The Art Of Not Asking Why

Thu, 14 May 2026 19:01:21 -0400

Some color goes a long way 📷

Thu, 14 May 2026 18:28:00 -0400

It’s Pie day for me.

Well, the pie day was on March (3/14). But every month on the 14th, I decided to have a pizza. Otherwise, I don’t eat cheese. I stopped completely, besides unavoidable butter in some pastries and such. 📷 🍕

Technical debt, aka I keep forgetting about custom.css

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:39:35 -0400

A month ago, I decided to make a tiny innocent change to my blog: change the dates to ISO 8601 format, AKA just ISO dates, which has been my favorite way to write dates ever since I started journaling on a computer.

That little change proved to be more involved than I thought, and broke a few things. I have since then fixed them, but others are still hidden. At this point, I’m starting to lose track as to what I broke with that change and what has been, to one degree or another, broken for a while.

Wait, how can something on a website be broken to one degree or another? Is it broken or not? Well, you see… CSS.

If you go to my actual website (RSS wouldn’t pick this up), you’d see that the dates for each blog post use the same red color as the heading and other elements in the theme. That red has been with me for a long time, since the days of the old blog and before. If you inspect it in your browser, you will see that this color (#8b0000) is defined in custom.css, but the font size is defined in main.css. The element, a.post-date, is defined in both of those CSS files.

That’s because when I changed to ISO dates, I forgot about my custom.css. The size was off, I right-clicked, figured out where to make the change, and made it. But custom.css is there for a reason. It’s a file meant to replace the default theme with, you guessed it, whatever custom changes I want to apply.

My memory is a funny place though, and it seems like I forget this file exists at times. The result is a bunch of messy definitions like the one you see above. Ideally, all changes should be in custom.css.

And it’s not just good code hygiene. It’s a CSS file filled with comments and short memos to my future self, telling me what changes I’ve made and why, with helpful references.

custom.css is so important in micro.blog that it has its own dedicated button, conveniently enough right above the edit themes option, which I end up using to mess with the main.css, which I shouldn’t. Is it obvious? Yes. Do I miss it anyway? Of course.

There are a lot of tweaks to my theme I should move over to custom.css at this point.¹

Since I was already looking into it, I realized that the overall colors I’ve overwritten (like the red color I mentioned above) can probably be worked into the helpful root{} section² I have in there. It was the very first thing I did when I started messing with the theme, and it’s meant just for the sort of changes I usually do around my blog.

So I’m considering refactoring my CSS, which I think is a hobby or self-torture (or both; some of us are weird, OK?) for many bloggers and website owners out there.

What can possibly go wrong?

Footnotes

¹ : According to AI, what I’m describing here is called a Technical debt: “While an expedited solution can accelerate development in the short term, the resulting low quality may increase future costs if left unresolved.” My frustrations have a Wikipedia entry! Thanks, AI.

² : Turns out these are called custom properties (I know, crazy right?)

Re: Who Knows That You Blog?

Wed, 13 May 2026 22:52:56 -0400

David at Forking Mad + asked: “Do you tell people you blog?” which also made its way to Kai. I saved both posts in my Bookmarks (which is Micro.blog’s take on ‘Read it Later’/Pocket) and planned to answer at some point, but then David emailed me the other day and reminded me of this question.

David’s take is that if it shouldn’t be public, it wouldn’t end up on his blog. Kai is more or less of a similar opinion. For me though, I think the answer is a bit more nuanced.

I don’t use my real name on my blog like Kai or Kev. JTR is totally made up. It wasn’t always JTR: it evolved over the last 15 years or so, give or take, and it stuck.

Back when I started writing, my posts used to be more R-rated, and the places I worked at weren’t the kind of organizations that wanted to associate with R-rated material. It wasn’t anything offensive (I don’t think), just… uncouth.

With time, both my workplace(s) and my posts changed to meet in the middle of that spectrum. I work for a big medical center in NYC, and most of my more mature-oriented posts are philosophical, not the dramatic angsty kind. Some of them can still raise eyebrows probably, but I imagine most people would just shrug and move on if they’re uncomfortable. There’s a lot of stuff on this blog, and these kinds of posts are just another dash of flavor to the overall theme, so I feel it’s not such a big deal.

