Routing blue links past unplugged TVs [Image via Gemini]

One of my favorite web authors, Ryan Broderick, who I read religiously, dropped another one of his truth bombs today in Garbage Day, decrying the continued decimation of text-based content that once defined the web, only to see it morph into something that is video first, or as he says "officially TV now". As we've observed over the last two-plus decades, Web behavior has rotated from newsgroups and reading full text articles, following links across the web, to short-form video consumption and Netflix-style episodic bingeing, with powerful algorithms suggesting you keep watching -- with sleep as the natural enemy.

Like I've said recently, you can't force old habits on new people who have been raised in a world of infinite bandwidth and infinite choice any more than you can ask kids to turn off the cartoons or put down the YouTube and pick up a newspaper. In today's post, Ryan calls time on the old "internet of libraries, replaced by an "internet of televisions", where, as he puts it, no one is famous, everyone is a celebrity on rented terms, and getting real traction with written words gets harder by the month -- made even more real as the hub and spoke model of RSS readers and centralized discovery lost momentum each year in favor of chasing ephemeral likes and practically non-monetizable "views", whose definition changes regularly to suit the platform.

Just a few weeks ago, I highlighted Garbage Day when saying how filtertainment eviscerated our informed monoculture. Every leap in bandwidth eventually fills the container you give it. We marched from static text sites passed around via links and email, to real-time social streams, to pocket screens pumping high-definition video straight into our earbuds. Not that this really comes as a surprise. In 2010, I warned about accelerating information streams on connected devices with "no off button, ever." When you give a tired population a choice between demanding prose and effortless video dopamine, the couch wins almost every night.

Video winning the mass-market feed isn't a mystery, if that's the market you want.

What breaks the open web for writers is a simpler mechanical truth: television has no blue links. When someone leans back into an algorithmic Reel, a video podcast on YouTube, or a zero-click chatbot answer, there is no natural exit ramp carrying a curious mind three hops deeper to an unfamiliar blog. I traced the roots of this choke point back in 2018, examining how a decade of silos throttled open content distribution and left the web linking less and talking more.

Publishing has always rested on creation, discovery, and distribution. Once Google Reader, FriendFeed, Digg, and Technorati disappeared, dominant platforms stopped acting as filtered pass-throughs. They actively throttled outbound URLs to hoard watch time, training creators to perform natively inside the silo for instant feedback while an essay on your own domain sat waiting for visitors who never arrived.

Waiting around for algorithmic cable boxes to hand text writers organic reach is a losing game. If the giant social apps want to be television, those of us who still think, build, and connect through reading have to wire up our own switchboard again. That conviction is why I built Webnerd.ai, which I introduced last month as a personal project that has no expectations of millions of users, but rejuvenates that feeling of discovery and sharing.

Do your part by cutting out the broadcast middleman: subscribe directly to blogs, personal newsletter inboxes, feeds and publications in folders you control, backed by practical AI summaries and stream audio that save time while still sending clicks straight to the original author.

Even more important is solving the traction gap where open-web discovery always worked best -- from person to person. Algorithms optimize for passive session length, while human readers vouch for voices worth keeping. Curated starter bundles help newcomers find active blogs on day one, while one-click sharing inside the app or right from the browser toolbar with the Webnerd.ai Chrome Extension turns every reader into a distribution node. When I flag a great piece, it lands on my public shared stream, cross-posts to Bluesky, and feeds its own subscribable RSS stream, keeping those blue underlines traveling across the open web.

Broadcast TV never killed books or independent magazines, and Instagram's binge button won't kill sharp writing either. Let the big platforms fight over the living room. The library is still open -- we just have to pass the good reads around ourselves.

The world of finance will evolve. The LLMs are happy to help. [Image via Gemini] 

In the AI era, there's a great divide emerging between the old way and the new way, and practically no industry is more closely aligned with the "old way" with tried and trusted capabilities than that of finance, where security and history are king, integration of new technologies usually comes via massive consulting contracts, and everything had better be FDIC insured. The old way screams of buttoned up suit wearing ties on Wall Street, while we've seen newer generations try forge their own paths, through crypto, gaming through prediction markets or taking long-shot option bets popularized on forums like r/wallstreetbets.

My job: Finding the best articles and amplifying them out. [Image via Gemini]

With Webnerd.ai bringing fast paced consumption and sharing back to my daily routine, the muscle of scanning, filtering and amplifying is back. This week is no different.

After a decade's effort in building out siloed social networks that aim to keep their content boxed in, independent blogging has endured and continues to push back. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out Paul Ford's post, The Web Is More Than Enough, where he showcased launching an entire browser-based office suite where all activity lives right in the URL, reminding us that the open web remains the most durable application platform on earth. Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick called out Reddit bricking up login walls, saying its defensive posture runs against Aaron Swartz's open access roots.

What we all saw this week with the US midterm elections is that closed networks force closed thinking. Republicans learned that X is the echo chamber. It was an inevitable result after Elon's acquisition and government meddling chased away all the left-leaning free thinkers to new places.  As Andy Baio called out, we know closed social feeds confuse algorithmic echo chambers with real-world consensus.

