pröper gander (das weblög)
all posts by date in descending order
2024-06-14 People and Blogs I was recently asked to contribute to Manuel Moreale’s interview series.
2024-06-13 Something for the Smol Web Newbies If you need this, if you’re dealing with imposter syndrome because of a misplaced notion of purity, then it’s there for you.
2024-06-13 “I Know Where You Live...” I’ve gotten this threat despite not putting personal info online, though it’s been over a decade.
2024-06-12 starbreaker.org and the Holy Grail Layout I’ve been making some changes to the layout for visitors using laptops and desktops.
2024-06-10 Toward a Tao of Vengeance cruel thoughts on a sleepless Monday night
2024-06-09 robots.txt: the Nuclear Option Corporate scraping of personal websites has exceeded the Ripley Threshold.
2024-06-08 Proprietary Social Media Tags Considered Contemptible To suggest that use of Open Graph and Twitter Cards metadata is harmful would be an exercise in belaboring the obvious.
2024-06-07 I Don’t Belong, Either a reply to Jackdaw’s post, “Belonging and not”
2024-06-06 Pronatalism is White Supremacy I had suspected it before; Richard Hanania’s support for this bullshit confirms it.
2024-06-03 Limited Fediverse Integration I don’t own/operate Bridgy Fed or ShareOpenly so use them at your own risk.
2024-06-02 mailto links in RSS Do great programmers steal, too, or just artists?
2024-06-01 Pride Month I have my reasons for flying these colors.
2024-05-23 Developer Experience: JSON vs XML Are XML feeds like RSS and Atom really that hard to work with in JavaScript?
2024-05-18 Concerning Age-Appropriate Content This started out as a Mastodon post in response to a #WordWeavers prompt.
2024-05-17 SaGa Emerald Beyond an introduction to Square-Enix’s weirder RPG franchise and its latest entry, based on the PlayStation 5 demo
2024-05-16 Oceanborn notes on Nightwish’s 1998 symphonic power metal album
2024-05-16 Making a Grimoire I’ve wanted to do this for a while, and I finally made a decent start of it.
2024-05-14 Footnotes: No Fun to Create, Either Tyler Sticka doesn't like reading footnotes online? Fair enough.
2024-05-13 Matters of Faith, Problems of Evil It’s a good thing I don’t believe in Hell, for this post alone might earn me a seat.
2024-05-11 Providing JSON Feeds in Addition to RSS I spent my Saturday night doing this instead of relaxing like a sensible person.
2024-05-10 Indecision 2024 in which I gripe about electoral politics in the USA
2024-05-10 Touch Grass? This phrase has become a pet peeve of mine.
2024-05-08 It’s Not Your Feed Reader If my posts are showing up as new in your app, it’s my fault.
2024-05-07 No Glove, No Love I use an ad blocker for the same reason I wear condoms.
2024-05-02 Heavy Time a cat helped me find a used paperback of this 1991 novel
2024-04-23 JS Naked Day This website wasn’t wearing much to begin with...
2024-04-20 Never Give Your Best At Work You get paid the same whether you meet expectations or exceed them.
2024-04-09 CSS Naked Day This website’s gonna rock out with its markup out.
2024-04-07 Is Reggaeton at 9am Really That Bad? This techie in Argentina seems to think so. He should be grateful it’s not Babymetal at 8am.
2024-04-07 B. Bergeron on Progressive JPEGs I would do so if WebP, AVIF, or JPEG XL were not available and (in the first two cases) well-supported.
2024-04-05 On Loneliness another take on the ‘male friendship recession’ from a man sick of hearing about it
2024-04-02 Ideal Breakfast? I doubt mine is anybody's ideal, but it works for me.
2024-04-01 Things to Do in April 2024 Here’s a todo list for my website; will I get to do it all?
2024-03-31 Happy Easter I don’t really celebrate this holiday since I’m neither a little kid, a parent, or a devout Christian.
2024-03-26 IndieWeb Carnival 2024: Accessibility on the Personal Web Is it just about disability accommodation and WCAG/Section 508 compliance?
2024-03-23 Personal Web, Personal Sovereignty I often feel like I’ve only ever been free on my own website.
