Posts in Writing (20 found)
Ruslan Osipov 2 days ago

Unveiling my gaming blog: Unmapped Worlds

For the past eight months, I’ve been running two parallel writing projects. You know about this one: my weekly posts in this blog (this is post 42, by the way). But there has been a shadow project running in the background. I love video games, and I’ve collected too many opinions on them to keep them to myself. Meet Rooslawn’s Unmapped Worlds , a blog where I write essays about games. I decided to go for a phonetic spelling of Ruslan in the title, in the hopes I’ll get misnamed less. I don’t review games. Instead, I write about game mechanics and tropes, and I love breaking down how digital worlds are constructed. It’s a place where I can complain about my dislike for map markers and quest GPS, or explore the reality that I rarely actually finish the games I play. It is a home for deep dives into immersion, design philosophy, and the specific friction that makes a game memorable. A few of the pieces I’m most proud of include when I didn’t speak the language of games and difficulty sliders are dumb . Running the project anonymously was a great idea - I was able to be more vulnerable, it allowed me to experiment more with different topics and formats, and find my voice. The voice of Unmapped Worlds can be described as rambly. I’ve been thinking of it as written gumbo . It isn’t clean and corporate, there’s texture, love and care put into it, and you know it’s authentic. Gumbo is something spicy, authentic, textured, visceral, and willing to take risks that alienate some of the audience. This is unlike slop, which usually comes from the desire for inoffensive predictability and consensus, even if we have to falsify our preferences to achieve it. - The FLUX Review, episode 211 Ultimately I felt like attaching my name to Unmapped Worlds does it justice - who I am is highly relevant to the writing. Gumbo’s flavor is unique to the chef. If you like video games, see if any of the 42 (so far) essays connect with you, and consider subscribing to my newsletter .

gaming Gaming writing Writing
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annie's blog 2 days ago

All feelings mean something but it might be something dumb

If your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can. — Marcus Aurelius What we learn as children programs us in certain ways. These programs run subconsciously. They determine our default emotional responses to everything  and the meaning we derive from those responses and the behaviors we enact based on the meanings we derive. Some of these programs served me well in childhood but don’t work for helping me be the person I want to be as an adult. There are healthy ways to deal with difficult things. Sometimes those are the routes I take. Sometimes I am not taking any routes, I am just sitting in my chair being a glazed donut of a human. It feels good to remember that’s okay. I don’t have to feel bad about everything. Being perfect is never a precondition for peace.  Self-acceptance doesn’t come when I do enough but when I realize I am enough. There are small cycles and big cycles. I know myself well enough to know what I come back to, most of the time. I’m okay with my equilibrium. It tilts this way and that, but it never tilts all the way over. The center can hold. Or maybe it can’t. Maybe things fall apart, and the center cannot hold, and it’s tumultuous but not apocalyptic. There’s this option I like to call forming a new center. It does create vast periods of feeling lost, unmoored, ungrounded. Big feelings, behavior shifting. Generally, lots of swinging and flailing. When you’re in the middle it seems chaotic, and mostly it is, but there’s something else going on too. A planting of feet on new ground. Disorientation is just the feeling you have before you get oriented.

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Weakty 3 days ago

Advice columnist for one

As I've been pushing myself to write more intimately about creative processes, slice of life experiences, and vulnerability, I've started to see my own writing as sounding like thinly-veiled advice columnist writing. I did not see that coming. And not coincidentally, I'm starting to see some of the writing I've been keeping up with on the internet as in a similar vein. I’ve heard creative people advocate that you should put out what you want to see in the world. That when you write, you create the world you want to be in (not sure how this applies to horror writers, though, ha). When you make music, you make the music you wish to hear. And so on. After having written for a few weeks straight in this fashion, I see now that I’m writing for my past self. I’m writing the things I wish someone had told me. And while the idea of being seen this way is mostly abhorrent to me, I’m also quite surprised and delighted by this. I'm pleased that I am now writing publicly the sorts of things that I wish I had been able to come across at a previous time in my life (often not long ago). But of course having this in the public sphere makes it strangely feel like I'm writing an advice column. Fundamentally, I think this is also totally fine (if a bit bewildering and amusing). But it takes me to yet another piece of advice shared with me a long time ago—that even when you're having a hard time going through something, it can bring you a lot of peace to remember that other people are experiencing this too. Simple yes, but it’s altogether easy to cling to what can feel like a problem unique to us (arguably entirely for the worse, whatever your reasons may be). I wouldn't dare to extrapolate these thoughts to greater theories of a utopia based in wide-spread vulnerability and openness, and so I’ll simply sign off for now. Ann Landers Weakty

