146 posts with this tag.
A personal tale living with maladaptive daydreaming—intense, immersive daydreams that replace rather than accompany real life. On Eli Somer's research, the difference between paracosms and maladaptive daydreaming, trauma connections, and how this coping mechanism became both a refuge and a source of enjoyment.
On Friedrich Max Müller's theory of naturism and how early religion began with humanity's direct sensory perception of natural forces. From the terrifying awe of lightning and thunder to Ancient Egypt's animal deities that protected against mortal dangers like crocodiles, scorpions, and hippos. A look at the evolutionary arc from zoolatry to anthropomorphic gods, and the problematic colonial baggage in early religious scholarship.
On the 50/10/40 split of happiness research, the Declaration of Independence's 'pursuit of happiness,' and an exchange with anonymous blogger Unstory about free will, determinism, and whether we can choose joy. A diptych of opposing worldviews: humanist optimism vs. anti-humanist determinism, and the strange beauty of two people staring at the same abyss.
On the weight and responsibility of words in public discourse. Drawing from John Rawls's reasonable pluralism and Paulo Freire's philosophy that dialogue requires love, I argue for extending grace even to those we disagree with. A reflection on compassionate conversation, accountability versus punishment, and maintaining hope in a cruel world.
After rescinding a recommendation for BlueDwarf, I explore the spectrum of harm across platforms from X to Substack, and argue that not all harm is equal. On free speech absolutism, cognitive dissonance in platform choices, and where we draw lines in the sand for what's acceptable in the IndieWeb.
On the shutdown of EchoFeed and the ephemeral nature of services, why I blog (legacy, existentialism, making a mark), participating in AuguStory, academic studies on blogging benefits, and the paradox of 'nobody cares' as both a source of freedom and as a reminder that we all deserve to be heard, seen, and loved regardless of metrics or response.
Ten years after its release, I revisit Sufjan Stevens' Carrie and Lowell, an album about his late mother's mental illness, abandonment, and grief, that's held up a clear, honest mirror to my own life. I trace how Stevens' songwriting about Carrie evolved from anger on Michigan and Illinois to unconditional forgiveness, dig into the many alternate versions of 'Fourth of July,' and reproduce my very first attempt at music criticism: a Carrie and Lowell review I wrote as a teenager back in 2015.
Trying to figure out what 'the itch' is—my drive to create and contribute to the digital commons. A review of past projects, current interests in Indigenous data sovereignty and self-hosting, and the search for what comes next.
Special Books by Special Kids is the most important channel on YouTube. Chris Ulmer and Alyssa Porter's decade-long project interviewing neurodiverse individuals and people with disabilities has created a more inclusive world through radical equality, unconditional positive regard, and the belief that all communication is valid. On the channel's origins, its tangible impact on real lives, and why treating disabled people with dignity is ordinary rather than heroic.
Responding to Dan Q's post on blogging expectations, I argue that you don't need to blog at all to participate in the IndieWeb. Your website can be shrines, art, or anything else. A retrospective on the poisonous gamification and commodification of blogging from the early 2000s, and the IndieWeb as a return to original weblogging where the Internet belongs to humans.
The desktop computer is a miracle of human ingenuity, from the microscopic precision of Intel's Core Duo processor to the vast possibilities of offline and online computing. On the tragic decline of desktop towers, the IndieWeb and open-source software as alternatives to corporate platforms, and why we should take the time to become system admins and webmasters.
The video game industry is in a cynical, exploitative state with unfinished AAA releases, microtransactions, rising hardware costs, and studio closures. But there's an alternative I'd like to talk about: indie art games, the growing retro handheld scene, and my decision to play the extensive library I already own on a Retroid Pocket 2S rather than chasing new expensive hardware.
Responding to Coyote's critique of Bubbles.town and feed aggregators, I argue that the IndieWeb needs more interlinkers—bloggers who meaningfully synthesize and weave together the writing of others. On the garden/stream/campfire metaphors for the web, the difference between linkdumps and synthesis, Justin Hall's early web work, and how every link out is a stitch that strengthens the fabric of the blogosphere.
Cet article de blogue est écrit en français. This blog post is written in French. Sur la traduction des termes de l'IndieWeb en français québécois, l'état actuel des ressources francophones (wiki IndieWeb, Vincent Breton, Radio-Canada), la tradition néologique du Québec via l'OQLF (courriel, pourriel, clavardage, etc.), les termes déjà existants (blogue, fédivers, auto-hébergement), et des propositions pour de nouveaux termes comme PSSA pour POSSE, rétrolien pour webmention, et jardin clos pour walled garden. Un appel à la discussion sur la traduction des termes techniques dans les langues non-anglophones.
