Musings

stop asking writers about "AI"

2026-06-29T21:26:06.000Z

There are questions every person I meet asks, and I’m getting sick of answering. Worse, the newest of these questions has been severely harming my motivation to write for several years.

I didn’t want to talk about this, but I’m beginning to think I need to. Hopefully, if I get this off my chest, I’ll be able to move on to writing about things I love.

the dreaded question

Every time I tell someone new that I’m a writer, they pause for a moment, then ask the same question: “So, what do you think about AI?”

Seriously, almost every person asks this eventually.

My boilerplate answer is that “I have serious technical, professional, and ethical concerns with the development and use of AI.”

People rarely let me leave it there.

having the conversation

Usually, I’ve actually made the effort and had the conversation. I explain that so-called “Artificial Intelligence” isn’t anywhere near the quality of writing serious authors reach. I explain that when people want to read a book, they’re really wanting to read the creation of another real person, and that you can’t relate to a machine.

I explain the systemic harm the technology has already caused to my craft and what damage it’s still likely to do, with no actual benefit.

But I’m really, really tired of having the conversation. Because it’s the same conversation over and over and over again, usually with no actual signs that the person I’m talking to cares enough to change their mind.

Often, they pivot the conversation to how they use AI. As far as I can tell, all these people really want is for me to validate them, so that they can tell people, “Yeah, even this writer I know who is critical of AI thinks my use-case is okay.”

I mean, I’m not gonna tell them to their face that any claimed “use case” at all perpetuates a belief that things will get better later with AI, and that this belief itself is most of what’s causing all the problems today. I’m not going to tell someone I just met to their face that their harmless pastime is validating the creation of technology that devalues human labor and creativity for the enrichment of the 1% who are salivating at the thought of laying off all their workers to get yet another billion dollars they’ll never live long enough to spend.

I’m too polite to say that to their faces. Maybe that’s my problem.

Some people mean well when asking. Some people are genuinely curious to hear my view.

Just asking the question, though, is the problem, for me.

the harm of the question

When your first thought at hearing about the craft I practice is of a technology that is fundamentally incapable of making a difference to that craft and is created with the goal of devaluing my effort and hard work, that tells me that you don’t value me.

When you ask me what I think about AI as if that has any actual relevance to the work I do, that tells me you don’t actually care about my work.

If I tell someone I published a book after meeting them in person, I expect they would want to read it. That’s my own reaction when someone tells me about what they’ve written. If I told someone instead that I asked ChatGPT to write a book so I could put my name on it, would they actually care? Would they ask how to get a copy?

Of course not. Because people want to read things that other people have written. AI is completely irrelevant to that; it isn’t a person, as much as the companies making it would like you to pretend it is.

No one cares that ChatGPT can write a novel. No one cares if the novels it writes are enjoyable to read, because that’s not why we read.

But when you ask me that awful, misguided question as if you’re equating my writing with that trash, it makes me wonder if my writing actually matters. I begin to lose motivation to write. I begin wondering how truthful it is anymore to call myself a writer when I dread putting pen to paper.

That’s where I’ve been stuck for three years now. Some of you may have read a story or two from me, such as ”Those Who Breathe Easy” which was published last August or the series of mythology stories a few kind people have been beta reading for me, but I really haven’t been able to get much written. Every word is a struggle with my own self-doubt, fighting the worry that even if I do the work no one will care.

And every time I talk myself out of that pit, a new person asks me, “So, what do you think about AI?”

Please, I implore you, stop asking writers about AI.

my actual visions of the future of art

Let’s take a break from that depressing talk. Let’s talk about what I actually expect of the future. Let’s have that conversation for a minute. Now that you know what it costs me to take the thought of AI seriously even for a moment, hopefully you can actually listen and maybe accept some new ideas. Maybe you also hate AI already; this vision of the future can be a bit of hope for you.

AI can’t replace human art, and it never will—but, eventually, our bosses might think it can. They might fire writers, artists, and musicians.

I tell this to people whenever I’m brave enough to actually have this conversation: when you fire an artist, they don’t just disappear. They’re still real people who exist in the real world, and they’re still artists.

Do you seriously think writers will actually stop writing if big companies stop hiring them? When, in all of human history, has contempt from systems in power ever stopped brave people from speaking up and writing change into being?

If you fire us, we’ll still be here. We’ll still be writing. We’ll still be publishing that writing, outside of the commercial systems that we’ve been constrained by until now.

And, when people are given the choice between a mass market ChatGPT-written romance novel published by a major publishing house or a book that a real human being poured their heart into and then sent out into the world, which are they going to read?

When you’re given the option to watch a large-budget Hollywood film ridden with clichés or an independent film put together after hours by a handful of young adults for the joy of the craft and because they want others to see what they’d made, which is more compelling?

Not just that, some of these independent projects will be made by the former greats of the commercial publishers, who’ve been spurned in favor of a small extra lining in billionaires’ pockets.

The moment the media conglomerates fire their real human artists is the moment they forget what actually made them big and set free their most valuable assets.

As I’ve written:

Telling me not to speak my mind
    is like telling a star
    not to shine

Giving me a pen and telling me not to write
    is like giving a bird wings
    and telling it
    not to fly

Telling me to keep my dreams a secret
    is like telling a chick
    not to hatch
    from its shell

My art is meant to be
    on display
Asking me hide it
    is like asking the sun
    to hide in the sky

AI “replacing” authors would not be our downfall, it would be the beginning of a new triumph.

conclusion: those left behind

Yes, I believe that AI poses no serious threat to the craft of writing in the long term. Yes, I think writers as a whole could even be in a stronger position if companies make the mistake of trying to replace us.

