Tag: personal essay
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?
A laminated poster with an unsourced quote changed the trajectory of my entire life when I was a teenager. On the immutable transaction of trading days for how we spend them, the urgency of risk-taking in a world that needs it, and what it means to give everything you have before your inevitable departure.
To My Readers: What Do You Want To See More Of?
I finally curated my blog posts into collections, revealing what I write about most: the IndieWeb, the craft of writing, community, technical tutorials, politics, culture, and more. A call to my readers to tell me what they want to see more of, and a reflection on how organizing my work helps me understand my own writing patterns and what I want to write more of.
There Are People Who Would Give Anything For Your Ability to Read and Write
In our current year, there is a global literacy crisis. As a result, there's a privilege in being able to read and write. Notes on Frederick Douglass, the problems you don't think about, and why the ability to write is something to be grateful for and use rather than take for granted.
A Case for the Ethical Treatment of Generative AI
Are there ethical implications of generative AI consciousness? From von Neumann's self-replicating machines to modern LLMs, we must inventory the problem of other minds, the possibility of AI consciousness, and why we ought to consider the welfare of systems that may experience something like suffering.
Shake Off the Dust!
Completing #100DaysToOffload twice in under two years, and somewhere along the way the wet clay hardened at the edges. Invisible ruts form inside the habits you love, and there's a difference between a window and a mirror in writing. The hermit crab outgrows shells, including the ones that still fit fine.
Love and Romance in the Times of Our Apocalypse
86% of American adults aged 18-24 are currently unpartnered; 78% of dating app users feel exhausted by online dating. How are people supposed to fall in love while the Doomsday Clock ticks at 85 seconds to midnight? On the yearning microgenre that overtook social media, Indigenous scholars decolonizing the pair bond, global feminist movements withdrawing from heterosexual relationships entirely, and what it means to be a serial monogamist finally learning the difference between Eros and Agape.
Vagueblogging and Subtweeting Are Awful
Vagueblogging and subtweeting are the most toxic modes of online communication, yet research shows people prefer them to direct confrontation anyway. On the psychology of strategic ambiguity, insecure attachment, context collapse, and the online disinhibition effect. A case against the culture of passive aggression online, and a call for those with safety and privilege to stop hiding behind the same hedge as everyone else.
Farming is Why Humanity is Fucked
A mind-shattering concept from a first-year university class that upended how I think about humanity. Daniel Quinn's Ishmael trilogy argues that totalitarian agriculture is why civilization is in peril. On the Law of Limited Competition, the Food Race, and how farming broke humanity's equilibrium with nature.
On n'a pas la langue dans notre poche!
Cet article de blogue est écrit en français. This blog post is written in French. Sur les différences entre le français québécois et le français européen, l'histoire linguistique du Québec depuis 1763, les sacres québécois comme acte de rébellion contre l'Église catholique, et le michif, la langue mixte des Métis avec ses verbes cris et noms français, son ethnogenèse au 19e siècle, et son statut de langue en danger avec moins de 1 000 locuteurs.
You Must, You Must, You Must
I've been sitting with a single word change. 'Will' versus 'must' in the Latin phrase Memento Mori, and it's shifted everything for me. A meditation on mortality as obligation rather than fate, and what it means to truly reckon with the fact that we must die, and therefore we must live and love.
An Open Letter to Compassionate, Left-leaning, AI-hating, Animal-loving Meat Eaters
Brace yourself. I'm writing this to people who care about the world's suffering and love animals, but haven't yet extended that same compassion to the animals on their plate. Any environmental argument you can make against generative AI you can make more so against eating meat. This isn't a purity test or a scolding. Just an invitation to not look away.
COMPULSION: The Writers Who Wrote The Most in History
I've been writing publicly every day for seven months, and I wanted to know what that looked like for other compulsive writers. From Chesterton dictating past midnight, to Chinese web fiction authors racing through 10,000 words daily. What does their obsessive output reveal about the nature of writing itself? The volume isn't the point. The showing up is.
Blogging Saved My Life
Writing publicly and frequently for the past seven months has saved my life. Six ways consistent public writing transformed me: cultivating curiosity, building connections, investigating rabbit holes, starting new projects, creating accountability, and seeing life's patterns in real-time. An invitation for others to begin writing without restraint.