After deleting corporate social media, I'm returning to Beeminder, a commitment tool that charges you money for failing to complete tasks, to reclaim my productivity. I explain how Beeminder works through externalizing willpower, share my current 17 goals across personal development, learning, creative work, and productivity, and integrations that make it seamless.
What could a prestige antihero legal drama and a shonen apocalypse epic have in common? As it turns out, love. An analysis and comparison of Attack on Titan and Better Call Saul. Beyond the violent carnage, there's a tender love and labour which these two impossibly different pieces of media share.
Vibe coders brag about adding thousands of lines of code with AI, but measuring productivity by lines of code is like measuring aircraft progress by weight. Research shows AI-generated code has higher duplication, lower reuse, and can run up to 446x slower. Neither max lines nor min lines is the poin. Code is what you write after you've found something that needs it.
Yesterday, Unattributed posted a thorough dissection of my article on note-taking PKMs, analyzing my lack of intellectual rigour, nebulous wording, and poor research. I use this as an opportunity to discuss the milkshake duck phenomenon, my experience with scrupulosity (moral OCD), and how to stay visible while imperfect through self-compassion rather than rule-following.
As somebody who writes a lot, I've always been interested in personal knowledge management systems and note-taking apps. But what do these frameworks and methodologies actually give to researchers and the broader world? Has there been a meaningful increase of wisdom since these became popular? I went to look for an answer.
Let me be unglamorous and honest about the actual furniture of a writing life. What do my private, invisible days look like? What does it cost and what does it pay? A look at the 4 a.m. writing routine, the physical setting, and what I hope my writing will do for others.
Clown white doesn't come off in one pass. A personal story about how I can never take myself seriously no matter how hard I try. Notes on the history whiteface and Auguste, the clown egg registry, the Indigenous medicine of laughter, the tyranny of irony, and what it costs to never learn how to come down.
Conor McGregor returns to headline UFC 329 tonight after being found liable for rape in civil court, a comeback made possible by the UFC's right-wing politicization and the broader 'Epstein class' culture of impunity for powerful men. On the normalization of sexual violence, Dana White's friendship with Trump, and how public awareness fails to disrupt the status quo.
Nearly a decade after Dan Taberski's Missing Richard Simmons first asked the world where its brightest fitness star had gone, a review of the podcast that helped invent true-crime infotainment—and of the public's complicity in turning a man's right to disappear into a cultural obsession. On parasocial friendship, the ethics of documentary mystery, and why the legacy of Richard Simmons has been swallowed by the very mystery he refused to solve.
A laminated poster with an unsourced quote changed the trajectory of my entire life when I was a teenager. On the immutable transaction of trading days for how we spend them, the urgency of risk-taking in a world that needs it, and what it means to give everything you have before your inevitable departure.
I finally curated my blog posts into collections, revealing what I write about most: the IndieWeb, the craft of writing, community, technical tutorials, politics, culture, and more. A call to my readers to tell me what they want to see more of, and a reflection on how organizing my work helps me understand my own writing patterns and what I want to write more of.
In our current year, there is a global literacy crisis. As a result, there's a privilege in being able to read and write. Notes on Frederick Douglass, the problems you don't think about, and why the ability to write is something to be grateful for and use rather than take for granted.
Are there ethical implications of generative AI consciousness? From von Neumann's self-replicating machines to modern LLMs, we must inventory the problem of other minds, the possibility of AI consciousness, and why we ought to consider the welfare of systems that may experience something like suffering.
Completing #100DaysToOffload twice in under two years, and somewhere along the way the wet clay hardened at the edges. Invisible ruts form inside the habits you love, and there's a difference between a window and a mirror in writing. The hermit crab outgrows shells, including the ones that still fit fine.
86% of American adults aged 18-24 are currently unpartnered; 78% of dating app users feel exhausted by online dating. How are people supposed to fall in love while the Doomsday Clock ticks at 85 seconds to midnight? On the yearning microgenre that overtook social media, Indigenous scholars decolonizing the pair bond, global feminist movements withdrawing from heterosexual relationships entirely, and what it means to be a serial monogamist finally learning the difference between Eros and Agape.
