237 lines
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237 lines
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Plaintext
[1]
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i logo The Internet Review
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• [2] [ic] Articles
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• [3] [ic] Toolbox
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• [4] [ic] Forecast
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• [5] [ic] History
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[icon-e]
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I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got on October 29, 2024
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It’s the “1998” of the AI Revolution. So Why Can I Safely Ignore It?
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Ah, I remember 1998 like it was yesterday.
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Windows 98!
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Bondi Blue iMac!
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The “[6]Cuban Missile Crisis” 😏
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[7]You’ve Got Mail!
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But we’re not here to reminisce. We’re here to consider why the so-called “AI
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Revolution” of today is not like the Internet Revolution of 26 years ago.
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1998 was a pivotal moment in time for me. It was when I’d gotten my start as a
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professional Web developer, working on projects for friends and new leads
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alike. And I was writing quite a bit for new online publications. (Alas, I
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hadn’t yet [8]rebooted iReview as a BeOS-themed destination.)
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1998 was also right in the middle of the first big Internet boom. AOL was
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riding high and acquiring companies right and left—including Netscape in a $4.2
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billion deal. Microsoft had spent a few years pivoting mightily from a primary
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focus on big box (offline) software to a major consumer play where they hoped
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to fulfill their vision of “a computer in every home” connected to the nascent
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World-Wide Web.
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Apple was also just beginning its “Second Coming of Steve Jobs” narrative arc,
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launching the Internet-flavored Macintosh computer that would save the company
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and pave the way for the successes of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
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So here’s the deal.
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I would argue that for most people, in the year 1998, it would have made no
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sense to stubbornly resist these technological advances. Imagine flat-out
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saying no to computers and the Internet—to the degree that you never set up an
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email address. No Web access. Nothing.
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(OK weirdos, enough with that dreamy look in your eyes! Maybe you need to go
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unplug for the weekend! 🤣)
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Were there people like that back then? Certainly! And even now, there’s no
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denying the appeal of retro tech. [9]Some folks still love to write on
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typewriters.
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But on the whole, you could argue that people in the late 1990s who completely
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shunned personal computing were limiting their options for no clear reason.
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Accessing a Web site for information instead of dialing an automated telephone
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line was clearly a superior experience. Talking to a friend via email or
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instant messaging was clearly more akin to a face-to-face conversation than
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writing a letter and sending it in the post.
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I remember my very tech-adverse mother becoming completely addicted to online
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chatrooms in order to discuss…and this is no joke…Gàidhlig with native speakers
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in Scotland and learners around the world. I even helped her set up [10]a Web
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site and mailing list called Gàidhlig 4 U — and in case you’re wondering, my
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Scottish Gaelic persona was Diarmaid Mac GhilleBhàin.
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The reason I’m going into all this detail is because I want to impress to you
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just how much of a overwhelming shift in culture the Internet was in the late
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1990s.
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I see none of that same inevitability today with the so-called AI Revolution.
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You can literally just not use it.
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Researchers, please get in touch with me. I can be part of your control group.
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Because I’ve never used ChatGPT. Not once. I hesitated even to access a link a
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client shared with me with a transcript of their ChatGPT request. AI cooties! 🙅
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I’ve never used GitHub Copilot. Or Cursor. Or any of the other AI “pair
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programmers” out there. Not once.
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I routinely switch off any AI tools in software I use (if that’s even
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possible). I never look at “answers” search engines regurgitate out, preferring
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to get to the genuine human-sourced information as quickly as possible.
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I’m still running macOS Sonoma and iOS 17, because I have zero interest in
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“Apple Intelligence”.
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I don’t say all of this to revel in my curmudgeonly Luddism. I say it because
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I’m living proof that you can be a fulfilled, modern, very online, technical
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expert & creator and completely sit out this hype cycle.
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Seriously. You can just not use any of these generative AI tools.
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A while back, I wrote up an [11]AI Ethical Framework for my software business
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Whitefusion. It even needs a bit of updating now because I once considered the
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environmental cost of generative AI to be a bit of a side issue compared to the
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main ones, but it’s becoming clear it’s actually [12]rather horrendous.
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I’m sad to say I see little evidence that we’re making any progress towards
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meeting the tenets of the framework. Creators are having to take major steps to
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protect their work against theft at industrial scale, and regulation is slow or
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non-existent to ensure models are trained and provided in an ethical manner.
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Until there’s widespread availability of generative AI tooling which meets my
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criteria, I’m refusing to use any at all. And again, the impact on my life has
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been…negligible.
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I honestly don’t feel like I’m missing anything at all.
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I’m still coding and making a real impact on the projects I work on.