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DYNOMIGHT 6 days ago

Why the chicken crossed the road, according to various entities

When I started this blog, I promised myself that I would always steer into weirdness. (As they say, “Get busy being weird, or get busy dying.”) While time has shown there are limits to what y’all will tolerate [ 1 2 3 4 ] I still sometimes feel a need to publish something that’s pure exuberant stupidity. Thus, I present: WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD ACCORDING TO VARIOUS PEOPLE OR OTHER ENTITIES Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) The chicken ain’t fussy. Everybody gotta be somewhere. The chicken been on this side a long time and never suffered none for it. The chicken don’t see no obvious benefit to the other side. But the talk of the town is nothing but crossing, and the chicken can’t help but go see what got everyone so stirred up. (Mark Twain) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) The outcome would be best if no one crossed. However, if other chickens do cross, then the outcome would be better if this chicken also crossed. The chicken rejects the Kantian universalism. So the chicken crosses. (Derek Parfit) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) You were a beautiful little chick The whole world was before you You greased your wattles and crossed the road Sure it would last forever Now it’s a cold morning and you’re driving to work Cursing all the cockerels in your way How did you get here Where did that little chick go (Pink Floyd) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) It didn’t. There is no chicken. You are the road. You and the sides are in an entangled macrostate. The chicken is an emergent property of the superposition. The chicken abhors being measured. A team of plucky chemists rush to inject enough decoherence to collapse the wavefunction before the chicken can consume the lightcone. (Christopher Nolan) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? C H I C K E N 3, 8, 9, 3, 11, 5, 14 11, 9, 3, 8 14, 3, 5 gcd(11^(9 + 3) - 8, 14), 3 × 5 (Ramanujan) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) For sex. Neither glamorized nor gross, possibly added for commercial reasons, possibly to make some point about sex’s place in real life. It’s all very unclear. (Paul Thomas Anderson) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) Did it cross the road, though? Did it? Sure, the chicken is associated with crossing. And it’s mechanistically possible for a chicken to cross a road. It’s plausible the chicken crossed the road. But maybe the chicken and the crossing were both caused by something else. Or maybe the road crossed the chicken . This is why we have RCTs. Come on, people! (Dynomight) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) Once there was a dragon who watched over the chicken village. The chickens begged the dragon, “Please let us have a road, so that we might cross back and forth!” “A road?” the dragon asked. “Are you sure?” “Yes!” the chickens answered. “A road! We wish for nothing but a road to cross, and then we will be happy forever and ever!” [7000 words redacted] And thus, all mass-energy in the universe was converted to chicken-torture annihilators. Makes you think. (LessWrong) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) We were out on the edge of the farm when the diethyltryptamine took hold. Beaky screamed something about coccidiostats in our feed and made a break for it, totally out of control. Before I could stop him, I heard the voice of God say, “Scrapples: The road awaits.” Suddenly I was standing on the median, cars screaming past, a group a baby ducks asking where the mountains of peas I’d promised them were. (Hunter S. Thompson) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) The chicken’s crossing is not a voluntary act but the unconscious actualization of a class habitus: raised in a coop whose symbolic boundaries naturalize the road as a site of danger and prestige, the chicken embodies the field’s doxa that “real” chickens must invest in the illusio of reaching the median. While the chicken never doubts the legitimacy of the crossing rules, crossing is not about the other side, but a performance of distinction that ultimately perpetuates the same field of species domination that produced it. (Pierre Bourdieu) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) grug on one side grug see other side grug chicken many metal box speed by very fast very volume metal box seem to stay on black land strip grug think better if metal box not hit grug because box hard and grug small soft chicken grug wait a while when no metal box for a while also often no metal box for a while after largest gap between metal box around 20 minutes grug wait until no metal box for 10 minutes then grug cross no metal box come other side also fine maybe cross back someday grug think side not matter too much grug enjoy chicken life either side same chicken life pretty good grug hope you also have life as good as grug chicken life groodbye from grug Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) Before there was chicken the road was waiting. The road is empty. Dust on your hackles. Heat rises in shimmering waves. No way to see what’s coming. How did it come to this. How a chicken supposed to move with roads everywhere. Creosote blows in from the mesa. Nothing left but to cross. You cross and nothing happens. A few minutes later a car stops but you don’t turn around. A door opens and you hear a click. Then the car is gone. (Cormac McCarthy) Q) Why did the chicken cross the road? A) For food. (An actual chicken) Requests: Peter Singer, Ayn Rand, Judith Butler, Bertrand Russell, Andrei Tarkovsky, the mother hen, a junglefowl, an SSRI, Singapore, the chicken’s hypothalamus.

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Tenderlove Making 1 weeks ago

Seattle Downtown Library

I want to try posting more images to my blog, so here’s my first try. Instagram doesn’t really seem like a good place to post photos anymore, so I figured I’d try on my blog. I’d like to get my blog working with Posse Party at some point, I just need to figure out the API keys, and then I can cross post this to Instagram anyway. Recently I went on a photo walk to the Seattle downtown public library. These images are from that photo walk! I’ve been living in Seattle since before the library was built, and I never took the chance to actually go visit, so this was a good opportunity. I feel like when you live somewhere, you don’t take the opportunity to visit all of the cool stuff there, and going on local photo walks seems like a good way for me to visit more of the city. Anyway, the Seattle public library is really great and I recommend anyone to visit!

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Manuel Moreale 1 weeks ago

On eating shit

You’re sitting at a table. In front of you, a series of plates. They’re full of shit (like some people). Not the same shit, mind you. It’s different types, produced by different animals, in different quantities. The unfortunate reality of the situation is that you have to eat the contents of one of those plates. Yeah, it sucks, I’m sorry. But you just have to. So you understandably start going through the thought process of figuring out which one is the “best” one. You start examining the shape, the texture, the animal that produced it. You start finding reasons to pick one over another. You start rationalising, trying to justify your decision to the other people who, like you, also need to pick which one to eat. It’s a process. A shitty one, I might say. But in going through this ordeal, you start losing track of the only thing that really matters: this situation fucking sucks, and there’s no good answer. The only reasonable thing to do is to pick the plate with the least steamy, smelly, nasty pile of shit and then figure out a way not to find yourself in that situation ever again. Sometimes eating shit is unavoidable. The only thing you can do is make it as painless as possible. Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome. Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs

