The Art Of Not Asking Why

It's not Enough, but it's Something

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 09:13:30 -0400

Girl on the Net (I will call her GOTN moving forward) wrote about the Cornell rape allegations. There’s plenty to read on her website and in the Wikipedia page if you want the details — it’s unfortunately a familiar story in American colleges.

What moved me to think was this part:

Far harder to start an awkward conversation. One-on-one or in the group chat with your guy friends. Somewhere there aren’t any women to show off to.

Yeah. I know exactly what she’s talking about. I’m an IT guy. I work with IT folks who are still about 90% men, and yes, I’ve heard some messed-up things. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Sexist jokes happen because sex happens, and some people are less mature than others. Some are just trying to break the ice, or be “one of the guys,” or god knows what. It doesn’t matter. Some of the things I’ve heard made me cringe, and I knew they were wrong the moment I heard them. I didn’t do anything and just moved on.

The why is easy to answer. The people who said the cringy things are people I work with day in and day out. These are people I rely on. Some are my friends at work. Standing up and saying something won’t just be awkward, it would be a showstopper. It would derail a whole meeting that is otherwise important, and it might scare these people off from talking to me openly again, because “I can’t take a joke” or whatever. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that it would damage my job.

The other part of rape culture GOTN talks about in this post is the hero flaw: men wait to be heroes and stop the evil villain who is about to do something “rapeful” to an innocent poor woman, and they will swoop in to save the day, just like in the movies. Obviously, this doesn’t usually happen, so if you’re waiting on this, you’re probably not going to do anything in the end.

Thing is, if something like this happened around me, I’m not sure I’d be able to act. I’m not a big guy; I’m a lifelong geek who was bullied in school growing up (worth mentioning here while we’re on the topic that one of the most persistent bullies was a girl). But reality is not a fantasy, and I know similar situations from my past when I had to do something, and I did. And it was probably as remote from being a hero as you could imagine.

It’s scary, and you need to fight against your instinct on both counts. Your instinct tells you to shut up, laugh along, or move to another car—There is no hero instinct¹.

GOTN and probably others who read this post would say it’s nothing and doesn’t really help, and they are probably right. I’d just like to say it doesn’t help enough. It’s something. I had her article saved for two weeks and it was something I wasn’t sure I wanted to write about. I could have just shrugged and move on, but I didn’t at the end. And even though I don’t think folks would believe me if I say it’s not about guilt, I’ll say it anyway. It’s not about guilt. It’s just something worth saying that needs to be said.

Maybe I can’t be as obnoxious as GOTN would like me to be. After all, my connections at work are very important to me (as a manager, that’s often what gets stuff done). But her post made me think, and I might be able to do something more next time. Maybe, if you read all the way to this point, you would also. And while it’s not enough — it’s something.

The AI assistant pointed me toward Bystander intervention, which is worth mentioning here. I heard of the concept, but didn’t read into it. Glad I did. ↩︎

It's Time to Wipe my Desktop

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:36:05 -0400

I said before it’s a good idea to wipe your personal computer, and I stand by it. Starting fresh is good, but the ability to do so when you need to, and having the confidence that you know what to do and where your important files and configurations are, is priceless.

Restoring from backup is an option and it’s good if something happens and you want to continue quickly where you left off, but I’m talking about virtual house cleaning. It’s not about restoring everything so it’s the same, it’s restoring the things you need while letting those you forgot about decay into dust of 1s and 0s, designated as empty space, until they are overwritten again with useful information.

There are also other reasons for the wipe. Kubuntu’s next LTS, 26.04 is out, making my current one obsolete. I now have a countdown notifying me how many days of supported security patches I have left. It comes with Wayland, which will give me more control over my new screen, and supposedly some gaming improvements. Another reason is to organize my program and configs (dot files) better with Emacs. I want to create documentation in Denote for GUI settings, or use tangle and write the config directly with explanations of what does what and why in a similar fashion to my Emacs configuration.

The biggest concern is the things I don’t know I need to save. My dad used to say this to me when we left home back in the day: “Good to go? Forgot all the things you’re supposed to remember and remember all the things you were supposed to forget?” It’s kind of fitting right now. I use all kinds of shortcuts scripts and programs that I forgot I installed at some point, and while reinstalling is an option, some configs are more complicated than others. Then of course there are chat logs, emails I saved locally… So what I think I will do is one final local backup of everything, and then wipe.

The last thing is time. Getting everything up and running will take a while, especially if I document everything I need to do. Emacs first, of course.

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:15:06 -0400

Finished Silo season 3, and I have questions. Of course I do. That’s why they’re making season 4.

The big one is still why. I was glad when Juliette started pushing people to ask that too, and I like that it was a good catalyst for what eventually led to the survival of Silo 18 at the end.

What I don’t like are all the clichés and the parallel storyline which, while important to the show and interesting in its own right, was too long and too involved. They should have kept it to one dedicated episode perhaps. I’m all about LGBTQ+ in shows of course, but having one here felt forced and artificial, you know, as if you can’t get the seal of approval if you don’t have one gay relationship taking place, and two women at that (two birds with one stone to get the marketing right). Meh.

There are a few plot holes, like the whole light bulbs thing (for what? And couldn’t they bring the plants upstairs, toward the roof, which does open to the sun every morning?), but overall I enjoyed it and will watch season 4 when it’s out.

Jack seems to like Small Prophets, and I think I’m going to check it out myself next.

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 08:01:59 -0400

One thing I’m enjoying over at Bubbles is the non-tech blogs. Every other blog list I visit is usually mostly tech-related stuff, and then it’s usually developers. I’m a techie myself, and I don’t have anything against developers, but it’s nice to see more blogs about humans just being humans.

Emacs Config Gems - Part 6

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:54:34 -0400

I came to realize that attempting to wrap up the “Wordcraft” section (as I call it) in Emacs is a fool’s errand. Emacs is Wordcraft. It’s what it’s all about. By the time I finish a draft, a new config or setting changes what I have. This here is an attempt to stay true to my conclusion in the last section.

