Feel free to ignore.
]]>This is the executive summary of the post where I am testing RSS to Friendica.
Right, this is just a test to see if I can post on the blog, which then should update the RSS feed, which in turn should be picked up by my Friendica instance, and thus being able to re-share it from my Akkoma account (which is my main account). Here's for testing. There is nothing to see here.
Actually, I am testing one more thing: I normally create posts directly on my desktop, sync to git and that updates the blog. This post however I am typing in an admin interface. I never do that, so I had to test that too. :)
]]>Looking at alternatives for feedreaders I came across Feedbin. This is my view on it and their service.
After my Feedly article I got a few comments saying "who uses RSS feeds these days?" and "why don't you just read the articles where you find them?".
The answers are "consolidation" and "privacy" along with "saving time".
Finding good quality news is hard and takes time. A lot of it is behind paywalls and/or on places/sites that are littered with advertising. Feedreaders get around some of those issues by only showing me news from sources I have chosen, without advertising, in one app where all articles look similar and according to my settings. I could expand on the benefits if you'd like but for now:
I decided to try Feedbin. I'm home. It is great. It is turning in to my fave service for getting news, from all types of sources, be it RSS feeds, news letters via email and also Twitter, all consolidated into segments/categories I have set/decided.
Just to clarify: this article does not contain any paid-for links. This is just me wishing to inform you of a service I really like but I'm not getting paid for writing this. In fact, I haven't even started paying for Feedbin myself just yet as I'm still in my 14-day trial of their service.
The regular articles look like well laid out articles with a bunch of settings for fonts/typography & colours, which was kind of expected. In this sense it doesn't differ a lot from other alternatives in general, and Feedly (which is what I used to use) in particular. It looks better than a lot of the lesser known alternatives though, where some of the alternatives feel like remnants from the 2000's.
What I couldn't get in Feedly though was Twitter lists. Well, I could in Feedly too, if I subscribed to "Pro+" (for a higher subscription cost) as opposed to the subscription I had, "Pro", which was the only subscription option when I went for it. Feedbin handles tweets and Twitter lists just fine though. It even shows you the original tweet but more importantly goes out to fetch the article that is linked to from that tweet, which is great.
Not only do I not have to follow news sources to add them to a list. This is great as some of them I do not wish to inflate their follower number for, others I don't want to be confused for being a supporter of, but I still wish to see their coverage of certain topics, to avoid only getting news from a single source/side.
So I have a Twitter list called "News - All sides" where I've added various news sources (from...umm..."all" sides, as I like to keep track of what they all say, not just from one of the "bubbles").
Feedbin takes the list of tweets and shows me the original tweet, however (and this is the trick) it ALSO expands the tweet with the article that is linked in the tweet. This makes it MUCH more digestable, at a lower effort, than reading those tweets on Twitter.
Also, for twitter "threads", they simply turn in to one "article" in Feedbin. One "thread" = one article, with a start/finish. Much more readable.
The same goes with feeds from for example HackerNews etc, which usually is just a headline and a link. I get the full article within Feedbin without having to visit the link myself.
If the article isn't automatically expanded, most often because the feed is in a certain format, I can still just press "C" on my keyboard and Feedbin goes out and fetches the article in the post.
And, finally, the news letter thing: I get a secret email address for Feedbin. If I swap out my email address for various news letters to that address, the mails come in to Feedbin, and perhaps as importantly, out of my mail inbox, decluttering my mail clients.
As I follow a bunch (around 60 I think) of news letter authors on Substack (which apparently is the publishing service of the hour), this takes a huge load off my mail client.
One interesting feature in Feedbin is that it also keeps track of changes to the articles. This means I can see what has changed or been corrected within the article content.
Altogether this means Feedbin becomes the main source for news intake for me, regardless of if it is tweets, feeds, mails etc, all managed in a superslick web interface (or app on mobile) that is made for reading, and it saves me a lot of time.
All in all this means I have found a good replacement from Feedly in Feedbin and I'm really quite happy about it. Not only is Feedbin nice and slick, it also has a good iOS app that works on both iPhone/iPad. It is becoming my one-stop-shop for my daily news intake. It doesn't have a desktop client though. However, as it is a web based service, for those times when I wish to "click out" to an article my browser obviously keeps track of the news sources where I am a subscriber already, creating a seamless experience for me, which is great.
There are all kinds of "helpers" and "tools" out there to wrap it in a solution that makes it feel like a desktop app, but I haven't bothered with those, partly because I am thinking those solutions wouldn't necessarily keep track of the various news sources in such a fine-grained way as I already have in my browser (Firefox) where I am using specific containers for specific services, which I have outlined in an older article and which is still as relevant.
]]>Time to move on from Feedly and I need to find another good RSS Feed reader.
I have been a paying "Pro" user of Feedly since 2014. In general it has been good and I've not had much to complain about when it comes to the actual service. Being a "Pro" user also has meant that I could "Power Search" for feeds and topics and add those as feeds. To be honest I had no idea search was a paid-for feature as I've been paying for it for so long.
Therefore I was a bit surprised when I tried to search for "Infosec" (and/or "Infosecurity") as a topic and as the first alternative got presented with something that looked great. Selecting that option leads on to the next page, which weirdly has an overlay where only two things are clickable: a "cancel search" or a sign-up button.
I figured "right, that is apparently what I have to do..." and clicked through and ended up on a series of questions about my company/employer, my title, work e-mail address etc. I started feeling uncomfortable about it now, because I was thinking "surely you know all the things you need to know about me...I'm a paying customer, right?"
The entire string of questions ended in a time-slot booking form that was impossible to exit out of, bar closing the entire desktop app. So I did. And felt like a right-old gullible fool. By now I had already parted with my work email address (which is different from my Feedly user email address) and lo and behold, pretty soon there was a bling from my email inbox that I had received an email from Feedly.
In the email I was asked if I wished to book a time-slot (as I hadn't finished that part of it all), and I was also provided with a link to a presentation describing what the product actually included, because this apparently was a product.
Let's pause here for a moment and for reference tell you that my Feedly Pro account costs me $45/year. Not a lot, but also not nothing.
Back in the presentation, at the end of it, I was informed of that what I was about to sign up for would cost me $1200 for the "Standard Edition", or I could get the "Advanced Edition" for $1600. Per month.