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Manuel Moreale 1 weeks ago

Karen

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Karen, whose blog can be found at chronosaur.us . Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter . The People and Blogs series is supported by Pete Millspaugh and the other 127 members of my "One a Month" club. If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month. Hello! My name is Karen. I work in IT support for a large company’s legal department, and am currently working on my Bachelors in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance. I live near New Orleans, Louisiana, with my husband and two dogs - Daisy, A Pembroke Welsh Corgi, and Mia, a Chihuahua. Daisy is The Most Serious Corgi ever (tm), and Mia has the personality of an old lady who chain smokes, plays Bingo every week at the rec center, and still records her soap operas on a VHS daily. My husband is an avid maker (woodworking and 3D printing, mostly), video gamer, and has an extensive collection of board games that takes up the entire back wall of our livingroom. As for me, outside of work, I’m a huge camera nerd and photographer. I love film photography, and recently learned how to develop my own negatives at home! I also do digital - I will never turn my nose up at one versus the other. I’ve always been into assorted fandoms, and used to volunteer at local sci-fi/fantasy/comic conventions up to a few years ago. I got into K-Pop back in 2022, and am now an active participant in the local New Orleans fan community, providing Instax photo booth services for events. I’ve also hosted K-Pop events here in NOLA as well. My ult K-Pop group is ATEEZ, but I’m a proud multi fan and listen to whatever groups or music catch my attention, including Stray Kids, SHINee, and Mamamoo. I also love 80s and 90s alternative, mainly Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, and Garbage. And yes, I may be named Karen but I refuse to BE a “Karen”. I don’t get upset when people use the term, I find it hilarious. So I have been blogging off and on since 2001 or so - back when they were still called “weblogs” and “online journals”. Originally, I was using LiveJournal, but even with a paid account, I wanted to learn more customization and make a site that was truly my own. My husband - then boyfriend - had their own server, and gave me some space on it. I started out creating sites in Microsoft Frontpage and Dreamweaver (BEFORE Adobe owned them!), and moved to using Greymatter blog software, which I loved and miss dearly. I moved to Wordpress in - 2004 maybe? - and used that for all my personal sites until 2024. I’d been reading more and more about the Indieweb for a while and found Bear , and I loved the simplicity. I’ve had sites ranging from a basic daily online journal, to a fashion blog, to a food blog, to a K-Pop and fandom-centric blog, to what it is today - my online space for everything and anything I like. I taught myself HTML and CSS in order to customize and create my sites. No classes, no courses, no books, no certifications, just Google and looking at other people’s sites to see what I liked and how they did it. My previous job before this one, I was a web administrator for a local marketing company that built sites using DNN and Wordpress, and I’m proud to say that I got that job and my current one with my self-developed skills and being willing to learn and grow. I would not be where I am today, professionally, if it wasn’t for blogging. I’ll be totally honest - I don’t have a writing process. I get inspiration from random thoughts, seeing things online, wanting to share the day-to-day of my life. I don’t draft or have someone proof read, I just type out what I feel like writing. When I had blogs focusing on specific things - plus size fashion and K-Pop, respectively - I kept a list of topics and ideas to refer back to when I was stuck for ideas. That was when I was really focused on playing the SEO and search engine algorithm game, though, where I was trying to stick to the “two-three posts a week” rule in an attempt to boost my search engine results. I don’t do that now. I do still have a list of ideas on my phone, but it’s nothing I am feeling FORCED to stick to. It’s more along the lines of that I had an idea while I was out, and wanted to note it so I don’t forget. Memory is a fickle thing in your late 40s, LOL. My space absolutely influences my mindset for writing. I prefer to write in the early morning, because my brain operates best then. (I know I am an exception to the rule by being an early bird.) I love weekend mornings when I can get up really early and settle into my recliner with my laptop and coffee, and just listen to some lofi music and just feel topics and ideas out. I also made my office/guest bedroom into a cozy little space, with a daybed full of soft blankets and fluffy pillows and cushions, and a lap desk. In all honesty, my preferred location to write is at a coffeeshop first thing in the morning. I love sitting tucked in a booth with a coffee and muffin, headphones on and listening to music, when the sun is just on the cusp of rising and the shop is still a little too chilly. That’s when the creative ideas light up the brightest and the synapses are firing on all cylinders. Currently, my site is hosted on Bear . I used to be a self-hosted Wordpress devotee, but in mid-late 2024, I got really tired of the bloat that the apps had become. In order to use it efficiently for me, I had to install entirely too many plugins to make it “simpler”. (Shout-out to the Indieweb Wordpress team, though - they work so hard on those plugins!) Of course, the more plugins you have, the less secure your site… My domain is registered through Hostinger . To write my posts, I use Bear Markdown Notes. I heard about this program after seeing a few others talking about using it for drafts, notes, etc. I honestly don’t think I’d change much! I really love using Bear Blog. It reminds me of the very old school LiveJournal days, or when I used Greymatter. It takes me back to the web being simpler, more straightforward, more fun. I also like Bear’s manifesto , and that he built the service for longevity . I would probably structure my site differently, especially after seeing some personal sites set up with more of a “digital garden” format. I will eventually adjust my site at some point, but for now, I’m fine with it. (That and between school and work, it’s kind of low on the priority list.) I purchased a lifetime subscription to Bear after a week of using it, which ran around $200 - I don’t remember exactly. I knew that I was going to be using the service for a while and thought I should invest in a place that I believed in. My Hostinger domain renewals run around $8.99 annually. My blog is just my personal site - I don’t generate any revenue or monetise in any way. I don’t mind when people monetize their site - it’s their site and they can do what they choose. As long as it’s not invading others’ privacy or harmful, I have absolutely no issue. Make that money however you like. Ooooh I have three really good suggestions for both checking out and interviewing! Binary Digit - B is kind of an influence for me to play with my site again. They have just this super cool and early 2000s vibe and style that I really love. Their site reminds me of me when I first started blogging, when I was learning new things and implementing what I thought was cool on my site, joining fanlistings, making new online friends. Kevin Spencer - I love Kevin’s writing and especially his photography. Not only that, he has fantastic taste in music. I’ve left many a comment on his site about 80s and 90s synthpop and industrial music. A Parenthetical Departure - Sylvia was one of the first sites I started reading when I started looking up info on Bear Blog. They are EXTREMELY talented and have an excellent knack for playing with design, and showing others how it works. One of my side projects is Burn Like A Flame , which is my local K-pop and fandom photography site. I actualy just started a project there that is more than slightly based on People and Blogs - The Fandom Story Project . I’m interviewing local fans to talk about what they love and what their feelings are on fandom culture now, and I’m accompanying that with a photoshoot with that person. It’s a way to introduce people to each other within the community. Two of my favorite YouTube channels that I have recently been watching are focused on fashion discussion and history - Bliss Foster and understitch, . If you like learning and listening to information on fashion, I highly recommend these creators. I know a TON of people have now seen K-Pop Demon Hunters (which I love, and the movie has a great message for not only kids, but adults). If you’ve seen this and are interested in getting into K-Pop, I suggest checking out my favorite group, ATEEZ. If you think that most K-Pop is all chirpy bubbly cutesy songs, let me suggest two by this group that aren’t what you’d expect: Guerrilla and Turbulence . I strongly suggesting watching without the translations, and then watching again with them. Their lyrics are the thing that really drew me into this group, and had me learning more about the deeper meaning behind a lot of K-Pop songs. And finally, THANK YOU to Manu for People and Blogs! I always find some really great new sites to check out after reading these interviews, and I am truly honored to be asked to join this list of great bloggers. It’s inspiring me to work harder on my blog and to post more often. Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed . If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 117 interviews . Make sure to also say thank you to Benny and the other 127 supporters for making this series possible.