Abbrevs

In my opinion, Abbrevs in Emacs is one of its fundamental features. It’s one of those things I’d show someone coming from other word-processing programs to show them the magic of Emacs. In essence, it’s a simple tool: you type two or more letters, and Emacs expands it to a phrase or even a whole paragraph. For example, when you type “hw” it will expand to “hello world” as soon as you hit space after the “w”.

Of course, you can achieve more with this useful function. We will get there. First, let’s discuss general usage:

To add a new abbrev, stand with the marker after the abbreviation, and then use: C-x a g for a global abbrev (which applies everywhere in Emacs), or C-x a i l for the specific major mode of the buffer you’re in (so, if you’re working in shell inside Emacs, it will add an abbrev there specifically.)
Once added, Emacs has a smart (and when you get it, helpful) way of remembering your lower-case/upper-case usage, depending on how you recorded the abbrev. Assume we’ve added “rnd” for “Research and Development”. This means:
1. “rnd” automatically expands to Research and Development
2. “Rnd” expands to Research and development (only the first word is capitalized!)
3. “RND” expands to RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
You can escape abbrevs with C-q after typing the abbrev. If “rnd” expands to “Research and Development” but you actually want to type “rnd” in the buffer, type rnd followed by C-q¹.
If you want to add a prefix to an abbrev, for example, you want the end result to be “non-Research and Development”, type: non- and then M-’ (this will result in a hyphen showing, which is good) and then rnd to produce the abbrev.
Finally, don’t forget about edit-abbrevs which lets you edit your abbrev file directly. This is good when you want to add a bulk of abbreviations (I did this when I wanted to add usernames: I copy-pasted a bunch of those from Outlook one day during lunch).

Alright, with the basics out of the way, let’s dig into the config itself.

First, we want to turn on Emacs’ abbrevs. In my case, I want to put the abbrev file in a folder I sync between my computers so these shortcuts are available on both of them. To do this, I need to set the path for the abbrev file:

(setq-default abbrev-mode t)
(setq abbrev-file-name "~/Sync/Personal/.abbrev_defs")

Now something a bit more advanced. I posted about this before, but I didn’t explain my use case, and I think its usefulness is a bit lost as a result. Here’s the general idea.

At work, we have user IDs (usernames) that I need to use with ServiceNow, our ticketing system. It’s also useful when I want to write an email, and there are five people named “John.” My brain solved this problem years ago with nicknames: the John who has tattoos and a beard looks like a motorcyclist, so I call him Harley (Davidson); the other John loves tea from Georgia, so I call him George, etc.

When I want to dig out Harley’s username, I prefix it with @, and Emacs spits out “jd1234” for his username. This way I don’t hijack the word “Harley” to always be associated with jd1234, only when I really want to use it².

The post I linked above explains how this works and gives proper credit to Prot, who helped me build this up using regex:

(abbrev-table-put global-abbrev-table :regexp "\\(?:^\\|[\t\s]+\\)\\(?1:[@].*\\|.*\\)")
(abbrev-table-put org-mode-abbrev-table :regexp "\\(?:^\\|[\t\s]+\\)\\(?1:[@].*\\|.*\\)")

Grammar Checkers

When it comes to grammar, I explored two options in Emacs. I first started with LanguageTool, then discovered Harper, which I use today. But as these Emacs posts go, I need to take a step back and talk about spelling and grammar checkers first.

With a spell-checking tool, we just need a dictionary: a list of words the program checks against what we typed and identifies the closest match in its list. The mechanism behind it is a mathematical principle of edit distance: it is a fuzzy search for words that are the closest to the misspelled one³. This can be complemented with a personal dictionary of additional unofficial words that we tend to use, and that’s mostly it; we’re good to go.

A grammar checker is a different animal, or actually, animals. And before we start talking about these, it’s worth mentioning that grammar, or what is generally considered “correct” language, is a moving target⁴. Language is a grey area, where what’s correct can be — at least to a degree — subjective.

The complex mix of tools used in what we cram together today under the term “grammar checkers” is a big underestimation of the history and development of the last 50 years or so of progress and the different tools that we use today. With modern-day LLMs, the confusion extends further, as these usually don’t use any of those tools, relying only on transformers and weights to predict what seems correct and what isn’t⁵.

Harper

Many Emacs folks, myself included, use Harper these days. It’s no wonder, given its speed and minimal install size, especially compared with LanguageTool, the other free alternative. But this lightness comes at a cost.

Harper provides:

a basic spelling checker (dictionary-based)
core grammar rule engine

… and that’s it. Indeed, in my first post about Harper, I noted a couple of basic errors it missed, and I still think it’s far from “the private alternative to Grammarly,” as it states on its homepage. I actually barely use it because it’s the competition that does a much better job, grammar-wise. If it were up to me, the tagline would be “a private, fast, customizable grammar checker for when you don’t want a grammar nanny looking over your shoulder.”

Harper is available on ~~homebrew~~ (it seems the folks behind Harper made a dedicated dmg since I last installed it), but for Ubuntu and its kin, it requires Cargo. This also means that if Harper is the only program you have from Cargo, you also need to remember to update it⁶. I’ve written and explained my Harper setup a few times, but it evolved over time to accommodate both my Mac and my Linux desktop, so I’m including the whole thing here. Note that Harper works through Eglot on Emacs, as I explained in the first post linked above.