For friends of maths, that is $14400 - $19200 over a year. I think it is fair to say that is quite a lot more than the $45 I am already paying.
The takeaway in all of this is a massive bugbear I have with many services online: why can't they be transparent about the cost up front? Why can't they be transparent about the feature-set of the service, up front?
A few simple lines of text information would have saved both me and Feedly from a lot of trouble, and I would have gone "oh, right, this is not something I need or even want, besides the price-point being in the realms of pure fiction and fantasy". Have you mistaken me for someone who flies to near-space just for the fun of it?
I'm sure the service/feature itself is fine. It looks quite impressive. Not a "please-here-have-my-firstborn-in-exchange-for-this-service" fine, but probably a decent service all in all.
Anyways...due to all of this, and due to me thinking I should not support companies that do bad UX and sneaky sales, but instead are honest up front regarding what they are about and how much it will cost me, I'm in the market for a new RSS Feed reader service. Currently Feedbin (thanks Phil Sheard) looks like it is the winner for me.
Feedbin has functionality for following social accounts like Twitter and automatically combine "threads" into long posts. It also has functionality for parsing newsletters, which would be a nice reprieve to my bacon-filled mail inbox. They are also abundantly clear on what they charge and what I will get for it. I can even search as a part of the deal. I think it might be worth checking out, if nothing else as they have a 14-day trial too. If I like it I'll do a write-up of it.
If anyone have opinions and/or tips, please contact me.
]]>You might have seen me on Facebook/Twitter saying something along the lines of that you/we/all should stop using "Big Tech" social media services, and look at start using alternative services.
There are lots of reasons for using alternatives to Facebook/Twitter. The reasons might differ from person to person as well. For me the main reasons are privacy and leaking private details. Also I wish to truly own my originally posted content (however mundande that content might be), as it is mine.
This also means that I don't like the theoretical and possible threat of me being banned/blocked/moderated from a service also means I will not be able to access my own content that I have posted. By using, and posting, original content on Facebook/Twitter/YouTube, that will always be a risk.
The debate about "free speech" surrounding the blocking of accounts on both Twitter and later Facebook are merely showing the symptoms of the problem with having big centralised services. For what it is worth I don't consider Twitter/Facebook to have "broken" free speech. They are private companies, and they removed elements from their "free" services that caused a lot of trouble. It is well within their rights to do so.
But as nice as it has been to be spared the raging lunacy of certain Twitter accounts, the legislation that has governed how/what/when/where the services are "responsible" or not, is being looked in to at this very moment. The big services in turn are responding pre-emptively, by making sure that they are covered for any eventuality regarding any changes in the law.
All the big tech social media services are now going through all the content shared/communicated on their services. Your content. Your messages. Even your private messages. They do this to ensure you are not breaking rules that will put them in to trouble.
When the alt-right/fascist/conspiracy chase has calmed down a bit the big services will start looking at any and all content, posted by everyone. In fact, it has already started, and I and some of my friends have been on the wrong end of that too many times. All kinds of content is now being caught in erratic faulty content blocking algorithms, or worse, manually checked by someone who has no clue where to find the latest information.
I can't even fault the big tech services for doing "something". They kind of have to. It is just...I don't want to be a part of it. I don't want them to have, and own, all my data, my thoughts and my conversations. I don't need them to know what I like/dislike only for their benefit to place better ads in front of my eyeballs, or to prioritise showing me posts from one user instead of another, thus building and re-inforcing opinion bubbles in their hope of increased interaction.
Those opinion bubbles are a huge part of the problem in todays society which has been massively divided, and is kept that way thanks to the algorithms of big tech social media services.
All of that possibly kind of makes sense to you, and you now wonder what alternatives you have? Glad you asked (you did, didn't you?), as that is the first step of breaking free, or at least attempting to regain control over your part/contribution in all of it. Unfortunately here are no quick and easy answers.
Firstly people should probably have a think about how and why they use social media today, and question themselves if they consider that to actually be the target when looking for new/other services. That will help you set the goalposts and make it easier to work out if you are getting closer to your goal (or further away) when you are looking at features and capabilities of alternative services.
In reality most people have probably not given this much thought at all. Yet many people on Facebook are NOT on Twitter (and vice versa) due to some quite specific-to-them reasons.
Therefore, trying to replace Facebook with a Twitter clone might not be the ideal way forward either, and can for sure set people up for disappointment.
Those are just example goals. You might have others. It is probably wise to also set a priority of importance of those things for yourself. Is any single one of the things on your list an absolute "must-have" or a direct "no-no"?
It can also be noted that the Big Tech services out there indeed are very good at what they do. They have spent millions making their services easy to use, and to create a glitch-free experience for their users. That is how they can reel in as many people as possible, which in turn means advertising money.
Most alternative services are often developed and run by happy amateur groups, that mainly stick together due to a shared conviction "they are doing the right thing", but without any type of pay or monetary reward.
In my search for viable alternatives I have signed up to, and used, most of the "alternative" services out there, with the main exceptions of Parler and Gab. Basically I have excluded platforms that are infamous for hosting alt-right/fascist/conspiracy people. That is not to say those people aren't spreading out over all the other services. They do, but I have wished to avoid services where they have stated and claimed/announced meeting points as theirs.
Basically my choice has fallen upon using a set of different services within what is commonly referred to as "The Fediverse". You can read this (external) article where they answer "What is the Fediverse?".
In short: The Fediverse is a collective of several separate services, each with their own characteristics, that can talk and interact with most other services on The Fediverse.
Each of those services are "federated". This means there is no central server somewhere that manages everything. Each of the services have their own "instances" (servers) and each instance can be as generic or as specific on whatever topic and/or interest group as the administrator of that instance feels like. There are thousands of "instances", with anything from 1 user to hundreds of thousands of users for that instance. There are more than 4 million people in total on the federated services.
4 million is a far cry smaller than Facebook/Twitter, who count users in billions, but honestly, you probably don't talk to most of the people on either of those services, and I doubt very much that you talk to, or interact with, more than a few hundred at most.
This also means that it doesn't really matter where in the Fediverse you join, you can talk/interact with the rest of the users of any Fediverse service, regardless of which service they prefer to use, or where they are.
You can do you, they can do themselves, and you can still interact. Great eh?