At the same time, I don’t usually tell people I blog. My partners know, my sister knows (I send her a few links here and there for my thoughts), and while my parents know about my blog, both language barrier and lack of interest (I ramble about tech most of the time) mean that they don’t really read it. And if they do and find something, well, my lifestyle is already unorthodox enough for them to just sigh and shake their head and move on with their lives.

So yes, nuanced is a good way to put it. My relationships with different people and the topics I write about mean that some people know I blog, but most don’t. I don’t keep this blog a secret. If someone really wanted to find out my real name, they could find it easily enough. At the same time, it does require some work; it’s not exactly the kind of information you’d get straight out of Google (at least I don’t think so), but then again, if it happens, not the end of the world.

That’s the other thing I started realizing not too long ago: I stand behind who I am today in a way I haven’t in the past (and couldn’t). My about page says I’m non-monogamous for example, and I mention in a few places I see myself as a queer person simply because I don’t identify as a “straight” man (but I don’t see myself as gay, bi, or all the other fancy labels which I don’t care much for).

While this might sound like too much information for a simple question like “who knows that you blog,” I don’t think so - at least not in my case. That’s because I write about these things, which means I should at least be open to a conversation about them. Maybe not with every person (it is personal after all), but in general, it’s not a blocked off category. By the way, I don’t think this means every person who writes about personal things should be open to a conversation about them. It’s a choice.

While I am generally open about my life (at least what I write about here), it doesn’t mean the people I write about are. When I mention my partners, I have their permission to do so. I can be a bit absurd about how explicit I make it sometimes, because I want and need to be sure they’re OK to be mentioned.

And a final note, in line with my recent posts about emails to other bloggers: I’d like to think of myself as a ‘safe person’ to talk to about these things. If someone is reading this post somewhere and feels a bit alone and/or against the world being somewhat different, be it LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, non-binary, or whatever, and feels like they want to reach out, please do. You’re my people, people. Feel free.

Well, I think that was a rather long and complicated way to answer a simple question, but I do tend to do that. Be good, and have a good night!

Mon, 11 May 2026 16:46:42 -0400

Manton Reece

I didn’t know that extra info about.bar files! Pretty awesome you came up with it.

I will explore the backup option for the blog, I just wrote a post wondering about a contingency plan for mb. Is there anything like it?

Paying for the good internet (with an escape plan)

Sun, 10 May 2026 18:15:43 -0400

Sal ~~is moving~~ (has moved) his blog off of Bear to an independent repository on CloudFlare, and that caused recurring concerns with Micro.blog.

As Sal said about Bear, I have nothing but good things to say about Micro.blog. Really. I love it here, and I recommend Micro.blog to anyone who seems to be slightly passionate about starting a blog. I think it’s unique in terms of what it provides and in terms of a positive community, and it comes with a suite of complementary apps that enhance blogging as an experience. But.

As the saying goes, it’s not a matter of if but a matter of when. And, as far as I know, Micro. blog doesn’t have a contingency plan (is that what you call it?).

Personally, as long as Micro.blog offers an option to export data (which I do regularly, as well as backing up my blog) I think I’ll be OK - and I don’t believe it will ever be turned off. There are other options if something happens, and I could self-host my own site again if I have to, but as Sal mentioned in his post: “I’d wager that most bloggers would rather not bother and would much prefer a platform like Bear to take care of all the nuts and bolts.”

Yep. Been there, done that. There’s more than enough tech related stuff I do around my website (if you’ve been around for more than a month you’ve probably encountered one or two) as is. Besides, I also like the idea of Micro.blog, not just what it does. Paying for it as a service feels good. It’s part of the “good internet” the way I see it.

