Elizabeth Tai

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The Firehose Feed

This is a chronological feed of everything I’ve published.

AI asia Being a Writer Being Chinese Birds blog blogging books cat CDrama ChatGPT China Chinese culture Chinese Drama COVID COVID19 culture digitalgardens Fediverse Fiction geopolitics indieweb Internet Language Learning life Malaysia Mandarin mental health movie review Obsidian Penang PKM Politics productivity reading science fiction seedling socialmedia StayAtHome Substack tech Technology television Travel writing

  • Jan 2023 Week 3 Food & Exercise Journal

    Initially, I thought to start recording my meals on Instagram because it seemed more convenient. But if I’m to follow the principles of the IndieWeb movement, ideally I should store my food photo journal at my home site, so I decided to do a one-week experiment. I updated this post periodically throughout the week via…

  • Elantris and Hope of Elantris

    So thrilled to finish this 590-page book, something I struggled with after the pandemic hit. (I couldn’t seem to focus long enough to finish a novella, let alone a chonker of a novel.) Admittedly, I used a combination of physical book + audiobook which really sped things along. Why a physical book? Well, I found…

  • Pluralistic: Tiktok’s enshittification

    Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. Cory Doctorow in https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

  • Chinese New Year eve

    Chinese New Year is a thing for my family. Since we are descended from Chinese Peranakans, our food preparation is like a military operation which can take days – without the order or strategy. And for some reason, Chinese New Year eve lunch feels like a bigger deal for my family. It usually takes Mum…

  • The enshittification of social media

    Cory Doctorow, in his article, Social Quitting, highlights how social media have life cycles. One day, they were sparsely populated fringe services, the next day, every­one you knew was using them and you had to sign up to stay in touch. Then, just as quickly, they imploded, turning into ghost towns, then punchlines, then forgotten…

  • From self-hosted WordPress to WordPress.com

    Thanks to the dominance of SEO optimised posts about WordPress from all manner of companies, any blog posts about wordpress.com is very, very difficult to find. Especially those about moving from self-hosted WordPress to WordPress.com. Here are some I discovered and kept for posterity: “…was surprised that they offer WordPress.org hosting. I always thought that…

  • For the love of economy rice

    Nothing is more typically Malaysian than the “economy rice” store. These places sell “chap fun” (a Cantonese word for “mixed rice”), vegetable & meat dishes which you eat with your rice. Chap fun stalls are usually found in restaurant corner, often run by an uncle or aunty who calculates the price of your meal in…

  • Twitter misleads

    How Twitter misleads us about how many people have left — and what to do about it Social feeds are engines for distorting social understanding. Here’s how to push back against the algorithm. https://natematias.medium.com/how-twitter-misleads-us-about-how-many-people-have-left-and-what-to-do-about-it-bba484b6fed6

  • Algorithms and creativity

    “In the absence of an algorithm there is only your own creative compass.” In the #Fediverse I discovered people like @ewen who understood the impacts algorithms had on creativity. I felt the same sense of suffocation as a writer. In other spaces besides #Mastodon such as #Twitter nobody really understood my angst against it and…

  • Solarpunk fiction

    Learned about a new science fiction genre today – Solar Punk “Solarpunk stories take place in futures where humanity, technology, and nature live in harmony rather than in conflict.” TBH, it sounds a lot like Star Trek which makes me think I will love this genre! Who are the authors in this genre?

  • ChatGPT and tech writers

    Are tech writers going to lose their jobs? How can they adapt? https://passo.uno/openai-tech-writing-howto/

  • Disconnecting from the electric grid

    “On May 22, 2022, I began an experiment. I unplugged everything in my apartment, with the goal of drawing zero power from the electric grid for one month. I had no idea how I would make it past a few days… As I type these words in January, I’m in my eighth month.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/i-disconnected-from-the-electric-grid-for-8-months-in-manhattan/

  • Third party apps cut off from Twitter

    “It feels like the time is right for a truly universal timeline.”– @chockenberry (the creator of Twitterrific) https://furbo.org/2023/01/15/the-shit-show/

  • January 2023: Digital gardening

    I quit Twitter, built a static website using Astro and am working on migrating my content to WordPress.com I’m also Indieweb-ifying my personal website.

  • Let’s have a depth year

    In 2023, I’m going deep. To be more specific, I’m going to have a “depth year”. Raptitude blogger David Cain originally coined this term in his post, Go Deeper, Not Wider. It unexpectedly sparked a “world-wide movement”. The mechanics or rules of the Depth Year is simple. For one year, don’t acquire new hobbies, skills, books,…

  • October 2022: I’m a Tech Writer

    Not gonna lie, I’m both excited and nervous about my latest career transition. It’s a dream come true after all — I thought I wouldn’t have this chance because this is a role that is relatively tough to break into. I started my Tech Writing job in September and I’m enjoying it so far. The…