I have tried out several of the different Fediverse services and I shall be doing a proper write-up of my thoughts and learnings later, but in short, for me right now, I'm using Friendica as a Facebook "replacement" (it isn't covering all bases, but I don't need all bases to be covered, only a few key ones) and I'm using Akkoma as a Twitter replacement. Also I have started using Pixelfed as an Instagram replacement. All three services are part of "The Fediverse", so unlike Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/YouTube etc etc, most (almost all) of the services in the Fediverse can see, and talk to, and interact with, the other services, "out of the box" so to say.
It could be noted that I am not using Mastodon, which is the absolutely largest Fediverse service (millions of users), directly myself. I don't have to, as the Fediverse services I do use can talk and interact directly with Mastodon and its users anyways. The main reason I'm not using Mastodon is because it requires more of the server it is hosted from, compared to Pleroma.
I host my own instances of both Friendica and Akkoma, mainly because I can and I'm interested in such things. If managing servers is not your "thing" I would recommend signing up on open/public instances instead. That was also how I started out exploring The Fediverse.
I recently read a great new-user summary of the Fediverse, which said:
"1. What is the fediverse?
mastodon, misskey, pleroma and others are social networks comparable to Facebook in 2010: real human beings sharing mundane things to small audiences of friends, acquaintances or friendly strangers. Nowadays it seems that the big platforms, especially Youtube and Twitter, have turned into broadcasts where a few big influencers present the talking point of the day to massive audiences who consume those opinions, often without adding anything themselves."
To me that statement has a lot of truth in it. Also, keywords to me would be "2010" and "real human beings".
In the Fediverse the users, which indeed are "real human beings", take responsibility, and the control, over the content they post and the content they read, themselves. If you think you'd like that, you should definitely give it a try.
You can find me here:
To install A you need B which depends on C which can only be installed by D which...
Looking at installing a new "theme" for a blog. It's using Tailwindcss, so heading over there to look at how to install it. This is my "log" over how it went.
It apparently needs Node and Npm. I have, at some point, installed both, so I try to find which version of Node I have and which I would need, by simply updating it. Turns out Node now needs user accounts even to use the free tier as it has gone commercial, so to be able to work out if I'm a paying user or not they need to know who I am, at all, first. I decide to wait a bit with registering. I most definitely do not wish to pay a monthly subscription for it, I just wish to check out a blog theme.
I'm being reminded that to update Node I need Nvm. Trying to work out what version of Nvm I have and which I would need, by simply updating it. Turns out the command isn't registered on my command line. Did I perhaps install it via Homebrew, "back in the day"? I can't remember. I do remember being as confused at the time as I am starting to feel right now.
Checking to see what version of Homebrew I have, and which one I would need, by updating it. It, surprisingly, goes well. I again try to update Nvm. It says it has updated but also that it is most definitely not registered as a command. It also has a note saying the way I installed it, via Homebrew, isn't guaranteed to work, and thus not supported, though "it should probably" work. Basically it means "if you get errors, which you shouldn't, we think, don't come to us for support".
Getting instructions on suggested configuration lines that I should add to to Zsh, which is what I use on my command line. I log out, log in again to ensure it reloads the amended config. It complains that the config file contains folder paths that are incorrect. Nvm is now accessible as a command though. Probably need to fix those paths though. Checking the paths, they do in fact exist. Permissions? Checking. Weirdly it all looks correct.
Logging out again.
Searching the Internets to verify how to best update macOS to latest Node. Hundreds of search results. I'm apparently not the only one confused here.
Turns out I can do it via Nvm, Npm and Homebrew, which is kind of what I knew, though if and how they are interconnected has always been a mystery to me (I'm clearly not "a javascript dude"). Right now it feels like I have installed and updated all three of Nvm, Npm and Homebrew once from each of the others. Probably "over-updating" something somewhere.
Logging in again.
It seems to work anyways, but I can't update Node that way. Get a message that I didn't install Node via Homebrew. Looking at what version Npm is. Decides to update that. It goes well.
Manage to update Npm to the absolutely latest version.
Manage to update Nvm to the absolutely latest version.
Manage to update Node to the latest(?) version...it has jumped from 3 to 6, from 6 to 7 and now reports it is 15.8. Quite a difference. Don't know if that is the correct/right version still though.
Now I've reached a point where Npm, Nvm, Homebrew and Node at least function as commands on my Mac. Now, where was I? What was I trying to do? Ah, right, "checking-theme-which-led-to-Tailwindcss".
From the Tailwindcss documentation I work out that I need Node 12.13+ so I should now be sufficiently "up-noded". Oh, right, it also instructs me to "install it to a project" bla bla. So I should probably think this through some more, I don't want to install it where I am (my user home folder) as it will create project specific things there, and I haven't even downloaded the theme that set me off on this long and winding road in the first place.
Also the Tailwindcss documentation tells me I will be needing to install something called "PostCSS" as well as an "autoprefixer". It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they have their own very specific dependency/package management/handling solution too, which quite likely will have their own dependencies.
This will have to wait though, now it is time for lunch. I shall ponder over, and silently remember the days when there was HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I'm too old for this shit I guess.
So...how is your Friday?
]]>I came across an interesting article about gamification of the real world, in particular on the topic of QAnon, which I realised I knew nothing about. Here are some links that I found.
The other day I came across an article posted by a friend on Facebook. He normally posts interesting things and the title appealed to me, so I clicked it. The article (which I will link to further down) is a game designers view on the conspiracy group called QAnon.
I finished the article with several "Aha!" moments, not because I have been contemplating QAnon in particular, but that the article and what it describes, is applicable to many other conspiracy theories too. Many of those, it turns out, are also somewhat interlaced/overlapping with QAnon, who doesn't appear to discriminate conspiracy theories in the slightest, but more acts as a collector of them all.
I realised I knew little to nothing about QAnon, though I had wondered what the Q signs/teeshirts stood for when I watched various news broadcasts or read articles covering Trump before the election. Me being me I had to find out more, especially after having read that article.
This might be the time where I should back-pedal a bit for your understanding: I have "friends" on various social media from literally all paths in life. All the skin colours. All the religions. All political views. All the sexual orientations. All the genders, including non-binary and trans-genders.
As my collection of mostly-beautiful people/friends on social media usually comes from one interest path in my life or another, where things like religion, sexual orientation or political views does not matter in the slightest, we most often have solved it by not talking about those things whilst we instead are talking about the topic that brought us together, be it music creation, music listening, work, gaming, photography or books.