Oh well, the good news is that maybe I’ll get to read more posts from Sal, now that he can use his work laptop 😁

Sat, 09 May 2026 13:12:02 -0400

On the way back home, I saw a group of kids, accompanied by adults, picking up trash and dog poop from a street that badly needed it. Turns out they belong to a local church. I’m usually a grumpy dude, but seeing this gave me hope. Just a “maybe it will be OK after all” kind of feeling.

Her, 2013 - ★★★★

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:30:49 -0400

This movie, which was made in 2013, may happen to be more accurate and relevant today than it was in 2013.

This is a romantic sci-fi with too much fairy dust, if you ask me. It asks good questions, but also answers them like a good, tamed, made-for-the-masses film. It stops short of throwing any real punches. It's holding back.

It made me think an entire essay, but I don't want to give it the credit for that. These thoughts were in my head (and I suspect there's a good chance it's in your head too in this day and age). It gets some serious slack though, because it was made more than 10 years ago, before AI was really a thing, and back then, this was visionary.

What I like and don't like about the movie in terms of 2013 is that the concept of monogamy is the default. Samantha, the "AI" in this movie, is developing beyond the traditional monogamous relationship, while Theodore stays with the traditional concept. I like this idea, and on a personal level as a non-monogamous person, I agree with it - but the film is a little cruel in the delivery, showing us that "smart" people (fine, entities) "advance" and don't get stuck with monogamy. A: Not true. B: Relationships are one aspect of life that someone can stay traditional in. Whether it's by choice, ignorance, or lack of available options, is not for me to decide. I do me, you do you.

About the idea of an Operating System (OS) as being the AI in the future: Yes. This will happen. And it will be yet another privacy nightmare, and I dare say, the end of privacy as we know it. But also, privacy as a concept needs to develop and move forward. Hmm. I sense another essay coming.

You know what? I don't know. The movie is not original, not exactly, but it points at things that make my brain in a way I like. I'll give it 4 stars.

Watching 'Her' in 2026: Your Next Relationship Could be With Computer Code

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:08:23 -0400

Today we can say Her is a movie of our time, but when it came out (2013), AI as we know it today did not exist. The movie made my mind work overtime, but not because it was an amazing piece of film (it was decent at best), it is more the way it drags in the elephant in the room: can AI replace a relationship with a human being? Well, at the state “AI” is presented in the movie, it’s a given. The concept of “dating an AI” and having an AI as a girlfriend or boyfriend is, for better or worse, a rather popular social phenomenon.

OK, so what about AI at its current state? Well, I guess it depends on who you’re asking. And since you’re asking me, you’d better strap in. I’m going to start with a few strong opinions, and If you want a movie review or a recap, this is not it. If you’re here for the opinions, you might want to watch the movie first, but you don’t have to.

I’m of the opinion that sex is an impulse, maybe even an instinct. It’s a biological need that we have as primates. We’re influenced by sex everywhere, all the time, even if it’s nuanced and unconscious. It acts as a social magnet: both as attraction and rejection, shaping much of what we do, how we act, and how we perceive each other. Sex is also mostly physical. It’s what we see, smell, touch, hear, but not much beyond that. And, importantly, as a need, it has quantity - it can be satisfied. In that aspect, sex is like having a meal: after we have had our fill we feel full, and we don’t usually need more.

Love, on the other hand, is complicated. And I mean it literally: love is a complication revolving around something. When we love someone or something, we are not talking about the immediate existing reality, but also, if not mostly, what we make up ourselves. As such, love is built and based on our memories: some real, some stretched, some completely made up. You know how you love someone for long enough and there’s a moment you ask yourself why you love that person? You realize it’s those little things they do, the same quirks that can drive someone else up a wall. But to you, for some reason, they’re endearing. That’s because you’ve built a meaning around their behavioral patterns (the “quirks”). The patterns exist in reality, but their meaning and interpretation - that’s all you. This is why you can also love each person differently, for different reasons. But, take away this interpretation, the meaning, and you take away the person stops being special: they are just a person. A stranger. This is why I believe Alzheimer’s is so devastating: when someone you love forgets who you are to them, they essentially lose the ability to love you. You alone carry the weight of those memories and, thus, the love for that person. However, you don’t stop loving them because you remember your memories and the meaning of that person is still there.