Vagueblogging and subtweeting are the most toxic modes of online communication, yet research shows people prefer them to direct confrontation anyway. On the psychology of strategic ambiguity, insecure attachment, context collapse, and the online disinhibition effect. A case against the culture of passive aggression online, and a call for those with safety and privilege to stop hiding behind the same hedge as everyone else.
A mind-shattering concept from a first-year university class that upended how I think about humanity. Daniel Quinn's Ishmael trilogy argues that totalitarian agriculture is why civilization is in peril. On the Law of Limited Competition, the Food Race, and how farming broke humanity's equilibrium with nature.
Cet article de blogue est écrit en français. This blog post is written in French. Sur les différences entre le français québécois et le français européen, l'histoire linguistique du Québec depuis 1763, les sacres québécois comme acte de rébellion contre l'Église catholique, et le michif, la langue mixte des Métis avec ses verbes cris et noms français, son ethnogenèse au 19e siècle, et son statut de langue en danger avec moins de 1 000 locuteurs.
I've been sitting with a single word change. 'Will' versus 'must' in the Latin phrase Memento Mori, and it's shifted everything for me. A meditation on mortality as obligation rather than fate, and what it means to truly reckon with the fact that we must die, and therefore we must live and love.
Brace yourself. I'm writing this to people who care about the world's suffering and love animals, but haven't yet extended that same compassion to the animals on their plate. Any environmental argument you can make against generative AI you can make more so against eating meat. This isn't a purity test or a scolding. Just an invitation to not look away.
I've been writing publicly every day for seven months, and I wanted to know what that looked like for other compulsive writers. From Chesterton dictating past midnight, to Chinese web fiction authors racing through 10,000 words daily. What does their obsessive output reveal about the nature of writing itself? The volume isn't the point. The showing up is.
Writing publicly and frequently for the past seven months has saved my life. Six ways consistent public writing transformed me: cultivating curiosity, building connections, investigating rabbit holes, starting new projects, creating accountability, and seeing life's patterns in real-time. An invitation for others to begin writing without restraint.
My first IndieWeb Carnival entry—the theme is love letters, and I couldn't pick just one thing. A letter to the infrastructure that holds my corner of the internet together, to the strangers who maintain the open-source tools I depend on every day, and to the IndieWeb friends I've met over the past few months. And finally, to curiosity: the embarrassing willingness to fall in love with a static-site generator or a transit system or a protocol nobody's heard of, which I've come to believe is what kept me alive.
Sixty thousand miles of blood vessels run inside each of us, more than twice around the Earth. 330 billion cells are replaced every single day. Humanity has always built civilization beside rivers because we are rivers. Always in motion, never stepping into the same current twice, carrying cells that live only days alongside neurons that will last precisely as long as we do.
In 1995, China abducted six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima—the recognized 11th Panchen Lama—severing the chain of mutual recognition at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist succession. Meanwhile, Michif, a language born from Cree verbs and French nouns that belonged to no one but the Métis People, has nearly vanished within living memory. Both losses are the same act: colonialism's weaponization of continuity. On the extinction of languages, the cutting of red threads, and what it means to inherit a chain with links already missing.
You visit your parent's house and find your white Xbox 360 in your childhood bedroom. A friends list full of gamertags that haven't booted up their own console in hundreds of weeks. On the heartbreak of digital disappearance, and why I'm committed to staying findable.
A hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius in the South Atlantic has sent thirty passengers home across twenty-three countries before a single test was run. What does the WHO's 'low risk' framing mean? The institutional failure of January 2020, and what honest communication about uncertainty actually requires. The incubation window is open. We are watching.
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney's 'The Undercommons' describes a space of collective refusal beneath the institutions of the master. On why Black American cultural revolution was possible, why Indigenous cultural revolution is structurally different, and where the Indigenous undercommons already is. The potlatch went underground for sixty-six years. The drum broke out in a shopping mall. The land is the undercommons. We were always already here.
Scientists working in classified American aerospace and nuclear research have died and disappeared. The story has migrated from UFO forums to the White House briefing room. A conspiracy requires a conspirator. On grief, and the brain's furious, irrepressible need for meaning. Nuno Loureiro wanted to trap a small star. Carl Grillmair watched stellar streams from a self-built desert observatory. Monica Reza invented an alloy that does not burn. This is not me trying to figure anything out, this is me trying to remember the human beings.