Like most I also have friends that have been collected over time. Some are childhood friends. Some are more recent. Some I knew but they might have developed in to people I no longer actually know or socialise with. Some new ones I think I know, but honestly, I only know them from one area of interest and/or work, and I don't have the full picture of their entire life.
That is how social media works, right? If you are like me you have "friends" on social media platforms that often not truly are your friends. Some you've never even met. Some you have met and wish you hadn't, but you keep them anyways on the social media platform.
It should be noted here that I have also made lots of "real" friends on social media, or other online activities including gaming, often that I most likely wouldn't have met otherwise. I've even started companies with such friends, and I've been travelling to weddings where the actual wedding is the first time I met the people in person, even though we've known each other for years, online.
However, after becoming "friends" with some "outside" the interest group that brought us together, I have learnt that I also have friends that believe in various conspiracy theories. This has surprised me, especially when the friend is similar to myself in aspects that relate to however we got to know each other in the first place.
As I am one of those that have been online since "the beginning" (early -90's), and take pride in my ability to find any information online if I focus on finding it, I have therefore investigated quite a few of the conspiracy theories quite closely. To me this has been for two reasons:
It should be noted that I have learnt it is literally impossible to convince someone who believes in conspiracy theories that they are wrong though. You can't. Doesn't matter if you attack or "play along". It just isn't possible.
If you have read any of my older posts on this blog you also know that I often talk about finding un-biased news, to ensure you have done your fact check and verified sources (and that I'm extremely concious of security and privacy, but that isn't necessarily related to this post).
Therefore I have, over the years, browsed and also signed up to various messageboards on a wide array of what most normal people would call dubious topics. This is probably where I should hasten to clarify that none of the topics I've "investigated" is sex related.
I do know more than I wish to know about conspiracy theories regarding Flat Earth, Holocaust-denial, 9/11 theories, moon landings, right-wing extremists etc. I've covered them all, but also need to stress that saying I did "investigate" or "research" in the proper (to me) meaning of the words, would be to glorify what I've done. I've mainly browsed and read and followed trails, mostly on the open "regular" Internet, nothing more.
I've not signed up as myself, mind you, no one does on those places and everyone are anonymous. If someone would use a real name/photo people would assume it is either fake and/or a trap, and/or a spy. Generally, they think most are spies, especially in the groups where they discuss various topics that relate to "the deep state" etc.
On those places you will not get access to all areas either, until you've somehow proven that you are real, active and consistent in your own messages on that same topic.
Anyways, I haven't done much of the above in a while (I would probably have to start over again on most, and I can't be bothered really), and QAnon has cropped up whilst I was looking the other way, so I realised I knew little to nothing about them, which got me curious, especially after reading the mentioned article above.
If you, like me the other day, don't know what QAnon actually is, here's a couple of primers from "regular" news sources: What is QAnon? (NY Times) and an article on Washington Post which also includes a nice 5-minute video that summarize it on a zoomed out level. Go read them and watch that video, then come back here. It should be noted that New York Times and Washington Post probably are "the enemy" in the eyes of QAnon.
So the above articles teaches us that there is an actual person (or a group of people) posting things on an anonymous messageboard and that posts under the pseudonym Q. It all started in October 2017. At first it was apparently "Q Anonymous" and later, just "QAnon". Often the posts are including "code", acronyms or shortforms that you have to be read up on to understand at all. On qanon.pub there is apparently a collection of posts (I got that link from the video in the article above, it was written on one of the signs of a Q-follower).
I'm not alone in not being clued up, others have been interested too, so instead of typing out stuff myself I shall be linking to it instead.
The main one, to me, is still Rabbit Rabbits post, but the reason I didn't give you that link first is because I think you will appreciate that article even more if you have a basic understanding of what QAnon is first. After you've read that article the rest of the articles are more for deepening your knowledge in case you are interested.
Some of the QAnon theories described in that collection of articles are truly mind-blowing. It is hard to believe anyone would actually believe any single one of them, but many believe in the vast majority of the collection of them. It is everything from the "regular" mumbo-jumbo that George Soros controls literally everything and everyone to occult cannibalistic sex pacts involving famous people.
To me, not being an expert and not sitting on any inside information, this all sounds like the continuation of what Cambridge Analytica did. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if a similar company is behind it all. Plant seeds. Seeds of doubt. Seeds of clues. Make people connect dots on a trail they have created. All the dots are "just there", no one knows where they came from, but now they are there, so they must be true, right?
This will make people "solve the riddle", something that most people actually love to do, and something they take pride in having accomplished, especially if others haven't. They feel superior and start defending and/or market it slowly. Grassroot opinion-shaping that leads a life of its own, as long as you feed it nuggets (Q messages) now and then.
I have often wondered why some of my "friends" online say things like "climate-change is a hoax, listen to this educated guy telling you the truth" (just an example) and then you check up on that educated guy and realise he has made his fortune working for the oil/car industry. All his friends are most likely in the oil/car industry. Would he ever propagate for not using oil/cars? Not very likely. Can't they see it? Apparently not.
In the same way they are somehow totally clued in on that Soros, the rich "democrat supporter" from Hungary, is "behind it all" whilst completely ignoring that Robert Mercer, the billionaire that founded both Breitbart and pumped money in to Cambridge Analytica, which in turn managed to overturn democracy in at least 14 countries (according to the documentary) and leaving a trail of destruction behind them and Mercers money.
Actually, given that Mercer sold Breitbart in Nov 2017, about the same time as QAnon was created, he might have found another way to influence lots of people with a leaning to supporting his ideals and ideology in general, and Trump in particular...(X-Files Theme in the background)
Image credit: Marc Nozell took the original photo, which I turned in to a "watercolor painting" (in Photoshop). The photo is shared under Creative Commons - Attribution 2.0
]]>Right, so this will be long, and it will all be about photography/photo-editing software. If that is not your thing, feel free to skip. :)
In an autumn clean-up of various service/software subscriptions, where I try to clean out the stuff I pay for but don't actually use, I went onwards and had a look at subscriptions I do pay for and actually use. The Adobe Photography package is such a subscription. It is actually quite aggressively priced in that you get both Lightroom and Photoshop for about $10/month (I guess there are slight local variations).
However, turning that on its head, that is also $120/year. I've paid for it since 2013 by the looks of my billing history. That is $120 x 7 years = $840 so far. I got curious on what the possible alternatives are today. At the time there wasn't any serious competitor to Photoshop, and I got Lightroom "for free".
