There seems to be an unwritten rule that if you have a huge website with masses of amazing "conspiracy" content going right back to the 90's, you have to leave the site looking like it did in 1998 and never update it's appearance or organise it properly. Here are some classic examples of must see sites that look like something the cat dragged in:
To help people making the switch to Linux I started compiling my Linux posts into a SIFT LINUX PAGE back in 2024, but it became a jumbled mess and needed a tidy up. So I decided to start over again and make it all as simple as possible.
One way to simplify things is to have a list of links back to original posts rather than trying to copy and paste them all into one big page.
LINUX POSTS ON THIS BLOG (newest at top)
AM I AN IDIOT? - Self doubts about my geek skills
BTW I USE ARCH - Some memes to troll Linux Arch geeks
WHICH LINUX DISTRO? - I really only recommend two, either Mint or Zorin
ONLINE PRIVACY - A few ways to keep hold of a bit of privacy
TESTING OUT FOSS - There is masses of Free Open Source Software (FOSS)
LINUX NEEDS MORE FILE BROWSERS - My issues with Linux file browsers
RETURNING TO LINUX - Why I quit Windows & moved to Linux
LINUX MISINFORMATION - Yes, even Linux reviews are full of lies
My Linux info is not aimed at geeks, it's for people who have been using Windows or Apple computers, and want to move to Linux in search of privacy and security, or for ethical reasons.
As with most subjects, with Linux there is far too much complexity and misinformation online, and that is often just confusing rather than helpful.
An ever increasing number of people are now asking about Linux. In the past this was mainly just an idle curiosity, but now they are seriously looking for an alternative to Windows or Apple.
Back in 2010 I did a page about Linux "LINUX A n00b goes for a test drive" which is still online, but despite having had a quick update in 2016, it's mostly out of date now.
With the benefit of hindsight, Windows XP was actually a pretty good operating system, as were Windows 2000 and Windows 7. But things have really changed since those days, and Microsoft are no longer even trying to hide their evil intentions.
For me Windows ended with Windows 7. Windows 11 is full on spyware and Microsoft is clearly aiming to build an AI operating system monitoring everything you do, meanwhile Apple is moving in the same direction, so sooner or later I think anyone who wants any privacy on a computer will have to move to Linux
These days, some of the Linux Operating systems (Distros) are pretty good, as they have been slowly progressing, while Windows has been relentlessly going backwards since Windows 7.
Like many people I had been complaining for years about Microsoft, but there reached a point where I had to admit that I had no future with Microsoft, so would need to do whatever it took to move on.
Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 in October 2025, and ramped up their efforts to push the even more appalling Windows 11, with its built in advertising, and full blown spyware (Recall) taking constant screenshots of your desktop and sending them back to Microsoft.
I'm expecting that even non security minded Windows users are finally going to start having issues with this level of spying.
SOME HANDY LINUX LINKS (sorted alphabetically)
A n00b goes for a test drive - My own original page about Linux from 2010
Distrowatch - A great introduction and overview of Linux distros
Libre Office - My pick for best replacement for Microsoft Office
Linux Mint - My own daily driver & favourite distro
Linux Zorin - A stylish & highly recommended distro
TECMINT - Information about Linux stuff
Holy cow, today is the last day of October. It seems like only last week I was freaking out that another month had gone by in two weeks. But that was actually the last day of September. Today it feels like the entire month of October has whizzed by in just seven days. Is time accelerating?.
An ongoing question that I've never really come to a firm conclusion about is "Who am I actually writing blog posts for, myself or a possibly imaginary audience?".
Something that threw me a bit this year was finding that if I didn't do any posts for a month, my daily hits appeared to increase, and if I did more posts than my usual one each day, my hits appeared to decrease. That is really quite perplexing, and I have ruminated about it from time to time...
Looking at which posts consistently get the most hits, the clear leader is the one about the book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston A. Price
I'm really pleased to be publicizing and sharing this amazing book from 1939, which I rate as both the best nutrition and the best anthropological book of all time.
But beyond that, my most popular posts are usually just collections of random memes that I tend to slap together when I feel like a lol and can't be arsed writing anything long winded.
Maybe 10 years ago about half of all internet traffic was still actual real people, living humans surfing the internet, including the people reading blog posts. But here in 2025 I'm convinced that is no longer the case, and now I suspect something like 90% of all internet traffic is AI.
So I seem to be claiming here that time is accelerating and nearly everybody online is a bot. That all sounds totally fruit-loops doesn't it? I can't prove either of those claims are true, but I know I'm not the only person thinking along those lines, because I've seen other people voicing similar thoughts. At least I think they were people, but they actually could have been bots too.
To stir things up a bit I like to make some changes each month, especially to my blog. For November I'm going to try making the following three changes to this blog:
1. To post whatever I feel like, long or short, anything from full length posts with references, down to single memes with no words at all.
2. To post whenever I feel like posting something, so if I feel like doing a heap of posts on one day I will, but if I can't be arsed posting anything at all for a few days, so be it.
3. To post for the primary audience of myself, not giving a toss what anyone else might think, or caring whether or not any of my posts are likely to draw in "hits" or not.
