Chris Hannah

I was thinking about social networks in the context of local communitites earlier. It made me wonder if a type of “scope” could be added to a network like Twitter, where you could determine how localised you wanted it to be.

You could have a scope of the entire world, a country, city, or even a much smaller community. And I think it could be good if you could set a scope when composing a tweet, viewing tweets, or also globally per account.

For example, if you select a scope when composing a tweet, then that tweet will only appear in the timelines of people that fall into that scope. Anyone would be able to go to your profile and read it directly, but you could set who gets it in their timelines?

If you’re reading content, you might want a way to only view content for a specific scope. Not just get a list of trending topics from an area, but actually read a live stream of tweets limited to a particular scope.

I don’t know how many people would even use such a feature, I’m not even sure how much I’d use it. But I do think that one problem the world has with social media is that it makes everyone part of one worldwide discussion. Now that may be a good thing, but I don’t think all discussions need to be held at that scale.

Sure, humans are sociable creatures, but I don’t think we’ve managed the step between having small communities and then suddenly being connected at a global scale very well. And I’m not sure we ever will.

I can’t quite say if this is a temporary phase I’m going through right now, since I’ve done something similar before. But recently I’ve been slowly reducing the ways in which my devices can interrupt and distact me.

I experimented with email services to help distinguish important emails, forwarded them all to the one address, and created some basic filtering/sorting rules. On top of that, I’ve turned off notifications for email and decidew to check it only a couple times a day, if that.

With social media, I haven’t switched off notifications completely, but I do have some filters on those. They seem to be working well, although I can see myself tuning that a bit in the future.

As for other notifications on my devices, I have a system where if I receive a notification that annoys me, I turn them off for that app entirely. Similarly to what I did when experimenting with my email system, by reducing the number of annoying and distracting notifications, they become much more useful, and have a bigger signal to noise ratio.

I’ve also been leaving do not disturb on for long periods of time, and purposely leaving my phone somewhere so I’m not distracted. I must admit, I’ve found it to be rather refreshing.

Maybe this is just a temporary phase I’m going through right now, but when I think about it, I do think there is a value in treating your phone (and other devices) more as tools, and not a life support device designed to be attached to you at all times.

I think I’ve finally found the reading system for me, and it’s all based on the GoodLinks app. The reading experience is GoodLinks is great, distraction-free, but with a few organisational options too.

My system is that I have two “inboxes” for things that I read, my email inbox, and also my RSS subscriptons. If I get a newsletter that I want to read later, i’ll add it to GoodLinks so I make sure that it’s read, but also doesn’t add any clutter to my email folders. The same applies for my RSS subscriptions, I treat my RSS reader as a triage system, similar to emails, where I may read small posts straight away, delete the ones I’m not interested in, and move the rest to GoodLinks.

It’s not just those links that go into GoodLinks though, as I regularly save articles from Twitter, Micro.blog, and variousother webpages via the Share extensions on iOS and maxOS.

I find that this method of moving everything into one place helps me not only keep track of what I want to read, but to also read more. Since I find having a dedicated place for reading, I can build up a decent collection of interesting content. And whenever I have time to read, I can grab my iPad, open GoodLinks, and I know there’s going to be something there that interests me.

My challenge to find my ideal writing app continues!

I’ve tried Editorial, iA Writer, and Ulysses in the past. But more recently I did a two-week experiment with Craft that went rather well, but I still thought I needed to test a few more before I settled. The app I just tried was Werdsmith, and sadly that disappointed me early on so I didn’t get very far. But now I’m trying out 1Writer, and it looks to be okay for now.

Although right now I’d say I’m torn between iA Writer and Craft.

I came across a story on twitter regarding a transgender woman playing in a women’s basketball team There were various photos showing her stature alongside the rest of her teammates. Because there’s no hiding it, she’s clearly got a huge build compared to everyone else on her team, and noticeably stronger.

While some of the replies I saw focussed on the fact she’s transgender so she shouldn’t play on the women’s team, maybe there should be a trans competition, or some were putting the blame on women in general saying things like “Women supported this, now they must face the consequences”.

I don’t want to get into any of that, because I’m not a women of any kind, so I can’t speak on behalf of one.

But I do think it raises some questions, that as a society I don’t think have been truly answered.

The discussion seems to be only skin-deep at the moment, with one side saying “she’s a woman and therefore she should play in the woman’s team”, and the other saying “but she’s only a transgender woman, she’s really a man and should plan on the men’s team”. This type of discussion doesn’t do anyone any good, and tends to end up in arguments.

What I think we need to think about is the reason why some sports have separate teams for men and women.

The obvious answer is because of the clear biological differences between the male and female sex. Men are typically taller, stronger, and quicker than women, so in most cases it would be unfair to compete against one another.

Obviously that doesn’t mean men are always bigger and stronger than women, and some women train to become much stronger than most men, but it’s clear that there is a massive biological advantage for men in many regards.

So instead of arguing what gender people are, and what team they should play on. Society needs to decide whether competitions are split on biological sex or by gender. Both have advantages and disadvantages. I personally think by doing it on sex is the fairest option.