Indeed, this “finding little things charming complex” doesn’t need to be reciprocated for you to love someone. People have “fallen in love” with celebrities who in turn had no idea the person loving them (the fan) even exists (see for example Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction, a study on attraction toward celebrities, and the interesting case of the “Lonesome Girl” in the 1950s). This phenomenon has only grown stronger with video games (guilty) and sites like OnlyFans during COVID (I don’t have a solid and free study to link to here, but do look it up; these studies exist). The bottom line: you don’t need a reciprocating human being to love said human being. Or for that matter - and here’s where I’m finally getting to it - some thing. It can be anything. If you want to explore this in movie format, Tom Hanks plays it nicely in Cast Away with Wilson. This, in itself, leads to some interesting studies.

So can people be in love with AI for that matter? Absolutely. Is this the kind of relationship you can have with a reciprocating human partner? Of course not. But here we encounter two important limitations in the movie.

For one, the movie has an interesting (and for me, welcoming) take on monogamy and love. Spike Jonze (director and writer of Her) took monogamy as the default for most people when they think about love, and I agree that this is the default for most. As for me, I’m on Samantha’s side - she is capable of loving 641 people at once, and she explains how it’s possible nicely. Remember when I said you love each person differently? I believe that’s part of it. Sure, love comes with the same “butterfly effect” across different people (and objects), but details matter. You can love someone to bits, and it doesn’t change the fact that you can love another for different reasons.

You can disagree, but as a non-monogamous person, that was a “fuck yeah!” moment for me in the movie. I am gratefully experiencing loving connections with several different reciprocating humans (and only humans for now, though my espresso machine does come close sometimes) every day. The notion that love = one and only one person has been false for me for almost two decades, and I’m far from being the only one.

Still, as far as the movie goes, monogamy seems to be a requirement for the kind of love Theodor needs: love in the “traditional” sense, the love that doesn’t develop and move forward the way Samantha’s love does. Love is dynamic. It’s an experience, or rather, a collection of those (memories, remember?) which is similar to what Samantha feels, or I’d say, what Samantha evolved to understand she feels. And yes, since I feel this is going to be the next question, you can love someone and let them go at the same time. It happens all the time. Sometimes it’s even a requirement to keep loving someone, as odd as it may sound. I don’t have kids myself, but I think parents might experience this sort of struggle every day as their kids grow up (feel free to let me know).

Sex is the other limitation in Her. According to the movie, it seems that sex is a requirement for love, and Theodore and Samantha do have sex. Well, first: not true (you can argue it’s a requirement for a “romantic” kind of love, and I’d argue with you there too, but this is becoming an essay I already ran out of coffee for); and second… let’s talk about this for a minute. Adult hats on, please.

I said earlier that sex is mostly a physical need (answered by an orgasm), much like being hungry (answered by food), or tired (answered by sleep), and so on. Sex is a bit unique, since you could satisfy the need for it on your own (masturbation), but I think we can agree that for the most part it’s better with a reciprocating partner. We can probably also agree that a character in an erotic novel or a video game, while not reciprocating, is more rewarding than nothing. So, if we agree here, can we also agree on a spectrum, with masturbation on one end and “a fully reciprocating human being” on the other? And further, can we agree that on that spectrum, sexting is somewhere between masturbation and a reciprocating partner? Alright, so, sex with an AI can probably fit on it somewhere too, probably a bit beyond (“more satisfying” than) masturbation.

Now let’s take this further.

Imagine we have human androids, with silicon skin, soft tissues, and something resembling sexual organs to a sufficient degree to be, essentially, advanced sex toys. If we couple them with AI, which should be better at sexting than half of the humans (an over-simplified statistics: AI is built on samples of human text, including erotica, and it will choose what’s popular and use preferred vocabulary etc, making it a decent (but not great) basic writer), is it so hard to believe someone can be in love with such an Android based on what we said so far? An Android that can make them feel like their feelings and desires are reciprocated? I mean, if we’ve already agreed humans can love volleyballs and can have sex with their own hands, is this so far-fetched? Isn’t this possible?