(with-eval-after-load 'eglot
  (add-to-list 'eglot-server-programs
               '(org-mode . ("harper-ls" "--stdio")))) ; This is the eglot-related integration
(setq-default eglot-workspace-configuration
           '(:harper-ls (:dialect "American" :linters (:LongSentences :json-false :AvoidCurses :json-false))))
;; These are options for Harper. I chose American dialect as the language, I also want to ignore long sentence errors (the main issue is that it hides other errors nested in those) and I also want Harper not to tell me when it thinks something is offensive. The full list of these options is in https://writewithharper.com/docs/rules. It needs to be nested inside the :linters option.
(when (eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
  (add-to-list 'exec-path (expand-file-name "~/.cargo/bin"))
 (add-to-list 'exec-path "/snap/bin"))
;; On Linux, harper-ls lives in ~/.cargo/bin (installed via Cargo/Rust).
;; /snap/bin is added for Vale (installed via snap - that's another program I might discuss, ignore it for now) and any future snap packages.
;; On Mac, Harper is installed via Homebrew which handles PATH automatically.

LanguageTool

LanguageTool provides:

A spelling checker
Core rule Grammar engine
n-gram data set (optional as local install for free)⁷
LLM (Paid, online only)

In addition, as I was researching more into LanguageTool, I found lesser-known layers and additions that are not fully documented. For example, there’s a neural network for confusing pairs included. I don’t know how important those other tools are, but if you use the full product online to get a taste, you will see the difference when comparing it to Harper immediately.

While it sounds like I’m favoring LanguageTool over Harper, I don’t have it installed anymore, and I haven’t used it in a while. The reason for this is that it requires Java and over 10GB (yep) if you want to get the n-gram running with the other additions. Below is my old config, based on version 6.1. You will need to install langtool.el to run it, without the full layers discussed above (by the time I found out about these options, I stopped using it):

(require 'langtool)
(setq langtool-language-tool-server-jar "~/Path/To/Current/LanguageTool-#.#/languagetool-server.jar")
(setq langtool-default-language "en-US")

All in all, I do not think Emacs is the best place for grammar checkers. YMMV, but since I have access to Grammarly Pro’s features, I prefer it. I also use AI to go through my posts, and it does a few very useful things, grammar being just one of them if I need it to. If I didn’t have Grammarly, I’d consider LanguageTool’s pro package, which comes with additional perks that are not available for a local install.

My logic here is simple: if I write a post for my blog, which is going to be public anyway, I don’t mind using online tools or LLMs. For more sensitive things, like my journal, I use Harper if I want to, but most of the time it’s an overkill for my own mind’s rambling anyway. This is why I said above that I barely use Harper, as I don’t really have a use case for it.

As I’m writing this, I realize another simpler trick is Emacs’ undo. Simply use C-/ (or whatever you have it bound to) and it will cancel the expansion. ↩︎
Now that I use corfu, which also contains my abbrevs, typing “george” will bring up a menu allowing me to choose george from a drop down instead of specifically typing @george. ↩︎
The mathematical concept behind this is called Levenshtein distance, after Vladimir Levenshtein, who came up with this in 1965. The basic idea in spelling programs is to measure how many “jumps” are required to correct a mistyped word. For example, “helo” to “help” is one jump, as well as “helo” to “hello”; “helo” to “hallow” though substitutes e with a, inserts an l, and then inserts the letter w — 3 jumps. This means that pure Levenshtein spell checkers will rank the first two corrections higher on the list (modern spell checkers introduce a few more tweaks). Wikipedia gives us an interesting history lesson here: Unix got Ispell, which is based on SPELL, and GNU built upon that with Aspell, which is what we have in Emacs today. The front end in Emacs, ispell.el, is named after the original program it once used. ↩︎
Brennan wrote a good post about this recently with plenty of links, which I’m stripping here because I want you to go read his whole thing, not just my footnote: “To ask someone to write properly is to assume there is a way to write proper. There isn’t. There is no universal, static version of English. Or any other language, for that matter. Every dialect of English, including regional accents and non-standard forms, follows complex, systematic grammatical rules.” ↩︎
While most popular LLMs today are generic and don’t rely on more traditional grammar tools, specific grammar products like Grammarly and Langtool do use specific traditional tools as well as an LLM on another layer, making the box of grammar checkers as a category even more vague. ↩︎
After realizing how often I forget to update Harper on Linux (I don’t get reminders as I do with other packages), I searched for a solution and discovered topgrade. It’s a Rust tool that probes your system, figures out which packages you use as well as your hardware, and offers you all the updates in one go: apt, flatpak, cargo, snap, and even updates for your boot, if you have a Linux machine from a brand that supports it, like System76. ↩︎
n-gram is a sequence of symbols, or in our case, words, where n is the number of words. So “a nice sunset” is a 3-gram sequence and “they are wearing hats” is a 4-gram one. Grammar checkers look at many of these sequences in a large body of text and evaluate whether what we type has errors. For example, if I write “they are wearing hat,” the checker will run this against several examples and will find that “they are wearing hats” (with an s at the end) is much more common than the first example, which means the first example is probably wrong and should be corrected to what is found in the text. As you can imagine, the checker needs to look at a lot of text to make good corrections, which is why that body of text is huge — hence the size of a few hefty gigabytes. LanguageTool explains n-grams and how they use them, which is helpful. If this sounds similar to LLMs and how they work, it’s because the connection exists: the basic idea of looking through a large body of text is the same, and in a way, LLMs today are built on a similar concept. However, LLMs take this a step further and compute what would make sense using weights and other settings in real time, while n-grams are essentially static lists of words the computer just compares against. There’s no “thinking” involved. It helped me to think about it this way: in terms of hardware, your hard drive reading speed is way more important for n-grams than your GPU. ↩︎

I Don't Miss the Good Old Days

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:57:40 -0400

Yesterday, Manton released yet another much-needed tweak to Micro.blog, and I realized something: I don’t really miss the old web. There are plenty of folks around me on the indie web who miss and even mourn the old web, and I get it — but actually going back? Nah. As I kept thinking about it, I realized that I don’t really miss how things were in general: I don’t really have a notion of “the good old days.” I know this is kind of a shock coming from a grumpy old man, and plenty would disagree with me.

