Website review
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What is 網絡暴民 Jacky's Blog?
網絡暴民 Jacky's Blog is a long-running personal blog by a Hong Kong writer who posts under the name Jacky. It is a record of one person's reading, viewing and everyday thinking, kept going for close to two decades — the archive includes anniversary posts marking eighteen years of the blog.
What you find there
- Reading notes ("開卷筆記"): short essays on individual books, typically science and technology titles, science fiction, and works about privacy and surveillance.
- Film and theatre writing: reactions to cinema and streamed stage productions, including Nolan's TENET, the Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 series, and National Theatre Live broadcasts.
- Personal and reflective posts: anniversary entries and occasional notes on the mood of the times, the pandemic, and keeping a blog alive at low intensity.
- Cross-posting notes: entries about publishing to other platforms, such as experimenting with Matters via a Likecoin WordPress plugin.
Who it suits
Readers who want a single, opinionated voice rather than news or reviews at scale. If you enjoy following one person's reading trail over years — seeing which ideas recur, how tastes shift — the archive rewards browsing. It is written in Chinese, so it is most useful to readers comfortable in that language.
How to use it
Treat it as a back-catalogue, not a feed. Pick a subject you already care about — sleep science, blockchain and trust, space elevators, Snowden's memoir — and read the matching note, then follow the category or date links around it. The anniversary posts are a good entry point if you want the author's own summary of what the blog has been.
As a practical comparison, a personal blog like this offers depth and continuity but irregular output, while general-interest outlets offer frequency without a consistent viewpoint. If you want a steady stream of new material, this is not that; if you want one reader's sustained attention on books and films, it is.
What types of content and topics does the blog cover?
The blog is a long-running personal site mixing short life updates with book notes and film or theatre commentary. Its most consistent thread is the “開卷筆記” (reading notes) series: nonfiction and science fiction, including themes such as surveillance and privacy, sleep science, blockchain and trust, space elevators, artificial intelligence, climate change and the future of humanity. Alongside those are film and performance posts — Christopher Nolan’s TENET, Akira, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, a National Theatre Frankenstein broadcast and an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical stream — plus annual reading round-ups and anniversary posts reflecting on blogging, the pandemic and the wider social mood.
If you are deciding whether to read it, treat it less as a news or review site and more as one person’s reading and viewing diary. A reader who wants a short, opinionated companion to a science or sci-fi book will get the most from the 開卷筆記 entries; someone looking for regular current-affairs coverage will find only occasional, personal reflection. The author also notes cross-posting to Medium and Matters and is reachable via Mastodon — Medium and Matters are where some of that mirrored writing lives, while Mastodon explains the social platform he uses.
A practical next step is to open the archive and read two or three 開卷筆記 posts in a row; that quickly shows whether the note-taking style and subject range match your interests before you commit to following the blog.
How can I navigate the blog to find book reviews or reading notes?
To find book reviews and reading notes on 網絡暴民 Jacky's Blog, look for post titles beginning with 開卷筆記 ("reading notes"). These are the author's book write-ups, and they appear as regular posts in the chronological archive rather than in a separate review section.
The blog's own recent listing shows this pattern clearly. Examples include 開卷筆記 – 永久檔案 (Edward Snowden's memoir), 開卷筆記 – 為什麼要睡覺? (Why We Sleep), 開卷筆記 – 天堂的噴泉 (Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise), 開卷筆記 – 真理機器 (about blockchain and trust), 開卷筆記 – 科幻小說不是亂掰的, and 開卷筆記 – 人類的前途. There is also an annual roundup such as 2019開卷記錄, which summarises a year's reading (the author notes 38 books that year) and is a good entry point if you want an overview before diving into individual notes.
Practical navigation steps
- Scan post titles for 開卷筆記. This prefix is the most reliable signal; it distinguishes reading notes from film, theatre and personal posts (for example 《天能》TENET or National Theatre Live: Frankenstein).
- Start with an annual roundup like 2019開卷記錄 to see which books were covered and which notes interest you.
- Browse by date. The blog presents posts newest-first, so older notes require scrolling through the archive or using the site's date-based URLs (the 十八年 post, for instance, sits at a /2022/02/18/ path).
- Check the author's other platforms. The blog states that posts are also published on Medium and Matters, so if you prefer reading there, the same 開卷筆記 material may be mirrored.
What to expect
These are personal reading notes, not formal reviews. They mix summary, the author's reactions and connections to other books or ideas — the 真理機器 note, for example, is framed around blockchain and trust, while 天堂的噴泉 discusses the space-elevator concept. If you want critical verdicts or ratings, this format may feel loose; if you want a thoughtful reader's reflections and leads to further reading, it fits well.
A useful next step: open the 2019開卷記錄 roundup first, pick one title that overlaps with your interests, then search the archive for its 開卷筆記 post.
What is the significance of the blog's anniversary posts like '十八年' and '十七年'?