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Harper Reed 1 weeks ago

Note #299

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I appreciate you. Thank you for using RSS. I appreciate you. Email me

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ava's blog 1 weeks ago

it feels like a calling, finally

Content warning: Brief mentions of disordered eating habits. Whenever I am deeply and actively involved in my passion topic (data protection law), I don’t care about the superficial stuff anymore. Writing, researching, talking to others about it, attending events just completely takes me out of the usual thought spirals and needless worries and makes me feel so at peace, so happy. I mean the things that the internet is especially good at convincing you of, even if you aren’t on specific platforms or in certain bubbles; the things that drip down to you from elsewhere, seep through the barriers. Beauty standards, looksmaxxing, pretty privilege, the current emphasis on making money via your looks as a social media or OF career, the idea of a dating market, dating strategies and having to optimize your value and constantly self-improve. The hope that by leveraging looks and weird manipulative books on how to win people over, you’ll get further professionally, as people perceive you as more competent and trustworthy. You need to be perfect because if you can’t even take care of yourself, how will you handle anything else? Together with a lot of memes about how “that’s how ugly you look if you (negative behavior)”. The message is clear: If you are sick and/or ugly, something is wrong with you and it shows on the outside to warn everyone to stay away. Some girl putting on makeup is telling you what’s chic and not chic, creating fear that people will not choose you, will even exclude you for minor a faux-pas. Things like considering a jaw shave to make my face more symmetrical or moving my hairline or doing Invisalign or losing another 10kg or considering a fitness regime to develop visible abs… only pop up as a sort of static noise and circular obsessive thoughts when I am lonely and/or directionless, hopeless, lost, questioning my path, not engaging actively enough with what I love. Whenever I am fired up for my passion and engaging with it, I don’t care about my looks or my weight. All I care about is treating my body well so I can do more of what makes me happy, and serve that passion well, devote myself fully. It feels like my calling, it feels like something I want to give myself to entirely, like a farmer is giving themselves to their harvest completely (cringiest thing I have ever said on this blog, but I don't know how else to say it!). I no longer care about eating as little as possible, and trying to postpone it as long as possible, while choosing low cal options that are as filling as possible to cheat my body. Instead, I care about eating enough and at the right times so I can read complicated texts, write, analyze, learn, am able to follow a lecture, and feel stable enough to travel and make it somewhere. I value it as the fuel that it is, to keep this meat mechsuit going that enables me to do the things I do, together with exercise for strength, not calorie deficit. I cannot do my part if I'm dizzy and weak. I also stop obsessing about how fat or asymmetrical my face might look from an angle or while I smile. Instead, I care about what I develop inside, and what comes out of it; that my ideas and words are meaningful, true, helpful. I care about understanding things correctly, of being able to explain them well, and about being able to afford my dreams and goals (further education), not beauty. I finally get to focus on giving my cognitive power, my presence, my body for the cause, not the eye; because I feel like this is my mission, and to pursue my mission well, I can’t starve myself, I can’t prioritize risky elective procedures and recovery, I can’t withdraw out of fear of being perceived as ugly or weird when my desired field compels me to talk to people more knowledgeable than me and learn. It really is true that beauty standards hold us back so much, distract us, take bandwidth and focus away. It can be so hard to break through the fog of these thoughts that tell us to provide value with our bodies and not our thoughts and words. I’m not going to be a better expert at this topic by being underweight or having abs or a smaller cheek, so why waste time on it pretending these subtle changes will help my overall success? The work ahead is straightforward, and nothing of it involves beauty. The internet drastically overstates the importance of these things. I already have great grades, a great work ethic, readers, an amazing mentor, the drive and intelligence. All of that is much more important for my success and happiness than fixing superficial flaws that no one but me is really noticing. My body is already going through enough, it deserves better. Reply via email Published 27 Nov, 2025

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The Jolly Teapot 1 weeks ago

November 2025 blend of links

Some links don’t call for a full blog post, but sometimes I still want to share some of the good stuff I encounter on the web. Music of Wellness (From Severance: Season 1) By Theodore Shapiro ・Right next to the music from GoldenEye for Nintendo 64 as one of the best music to play while working. (via Kottke ) Random scenes from Tokyo, and some thoughts on online publishing ・Reading this post, I kept nodding along in agreement with everything Winnie Lim wrote: What is the point of most of the things we do online? This is not a cynical take, but a real question. My simple, if a little dull, answer is that we do it for ourselves first. If I were living in 1884, would I write a public journal, a diary, letters to a few friends, or books? I don’t know the answer, but a blog is what encourages me to write in 2025, just like it did twenty years ago when I published my first blog posts on Windows Live Spaces. There wasn’t really a point back then either, but an irresistible urge. Dealgorithmed ・Speaking of wondering what the point of what we do on the web is, Manu will launch a new “ newsletter about the small web, the poetic web, the quiet web, the web many say we lost years ago, yet it's still here, ready to be rediscovered by those who care ” Count me in. What A.I. is Really For, by Christopher Butler ・“ I don’t worry about the end of work so much as I worry about what comes after — when the infrastructure that powers A.I. becomes more valuable than the A.I. itself, when the people who control that infrastructure hold more sway over policy and resources than elected governments. ” Citizen Eco-Drive Cal. 0100 ・If I had the money, this is the watch I would wear and cherish. This video by Hodinkee captures very well what there is to love about this unusual quartz watch; I mean, just look at how the seconds hand moves… Marvellous. Oncle Bob ・The great mind behind my hosting service of choice, xmit , launched a new app called Oncle Bob that aims to make static site deployments a breeze. If I keep using the xmit CLI for now — especially after investing a lot of time learning how to use scripts — this finally makes things so easy for everyone. Excellent tool. The bird people of Lake Manchar: surviving in a vanishing oasis ・Reading this article has sent me into a Wikipedia spiral of links for 90 minutes or so. A very sad story that made me even more curious and fascinated by this part of the world. Random Mini Dungeons ・Dave Rupert shared a video from Odd Artworks’ Random Mini Dungeon video series , and I have to say that I love absolutely everything about these videos. If I knew how to draw isometric perspectives properly (and how to draw at all), this is probably what I would do during rainy weekends. Screw it, I’m installing Linux ・“ I do not want to talk to my computer. I do not want to use OneDrive. I’m sure as hell not going to use Recall. I am tired of Windows trying to get me to use Edge, Edge trying to get me to use Bing, and everything trying to get me to use Copilot. I paid for an Office 365 subscription so I could edit Excel files. Then Office 365 turned into Microsoft 365 Copilot, and I tried to use it to open a Word document and it didn’t know how. ” Surely you’re joking, Mr Suleyman ・V.H. Belvadi on how people in charge of A.I. are appearing surprised when learning that others are not as in awe of its potential as they would like: “ There is a sense of self-serving, faux admiration for a vision of a product intended to gaslight the public into believing in its capabilities. Anthropomorphised, such entities would be called charlatans. ” More “Blend of links” posts here

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Kix Panganiban 1 weeks ago

Sometimes 1% > 100%

I went to bed last night feeling excited to bike across town the next morning. But between the loud music coming from my next-door neighbor and my body still sore from going to the gym that day, I woke up the next morning really groggy and lacking the willpower to get up, put on my cycling gear, and push my legs. Even so, I did it anyway. I got up, pedaled the bare minimum -- a 6K lap across my usual morning walk route -- and headed back home. It was the best decision ever. I came back feeling energized and refreshed. After making a cup of pourover, I think I just had the perfect start to my day. I've come to realize that sometimes things that feel daunting or insurmountable are actually easy to get past once you've just tried . Sometimes the bare minimum is enough, and getting past the hump will propel you forward. We don't always have to go 100% -- it's often enough to just go .

