Ira Cogan

[This is not advertising or an endorsement or a disavowal of any products or services, I'm just writing about the stuff I use.]

I recently wrote about the stuff this blog is made of; my domain registrar, platform, and email service respectively. In that spirit I want to write about the other stuff I've been using lately and how I arrived at the process I currently have. Over the years I've used so many different kinds of writing software, and I've gone from Windows to Mac and back. I mention this because it's relevant to the topic of writing software.

So like, in summary to be expanded on some other time, I was a PC person from the early 90s up until the XP era in the early aughts. And then the iPhone 3GS came out. I liked it so much that when my computer died, I got Mac and almost exclusively used Mac hardware products up until about three years ago when I took a spreadsheet class. The experience of Excel on a Windows machine was so superior to the experience on a Mac, I switched back. Throughout it all, I've been, and still am an iPhone person. As far as my position on this stuff goes, everybody should use whatever makes them happy. I don't think one is better than the other. Windows machines are more versatile. Macs are more secure. Linux is the most socially conscious.

Anyway, at different times over the years, some pieces of software were not available on whichever platform I was using, or the software was and, in some cases, still is, just better on one over the other. I experimented with Google Docs, IA Writer, Notability, Apple Notes, Google Keep, Scrivener, Microsoft Word, Microsoft OneNote, and a slew of others... Which resulted in me having a lot of writing scattered across a slew of formats. Unless I saw something through from beginning to completion in a short amount of time, it got filed away and forgotten about. I still got a buncha stuff all over the place but moved most of the important stuff to Word/Docx.

I decided when I made the switch back to PC that I would serve myself better becoming proficient at Word and Google Docs since Microsoft Office and Google Workspace are what most of the business world uses and given my making a habit of using Excel for more things instead of a bazillion different apps and services doing what a spreadsheet can do but prettier, I decided on Word. But more importantly I decided to pick one piece of writing software and stick with it exclusively. Until a couple of days ago.

My blog host is just too awesome. The CMS just works too great for markdown and uploading photos from a browser, and Word, well, doesn't do that as well. So I started out drafting in Word, and due to the friction (best word for it I can think of) I developed the bad habit of drafting directly into the CMS and publishing there... And the other day I caught myself not copy/pasting it into a Word Document and saving it immediately. I realized I need to add a little friction. Speed is nice, but the process is just too fast and I want this stuff to have a little friction to it, but not so much that it's a pain in the ass. Drafting markdown in Word is a little bit of a pain in the ass. So I was like 'What's a good markdown editor (one that isn't the CMS of write.as)?' and I've heard good things about Obsidian, but then I remembered IA Writer. I remembered the inventor of markdown really likes the iOS version so rather than try out a new thing, let me download the thing I already had but for Windows this time and see if I still like it. And, I do! I'm writing this in IA Writer right now, and I can export to Word with one click! And upon testing, it exports with all the styling looking as it's supposed to in Word.

So now I have the best of all three worlds; A place to draft for the blog that isn't the blog itself, a way to save it in .md and in .docx quickly, and the place to share it, and with just the right amount of friction to the process.

That's all for now.

-Ira

I re-download the app to my phone. I open up Facebook. There's a default feed in front of me. I don't understand it.

There's a post from UNICEF Ireland. The white text on black background reads “This week, a 12-year-old girl in a tent in Gaza was shot...” and I'll spare you the rest of the quote.

I scroll down a post. There's a humorous post from some entity I am not familiar with. The Scottish Sun. It's a picture of a handsome young man surrounded by attractive young women. The caption in the picture reads “Boston braces for Tartan Army baby boom as smitten locals enjoy kilted flings”. An accompanying quote reads “It takes a real man to rock a kilt.” I giggle.

I scroll down. There are posts from entities that I do deliberately follow. Most of them are posts about posts from other entities. ...Which is literally what I'm doing right now. For what it's worth, I'm using my own words. I navigate over to some of their pages. A lot of it is screengrabs of posts with snarky commentary or “right on” commentary. There's little to no original content.

I click on “feeds”, I click on “friends”, and there's a feed in front of me of posts from friends, and the posts are in some order I don't understand. No context is given to me that helps me understand why I'm looking at what I am looking at, in the order that I'm looking at it. It isn't chronological. Some posts are higher up. Some are further down. Some are left out altogether.

Was some of it worth seeing or engaging with? Sure. Am I any more informed about what some of my friends are up to or thinking about? Also, sure. But why do I feel like such a sucker every time I log on there?

Deep down I know why. I ignore it.

In my subconscious somewhere, I recall the stat that only 8% of Facebook interactions are between friends these days. Sounds about right. I'd say about 8% of my time and interactions there are with friends myself. How did that happen? I got trained into disconnecting from my friends by a “social” network.

