A few months back, Corey Doctorow wrote a blog about Enshittification, which is a process of taking a good, fun, and useable product and gradually, through a clear set of steps, make it terrible. Or a shitty product.

HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

It is likely you favorite App will go through this process. First, you have a great app that seems like it brings you a lot of value, then it gets a little crappier, clunkier to use, more logins more data tracked, then you’re getting charged a subscription, then you feel like you’re getting ads in the app you’re subscribed too.

This is part of the reason why Google dropped the “Don’t Be Evil” motto. They were doing things previous versions of themselves would have considered Evil. Case in point, moving into China and censoring part of the internet. They still do, just on a much more limited basis. It’s the “Cost of Doing Business.” If that’s the cost of doing business, then they’ve already gone to the point of abusing their users.

I don’t think this is the only way platforms/apps die. I think they are often left to rot and die through neglect after a purchase. If a larger competitor gobbles up a smaller one, the larger competitor can extract the best bits of the smaller product and put them into their Enshittified product. This leaves the original smaller more innovative app, much worse off.

Fighting against Enshittification is hard. It requires collective action. It requires users to demand regulation to protect the user from Enshitification. It’s a constant battle, this isn’t a one time set and forget action.

Section 230 is one of the best things for any internet platform, but it’s been under constant attack. It’s under attack because it allows businesses to keep Nazi’s off a platform. It keeps Right Wing Fascists off a platform. The problem for Right Wing Politicians in office is that their talking points line up or are softened versions of Nazi rhetoric. So, those platforms, if they use automation for moderation, will kick Right Wing voices off, because they sound like Nazis.

Section 230 is very far from perfect, but it protects businesses that do not want to Enshittifiy the way eXTwitter has Enshittified.

Call your Senator and support actions to block mergers. Call your Representatives and support actions to protect users

Over the past couple years, I’ve been struggling with some really significant health issues. I have been dealing with some sort of allergy since I was a kid. I had reactions to Swedish Fish, it was my first real experience of cutting food out of my life and just kind of moving on. When I was about 9 I loved Swedish Fish. I’d eat them as often as I could get my grubby mitts on them. However, my throat would swell up. After the second time it happened, I just stopped eating them.

Almost two decades later, I was having issues with wheat. I’d been having those since I discovered wheat beer while in undergrad, but it’d escalated to the point of impacting bread. I’d also started to have issues with cheese. Dairy was also not something I’d enjoyed for a while, so it just kind felt like time to cut them both out.

This was hard, much harder than giving up Swedish Fish.

About 5 or so years later, I finally went to an allergist. From there with immunotherapy things just kind of blew up. I’ve had my diet restricted to about 6 or 7 different things. It’s been tough. I’ve shed about 90 pounds on this diet. However, I’ve been able to get into shape a lot, because of my indoor cycling trainer.

I’m currently going through the process of trying a couple new drugs. Right now I’m testing out Orladeyo. This one is interesting, since it was generally made for Hereditary angioedema, which is a very significant swelling disease. It looks pretty challenging to live with.

So far, I’ve been only it only a few days, the immediate Gastro side effect aren’t too bad, just a bit of burping and discomfort, which is significantly better than the potential. I’ve already seen some benefit of it, I’ve shed about 3 pounds of water weight in just about 2 days. Clearly, the medicine is doing something for me. I’m pretty happy about that. I’m hoping that this will work for me to allow me to resume the immunotherapy.

This year I’ve been struggling to do any writing or editing, in general. I hope to get back to the editing this month and finish up Goat’s Legacy. I’d like to get it published early next year. I plan to turn the Good Goddamn into a Vella for Kindle. I also hope to get back to writing a blog on here once a week or once every two weeks. Just to get back into the swing of writing.

Things have just been hard.

Before I jump into the meat of what I want to say, I want to step back and look at why I’ve really slowed down my blogging. A few things have been going on. First, I’ve been really struggling with my mental health. It’s been with me my entire life. I’ve had some sort of depression or another. In the lead up to the 2016 election I was obsessed with politics and it was not healthy.

I was frustrated with our political candidates in 2016 as well. I didn’t like Clinton’s policies and I thought we needed a significant shift in our foreign policy and domestic policy. That we should use the next presidency to reduce military spending and strive to make significant changes in our healthcare policies and expand our basic rights. I believed we needed to codify this into law. I didn’t see Clinton doing that. So, I submitted a protest vote in 2016. I voted for Bernie. Now, I rationalized this a few ways. I gave money to the DNC, I voted for all the national Democrats aside from her. I also knew that my protest vote wouldn’t have a significant impact in Oregon. I was right. Clinton handily won Oregon, won the national popular vote, and I got to protest that we should have had a better candidate than Clinton.

However, with Trump’s election, things rapidly spiraled. I needed to step back from all of the chaos he was causing. I couldn’t handle the news. Instead, I ramped up my donations. I give to more established causes across more diverse set of political interested than I did before.

Then my health started to fall apart. In 2019 I learned that I’ve been struggling with significant allergies for years. The care I was receiving seemed to ramp up my health issues and just before everyone else was stuck in their houses for Covid I was stuck in the house because I would have anaphylaxis reactions. So, instead of protesting, I read and wrote book reviews on here and donated more.

