Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification to refer to the way of online platforms, moving from awesome experience for users, to making it shitty for users to please businesses who are bringing money to the platform, and finally making it shitty for everyone as they focus solely on shareholders.

But the term works with programming and products, too. A few years ago, we signed up for a concert subscription. The first year, it was awesome. The second year, they reduced the number of concerts. Then they limited how many concerts you could sign up for at a time, so you constantly had to manage your account or get shut out of concerts because it was first-come, first-served (or get a 15% discount on full-priced tickets to account for the 15% discount you already paid for with your subscription). The third year, they raised the price of the subscription by 25%. And finally, they announced they had new restrictions, effective immediately, on bag size (only a small clutch) and banning personal water bottles.

It went from awesome to not very enjoyable, all in a three-year span. I’m trying to see it for what it is now vs. remembering what it was like three years ago. Is it worth the cost right now? We have a few months before the renewal date to decide.

But here’s the thing — in our experience, the first year was great. But we hadn’t been there for the year before that. What if people who had started their subscription a year before us thought that our year was terrible in comparison to the year they had come from? Totally possible. It only seems shitty because we have a comparison. Without a comparison, if we started now, we may think things are wonderful.

It is really hard not to think about things in comparison. To judge things as if nothing had come before.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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One more game that I’ve been playing for months and seemingly never wrote about is Neighbourle. You get a country highlighted on a map, with its neighbours in grey, and you have to state the names of all of the countries that border the daily country.

I can usually guess a country based on the number of kilometers and the direction, but this is harder because you have to know the names and shapes of every country that touches it. Even if it’s just a small piece of the border.

Enjoy.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

I am very very very swayed by book covers. They will get me to try a book, even if they won’t get me to love a book. But isn’t that one of the hardest things? To get someone to give something a try? Book covers work on me.

But I saw this site featured on Kottke, and I decided to try it. The idea is that you read one page. If you like it and would keep reading, you can click reveal. If not, you go on to the next book. I ended up clicking reveal on a book I would never have given a chance to because I didn’t connect with the cover.

Point taken.

My TBR is already too long, so I’m not really looking for more books to add to it. But I thought it was a very cool way to browse books from home without cover influence.

Tuesday was the 20th anniversary of the Friday Blog Roundup. 52 x 20 = 1,040, so how could there be 1,093 Roundups? Because this is actually the 993rd Roundup. Remember, they were misnumbered by 100 many many years ago? So that means in 20 years, I have missed writing this 47 times. About twice a year. 50 other weeks out of the year, I note what stuck with me after I closed the tab.

I used to read hundreds of blogs per day. Now that number is much smaller. It is what it is. Things change.

But I’m really grateful to everyone who still reads this, and even more grateful to everyone who still writes.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Middle Girl recounts an intriguing recurring dream involving a cat and a tiger. If cats represent creativity (according to the ultra-scientific online dream dictionary) and tigers represent fears, is she grappling with creativity parading back and forth, out of reach? Come for the dream interpretation. Stay for the art.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled is marking 25 years of childless living. She writes: “25 years ago today (!), while licking the wounds (physical, mental, emotional) inflicted by five-ish years of trying and failing to conceive a baby … I posted my story on the Childless Living message board on a now-defunct site called iVillage.” Grateful her voice is in this world.

The roundup to the Roundup: 20th anniversary of the Roundup. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 17 – July 24) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.

I have a book I added to my TBR — the Carrier — that is about a society where you can get someone else to carry your emotional pain. “Why should you suffer when she can do it for you? Welcome to Eudaimonia, a revolutionary company that can free you from your unwanted emotions.”

I liked the writing, but I really liked the question at the heart of the book. Is it ethical to have someone else carry your emotional pain? What if it’s voluntary? Can it ever truly be voluntary? Who would choose to absorb someone else’s pain if they had another choice? What if it shortens the other person’s life? Would it be okay to use the service if the person knew the risks and still opted for the position?

Heady questions.

I found the book during the heat wave, when I wanted to hire someone to work on our lawn because I didn’t want Josh working outside. But isn’t it sort of the same thing? To hire someone to be physically uncomfortable for you? Maybe not totally the same thing because there are perks to working outside, whereas there are no perks (that I can imagine) to feeling someone else’s emotional pain. But the book topic gave me pause.