But not everyone will agree. And it also doesn’t fix the problems transgender people have. Because for all the people that complain on Twitter about a transgender woman being on a women’s team, I can imagine there would be a similar reaction if she was playing on the men’s team.

I would like to add that I know this can be a sensitive subject for some, so if I’ve used them wrong term anywhere, please know that it was not to offend or cause controversy. This is just me thinking out loud.

I’m thinking about checking out Apple News+, and as soon as I saw the £9.99 subscription fee, I thought maybe now is when I should look into getting an Apple One subscription. Since I already use Apple Music, Apple Arcade, iCloud Storage, and Apple TV+.

One restriction is that there is only one Apple One plan that includes News+, and of course it’s the most expensive one. The Premier plan contains 6 services:

• Apple Music
• Apple TV+
• Apple Arcade
• 2TB iCloud Storage
• Apple News+
• Apple Fitness+

And for all of those, it costs £29.95 a month.

However, for the four services that I currently pay for, it doesn’t even come close:

• Apple Music - £4.99 (I’m still getting student prices)
• Apple TV+ - Free (Until July 2021)
• Apple Arcade - £4.99
• 2TB iCloud Storage - £6.99
• Total: £16.97 (Until July 2021, where it will go up to £21.96)

So until July when I’ll have to start paying for Apple TV+, the difference between my current individual subscriptions and Apple One Premium, is News + and Fitness+ (which I don’t want) with an additional cost of £12.98 a month. I think I’ll subscribe to News+ directly for now then.

One benefit of the Apple One plans are that you get one month free. So I think I’ll create a reminder now to activate that in July when I’m at peak subcriptions.

I heard an MP mention the other day that as the number of positive cases drop here in the UK, the data will become more unreliable because of the expected number of false positives. While our cases have been relatively high it’s not been a problem, but with the number of tests that we are performing each day, low numbers of positive cases may not tell the whole truth.

As per the ONS, we know that the rate of false positives of the PCR test is between 0.08% and 0.4%. I haven’t found concrete guidance on the false negative rate. However, over the pandemic I’ve seen reported from scientists and politicians that if you compare the two common tests used in the UK, the PCR and the lateral flow tests, the PCR tends to produce more false positives, and the lateral flow more false negatives.

Putting that aside, I decided to use the UK governments data on testing and positive results and see how everything looks. Luckily, the data includes the number of PCR tests alongside the total number of tests for a given day. So I could apply the false positive rate to the PCR tests only.

The simplest graph I’ve come up with is showing the number of positive results (in total), compared to the minimum and maximum number of expected false positives, given the number of PCR tests performed on each day.

I would take it with a grain of salt, seeing as there will obviously be a number of false negatives, although reports suggest that this rate is much lower then the false positive rate, and also with the dates not always lining up between a test being performed, results reported, and specimen date.

However, the assumption that the rate of false positives may have an affect on how we interpret the data looks to have a truth to it. So in respect to “the data”, I would suggest that COVID zero will never happen while we are performing ~500k tests a day, given the number of false positives.

Update:

I have made a second graph which shows the overall positive number of cases in the UK per day, and also the same number of cases per day both removing the minimum and maximum number of expected false positives.

More salt is needed, but we’re certainly coming to an interesting point regarding the data.

I would also like to point out that I do not believe that number of positive cases should be the sole data point for restrictions, seeing as the number of deaths and hospitalisation rates are much more important. Because if you could remove the deaths and hospitalisation, then there would not be much risk left.

Okay, so I’ve decided to renew my Micro.blog subscription, and see if I can make it work for me as my go to social network.

I’ve been slowly been becoming less invested in what I see on Twitter, and the endless hot-takes and throwaway opinions. And at the same time, I’ve been having a peek at what people are posting on Micro.blog, and also replying to the odd post. It certainly feels like a whole different environment to the rest of the internet.

A phrase Greg Morris used when describing Micro.blog resonated with me a lot: “One of the reasons I love micro.blog is because it is so slow”. I get a sense of that too. When you’re on Twitter, it feels like a packed motorway with every car going at 100mph, and the only way for you to use it is to jump on and do it at the same speed. There’s no time to breathe or to think.

I can’t quite put it into words, but a rough analogy would be that on Twitter it feels like everyone is talking at one another, but on Micro.blog you’re actually talking to one another.

I’m not sure if this is a thing that other people do. But I never listen to anything, whether it’s a podcast, or just music, as I enter my house.

For some strange reason the transition to moving inside while listening to something, just feels a bit dirty to me. Maybe that’s not the right word, but it has a similar effect.

I used to just turn the volume down as I entered, but that still felt uncomfortable to me. So whatever it is, I always have to pause any audio before opening my door. Luckily I have AirPods, and can just tap the side of one to do this.

What’s maybe even more strange is that I rarely listen to anything using head/earphones indoors. The only exceptions are when I’m on a video call for work, and I’m not alone in the house, or if I have over-ear headphones on while focussing on writing or development. Both rare occasions.