For those who don't know, Photoshop and Lightroom solve different problems. I do need access to both their sets of capabilities. I don't open Photoshop every time I edit my photos, but when I do open it, it is because I truly need that fine-grained detailed control that it gives, or the ability to work in layers. Doing slight dodge/burn of eyes for example would be a pain to try to do in Lightroom, but is comparatively easy in Photoshop as long as you have the time.
On the other hand, Lightroom handles my photo collection. I can tag things and keep them in order, search for specific tags, and quickly sift through photos after a shoot to quickly discard the duds and to mark the good ones for further editing (probably in Photoshop).
7 years is an eternity in software though, so I figured there might be other/new tools out there these days, but I realised I didn't know what they were and if they were any good. Being me, I obviously had to try as many of them as possible. If I were to find a replacement for both Lightroom and Photoshop, I could possibly ditch my subscription and move on to other tools, if nothing else because new shiny toys are...umm...shiny.
Just replacing one of them wouldn't be good enough, as that would still leave me with the current subscription, only that I would have bought more software and have gotten myself even further dependent on whichever of Photoshop/Lightroom that I hadn't managed to replace. So how did I do?
Not very well.
I am now deeper entrenched in Adobes Photography suite than I've ever been before. However, I love it more than I have ever done before. Also, I can honestly say that I gave the competition a run for it, having deep-tested most of the other software out there for their full trial periods, trying to solve real and actual photo-editing problems I had, without "cheating" by doing it in Photoshop instead.
I found a couple of new tools to add to my arsenal of photo editing as well. There is however no point in having several pieces of software doing the exact same thing, and as no combination I tested could topple the Photoshop/Lightroom combo I have only added new tools that enhance them.
Perhaps most importantly: I got to brush up my old Photoshop skills (I've been using it on/off since Photoshop 3 back in the -90's, when they introduced layers, and I swapped from Paint Shop Pro) as well as learn a whole host of new tricks. I should perhaps stress "new to me", as some of the things I've learnt over the last couple of months are old-school photography techniques that "real" photographers have used for years. Some I've been vaguely aware of, and the theory behind them. Some were completely new to me.
One of the reasons I wanted to "skill up" my Photoshop skills was also to learn which plugins I would actually need and benefit from, and which ones that I could actually get the same results if I took the time to learn how it should be done. Also, Photoshop really has added some great new features since I last took a deep-dive in it. This made it possible for me to compare various techniques for solving the same problem, and to be able to pick the best one.
In my case the end result meant staying with Photoshop/Lightroom, though adding two plugins and a couple of "panels", mainly for the speed/convenience of them.
Some of the software I've tested lately includes (but is not limited to, as I probably am forgetting something): DxO Photolab (mainly v3 though v4 was released in the middle of my testing), Luminar 4 (affiliate link actually, my first ever!), Capture NX, Exposure, all the Topaz plugins (most notably DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI, Mask AI and Studio 2), DxO Nik Collection, Affinity Photo, Raw Therepee and...umm, that might be it!
Apart from owning Affinity Photo on iOS already (and it's awesome there too), and having tried Topaz Mask 5 (or something) some time ago, all of these were new to me. I also read about ON1 and Capture One before deciding to wait a bit with them as they would be more expensive, all things considered, than what I already have, not less.
On that note though, I noticed that many of the software developers these days in reality are doing "subscription-like" pricing (with the obvious/notable exception of RawTherapee, which is free regardless of how you measure "free", and Capture NX also is free though I guess it requires a Nikon camera, which I have). Basically, the trend seem to be you pay between $40-150/year to get updates after the first year, counted from your purchase. Also, many of them have various types of "memberships" (that usually cost another $50-ish/year) which gives access to downloadable, often for a price of course, content such as "looks" or "skies" or "presets".
I guess the economy of software and living off that initial and only sale has caught up with many of these companies as they start to realise the market, after all, isn't eternal, but the other way around, quite limited and with lots of competition.
Me, already being on the Adobe subscription which, as a reminder, is $120/year and I get all the latest versions automatically, I can totally understand that the other companies wish to do something similar, for business reasons. Also, for users, if the only way a company can make money is by selling one piece of software once to each user, said companys incentive to keep developing it, refining it and adding more features to it, becomes more and more limited, all whilst their source of income will slowly decline when their target audience have already purchased it once.
If you on the other hand know you have a recurring set of users that actively use (and pay for) the software it makes sense to do improvements, and to pace development and re-investment according to how many are subscribing to it, as that will set your available budget, from which you have to pay the actual developers, the rents and ideally also have enough for some profit.
Adobes aggressive pricing means it is hard to compete with though. Most software subscriptions and/or fees from their competition simply can't deliver the same amount of value for such a low price.
So, this is not a full-on review on any of these tools, but I can give a couple of fly-by comments on them:
Most impressive file handling came in Exposure. It is ultrafast and has all the tagging capabilities that Lightroom has, without having to import all your photos into a "collection" or "library". It basically just reads your files from your harddrive. Sadly Exposure don't trigger external software with whatever Photoshop triggers them with, so even though it is completely possible to open external/other apps from within Exposure, they most often start off in the state where you left them, and not necessarily with the image you were working with in Exposure, which is a bummer and slows down workflow a lot.
Affinity Photo is amazing. It is the one piece of software that could rival Photoshop in a feature-by-feature comparison. Sadly plug-ins only work in theory. In reality, not so much. Also, the best way of adding plug-ins to Affinity Photo is by pointing it to the plug-in folder of Photoshop, which kind of negates the possibility of uninstalling Photoshop to use Affinity Photo instead, and if I already have both installed I will quite likely pick the one with working plug-ins and that I've used for years on end.
The file handling of Luminar, Photolab, Capture NX and RawTherapee can not compete with the file handling in Lightroom. This is my subjective view of the general feel of it, but also it is down to ability to tag etc, apart from most of them feeling sluggish to use. They all look good on the product pages, but in reality they didn't "feel" fast/responsive/reliable. Only Exposure did this, and it (to my surprise) did it even better/faster than Lightroom.
The biggest positive surprise to me came from Luminar 4 and its ability, used as a plug-in, to add to pretty much any and all photos I passed through it. At first it felt too...umm...toy-ish (it is all what at first appears to be simple sliders), but it actually is really well done. I ended up purchasing it, and all the links to it in this post are indeed affiliate links, which means I'll get a kick-back if you end up purchasing it too when coming from a link here.