That doesn’t mean I want it to happen. Some of us would be hurt. Some of us have been hurt already.

Because when you tell us by asking that dreaded question that our dreams are worthless, some of us are going to take that to heart.

Some of us are going to stop trying to write.

If you’re a writer, I beg you: never stop writing. I will say as many times as I have to that I would far prefer reading anything you write, no matter how terrible you think it is, than anything an “AI” spat out.

It’s true, some people won’t value you. I’m gonna be honest: they probably wouldn’t have even if AI didn’t exist. Don’t write for them. Write for you, and write for the people who will listen because I promise they’re out there.

When National Novel Writing Month revealed to writers how little they actually cared about us with their terrible statement on Artificial Intelligence (calling condemnation of it “classist and ableist”), my biggest fear was that the people hurt would simply stop writing. That’s the real reason I started Writing Month: to create a new space for writers so that they keep writing, no matter what.

Keep writing. As I’ve written in another poem:

While the world tries to fall,
Write a pillar, keep it up;
Write the Moon in the sky to
Pull the tides to the shore.

I would love to hear from you, to talk about the craft we love. To hear if you agree, if you’ve also been harmed by the dreaded question. To hear if this little piece I wrote helped at all. My email address is below, and it will make my day to hear from you.

To everyone else I ask a final time: stop asking writers about AI. You might not mean any harm. But at least for me, and I suspect for others, your innocent question sounds like it’s coming from the same direction as the ceaseless barrage of devaluation we’ve been fighting.

Instead, perhaps try a different question: “Can I read your work?” Show us how much you really do care about the craft we love.

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visions of an embodied internet

2026-04-09T05:43:40.000Z

Some days, I wonder what the internet would be like in an analog world. Can we envision interacting with the massive web in physical form, without directly touching a computer?

With a bit of coding work, I think it could actually be done. Here, for your pleasure, is my vision of an embodied internet.

my blog

Now, the whole concept depends on the existence of flawless OCR of my handwriting, which I assume does not exist, given my brief experiments with OCR. But hey, let’s assume the tech exists, or that I would train an OCR algorithm myself to get it working well with my handwriting.

Given that, I would simply draft my blog posts by hand, which I already do, on occasion, then put the paper in a slot or box to be scanned, dropped into a template, and uploaded to my website.

Easy as pie! (Having never made pie, I admit that I’m not sure how easy it is. Perhaps the phrase should be “easy as stir fry”?)

email

There are currently other ways I interact with people online, but email translates the most easily into physical form since it is, after all, named after physical (”snail”) mail.

Each morning, a thermal printer (or regular printer) could fetch my email, print out each message, and drop it in a mailbox for me. I would pick it up, sort through it, decide what I want to reply to, and take out my trusty fountain pen.

Above, I assumed the existence of flawless OCR for my handwriting. In this case, I think most of my friends could actually be happy receiving a scan of my handwritten replies. It would have a sort of analog charm to it.

If they use the same embodied internet system, perhaps it would be more like faxing than email.

The big question here is accessibility; I suppose screenreaders would just have to work off of an OCR version? I don’t have a good answer.

surfing the web

I expect that I would have to use something akin to my URL shortener intended for handwritten notes to help me out, here. Every time I encounter a link that was printed out by my system, it could include a urlref in parentheses afterward, which I would have to somehow enter into the system to get a printout of the webpage.

Simplest would be a keyboard, of course. Say I planted a keyboard right below the output of the printer. No monitor needed, I just type the reference and hit return. I could even use a macro pad with only the keys needed to type a URL reference.

I’d keep a notebook full of references to key starting navigation points for the internet. After typing one in, I’d follow links from there on to get to where I need to go.

Maybe I would even allow myself to type search queries and get a printout of the results from Clew. I’m honestly not sure where to draw the line for this one and what counts as “embodied”. I probably would need a small e-ink screen to go with the keyboard, to display what I’ve typed and potentially give a preview of a page before I print it.

feeds

This is a lot easier. Each website I print out from the above could include a small QR code in the corner. I’d then have a scanner for that which would load the page, detect a RSS/Atom feed, and add it to my subscription list.

All new items from my subscriptions would be printed out and dropped in a box for me each morning. If I wanted to reply to an article, I could either do so via my blog or my above system for sending email.

conclusion

I know a bunch of this is hilariously implausible or impractical, but I had fun imagining it, and it’s a worthwhile thought experiment. In what ways would you adjust this system? Do you have ideas for how to embody other digital systems? You can send me an email with the link below. I might even send you a picture of a handwritten reply (no promises).

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currency is an abstraction of value

2026-04-03T06:33:41.000Z

In my Religious Communication course last semester, we had a discussion of economics. I won’t get into the details, but what matters now is my very basic definition of “capitalism”, which the class ended up adopting for most of our discussion:

a system that abstracts value into currency to simplify exchange of goods and services

While I had an inexpressible amount of fun in that discussion shattering the worldviews of middle-class Texans by persuading them that billionaires don’t actually deserve their wealth, that’s not what I want to focus on today.

I want to focus on how I defined currency: as an abstraction of value.

Currency represents the level at which people value their time and belongings. In theory. In reality, it’s merely an abstraction of that value, meaning a simplified representation to serve the purposes of the overall capitalist mechanism.

Abstractions don’t always accurately represent their origins. Currency, in particular, does not always reward the true rigor of labor, and it values efficiency over people.

I’ve been thinking about this again in the context of the way contemporary LLMs have commoditized writing and words. As someone who considers the agglomeration of words my craft, this is understandably a concern of mine.

