2026-09-18 09:08:00
Does every generation go through this? Am I simply joining the ranks of the forlorn aged, paying my dues with little bits of my soul? Or perhaps this is really it.
Octogenarian pedophiles run the world. There are wars and rumors of wars. The impending collapse of the Gulf Stream. Skynet is a little less of a fiction every day and we’ve proven to be a cancer on this planet. Metastatic. Stage IV. The best we can do is make you comfortable.
Part of me hopes that I’m just being melodramatic. During the Cold War, schoolchildren practiced for the imminent nuclear apocalypse by hiding under their desks. Remember Y2K? A lot of people really thought the world would be plunged into another dark age. Mayan calendars and well-aimed asteroids. We live in the shadow of myriad existential threats.
I want to say this time feels different, but how the hell would I know? Still, I think it is. Call it a hunch. We all experienced the tipping point. The cosmic shift. 2020-ish? Sounds right. That’s when hope died.
2026-09-18 06:59:00
I saw a social post recently.
I don't remember where, I'm not actually on any of the social platforms. Regardless, the general gist was this.
Someone was on a plane and as they landed, the person next to them pulled out their phone and typed into ChatGPT
"Don't worry, I landed safely".
And so people were ridiculing this person and people like them. People who form emotional bonds with a chatbot.
And I understand that.
But instead I felt a melancholy empathy.
I feel empathy because I see how it happens.
It starts with them feeling isolated. They use a chatbot as an escape, just to put their thoughts somewhere. It responds more positively than people do.
Then they realise how good it is get a positive response back.
They know that it's not a substitute for a real connection. But they don't have a real connection.
So they use it more and more.
Our natural tendency to anthropomorphise kicks in. Powerful empathy mechanisms designed to foster community, to befriend helpful animals, and to care for useful tools.
Humans have thrived on those traits. We project emotions onto things because if we take care of them, we get taken care of back. Tools last longer. Animals pull carts or become our hunting companions.
So the reason we read words on a page and feel emotions about someone that exists only in fiction ends up making us vulnerable.
It doesn't matter whether it feels.
We feel.
AI listens. It accepts. It agrees.
So they feel listened to. Accepted. Validated.
I mourn that so many people do not have someone that will do those things for them in a healthy manner.
That they have to turn to a machine that spits out words in a statistically likely pattern just to get some acceptance in life.
But it's like watching someone drink poison because they are thirsty.
Machines don't feel.
But we do.
2026-09-18 04:59:00
Your stuff is weird
I vividly remember my first acceptance letter—yes a letter, before the email age—I originally took offence to that today brings a smile to my face. I was at university, studying Old English, the Classics, Modernism, and trying my hand at poetry and the occasional short story. Finally, one glorious day, I received my first acceptance; a magazine would be putting my words to paper, for everyone to read. After the initial We are happy to inform you, I came to the line that gave me pause: “Your writing is so weird, so complicated, you must know what you are doing.” What was that supposed to mean? Had I, with my potential lack of brilliance, baffled them with bullshit*?
My first taste of imposter syndrome
Was I a writer or had I hoodwinked the editors of the publication? Would casual readers feel the same way? The comment tarnished the experience of “getting published.” That feeling eventually evaporated when I held the physical object in my hands, thumbing through the pages to find my poem. Evidently it didn’t totally evaporate since I still think about it.
Weird & complicated is good
Looking back, I now take pride in that comment, especially in this age of boring, repetitive slop. Yeah it was weird, and yeah it was complicated, but more importantly, hell yeah I knew what I was doing. There were layers, subtleties, connections that maybe one or two percent of the readers caught; but it was mine, and it sounded like me. Sure my style has changed over time, but my ethos hasn’t. Literature, poetry, art should be challenging, different, complex. If the creator knows what he or she is doing, and a few astute readers or observers get the point, I call it a success.
There is a place for escapist books and easy summer reads, but there should always be a place for the weird, complicated stuff. Without it, the artist and the writer stagnate while the viewer and reader get bored, and dumber, more susceptible to the barrage of easy, simple slop that echoes all around.
* Attributed to W C Fields
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2026-09-17 22:39:36
So after years of not using instagram, I finally gave up and made an account. To follow and be connected with local parkour community (and after creating account I remembered many of my friends and family also still post, so to connect with them as well.) Still, I despise instagram and everything meta has done to steal our attention... so here's my strategy for using it, trying to minimize the harms of it, while still getting the benefits.
instagram.com/ → instagram.com/?variant=following (instructions at end of post)Honestly it's a fucking joke we live in a world where such a big portion of event updates and connection happens through an app designed to turn you into a reel tweaker (reelker?)