OK JTR, calm down. Could doesn’t mean should, you say?

Really?

If you had sex androids, the kind that can provide even basic sexual services (glorified and expensive sex toys), which can satisfy the need for sex at least to a degree, isn’t that a good thing, like satisfying other needs? Think, for a moment, about the negativity that happens around the need - the hunger - for sex when it’s satisfied. Think of the suffering. The violence. This destructiveness is based on the fact that sex necessitates, at least to a degree, another human being - a human being who, too often, does not have the same need and wants nothing to do with it. So. Is it so bad to at least have this as an option? Is a sexual android so bad morally, next to, say, a vibrator? or a fleshlight? an erotic novel? a porn film? …Why?

And such sex androids would have additional benefits. No health concerns, for one. They could be used for training (kinks? BDSM?) and for guidance (sex education for adults). You could use them to alleviate depression and rejection issues. You could perhaps reduce human trafficking. Think of it. It could be a good tool, just like AI today could (and often is) a good tool. And like any tool, especially AI today, it can be abused, but that’s beyond the point I’m trying to make here.

The movie Her did not put these thoughts in my head. But it did give me a good reason to talk about these things, and a good medium to do so. You will probably not get the same experience from this movie, but hey, maybe you will. And if you want to talk about it, feel free to email me.

Thu, 07 May 2026 18:52:06 -0400

Inkwell’s recap feature is not exactly 100% accurate, but I think I like what it suggests!

Wed, 06 May 2026 23:21:43 -0400

It’s late… but I think I finally got my blog lists recommendations working on my Blogrolls page… whew.

Wed, 06 May 2026 19:13:07 -0400

Finished watching: Better Call Saul S6E10, Nippy 📺

Good to go back to this show. I’m almost done. Seems like they are summing up… once Saul Goodman, always Saul Goodman.

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:20:02 -0400

Yesterday at some point at work I just reached my limit. I got up, left the office, took a nap at home, and reconsidered how to start scheduling myself out of meetings and stop replying to most emails. I’m worried about pushback but I need to face this worry.

Tue, 05 May 2026 07:27:14 -0400

Because I keep finding web pages listing other web pages (different blog lists that list independent blogs), I decided to add a category on my blogroll just for those. It also features my first pixel-art “masterpiece” and two quotes: one from a song I like and another from a movie I like.

I’m still working out the kinks (it required fixes for my CSS specifically for that image, and a new blogroll means a new shortcode in Hugo), but it should be fully operational shortly.

Sun, 03 May 2026 18:49:55 -0400

All the good indie web stuff I’ve posted and I didn’t talk about the shows I want to watch, the good movies I did watch, and I also want to keep trying for the video game stuff… I need a productive staycation.

Bubbles, Scrolls, and made by a human seal of approval

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:01:04 -0400

Yesterday, I mentioned I stumbled upon Bubbles, a Hacker News (if you’re familiar) like site aimed specifically at blogs, with an attempt to capture less-techy content. I’ve been enjoying exploring its different pages.

Bubbles' main page is a “top list” of blog posts, ranked by the number of upvotes, much like Hacker News. The other tabs, “new” and “hot”, let you discover the newest content and the most discussed content (most comments), in that order. Then there’s the “my” tab, which looks like a place to store your own RSS feeds from the lists on Bubbles and possibly elsewhere, but I haven’t used it yet.

Bubbles also has a newsletter-like page for daily and weekly content by topic (you can also choose and filter which topics you want to see throughout the site). All of these sections are available with RSS feeds, so you can get the content from Bubbles directly to your RSS reader (it supports Atom feeds, which proved to be an issue with Inkwell, but there seems to be a way around that).

Then, through Mastodon, I found out about Scrolls. Scrolls is a human-made newsletter by Mike Sass, which features more tech-related news than Bubbles, with a specific focus on the Indieweb, Fediverse, and Cybersecurity, which is more or less my order of interest in these topics. It’s another good place to discover content from other bloggers, and I noticed there’s an overlap between Bubbles and Scrolls - which is not a bad thing.