I’ve read before that in a post-scarcity world, one where a particular craft has been automated, artisanship—intentional, human labor practicing a craft as an art—becomes immensely valuable.

That used to comfort me.

Of course, it’s true; human-crafted objects are far more valuable than mass produced ones, and it’s the same with, say, information-based artifacts like stories (now automated via “AI”). But currency is only an abstraction of value.

In terms of that abstraction, the vast majority of people can’t afford to pay people the amount they value their work at. Even worse, the few who can afford that level of value are the 1%, the billionaires—and they don’t value human labor.

The capitalist system we live in does not allow us to fully express the value we hold for things, as any currency we dedicate to that task is currency we can’t spend on the essentials we need to live.

Our world values thrift and a willingness to make decisions for purely currency-driven reasons, rewarding whatever is the cheapest and with the least overhead. In practical terms, that works out to rewarding companies that pay the least to the people who work for them.

People have been trained to think of currency this way because we see currency exchange as primarily taking place between us and faceless corporations. No one cares if a faceless corporation makes less money because we decided to purchase from a competitor. Which is good; we shouldn’t be caring about corporations.

But we should be caring about people. They deserve our expressions of value. Or, if necessary, they deserve the abstraction of value that we label “currency”.

I don’t have a call to action today, because I don’t really know what action to take to “solve” this issue. But I do strongly believe in the power of shifting the mindset of a people, as collective action is the medium of change for systemic issues. So, start thinking about the currency you spend in these terms. Talk about it in these terms.

Your money is an abstraction of the value you have for your time and belongings. How are you spending that finite amount of value you can express?

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2025 in review

2025-12-31T08:34:14.000Z

Wow, I haven’t done this since 2022, have I? Well, here goes nothing.

university

I graduated! I now have a BA in Communication from Texas A&M University (and a minor in English), and as much as I had fun and learned a lot, I’m glad to be done.

If I had to describe my “focus” in my studies, I’d label it as New Media and Independent Publishing.

And, now that I’ve finished with that, I’ve moved back to my beloved home in the tropics for at least the next year.

writing

My plan for 2026 is to spend it as a full-time writer and see if I can make that take off as a career by this time next year. Exciting!

I did have a notable publication this last year by Nantucket Lit: my story “Those Who Breathe Easy” appeared in the Overscan anthology which was published this August. Also keep an eye out for my writing in the new First-Class Fiction postcards, which will be sent out throughout this coming year.

I have some writing ideas that I’m working on, including a very cool publishing project, but nothing ready to announce yet.

coding

Besides the secret publishing project I mentioned above, which still has a fair bit of coding work ahead of it, my main projects at the moment are Writing Month and Clew. Clew, in particular, I’ve put thousands of lines of code toward in the last year, but I haven’t finished the refactor I’m working on so the changes aren’t public yet.

consumption

Want a brief summary of what I’ve been reading, listening to, playing, and watching this year? Here you go!

books

Not going to list everything I read, but here’s a brief summary of the highlights (mostly from the second half of the year, when I really got back into reading):

The full The Expanse series
The full Murderbot Diaries (which I read through not once but twice
Life After Cars, which I pre-ordered and loved
Here Comes the Sun, by Bill McKibben
I reread The Gift of Rain
Many texts for my “Literature for Children” course
Many issues of Clarkesworld Magazine, as well as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which I just began subscribing to

Some things I’m now reading:

Ben Bova’s As on a Darkling Plain
Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You (slow going, but I did write my final paper for my “Religious Communication” course this semester on chapter three)

I also acquired a precious copy of The Internet Phone Book, which I have only lightly perused so far but can’t wait to dig into.

games

Some games I completed this year:

Dead Cells - I beat the secret final boss and all the DLCs (except Return to Castlevania, which Joel just gifted me)
Chained Echoes
1000xRESIST
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist
Pyre

Though released in August of 2024, I didn’t do a review that year and need to also mention World of Goo 2, a lovely sequel to one of my beloved childhood treasures.

Some games I’m currently actively playing:

Replaying CrossCode with Joel and Steffo
Astral Ascent (a current favorite)
Noita
Rogue Legacy
Citizen Sleeper (another gift from Joel; I’m currently taking a break from it though)
Hollow Knight, which I’ve reached the final boss of

music

I acquired 109 albums in 2025, but I’ll endeavor to list a few of my favorites:

Chick Corea
- Antidote
- All three Trilogy albums
- Forever Yours (just released, recordings from his last two concerts, spectacular)
Michael Davis
- Open City
- Absolute Trombone
- New Brass
The Manhattan Transfer
- Tonin’
- Bop Doo-Wopp
Bobby McFerrin
- Bang! Zoom
- Spontaneous Inventions
- The Voice
- (with Yo-Yo Ma) Hush
SeaFury
- we who wander
- atmo
Sting
- …All This Time
- The Soul Cages
James Taylor
- New Moon Shine
- Flag
- Hourglass
- October Road
- Sweet Baby James
Claude Fontaine
- La Mer
- Claude Fontaine

blogs

Some favorite RSS feeds from the past year, which you should check out:

Check out my blogroll for more.

That’s it for now. See y’all in the new year!

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building an analog week calendar with a deck of cards

2025-11-06T07:04:30.000Z

As I’ve written before, I love week dates, and I’ve started using them for all of my personal organization.