I was also quite (surprised and) impressed by Topaz Studio 2, which I had downloaded to test mainly because it was right next to the plug-ins I actually was there for (DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI). Studio 2 has "light" versions of several of the Topaz plugins, but it is also really easy/quick to create your own settings, save them and recall them later. I often ended up using as a "Photoshop light" from within Lightroom.
I was surprised to see that Capture NX and DxO Photolab appear to be sharing a (software) design paradigm/GUI for doing detailed spot changes. Both have the same annoying flaw though: I can only pull out the area as a perfect circle on a given spot. Big circle. Small circle. But no other shape/form. Making an oval would have been nice for example, as faces most often are oval, and adding some exposure to a face in an otherwise too dark image can improve it quickly...provided I can apply that exposure addition on the face, only, not as a halo around the head.
DeNoise AI got a lot of use. That was expected as it was one of the embryonic sub-reasons I started off these tests in the first place: I had a bunch of grainy/noisy images that I wished to fix. I ended up purchasing it too (no affiliate links though).
Sharpen AI was also surprisingly good. Even though I have learnt firstly to sharpen in Photoshop "native", as well as having a couple of new Photoshop panels that help with sharpening, I used it now and then anyways, to compare results. It often came out really well. Topaz have "bundles", which can be a good way to save some money. They even have a "complete my bundle" function, which perhaps can be useful to some. Annoyingly they appear to have compiled said bundles "wrong" though, in my humble opinion. For me, owning DeNoise AI and wishing to own Sharpen AI and Studio 2, there is absolutely no sensible way of doing that via bundles, even though the actual prices of the bundled software could be swapped 1:1 and be a match in price. I guess they wish to increase sales of the software that doesn't sell otherwise, and they get added to bundles to get them out there, at all...?
As mentioned above, doing all of this testing I also managed to brush up my old Photoshop skills, and also add a plethora of new Photoshop skills to my arsenal. This meant learning the "how" of sharpening, noise reductions, focal points, de-haloing, de-fringing etc without any other tools than Photoshop. I needed to do that to see where a plugin actually is adding value to my tools, or where they are not needed (and I therefore can spend my money elsewhere). It was great fun, and very educational. As I had hoped, it also made it possible for me to discard a handful of plugins that I no longer need, though plugins still can be a nice/quick way of achieving results without having to spend hours on a photo.
This left me with the following conclusion (and software):
So, there you have it. I didn't manage to replace both Photoshop and Lightroom, which was what I set out to investigate if I could, and that has meant I have dug in to Adoble-land even further than ever before, but am happy with knowing I have the best tools available.
]]>Keeping productivity up can be a challenge, especially when working from home. It has made me do a re-jig of the tools and routines I use. I am now back at using Evernote for my "input", to help me sort out the rest of my day. This is how I have it set up.
During my eternal search for the holy productivity grail I've learnt that it doesn't exist, at least not as described by others, for me. Maybe it is me. It probably is. I've tried all the tools. I've tried all the methodologies. Still, I haven't been fully content with any of them.
Therefore, I am now, and have been for a couple of months back at using Evernote as my primary input tool or "work handler". It is now a part of a larger Frankenstein system I use (which I can describe later, but which works for me), but now I'm "only" using it for sifting through tasks/to-do's, prioritising them and keeping track of them being actioned.
The major difference now compared to earlier is all about mind-set: I tried to use Evernote for "everything". That included "content input", "as a database" etc, though I don't really like it for those purposes. For example, it doesn't handle Markdown (hello?) and it has a very clunky template system that doesn't handle images in any logical fashion at all. As a "database" it lacks some very important features too.
Still though, it is cross-platform with a solid sync between devices, and I like the "search text within PDF's" functionality which is very handy when I use the companion app Scannable for my travel expenses and receipts, etc. I can easily forward items to Evernote from other apps/software, and with a little hack I can even add files that are put in folders automatically to Evernote (this isn't a big thing for PC people, but weirdly this functionality has never made it macOS/iOS).
My current productivity workflow in Evernote goes like this:
The morning starts with IFTTT creating a new note in my Evernote at 07.00 It has a basic list of tasks to set me off on the correct course for the day. Currently, it looks like this on IFTTT:
<b>Today's List</b><br><br>
Review Calendar<br>
Mail Inbox Zero at Work<br>
Mail Inbox Zero at Home<br>
Review EN Inbox<br>
Review EN Reminders Pending<br>
Review EN previous day/week<br>
Take medication<br>
Take vitamins<br>
Eat Breakfast<br>
Eat Lunch<br>
Exercise<br>
Write (at least) 500 words for article<br>
Make New Daily list<br>
Summarise today’s progress
I open up that note, put down the cursor in the title field and press CMD+SHIFT+D which adds today's date after the weekday name it already has in the title.
I select all the text lines in the note and press CMD+SHIFT+T which turns each line into a task with a checkbox in front of it.
I didn't invent this myself; I got this excellent tip from http://www.torgersons.com/detailed-routine-using-evernote-for-tasks-and-tracking/ but I have found it to be useful for me to actually using Evernote at all. For me it is about removing barriers, otherwise I might skip doing things, and skipping things is a slippery slope towards chaos, I know that from experience.
Some tasks on that list are there because my brain needs them there, otherwise I would simply forget. Weird, but hey, apparently that is how my brain works. I move this list to a notebook called "Action Pending" and I ensure I have tagged it with "1-today" (it actually comes automatically tagged from IFTTT with this tag). This way it will be visible in several views that are easily accessible from all my target platforms, especially mobile devices that don't have as many settings as the desktop version of Evernote.
Anyway, now I have a blueprint for the morning, because this list will get longer in just a couple of minutes. Even though that list isn't in priority/time order it still starts off in the correct order, and so I chip things off from the top.
If I find something in my calendar that I need to clarify, prepare or otherwise take note of, I create such a note in Evernote now, even if the contents is just the headline of the calendar entry, like the meeting name.
Then I move on to my inboxes, both for work and my private emails (which are spread out over 9 different accounts, all with different purposes). Here I delete a lot (and I try to remember to unsubscribe to both spam and bacon as well, to make my inbox leaner and more manage-able tomorrow).