2024-03-18 Reset, Part Two I didn’t quite go through with my original plan after all. Here’s what I did instead.
2024-03-16 How web bloat impacts users with slow devices Dan Luu digs deep into how a lot of current web tech just doesn't work on phones commonly available in poor countries.
2024-03-15 The Right to Change Sex A long, interesting article in New York Magazine that references Judith Butler and raises a pressing question: why in Hypatia’s holy name are we still pretending that conservatives have valid arguments?
2024-03-13 A Modest Proposal for MAGA If you really want to make America great again, it’s time to eat the rich. Start with Trump.
2024-03-12 Kitty Doesn’t Think Things Through Having cats around is one reason I prefer WFH, but they can be silly.
2024-03-03 Hacker News, Again What part of “my website, my rules” do some people find difficult to grasp?
2024-03-01 Storming Heaven What if defiance of nature is human nature?
2024-02-26 IndieWeb Carnival 2024: Digital Relationships or, How I Met My Wife and Why I Might Not Try That Again
2024-02-22 Robb Knight on Using Eleventy Should I be frightened because this makes sense to me?
2024-02-18 A City on Mars looks like I have another book to buy for my to-read pile, or I could do the sensible thing and borrow it
2024-02-14 Shoggoths Away! a song by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
2024-02-14 A Cure for Atheism Why can’t you love God in Her bed?
2024-02-07 Too Much Greek Mythology? Some recent reading inspired an outpouring of doggerel involving the trickster god Prometheus
2024-02-07 Concerning Trans Rights Most of the rights transgender people want recognized are basic rights of individual self-determination, and I’m OK with that.
2024-01-01 Reset Here we go again. I might actually redo this site again this month.
2023-11-13 HTML5 Needs a “partial” Element What good are web components if you can’t easily reuse them across multiple pages?
2023-11-07 Your Site, Your Rules, Your Way This is me sticking up for the “soydevs” who don’t build their websites the way other people think they should, because tech prescriptivists who indulge in gatekeeping are authoritarian scum.
2023-10-21 The Last Post for This Version I should have written this over a month ago, but I’m building a new version of starbreaker.org
2023-09-17 The Song of Achilles reactions to and opinions on the novel by Madeline Miller
2023-08-31 Isabel Hogben: a Victim of Conservative Grooming She’s exactly Bari Weiss’ type: young, naïve, impressionable, and receptive to authoritarian ideology.
2023-08-30 RE: Why Are Websites Embarrassing some commentary on a post about egregiously bad web design by Robin Rendle and a rant about modern web development that you’ve probably read before
2023-08-27 Dictionary Integrations adventures in integrating GNU Emacs with dictionary apps on macOS and GNU/Linux
2023-08-27 Viewpoint Limitations Writing Spiral Architect in first-person viewpoint might have been a mistake. There are elements that I could explain from another viewpoint that I can’t explain from Morgan Cooper’s.
2023-08-24 Little Spoon a romantic haiku
2023-08-21 Contributing to the Cacophony I have an account on mastodon.social now, but I’m not leaving libranet.de; it’s a backup/RSS syndication account.
2023-08-19 RE: A Key Feature of NFTs Has Completely Broken I’m laughing my ass off as I read this tech in The Verge. But my laughter is angry laughter. People really should know better, dammit.
2023-08-18 RE: Red Meat Friday: Why Vim? This is a post about UNIX text editors. You are not expected to understand this, or to care.
2023-08-16 I Finally Got Without Bloodshed Taken Down Most writers would lament the removal of their first novel from Amazon. For me it’s victory and liberation, but now I must decide what to do next.
2023-08-13 Tears in Rain I’ve been reading a dying man’s blog post about regret, and I have opinions with which I’d rather not directly burden him.
2023-08-09 Boots: a Haiku capturing the small soul of an authoritarian bootlicker in seventeen syllables
2023-08-04 Adam Winfield Needs a Mirror This little shit doesn’t realize that he’s one of the “small-souled bugmen” he claims to detest.
2023-08-01 Writing Wonders: August 2023 I thought I’d answer this month’s questions in one place, and make them accessible outside of parasocial media.