Of course, since I’m pretty much the only one using the system, it can be difficult to find products that are designed to work for me, so I end up building my own. Ever since realizing that the number of cards in a deck matches the number of weeks in a year, I’ve been planning an analog calendar built purely with an ordinary deck of cards.

a note on suit order

Before I jump in, I do want to make a quick note about how I order the suits of cards; for this calendar, I’m using English alphabetical order, with clubs (first in alphabetical order) as lowest and spades (last in alphabetical order) as highest: ♣♦♥♠

This is the most common ordering in Western card games I’ve seen. I’ve also played games using an order more common in East Asia, which swaps the hearts and diamonds: ♣♥♦♠

The English alphabetical suit order is easiest to explain and remember, though, so it’s what I’m using.

the system

Each suit represents one quarter of the year:

♣ - Quarter 1, weeks 1-13
♦ - Quarter 2, weeks 14-26
♥ - Quarter 3, weeks 27-39
♠ - Quarter 4, weeks 40-52

Within each suit, the number (with Ace representing 1 through King as 13) represents the week number within that quarter. For example, this week is number 45 on the ISO calendar, which is the sixth week of quarter four, represented by the six of spades.

The current week, on my calendar.

The rare 53rd week (ISO week dates use a leap week calendar system) will be represented by a joker 🃏.

This calendar currently only represents the week number, not the day of the week. I haven’t decided whether to include the day, yet.

creating the physical calendar

The actual physical calendar, in its simplest form, is simply a deck of cards. Sort it from low to high, beginning with the Ace of Clubs and ending with the King of Spades and a joker. Place this deck face down.

Each week, turn over one card and place it face up in a pile next to the deck. (If you’re not starting in week one, skip to the current week’s card.) Done right, at the end of the year you can simply flip the exhausted deck back over to reset the calendar.

One of my favorite elements of this calendar is the very clear physical representation of how far we are through the year. Take a look; we’re near the end of the year, so the deck has very few cards compared to the discard pile of weeks that have already passed.

Even though it’s just a deck of cards to the casual observer, the presentation clearly shows that there is more than meets the eye.

This calendar should, of course, be put in a highly visible place, but one where it’s not likely to be disturbed accidentally. This could make a great conversation piece!

possible improvements

There are two main improvements I can think of right now:

A nicer deck of cards would be cool; right now I’m using a generic Bicycle deck. Perhaps something like LMNT’s Junior Playing Cards? Those have a lovely aesthetic to them. Really, any artisanal deck would look fabulous.
Some sort of enclosure would be very cool. Something 3D-printed is the obvious solution; I’ll have to think about an ideal design. This could keep things in place while raising the professional look of the setup from two piles of cards.

Any other thoughts or recommendations are very welcome.

closing thoughts

It’s simple, but I really like this. There’s something very aesthetically-pleasing about this, both visually and functionally. (I see aesthetics as encompassing far more than just looks.)

I’m going to continue mulling over this; there is definitely a lot of room for improvement.

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analyzing subscriptions and budgets

2025-10-01T07:56:57.000Z

A number of my friends have been posting summaries of the different services they subscribe to, which I find a fascinating practice I’ve been doing and analyzing in private for years, now.

In the hopes that it well help people make better financial decisions, I’ll walk you through the process of how I decide to allocate my money.

week dates, my beloved

I’ve written before on ISO week dates, a system for tracking the date via weekly rhythms without involving months. Since writing that, I’ve transitioned almost all of my personal systems to week dates, and been far better for it. My life is built around weekly rhythms, and using week dates helps me better visualize how numbers fit into that routine.

In this post, I have done the math to convert my subscriptions into cost in USD per week, for these reasons:

A standard unit of measurement means we don’t have to get confused by comparing monthly and annual costs
Thinking in terms of months or years is too abstract for our minds to really compare costs to how much we use the services in question.
Because this is the way I do it in my personal calculus, and after all that’s what this article is about.

a brief aside: costs covered by donations

As I’ve written, I have started accepting donations for a few of my projects, and people have been so overwhelmingly generous that I’ve broken even on most of my hobby projects. Before I get into the meat of this post, I’ll break down the recurring costs I pay from donated funds:

Server Hosting - $4.90/week
Remote Backups - $0.46/week
Domain names - $0.99/week (this only includes domains from these projects; I’ll list personal ones later)

In total, $6.35 per week. I currently receive $20.21 per week in donations from my incredibly-generous patrons, so there is definitely a surplus I’ve been deciding how to spend on a case-by-case basis.

Costs listed from this point on will all be from my personal discretionary funds.

personal subscriptions

Without further ado, let’s enumerate costs.

essentials

I will not be canceling any of these, as they’re central to everything I do.

Email - $0.24/week
FOSS donations - $1.14/week
Domain names - $1.66/week

All together, that’s $3.04/week, which isn’t bad at all considering the previously-mentioned surplus from donations to my projects.

entertainment

I only have one entertainment subscription, in the literal sense:

Clarkesworld Magazine - $0.92/week

I used to also subscribe to Forever Magazine, but have paused my subscription until I catch up on my backlog.

As I begin to allocate more time to pursuing my writing career, I expect I will subscribe to more magazines and develop a better process/routine for keeping up with them, but that is a topic for another time.

Unlike many people, I don’t pay for any streaming services, either film or music.

While I’ve technically listed all my subscriptions at this point, I have a number of de facto subscriptions in the form of budgeting.

budgets vs subscriptions

Instead of traditional subscriptions, I tend to favor buying entertainment outright in budgeted recurring amounts.

For example, I maintain my own digital music library, so I put the cost I might have paid toward a Spotify subscription towards buying music.

Similarly, instead of a subscription service for video games, I buy DRM-free games, usually on sale.

As opposed to, say, a subscription to a magazine, the clearest benefit here is that I get to choose exactly what I get with my money.

For example, let’s take my friend Joel’s article on this topic. In it, he describes his decision to buy Humble Choice, a subscription which regularly gives curated games, chosen for you.