(I told you already that X was toxic, but maybe the right wing has figured this out now too?)

We are all continuing to learn where AI fits in our workflow and how much we invest in it. This is true at the corporate level as well. Tomasz Tunguz ran the math on an 80-gigawatt AI ceiling for 2027, showing how doubling GPU rental rates are pushing inference bills to new heights, while cheap AI intrusion tools are straining security teams at unprecedented levels.

AI is doing incredible things in terms of resetting expectations for employees at all levels. It's reset expectations for middle managers and reset expectations for new hires. At Anthropic, Felix Rieseberg said he has retired traditional coding interviews because hunger beats whiteboard tenure in an agentic world. And John Battelle captured the emotional knot of modern tech workers in Baring It All To Claude, which can mean trusting a model with your life's work, and hoping for the best.

When platforms wall themselves off and algorithms chase outrage, sitting down with an RSS reader and sharing good writing by hand isn't nostalgia. It's how we keep the web human. I'll be doing my part over at Webnerd.ai, and sharing out to RSS or Bluesky or wherever you like. That's what standards are for.

Webnerd.ai Share & Subscribe -- live now in the Chrome Web Store.

The Web content model consists of three major parts: creation, discovery and distribution. The last decade-plus has seen tremendous turbulence as one-time hubs came and went, and content creators lost a grip on how their content could be consumed and shared easily from both dedicated fans and casual visitors. Couple that with shorter attention spans and all matter of marketing hacks that have distracted core audiences, and it's a tough slog out there for journalists and bloggers.

One of the motions I've missed in our consumption and flow has been the fast option to share and subscribe as I encounter the best content on the web. So I've built a Chrome extension for Webnerd.ai that has three major functions:

1. Subscribe to new sources and add them to your folders as you browse.
2. Add individual items to your shares in Webnerd.ai, even without subscribing.
3. Share directly to Bluesky, with optional caption.

Starting today, Webnerd.ai Share & Subscribe is officially public on the Chrome Web Store, working across Chrome and other modern browsers, such as Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, and Edge.

Back in our Web 2.0 peak, I had bookmarklets for Google Reader and FriendFeed as mainstays in my browser and I could see top stories spread from person to person. The act of sharing content helps expose great new sources to my network, and in turn, I learn from them.

Here are some benefits of the Webnerd.ai extension:

One click publishes the story directly to your Webnerd.ai Shared Items, your personal curated stream (like mine at @louis-gray), and its accompanying RSS feed.

The extension is tuned for fast link-blogging while you read, including:

• Auto-Saved Quotes & Notes: Highlight any passage on the page before opening the extension and it drops right in as a clean blockquote.
• Automatic Tracker Stripping: Marketing parameters like utm_*, fbclid, gclid, and newsletter tracking tokens get scrubbed automatically before you share.
• Simultaneous Bluesky Cards & Standard.site Endorsements: Keep the Bluesky box checked to cross-post straight to your feed (such as my LG Stream) with rich OpenGraph link cards, compressed thumbnails, clickable hashtag facets, and cryptographic site.standard.graph.recommend endorsements via AT Protocol OAuth 2.1.

Live Feed Radar, Cadence Previews, and One-Click Folders

Spot hidden feeds with an optional glow, check the posting cadence, and add as you go.

Modern browsers stripped the orange RSS icon out of the address bar years ago, indicating millions of readers that feeds died when they were actually hiding in plain sight. Turn on the extension's opt-in Toolbar Glow  and the toolbar icon gently illuminates whenever a page publishes RSS, Atom, JSONFeed, or AT Protocol Standard.site publications -- including subscribable channels and profiles across Substack, Medium, YouTube, GitHub, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Reddit.

And if you are worried you're going to subscribe to a site that posts way too often, you can previews a feed's latest three headlines alongside an instant cadence check, so you know right away if a blog is active. From there, file the writer directly into any of your existing Webnerd.ai folders or spin up a new folder inline.

Right-Click Quick Share and Privacy-First Permissions

Right-click any page, quote, or link to Quick Share in the background with zero browsing tracking.

When you're moving fast, right-click any page, highlighted quote, or outbound link and hit Quick Share to Webnerd.ai. It publishes in the background and pops a clean confirmation toast in the corner of the page with direct links to view your post on Bluesky or in Shared Items.

Just as important is what the extension refuses to do. Too many browser add-ons demand blanket access to read every page you visit around the clock. I couldn't care less about your browsing history. Out of the box, Webnerd.ai runs on minimal activeTab permissions -- zero background tracking of your browsing activity -- only inspecting the current tab when you click the icon, tap the hotkey, or trigger the context menu (unless you explicitly opt into the ambient Feed Radar glow).

install Webnerd.ai Share & Subscribe from the Chrome Web Store, pin the pulse icon to your toolbar, and tap 1-Click Pair over at webnerd.ai/extension to connect your existing Webnerd.ai session. Give it a spin on your open tabs today and ping me on Bluesky with what you want to see next -- the native Android app is up next.