Tag: personal essay
Love is for the ones who love the work.
Taking the final line of Joseph Fasano's poem 'For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper' as a starting point, I argue that loving the verb of creation matters more than daydreaming the noun. There's a wide chasm between writing discipline and the seduction of genAI shortcuts. The only way forward is to start doing the work—badly, bravely, and now.
I Want to be Unremarkable
A meditation on the contradiction of writing publicly while wanting to remain unremarkable, drawing on Daoist uselessness, Epicurean lathe biōsas, state legibility, and Deleuzian imperceptibility—and why the only peaceful path is to keep writing and surrender to shared oblivion.
Normalized Fascism in Open Source: $12 Million Given to DHH
Open source has become a safe harbor for far-right politics, from David Heinemeier Hansson's white-nationalist rhetoric and the Omarchy Foundation's $12 million in patron funding to so-called apolitical projects that treat marginalized contributors as political, and why a united boycott of complicit tech companies is our only way forward.
100 Questions for Webmasters
A hundred-question chain meme making the rounds about how and why we make websites. I answer my way through questions on workflow, editors, CSS confidence, webrings, Neocities and Nekoweb, domain names, accessibility, genAI ethics, Gruvbox, and everything else about being a webmaster.
the movie you loved at 20 gets a vote forever
in 2009, (500) Days of Summer felt precision-engineered for being 20. revisiting it now means seeing both the movie and the person who first loved it.
SAD MACHINE
Debian's recent vote to permit genAI contributions, alongside the questions raised by the IndieWeb is Punk manifesto, leads me to reflect on the harm-reduction case, the deskilling of creators, the NFT-like grift of genAI output, and the Potemkin village of an industry that has yet to find profitability.
A Few Small Things
Reflecting on the mental fatigue of posting every day during Blaugust, I share a few small things that cheered me up: a new keyword filter on Bubbles.town, Jan Miksovsky's Origami Projector, and the ongoing, hand-made goodness of the independent web.
A Few Small Things
Reflecting on the mental fatigue of posting every day during Blaugust, I share a few small things that cheered me up: a new keyword filter on Bubbles.town, Jan Miksovsky's Origami Projector, and the ongoing, hand-made goodness of the independent web.
The Little Dreams Inside My Head
a personal think-peice on what I want to do in life
Creating an Open-source Blogging Studies Syllabus
Announcing a new open-source, asynchronous Blogging Studies syllabus that blends writing craft and independent web publishing, built on Codeberg. I trace the decline of free MOOCs, outline my curriculum's anti-capitalist and community-driven pedagogy, and invite contributors and learners to help shape it.
Being a Toolshed of Optimism
Reflecting on a reader's description of me as 'nice' and the responsibility of having an audience, I commit to becoming a 'toolshed of hope and stubborn optimism' in my writing. Drawing on solutions journalism, restorative narrative, and thinkers like Rebecca Solnit, Mariame Kaba, Joanna Macy, adrienne maree brown, and Christiana Figueres, I explore how hope is a discipline and how to tether anger and grief to concrete, actionable repair.
Outjerked by the Trickster
I've been satirized by circlejerk.blog, and I reflect on the history of online circlejerking, Indigenous trickster traditions like Coyote and Chi-Jean, and the concept of survivance. A call for more humour and satire in online spaces, and how trickster storytelling can build empathy through shared laughter.
Suspect Happiness in Pursuit: An Anti-Interview with Unstory
On the 50/10/40 split of happiness research, the Declaration of Independence's 'pursuit of happiness,' and an exchange with anonymous blogger Unstory about free will, determinism, and whether we can choose joy. A diptych of opposing worldviews: humanist optimism vs. anti-humanist determinism, and the strange beauty of two people staring at the same abyss.
What Remains? My AuguStory
On the shutdown of EchoFeed and the ephemeral nature of services, why I blog (legacy, existentialism, making a mark), participating in AuguStory, academic studies on blogging benefits, and the paradox of 'nobody cares' as both a source of freedom and as a reminder that we all deserve to be heard, seen, and loved regardless of metrics or response.
