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  "description": "I often go through a loop of visiting sites like hacker news or lobste.rs, opening half a dozen tabs in the background based on their name and then waiting days to read them.\n\nThey sit in my list of open tabs and trigger a mild pang of guilt when I glance at them. Sometimes I save them to a 'read later list' but that just ends up moving where and when I see them.\n\nThe odd thing is that when I do finally end up reading them, they often end up being very different from what I'd imagined.\n\nDespite ",
  "path": "/the-unbound-potential-of-open-tabs/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-18T08:25:17.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.elliotcsmith.com",
  "textContent": "I often go through a loop of visiting sites like hacker news or lobste.rs, opening half a dozen tabs in the background based on their name and then waiting days to read them.\n\nThey sit in my list of open tabs and trigger a mild pang of guilt when I glance at them. Sometimes I save them to a 'read later list' but that just ends up moving where and when I see them.\n\nThe odd thing is that when I do finally end up reading them, they often end up being very different from what I'd imagined.\n\nDespite all of this the pattern continues. I know they'll sit for a while before being read. I know most of them will be mediocre but it's a habit that I can't quite break.\n\nIf I get mildly introspective there are three reasons I keep it up.\n\n  1. Sometimes, they meet expectations. This is probably just a slot machine effect but given how quickly you can close a tab, the risk is low.\n  2. Sometimes, what I thought the post would be about ends up being more interesting and triggers me to look into things myself.\n  3. Sometimes, the least frequent case, the topic isn't what I expected but there's some meta value in the style of writing that I end up enjoying.\n\n\n\nI think there's also some value in random discovery. If I was slightly more cynical I could probably filter out most of the posts assuming I knew better. That would certainly free up a little time and likely a little RAM but I think the chance at finding something new and interesting is worth the cost.",
  "title": "The unbound potential of open tabs",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-18T08:25:17.000Z"
}