At the moment this blog is literally jumping up and down each day from around 250 daily hits lows, up to occasional 1400 hits on one day highs. That makes no sense to me, but if it's all meaningless, why do I give a toss anyway?.
I find it a bit daunting to get my head around this, but in one form or another I've been blogging since the start of 1999. Back then we seriously thought there was going to be a massive computer crash on the last day of the year/century, and took care to save decent backups of everything offline.
This particular incarnation of the Sift blog only goes back two years, but my "Sift" blog has been around for over a quarter of a century, and the logo was a remix of the Shift motocross clothing brand from the from the 90's.
For most of that time my posts have been totally random, and I averaged only about two posts a week for 25 years, but for some reason I became more anal at the start of 2024 and decided to start aiming to do a post of some sort every day.
I'm not trying to make them all great masterpieces or anything, some are just stuff like one liners with a meme, but it has been a strange ambition at the back of my mind to match the number of blog posts with the number of days each month. Why?, I have no idea...
So the two months this year (May & July) where I skipped posting for the month were actually unusual breaks in a very long running habit. Those months off were experiments to test two things:
Firstly I wanted to see if I missed blogging? - Yes, I did, and by the end of a month I was definitely hanging out to post something.
And secondly I wanted to see if not posting had any effect on the number of "hits" my blog got. I expected that not posting would reduce the number of hits, so was quite surprised in May when they went up. And that was why I repeated the experiment again in July. Again, the hits went up when I stopped posting. Odd.
This post: "MY AI AUDIENCE" goes on about that subject further.
My best theory about what is going on is that most internet traffic is now AI, and traffic flows are being used to shape the entire internet. If I'm not posting anything on my Blogger blog, Google (who own Blogger) want to encourage me to keep the blog alive, so they increase my traffic to make posting seem more worthwhile.
But if I am regularly posting, Google, who I'm sure would actively dislike my content, might reduce their AI hits, in the hope of either driving me away altogether, or in a misguided attempt to motivate me to post more approved content. Neither option seems to have worked out for them, but yes, that really is all I came up with...
Now when I look over my posts for the year, those two months with only one post are blots on my blogging landscape, and I have an urge to go back and fill them out. It's very unlikely that many actual people will ever look at anything I retrospectively post way back in May or July, so this will be entirely just for my own anal perfectionism.
I'm going to look back over my old posts, attempting to find some that I haven't already updated or re-posted here on this current Sift blog, that I still think are relevant and interesting in 2025. And if I find any, I'll stick them into the empty days of July first.
If it doesn't all work out well, that may be the end of this somewhat odd plan, but if I do find heaps of suitable posts, I'll fill out July, and then maybe even go back further and do May as well.
Using Wayback Machine I can check out my websites from more than 20 years ago! This is what my original Sift homepage looked like 22 years ago
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I Sift, therefore I am siftySifting can potentially cultivate a much more aware state of mind than, say, mindless consuming and generalised believing. Hidden underneath all the worthless misinformation that flows freely out to us everyday, are some rare gems of truth. But you have to sift for them. Sifting about on the net, I’ve found myself drawn to some seemingly diverse subjects such as nutrition, health, marijuana, hemp, consumerism, capitalism, chaos theory, organics, censorship, drugs, doctors, warez, hacking, advertising, corporations, chemicals, GE, computers, free trade, and of course the USA and it’s uncontrolled world domination fetish. That’s a wide range of subjects and I’m too lazy to get into all of it, so a lot of the stuff on this site relates to health issues, as lately I’ve been spending a lot of my time working on my health, and researching diet and nutrition, But the thing I have found repeatedly, is that once you start digging around, everything starts to follow a similar pattern. Basically, it seems that if something is widely reported, it is probably false, whether it’s about healthy food, or terrorist attacks. The way these things tend to interlink, and the patterns they each repeat, open up a clearer way of looking at things. An alternative perspective, distilled through sifting. A bigger picture. There are many people on the Internet who are trying to distribute quality information. But most punters are not ready or willing to even consider it – they are too thoroughly indoctrinated. So it stays submerged. One of my friends responded to this site with “I just maintain a state of apathetic cynicism and avoid thinking about all this stuff” And that’s a reasonable reaction, there’s no point getting stressed about it all. But on the other hand, we are getting shafted and lied to so frequently that it’s hard to just ignore it. And I think that right now there are enough people becoming aware of what’s going on to start fighting back. Knowledge is power. For example, if enough people are aware of the real reasons that America attacked Iraq, or of America’s history of world domination and how taking over Iraq fits into that, or that the “war on terrorism”, like the “war on drugs” is a complete scam, intended only to increase America’s power, then maybe that will help to make the actions of the US backfire on them. Every aware person is only a drop in the ocean, but every drop can help dilute the tide of oppression that’s coming from the likes of the US government, and the overbearing evil of multinationals such as Monsanto. The Internet is still a place where the individual can fight back. Let’s keep it that way. As I find interesting new stuff, I’ll post some bits of it along the way, and make a sort of documented sifting scrapbook. Siftings from the sifterhood. As a rough guide, the text