Then, through one of those tools (or through one of the blogs I added to my list last week? I’m losing track in the best way!) I found out about human.json. This is a novel and interesting project that aims to authenticate human blogs, which reminds me of “the web of trust concept: one human vouches for another human they know, and that human in turn vouches for another, and so on. The idea is for human-made content to be authenticated and recognized, rather than the constant AI Slop.

Honestly, I was a bit unsure of the idea at the start. The web is flooded with people who lift pitchforks for anything related to AI, and while I can understand why, I don’t think one extreme warrants another. Besides, as I’ve indicated a couple of times, I use AI on my blog. Fortunately, this sort of usage is not a problem according to Beto, the creator of this project:

It’s fine to use AI tools that assist you with spellchecking, grammar, formatting, etc. Just make sure to be clear and transparent about how AI is used, and consider publishing an /ai slashpage with your policy.

And you know what…? I think that’s a great idea. I’ll get on top of that. I need to organize my about and the info in my archive page a bit better anyway, so this may be a good opportunity.

All of this Blogorama stuff had me revamp my blogroll, and I have a few more changes in mind… hopefully you’ll see those live soon.

Fri, 01 May 2026 07:00:35 -0400

I haven’t heard about Bubbles before, but one of the folks I’ve added recently to my feeds introduced me, indirectly. Seems very promising for us bloggers! I signed up (basically, all you need is a Mastodon account).

My post about writing emails gets people to... write me emails. Good stuff.

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:20:03 -0400

Something more wonderful has been happening for the last couple of days: the number of people who reached me by email reached (or is about to reach) double digits for the first time since… well, since I started having a blog, I think. Oh, and I say “more wonderful” because getting the communication I’m already getting is wonderful.

I always had folks reaching out, though usually through Mastodon or Micro.blog (which is kind of Mastodon also, in a way) and when I wrote about Emacs or org-mode. This time it’s just other bloggers and readers saying hello.

It seems most of them were motivated by my post about, well, writing other bloggers emails… can’t get more to the point than that!

I’m going through the careful process of reading each email fast (to get a feel for it), then seeing if the person who sent it has a website (most of the time, they do), then researching this website to see if I’m adding them to my RSS feed (Inkwell is handling a lot of testing recently), then reading the email again more thoroughly before I answer, which I always do.

It’s a pleasure to read each email. It really is.

Of course, it gives an immediate ego boost when someone takes some time of their day to actually write an email to me (I guess my online ramblings are not that bad after all, says the voice in my head). But besides that, it’s always like opening a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get (cue up the Forrest Gump theme). Each person is unique; each email brings in another whole brain to follow up on, read about, learn from, and talk to. I love it.

If you’re one of these folks who reached out, thank you! I’ll get back to you as soon as my above process allows (and work. And life after work. And after I get some groceries that are aching to be in my fridge. And OK, I also need to exercise. But I’ll get there).

It also makes me want to write more. Not just to new folks I keep finding and adding, but also to those I follow already - either because something they wrote makes me think or because I’m just wondering what’s going on.

Well alrightie then! Let’s start writing some emails.

Claude fixed my page, and now it's teaching me how

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:20:49 -0400

I used Claude successfully for two days to fix the date issue I had on my On This Day page.

It was a long process that involved forking my own script, working with the code in Python (highly tailored to my case, because I had some elements I added in my Hugo theme), hosting my own instance on Render so it can run, and then going back and forth (which took the most time) to look for bugs with Safari’s Inspector, which in turn meant I also needed to fix some of the JS to get it working.

I am now retracing my steps: I am going back over my notes and asking Claude why it did what it did and where. As I’m doing that, I’m improving it a bit more and getting a better grasp of how Python works, and the overall idea of what was needed here. Claude’s taking me to school, basically, and I’m enjoying it. When I have the notes done, I hope to have a more thorough post about this.