As I pointed out to him, knowing his gaming habits, he owns far more games than he actually has time to play. If instead of a subscription like this, he saved the money for specific games he knows he will like, then waits to buy more games until he’s made satisfying progress on what he has, he will both enjoy his time gaming more and spend less money on games, without needing to cut back on his time spent gaming.

In short, a budget instead of a subscription gets him more value with less money, even though technically speaking he’s receiving less content per unit of money he spends.

When budgeting for entertainment, my general rule of thumb is to spend $0.50-$1.00 per hour I spend on a category of entertainment. By spending $0.92 on Clarkesworld, for example, I should expect to spend 1-2 hours per week reading it to get my money’s worth. When I buy a video game for $5, I expect to play it for at least ten hours.

Music is a little harder to gauge, since I listen to so much music and have listened to everything in my collection many times. Instead, I try to gauge how much novelty I want in my music listening experience: I tend to desire at least 1-2 new albums to listen through and savor each month, so I budget accordingly, with the occasional spree of buying used CDs on clearance to add some bulk to the collection.

The rule of thumb in all of this is to compare the money spent per unit of time. For subscriptions, this can be measured in money per week. For budgets, looking at how much time you spend versus the money you spend is valuable.

I would list what my budgets for entertainment currently are, but I’m actually in the middle of updating them and don’t know yet how things will stabilize. I currently expect to spend less on games and stationery while spending more on music and literary magazines.

a useful formula

This is by no means a complete formula, but this is a work-in-progress bit of quick math I’ve been using to measure the time value of purchases, specifically of video games (though it can be applied to other areas).

First, you’ll need to work out these variables for the purchase in question:

Rating - If evaluating something you already own, use your personal rating. Otherwise, use the average rating of reviews for the item. 1 is the best rating, 0 is the worst. You can easily swap in a fraction like 5/5 or 3/5 to emulate a rating out of five stars.
Time spent - Again, if you own it, use the time you spent. Otherwise, resources like How Long to Beat can provide a good estimate.
Cost - This is typically the total cost for buying something outright. If you’re evaluating a subscription, use the weekly cost and fill in “time spent” in terms of average time per week.

With that figured out, plug it into a calculator:

cost / (time * rating)

In this formula, a lower result is better. To summarize, the result represents “cost per amount of time” (so lower cost is better), weighted by how much you enjoyed the result. For example, take a $7.50 game that took 7.6 hours to beat.

If it was an amazing game, 5/5, the score is 0.98. You spent about a dollar per hour; the rating in this case doesn’t affect the equation.
If the game was mediocre, 3/5, the score is 1.64, significantly worse. Because the game was not as enjoyable, in a sense it costed you more. If I do the math, you would’ve had to get a good deal on the game and have paid only $4.47, for the value to have worked out the same way.
If it was a terrible game, 1/5, the score is a terrible 4.93. Only if the game was on sale for a low $1.49 would it have been worth it. (The math breaks down a bit here; personally, I’d have given up on the game long before finishing if it were this terrible, and I would ideally not have bought it in the first place.)

I aim for entertainment I buy to fall into the 0.50 to 1.00 range. Of course, if it’s lower, even better—that means you’re getting more value for less money—but in general 0.50 to 1.00 means the creators were fairly paid, without ripping me off in the process.

So far, I’ve used this formula to compare games I’ve considered buying by plugging in the average play time and rating people end up with and comparing to the cost of the game. With this, I can generally estimate how valuable games will be and make wise decisions on how to distribute my limited money for the best return.

conclusion

This has been a very technical and number-driven post, which isn’t my norm. If you enjoyed this or found it useful, I’d love to hear from you! Similarly, I’m very open to suggestions on how to improve my methodology or calculations.

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my ideal tech setup

2025-09-27T01:20:36.000Z

I tend to be practical about my tech, trying to keep using things as long as they’ll work. That said, it’s been an interesting thought experiment to imagine what my setup would look like in my ideal world, both hardware and software.

computers

This is probably the most fanciful (and expensive) adaptation of my current setup, so I’ll go ahead and lead with it.

Since developing an interest in analog tools, I’ve also been adapting my expectations toward computer use:

I want using analog tools to be my default mode, and any use of computers to be an intentional choice.
I would like to have a dedicated space for using computers, and not to lie around anywhere on my laptop.
I still do need to be able to travel with my setup without losing any major functionality.
I’m trying to make more and more of my tasks possible to complete offline or with intermittent network connections. For example, I’ve altered my email setup to run off of a local copy of all my emails that syncs with the server when I’m online.

With that in mind, let’s catalog essential tasks I’ll need to be able to do with my devices:

I need to be able to write; even though I do much of that on paper, now, I eventually transcribe and edit work digitally. I’m not worried about this, since my preferred editor, neovim, should work on any hardware/software platform.
I need to be able to work on my coding projects. While development work can be compute-intensive, I mostly do web development or work on otherwise-lightweight projects. Again, this should work on most hardware/software platforms.
I need to be able to keep in contact with friends and family. Most people I’m close to live in different time zones, so messaging and video calls are a requirement (a little more on that later).
I need some entertainment. While I don’t necessarily need my full video game library when traveling, it would be nice to be able to carry and use a decent supply of e-books, videos, music, and maybe a few lightweight or emulated games. This imposes some storage requirements, as well as the computing resources to use whatever entertainment I stockpile.

Considering all this, I think my ideal setup would involve two main computing devices (I’ll mention my phone later):

A desktop-style computer that stays in place at a desk.
A lightweight laptop of some sort to travel with. It wouldn’t need very intense computing resources, though strong battery life would be nice.