2023-07-30 Cathedrals on Quicksand Some thoughts on a recent Minutes to Midnight blog post from the opposite perspective.
2023-07-27 Web Environment Integrity: Expectations, Reality, and Entitlement Google’s latest attempt to respectively exploit and protect its dominance in the browser and advertising markets puts the company’s effrontery on full display and cries out for the sort of antitrust enforcement not seen since Uncle Sam brought the hammer down on AT\&T.
2023-07-25 Silence Implies Consent My efforts to thwart commercial use of my website may come to nothing, but I will make them anyway for my own sake.
2023-07-24 They Abandoned Their Children to Fortnite If children are obsessed with video games to the point of throwing tantrums when they can’t play, I blame the parents. They failed their children, and these children will spend their lives paying the price of their parents’ negligence.
2023-07-24 From The Archives a list of restored posts that might prove of interest to somebody looking for a quick read
2023-07-23 Spiral Architect: Patient Privilege I should be writing this chapter, but I’m not quite ready yet.
2023-07-22 No Bottling the Genie Again As much as I sometimes want to become anonymous again online, I suspect that it’s too late for me. Learn from my mistakes.
2023-07-19 This is Not My Side Hustle I got an email from a guy who doesn’t understand why I’d run a website without trying to monetize it. My response became a manifesto. Oops.
2023-07-17 Stormageddon, Fluffgoddess of the Next Apocalypse a bit of flash fiction featuring Claire Ashecroft and an AI “on the fritz”.
2023-07-17 A Cat Meets the Emacs Doctor a bit of Monday silliness; apparently Smudge figured out M-x doctor
2023-07-17 Spiral Architect: Little Sunshine and more… I had written this update late Sunday night, but forgot to upload it for several days.
2023-07-13 RE: The syndicate I generally agree with Jeremy Keith at adactio, but I want to go a bit further.
2023-07-13 Flaming Telepaths hearing this song on the radio back in the day pulled me into Blue Öyster Cult fandom
2023-07-10 They Too Are God’s Children a reply to Jeremy Sarber’s “The mission field is decorated with rainbow flags”
2023-07-09 Spiral Architect, Chapter 5: Prima Donna a short progress update on my work in progress
2023-07-07 Zuck’s New Threads Are Lame Fuck Mark Zuckerberg and all of his works. Including his new parasocial network, Threads.
2023-07-05 Burn the Mothers Down I finished my first run through Final Fantasy XVI yesterday, and it’s been a ride. Expect spoilers.
2023-07-01 Writing Wonders: July 2023 I thought I’d answer this month’s questions in one place, and make them accessible outside of parasocial media.
2023-06-30 Been Sick I have no idea what it was that kicked my ass, but I seem to be getting over it.
2023-06-27 Books I Never Finished I saw this thread on Tildes, and since I can’t chime in there I’ll have my say here.
2023-06-24 Reworking My Blogroll I’ve been tinkering again instead of writing sf, and remembering how to write XSL transforms.
2023-06-22 Insomnia I’m occasionally subject to sleepless nights. It’s usually my own damn fault.
2023-06-21 You Are Not Normal I’m a little tired of people who do a better job of conformity than I claiming to be normal. They are no such thing.
2023-06-17 Now I Have a Mailing List It’s not what you think; this mailing list allows discussion, not just broadcast.
2023-06-15 RE: Acting Your Wage Will Atrophy Your Abilities commentary on a post by Ruby On Rails creator and 37signals founder David Heinemeier Hansson
2023-06-15 Our Revels Now Are Ended… a bit of Shakespeare that’s been stuck in my head for years
2023-06-15 RE: Makefiles for Fun and Profit commentary on a post by James Tomasino
2023-06-14 Theme, Variations, Eternal Return I don’t know if I’ll use this in a Starbreaker story or if it’ll be another fragmentary outtake.
2023-06-13 I Was Banned From Tildes, Too Unlike those who protest their innocence, I had it coming.
2023-06-08 They Came From Hacker News Going viral on aggregators like Hacker News and Reddit isn’t what it used to be.
2023-06-06 Would You Recommend Us to Your Friends? This question irks me, and if you’ve seen GoodFellas you know the answer.