My first website that I remember having was one of those HTML mutants on Angelfire. It had blood-dripping bars instead of <hr> separators, spinning skull animations, and a MIDI of Metallica’s Unforgiven playing in the background because I was an angsty teen (unlike other teens, I guess?). I’m also old enough to remember BBSes, for those of you walking around with long white beards. I remember playing Duke Nukem 3D (or maybe Doom?) with my friend and getting interrupted when my mom picked up the phone and disconnected our dial-up modem connection. No, I don’t those days.

My old website was a lot of work. I learned a lot, sure, but most of my time went into fixing annoyances I don’t need to deal with today, not to mention the lack of content and the awful poems I posted online. I remember going through Photoshop tutorials on other sites and learning how to create metal ball effects with simple radial fills and shadow effects for some of my images. The BBSes were interesting, but there were few people online, and back then it cost money to make phone calls, not to mention it prevented anyone else from using the phone. Duke Nukem 3D was a fine game, and I learned how to create my own levels, but… actually? I don’t have a “but” here. It was fun to make levels.

But when I look at Micro.blog today, with what it offers, and when I use this magic box we call iPhone to snap photos of flowers that I can edit and post to my blog within seconds, I don’t want to go back. And it’s not just the technology itself; it’s also the people. I write to people today and they write back. Part of it is because I matured and have stuff to say (or those I talk to are crazy and like my ramblings for some reason, take your pick), sure, but part of it is also because Google came up with Gmail and with it the whole concept of free and accessible email that just makes it possible. Micro.blog comes with built-in themes and features I used to spend hours getting right on Movable Type (remember that?) and later WordPress. When I started using Micro.blog it was because I was tired of self-publishing my website through Hugo each time.

Emacs was around for years, but I didn’t have the mindset to use it. And AI… look. All I can say is that I could deal with CSS before, and I could research things, but not like this. I wouldn’t even know what to ask, and I ask a lot of questions. I research better. I write better. I enjoy it all better.

As a kid, I remember I was told by my elders (parents, family members, teachers, etc.) that I had it easy and that being an adult isn’t fun and games. Baloney.

I can do what I want, to start with. I can see whoever I want, which led to finding friends and partners, which was not an option for me growing up. I hated school, and I got poor grades to prove it, until I got to college and could choose what to learn, which earned me scholarships and honors for a period, because I loved what I learned. It was a complete change from the angsty teen with the spinning skulls. I simply never fit into the mold, and as an adult I am free to find my own mold. And it works. I don’t miss being the bullied outsider at school. Even D&D, which I loved playing with the weirdos I was able to gather at some point, is something I could enjoy more today with other weirdos, better adult-oriented themes, and all the rules available whenever I want, mostly for free or close to free. Everything is potentially better. I can bring the old, reinforced by the new, and create these moments again, but this time with a choice of leaving the annoying angsty parts out.

And this is what I want to leave as a message. If you miss something and feel nostalgic, you can recreate it to an extent. The indie web is one such example, and D&D is another. Take what you remember, and celebrate it. Mix it up. Share with your friends. And what better time than scary season, my favorite time of the year with its cool hoodie-weather? As an adult, I get to enjoy it with a hot cider, too.

Thoughts about Silo

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 09:07:17 -0400

I’m deep into Season 3 (Silo S3E7, Radio) and I have thoughts. This post contains minor spoilers if you haven’t watched the show, which also means please don’t ruin this for me if you finished season 3.

One issue I have with Silo is the cliché they’re selling back to us. It’s not that the show does a poor job at it — quite the opposite. It’s still a great show and I enjoy each episode intensely, with each episode giving me more of the lore in a way Fallout didn’t. What bugs me is that it reflects what seems to be the popular opinion of AI in general: a faceless, cold, reasonable, and emotionless computer that gives orders to kill thousands of people without giving it a second thought. At times it even seems to freeze and think, as a reasoning LLM would, before giving an answer (the number of times I wished Camille could open that “thinking” tab while talking to the Algorithm: “the user appears emotional. I should provide a reasonable counterargument and combine it with a compliment to convince them…”)

It doesn’t make sense. If the point is to preserve the human race, it would help the residents of the Silo with knowledge of what happened instead of trying to kill anyone who would even think of the idea of leaving. There would be scientists, with equipment assigned from critical supply (this is where they store things they can’t make), who would venture to the surface to check the situation periodically.

If one of the other silos was compromised with its inhabitants dead, one of the first things a helpful AI would do is to inform other silos and have them use the supply remaining there — which, hey, if you’re visiting a place like this, it would be one of the first things I would think about myself, returning to my silo and organizing a team to grab essentials — instead of keeping everyone in the dark.

Speaking of that — and I read some of the books (I forget how far I read though) — what’s the deal? I get it from a story point of view, sure. But what is the point of keeping everyone in the dark? One thing the show does well, in my opinion, is describing humans as a bunch of nosy diggers who always want to learn the truth. Hiding it is usually more effort than it’s worth, especially to these extremes¹. Of course, knowledge is power, and humans love power, so… Anyway, it doesn’t add up.

The “Algorithm,” as it’s called in the show, is also this powerful being that must be obeyed because… why? What happens if you don’t? Apperently it would kill a whole silo to protect the truth, whatever that is, which again, doesn’t make sense. If the truth is more important than an entire silo population, and the show so far makes it so that it is, then just kill them off already. Why get so close to exposing the truth?

When I asked these annoying questions when I was a kid, my dad used to say “because otherwise there wouldn’t be a show, would it?” and yes, I get it. But that’s also why it’s unbelievable and fantastic, and why the way it presents AI back to us is too on-the-nose and makes me grumpy. Which is maybe the point.

It’s also a known fact that the mystery is more interesting than the solution to that mystery. I often like to use the example that since the NYTimes published an article about UFOs being real and that the government covered it up, people still look at you like crazy when you mention this fact. It’s fun. ↩︎

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 14:01:54 -0400

This wasn’t a fun night. My sleepy brain convinced me that removing it or taking out the batteries would set off the alarm, which was the last thing I wanted at 3 in the morning… So I tried to ignore the beeps until I couldn’t anymore and took the batteries out. Solved. I feel dumb. And tired.