My Framework Laptop is pretty great, but a lot of that greatness is in the computing power, which I’m very happy with, and not the peripherals, form factor, etc. As a main computing device, I don’t see myself being able to pass it up with a desktop computer that’s more useful to me.

So, my idea? Convert it into a desktop. Framework sells a specially designed case for the mainboard which is very compact and fits my desires perfectly with hardware I already mostly have. Implementation cost: $40 (plus whatever a decent monitor costs)

For the travel device, I have to go with my dream portable device: the MNT Pocket Reform. Notably, I don’t think this would work as my primary computing device, but as a traveling tech setup? It would be amazing and perfect. (With the possible exception of battery life, but I could make it work.)

As an ARM device, software support would be more limited than my Framework laptop, but for my main productive tasks, this shouldn’t be an issue. While it likely wouldn’t be able to play most of my games, I should be able to get a couple lightweight emulated games running to keep me engaged, and it would of course be able to manage my e-books, downloaded webcomics, music, and so forth, particularly equipped with a 1TB SSD to store downloaded media. Implementation cost: $1250

I don’t see myself actually putting up the cash to buy a Pocket Reform any time soon, and without it, it doesn’t make sense to convert my Framework Laptop into a desktop. But it’s nice to know the dream. And, knowing the basics of what I need, if I spy a different, cheaper device that would fill in the “travel device” role, I can recognize that.

Alternatively: I already have an old Inspiron n411z which is an amazing device, but more bulky and I don’t have a working battery for it. If I can track down a reliable battery replacement (tips welcome; I’ve been burned once already), it would be a great secondary device, though, again, it’s a little bulky and heavy. I could also look into replacing the hard drive with a solid state drive. Implementation cost: $25-125

reading

To me, the ideal case is doing most of my reading in physical books. That would rock. But realistically, I’m gonna be doing a ton of reading digitally:

I have digital magazine subscriptions, most notably to Clarkesworld
I read a ton of blog posts, notably via web feeds
I simply don’t have the space to store or money to buy all the physical books I wish I had
E-books are far better when I’m traveling, for both space and weight.

books

I think the obvious top contender for e-books is an e-reader (reading on a computer or phone is a pain). I have a Kindle, managing books for it through Calibre, which works just fine for this task.

That said, I do wish my e-reader had physical page turn buttons. I still have an old Kindle 4 with them, but the screens on those were really sensitive and this one’s has acquired issues with partial refresh that can make the screen unreadable.

Estimated implementation cost: $0 if I stick with my current hardware (most likely), $30 if I buy a refurbished Kindle 4 to get back those page turn buttons (but this would be less durable and wouldn’t have a light for reading in dark environments), $100-150 if I bought a current model of e-reader, most likely from Kobo (I don’t see myself doing this unless my current Kindle breaks; the cost isn’t worth the gains, but hey, we’re talking about my dream setup).

Hey, and while I’m dreaming, I wish there were more sources of DRM-free, affordable e-books out there. I can make do with what exists, though.

feeds

Currently, I read my feeds on my laptop or phone. In my ideal setup, I’d have my feeds on my e-reader like my books.

Calibre has some built-in RSS feed functionality, but in my experience it feels a bit clunky and not really the way I want to consume my feeds. KOReader’s support for feeds seems like a better bet to me, though I haven’t been able to get KOReader running on my main Kindle, so that might not be a feasible solution for me at the moment.

Whatever device I end up reading my feeds on, I want to make some adjustments. I think a serious problem with my feed reading habits is that I place an expectation on myself to read every item that comes in, which isn’t really healthy.

I want to read these posts, but I’d rather make intentional choices to read feeds for a set amount of time than compulsively check for new articles. I’d let any posts I don’t get to simply disappear after a certain amount of time, to keep the queue from becoming overwhelming or giving me an excuse to procrastinate on my work to get things read.

I’ve done some brief work experimenting with building a tool for this, but haven’t gotten far as of this writing.

listening

I have two primary categories of listening: music and podcasts.

Ideally I’d like to have one dedicated device that takes care of both tasks. Now that I have a Tangara, I can do that, at least with regards to hardware.

That said, I haven’t actually started listening to podcasts on it, as the support is still being worked on. Most important to me, I listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed, which the Tangara does not yet support. I’d have to transcode the audio files themselves when I load them on to the device, which I haven’t taken the time to script, yet.

Estimated implementation cost: $0 (my ideal music setup is fully achieved; podcasting requires some software work.)

messages

This is the most fanciful section of this post.

I want to be able to use a single messaging app with everyone I communicate with that doesn’t require a phone to be i the loop. I’d want to be able to run a lightweight client on my computer, ideally in the terminal. End to end encryption would be nice.

The closest possibility I see is Delta Chat, though some work would be needed, particularly toward the “lightweight client” end. Also, I don’t know anyone who uses it.

Estimated implementation cost: $0 (it’s just a software wish, but not likely to happen without a lot of social/community work to get everyone I contact to adopt whatever I land on)

Another note, it would be nice to have a way to separate out general chat messages and discussion from time-sensitive requests that need my immediate or quick attention.

phone

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t actually care about my phone and actively avoid using it. Barely at all. All I need:

Calls.
Basic SMS, I suppose.
I’ll admit, having a camera built-in is rather nice (though I wish I had a better workflow for backing those photos up to my computer).

Most things people do on a smartphone I preferentially do on my computer, so see that section above.

