Sunday Morning Reading

It’s a Sunday, so it’s time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. As usual, I’m sharing a collection of links and once again they somehow touch one upon another. Funny how that happens. Some point to big issues. Some about the comings and goings of life. Some about its shifts. Take a look. Take a read. Happiness is a choice.

David Todd McCarty’s On Being Good At Life talks about abandoning the quest of success, fame, fortune, and just being better at life. Deciding how one defines life is always the first obstacle.

If you read one piece among those shared this week, read Josh Marshall’s Google, AI, Oligarchy and the End of the ‘Open Web’. I’ve been writing about Google’s recent moves and how they will change the web as we know it. Josh nails it better than I ever did. Some think we’re ready for this. I’m not one of those.

We lost a one of the good ones this week when Om Malik died. By all accounts a great human being and a giant in tech for so many years in so many spheres. Om’s writing has been featured in this column many times. As a human he was so much more than just his achievements. Two great pieces about Om that you should take the time to read. John Gruber’s simply titled Om, and Mathew Ingram’s Om Malik 1966-2026. Sail on, good sir.

Tom Wellborn takes a look at The Art of the Fail. You can guess his target. You should read his piece.

JA Westenberg takes on the pursuit of optimization and the cult of the extreme in The Extreme Is The Easy Way Out. Choosing a middle path is also not necessarily easy.

Mike Masnick tells us How The Internet Became A Tool For Domination and Control Instead of Liberation. Joke’s on us. I’m not laughing. 

Ken White’s not laughing either. Or maybe he is. There’s always some kind of fracas happening in social media, regardless of the platform. When you step back, it’s weird that we designed something to explode and exploit that kind of chaos. Weirder still that we think we can control what people say or social media or anywhere else by banning them. Ken White of PopeHat fame was recently suspended from Bluesky and writes about his thoughts in A Bit of Tedious Drama At Bluesky. The piece is much more than just about those circumstances and worth your time. You are what you think and say. Ken defines it well.

A tip of the hat to Dwight Silverman who’s retiring (again) after a terrfic career writing about tech. I have always enjoyed Dwight’s work because he kept the focus of his tech adventures on the user, while having a firm grasp of the bigger picture. Check out The Grand Finale (for real this time): My 30+ year column ends, It’s exit heralded by AI, and also his thoughts about his retiring on his personal blog. I’m guessing (and hoping) we haven’t seen the last of what Dwight has to say.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.