The bell rings. I salivate. I remind myself that everyone is susceptible to this stuff and it is not a good use of anyone's time. Facebook may not be the only offender these days, but you can quickly trace a direct line between everybody else's behavior and Facebook's.

I snap out of it after about fifteen minutes. Thankfully, before I can even get to “reels” this time.

I navigate over to the “memories” or “on this day” feed and see if there are any tasteless old posts that need deleting. I log out. I remove my login information from my device. I get back to living life.

Repeat tomorrow. Hopefully minus the fifteen soul sucking minutes.

-Ira

I went the last couple of years only participating there every now and then. I log in, I check the “memories” or “on this day” or whatever page to check if I posted something years ago that I’m embarrassed by. People change over time, and I don’t delete things that were written by a person who saw the world differently than he does now, and I don’t delete things that were written as a reaction in real time to current events. Like, conversations, or just whatever I was thinking about a particular thing that I don’t think anymore knowing what I now know -I don’t delete that because I think those posts should be held to that standard.

But I do delete idiotic or offensive things I wrote in the past for the sake of being idiotic or offensive. When I first signed up for that thing in 2007 (19 years ago!) it was a place to chat with a handful of friends not unlike the cafeteria lunch table in high school or a dive bar. Social Media Manager, Influencer, and Content Creator were not occupations, and smartphones and the mobile internet were still in their infancy compared to today. Also, it wasn’t a place I’d regularly bump into my relatives… So yeah, it was kinda like a dive bar for me.

So, I still log in there almost daily, I look at the “memories” page, and although tasteless posts don’t come up too often, they come up every once in a while and I delete those. And then, ideally, I log right out. But sometimes I don’t, and I waste a buncha time… but I did successfully barely participate on that thing for a while… And then the Knicks made the finals! So the last couple of weeks I participated again but I think I’m done with that, at least for now.

I figure by not participating, I avoid contributing to the network effects of that thing. And from what I see there, I am missing out on a few things, but the cost is too great.

I figure if I can abstain from contributing to the network effects of that place, maybe it will inspire others to do the same. I also figure by sticking with this thing you’re reading right now, it will remind people (well, myself really lol) that there is a world out there outside of Instagram, Facebook, and the like and that world is just… better.

That’s all for now.

-Ira

I don’t care if you moved here yesterday or have never even been to New York and I don’t care if you’ve never seen a basketball game before in your life.

YOU DO NOT NEED ANYONE’S PERMISSION TO ENJOY THIS. GATEKEEPERS IN EVERY FANDOM ARE BORING LOSERS AND ALWAYS WILL BE.

That is all.

-Ira

I finally took the time to figure out how to remove the write.as branding on the footer from this thing. Nothing against write.as, I love it! I just don’t want the branding appearing on here.

While it’s on my mind and If you’re at all curious, this is the stuff I use for this endeavor. This is not an endorsement nor an advertisement. Just a statement that (at press time) I’m a satisfied customer of these services:

Domain: iwantmyname

It’s just simple and has “one click integration” with a lot of services which I love because I’m not into fiddling with technical things. I’ve seen rating sites mention it’s pricier than it’s competitors and maybe for the first year it is, but the competitors tend to offer an inexpensive introductory rate for the first year and then jack up their prices. It’s been my experience that iwantmyname only raises their prices every few years and when they’ve done that, it’s been reasonable.

Hosting and platform: write.as

Look, there’s all kinds of services out there that are great for making and hosting a website with all kinds of bells and whistles. I just wanted something that works with a custom domain, supports markdown, supports image uploads, has a simple CMS that’s easy to use, and doesn’t look tacky. Even when I had the default write.as branding on the footer, imho this thing never looked tacky.

Email: Fastmail

Fastmail is inexpensive and it just works. I think these days the big companies support @yourcustomdomain addresses too, but I wanted a service completely disconnected from my personal accounts and I’m satisfied with it.

addendum I can't believe I forgot about this part. I wanted an email service that's disconnected from the host. I've used Ghost, Wordpress, and now write.as for hosting and I haven't had to take too many steps when switching hosts because of this. There are companies, usually the hosting ones, that offer packages that include hosting, email, and domain registration all in one place and that makes sense for a lot of people, I'm not one of them. Companies can change and I don't want to find a situation that takes a lot of steps to extricate myself from.

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philosophical stuff

Look, I understand the value of the network effects of those other places that I’m not going to name but it would do us all some good if we spent less time there. If you’re feeling creative, make your own thing with your own domain and express yourself there. Yeah, you’ll have to tailor it for a more general audience, but so what? If you’re just on there to keep in touch with friends and family that’s one thing, but for almost anything other than that? You’re putting too many eggs in too few baskets.