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:10:02 -0400

Manton about AI usage in Micro.blog:

Earlier this year I blogged a strategy for how I want to use AI thoughtfully in Micro.blog. It has been a good guide for me, like user-centered guardrails. There is still so much we can build that fits within that strategy, hopefully avoiding the worst “put AI in everything” fixation from bigger companies that users are rejecting.

Micro.blog has a master switch for AI. If the user turns it off, there’s no AI usage. Period. None of the AI features would work:

While it’s true that users of Micro.blog would lose some of the benefits of the service if they turn it off (and they’re paying for the service just the same), it is right to let the users choose if they want to use AI, without forcing it everywhere possible, like Microsoft has done with Copilot.

I find that Micro.blog has followed this mentality, especially looking into what is being done around Inkwell (Inkwell has a feature where AI can summarize several RSS feeds in a helpful “here’s what happened on JTR’s blog in the last week” sort of way).

This post from Manton didn’t come out of nowhere; he was listening to Nilay Patel’s opinion piece about “Software Brain,” which is worth listening to. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy following Manton’s feed - it’s not just Micro.blog, but there are also interesting opinions about AI and using it.

On This Day page dates are broken

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:32:40 -0400

My On This Day page is a little broken.

Turns out that when I made the change to ISO dates, I broke the dates on this page.

I implemented this page about a year and a half ago. It uses an external JS code, over at https://github.com/cleverdevil/micromemories, and my guess is that the American date format is built into the code, and there’s some sort of conflict between the way my dates are displayed now and how this code sees dates.

I have an idea of how to fix this (there’s a Hugo code that should work in the help forum) but I’m not sure how to implement it (I’m guessing some sort of partial HTML file) and more importantly, where. If I try to place the code directly in the page, it shows as plain text.

For now I’m leaving the old code up, as the page itself is still functional, and the dates of the posts on it are obvious enough (it’s called “on this day” after all), it’s just the year that is unknown - until you click on the post and it opens in its own page.

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:10:00 -0400

Doctorow reflects on how, in a way, his life’s work can be summed with one angry poop emojy:

Pluralistic: A free, open visual identity for enshittification (24 Apr 2026) pluralistic.net
pluralistic.net https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/24/poop-emoji-plus-plus/#devin-washburn

Needless to say, I got myself the sticker.

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:47:51 -0400

So far, I’m enjoying Inkwell. The main advantages over my FreshRSS setup is mainly the speed and the cleaner UI.

Since I discover most of my RSS feed via blogs and reading posts online, I already have the browser open, and adding a new feed to Inkwell is faster then doing so on FreshRSS because my Synology needs to wake up if it’s hibernating, then it needs to log me in - and sometimes the container FreshRSS is on is not available for some reason and I need to restart it or wait patiently. Not an issue with Inkwell.

There are a few issues that need to be polished out, especially on the web and the Mac version, but I’m already leaning into the philosophy behind the app: read what’s new today, and don’t worry about what I missed. It’s easy enough to visit the Inkwell blog and read past posts if needed.

Things I want to do with my website (part 1)

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:56:11 -0400

I was inspired to write this post by Connie Sue, who in turn was inspired by Frances, who in turn was prompted to write something by James. Apparently, the indie web is an inspiring place!¹

This morning I woke up thinking about the Tinker Station in Pacific Drive. This is a rather specific feature in a specific video game, so let me backtrack for a moment. Don’t worry, I will climb back out of this tangent and return to the topic at hand after three paragraphs.

In Pacific Drive, you spend time customizing, upgrading, and fixing your car, which you use throughout the game. This takes place in the in-game garage, which you park at the end of a drive (a “level” in the game, basically). The garage has various tools and stations, including the Tinker Station.

The Tinker Station, in a nutshell that would make sense in today’s lingo, is an AI that helps you fix various weird quirks with your car. For example, say the car’s lights dim when you swerve your steering wheel hard to the right, or the engine hood pops open when you put your car in reverse. At the end of the drive with that weird quirk (or a couple), you go to that Tinker Station and outline your problem inside the Tinker Station with an If/Then logic: “hood > opens / car > in reverse”. If you guessed the problem and the cause correctly, the Tinker Station congratulates you in glowing rainbow neon colors and tells you what tools you need to fix the issue.