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I’m still writing. I’m still podcasting.
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I’m still taking photographs and editing them. (with zero “generative fill”!)
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I’m still participating in my local communities. In fact, if I ignore the few
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conversations I’ve had with folks IRL about what generative AI “will” do and
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focus on how AI has affected anything I do IRL, the answer is nothing. AI might
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as well not exist when I consider all of the things I do on a daily basis out
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in the real world.
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It’s not inevitable. (Sorry Thanos!)
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I’m really unable to explain to you why I would need generative AI to help me
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with anything I do. Now don’t get me wrong, I definitely appreciate machine
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learning. Making transcripts, translating text, searching for photos,
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dictating…these are all truly revolutionary and valuable computing tools. And
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if you want to put all of them in the broad category of “AI” and call me a
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hypocrite, you’re welcome to try.
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But I find that there’s a wide conceptual chasm between traditional machine
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learning tools as described above, and this new crop of generative AI services.
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And unfortunately, when the lines get blurred, [13]it’s actually pretty
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terrifying.
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Computers can’t think—and they won’t. Anyone trying to sell you on a vision of
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AGI, or “powerful intelligence”, or any such nonsense, has truly drunk the
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kool-aid (or cynically capitalizing on the hype cycle before it bursts).
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Computers can’t experience the world, because there’s no qualia in the
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lifecycle of a digital operation. Chatbots are lying to you when “they” wax
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philosophical about how much they appreciate the beach in the summer or that
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pickles taste great in a sandwich. I find it nauseating that some people
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willingly accept this kind of output from a chatbot. When the #1 problem with
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the Internet today is the rampant spread of misinformation and total bullshit
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everywhere at dizzying speeds, folks seem fine with using bullshit generators
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at scale?
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I don’t get it.
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But thankfully, I don’t need to, because I can continue to live my life
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perfectly fine without using any of these generative AI tools.
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Try it! Once you’ve weaned yourself off of these fake intelligence simulators,
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you just might realize they never added to your quality of life in the first
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place.
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(But, alas, you can’t join my control group. 😉)
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Enjoy Email Newsletters? 📨 Subscribe Now!
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[14]“Cycles Hyped No More”
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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[15]➜ Ghost is Now Federating, in Private Beta for Now [16]The Web Browser for
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Those of Discerning Taste: Vivaldi ➜
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Continue Browsing: [17]October 2024
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The Internet R
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E
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V
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I
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E
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W
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The Internet Review is the brainchild of [18]Jared White and published by [19]
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Intuitive Future.
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Founded in 1996 (really!) and rebooted in 2024.
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[20]Mastodon logo
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[21]Connect with Us on Mastodon!
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[22]RSS logo [23]Subscribe to Our RSS Feed
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🚫 any damn browser animated GIF 🚫 any damn browser animated GIF 🚫
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Best experienced in…a variety of different browsers because we’re more highly
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evolved than our 1990s predecessors! 😄
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👉 any damn browser animated GIF 👈
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Human Made
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Proud to be indie, proud to be AI-free, and proud to foster the preservation
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and continued flourishing of a human-centric, user-first internet.
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All written content Copyright © 1996-2024 Jared White and may be reprinted in
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full only by express permission.
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🚧 This Web site is under construction. And always will be! 🚧
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References:
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[1] https://theinternet.review/
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[2] https://theinternet.review/
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[3] https://theinternet.review/toolbox/
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[4] https://theinternet.review/forecast/
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[5] https://theinternet.review/history/
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[6] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1998/09/what-exactly-is-the-cigar-story.html
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[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ve_Got_Mail
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[8] https://theinternet.review/archived/1999/06/09/introduction-to-beos/
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[9] https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2022/07/why-and-how-i-use-a-typewriter/
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[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20000424001346fw_/http://distantoaks.com/g4u/index.html
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[11] https://www.whitefusion.studio/ai-ethics
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[12] https://www.techradar.com/pro/generative-ais-energy-demands-are-accelerating-the-climate-crisis-top-researcher-warns-of-environmental-impact-of-googles-new-search-feature
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[13] https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14
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[14] https://buttondown.email/theinternet
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[15] https://theinternet.review/2024/10/26/ghost-is-now-federating/
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[16] https://theinternet.review/2024/11/19/vivaldi-web-browser-for-customization-power-users/
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[17] https://theinternet.review/archived/october-2024
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[18] https://jaredwhite.com/
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[19] https://plus.intuitivefuture.com/
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[20] https://intuitivefuture.com/@theinternet
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[21] https://intuitivefuture.com/@theinternet
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[22] https://theinternet.review/feed.xml
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[23] https://theinternet.review/feed.xml
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