There’s value for a store to be located in a mall, but only the kind of people who go into malls will see it and having only mall locations is limiting. Especially when the mall is a shitty mall in a shitty neighborhood. And sometimes it’s the mall itself that is making the neighborhood shitty!

Check out POSSE if you’re unfamiliar with it. It stands for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere and it’s just a good practice for creatives of all kinds. [UPDATE: ok ok, I misunderstood the “syndicate” part, I meant like, post links to your stuff elsewhere, not necessarily post your actual stuff elsewhere, I mostly agree with the philosophy.]

-Ira

More people are going hungry now than at the height of the pandemic -NPR Today I learned the USDA halted its own research on food insecurity last year.

North Carolina Bill Would Legalize Killing Abortion Providers and Advocates -Seriously -Jessica Valenti

Since the Dobbs decision, bills like this are being submitted all over the place, and sometimes they get through. And there’s plenty of other horrifying news surrounding the issue. Valenti’s Abortion, Every Day newsletter helps me stay informed.

edit: I corrected a link

I count my blessings every day that I’m in New York for a number of reasons, this issue among them, but, things can change. A lot of people learned that the hard way with the Dobbs decision. Safe and legal access to abortion is central to a woman’s autonomy and that isn’t a given anymore in a lot of places here. Someday, it may not be a given anywhere. Elections matter.

That’s all for now.

-Ira

When I Was A Beastie Boy by Kate Schellenbach with Jill Cunniff and Gabby Glaser. Although a lot of this stuff took place about a decade earlier, as a New Yorker who started playing music and got into going to shows in the 90s this really spoke to me. The city was our playground indeed.

Trump DOJ mass-deletes info on Jan. 6 riot cases, including violent assaults -NPR. Look, I know everything is exhausting but it’s important to stay outraged.

The Year Boomer AI Slop Came to Cannes -Vulture. I don’t know what the word boomer has to do with anything in the title here but this is a fantastic read and treats this stuff with the contempt it deserves.

That’s all for now.

-Ira

I watched the show a while back. If you’re reading this from the future, there are 2 seasons up and season 3 comes out July 3rd. I really enjoyed it and I finally got around to reading the books.

Seasons 1 and 2 are based on the first book, and the show has some side plots that aren’t in the book, but there’s nothing on the show that conflicts with the books too much or interferes with their spirit.

And I’ve written about this kind of thing before, what I think an adaptation owes its source material. An adaptation doesn’t have to be the exact same story or events, but it does have to take place in that same world and touch on the same themes in a meaningful way. And that’s it, and the show does exactly that. Reading the first book was a little difficult because I already had the gist of most of the things that happen in the book. I would have gotten more out of it had I read it before I watched the show, but I still really enjoyed it. The other two books were almost nonstop page turning!

Howey’s writing is fantastic. I ripped through those books in about a week and a half and then consumed upwards of ten thousand words from his blog so far and am currently reading Beacon 23 which I will likely finish this afternoon.

Good stuff!

-Ira

It's almost all bad news all the time in the moment we're living in. I know I harp on this stuff a lot, but it's important to not accept fascism, corruption, and just plain idiocy as something that's a normal part of our lives.

The president is not a normal human being. Trevor Noah said a while back that he isn't a unique figure, as in there are other world leaders like him other places. But, that doesn't matter to me. We've gone so far backwards so quickly. I mean, I could fill pages about each issue going back to 2015 when he campaigned on “a ban on Muslims entering the country... Just until we know what's going on” to “Russia, are you listening” to... Look, one could fill books with this stuff and there is only so much time I can spend writing about it.

It's just remarkable, the hits have just kept coming. There are countless moments that could be pointed to that signaled the beginning of the end, and countless things that they've done since that are just terrifying, but I often think about these two. One of which occurred in the early days of his first campaign, and he still secured the nomination, and the second after he secured it, but still before the 2016 election. And tens of millions voted for him anyway. And don't get me started on what's happened since.

I think about these two often because millions of my fellow Americans disappointed me. And the ones who have regrets now? The excuses they make. “We did not know he would do this”, whatever the “this” is. Well, I'm here to say yes, you did. See those two links above. You're telling me you didn't know about that shit before the 2016 election?

And look, there's plenty of blame to go around for everybody, but I gotta blame the people who stepped into a booth and voted for him before I blame anyone else.

As they flood the zone with shit, I just think it's important to remember this stuff. It matters.

Also, look, sorry about the downer of a post, and I know you probably already know all this, but sometimes I gotta vent. Thank you for listening.

-Ira