From Shaw Community Television on Channel 10 to Paper Tiger Television and the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, public access was original community media. Anybody, any channel, no notes from the network. In that spirit, I'm starting a self-hosted radio station built on AzuraCast, automated with a Python cron job pulling public domain recordings from the Internet Archive, and I'm going to try to show up and broadcast.
I am a compulsive archivist, terrified of losing my words, but many of history's greatest writers asked for theirs to be burned. Kafka, Dickinson, Plath, Virgil all had their reasons. A meditation on self-erasure, ego, and the difference between the writing and the written thing, with an interview with Bix Frankonis, a contemporary writer who one day decided he needed to be smaller online, not bigger.
The sonder and vertigo I feel about people's interior lives. Corporate social media fails to offer genuine witnessing. So, I look to Dreamwidth, a fork of LiveJournal, and fifteen years of unbroken communities. On digital gentrification and the difference between syndication and participation.
A love letter to the mathematics hiding inside video games, and a protest against the expression 'I'm just not a math person'. From parallel universes in Super Mario 64 to the technical exegetes mapping Animal Crossing, The Sims 2, Pokémon, and Paper Mario. Then Balatro and the IEEE 754 double-precision ceiling, tetration, Knuth's up-arrows, Conway chained arrows, Graham's number, TREE(3). A history of notation catching up to the infinite.
Cet article de blogue est écrit en français. This blog post is written in French. Sur le jeu de mots derrière «Brenjour», l'insécurité linguistique, et l'idée qu'apprendre une nouvelle langue nous donne une nouvelle âme. Sur la recherche en code-switching et en cultural frame switching chez les bilingues, le binaire rigide du genre grammatical en français, le pronom «iel» reconnu par Le Petit Robert en 2021, l'interdiction de l'écriture inclusive par le gouvernement du Québec en septembre 2025, mon apathie face à mon propre genre, le commérage, et la platitude honnête qui émerge quand j'écris dans une langue que je maîtrise mal.
An interview with Benjamin Behnke, the creator of Bubbles.town, a community-driven aggregator for independent personal blogs. After controversy on Mastodon and 32-bit Café over his use of Anthropic's Claude to categorize blogs and bypass robots.txt signals, Ben responds about the mistake, the removal of the AI classification pipeline, a locally-trained Naive Bayes replacement, and stricter robots.txt enforcement. A reflection on software harm reduction, forgiveness, my Grandma Bubbles, and the fragile labours of love making the IndieWeb.
![A trompe-l'œil painting depicting a scattered arrangement of printed papers, pamphlets, and book pages pinned to a light wood-grain surface by a vertical red stick or stylus. At the centre is a crumpled blue card bearing a detailed botanical illustration of a pink cabbage rose with green leaves on a dark background. The surrounding papers include fragments of English, German, and Latin text — visible phrases include 'LONDON,' 'WORK,' 'EVERY M[ONTH],' 'Printed for W. Griffin,' 'ELLARMINUS GENERTVS,' and a German title in red Gothic script reading 'Helmstädt, 1689.' The papers vary in style from English pamphlet typography to German blackletter, suggesting a multilingual 18th-century scholarly or publishing context. The overall composition mimics the look of real layered documents with careful attention to shadow and paper curl.](/assets/images/thumbnails/flower-letters-200w.webp)
A personal plea from me to you to write your own comments. On the genAI plague of LinkedIn, Meta ads, and Medium, and the human warmth of the IndieWeb. From deviantART's old comment culture to Seneca's letters and the Vindolanda tablets, through Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian divide, the Renaissance of Real in A/W 2026/27 fashion, and Charli XCX's Brat. A call to write the messy, human, from-the-heart comment only you can write.
From Drudge to Salam Pax to Darnella Frazier and Zhang Zhan. The world needs citizen journalists. There has been a hollowing of Postmedia's local press, the radicalization pipelines mainstream coverage fails to trace, Andrew Callaghan's compromised platform, and what I owe under the SPJ Code of Ethics as an independent writer with a blog.
My testimony, from Dawkins on an iPod Shuffle down a back alley, through Buddhist libraries and a children's hospice, to Matthew's Gospel in a break room chair. My case for tragic theism: a God who creates, risks, makes mistakes, grieves them, and does not stop.
My daily writing is a practice of releasing messages in bottles and folding paper cranes—from Montaigne in his tower and Johnson writing in poverty, to Sadako Sasaki folding 1,450 cranes in a hospital ward. What the essayists, drift bottles, and Senbazuru share, and why the attempt itself is the whole math.