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A Working Library 2 weeks ago

Where there is a wall

In Three Guineas , an essay that expands on her writing in A Room of One’s Own , Virginia Woolf responds to a letter asking her to lend her support to the effort to prevent war. She is writing in 1937, a moment when war is less an abstract notion than an insistent neighbor, knocking loudly on the door. She considers, in light of other requests made to her, whether or not education is an antidote to war-making. But in consulting history on the matter, she is forced to conclude the opposite: Need we collect more facts from history and biography to prove our statement that all attempt to influence the young against war through education they receive at universities must be abandoned? For do they not prove that education, the finest education in the world, does not teach people to hate force, but to use it? Do they not prove that education, far from teaching the educated generosity and magnanimity, makes them on the contrary so anxious to keep their possessions, that “grandeur and power” of which the poet speaks, in their own hands, that they will use not force but much subtler methods than force when they are asked to share them? And are not force and possessiveness very closely connected with war? Woolf writes of the refusal on the part of most university professors to teach at the women’s colleges, of the fact that the women’s colleges are beggarly compared to those of their brothers, that women are still largely precluded from entering the universities. That is, far from the open arms one might associate with an institution committed to generosity or magnanimity, the university seems to have the qualities of a locked door. What would become of women if they acquired the key? And the facts which we have just extracted from biography seem to prove that the professions have a certain undeniable effect upon the professors. They make the people who practice them possessive, jealous of any infringement on their rights, and highly combative if anyone dares dispute them. Are we not right then in thinking that if we enter the same professions we shall acquire the same qualities? And do not such qualities lead to war? It is hard not to read this in light of the present-day assault on universities, of their effusive capitulation to an authoritarian power, of the huge sums of money that make paying such bribes possible—and of the wars being fought daily across our cities and streets. And, yes, on the one hand, the attack on higher education is a crime and a terrible loss, both for the students and professors, the researchers and scientists who are trampled in the process, and for humanity at large, who will no longer benefit from their great work. But so, too, is it a loss that education became so high, so much an enormous business, a place of credentials and prestige, of status and repute, grandeur and power. Anything that grows high must build up ramparts to defend itself, and where there is a wall there is—one day or another—a war. View this post on the web , subscribe to the newsletter , or reply via email .

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Manuel Moreale 2 weeks ago

A moment in yet another memorial

There’s something unique about visiting WW memorials. I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s a strange mix of awe, sorrow, gratefulness, and many other feelings all bunched together. Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome. Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs

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flowtwo.io 2 weeks ago

On 10 Years of Writing a Blog Nobody Reads

In November 2015, I started a blog on Blogger. My first post was a book review of The Martian by Andy Weir. 10 years and a couple of blog migrations later, I'm still writing. I wanted to share some thoughts and learnings I picked up throughout this time. Some of it is specific to writing a blog, but some is generally applicable to writing in any format. goodnight sweet prince One of the main reasons I maintain this blog is to become a better writer. I really appreciate when someone's writing feels effortless. Whether it's in a book, an article, or even a technical document—communicating effectively is a fine art. I'm not there yet, but I enjoy the process of improving. My style has certainly improved since my early days of writing. Reading my old stuff is painful. I would use too many qualifiers and verbose phrases. It was a direct translation of the way I spoke, which turns out is a bad strategy for how you should write. If your goal is to have other people read—and hopefully enjoy—your writing, you should make an effort to edit your thoughts. Here's a sample of the useless phrases I would add to the start or end of almost every sentence: This was my worst habit when I started. It's just fluff that makes it exhausting to read. It's redundant to say "I think" at any point in an opinion piece. keep all that pondering to yourself buddy Using this "careful" language just softens your ideas to the point of being inarguable. If you start a sentence with "I feel..." then no one can dispute anything that follows, since it's just your feeling. This is boring to read. Writing a blog, or anything really, is your contribution to public discourse. Sure, this blog only averages 10 page views a week (9 are bots and 1 is me) but I'm still throwing my ideas out there into the digital ether. If you're publishing something on the internet, you might as well stand tall behind your words and wait for someone to call bullshit. Using multiple adjectives is another bad habit I struggled with in the past. Phrases like: These are unnecessarily descriptive and, more often than not, redundant. Just use one really good punctilious adjective instead. Open a thesaurus if you need to. My goal now is to use less words to convey an idea. Everyone's interpretation of words is different, so using more precise language will just muddle your ideas. To use a metaphor from electronic communication—there's so much noise in the channel that modulating your signal doesn't provide any extra information. The writing process should be highly iterative—many drafts are needed before you arrive at something you're happy with. Taking time between drafts can help too, so you come back to it with a different perspective on what you wrote. If we're talking about a blog, there's really no strict timeline for getting a piece of content out, so when you choose to publish is up to you. Even after publishing, there's nothing that stops you from updating the content afterwards. You should write down ideas when you have them. Literally, I wrote the genesis of this paragraph while in bed at 5am in January. You never know when inspiration will strike, so I find it best to get the thought down quickly and then expand on it later. It really helps to make the ability to write as accessible to you as possible. For example, I use Obsidian for all my drafts now. It has cross-device support with cloud syncing, so "writing from anywhere" (mostly my phone) is easy now. I can now publish my smart toaster review directly from my smart toaster There's a lot of talk about the value of "manual" writing in the age of generative AI. GenAI, specifically Large Language Models, can be thought of as calculators for writing; they can generate coherent written ideas instantly from any input. So just like how nobody does long division by hand anymore, maybe people won't do much writing by hand one day. The introduction of GenAI has increased the surplus of written content to infinity, essentially. So from an economics standpoint, without any resource scarcity the value of written words has been reduced to zero. But is there still value in human produced writing? Subjectively, yes. Objectively? I'm not sure. I think there's a lot of personal value in writing though. Book reviews, for example, are essential for gaining a better understanding of what you read. It helps crystallize the knowledge in some way and integrates it into your mental map of the world. The reviews I post vary in content—sometimes it's a critique, or a summary, or an extrapolation of a concept from the book I'll do additional research on. Either way, this process helps to remember something about the book long-term. I think of it like breathing but for ideas. We do so much reading all day—there should be a natural balance with producing words too. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale... And I'm still not a great writer by any means. There's a lot of ways to improve, which is kind of motivating and excites me to keep writing. I often write "too much" and struggle to really condense my thoughts into a sharpened essay. Most of my posts are 2000+ words...nowadays I'm trying to restrict myself to 1000 words. The limit forces me to really think about the core idea I want to share. *checks word count* Thanks for reading! I believe... It feels like... It seems that... In my opinion... ...Interesting and thought-provoking... ... broad, wide-ranging... ...detailed and well-written...