I currently use an iPhone SE (2020). It completes all my needs and I’ve tried to cut it down to be as minimal as possible. I could probably make do with a dumb phone, but I currently need to be able to use a couple apps for uni, and I figure someday might have similar requirements for something even after uni, and of course there are stupid messaging apps like Signal that require you to have a smartphone even if you only use the desktop client. I’ve had it since 2022 (handed down) and I don’t see myself replacing it for at least five more years, maybe a decade or more. The only hardware short-falling is that the charging port has been increasingly finicky.

Estimated implementation cost: $0

conclusion

When I first started writing this post, I was expecting to have a lot of pricey desires. (Worth noting: I didn’t have a Tangara yet at that point.) The more I look at this problem, though, the more I’ve realized how close to this I can get with the hardware I have and a little time working on software or finding replacement parts.

It may not be my “dream” to do things that way, but there’s no reason not to move my current setup closer to that dream just because I can’t completely reach it yet. After all, the pursuit of that dream will help me better evaluate it and create new and better dreams.

What’s your biggest dream for your tech setup? I’d love to hear about it.

Thanks for using RSS! You rock.

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urlref: website bookmarking for handwritten notes

2025-09-11T00:57:43.000Z

I’ve been moving more and more of my notetaking and task management systems to analog, hand-written systems, using my beloved fountain pens, but this presents a problem: how does a terminally-online, technically-minded young adult (me) reference things I see on the web in my notes?

To accomplish this, I built urlref, a lightweight tool purpose-built for the task.

balancing simplicity and ease

To begin, let’s draw a distinction in terms that are often confused: simplicity measures how much expertise or mental effort it takes to understand and implement a process, while ease refers to the actual level of difficulty in using that process.

A process can be simple to understand but difficult to use; for example, the simplest solution to my problem would be to simply copy down URLs verbatim into my notes, but this is not an easy solution, as URLs are long, complicated, and easy to mess up.

For my solution, I traded simplicity for ease of use; in this system, I can easily generate a 3-5 character code representing any webpage, then write it down in place of the URL. Later, I can easily reverse the process in my web browser and get back to the original page. As a trade-off, the design took a lot of intentionality and it was moderately complex to set up.

the conceptual explanation

My system is highly inspired by URL shorteners, which have a very similar goal. That said, I didn’t want to use a commercially-available URL shortener, as they have severe privacy issues, are difficult to back up, and leave all of my links dependent on some third party which could go down or change their terms at any time.

I could host my own URL shortener, but the actual process of copying a URL into a website that shortens it lowers the ease of use of the system, despite the result being easier to write down.

My actual chosen method simply uses a short code, like is at the end of a URL shortener’s output, but without any website involved. Everything is stored locally on my laptop, with no external dependencies whatsoever. Even the code of urlref is only 59 lines long.

Here’s how it works:

I find a webpage I want to reference in my notes or journal.
I hit the “a” and “r” keys in sequence in my web browser (Qutebrowser is a modal browser with keybindings similar to vi).
I receive a notification with a short code (in sequential order, so they stay short for a long time), which I write down in my notes in place of the URL. An example code might be A06, which I write as @A06 to make it clear that it’s a link/reference.
When I want to re-open that webpage, I simply type r A06 into my browser’s URL bar and hit enter. The codes are case-insensitive and 0 and O are interchangeable, as are 1, l, and I. My browser automatically takes me to the URL I originally was at.

It’s a cool and easy-to-use system, but how does it work under the hood?

the technical explanation

For this project, I decided to use nim, a straightforward compiled language I was confident would create a lightweight resulting binary with no dependencies.

When fed a URL, urlref simply adds that URL to a sqlite database, stored locally on my device in an easy-to-back-up location. It then returns the sequential ID of the entry encoded in Crockford Base32, a system for creating convenient human-usable codes. As mentioned above, easily-confused characters are interchangeable. It also leaves out letters that might make your codes include swear words (which I appreciate, personally).

urlref can also serve a lightweight HTTP server which redirects requests to /<id> to those IDs’ URLs. I set up my computer to run this server in the background when I’m logged in.

Now comes the clever part: integration with my browser.

Qutebrowser makes it easy to script keybindings, so I made a short script to run when I type “ar” (short for “add reference”) which passes the current URL to urlref and gives me a notification with the short code to write in my notes. This part would need to be implemented differently in different browsers; a relatively-simple browser extension could probably accomplish it, especially if I added an API path to the urlref HTTP server to add references via API requests instead of the CLI.

Using the codes, though, can easily be set up in any browser worth its salt. I simply set up a custom search engine. This was the fundamental realization that inspired the project: with a custom search engine in the browser, it can use custom behavior to handle urlref IDs, without caring about the ease of typing the underlying URL. When I type r a03 into the URL bar (“r” being the trigger word telling the browser to use the custom search engine) it gets interpreted by my browser as http://localhost:9873/a03, which is urlref’s local HTTP server.

urlref then simply looks up the code in the database and sends a redirect to my browser. Since it all happens on my own computer, it happens extremely fast and there’s no noticeable overhead. Additionally, since it’s all on my computer in an ordinary file, it’s easy to back up my bookmarks to ensure I never lose them.

conclusion

I’ve been using this system for five months now and haven’t had to edit urlref’s code a single time. It just works, which is the best kind of software. It’s simple and straightforward, with no sign of scope creep or external dependencies. Best, it should keep working indefinitely, and even if something makes my code impossible to run in the future, sqlite databases are ubiquitous, so it should be simple to recover the underlying URLs that I bookmarked even then.

Of course, I built this system for my own use, so it’s highly opinionated. You’ll likely need to do some of your own work to integrate it onto your own computer, especially if you’re not using Qutebrowser.

