Reysu in the video How to absorb books like a sponge and read 2x faster:

One of the most valuable things you can do with your free time is reading books. They not only contain a huge depth of information, but just a single idea in a book has the possibility of changing your life entirely.

I recently found Reysu on YouTube and have enjoyed a lot of the videos on their channel. It is a good mix of technology topics and various bits of life advice—particularly the ones on Notebooks, but that’s for another day. I hate the title of this one and wrote about why reading doesn’t need to be hacked, but this statement in the first part of the video stood out to me.

Reading is one of my favorite things to do. I don’t know why, I have a million other things to entertain me, but reading takes me to a different place that nothing else can. There’s fiction to distract me but not leave me hollow like passive media does. There’s non-fiction for me to learn new ideas and improve my life. Whatever it is that I am reading, it contains loads of little bits that all leave their mark and improve me as a person.

Also a special shout out to this genius thumbnail that first got me to watch Reysu’s videos.

🔗 The Kobo Libra Colour | The Dent

In just a few days the Kobo has made me fall in love with reading again and I’m really pushing myself to do it more when I have short time slots throughout the day.

Picked one up myself yesterday and I’m also really impressed.

Cory Dransfeldt writing about Data ownership and agency:

I control that data, it sits on infrastructure I manage, it’s in a format I understand and I get the responsibility (or fun — let’s go with that) of presenting it. I get agency and that agency is accompanied by the burden of maintenance, presentation and action. Convenience in exchange for control.

As usual, Cory’s take is measured, accurate, and raises some interesting points on the ownership of your data online. Many people have begun to think about these things now that the USA is finally preparing legislation on privacy and personal data. Of course, that isn’t a worry for me, but this short statement prodded at something I was thinking about when moving my blog around in the last few weeks.

I really want to have an 11ty blog and keep all of my data to myself. I can then pull in whatever it is I want from around the web and display it in whichever way I choose. Thankfully, I am skilled enough to write a bit of code and get things going. It makes the most sense for me, but I just can’t be bothered. I want to be able to post easily, post all sorts of things, and not have to worry about a thing - in exchange for that, I give up control.

Don’t get me wrong, I trust Manton and micro.blog more than any other platform; this is more control of how I can do things and, in some cases, what I can do. In exchange for being able to post easily and not have to deal with rebuild times and server things - my host calls the shots now. This will range from pretty much unlimited ability on platforms like WordPress to locked-down services like Hey World. Whoever it is you choose, as Cory writes, you get “Convenience in exchange for control”.