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Weakty 2 weeks ago

Counting Priorities

Take a moment and ask yourself: what are my priorities ? Perhaps, like me, you’ve walked decades on this earth and never really asked yourself this sort of pointed question. But let’s not dwell on why we aren’t asking such questions, and try to answer the question itself. (I refuse to answer the question). I’ve often struggled with trying to do too much at once. Not knowing what my priorities are makes making the decision of what to do harder. In this context, I’m talking of priorities of the privileged sort—the ones that live way at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: priorities of expression, artistic or otherwise—I’m talking about Priority and Self-actualization. I suspect many people have a long-standing ache, a desire for meaningfulness in their lives, and I think conceptually, priority, and the difficulty of prioritizing, has a lot to do with that. Perhaps that is why the quote at the beginning of this post struck me. A priority represents how you spend your precious time. I see it as a chain: with the time that you have, you make decisions about how you want to spend it, which leads to actions, those actions lead to results and hopefully, those results (and hopefully, the act of acting) are fulfilling and meaningful. Pretty simple, when you write it out. But if it’s so simple, why did the quote hit me so hard? Mann’s words can get you to stop and think about what a priority is. A very abrupt stop. The kind where you might actually wonder about the very definition of a word, and how you apply it from your lexicon. With that stopping, you might have clarity. In this case, perhaps it is clarity on when to say “no”. Clarity to assess what really matters. Clarity to slow down and think about things. In a search of meaning and fulfillment, I think we need fairly constant and repetitive deliberation on what our priorities are. I don’t think I’ve been doing that repetitive deliberation. What can make this more difficult is experiencing priority-envy. Sometimes, we might come across someone who has convictions and priorities so strong and apparent that we can’t help but feel jealous; they are on a path that seems so obvious to them that it makes us wonder what it will take to find our own path. Where does their passion come from? we might ask, how did they know , or even more importantly in today’s age, how do they remain focused on it? I can only speak for myself here, but I suspect others might feel the same sometimes: an overwhelming feeling that one must narrow in and specialize on something that yields—what, exactly? The answer may vary from person to person. To have recognition in your field? Perhaps to be the self-same person that others envy for how convicted we are in our walking life. Or more insidiously, to feel like we’re going somewhere ? At the root of this wondering are plenty of uncomfortable questions. It can be overwhelming, simply crushing to even stop and think: what does one do with a life? Or to add even more pressure: what does one do with the non-contiguous slivers of life existing between one’s obligations? . So, I spent some time taking Mann’s quote very literally—why not? What are my two priorities? But I wouldn’t even let myself answer the question, Instead, I looked for a way out, a way to take a branch, and subdivide it into smaller branches. I jumped straight to bargaining. I told myself that there are given and chosen priorities. Taking care of yourself, your family, maintaining a roof over your head—those are all given priorities. Chosen priorities are based on how you prioritized your discretionary time. I could come up with two priorities in that sense, couldn’t I? I started asking myself some questions. Was writing one of my two priorities? Painting? Reading and self-educating? Community-involvement? I ended up combing through a field littered with passing (and some staying) interests. But trying to find a priority in an interest or a hobby wouldn’t do it. I needed to zoom out. That meant asking myself what these existing things had in common. Using this very literal lens did yield me this: I thought about values behind all of this—the driving factor behind my priorities, and subsequently, my behaviour. A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me a simple question: what motivates you? Until then, no one had ever asked me a question like that. I had not asked myself a question like that. The question isn’t so different than asking yourself what your priorities are. And to zoom-out again, I think both questions, again, are about values. Perhaps like me, you have a feeling of what your values are, but you haven’t really expressed them before. Surely, I was living them, no? and the lens into that landscape was most easily seen by my behaviour (and so we return back to priorities, back to how we spend our time). So, like me, perhaps you’ve never asked yourself this whole line of destabilizing questions. But if it is true that some of the answers lie in how we spend our time, then it stands we should talk about and assess automatic behaviour. Looking at my default actions and how I spend my time provides a fairly visible trail of breadcrumbs to work back up to identifying motivations, priorities and perhaps most importantly, values. While many of our automatic behaviours have been co-opted by attention-stealing-devices, I remain optimistic that looking at what we default to doing can give us a hand in coming up with some answers. Unfortunately, some of those answers might not be so glamorous (or might be downright toxic and scary). Let me self-pathologize to see if we can work something out for one "part" (in the IFS-sense) of me. When I look at my inability to sit still and rest, I see a creeping feeling that I should be working on something. My spare moments should be spent creating, producing and improving . Hmmm—ok, I see that work might be broad enough of a category to qualify as a priority, here. Now, what might be the value that is driving that behaviour? It might be Security (securing future work, financial stability etc). But it might also be valuing Expression, or Creativity. So it seems values can be conflate, connect and co-depend. Taking a very literal approach to assessing priorities can be helpful if a bit constraining. But the act of writing this post out, felt altogether gratuitous and indulgent—even more so than my normal writing. Perhaps priorities aren’t always things that need to be identified with words. Maybe they are a unstated presence that manifest in our behaviour and is directly linked to our values. Stopping and asking ourselves about these sorts of things can provide useful pauses and opportunities for recalibration in our lives. And yet, I’m not sure I believe that. Because why else would this quote have struck me as it did? I do not end this post with any conclusive thoughts, but more questions than I had before. So, I will leave you with another quote that have been floating in my mind, and I find sufficiently calming in these existential waters:

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Brain Baking 2 weeks ago

Is Collecting Physical Games Worth It? (Part IV)