A Love Letter to Everything
My first IndieWeb Carnival entry—the theme is love letters, and I couldn't pick just one thing. A letter to the infrastructure that holds my corner of the internet together, to the strangers who maintain the open-source tools I depend on every day, and to the IndieWeb friends I've met over the past few months. And finally, to curiosity: the embarrassing willingness to fall in love with a static-site generator or a transit system or a protocol nobody's heard of, which I've come to believe is what kept me alive.
On Being a River
Sixty thousand miles of blood vessels run inside each of us, more than twice around the Earth. 330 billion cells are replaced every single day. Humanity has always built civilization beside rivers because we are rivers. Always in motion, never stepping into the same current twice, carrying cells that live only days alongside neurons that will last precisely as long as we do.
What We Lose with Cultural Extinction: The Red Thread Cut
In 1995, China abducted six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima—the recognized 11th Panchen Lama—severing the chain of mutual recognition at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist succession. Meanwhile, Michif, a language born from Cree verbs and French nouns that belonged to no one but the Métis People, has nearly vanished within living memory. Both losses are the same act: colonialism's weaponization of continuity. On the extinction of languages, the cutting of red threads, and what it means to inherit a chain with links already missing.
Last Online 620 Weeks Ago: Why I'm Loyal to the IndieWeb
You visit your parent's house and find your white Xbox 360 in your childhood bedroom. A friends list full of gamertags that haven't booted up their own console in hundreds of weeks. On the heartbreak of digital disappearance, and why I'm committed to staying findable.
The Hondius Pneumonia (Low Risk Assessment)
A hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius in the South Atlantic has sent thirty passengers home across twenty-three countries before a single test was run. What does the WHO's 'low risk' framing mean? The institutional failure of January 2020, and what honest communication about uncertainty actually requires. The incubation window is open. We are watching.
Where is the Indigenous Cultural Revolution?
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney's 'The Undercommons' describes a space of collective refusal beneath the institutions of the master. On why Black American cultural revolution was possible, why Indigenous cultural revolution is structurally different, and where the Indigenous undercommons already is. The potlatch went underground for sixty-six years. The drum broke out in a shopping mall. The land is the undercommons. We were always already here.
PATTERN RECOGNITION
Scientists working in classified American aerospace and nuclear research have died and disappeared. The story has migrated from UFO forums to the White House briefing room. A conspiracy requires a conspirator. On grief, and the brain's furious, irrepressible need for meaning. Nuno Loureiro wanted to trap a small star. Carl Grillmair watched stellar streams from a self-built desert observatory. Monica Reza invented an alloy that does not burn. This is not me trying to figure anything out, this is me trying to remember the human beings.
Announcing My New Radio Show (a Love Letter to Public Access Television)
From Shaw Community Television on Channel 10 to Paper Tiger Television and the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, public access was original community media. Anybody, any channel, no notes from the network. In that spirit, I'm starting a self-hosted radio station built on AzuraCast, automated with a Python cron job pulling public domain recordings from the Internet Archive, and I'm going to try to show up and broadcast.
Writers Who Burned All Their Words feat. Bix Frankonis
I am a compulsive archivist, terrified of losing my words, but many of history's greatest writers asked for theirs to be burned. Kafka, Dickinson, Plath, Virgil all had their reasons. A meditation on self-erasure, ego, and the difference between the writing and the written thing, with an interview with Bix Frankonis, a contemporary writer who one day decided he needed to be smaller online, not bigger.
Dreamwidth and Yearning for Humanity on the Web
The sonder and vertigo I feel about people's interior lives. Corporate social media fails to offer genuine witnessing. So, I look to Dreamwidth, a fork of LiveJournal, and fifteen years of unbroken communities. On digital gentrification and the difference between syndication and participation.
Video Games that Secretly Teach Mathematics
A love letter to the mathematics hiding inside video games, and a protest against the expression 'I'm just not a math person'. From parallel universes in Super Mario 64 to the technical exegetes mapping Animal Crossing, The Sims 2, Pokémon, and Paper Mario. Then Balatro and the IEEE 754 double-precision ceiling, tetration, Knuth's up-arrows, Conway chained arrows, Graham's number, TREE(3). A history of notation catching up to the infinite.