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 19:15:23 -0400

A walk in the park. The neighborhood park. 📷🌼

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:41:22 -0400

Feels good to geek out about Linux and Emacs and some computer science history. The more I learn, the more I enjoy learning. The next episode of Emacs Gems is being made one geek fact at a time 🤓

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 20:24:12 -0400

I replaced my kitchen sink drainer from the one that comes with a stopper:

To this regular metal mesh:

I should have done it years ago. The one with the stopper always blocks the drain and requires reaching into the dirty water to open it at an angle, and then food pieces go down the drain. What’s the point of ever doing that? And if for some reason you need to fill up your sink, why get a dedicated rubber stopper?

Thunderbird on macOS and Linux

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:43:37 -0400

At some point after I got my new screen, I gave up on the native Mail app on my Mac. With the new resolution the text became too small to read and I got fed up that something as basic as zoom wasn’t available on one of Mac’s classic apps¹. Even 40-something-year-old Emacs has a built-in zoom function.

Thunderbird on macOS sounds out of place, especially with so many other options. I picked it up because it’s one of the clear options on Linux (my desktop), and I know it to be a free and well-maintained app².

I didn’t expect that I’d like it, and it still has its quirks — but you know what? It kind of works. It does a clean job syncing my personal calendar too, which I appreciate. I don’t know that I will always use it, but for now my eyes are thanking me. At the same time, I’ve switched from Vivaldi Mail (it does what it’s supposed to, but it’s too minimal, and I never got used to the UI) to Thunderbird on my Linux as well.

I don’t know that I’ll stick with it. The tabs are weird and the fact that Grammarly doesn’t work with it was a nasty surprise (it is one of the points why Emacs alone doesn’t work for emails). For now… it does the job.

I know the Mac has a global accessibility tool for that, available under Preferences. I specifically mean in-app zoom. Someone will probably still comment and point me in that direction and tell me that “I’m holding it wrong” probably. ↩︎
Those of you who live and breathe Emacs would ask me why I don’t use Mu4e or something similar. I’ve touched this a couple of times on my blog. In short, Emacs is more of a drafting place for me, and I use various apps as the “publication” tools, many of which are enforced by work (restricted Office 365 environment). ↩︎

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 20:31:55 -0400

A month ago, The Tinkering Dwarf wrote that writing is hard when stressed. It was a small post, one of those “life happens” vents, but it resonated with me.

I was just before my vacation to Maine. I haven’t been sleeping well, which isn’t new, but I’ve started connecting a couple of dots with my physical health as well. I gained weight, and for the first time in my life, some of my pants stopped being comfortable. The RSI issue I wrote about occurred around the time I had an annoying eye infection. 5 Hours of sleep a night meant even less energy to do anything.

My mental energy is mostly spent on work, which means other areas like writing have been slowing down.

I started a process of correcting this, and in a way I hope that writing it down here would make it more “official” for me to follow. One unexpected difference between writing for work vs. writing for leisure has been my new keyboard: I use it fully now inside Emacs, but it’s still too slow for work, so I leave it for posts and writing in my journal. The quiet that comes with it (it doesn’t make typing sounds) and the slowness allow me to concentrate more on my intention writing, which I enjoy.

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:31:09 -0400

I wanted to post this yesterday but didn’t get to it. This is a good list, I think I should make myself one like this: good things I’m looking forward to this week — feel-good rituals included.

Highlights of my week francescrossley.com
Little things I love every week

What the Fran https://francescrossley.com/highlights-of-my-week/

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 21:25:21 -0400

I finished watching Pluribus Season 1 📺 without realizing it was the last episode. Started watching during the Main vacation. It’s different from Gilligan’s other shows, but it’s definitely him, with the show set in a parallel universe to Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

Glove80 and Emacs: Re-training my Fingers

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 18:42:21 -0400

I’m still getting used to the Glove80. Writing text is doable but still painfully slow.

I mentioned I use tangent, which integrates the Glove80 layout. One thing it doesn’t have though is a practice layer for Emacs, with Emacs key chords like C-c C-z, for example.

So I called Claude for help.

I’m on the third version of this mod, adding the command names from Emacs, so that I know what the commands I’m retraining my fingers on are — because my fingers remembered these commands (and thus are now clueless), and now I need to commit them to memory again through my eyes. This here is the first post written fully with the Glove80. I’m getting there.

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 10:56:20 -0400

Today was the first time in years I read some news and didn’t cringe right away. It was more or less usual news. This article was interesting (sorry, paywall)

www.wsj.com/business/…

So Where did John Doe come from Anyway?

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 20:07:32 -0400

This question came up as I was setting up for work today.

As it turns out, “the earliest usage of the names can be traced back to 13th or 14th century England,” according to John Lupton, of the Illinois Supreme Court¹.

John Doe is a fictitious name used in legal proceedings when the actual name of a party is unknown at the time a lawsuit is initiated. The designation may also be used to protect a plaintiff’s anonymity, though more commonly, it stands in for an unidentified defendant until the correct identity can be determined. - Cornell Law School

The Wikipedia entry is a bit more morbid:

John Doe (male), Jane Doe (female), or J. Doe (neutral/unknown) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used in the British, Canadian, and American legal systems, when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often used to refer to a corpse whose identity is unknown or cannot be confirmed.

When going back to the old English texts, it appears that John Doe often make appearance next to Richard Roe, which you might heard of — Richard Roe being the state, or the “people” who would usually sue the other party, John Doe.

“It is unknown why the names John Doe and Richard Roe were coined in England,” says Lupton.

John and Richard were probably the most common names in Britain at the time, and Jane was a name similar to John (instead of using Mary or Elizabeth, which were probably the most common names). To maintain the fiction, the British would not use names that were common, like John Smith or Robert Jones because that would be confusing to the many Brits who likely had those names.

