Bubble turbulence

I had some thoughts about bubbles last week, and that post had some impact. /2026/10/impact.png For example, you might notice that posts on Top are no longer only a couple of days old. This is because Ben adjusted the algorithm to ignore the age of the post. In theory, this sounds good. Why should a post get penalized just because it's old? However, it does feel weird for a post that is 200 days old to appear on Top. I think it's because we are so conditioned that the algorithm always provides fresh content, even though it shouldn't matter. It does feel wrong to suggest for this change to be rolled back. My previous post noted how hard it is for a post to get traction, and unshackling exposure from post age does help. It's not like posts get worse with age (mostly). But that made me start thinking - do we actually need to know post age? What do I actually need to know about a post? Well the name obviously, and who wrote it. Hmm... /2026/10/bubbles_abridged.png As a thought experiment…