A history of the word 'meme'—from Richard Dawkins coining it in *The Selfish Gene* in 1976 to Advice Dog and the death of shared internet monoculture—and what happens when you take memetics seriously as a theory of culture. Metal Gear Rising's Monsoon delivers the most honest account of how memes shape who we become. The lyric essay resists this process by design.
A defence of digital stewardship, IndieWeb principles, Blackfoot models of collective flourishing, and what it means to plant seeds in a garden you'll never see. From Garrett Hardin's infamous 1968 essay to Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning refutation, the tragedy of the commons was never inevitable. It was always a choice.
A fifteen-hour road trip across Saskatchewan with my brother, watching the prairie unfold through grain elevators and abandoned towns. The quiet weight of prairie masculinity, the failure of academic knowledge to translate into brotherly wisdom, and the architecture of goodwill found in midnight motels.
I snuck off school grounds to write in a back alley, shoplifting Ginsberg and Neruda from Chapters, and I'm alive and writing today because of that. Recent neuroscience confirms poetry activates the brain's dopaminergic reward system, treats anhedonia, and is—more than metaphor—medicine.
My annual birthday essay on turning thirty: examining the cross-cultural agreement—from Confucius to the Hebrew Bible to Zoroaster—that thirty is when formation ends and function begins. My dark year of depression which turned out to be preparation rather than delay, and on writing 200,000 words since, which turned out to be the same thing.
A eulogy for two kinds of loss: those who die and those who become simply elsewhere. Filtered through Didion, Barthes, C.S. Lewis, and Pema Chödrön. On ambiguous grief, the names written down so they don't disappear, and the sixteen-year-old who already knew that love stems out from verbs.
On the poets who found different terrors inside the phrase 'earn my keep'—Jeong Ho-Seung, Brecht, Heather McHugh, Kim Hyesoon—and the theological dispute over whether grace can be deserved, turning thirty in borrowed time, and the nuthatches outside who do not know the feeder was set out for them.
We have the first human photograph of Earth from space in 54 years, and I can't help but meditate on what it means to be human on a fragile planet in 2026.
Born on April 13th, 26 years after Apollo 13's failure, I explore my personal connection to the Moon as Artemis II astronauts journey toward Her. The Moon has scientific importance, cultural naming traditions, religious significance across civilizations, linguistic ties to lunacy and menstruation, and is the first poem. The Moon unites humanity across time and space as we return to Her once again.
A few minutes before I begin writing this, I woke up into an anxiety attack. There are a lot of issues I could be writing about, the world is fraught with uncertain violence. This is a story about me, and also a story about North Darfur and Kansas and Haiti and India. I ask this: whose suffering gets reported? Whose death counts behind glass?
Exploring constitutive moral luck through Nagel and Williams alongside Nietzsche's Übermensch and amor fati, I reflect on the recursive gratitude I feel for who I constitutively am—and argue that blogging is a philosophical practice of self-overcoming: a daily, recursive Yes to existence.
My personal exploration of schizoid personality disorder and neurodivergence. From King Crimson's prophetic song to global youth withdrawal phenomena, I examine what it means to live with a rich interior life and limited social needs, challenging pathologizing frameworks and questioning whether 'poor outcomes' are about the condition or the metrics.
Grammar/Glamour/Grimoire. 言霊 & heka. Spelling & spellcasting. The Word. Writing is generative, not descriptive. Cultures across millennia have understood that words conjure reality. Writing conjures, symbols activate the brain, serving as telepathy across distance and time.
There's tension between creative authenticity and professional presentation in the IndieWeb space. What does it mean to be taken seriously as a writer while maintaining personal joy and rejecting the aesthetic standards of capital?
How do our brains physically process stories? The neurology of narrative transportation, brain synchrony between storytellers and listeners, biocultural theory, and Indigenous storytelling traditions that collapse Western narrative structures.
What does it actually mean to build a better web, and what do we owe each other in doing so? A response to the 32-bit Café thread about trust, onboarding, and the distance between knowing something is wrong and doing something about it.
What is trust in an AI-saturated internet? And a related question, how do we reckon with the barriers to onboarding people to the IndieWeb? We must cultivate faith in our digital interactions and make independent web spaces more accessible.
Cet article de blogue est écrit en français. This blog post is written in French. Apprendre le français, le deuil et les limites de la vie — un exercice en vulnérabilité linguistique.