in red is generally stuff I have slapped together myself, while the blue text is stuff I have shamelessly ripped off wholesale from other sites and books, with as little editing as possible. I am a firm believer in the motto “information wants to be free” Once something is posted on the net it’s like tossing a bottle in the sea – who knows where it will end up… So feel free to recycle anything on this site – if it’s in red it may even be original and a credit to www.sift.co.nz would be much appreciated. Wherever possible I have left in credits for the sources of all the material I have ripped off, and that to me is cool – I realise not everyone agrees with that, but as I am trying to show on this website, there are generally two sides to most arguments. (And the other side are generally a bunch of idiots!) Much of this site contains personal opinion. But I believe the factual content is accurate. If you have clear evidence that would dispute or add to any of the statements on this site, feel free to send it to me. I have just added a feedback page for responses to the site. The most popular page on this site has been the Coca-Cola one. It’s my theory that is was getting the most hits because I had put the link to it as “coke”. That’s now been changed to Coca-Cola, so if it becomes less popular, I’ll take it as a sign that people really want to read about drugs. That they want to read about Colombian drug dealers hoovering up mountains of coke off glass top tables in expensive nightclubs. Maybe they want to look at porn and read about coke. There’s certainly some good sifting material in those subjects, so who knows… People keep paying me to do stuff for them. It takes time and interferes with my sifting. Sometimes it’s a problem. Sometimes I just sift anyway, and things I was going to do remain undone. This site still hasn’t got much stuff on it yet…. But it’s on my list. It’s number 186. I’ll be back. |
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Sometimes people talk about their inner guides, as if they are delicate soft spoken little wallflowers, hard to even hear, let alone to understand what they are trying to say.
I was half expecting my inner parrot to say something like “It’s OK to use the internet for longer if you have a specific reason, as long as you don’t waste time surfing”.
It’s not always this clear, but whatever sense of intuition I have really seems to have had enough of the internet at the moment.
Blogging can be very confusing at times. Despite saying I was only posting stuff for myself and ignoring the hits, I must admit that I do keep having a peak at the hit count.
As I've mentioned once or twice, my old Wordpress blog www.frot.co.nz used to get about 1000 hits a day in 2019, prior to the covidhoax, but during convid those hits all dried up and it went down to about 100 hits a day.
For some reason I always assumed that those 1000 hits were real people, and Google managed to stop 90% of them in 2020 by black listing my site. But I may have been barking up the wrong tree there.
On my newer www.sift.co.nz Blogger blog I've tried a couple of experiments and it has slowly dawned on me that quite possibly most of my audience is AI, and most likely always has been.
My new blog was only getting about 300 hits a day, but when I had a month off in May this year, and didn't post anything, after a few weeks the hits rose to more like 800 a day. Then when I started posting daily again, after a few weeks they dropped back down to around 400 a day.
Perplexed, I left it a month and repeated the month off experiment in July. This time the hits rose from around 400, up to over 900, after a few weeks of posting nothing. Then after going back to diligently doing a post every day for a few weeks, my hits gradually declined again.
Two possibilities I came up with: Firstly it may be that my posts are such complete bullshit that the more I post the less people look at my blog. That is possible, but it also requires that the less I post the more hits my blog gets. And that second part seems unlikely.
My next idea is that most internet traffic is AI, and traffic flows are being used to shape content. If I'm not posting anything on my Blogger blog, Google (who own Blogger) want to encourage me to keep the blog alive, so they increase my traffic to make posting seem more worthwhile.
But if I'm regularly posting, Google, who actively dislike my content, reduce the hits, in an attempt to drive me to post more approved content. I haven't actually ever tried doing that on Blogger, but I have tried it on a Facebook account, and yes, an inoffensive FB account does do much better in the algorithms.
And then the penny dropped - on blogs, video sharing platforms, social media, and indeed the entire internet, what if the "traffic" is not humans, but is mostly AI?. By "mostly" I don't mean about half, which is a widely accepted figure in 2025, but more like well over 90%.
If almost all internet traffic is AI, on the internet we have already been replaced by bots. While I thought bots had blacklisted my content and stopped a human audience from seeing it, what if almost all my hits were AI in the first place, and all the bots did was stop pretending to look at it?.
It's becoming increasingly clear that a huge amount of content is now being produced by AI, especially on platforms like YouTube. But what we were failing to see that most of the audience was AI all along. So everything we post had just better be primarily for our own entertainment, because bugger all real people are looking at it!
Here is something I wrote back in May. To tell truth after watching the past month play out, I'm thinking it 10x more now... đŸ¥¹
If there was one thing I have learned over the past five years it's that normies are clueless retards, and they will believe whatever bullshit they are told by the deep state controlled media, rather than research any contrarian opinions.
So if I still keep posting that sort of stuff myself, it's really more about getting things off my chest, than because I genuinely believe this vast train wreck can be prevented now.
Out of curiosity I set up an account on Medium last year, and did one quick test post to try it out. The site design sucked, with no formatting, and the content was all a bunch of boring libtard bullshit. I promptly forgot all about it, until I got a notification email saying my account was under investigation for violating Medium rules... LOL...