The anniversary posts are the blog's yearly check-in: a personal status report rather than a topical article. In "十八年" the author notes the site has been running on low power — mostly link roundups and diary-style notes — with reading continuing but writing stalled by the pandemic and mood. "十七年" strikes a similar tone, observing that 2020 was widely seen as bad and 2021 looked no better, and that many people were settling for simply staying well. Both posts mark the passage of time on the blog itself and are tagged with the year, blog and life, which is exactly where they sit: part milestone, part diary.
For a long-running personal blog, these posts do a specific job. They tell returning readers the site is still alive, they set expectations for how much new material to expect, and they give the author a place to reflect on the wider mood without forcing a full essay. The value is continuity rather than information. A reader who has followed the blog for years gets a sense of the person behind it; a new reader gets an honest snapshot of its current rhythm.
If you are browsing this blog and want substance rather than status, treat the anniversary posts as an index of the period around them. The entries listed near them — book notes on Edward Snowden's memoir and Why We Sleep, a film note on TENET, a piece on the Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 series — show what the author was actually reading and watching while writing those reflections. Start with the anniversary post to gauge the mood, then follow the book or film notes published in the same months for the concrete content.
How does the author share content across platforms like Medium and Matters?
The author treats this blog as the home base and pushes selected posts outward to other platforms rather than writing separately for each one. The visible pattern is cross-posting: a post published here also appears on Medium and Matters, with the same text and title carried over. A small "Also on Medium Matters X Mastodon" line under the post, plus share buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Pocket and Email, is the plumbing that makes this work.
The clearest documented case is the Matters experiment. In "試Matters發佈" the author explains that a Likecoin plugin for WordPress added a publishing function for Matters, and that the plan was to try posting there for a while but to automate it rather than do it by hand. That tells you the intended workflow: write once in WordPress, let the plugin syndicate, and avoid maintaining a second writing queue. The same post shows the trade-off — the author had not enabled Likecoin, so the crypto-reward side of Matters was not part of the motivation.
What this looks like in practice
- One canonical text, several mirrors. The "十八年" post carries the same body text on the blog and on Medium and Matters. Readers on any platform get the full post, not a teaser.
- Platforms as reach, not as separate blogs. Medium and Matters are treated as distribution channels; comments and identity stay with the original author rather than becoming platform-specific personas.
- Sharing is manual and social. The Twitter/Facebook/Pocket/Email buttons cover the casual share, while the "Also on" line covers the platform-level mirror.
- Mastodon appears alongside the big platforms, which suggests the author favours open or federated venues where they exist, at least as one more outlet.
If you want to copy this setup
Decide first whether you want mirrors or conversations. If mirrors, keep one source of truth and syndicate automatically, exactly as the plugin approach does; accept that replies will scatter across platforms and that you may not see them all. If conversations, post natively and expect to write twice — more work, but each platform's audience gets something shaped for it.
A practical middle path: publish here, auto-syndicate to one or two venues, and add a short line at the top of the mirrored copy pointing back to the original for comments. That preserves the "write once" benefit while giving readers a single place to respond. For a concrete case, someone reading "開卷筆記 – 永久檔案" on Matters who wants to follow the book-note series should be pointed back to the blog, where the whole run lives.
For comparison, the author also maintains a presence on Medium and Matters, and the site's own archive is at 網絡暴民 Jacky's Blog.
What insights does the author provide on films and cultural works during the pandemic?
The author treats pandemic-era film and culture as a mix of practical distraction and structured reflection. During lockdowns he used free online theatre streams—musicals and National Theatre productions—as a way to keep engaging with culture when venues were closed, and he paired that with reading notes on technology, privacy, sleep and science. His own framing is that the period made it hard to write seriously: he describes reading continuing while note-taking slowed, and calls it a time of gritting teeth and adjusting mindset.
Concrete threads from the posts:
- Streamed theatre as substitute. He watched Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals released for free during the pandemic and a National Theatre Live production of Frankenstein, noting the two-version casting. This is a reader who wants stage work without a stage.
- Films as spectacle and puzzle. His note on TENET focuses on Nolan's structural obsession and the "brain-burning" complexity, set against the pandemic's effect on cinemas. He also saw Akira on the big screen and remarked on weak attendance during a third wave.
- Adaptation and franchise. He watched Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 and judged it against the earlier SAC lineage—useful if you care whether a revival keeps its original spirit.
- Reading as the other half. His book notes cover Snowden's memoir on surveillance, Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise and the space elevator idea, blockchain and trust, and Why We Sleep. These are not reviews of the pandemic; they are how he processed it.
A practical next step: if you are choosing pandemic-era culture to revisit, separate live-capture theatre (worth it for performance and staging) from streaming originals (judge them against the franchise they claim to continue). For films like TENET, decide in advance whether you want the puzzle or the spectacle—the author clearly values the former.
His blog is at 網絡暴民 Jacky's Blog, where the archive runs back through these entries.
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