Now Escaping Planet Box Store
Destination? Far away and closer to home
It's been a month since I left Facebook…
I deleted Facebook and Instagram last month and a few months before that I deleted X. Meta’s stock price is up almost 20%.
Overthrowing the billionaire oligarchy may take longer than I hoped…
I don’t have a replacement for Facebook today (March 2025). But the future is coming quickly.
Federated communities, not billionaire-brewed drugs, are in development…
It seems we all want community, but don’t want to be spied on, manipulated, or bombarded by noise just to be with friends. I’m on Bluesky and Mastodon.
My social world is smaller but deeper. I'm reconnecting with old friends via messaging apps like Signal. I may even meet a few in person (Note to self: relearn how to shower)
And a bigger journey has emerged.
A long-simmering idea, seeded in college by reading Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher, has blossomed into a realization.
I must escape Planet Big Box.
Destination?
My GPS is an analog technology, homesickness, but for a place I’ve never been. I can only dream of a distant land with endless plateaus uninterrupted by ads.
It’s almost impossible to think of a life not blinded by brands. Farmer’s markets, family-owned grocers, and then who else? A miller? A cooper? Can I make my own clothes??? I installed Linux on an obsolescent MacBook—take that Mr. Apple.
Instead of making good TIME, I’m lounging about and enjoying GOOD times.
Navigators
Without a clear destination, I can only gather information and float in the direction of light and clean air:
Mr. Global, oil and gas exec and expert. I found him on TikTok but here’s his Youtube channel
Kathryn Anne Edwards, PhD Economist
Aaron Parnas, Activist lawyer and son of famous Lev Parnas
The Lever, An investigative podcast series exposing the 50-year plot to legalize corruption in America
I’m still reading the headlines from the old guard, like New York Times, but also devouring:
TikTok
Al Jazeera, mostly for Middle-east updates
I’m trying to read more while making progress on my own novel. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is excellent. Its TV series is also fantastic.
I’m listening to:
Bill Callahan’s One Fine Morning and Lola Young, I’m so messy
But mostly
Most of the time I’m avoiding the shitshow that is DJT and his destruction of the US Constitution, its democratic traditions, and alienation of our more principled allies.
Like any mountain storm, friendless and violent, surely this too will pass.