2023-06-02 Writing Wonders: June 2023 I thought I’d answer this month’s questions in one place, and make them accessible outside of parasocial media.
2023-06-01 Microservice Architecture is a Recipe for Pain You’d think that having grown up Catholic I’d be masochistic enough to like developing microservices.
2023-06-01 More Cleanup documenting more changes for future references
2023-05-26 A Bit of a Cleanup in which this website’s operator documents some changes he’s made for himself if nobody else
2023-05-26 My Manhood, My Property, My Way a rant and a meditation on biological sex, socially-defined gender, individual choice, and existentialism with music by Diamond Head, The Sisters of Mercy, Annihilator, and Frank Sinatra
2023-05-25 Programmers and Grimoires Do not begrudge developers and system administrators their references unless you crave downtime, breakage, data corruption, and other dire consequences…
2023-05-24 Make Them Reject You If you don’t ask for things, and you aren’t willing to simply reach out and take them, you’ll end up with nothing.
2023-05-24 A Well Known URL for Your Resume/CV Jim Nielsen came up with a well-known URL for avatars, but why not one for resumes and CVs?
2023-05-22 Not For Her Sake I had never heard of Alyssa Rosenweig until today, so it’s not for her sake that I vote against Republicans at every opportunity.
2023-05-19 RE: Date and Time with a Static Site Generator I was tempted to just email Jim Nielsen with my answer, but decided to blog it instead.
2023-05-18 After 1989: A Trip To Freedom notes on the historical concept album by Minutes to Midnight
2023-05-14 Fun with Dates and Emacs a note to myself about creating RSS and Atom friendly dates for posts in Emacs
2023-05-11 Trying Friendica My discomfort with the Fediverse might be discomfort with Mastodon itself.
2023-05-06 Your Screen Is Tasty I see no reason why this website shouldn’t eat it all. (om-nom-nom)
2023-05-01 Alice Cooper, Live in Hershey Catherine and I crossed off an item on my rock ’n roll bucket list last night
2023-04-28 Dammit, Apple If your content blocker is going to block images, it should block all images.
2023-04-23 RE: Mastodon Preview Cards regarding a post by Jeff Sikes
2023-04-16 Disdain for Profanity is a Luxury Belief prescriptivist boors and bores alike have been looking down on profanity in English since 1066
2023-04-14 Florida Man Bans Abortion I don’t care that his real name is Ron DeSantis.
2023-04-14 I Just Bought a Piano Oh shit, am I petit bourgeois now?
2023-04-13 Parental Rights some random thoughts and advice to parents from a childless man
2023-04-13 John Daker has seen some shit a commentary on the Eternal Champion novels by Michael Moorcock
2023-04-12 Preventing LLM Scraping I don’t want my writing used to train a large language model.
2023-04-12 A Letter to NPR Management I’m posting this here on my website so I have a receipt.
2023-04-09 Jesus He Knows Me Ghost is covering Genesis, and they picked Easter to drop this video.
2023-04-06 Scarlet Dorn discovering a new (to me) band from Germany
2023-04-04 First World Problems in which I gripe about self-inflicted annoyances I face as a webmaster
2023-03-17 Poem for a Mass Resignation the Great Resignation deserves a greater poet than I, but this might do for now
2023-03-16 Companies Are Failing Everybody disputing findings in the most recent Women in the Workplace report
2023-03-15 The Ides of March If you ever wanted to have a public toga party while staging a general strike, today’s the day.
2023-03-14 RE: Stop Using Custom Web Fonts I got over custom web fonts a long time ago, but I’m no designer.
2023-03-03 RE: The Ultimate Linux ARM64 Workstation comments on Jason Eckert’s post about running Asahi Linux on a Mac Studio
2023-03-02 RE: All You May Need is HTML comments on Fabien Sanglard’s post about how to build a website
2023-02-15 Fertility Crisis? You’re Welcome! Has it ever occurred to New York Times columnists that wage slaves don’t breed well in captivity?
2023-02-14 Persona 4 GOLDEN I played the original on the PlayStation 2, and I’m feeling nostalgic.