Mails that are just confirmations or "for info", I archive right there and then. What I'm looking for are emails that require further action or will be needed for future important reference. Here I also adopt the GTD view: if it'll take me less than 2 minutes to respond to the email, I do it right away. If it will require more of my time and/or brain power than 2 minutes, I forward the email to Evernote. Evernote will turn the mail into a note with the subject as the note title.
When I'm done, I have reached "Inbox Zero", which I have realised now works really well for me (see notes below). The theory being if it is in your email inbox you haven't processed it and decided on an action for it. Everything else you will have an action plan for, at least in a couple of minutes (right now you have just done rough sorting). I should add that now I also close my e-mail clients to avoid being distracted by notifications and/or sound alerts, etc.
The astute reader will have noticed I now merely have moved all my email inboxes to my Evernote inbox. That is correct, and also therefore the next action on my to-do list for planning my day. In Evernote I open up my Inbox and start deciding on when and where I shall act on the items in there. I tag up every item accordingly. As the tags already exist in Evernote, this is quick, and usually involves typing the first letter of the tag and then Enter.
Some things are just for reference, so I have a notebook named exactly that: “Reference”. I also have folders for “Receipts”, “Research” etc. Most things are “tasks” that I need to follow-up and/or act on, so I move them to a “Backlog” folder. I also tag them with a relevant time frame when I expect to action the item, for example “2-thisweek” or “3-thismonth” etc.
I also add relevant helper tags to make finding the notes from various views as simple as possible, for example, "@work" or "@home" or "@shop" and also, if applicable, project name.
When I've gone through all the items in the backlog, they have all been tagged as correctly as possible. I then move down to the tag view for "1-today". It will list every note that has that tag and thus will be my tasks for today. Also, this is where I can find my master task list for the day that IFTTT created for me this morning. Here's another nifty trick from Torgerson: select all notes (but de-select the master list) and select: "Create Table of Contents Note".
That will create a new note, with each of your selected notes titles on a new line, linked up nicely. Select the contents of that list, click the “list button” to remove the numbering, and tick the checkbox button to put check boxes in front of each line. Then copy that list to your daily master list at the bottom. This is now your to-do list for today, along with whatever tasks you have left from your default template that IFTTT sent you earlier.
This process described above probably takes longer to read about in this post than it takes to actually do, especially when you get in to it.
Many items in your master list for the day will also have a link to that specific note where you can add further details/information. This is perfect for meetings notes, or for adding development notes to an email that you needed to follow up, etc. You get both the rough overview of headlines of the tasks, but you can still add as much/little details as you like to each note, without cluttering up the master list.
I think the key here in this workflow is that I have cherry-picked a bunch of tips and tricks from various methodologies, where neither worked perfectly for me on their own, to something that fits my daily life and, perhaps more importantly, my brain.
The key inspiration for the above Evernote workflow comes from previously failing in doing the following routines/methodologies:
Especially Inbox Zero should be explained just a little: for years I “faked” Inbox Zero. Having it at zero became more important than getting things done. I checked my inbox every 5 minutes. As I was sloppy in doing it “correctly” (i.e. decide if an action is needed etc) and I had various confused ways of acting on it, it usually ended in me not doing the things, but still deleting/hiding/archiving in the inbox. You can get away with that for some time, but for me reality caught up, and I needed to sort it out.
I think the most important thing with any of these productivity tips you read online is: you have to find what works for you, not because someone else says so, but because you know yourself. As Merlin Mann (a.k.a "Mr Inbox Zero") so perfectly put it:
“It’s about how to reclaim your email, your attention, and your life. That “zero?” It’s not how many messages are in your inbox–it’s how much of your own brain is in that inbox. Especially when you don’t want it to be. That’s it.” – Merlin Mann
Finally, using services like IFTTT, Zapier, Automator (macOS) and Shortcuts (iOS) can do wonders in automating boring tasks that would only eat up your time further if you were to do them manually. Use those tools where you can, so you can free up time to getting things done.
As mentioned above, this is one part of my overall workflow, but it is a very important part as it keeps the rest of it together. I will do a write-up of the other bits and pieces too, if nothing else for the purpose of documenting it for myself.
]]>Did you hear "Bill Gates will make billions of $USD on a vaccine as he owns the patents for such a vaccine"? Or perhaps did you hear "viruses spread via 5G towers"? Or what about "the vaccine will contain digital trackers to control us all"?
Yeah, I saw them too. What I haven't seen was any actual evidence to support a single one of those claims though...
I find it interesting but not amazing that in times like these, the people who normally blurt out their conspiracy theories have added some fresh ones to their arsenal. What I do find surprising, and also very weird, is how "regular people" allow these stories to spread in their social media streams, either by re-sharing them actively themselves, or by not objecting to their friends sharing them. I understand people might not be keen on confronting their friends online, though given the times and the trends, arguing with strangers online seem to be a favourite hobby for some quarantined people.
Now, I understand there are many factors across a wide range of topics that feel new, unknown, and some of them are scary. Still, that shouldn't stop us from seeking truth, and to further our knowledge. When I say ”further our knowledge” I mean we should be seeking facts.
This is where it goes wrong though: people apparently have confused "published online" with actual "knowledge". Therefore I would like to highlight a basic fact for you:
Almost anyone can, and does, publish almost whatever they like on the Internet. It is a great freedom we have, and it is an essential part of what many countries have as a basis for their legal system: freedom of speech. Some countries do not even have this. Therefore, those of us who have it should value it. Carefully weigh it. Appreciate it, and ideally, use it for good. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences though.
Freedom of speech means that pretty much anyone can say what they feel like, without fear of being censored by the government(s), and what better medium/platform for that than the Internet, right? We could probably spend a separate article only on covering Freedom Of Speech, but that is not my target here, I merely wanted to point out it is very easy to publish things online, for anyone. You are for example reading this self-published text on this very blog. I wrote this. You don’t have to agree with me, but it is still my right to express my opinion here on this topic. It is your right to agree or disagree with me, or to ignore me completely. People have died for us both to have these rights.