So there you go, another random fact.

It was more specifically used for ejectment actions — lawsuits that determined who had the right to possess land. These often involved cases between landlords and tenants (or serfs and peasants) over property rights, typically when someone was behind on rent or taxes. ↩︎

Glove80: First Impressions — the Typing Reset

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:15:29 -0400

I said I’ll do it, and I did. I got my Glove80 early! I looked at my emails yesterday afternoon, and there they were, waiting for me in the mailbox.

I was surprised at how light the box felt, even though Xah mentioned it several times in his review. I knew it was made of plastic, but this light? Yep. The other thing that surprised me was the size: they are smaller than I thought, which in my case is excellent (I have small hands).

I still need to pair it (or them? as in both parts? the gloves?) with Bluetooth to both my Mac and my Linux desktop, since I only used them connected (to charge them). There is a lot to like about this keyboard, but first the big caveat: getting used to it. Them. The thing. Ugh, take your pick.

Thankfully, this was not a surprise. It’s the big issue with this keyboard: it smashes your finger memory to bits and you need to start from zero again. I couldn’t get a single sentence through my journal yesterday, and I’m typing this post here with my old Kinesis keyboard because I want to put it up today — but I’m working on it with tangent, which is designed for the Glove80 and even has an option to choose which layout I use, as it has several (I chose to stick with the default one, even though they have a macOS-dedicated one with two command keys).

I estimate it will take me about a week to 10 days of learning before I can start typing normally with it, and then another week or so to build speed and maybe add additional customizations. But that’s the main idea here: this keyboard feels right.

Even if ergonomics is not something you care about, having a keyboard that you can customize with buttons that work for your needs (and let’s be honest: Emacs, Linux and macOS come with their own unique needs when it comes to keyboards) can probably turn you into a better typist. Xah might sound a bit like a keyboard preacher, but one of the points I definitely got from him is that standard keyboards are designed after old typewriters (including the brick-like pattern of the keys), which does not make sense on modern computers. If I could go back to when I started learning to type on a computer, I would have taught myself to use columnar keyboards the same way we learn a second language.

It’s the same principle: your fingers won’t forget the old layout as long as you use it. I’m typing this on my Kinesis, and I’m fine. Meanwhile, this Kinesis keyboard is split wide apart (I have a mouse with a mouse pad separating both halves) in such a way that typing on a regular full-size keyboard (which is one board) does introduce typos I do not have on my MacBook’s keyboard, because I still use it enough. So take this to heart — I think this second language example I use is pretty spot on¹.

Besides the customized buttons (which can be done with many keyboards today), I like how it’s built and shaped. It makes sense when you look at it: the keyboard should fit your hands, not your hands fit the keyboard. And while the lightness and the plastic might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I do find that I like it.

The keyboard is very easy to pack in the included case and carry with you: It practically weighs nothing, and there are no wires to stuff in the case (it’s meant to be completely wireless). It’s easy to clean, and the palm rests (not the wrist rests, which is another thing, which might introduce a problem of its own) can be wiped off easily. The keycaps come off easily if you want to replace them with others, and I’m learning to appreciate the soft, quiet keys. I might miss the heavier, clicky switches on the Kinesis, but I ask myself whether that’s more nostalgia than a real need. After all, if this keyboard were loud and clicky, I’d think twice about bringing it to the office and annoying everyone around me. But hey, to each their own.

There’s a lot to like here, but I’m definitely still in the honeymoon phase. Give me a week, and I’ll probably write more about the issues I’ve encountered and why this keyboard might not be for everyone.

This is, by the way, one of the reasons I did not want to start using special modifier layers like Xah Fly Keys or god mode. These can work, but they introduce another level of learning, like another dialect of English or similar. I might get there, but first I want to learn to use the Glove80 properly. ↩︎

My Blog Fails Accessibility Tests and That's Okay

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 19:23:26 -0400

Some indieweb folks seem to be concerned with accessibility and readability of their site recently, so I figured what the hell. I ran this blog against WAVE, which is a tool by WebAIM, and yeah… It ain’t pretty. My blog scored 4 out of 10.

But as I started reading more into the issues, I realized fixing those would be going against what I enjoyed doing with the website and at times counterproductive.

I’ll start with the biggest issue I saw with my blog: glaring, angry red “very low contrast” errors.

I recently changed my blog theme to solarized. Solarized is an attempt (and I believe a successful one, as I’m pleased with the results) to standardize my less-contrasting colors¹ with a known theme. Low contrast on purpose? Yes. It’s an issue I personally have, where harsh contrast makes text glow (“ghost text”). It’s called halation. I’ve always preferred less contrast in my own notes (my markdown files, then TiddlyWiki, then Emacs), and my blog follows this suite. So in short, the low contrast on my blog is a feature, not a bug. Also, I believe (perhaps wrongly) that most people who read my blog do so with an RSS reader anyway or could probably use a reader mode with the browser if they have issues. And also? It’s pretty. I enjoy it. My blog is about delivering written content, but I also enjoy how it looks.

Another issue WAVE flagged was “redundant links.” This happens when you have two or more links to the same page next to each other. On my blog’s main page, this happens with post titles and dates: both link to the post itself. This is not easy to fix because it has to do with how I write.

Not every post on my blog has a title. If you look through my blog, you’d notice short micro-posts (usually around 300 characters) that don’t have a title². This is deliberate. In fact, it’s one of those core concepts of what Micro.blog stands for, and one of the reasons I like it: short micro-posts (hence the name, eh?) and quick Twitter-style blurbs (or Mastodon these days, or whatever) go on the blog just like the long posts, which do get titles.

I said this before:

…if you’re one of those once-a-month folks who struggle to express yourself, do me a favor: don’t wait for that something. It ain’t coming because it’s already there. Just spit it out already.

