Hi, folks. I don't ordinarily address everybody directly like this. It never feels right. Just not my thing, you know?

Anyway, this is for folks who have my RSS or ATOM feeds in their feed readers. I really appreciate it - not enough folks use feeds these days or have presences outside of the walled gardens. However, there isn't any need to poll my site every ten minutes. Or every five minutes. I appreciate your enthusiasm (I really do), but I only post once or twice a month. There's no need to hammer the server quite so hard. Checking once a …

There is a conspiracy theory online called the Dead Internet Theory. So the story goes, some years ago people - actual, organic people sitting at keyboards or holding phones - stopped posting anything, anywhere online. Depending on who you talk to (and this includes credentialed folks who study various aspects of the Net, not just denizens of image boards or random users on forums), the proliferation of spambots, botnets, folks who use bots to age Twitter accounts to sell (link anonymized) for various purposes (like astroturfing) and SEO shenanagains effectively pushed organics out through sheer numbers. One person can use custom software …