2023-02-10 Always Remote Regardless of the weather, I will always prefer remote work over on-site.
2023-01-30 Living for Pleasure: an Epicurean Guide to Life notes on Emily A. Austin’s book about the Greek philosopher Epicurus and his teachings
2023-01-27 Ticketmaster Delenda Est There’s nothing wrong with Ticketmaster that can’t be fixed by razing the corporation to the ground
2023-01-09 I Quit Mastodon Again Maybe this time it’ll be permanent…
2023-01-06 smile, he said it isn’t just women who hear this
2023-01-06 silent defiance yet another bad haiku
2023-01-05 A Seed of an Ending for Soft Doctrines Isaac Magnin has nobody to blame but himself. This was the best possible outcome of his endgame.
2023-01-03 RE: Does a Blog Need to Integrate? blogs with RSS/Atom/JSON feeds are already interoperable
2023-01-01 No New Years’ Resolutions in 2023 they usually go unkept, anyway
2022-12-31 Hello Again, World restarting my blog on a new domain
2022-08-31 Salary Range or GTFO concerning pay transparency in tech recruiting and its lack thereof
2022-08-27 Things Do Not Have Friends a rant about the so-called male friendship recession
2022-08-17 a Phishing Attempt for PayPal Users Who falls for this? Are these assclowns even trying?
2022-08-15 Shadowbanned an extremely short flash fiction
2022-08-15 RE: Static Site Generators Easier to use depends on who you ask, doesn’t it?
2022-08-15 The Magician and the Parrot a joke that came out of my UNIX fortune program
2022-08-12 Holy Smoke Fuck censorship. Burn all book burners for great justice.
2022-08-10 cicadas a summer haiku
2022-08-03 The Village Voice Isn’t Really Back Brian Calle might have resurrected the brand, but not its soul.
2022-08-01 Gloomy Monday Thoughts About Computers half-baked and not thoroughly thought-through bathroom musings about computers as weapons in search of civilian applications
2022-07-29 Learning Vue in which I set about adding another tool to my kit to stay employable
2022-07-28 Random Thoughts on Game Streaming if you’re streaming a multiplayer game, please tell me up front so I can drop out
2022-07-27 Little Changes After inspiring more changes in Bradley Taunt’s pblog, I made further tweaks for my own use.
2022-07-25 Still Derisive About Marketing I’m an old techie and I still despise marketing and its practitioners.
2022-07-25 An Archetypical Tech Recruiter I’m almost of sick of these people as I am of self-righteous terminally-online types.
2022-07-22 Building a Site for My Fiction with ‘pblog’ thinking out loud, building in public
2022-07-22 Notes on Pancreatic Cancer Screening Is early detection of pancreatic cancer even practical for most people?
2022-07-21 Web3 is Coming For Authors A ‘crypto revolution’ re-imagining books? Count me out.
2022-07-21 Creating YouTube Thumbnails with a Shell Script It’s almost as good as an embed, but without Google’s spyware.
2022-07-20 Nothing Like a Bad Phishing Attempt There’s been a phishing scam targeting M&T Bank customers via SMS since 2019.
2022-07-20 Paying Strangers to Watch Me Work? How stupid can the New York Times get when it comes to remote work?
2022-07-20 RE: High Property Taxes Are Good, Actually commentary on Brock Whittaker’s post on interest rates and real estate speculation
2022-07-19 RE: Soft Deletion Probably Isn’t Worth It a reply to Brandur’s post about soft deletion in databases
2022-07-19 RE: Really Getting Started with Hugo a reply to Bryce Wray’s post about Hugo’s quickstart instructions
2022-07-19 Crypto Direct Deposit? WTF? The more I learn about cryptocurrency the more closely it resembles a comic book supervillain’s revenge on a world that allowed him to be dateless on prom night.
2022-07-18 RE: Thoughts on RSS a reply to Matt Rickard’s thoughts on RSS and the problems it faces
2022-07-18 RE: The Linux Desktop is Hard to Love a reply to Bradley Taunt’s post about the inherent jankiness of desktop GNU/Linux
2022-07-16 Extending pblog Some of my extensions to Bradley Taunt’s pblog aren’t necessarily suitable for submission as a patch, but I wanted to document them here.