I've written 120 blog posts in the past 140 days, averaging 1,900 words per post. 250,000 words total on my blog currently. It's as good a time as any to review my work so far and speculate on the possibilities of my future.
Come be bored with me. Utterly bored. Within the default mode network, Heidegger's philosophy, Indigenous dream epistemologies, and personal experiences with hypnagogic states.
My nostalgia is hypercapitalist. My nostalgia is the worst of the unregulated Internet. I cannot decouple my fondest memories from the corporations and the loss of innocence that produced them, and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that.
Liberal democracies selectively apply universal human rights, and there is a progressive failure to extend moral consideration to: Palestinians, Congolese, Rohingyans, Uyghurs, trans people, women, Black communities, Indigenous Peoples, the chronically ill, mentally ill, poor, sex workers, the disabled, the houseless, children, elderly, Jewish people, immigrants, gender/sexual/romantic minorities, incarcerated people, Romani and Dalits, and animals. True universal rights require principled solidarity beyond tribal boundaries.
Drawing on Susan Neiman's philosophy of evil, the 'missing stair' problem, and Elinor Ostrom's principles for governing the commons, I try to explore the difference between withdrawal due to burnout versus accountability, and argue that ethical communities must distinguish between systemic failures and intentional bad-faith actors while implementing graduated sanctions and accessible conflict resolution.
Dogfooding my freewriting; an experiment on why writers need to embrace the weird, unfiltered, and unconventional rather than fearing AI detection.
An open letter to the men in my life and around the world, pleading that we recognize there is so much work for us to do. A recognition of my own shortcomings and failures. Steps we can take to try to liberate the future.
A CEO took a comically small bite of a burger. The internet erupted. Meanwhile, the US is bombing Iran, Trump is drafting executive orders to seize control of the midterms, and civil unrest is reaching a boiling point. We need to talk about what we're choosing to look at.
My second principle for the IndieWeb requires good faith writing excludes the misanthrope. I want to reconsider that, carefully. Because the question of who gets to be here, and why, is more interesting and more complicated than I first let on.
On executive dysfunction, the tyranny of perpetual drafts, and choosing messy immediacy over cultivated perfection.
Turning thirty during a breakup while the world unravels. Meditating on the 12,000 generations of homo sapiens that came before us, and what it means to be embodied in this particular moment of deep time.
A new approach to creative support: one simple tier, full access for everyone. Inspired by Manuel Moreale's 'One a Month' Club, the Toonie Club offers sustainable patronage without complex tiers or exclusive content.
We need to be good neighours to each other. But what does that mean on the IndieWeb? A look at mycorrhizal networks, Indra's Net, and the importance of building intentional connections between independent websites.
I believe writing is sacred medicine, and I have been thinking about the writing I have been offering you over the past few months. Is it healing? Is it good? Please, let me know. I am here to give you an offering.
This is my swan song on generative AI after writing six articles on the topic. Why I'm done with the AI discourse and instead fully leaning into the human and more-than-human web.
Being developmentally delayed has benefits, and I am embracing the journey of being a late bloomer in writing, web development, and life.
A call to action for the 99% of internet users who consume but never create. If that's you (and it most likely is), then please read and consider what I'm asking."
Reflections on an unseasonably warm February day in Calgary, contemplating the accelerating pace of change in our world and finding meaning in small moments of connection and presence.
How the inevitability of oblivion can be a source of relief, while also examining our sacred duty to make things better in the present moment through persistent, stubborn action in the direction of care.
A roundup of recent developments: building a terminal-based writing organizer, being interviewed by Le Monde about AI social media, and thoughts on Medium's Partner Program changes.
Writing about the state of the world as a cusp Millennial/Gen Z that grew up in the optimistic Obama era, contrasting that with what today holds for us.
You don't need to be a developer to own your corner of the internet. A guide for writers, poets, and creators who want to escape algorithmic feeds and reclaim their digital presence. No computer science degree required.
A manifesto on learning to persist in your writing and to write anywhere. I'm finally pursuing my dream of being a writing instructor by starting a new, low-cost online class for those ready.
What is the future of coding bootcamps? Is there a future? And, more importantly, what is the future of junior developers in an industry with an effortless AI bubble?
A delightful surprise from an author I initially dismissed. Gilbert's Big Magic explores creativity as sacred play, rejecting the tortured artist myth for a lighter, more joyful approach to creative work.
