Sara Bareilles - Brave (embedded YouTube)

"Maybe there's a way out of the cage where you live. Maybe one of these days you can let the light in.
Show me how big your brave is. Say what you wanna say and let the words fall out. Honestly I wanna see you be brave."

Enya - Caribbean Blue (embedded YouTube)

Because I need a bit of peace today.

Silence

Silence. The loudest sound.

Fix It, Facebook

Social Fixer's "New Year's Resolutions" wish list for Facebook.

Social Fixer advises Facebook to listen to its users: "Yes, we are the product being sold. But unless you keep users happy, you will soon have no one left to advertise to. Users don’t pay you the money, but they are your customers too."

Among the things that Social Fixer is asking for:

* Fix the damned news feed: "We're not stupid. We know you're just manipulating the content in order to charge Pages and advertisers for their posts to actually be visible to users. And let's face it – your algorithms are terrible. Everyone I talk to is becoming disenchanted with their news feed."

* Stop with the ceaseless changes already: "We like continual improvement, but not constant random tinkering. We don't have time to re-learn how to use Facebook every 2 weeks. It's really annoying."

* Give us more control over privacy. No, more: "You want users to share more and tag more and like more and comment more, because it lets you harvest more data. ... With each update to the privacy settings, you make it more complicated and more difficult to communicate only with those people you wish to. Instead of gathering better personal data by reducing default privacy, you are making people afraid to say anything of substance because they are never sure who will see it."

Leaving 2013 Behind

Good-bye, 2013. And good riddance.

First thing early Monday morning I'm gonna pick my tears away. Got no cause to look back - I'm lookin' for me a better day. You see the thing 'bout love is that it's not enough if the only thing it brings you is pain.

There comes a time when we could all make a change. So just let go and let it flow.

Some kind of magic
Happens late at night
When the moon smiles down at me
And bathes me in its light

I fell asleep beneath you
In the tall blades of grass
When I woke the world was new
I never had to ask

It's a brand new day
The sun is shining
It's a brand new day
For the first time in such a long long time
I know, I'll be ok