I read White Rage and I believe that book does the best job at explaining the history of why we’re seeing these erosions of rights than ever before. So, given the dire circumstances, I did the only rational thing, voted for Biden, donated more money to more causes and focused on getting healthy.

My health is moving in a better direction, though I’m still deep in the forest and a long way from getting out of the woods.

I sent that protest vote in 2016, because I wanted a leader that could start structural change. Someone that was willing to buck convention to risk reelction by codifying more rights. We need more rights enshrined in federal law. We need democratic leaders that recognize the Republicans goal is power. Continual power for a white ethno-theocratic state. One that doesn’t allow for BIPOC or their allies. One that only allows Evangelical Christians.

Roe is most recent right to fall. it will not be the last. It didn’t start here. Our rights have been on a long decline since 2001 when the Supreme Court decided the election, even though recounts indicated Gore was likely going to win Florida. It continued with the Patriot Act and the continual erosion of the 4th amendment. Then we saw the continual erosion of voting rights, first with the Citizen’s united ruling and culminating with the elimination of the VRA. This caused the huge lines we’ve seen at all the most recent election. It’s why we see so much dark money sloshing around.

I know I have a lot of privilege in our democratic system. My goal during the next few years is to ramp up my donation and leverage my privilege to push the Democrats farther to the left to counter the extreme rightward pull of the Republicans. I will mostly do this during primaries when I vote, but then vote for the Dem candidate when it makes sense.

Our rights are going to continue to erode. Gay rights and contraceptive are next, then interracial marriage, then we’ll be an apartheid state again. That’s the goal. In the mean time, I hope to do more blogging, I will donate. I will do what I can.

The End of Food Allergy: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse a 21st Century Epidemic by Kari Nadeau

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I bought this book, because I’m going through a LOT of food allergies right now. Even though we’re in COVID, I’m stuck in the house more than just about anyone else. I have allergic reactions to the pollen outside to the point that my throat feels like it’s closing up. On top of that, I keep rolling back my food uncovering new things that I’m struggling with. Testing can be a challenge and it’s kind of impossible to test for everything. Just the other day, I figured out that I couldn’t have pasta sauce, either because of basil or because of tomatoes. Regardless, things are hard and really stressful for me.

So, I bought this book looking for some other sorts of ideas that could help with my ongoing treatment. I’m currently undergoing Immunotherapy, which this book is basically all about. Well that and preventing food allergies in kids. So, if YOU are expecting and really worried about your kids having allergies, this book is for you! There’s seriously a full chapter on the different types of research conducted to uncover the root cause of allergies.

The general findings are that you need to expose kids early, with a bunch of stuff together, rather than waiting a long time. (There are things that make that easier). That and if your kid has dry skin, you better doing everything you can to heal it, cause that’s a major vector for food allergies.

The Authors spend a bit of time scaring the crap out of readers with short cases of allergy sufferers dying. Which kind of sucks to read. Cause they are young kids that unknowingly eat something that kills them. It’s a stupid tragic death. It’s terrifying, cause I feel like that could happen to me. I’m pretty sure that could happen to me if I eat ginger, so it’s looking at death in the face, if you have allergies.

However, there’s good news, because they go from talking about kids dying to talking about how they saved a bunch of other kids using Oral Immunotherapy. They also talk about a couple drugs that speed up the immunotherapy from a year or more to less than a few months. However, I’m actually ALLERGIC to that drug, so I hope, in your case, you have much better luck.

In terms of peanut allergy sufferers there’s even better luck, because there’s something of a “vaccine” that switches your immune system from attacking peanut protein to actually treating it as food. There are a number of studies in progress.

Overall, this book was really well written, there are fantastic layperson explanations of very technical immune system deep dives. There’s clear explanations of risks for any and every treatment options. There’s a lot of hope in this book. The other thing that’s really nice. They talk about the emotional and psychological toll these allergies take on a person. They strongly recommend finding a therapist to talk through the anxiety and stress of the disease.

My biggest complaint is the last of end notes to indicate what study they are referencing at any given time. They often have summaries that are cited at the very end, but it’s not like the Body Keeps the Score, which has notes to the actual papers as they are reference.

Highly recommended if someone you know is suffering from food allergies.



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Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader by John Rossman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I believe this book was intended to be written in the style of Amazon narratives. Some of them were well written others were uninteresting or felt like the author was pandering. I read this book over the span of a few weeks, I would say it was generally unmemorable. I really don’t remember many of the ideas listed in the book.

The reason I don’t remember them? Well, the chapter heading at three items on it. The title of the idea, a subtitle, and a pithy quote. The idea was written out in a little box which may or may not have been on the first page of each idea. Further clouding this, is that for each idea, and there were 50 1/2 ideas, there was one or two pages of introduction before getting to the meat of the idea itself. Often the ideas which acted as chapters, were only two to four pages long.

Some of the ramblings were speculation of what amazon could do if they got into health care, some was complaining about some business the author had to use, but did a bad job with their processes. In many cases, it showed a sad lack of empathy for the people the author was interacting with in these businesses.

Finally, the author hasn’t worked at Amazon in 15 years. He was in one major role, while it played a large part in Amazon’s overall growth, he doesn’t have any deeper understanding of AWS than anyone else looking from the outside in. Maybe a bit more because he might have some high up friends working there.

Ultimately, this book has a piece or two of interesting ideas, but is very short on execution. Don’t recommend anyone read this book.

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