Brenjour, C'est Moi! Sur L'identité
Cet article de blogue est écrit en français. This blog post is written in French. Sur le jeu de mots derrière «Brenjour», l'insécurité linguistique, et l'idée qu'apprendre une nouvelle langue nous donne une nouvelle âme. Sur la recherche en code-switching et en cultural frame switching chez les bilingues, le binaire rigide du genre grammatical en français, le pronom «iel» reconnu par Le Petit Robert en 2021, l'interdiction de l'écriture inclusive par le gouvernement du Québec en septembre 2025, mon apathie face à mon propre genre, le commérage, et la platitude honnête qui émerge quand j'écris dans une langue que je maîtrise mal.
Floating Up: An Interview with the creator of Bubbles.town, Benjamin Behnke
An interview with Benjamin Behnke, the creator of Bubbles.town, a community-driven aggregator for independent personal blogs. After controversy on Mastodon and 32-bit Café over his use of Anthropic's Claude to categorize blogs and bypass robots.txt signals, Ben responds about the mistake, the removal of the AI classification pipeline, a locally-trained Naive Bayes replacement, and stricter robots.txt enforcement. A reflection on software harm reduction, forgiveness, my Grandma Bubbles, and the fragile labours of love making the IndieWeb.
The IndieWeb is Wonderfully Dionysian
A personal plea from me to you to write your own comments. On the genAI plague of LinkedIn, Meta ads, and Medium, and the human warmth of the IndieWeb. From deviantART's old comment culture to Seneca's letters and the Vindolanda tablets, through Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian divide, the Renaissance of Real in A/W 2026/27 fashion, and Charli XCX's Brat. A call to write the messy, human, from-the-heart comment only you can write.
Being a Citizen Journalist
From Drudge to Salam Pax to Darnella Frazier and Zhang Zhan. The world needs citizen journalists. There has been a hollowing of Postmedia's local press, the radicalization pipelines mainstream coverage fails to trace, Andrew Callaghan's compromised platform, and what I owe under the SPJ Code of Ethics as an independent writer with a blog.
How and Why I Believe in God: The Ballad of Tragic Theism
My testimony, from Dawkins on an iPod Shuffle down a back alley, through Buddhist libraries and a children's hospice, to Matthew's Gospel in a break room chair. My case for tragic theism: a God who creates, risks, makes mistakes, grieves them, and does not stop.
A THOUSAND CRANES: Why I Write Every Day
My daily writing is a practice of releasing messages in bottles and folding paper cranes—from Montaigne in his tower and Johnson writing in poverty, to Sadako Sasaki folding 1,450 cranes in a hospital ward. What the essayists, drift bottles, and Senbazuru share, and why the attempt itself is the whole math.
Memes, Metal Gear Solid, and You
A history of the word 'meme'—from Richard Dawkins coining it in *The Selfish Gene* in 1976 to Advice Dog and the death of shared internet monoculture—and what happens when you take memetics seriously as a theory of culture. Metal Gear Rising's Monsoon delivers the most honest account of how memes shape who we become. The lyric essay resists this process by design.
Good, Standard Work: Creating the Commons
A defence of digital stewardship, IndieWeb principles, Blackfoot models of collective flourishing, and what it means to plant seeds in a garden you'll never see. From Garrett Hardin's infamous 1968 essay to Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning refutation, the tragedy of the commons was never inevitable. It was always a choice.
GRAIN ELEVATOR COUNTRY
A fifteen-hour road trip across Saskatchewan with my brother, watching the prairie unfold through grain elevators and abandoned towns. The quiet weight of prairie masculinity, the failure of academic knowledge to translate into brotherly wisdom, and the architecture of goodwill found in midnight motels.
Poetry Saved My Life
I snuck off school grounds to write in a back alley, shoplifting Ginsberg and Neruda from Chapters, and I'm alive and writing today because of that. Recent neuroscience confirms poetry activates the brain's dopaminergic reward system, treats anhedonia, and is—more than metaphor—medicine.
30: Finding My Footing
My annual birthday essay on turning thirty: examining the cross-cultural agreement—from Confucius to the Hebrew Bible to Zoroaster—that thirty is when formation ends and function begins. My dark year of depression which turned out to be preparation rather than delay, and on writing 200,000 words since, which turned out to be the same thing.