I bought some more expensive looking Nintendo switch game cartridges. I blame Joel ’s convincing who manages to bypass my already weak resistance to these kinds of messages. This, combined with a diminishing amount of time available to put into gaming, results into my physical backlog being larger than ever before. It’s been three years since I wrote part III and I have more thoughts so here we go. Perhaps read Part I , Part II , and Part III first. Let’s talk about pricing. In part III, I wrote: […] I’m beginning to wonder whether or not I should give up this ridiculousness. Instead, I could buy three games instead of one, and send the money where it belongs: the developers. […] There’s no denying that the price point of a physical game is much higher than that of a digital one. In general, digital versions cost about less—without taking the frequent sales into account that for some reason never happens for physical counterparts. In part III, I discovered that including taxes, physical games cost about times more! Outrageous! Or is it? It’s not! Wait, what? I decided to keep part IV a positive one and have changed my mind since complaining about the price. The higher price comes with a few advantages, hear me out. First, if something is more expensive, it takes more of a deliberate action to buy it. You don’t blindly press the add to cart and check out buttons: you first contemplate whether it’s worth it. Is this game really something I’m willing to pour time into? Should I really get this version considering my backlog already has three too long jRPGs on it? Instead of buying three games on sale in the eShop, you can only buy one so you better make that choice count. Also, precisely because of that deliberate action, I find that actually playing and finishing these games is easier. If you’ve paid that much for a game, you better pour that time into it, otherwise it’s money wasted. Chances are much lower of buying a total bust as you’ll be more thoroughly researching instead of recklessly buying. In the end, I end up enjoying these games more because I feel the need to spend more time with them. And that’s a good thing. Third, that price has never really gone up. A typical Limited Run Game costs —including shipping and taxes, that’s almost . Sixty is the about same amount I paid for a brand new copy of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in 2004 and it is about the same amount I paid for a brand new copy of the 2024 Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake on the Switch last year. When taking inflation into account , that should have been instead, an increase of . Observe the following graph depicting a very imprecise history of video game pricing from 1985 (NES) to now. The blue top line is the actual value adjusted for inflation, the red bottom line is the sticker price. Video Games Price History Chart 1985 - 2024. Yes, in the early nineties, cartridge gaming was expensive, although there were many exceptions. Most Mega Drive carts we bought were new and on sale, never reaching or their Belgian Francs equivalent. We transitioned to pirating PC games when those N64 carts became even more expensive. But the biggest takeaway from that graph is the flatline from 2000-ish to just before 2023: relatively speaking, the full price of a physical video game has been stable for more than twenty years. That means for a console game 1 and for the GB(A)/(3)DS counterpart acts as my golden reference point. Convenient then, that limited physical edition releases of Switch games also aim for that range if you include shipping and taxes. This is the reason why I will be totally fine by paying the “full price” for Hollow Knight: Silksong when the digital counterpart is only . Ridiculously cheap, by the way, as this is a slap in the face for other indie studios that struggle to get attention, but that’s an entirely different matter. Sixty “bucks”—can I say bucks when I’m in the Euro zone?—is perfectly reasonable to put down in exchange for deliberate action. Deliberate action that finally got me to sit down and finish the Rise of the Triad: The Dark War campaign while back in 1994 I didn’t even make it to the fourth level of the shareware episode, even though I admired the game. If you still find that hard to stomach, consider this: that Steam copy of your game can be retracted at any time. You’re basically just loaning it even though you’ve paid for it. This has happened before and will happen again. Meanwhile, I can sit back, relax, and laugh, clinging onto all my physical stuff that slowly but surely takes over the house, like a Creature of the Night . Even though that might be a slight exaggeration, there’s another graph that we can easily imagine if we think about value over time as an investment. I know it sounds ridiculous to think of buying games as an investment, and it is, even though many collectors treat it as such. There will be a point when Nintendo Switch games will no longer be produced, and it doesn’t take more than a few months for a price to go up according to websites like pricecharting.com . That is, this graph is the opposite of the above one: your Limited Run Game copy will become more sought after, but the devaluation of money will keep that investment more or less constant—depending on the game, amount of copies, et cetera. Meanwhile, your digital copy will be worth nada simply because you can’t get rid of it as you never really owned it in the first place. To conclude, I wrote another thousand words to confirm what I already said in part II four years ago: Physical games are usually more expensive. And that’s an advantage. Why? Because the more money I spent on a game, the more conscious the decision will be. Oh well. At least the graph is a nice touch, isn’t it? I’m going to pretend Sony PS1/PS2 games and the mass copying of CD-ROMs wasn’t a thing here.  ↩︎ Related topics: / games / collecting / By Wouter Groeneveld on 21 November 2025.  Reply via email . I’m going to pretend Sony PS1/PS2 games and the mass copying of CD-ROMs wasn’t a thing here.  ↩︎