2022-07-15 Blocking Crap with a Hosts File If you can get your hands on /etc/hosts, it’s a good way to block the worst of the web.
2022-07-13 There Goes Your Feed (Again) Because I often break shit while tinkering…
2022-06-24 Roe v. Wade Was Overturned Today Never forgive. Never forget. All conservatives are scum and the government can only recognize rights we’ve always had.
2022-05-12 COVID-19: One Megadeath Later a rant about the US’ collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic
2022-05-11 Podcasts Have Always Sucked Transcript or GTFO. I can read faster than you assholes can talk.
2022-04-29 A Reality Where HTML Never Existed Bradley Taunt thinks CSS and JavaScript were a mistake. I go further.
2022-04-28 Party Like It’s 1989 a Web Zero Manifesto
2022-04-27 Playing as a Woman in Final Fantasy XIV Why not, since I pretend to be a man in real life?
2022-04-26 Using GNU Recutils to Generate a Playlist Feed I ended up not doing this, but I don’t want to delete this post.
2022-04-18 Going Dark (Building A Shinobi Site) documenting the process by which I rebuilt my website (yet again)
2022-04-04 RE: The Box of Doom commentary on Krad’s zine, The Box of Doom
2022-03-29 About My Ad Blocker It’s your fault I block ads. You chose to use adtech, and adtech is malware.
2022-02-03 Hellbound; or, Curse God and Live This K-drama got me thinking about existentialism and the problem of evil.
2022-01-27 Personal Websites as Self-Portraiture The personal website is both medium and message, a self-publishing technology and a new visual arts medium, and every website is its operator’s self-portrait.
2021-12-02 Questions for Your Cast a brief guide to character creation without prior worldbuilding
2021-12-01 Amazon’s The Wheel of Time Blind Guardian did a better adaptation with a ten-minute power metal song.
2021-11-01 Fuck Trump; Let’s Go Brandon Deference to authority is un-American. Fuck the President no matter who he is.
2021-09-27 RE: Thoughts on Silly Hats a reply to marginalia.nu’s post on fashion and subculture
2021-09-22 Literature Ain’t Burger King Want to have it your way? Write it yourself.
2021-09-08 Of Course I Worked There. So What? a rant about the New York Times’ anti-remote work propaganda
2021-09-01 Hearing Rainfall Reflections on working from home, and why I don’t want to go back to onsite work
2021-08-25 Is the Thought of an Incel a Real Thought? I don’t believe incels actually exist. I think their problems are self-inflicted, and I have no sympathy.
2021-08-25 How to Ruin a Date all it takes is one word
2021-08-21 Does Therapy Work for Men? I’m not convinced it does, but I could be wrong. I am, after all, a man.
2021-08-20 Don’t Worry. I’m Still OK. I don’t believe anybody will care, but don’t be surprised if you don’t see me posting much here.
2021-06-15 My Father is Dead The man worked his ass off and he didn’t even get to retire.
2021-06-09 Installing Devuan 3.1 and Migrating to Ceres notes I compiled for future reference or in case they help others
2021-05-22 The Cancellation of Emily Wilder by the Cowardly Associated Press I love the smells of conservative hypocrisy and butthurt in the morning.
2021-05-11 What Five Stages of Grief? I think I’ve skipped straight to angry acceptance.
2021-05-06 My Father Is Dying The man I knew is gone, replaced by a broken, bewildered animal.
2021-05-05 Wife First, or Mother? Spoiler warning: I choose my wife. Always.
2021-04-29 a haiku from my study window blame Ghost of Tsushima if you want for this poetic impulse
2021-04-23 Entries for a New Devil’s Dictionary inspired by the original Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
2021-04-20 Why Should I Go Back to the Office? Also, why do I always get nervous when somebody at work talks about ‘safe spaces’?
2021-04-19 Not This Shit Again; or, ACAB I’m tired of hearing about cops going full Dredd and summarily executing civilians.
2021-04-16 Then I’m Against You Demanding that I choose a side will never work in your favor.
2021-04-13 Maybe I Don’t WANT To Be Reached? I have lots of reasons to avoid social media. Advertising is but one.