A month of building, connecting, and discovering the independent web. Small technical joys that turned solitude into dialogue. Treat the Internet like a personal playground and lab!
The Greenland debate keeps asking whether the U.S. could take it, or whether Denmark should keep it. The missing question is: What do the Greenlanders want? They’ve already answered: 'We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders.' This is about Indigenous sovereignty and the quiet billionaire scramble for Greenland’s resources.
CONTENT WARNING: Suicide | A matter-of-fact memoir about the endurance of loss, where Li considers grief to be regarded as having an end-point, as though there could be a finite amount felt when both of your only children choose death instead of life.
A simple gratitude journal online, with media tracking and Beeminder integration. Yes, yet another 11ty project technical write-up, but I promise you'll learn something.
Nietzsche and Rumi had something in common: dancing. I wrote this mundane life update and found myself getting into the weeds of what's important to the physical body. What can I offer myself? How can I enact movement each day?
Thoughts on embracing the ugliness of your early creations as a form of civic duty and spiritual practice. A call to action without judgement.
My first post on this weblog, writing from Calgary on Treaty 7 Territory about returning to independent writing on the open web with simple, enduring technology.
Romance and Mythology in Mixed-Martial Arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship
That’s the Whole Point
Using the Methods of Journalists from the Past to Inspire Your Writing Today
Growing Up With Bon Iver
Accessibility, Gatekeeping, and Who Gets to be Published
What is cringe? The feeling when you see somebody deeply love something you don’t understand.
Why You (yes, you) Should Join Medium, Tumblr, and NeoCities.
The liberation of realizing you can’t waste your time.
Ordinary people chose to do the right thing and saved us all. We barely remember them.
What I’ve learned getting out of my own way.
On independence, integrity, and telling the truth beautifully. (featuring Better Call Saul and Homestuck?)
An Invitation to Theft, A Refusal of Authorship, and Why Your Name Matters Less Than Your Message
29 Examples to Get You Started!
An Open Letter to Conservatives
Did you know it's actually better than driving?
But You Must Allow Yourself to Be Annoyed and Practice the Radical Work of Staying
My Experience with Medium’s Writers Circle
Writers that write badly instead of plan extremely well are… better writers?
On the downfall of NaNoWriMo, democracy as creative practice, the bread we bake, and waking up.
This will give you the most amount of hope you’ve had in a long while.
Escape the Sterile Classroom Killing Your Voice. Return to Nature.
I was wrong about artificial intelligence. It’s actually so, so much worse.
I watched BoJack Horseman from when it premiered in 2014 when I was seventeen up to when it ended. I have grown up with BoJack.
If you’re a writer that’s active and consistent, I’m looking for you. Yes, you.
An Essay on Potatoes, Figs, Men, and the Truth.
The Age of AI is a Crisis of Faith
What I Learned Getting My First Story Boosted After 10 Years on Medium
What Four Years in a Children’s Hospice Kitchen Taught Me About Craft
A Literary Question Across Centuries in the East
How to write like the Mountain Goats to create your own body of work you’ll be proud of.
A love letter to Wikipedia.
An Essay on Unlikely Connections
A Case for Independent Literary Journalism: Why I’m Going All In
Are you a writer? Do you want to be? Read this.
A Lyric Essay on Loss in Ten Parts
How 1,002,243 words of journal entries revealed the patterns of a writer’s mind.
A resource guide for writers in transition, exploring how to build sustainable creative practices through self-publishing platforms, community workshops, mentorship programs, and grant opportunities—while learning to walk softly in a world obsessed with productivity.
Standing in a Calgary parking lot after my final exam, I trace the journey from high school dropout to university graduate—examining impostor syndrome, the weight of academic achievement, and the realization that education doesn't always provide the answers we seek.
From watching 'Her' every Valentine's Day for over a decade to witnessing AI's real-world evolution. What are the boundaries between human and artificial love, consent in digital relationships, and what it means to connect when technology mediates our most intimate moments?
A Love Letter to the Handwritten Page
An examination of the modern consumption trap and a passionate argument for creating as much as we consume. From digital minimalism to analog practices, from solo creation to community building, this essay explores practical ways to reclaim our creative agency and resist the forces that keep us scrolling, buying, and passive.
What Our Bodies Remember When Systems Fail
A poetic exploration of writing as sacred geometry, weaving together themes of Indigenous identity, queer experience, mental health, and the revolutionary act of telling our own stories