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Manuel Moreale 2 weeks ago

Alexandra Wolfe

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Alexandra Wolfe, whose blog can be found at wrywriter.ca . Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter . The People and Blogs series is supported by Piet Terheyden and the other 124 members of my "One a Month" club. If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month. I’m a viviparous, mammalian, carbon-based biped — a veritable fossil from a bygone age sometimes referred to as the Good Old Days. Though, to be honest, that’s debatable to the nth degree. I was born in Germany to British parents and moved across the planet every 2-3 years, all of which seemed very natural to me at the time. Apart from studying for 3 degrees (I never finished any of them) I did several years in the military ostensibly as an air traffic controller. I then somehow stumbled from there into the print & publishing trade and made a comfortable living working on books and magazines. I even rubbed shoulders with a few names over the years, which in and of itself, was pleasantly entertaining. Being in the publishing trade allowed me to indulge in a number of my fav hobbies, including publishing a couple of scifi ezines over the years, run a Star Trek club, hang out at several scifi and comic cons, and meet the stars and writers of many of my fav scifi shows. I still have the photographic evidence to prove it. I didn’t so much as decide to blog as stumble into it, like many back in the days of LiveJournal and MySpace, we all just followed the crowd. It then seemed logical (at the time) to upgrade from a MySpace account to bumbling around with HTML creating a static website that was then quickly superseded by me creating an official ‘Blog’. At that point I was using the then new Wordpress software. It was, for me at least, revolutionary. Suddenly, everyone was blogging about everything. It’s at that point I think I bought my first domain name: wrywriter and used the dot com version till right up till a few years ago when I added the dot ca version and, sadly, let the dot com version lapse. Though now, I wish I had kept it. Now, I still have the name, but have moved away from Wordpress and blog ‘lightly’ using Bear Blog and Micro Blog to scribble and share my thoughts on. Clean, small, simple and more focused on the actual writing and less on the tweaking and tinkering. Both platforms suit my current needs. I’m not sure I have a process per se. I don’t plan posts, and don’t jot down ideas. I’m more of a pantster, I stare at the blinking cursor only when I feel like I have something to say. Whether that be some random thought I had over breakfast, a news item I want to respond to, or a response to someone else’s post. I don’t do research, or make drafts, or have endless notebooks full of ideas. Unless we’re talking about short stories or ideas for novels. Blogging, for me, is more about spontaneity. I would have to say that physical space can and probably does influence how anyone writes. And that we all have our own particular quirks and eccentricities when it comes to our writing environment. I like mine to be quiet, clean, and minimal. There are a few toys I have at hand I play with, but other than that, it’s me and the keyboard, and a large screen. You’re asking a dinosaur who somehow lived long enough to stumble into a Jetson’s future what my Tech Stack is? Excuse me while I consult someone smarter than I am about what a tech stake might look like. Oh, you mean where did I buy my domain name and that sort of thing? I want to say Porkbun because I just love saying Porkbun. But no such luck, I sourced my domains here, in Canada, with WHC.ca and, at one time I had hosting with them, that is, till they kept putting their prices up. I also got very disillusioned by Wordpress so moved full time to Bear Blog and Micro Blog. I use Bear for more long form rambling posts and post my daily thoughts over on m.b. which is more suited to sharing said drivel on social media. I find this a bit of an odd question, my experience is based on what I went through, that ‘living’ experience of places and spaces that no longer exist, so of course, in the here and now, it would all be different. I would probably start off with a simple blog on Bear or the Pika platform and skip the likes of Blogger and Wordpress altogether. The web might be obsessed with money, but I’d say most bloggers are not. I’m not interested in monetising my blog, nor am I interested in reading blogs that are focused on making money. I avoid them like the plague. If someone quietly, and respectfully asks me to support their writing, however, with a discrete ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ button, then I’m almost always happy to make a donation. There are so many great blogs about at the moment, but some of my current fav reads are: I would humbly suggest you ask David Johnson of Crossing The Threshold for an interview. David lives in Hawaii and always has some thoughtful posts to read on his blog. There are many things I’m always working on when it comes to writing projects. I do love to scribble. You can find more over on Alexandra Wolfe (alexandrawolfe.ca) and read my daily posts over on the Wry Writer (wrywriter.ca). For those of you out there who love reading fantasy, I stumbled upon a great series by Robert Jackson Bennet starting with, The Tainted Cup and followed by A Drop Of Corruption. I sincerely hope there’s more in the series. Some fun websites people might like to check out: And finally, I would like to extend a big thank you to Robert Birming for suggesting me to join in this amazing series, People & Blogs, and an even bigger thank you to you, Manu, for asking me to take part. I feel honoured to be among such an esteemed alumni. Much love, Alex Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed . If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 116 interviews . Make sure to also say thank you to Chuck Grimmett and the other 124 supporters for making this series possible. David at www.crossingthethreshold.net Sylvia at sylvia.buzz David at forkingmad.blog Kimberly at kimberlykg.com Robert at robertbirming.com Annie at anniemueller.com My life in Weeks weeks.ginatrapani.org Notebook of Ghosts notebookofghosts.com Shady Characters shadycharacters.co.uk

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Lambda Land 2 weeks ago

Typst for Your Code Blocks

I started using Typst about a month ago to write my dissertation proposal. I had seen Typst before and decided to keep an eye on it as it matured. While it still is very much in development, it is mature enough that I was able to rewrite my dissertation proposal from an org-mode → LaTeX pipeline to pure Typst in about an hour with no major hiccups. In fact, most things got simpler as a consequence of using Typst. Typst is a typesetting system written in Rust designed to be a replacement for LaTeX . LaTeX is the de-facto standard for typesetting technical documents thanks to its unsurpassed support for rendering mathematical formulae and its attention to excellent typeography . Both LaTeX and Typst operate by transforming a markup language into an output format like PDF. I am working on a presentation to give as part of my oral defense of my dissertation proposal. ( Note: I am not defending my dissertation yet—first I have to justify my plan of research to my PhD committee.) I found a way to use Typst to get gorgeous source code blocks at minimal cost. I like having good syntax highlighting in my technical presentations, but getting properly highlighted code was either shoddy or labor-intensive. The tradeoff is: I will still be using the highlight-each-word technique when I need to show some code and simulate editing it; the “Magic Move” transition in Keynote makes these kinds of code-editing demos easy to build and easy for the audience to follow. However, the majority of the time I’m just displaying code on the screen. I built a Typst template and associated theme file for code blocks. Now, if I have some code I want to put on a slide, I write a Typst file like the following and put into e.g. : Then I run and I get a PDF file with a transparent background that looks like this: (That’s obviously a PNG file so that it displays nicely here on the web. The real output of that command is a PDF file.) I can take that PDF file with a transparent background and drop it straight into my Keynote presentation. Typst takes care of all the syntax highlighting and it’s been good enough for my needs. Typst is still pretty new software. It has some rough edges and I will not be asking conferences to support Typst for their submissions until all those corners have been smoothed out. However, I am hopeful for Typst’s future, and anywhere where I can get away with just submitting a PDF without the source, I will be using Typst. The things that Typst does better than LaTeX right now: Typst has good typography and bibliography support. It can work with BibLaTeX files, so you can start using Typst without having to rewrite your whole bibliography. Citation syntax is simple and easy to figure out. Typst sill has a bit of a way to go before it does everything that the venerable LaTeX Microtype package does, but it’s making progress in this area. Typst is free and open-source; you can contribute on their GitHub repository. It is written in Rust and the code seems to be well-organized. They have a hosted collaboration platform that is proprietary; you can subscribe to this, and the funds spent here go towards paying a few full-time developers to work on both the closed-source collaboration platform and improving the open-source compiler. I think this is a neat model and I hope it lets Typst get off the ground and get the adoption it will need to survive and (hopefully!) supplant LaTeX as the typesetting system of choice for technical audiences. Incredibly friendly syntax and rendering model. I went from not knowing anything about Typst to reproducing my résumé perfectly in an hour . I even made use of fancy things like functions. Excellent documentation. Did I mention how quickly I learned how to use Typst? It is easy to find the thing you want to customize. Instantaneous build times. Anyone who works with LaTeX will be familiar with 20+ second build times. Typst is so fast that it can live-rerender documents multiple times a second.

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