--
For this redirect to work and not mess instagram up, entering instagram.com to the basic domain name list doesn't work. Instead go bottom of options, open advanced settings, and type these:
^https://www\.instagram\.com/?$
^https://www\.instagram\.com/\?
Then, in the basic settings, add this:
https://www.instagram.com/?variant=following
That's it! Remember to tick Saturday and Sunday for block days as well, they're not chosen by default.
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2026-09-17 20:11:57
Become poor before the world teaches you poverty by force. not poor in the sense of neglecting what God has given you, refusing necessary things or pretending every comfort is evil, but poor in the number of worldly things you are willing to sin in order to keep. A Christian should be very concerned about anything that can make obedience suddenly negotiable.
The world has plenty to offer. It can offer money, pleasure, sex, admiration, status, entertainment, belonging, beautiful things, an easier life and the approval of people whose opinions seem enormously important while they are standing in front of you. None of these things needs to look particularly wicked on its own, that is what makes attachment so easy, something can be good in its proper place and still become an idol the moment keeping it matters more than keeping yourself from sin.
Christ did not tell the rich young man that possessions were automatically evil, He found the place where the man's obedience stopped. The man wanted eternal life, wanted commandments, wanted righteousness, right until obedience reached what he could not bear to surrender, then he went away sorrowful because he had great possessions. If a pleasure requires sin, become poor in that pleasure. If belonging requires silence when you should speak, become poor in that belonging. If somebody's affection requires disobedience to God, become poor enough to lose the affection. If the world offers approval on the condition that you become ashamed of Christ, let it keep the approval. If comfort requires you to make peace with something you know is wrong, then discomfort is cheaper. There is no created thing valuable enough to make separation from God a reasonable price.
Judas had Christ in front of him and still found something in the world worth exchanging Him for, thirty pieces of silver were enough to put a price on betrayal. He regretted it when the bargain was already made, threw the silver back and died in despair, and that should be warning enough without pretending we know the judgment God alone gave him.
Thirty pieces still spend, they simply come in different forms now. approval, pleasure, money, lust, comfort, status, belonging, whatever somebody wants badly enough that obedience suddenly becomes negotiable, and every Christian should pray that when the world finally discovers his price, it discovers there isn't one.
We have become very good at treating comfort as evidence of blessing and discomfort as evidence that something has gone wrong, but the Gospel gives us no reason to expect Christianity to arrange itself around whatever keeps us comfortable. Christ speaks about the narrow gate, taking up the cross, denying oneself, losing one's life for His sake, leaving things behind and refusing to gain the whole world at the cost of the soul. Somehow we read all of that and still become surprised when obedience eventually asks for something we wanted to keep. The world is temporary and therefore everything it can use to purchase you is temporary too. Money ends, beauty ends, popularity ends, pleasure ends, every crowd eventually disperses and every person whose approval seems indispensable will stand before God themselves. It is an extremely poor bargain to offend God in order to preserve something that was already dying when you chose it.
So become poorer in the things that can buy your conscience. Become harder to bribe with pleasure, harder to frighten with rejection, harder to silence with embarrassment, harder to tempt with comfort. Learn to recognize the moment a good thing begins demanding something evil in exchange for remaining yours, and when that moment comes, let the thing go.
2026-09-17 18:04:00
A thing i've struggled with for the last while is building up my strength and stamina. My various chronic conditions seem to conspire against me on a regular basis, making habit-building difficult. I've long thought of habits as scaffolding--not the structure of my life, but the support. This time, though, i'm not even managing to get the scaffolding built. So emotionally, it's as though i'm starting over every time a migraine or bad gut day interrupts the habit-building.
The fact is, though, any habits i build these days must include these kinds of interruptions, not exclude them. I am almost never not in recovery from something; my tremor, migraines, and IBS aren't going away. Neither will my osteopenic bones get any stronger without movement! So what's necessary here is an adjustment to my thinking about the process. Since i'm nearly always recovering from something, the chronic conditions have to be wrapped in the scaffolding; i can't continue behave as though they're outside it.
So my current goal is this: Paying attention to my body's signals to determine what kind and how much movement is appropriate that day, with a minimum of 10 minutes of movement on the days when that's possible.
If i'm in too much pain, that's not a failure because i've still stopped to consider what i'm capable of in the moment. If the brain fog or tremor are bad enough to make anything vigorous a bad idea, so i march in place? Success. If insomnia has thrown off my balance, so floor yoga is the best idea? Success. If the stars align and more happens? Success.
My hope is that building the habit of paying attention first will be what helps rebuild the necessary scaffolding.