Life – Pete Sime | A Personal Blog

Sede vacante

Pope Francis | Jorge Mario Bergoglio 1936-2025

I’m not a very observant Catholic, although over Lent and Easter I have found myself returning to Mass with more regularity. I don’t really like to talk about religion that much because I consider myself a secular pluralist – as I’ve discussed before.

But this is my blog, that’s my name in the URL and while I’m not going to beat you over the head with religion at a dinner party, I might as well gently prod you with it here.

Pope Francis was my kind of pope. His emphasis on mercy, understanding and reconciliation was very much needed after the more doctrinaire Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II. In the wake of the abuse scandals and especially the cover-ups, a lot of Catholics like me were very angry at the Church and I suffered a spiritual loss when I lost the compulsion to observe my faith.

Pope Francis’s approach to his ministry demonstrated that Catholic spiritual life and engaging in the world as it is are not incompatible. Without that approach I don’t think I would have been open to returning to church.

I hope when a new pope is elected by the College of Cardinals, that he builds on Pope Francis’s work. This world, as always, could do with more mercy, love and understanding.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,
and let Your perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed
rest in peace.

Walking the walk

This weekend I confirmed the cancellation of my Adobe subscription. I’m just a hobbyist and I’m happy to use Darktable instead of Lightroom and GIMP instead of Photoshop. I’ve been trying them out for a couple of weeks and they are more than satisfactory. They are more than enough for a hobbyist like me.

I also took the opportunity to look at my Amazon spending. I’ve been blocking them since November, but it was only last month that I gave up on Prime Video. I have to admit this gives me a smug sense of satisfaction. I hope you’ll forgive me.

The power of the blog

The internet has fallen. Over the past decade and a half, online life grew more and more concentrated into a handful of platforms. Twitter. Facebook. Reddit. Youtube. And lately, Tiktok. Three of those services: Twitter/X, Meta (Facebook/Instagram/Threads/Whatsapp) and Tiktok have demonstrated their fealty towards Donald Trump. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter/X, performing a Nazi salute at the inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta has abandoned third-party fact checking. And Tiktok performed a stunt of an 8 hour shutdown, crediting Trump with saving the app in the US.

Reddit and Youtube are not quite so nakedly biased in the way they deliver their content, but the nature of AI slop and the fact their business models rely on retaining user attention means the quality is variable.

What I’m driving at is the users have lost control of these platforms. And the best way to counter that is to revert back to blogging. With a blog, you are in control. You can say whatever you wish and post whatever you want (within the law). And while it may for a while be yelling into the void, at least for me it is the change I want to see online.

I’m sick of enshittification. I’m shit of losing years of posts. I’m sick of missing out on seeing how my thoughts evolve on a topic and where I draw a line on various issues.

Most of all I’m sick of supporting companies whose interests are totally out of line with my own. This is a simple, concrete action to take if you don’t want to support what’s going on in the US and you don’t want to be in the hands of the corporates.

A blog is fairly simple to set up and if you want to self host on a Raspberry Pi – as I do – or a secondhand PC or a cheap mini one, it’s cheaper than a year’s worth of hosting on a commercial web host. And at least then you can claim your independence online.

Recycling

My resolutions are pretty prosaic and are largely recycled:

● Read more.

● Lose weight.

● Reduce time online.

● Be political.

● Learn something.

● Travel somewhere noteworthy.

● Be a more diligent photographer.

● Keep this blog.

Happy 2025, everyone.