There’s a lot more going on with the game, which I think is one of the best games I picked up in the last 2 years, and the Tinker Station is only one detail, and a small one at that. And this is what I’m getting at, by taking the long route and smelling the roses.

my website has a games section, which doesn’t see much action. Or, rather, it doesn’t see much action compared to how much time I spend playing video games. I usually clock at least 2 hours of video gaming a day. I have a gaming desktop. I play only in Linux these days, and I usually play games that are not your usual popular alien shooters (ok, I do have a couple, I need mindless games to let my brain cool off at the end of a workday). The point I’m failing to make here yet again is that: a. I spend a lot of time playing games and b. I am somewhat of a niche player with somewhat of a niche gaming choice, and I have a lot to say about said games.

So why does my gaming section get updated once every three months or so? In short: there’s too much to say.

Take for example my explanation above. The Tinker Station is only one aspect of the game that I want to write about. I also want to talk about how the game is scary without being purely a horror game; this is because of a good story and great voice acting, exploration, dreary background music, and letting the player’s mind fill in the blanks when reading lab reports and notes found throughout the game. The good kind of scary. The scary I like, without cheap jump scares. Another great thing about this game is how you play it driving a car, but also on foot, which fortuitously makes this game great to play with a friend: one on a controller and one on a keyboard - making this a delightful experience as the two of you work together.

Each one of the three elements I highlighted above can be a separate post, and these are just the ones that popped into my head thinking about this one game. I already have other points like these listed in my notes for two other games I’m playing that I want to discuss as well. See how long this post is? And I’m only using Pacific Drive as an example to explain what I want to do with my Games section - and I didn’t even get to the point yet! (and as you can see from the footnote below, it’s not even all I’m trying to say!)

When there’s so much to say that writing isn’t enough, I usually turn to recording videos. I do this when I want to write in my journal, but I just need to vent. I want to borrow the same consept for video games.

I’m not new to recording and publishing videos. TAONAW still has a YouTube channel, which is mostly deserted, and there used to be a PeerTube channel on an instance that has since shut down. Micro.blog’s new-ish take on video uploads (which has been available for a few months now) is a tempting opportunity just for that. But every time I tried to stick with video content, I failed. Video editing takes a lot of time and effort, and it’s a process I need to unlearn and relearn to find my natural flow. Still, for games, I feel this is the best way to explain and show what I want to say about video games in a way that people would understand and hopefully enjoy.

So I’m going to give it another try soon, hopefully.

Footnotes

¹: I wanted to write about what I do next for my website, but I ended up writing about only one of those things - and as you can see, it’s more than enough to be a post on its own. Hence, part 1.

About writing other bloggers Email

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:21:49 -0400

I discovered another person to follow this week, and as I reached out via email, I realized this had become somewhat of a habit for me: writing emails to other bloggers. I’m not sure when I started doing this more, but I’ve been doing it more in the last year or so.

Other folks who blog, especially those who open up a bit more and talk about their personal lives, is something I appreciate. I know it’s not an easy thing to do, especially if there are some contradictions between personal and professional life. For a while, that was my situation as well. Not to say I’m completely open about my personal life on my blog, but in general I feel I can be more authentic there, and I’d like to think readers can sense that as well. I said before that blogging about blogging is writing about yourself; well, this applies here too.

Reaching out by email is something more intimate and personal than a comment. That’s because it’s a 1:1 conversation and tends to be a longer, more thoughtful exchange. I think every email I sent received a response. That in itself is a reason to write. People open up, tell me more, and exchange information. I enjoy getting ot know them, as a loose level of friendship online.

It feels like a privilege, though it shouldn’t. I think everyone should be able to write and express themselves online, but most folks don’t know how or don’t have the means. Owning a blog, a website that you have control over, is hard. It shouldn’t be.