On Freedom, and the Future
A reflection on the entanglements of freedom and responsibility, by way of Jim Collins, in his new book "What to Make of a Life"
On Extending Our Last Time(s)
A little ode to last times ... and pushing back on the fact there will be a last time for anything - for many things - with my beloved dog
REVIEW: Sufjan Stevens' Carrie and Lowell, Ten Years Later
Ten years after its release, I revisit Sufjan Stevens' Carrie and Lowell, an album about his late mother's mental illness, abandonment, and grief, that's held up a clear, honest mirror to my own life. I trace how Stevens' songwriting about Carrie evolved from anger on Michigan and Illinois to unconditional forgiveness, dig into the many alternate versions of 'Fourth of July,' and reproduce my very first attempt at music criticism: a Carrie and Lowell review I wrote as a teenager back in 2015.
SBSK is The Most Important Channel on YouTube
Special Books by Special Kids is the most important channel on YouTube. Chris Ulmer and Alyssa Porter's decade-long project interviewing neurodiverse individuals and people with disabilities has created a more inclusive world through radical equality, unconditional positive regard, and the belief that all communication is valid. On the channel's origins, its tangible impact on real lives, and why treating disabled people with dignity is ordinary rather than heroic.
Playing the Games We Have
The video game industry is in a cynical, exploitative state with unfinished AAA releases, microtransactions, rising hardware costs, and studio closures. But there's an alternative I'd like to talk about: indie art games, the growing retro handheld scene, and my decision to play the extensive library I already own on a Retroid Pocket 2S rather than chasing new expensive hardware.
Knitting the Web: We Need Interlinkers!
Responding to Coyote's critique of Bubbles.town and feed aggregators, I argue that the IndieWeb needs more interlinkers—bloggers who meaningfully synthesize and weave together the writing of others. On the garden/stream/campfire metaphors for the web, the difference between linkdumps and synthesis, Justin Hall's early web work, and how every link out is a stitch that strengthens the fabric of the blogosphere.
cars i’d be willing to learn how to drive for: silver 2012 toyota rav4
(crossposted from tumblr and dreamwidth)
Something just doesn't feel right
I need to get it off my chest: Fan fiction community edition. I wrote this months ago, but I still feel the same.
Mea Culpa, When Somebody Writes Your Wrongs
Yesterday, Unattributed posted a thorough dissection of my article on note-taking PKMs, analyzing my lack of intellectual rigour, nebulous wording, and poor research. I use this as an opportunity to discuss the milkshake duck phenomenon, my experience with scrupulosity (moral OCD), and how to stay visible while imperfect through self-compassion rather than rule-following.
What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really?
As somebody who writes a lot, I've always been interested in personal knowledge management systems and note-taking apps. But what do these frameworks and methodologies actually give to researchers and the broader world? Has there been a meaningful increase of wisdom since these became popular? I went to look for an answer.
CLOWN BURNOUT
Clown white doesn't come off in one pass. A personal story about how I can never take myself seriously no matter how hard I try. Notes on the history whiteface and Auguste, the clown egg registry, the Indigenous medicine of laughter, the tyranny of irony, and what it costs to never learn how to come down.
Why Does Conor McGregor Get a Comeback?
Conor McGregor returns to headline UFC 329 tonight after being found liable for rape in civil court, a comeback made possible by the UFC's right-wing politicization and the broader 'Epstein class' culture of impunity for powerful men. On the normalization of sexual violence, Dana White's friendship with Trump, and how public awareness fails to disrupt the status quo.
REVIEW: Missing 'Missing Richard Simmons'
Nearly a decade after Dan Taberski's Missing Richard Simmons first asked the world where its brightest fitness star had gone, a review of the podcast that helped invent true-crime infotainment—and of the public's complicity in turning a man's right to disappear into a cultural obsession. On parasocial friendship, the ethics of documentary mystery, and why the legacy of Richard Simmons has been swallowed by the very mystery he refused to solve.