I still stand behind it. If I see something I like and snap a picture, I want it on my blog. If I have a quick thought I want to share, I want it on my blog. A “mind fart,” as I call it? I want it on my blog³. The way I write posts follows a different workflow accordingly: a quick photo with a sentence (like this one for example) is done through the Micro.blog app on my phone. A quick photo (usually with some editing I also do on the phone), which gets uploaded, and a sentence or two. Upload, publish, done. 5 minutes total. Long posts, on the other hand, like my Emacs Config Gems (currently working on part 6), can take several days to write and edit on my computer(s). I write these in Emacs, then export the files for some AI polish, add a summary, and then a title that hopefully also reflects the post’s mood. I take my time with those. Different kinds of posts, different tools.

Back to the point I’m trying to make — titles do not belong on everything. And if I don’t have a title, there’s no permalink to the post besides the Date.

“OK,” you say, “so why not just the date as a link?” Because it’s a tiny little thing (with not enough contrast to see clearly, right?) and not as obvious as the post title. Let me put it this way: posts that have titles are also those that should have a big obvious link, because what you see on the blog is a summary of the post, and you need to click on the title to read the whole thing. So: permalinks for long posts are a must, done through the title and the date; permalinks for short blurbs are nice as a reference, done through the dates only.

Now before you argue against this logic, hang on one second. Tell me, is it really such a bad idea to have both? One is an obvious use case (title) and one “just in case”? Why do we have to make a choice of one or the other?

The two “issues” above with my blog’s accessibility probably knocked it down to a 4 out of 10 instead of, say, a 6 or even a 7. But not all the points from WAVE are bad.

For example, my tagline, that H2 title that says “Don’t ask me why, I’ll tell you anyway.” It’s cute, but yeah, having it there is a bit weird since it competes with the title, and the font I use isn’t that great either. Point taken.

Another issue is the alt descriptions for images that are too long. They are generated by AI automatically (one of Micro.blog’s features, if you turn it on) and usually good enough — but it doesn’t mean they can escape inspection when I post. There’s some friction (I need to wait for the AI to generate a description, then go back in there and edit), but yes, this is something to take into account. In this recent post, for example (which doesn’t have a title, because it’s one of those quick ones, see what I mean?), the first picture with the seagulls is described as “A rocky coastline with seagulls scattered across the rocks and a calm blue ocean extending to the horizon under a partly cloudy sky.” Ehhh, it starts to sound like a bad poem when it needs to be a clear description. Something like “a rocky coastline with a large number of seagulls, calm ocean in the background” is probably good enough. OK, WAVE, you won this round. I will get on this.

All this goes to say: what I like or need is not what you like or need. We are different, which is why the indieweb is the wacky wonderful place it is. And while we should try and make it accessible and inviting, let’s not overdo it to the point of stripping our sites of our personalities, or fix one disability at the price of another, mkay?

To be fair to Solarized, the theme itself can provide enough contrast if you apply its colors to do so, which I purposely did not. For example, I use the theme’s red for dates in both dark and light themes, which doesn’t provide enough contrast against the background color, according to WAVE. ↩︎
These posts also do not have a summary, as long posts do. In other words, when I write a long post, the first 300 characters or so are reserved for a summary which goes on social media and on the front page of the blog. When you click the title and go to the permalink, you see the full post. ↩︎
This doesn’t mean I put everything on the blog. It’s a matter of choice of course. But the idea is that the “price of admittance” when it comes to my blog is kept low on purpose so I can keep my creative juices going and the blog alive, because that’s how I like it. It’s what gives the blog its personality: the quick snapshots, quick comments to links I grabbed, etc. ↩︎

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:43:47 -0400

Didn’t realize Claude comes with “Age assurance,” nor did I think you needed to be 18 to use it.

Claude, our consumer product, is only available to people over 18 years. You’ll need to confirm you’re 18 or over while setting up an account. When we detect signals that you may be under 18, we’ll ask you to verify your age before you can continue using Claude.

This is a blanket solution for a nuanced problem. What about high school students who want to use AI responsibly to help with projects? What about people who use it in a library and don’t have access to provide age verification? Why 18 (as opposed to 21? Or by region/country?)

The elephant in the room is the line “How we protect your data.” They don’t. If you believe anything else at this day and age, that alone should disqualify you from using Claude.

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 19:22:07 -0400

Almost time to leave. An odd vacation, with plenty of thoughts that invite more reflection. Glad I have a couple of days at home after. 📷

LibreWolf Returns to Homebrew

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:02:00 -0400

LibreWolf is back on macOS. I was happy to see it can be installed through Homebrew again. In fact, it’s easier to install than ever, as it is now fully recognized by macOS’s Gatekeeper — no need for the awkward --no-quarantine option that was once needed to skip Gatekeeper and then later became the reason it was no longer supported.

I discussed LibreWolf and its installation issues on macOS before. The short version: The LibreWolf maintainers refuse to buy a developer account membership from Apple (basically $100 a year), which is understandable. Unfortunately, if you don’t pay to join the Apple club you don’t get a developer ID and you don’t get an Apple certificate. Without those, the user gets a misleading¹ message saying the app is flagged as “damaged” and that they should move it to the trash.

However, if you try to download and install LibreWolf through Homebrew now it works just fine.

Have the maintainers caved in and paid Apple? Not at all. They used OSSign, which now offers an option to purchase licenses from Apple for FOSS projects like LibreWolf (they are not receiving new applicants for the time being, but those who already signed up like LibreWolf are already in the program to stay). It is effectively what Let’s Encrypt does for Indieweb folks to obtain HTTPS certificates, like the one on the blog you’re reading right now (which I get through Micro.blog).