2021-04-07 YouTube Kids a Vapid Wasteland? No Shit, Sherlock. I’m sorry, but when has children’s entertainment in the US not been a vapid wasteland?
2021-04-01 It’s Just Some Other Asshole’s Computer Is this the curse of knowledge, or merely pride?
2021-03-25 Tina Guo Classical instruments, heavy metal, and fetishwear? Yes, please.
2021-03-24 The Wrong Kind of Diversity Diversity will be punished unless it can be exploited because under capitalism no lives matter.
2021-03-15 Parallel Transcoding from FLAC on Linux Using find and xargs can dramatically speed up the transcoding of large collections of FLAC files to formats like Ogg Vorbis or MP3.
2021-03-03 Unpleasant Truths About Culture Fit If somebody wants to discriminate against you when hiring without getting sued, this is the excuse they’ll use.
2021-02-26 Glory and Blame In which I wax irreligious and take a whack at the problem of evil.
2021-02-13 Gina Carano Will Be Fine She has fuck you money, and she hasn’t actually been silenced.
2021-01-17 Goddammit, Jon Schaffer Good thing I never mistook Iced Earth’s founding guitarist for a hero, let alone met the man in person.
2021-01-12 XTerm: Because Worse is Better It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to work.
2021-01-11 Parler Had It Coming Their management forgot that there is no cloud; it’s just some other asshole’s computer.
2021-01-07 Thoughts on the Insurrection I am fucking sick of right-wingers and their bullshit.
2021-01-02 My Wife Gave Me an AlphaSmart 3000 for Christmas I wasn’t expecting this, and it’s surprisingly handy now that I’ve gotten the hang of using it.
2020-10-21 Aspects of Tyranny and Oppression a beast with five faces: church, state, capital, society, and family
2020-10-20 More Stuff I Might Use Later These might work in a new edition of Without Bloodshed.
2020-10-14 Getting Back Into It But first I’ve got some background material to work out.
2020-10-06 I Voted By Mail Any public official who takes voting rights seriously should work toward making voting by mail the default.
2020-10-02 Spamtoberfest Man, Digital Ocean really didn’t think this through.
2020-10-01 Cobra Kai at Work a defense of wildcat strikes, legality be damned
2020-09-30 Shite Hustle (No Revenue) an affectionate parody of Alestorm’s “Shit Boat (No Fans)”
2020-09-24 The Cop in My Head All cops are bastards, especially the one in your head.
2020-07-17 Making Meaning inspired by a Gemini post by Case Duckworth
2020-07-12 RE: Naming Computers a reply to dctrud’s gemlog
2020-06-26 Leftist Dating Advice Considered Harmful I’ve never gotten effective dating advice from a leftist on the internet. Have you?
2020-06-19 Egoism, Neutrality, and Zeal I hate getting the hard sell, especially when you’re trying to sell me a cause.
2020-06-15 Bostock vs Clayton County, GA I’d like to see originalists shit themselves as they read this decision.
2020-06-13 Text Mode Weekend, Part Deux in which I continue to experiment with Slackware without X11 as a desktop OS
2020-06-09 What if Internal Wifi Was a Mistake? When was the last time you did anything with your computer offline?
2020-06-09 The NoFap Hoax, by an Anonymous Psychology Professor I found this on Pastebin and wanted to preserve it.
2020-06-06 Text Mode Weekend in which I experiment with Slackware without X11 as a desktop OS
2020-06-06 Choose Life? the problem with video games is that reality sucks
2020-06-03 RE: Against Bingeing TV contrary to acdw’s opinion, I don’t think Netflix invented binge culture
2020-05-31 Relevance Junkies I can’t be the only one sick of hearing about J. K. Rowling.
2020-05-19 On the Imperative of Niceness Stop tone-policing your fellow workers and start organizing general strikes.
2020-05-19 How to Avoid Reply Guys Anything you post in public is fair game.
2020-05-16 The Racist H. P. Lovecraft vs. Self-Righteous Internet Leftists Throwing Lovecraft’s work down the memory hole only harms the living.