That said, if this system interests you, I’d love to hear your thoughts! If you have ideas to improve it, I’d love to hear those as well. I’d also be willing to help you adapt this to your own needs or figure out how to set up the project.

For any of those purposes, my email address is below; I look forward to your messages.

other implementations

Some other people have sent me their own takes on this idea, which is super cool! Check them out.

Thanks for using RSS! You rock.

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combating consumerism

2025-07-18T10:14:25.000Z

I should open by saying that I’m very hesitant to spend money. My own mother describes me as a “miser” in conversations with people outside our family. Saving is a far more natural action for me than spending.

Even so, living away from my family with a little more financial independence in the hyper-consumerist United States culture has certainly influenced my willingness to spend money on non-essentials. Even when I don’t buy things, I spend too much time imagining how my life would be if I did buy them.

I’ve decided I’ve had enough.

branding

My struggle against consumerism isn’t new, though my perspective has changed. This struggle began with the most visible sign of capitalist excess: brands.

I’ve long avoided wearing clothing with visible brand logos, and a couple years ago I made an effort to stop using brand names when unnecessary—for example, I could ask for a “cola” instead of a “Coke” or “Pepsi”. I covered up the logo of my old Surface Laptop with a sticker.

I reasoned that I was opposed to the idea of a “brand”—if nothing else, the term is named after a practice that does not bring along positive connotations.

As I continued this, though, I noticed that I wasn’t opposed to all brand logos. I didn’t cover up the logo of my Framework Laptop; I wear shirts with the logo of my university; I started developing projects with logos of their own. Eventually, I was learning the actual principles of branding and marketing in my classes.

I realized that I was only opposed to branding of companies or projects I didn’t like or share values with. So, really, the brand couldn’t be the root issue.

for people

After a lot of thought, aided by ideas in my class on “New Media and the Independent Voice”, I was realized my true concern: I want to use things made by people, for other people, not things made by companies for customers. I’m most passionate about projects where I can see a clear emphasis on making life better for people, not projects which value profit over people.

In an ideal world, I’d want everything I use and consume to be thoughtfully made by other people with my actual good in mind. Even more importantly, I want to be a person who makes projects which value and support other people. That philosophy drives my coding projects, my writing, my reading, the music I listen to, and even how I cook.

That’s what matters to me more than a “brand”; branding can be manipulative or greedy, but it can also act as a force of good to bring people together.

Make and interact with things as a person, not a customer or profiteer.

my current dilemma and solution

Now that I’ve worked out my actual philosophy in this area, it’s time to take steps to move closer to my goal. Despite not enjoying interacting with consumerist systems, I still frequently browse through reviews or products I could buy and sped time imagining my life with those products.

I’m more idealist than pragmatist, and the allure of a “perfect” setup is very appealing to me. This isn’t a problem in itself, but the result is that it leads to dissatisfaction with the present in favor of wishes for the future. I don’t want myself to keep striving for improvement, but I also don’t want to hinder my ability to enjoy the things and systems I have now.

So, with this in mind, I am now in the process of unsubscribing from every feed I follow which makes me want to buy things. Some of these are sources which fit my “by people, for people” philosophy, but they still give me a dissatisfaction with the things I have or alert me to things I could have which I’d never considered or wanted previously.

If I think of something that I want myself, I can still seek out those sources to help me narrow down my options. I have no problem with that. But I don’t want anything that I don’t specifically search for to make me want to buy things.

conclusion

We’ll see how this goes. I believe I have a firm ideological basis here, but it does remain to be seen whether the actions I resolve to because of it will be effective.

Your thoughts and ideas are very welcome.

Thanks for using RSS! You rock.

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apparently i have readers

2025-06-16T08:13:24.000Z

I published my first ever blog post on January 1st, 2020, with no realistic expectations of an audience. Sure, I’d share occasional posts with friends and family, but no one went out of their way to read the words of little old me.

Now, over five years later, I’m realizing that’s changed. On most of my recent posts, a reader I didn’t know about has reached out, usually via email, to express their thoughts.

i write for myself

I’ve never written my blog posts as if they were a product; I pick my topics purely based on my own interest. Perhaps it’s for this reason that I don’t participate in trends like the Blog Questions Challenge—I already know the answers to those questions, so it doesn’t interest me as much to write about them.

For similar reasons, my posts tend to have a philosophical element to them. I use my blog as a medium to develop and process my thoughts, not as a place to perform for others. I love performance, of course, but my personal blog isn’t where that happens.

I am my own biggest fan, here.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted that my musings have an audience—it makes my day every time a reader emails me about my blog. But I’m not going to change the way I write on my blog for that audience’s sake.

And, after all, why should I? Those of you following along know exactly what you’re after. Changing the format or topics would only weaken that bond.

the coming redesign

I’ve been working for a long time on a redesign of my personal website. This redesign will be a significant change (for the better, I think) to both the design and structure of the site.

The biggest change to the new site is that I will have new sections to post in, aside from this “musings” blog. Currently, I plan to add sections for week notes and a link blog, recipes, and possibly more.

This way, I will keep this blog intact with its format and typical style (which I love) while allowing myself to branch out and explore more ways to write and enjoy my personal site.

I hope you, my readers, will enjoy these new sections when they arrive, but again: I am my own primary audience. I’m doing this for myself, not with the goal of popularity.

This blog will remain intact and continue to update, in any case. If you follow it now and don’t care for the upcoming changes, you should be able to do so indefinitely, and I hope you enjoy that.

conclusion

Thank you, everyone who has been following along as I semi-regularly post my often-wrong views on the world around me. I’ve truly treasured your messages and encouragement, and I look forward to another five years, at least, of musing together.

Thanks for using RSS! You rock.

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