The “damaged” message is misleading because it’s a fraction of a potential truth. Apple requires developers to pay a yearly fee to get a license. The other part Apple does is a scan for malicious software (malware), which happens on Apple’s servers. But to upload to Apple’s servers, the developer needs the license first. On macOS, Gatekeeper checks for a license and for a notarization ticket — the approval from Apple’s servers that the software is “free of known malicious content, and hasn’t been altered.” In the case of LibreWolf, because the developers refused to join Apple’s paid developer program, LibreWolf never got the chance to be uploaded to Apple for a scan — it was rejected outright. To call such software damaged then is a big stretch. This is exactly the kind of lack of transparency I dislike about Apple. ↩︎

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 16:52:13 -0400

Nat sent this to me after I mentioned my Apple Watch makes me more anxious about my lack of sleep by constantly reminding me that I’m tired.

Sometimes ignorance is a bliss.

There's Something about Mewgenics 🎮

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 14:15:50 -0400

I tried to write about Mewgenics a couple of times now and failed — there’s so much going on in this game that makes it challenging to write about! But that’s been my go-to game for a long time now, and it’s time to try again. Oh, and in case you forgot: all the games I write about work on Linux through Steam’s Proton, as this is the only way I play (no Windows, no thanks).

Mewgenics is… a dungeon crawler. Kind of. But it’s also a very simplified turn-based tactical RPG. But it’s also a rogue-like, with some elements of base building. It’s the messiest game I’ve seen in a long time, with so many things thrown into it, but somehow it holds them all together spectacularly. With 145 hours invested in it (and more added every week), I think “addictive mess” is the best definition I can come up with.

OK, let me start this review again: with the confusing introduction I made above, you should be prepared. Now, think toilet humor. Think graphics that look like a 6-year-old made with crayons. Think The Binding of Isaac (the game) and you won’t be far off, because the same guy is behind it.

In the main game, you have a squad of four cats, each one has a specific class (loosely based on DnD and video game tropes: a cleric, a fighter, but also a “Tank”, etc.) Your goal is to fight different kinds of eeky enemies (mosquitoes, ticks, rotting cat zombies, headless dogs with exaggerated anuses, turds (yes, actual shit turds), puking leeches, and many more) and defeat the mini-boss and the main boss at the end of the level. You’d think that with four or five levels of this nasty comedy you’d exhaust the number of enemies you can run into, and you’d think wrong. This game has a way of looking like a small toddler joke that doesn’t have much going for it, but somehow it keeps introducing more sophisticated mechanics as you keep playing.

What do I mean by sophisticated? Let me take an unexpected turn, because this is what this game does constantly. The soundtrack. It’s so good I am actually considering buying it, with over 50 original tracks that stick with you. The kind you find yourself humming in the kitchen while doing dishes. You’d think, “How many songs about pussy-cats (har har) can you come up with?” That’s what I thought. The game plays a theme (instrumental) throughout the level, and the theme expands to the full song with lyrics when you fight the boss. At some point after defeating another boss I realized that it’s not a coincidence: the songs are actually decent, and some are good and catchy. The game has a whole radio station built in, complete with a DJ, sponsors, and music.

Mewgenics - OST by Ridiculon

A radio station means a radio, which means you need to listen to it somewhere. So you have a home base. A home, which is also your base, as in an actual house, complete with furniture and expansions you can unlock throughout the game. That base provides your mini-game off the main game, where you’re doing your best at breeding your cats. Yes I’m serious, the game is called Mewgenics after all. Each cat has unique abilities (rogue-like, remember) and it’s your job to decide which female-kinda cat to put with a male-kinda cat in one room, sit back, and watch them do their thing so one of them produces offspring. And yes, the genders in this game are also a question mark, literally — some of those cats have question marks hovering over their heads and they can be both genders or neither. They’re also complicated enough to have mutations, sexual orientations… Hell, they come with an entire family tree which you can unlock as you keep playing.

Speaking of unlocking, this is another big feature of this game. You have different NPCs that you meet early on, each one providing further bonuses and tips if you give them your cats. For example, the mad scientist (of course there’s a mad scientist) gives you unique cursed items you need to take into your adventures as sidequests; the stereotypical gay dude wants babies because him and his wife can’t have offspring and gives you all kinds of relationship advice which unlocks to additional features; there’s another guy who has a grandma (nanny) that doesn’t hear well and wants to sell you weird furniture; a bitter psycho that seems to work for PetSmart, and more.

But wait, I didn’t really talk about the actual turn-based RPG part of the game, which is the main thing!

The main game consists of taking turns with your cats on a grid that has different environmental effects (lava, water, flowers that heal you, garbage bags you can destroy, grass that can catch fire and spread, etc.) and attacking the enemies with your unique abilities. Some of those are straightforward (you shoot an arrow over a range, or swat with your paws), some are magical (a fireball or a lightning bolt), some are weapons (shotguns, broken glass, rocks), etc. Your cats, depending on the class and unique skills you pick up along the levels, also have other unique abilities like healing other cats, raising the dead, backstabbing, charming enemies, and more. Your goal is pretty simple (For once! Something simple in this game!): clear the level of enemies.

The enemies have unique abilities of their own. Some are plain dumb, while others are completely disastrous (one of the bosses can possess one of your cats, which then turns on you. I hate this guy). Each level brings a bunch of new enemies, environmental hazards, and items that help you along - these are reshuffled each adventure. The game adjusts to difficulty levels, so you won’t see all the enemies a certain level has until later, and then some enemies can be “elite” status, creating even more havoc.

At the start I didn’t think I could make it just with four cats, but as I progressed I unlocked abilities that made them real badasses; it helps that you can heal cats and even bring them back if they die, while you can recruit various other creatures to help along the way.

I’m looking at the level list, my achievements list on Steam, and the wiki for the game, and I’m realizing that at this point I’m not even half done. It’s a game I picked up last year after finishing Hades 2, and I’ve been playing often. It’s a game that’s easy enough to pick up at any point but hard to put down. It has a lot of content (if this post is any indication) and I highly recommend it if you’re into cats, rogue-like turn-based dungeon crawlers tactical games, dirty humor… look. Just get it. It usually hovers over the $20 range, and it’s worth every penny. Now if you excuse me, I have a mini boss to deal with that’s giving me a hard time.