Somewhere, long ago, I came across a distinction between two types of content:
flow content, and reference content. I don't know if these were the terms used,
but as they're the terms I recall, they'll serve. Flow content is stuff that's
valuable for the fact that it's current. Reference is perhaps less immediately
useful, but retains long-term relevance, and you might keep going back to it.
Like most things in life, this isn't a hard dichotomy, but a continuum,
dependent on context and purpose. So while "what's the weather tomorrow" might
be a typical example of flow content (useless once tomorrow passes), in an era
of climate change and politically-motivated destruction of historical data,
suddenly the reference value becomes more clear. But I think we can all see the
two ends of the spectrum, even if we can also imagine contexts that move a
given piece of content from one end to the other.
So, my Mastodon feed is mostly flow: communication in the moment, valuable in a
flash but stale before the day is out. But this site is intended to be
reference. That's why it's not a blog, in fact. I want to have pieces here,
pieces which I can update as circumstances demand, but which are not organized
around their time-of-publication. I hope that I can write things that you want
to come back to later and reconsider in a new light.
Of course, I'll also try to add dates to whatever I write, and to major edits.
That's just responsible.