But I hope that you consider what I write critically and still with an open mind: just because I have published it online doesn't make my words true, it merely means that I have a platform to publish my thoughts on. You have the same possibility to do the same. Almost everyone I know does. And, you know, there’s always Facebook…
Now, here comes the crux of the matter: because I know how easy it is to publish things online, I read things online with extreme caution, bordering on suspicion. If I find, or read something online that makes me stare in disbelief and think “really?”, I need to investigate further, and to find facts from more sources on the same topic. I have even spent some of my time trying to help people to find non-biased news sources, to ensure they stay with the facts, and not following someone's political or commercial agenda, which may or may not be “hidden”, but still often is there.
The same goes for all conspiracy believers favourite media channel, YouTube. Here's a tipoff to the rest of you: if someone breaks into a fruitful, interesting discussion you and your friends are having on whatever topic that might be under debate and claiming it is all wrong, and then leaves a 1-hour YouTube video as their “evidence”: block and/or ignore. These days you can nigh on measure how much a conspiracy believer is close to being a proper “nutcase” by looking at “minutes of YouTube videos shared”, and I haven’t even mentioned checking the validity of the creators to said videos.
Again, literally anyone with a smartphone can upload videos to YouTube. The combination of "free speech" along with an ever increasing population means that a larger and larger number of people, that probably shouldn't, now can upload whatever they like on a global video distribution platform.
A good video can definitely help digest some boring reports of statistical data, or it can help to support scientific areas by distilling it down to the easily presentable facts. If someone were to tell me about the genome structure and how a certain illness could affect it in detail, via written text or via speech only, I would probably start off nicely, but slowly doze off more and more unless they were excellent presenters. Show me a video of the same genome structure and how it looks before/after that illness probably would illustrate the same thing, literally in minutes, and make it quicker for non-professionals like myself to take in. It is easy to see the lure of a well produced video.
Also, people seem to enjoy watching movies, as an entertainment channel video it is not bad at all. However, if we are talking about scientific facts, the video should support the written evidence related to it and that it also ideally links to, as that is the actual evidence. This is where pretty much all the conspiracies go downhill quickly. They can't produce the facts. They can't produce evidence, and they especially can't produce evidence that can be replicated, either by themselves (not as important) or anyone else, which is very important if you are trying to prove something that goes against verified scientific theories/facts.
Speaking of the word "theory", that is another favourite word from the conspiracy people. They have completely missed that there is a difference in actual meaning between a speculative “theory” (i.e. -“I think it will rain tomorrow“ or -“I think Rey is Anakin Skywalker’s cousin“) with the meaning of a scientific “theory”. Somehow they seem to think the word "theory" in the term "Conspiracy Theory" is of equal weight to the "theory" in "Scientific Theory". It is not. They are not even related, and it is a shame they are spelt the same.
Once again will I lean on Wikipedia to tell you about Scientific Theory:
A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can be repeatedly tested and verified in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled conditions in an experiment. In circumstances not amenable to experimental testing, theories are evaluated through principles of abductive reasoning. Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.
But it also goes on by saying this (scroll down on the link above), and as it is important, I feel I need to include it as well:
A common misconception is that scientific theories are rudimentary ideas that will eventually graduate into scientific laws when enough data and evidence have been accumulated. A theory does not change into a scientific law with the accumulation of new or better evidence. A theory will always remain a theory; a law will always remain a law. Both theories and laws could potentially be falsified by countervailing evidence.
There aren't many things similar between a speculative conspiracy theory (which are guesses) and a scientific theory, which can be proven repeatedly often earlier than they actually can be scientifically explained.
However, if you read those passages again, or better yet, read the source links over at Wikipedia or wherever you get your facts from, you notice that it all boils down to a key concept: evidence. You know, the thing that conspiracy theories lack in 100% of their cases.
Speaking of evidence, there appears to be some confusion on how the “burden of proof” works, so let's have a look at that too. This is what Wikipedia says regarding “burden of proof” regarding law (as in legislation):
The burden of proof is always on the person who brings a claim in a dispute. It is often associated with the Latin maxim semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit, a translation of which in this context is: "the necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges."
That is both pretty clear and also very logical. If you claim that a previously proven fact is incorrect, you would need to prove how, when and where it is actually incorrect by submitting new/superior facts that make your point obvious. Makes sense? Fair? However, Wikipedia continues like this too, on the entry for Burden of proof (philosophy):
In a legal dispute, one party is initially presumed to be correct and gets the benefit of the doubt, while the other side bears the burden of proof. When a party bearing the burden of proof meets their burden, the burden of proof switches to the other side.
Apparently that definition is too straight-forward for conspiracy nutters to understand, as they keep failing on that very specific point. Instead, they appear to have adopted a stance which appears to go like “I refute your scientific proof based on that I don't like it, and it is now your task to change my mind”.
No. No no no. That is not how it works. That is not how anything works.
The even more common thing I see circulating right now is the demand from the conspiracy nutters to prove a negative, and a negative that they themselves have made up no less. I read a very interesting article on “evidence” yesterday (thanks Sean for posting it). Go read it.
Also, I read an article earlier today regarding negative proof today which I can't find right now (if you know where I read it please send me the link), but which summarises the absurdity of proving a negative quite well:
-"I heard the president ordered 17 hookers dead!"
-" I don't believe that is true."
-"Then you must prove me wrong."
For obvious reasons it is impossible to prove a negative, but exactly that pattern is what the conspiracy people use time and time again, along with calling anyone who doesn’t nod along to their tune or perhaps even raises an eyebrow at what they say (probably out of concern for the mental health of the conspiracy spreader) with "sheeple!" or "don't you see the truth!?" etc.
When you ask them for basic things like "sources?" or "proof?", they simply dismiss it with "if you don't know where to find it you are doomed anyway" or "it is out there if you know where to look" or, of course "here's 6 YouTube videos" (each clocking in at 2 stiff confused hours, and you wonder what the actual question was again after 5 minutes in to one of them, because you decided to give it a chance, and after 15 minutes you've given up hope for humanity to actually make it altogether) or something along those similar lines.
Right, so that is what I think on the topic. But I still can't understand why otherwise somewhat logical people re-share illogical hearsay and obvious conspiracy theories, without proof or evidence. Stop it. Or as Kat Montgomery so elegantly put it in a Facebook post when reaching the topic of conspiracy theories being removed from Facebook, YouTube etc:
]]>Lastly, private companies removing false information from their platforms does not represent repression or promotion of propaganda. It’s helping to promote the spread of sound scientific information. If you think lies should be permitted to circulate freely alongside the truth with the intention of reaching people who won’t be able to tell the difference, you are part of the problem.