2020-05-14 What Really Caused Nationfall? It’s easier to write post-apocalyptic sf when the world isn’t collapsing around you.
2020-05-10 Dragon Hunting; or, Helvetia delenda est An idea for a SF thriller that I probably won’t use
2020-05-09 Vocabulary Lessons There are plenty of good reasons to avoid the use of ‘niggardly’ that online leftists don’t cite.
2020-05-01 I’m a Sodomite and I’m OK You’re probably one too, unless you’ve never had recreational sex.
2020-04-20 Three Mile Island Dirty Rice a recipe for spicy eggy rice dish, without a lot of bullshit
2020-04-20 Final Fantasy VII Relived better than I expected, with some unexpected twists, but don’t pay full price
2020-01-01 Why I’m Going to Block You I don’t need a reason, but people give me so many good excuses.
2019-12-31 A Decade in Review a summary of what my life has been like this past decade
2019-12-30 Real Sex Education Compared to what I got in the 1990s, PornHub was an improvement.
2019-12-21 Containment, Social Media, and the Dangers of Imitation Deplatforming wasn’t a major issue before social media, and it still isn’t even though social media more often creates cacophony than community.
2019-10-02 I Want My BSD! my autobiography as a Unix fan, with apologies to Dire Straits…
2019-04-19 Proprietary Video Games a rant on deliberately crippled computers and software
2019-01-05 On Religion as Blasphemy Suppose we’ve been putting words in God’s mouth the whole damn time?
2019-01-04 On Allyship I’m nobody’s ally, but some of the things demanded of allies are easily granted, so why not?
2019-01-02 Harry Frankfurt: On Bullshit I’ve some to suspect that understanding and containing the spread of bullshit is the defining issue of our time.
2018-09-24 Turning Forty looking back from the top of the hill before I go over it
2018-07-12 The Truth About US Taxes? I’m not convinced that taxes are necessary to finance government.
2018-01-19 Leaving the Cult; or, Getting Free of Toxic Tech Culture This post is absofuckinlutely brilliant and you should have read it last week.
2017-03-31 The Definitive Count of Monte Cristo opinions on Robin Buss’ translation for Penguin Classics
2016-03-03 Finding the Sweet Spot: Purple Prose and Fire Emblem Fates What if purple prose, used in moderation, wasn’t the aesthetic atrocity that style fascists and writers even more pretentious than I am make it out to be?
2016-02-29 C.L. Moore: Queen of the Pulps one of the great 20th century originals and a worthy heir to Mary Shelley
2015-04-24 I Know I’m Fat. Did You Know You’re An Asshole? I don’t want or need your acceptance. You can think whatever you want; just don’t make your prejudice my problem.
2015-03-15 Programmer Passion Considered Harmful I might have been drunk when I posted this on Medium, but I meant it and I stand by it today.
2015-03-14 You Should Listen to Galneryus This Japanese power metal act’s first three albums are tight.
2015-03-11 Review: The Winter Boy I had gotten a free copy in my World Fantasy Convention 2014 book bag and had the pleasure of meeting Sally Wiener Grotta and attending a reading.
2014-08-16 Richard Zane’s Fantasmagoria an absolutely gonzo indie novel by an author I knew from Google+
2014-07-08 The Alpha Male Myth Alpha wolves don’t exist in the wild, only in captivity. Research has shown this. If alpha men exist at all, it’s because we’ve made a prison of our society.
2014-07-02 Derelict by L. J. Cohen: a YA Worthy of Heinlein a review resurrected and expanded from the archives; I had bought the book and gotten my money’s worth
2014-03-22 Worldbuilding: Mutual Aid vs the Welfare State I’m not an expert in economics or in political economy, but the more I tried to think things through the more impossible it became to justify writing a straightforward right-libertarian utopia.
2012-05-23 Post-IPO Facebook: Echoing the Dot-Com Boom From my archive, a prophecy that went unheard but not unfulfill’d: I saw Facebook’s enshittification coming, but didn’t think it would be this bad.
2004-10-31 Just Married! I might have had doubts, but I don’t have any regrets.
2002-07-04 One Nation Above God Never mind forcing kids to pledge allegiance, why are we forcing kids to go to school in the first place?
