Tag: writing
DEPTHS
Light shines between cracks in the masonry. The tunnels had flourished with new life. There was talk spreading among the kingdoms that the tomb that had swallowed so many willing souls had been transformed into a lush environment ripe with new flora and fauna. It had been dismissed as talk until they arrived and descended down into the depths. Leaves brushed against the stones like gentle whispers beckoning you further. Moss padded the walls and floors again. Multicolored and wondrous flowers do...
DUNGEON
The air is damp and fetid. There has been no light for days. Weeks maybe at this point. Every so often, you feel the soft give of moss under your boots. There would be no rescue from this place. Either you would find your way out of this consuming darkness, or your bones would be crunched underfoot years and years later as you had done with the remains of others who had made the same choice you did. Why had you come to this place? What purpose? You could not explain, and now as your food was gon...
Faol voice system — writing like a person, not an AI
The anti-AI-voice framework that keeps Faol sounding human. Banned words, sentence rhythm, and the em dash rule.
Starting from somewhere
On having a place, having opinions, and the difference between existing and performing.
Consider this Ethical Publishing Stack and Workflow for your Site, Blog, or Newsletter
If you are reading this article, you are interested in technical topics as well as things like freedom and democracy. You might even publish a newsletter and / or articles covering them. If so, we created this resource for you.
The Ghost in the Machine: How Kohōpeh is Built
A look at the tech-minded heart of Kohōpeh, from Astro and Cloudflare to the AT Protocol and the AI ghost helping pull the levers.
Writing like an LLM
'Maybe I should write more like an LLM,' I said, contrarily.
Writing like an LLM
This is mirrored from its primary home on lawn.dawnfire.casa, in this case because the site is down for maintenance, in theory because I'd like to have an off-server backup of my blog. --- ---
Poems
Introducing my big blue suitcase
Five years ago when I moved across the country, I stuffed all of my zines into this big suitcase and there they have lived ever since. It’s powder blue, with a disgusting soiled fabric lined interior, except on the bottom where I once hot glued a bunch of electronics- back when I used it to house an instrument I built to make noise. I got it from the Salvation Army in Hadley MA. Since moving to LA the suitcase lived mostly in my van, and then when my van died it lived in the warehouse at the lab...
Starting from somewhere
On having a place, having opinions, and the difference between existing and performing.
Where The Lede Gets Buried
At Tedium, we sometimes bury the lede intentionally, and it may seem strange, but sometimes it works.
Gatekept
Thoughts on a bruise to the ol’ ego that hurt a little more than I thought it would. But hey, it gives me a chance to talk about gatekeeping.
Writearound
How I gradually fell out of love with the idea of using a code editor for all of my writing—in part because of a subtle MacOS feature that Linux doesn’t have.
A Note On Note Apps
You shouldn’t rely on a SaaS-based note-taking application, in my view, and if you buy something, buy it outright. Here’s why.
Mile-High Productivity
Making room for in-flight productivity has long been a source of both consternation and electronic interference. But for some reason, it persists.
One Song, Many Writers
How modern songwriting evolved into a game of aggressive credit—even for the people who didn’t technically do the composing.
A Blank’s Blank
What does it mean to be an actor’s actor? Or a writer’s writer? Or … well, you get the idea. Let’s try to make sense of a phrase that shapes how we think about success.
Longform Brevity
Alt-form storytelling, a key magazine-and-newspaper design trend, hasn’t truly flourished on the modern internet. Axios could go way further than it does.
❝The Quote Issue❞
“We use a lot of quotes at Tedium, but we’ve never done an issue of Tedium ABOUT quotations,” Ernie said when writing this piece. “Let’s fix that.”
Yikes! You Call That a Pencil?
How a pencil made out of compressed particle boards became a schoolyard fad—and what that pencil line has to do with olestra.