Week 13, 2026: Stormy settings
In waking up to what I thought were the sounds of missile interceptions but turned out to be thunderstorms, I’ve learned that the two sound remarkably similar. I’ve taken a break from running.
Instead, I’ve spent most of my week writing ideas for my blog or materializing them. It’s been one of those borderline unhealthy creative spells where I can’t think about anything else. I’ve learned to let those spells take over because they don’t really get out of hand and I tend to otherwise lose interest altogether. More often than not, they bear good fruit: a calculator, a game of rock paper scissors, an etch-a-sketch.
Anyways, here are some superior snack combos I assembled in my refusal to leave my desk long enough to prep a real meal:
- Cheetos and labneh (Chtoora brand)
- Radish and grapes
- Ruffles and gouda cheese
I’ve been thinking a lot about weird computing and the indie web. I wish more non-technical people knew that they don’t have to be computer people 1 to have personal websites or write weeknotes. This wish was reinvigorated after reading a piece in which Hayden makes the case, rather wonderfully, that coding is an art form:
Usually I get further in the argument than you'd expect, mostly due to some arty bona fides of my own, but I never actually win. I appeal to people who've done what I've done a million times- sit down in a silent room and try to write a song from scratch.
People who, like me, have often found themselves excited by the look of a blank screen in a word processor, or who've found themselves smiling to no one but themselves when they hear three of their new chords together for the first time, doing something that no one else in the world could possibly do, not even after a hundred years, because a butterfly flapped its wings in Minnesota and a wave broke against the artificial reef in Amalfi and the sum total result is that you, here, right now, did something completely new, and it somehow came straight out of you, unprompted.
And you can never really choose those moments, they just come to you, and when it's done, and even when you've run out of ideas, still, there, on the page or in your voice memos, there it is, something you've done, and you count on those moments and those notes and those words when you're somewhere you've never been before and farther away from anyone you know than you've ever been. "Look," we say. "I did something. I did it."
This is a large excerpt to quote but I enjoyed it so much I couldn’t cut it down any further. It reminded me of why I got interested in web development in the first place.
I continue to be too zapped of energy to hold down conversations. It doesn’t help that there are thunderstorms and missile interceptions. It doesn’t help that Medo left for Cairo again.
It doesn’t help that recent interactions have been grating and confusing. While shopping for groceries ahead of my dental surgery, the lady at the till charged me for a bag I brought from home and I just blinked slowly at her screen and then paid for the bag. Earlier, a young man came up to me while I was in the long-life milk aisle to converse. I had the impression that he wanted to either practice speaking in English or practice speaking to women, both of which I sympathized with but neither of which I was in the mood to entertain.
I had my remaining wisdom teeth taken out a couple hours ago. My mouth is full of blood and it’s already time to change the gauze, so I should probably go tend to that now. It’ll be mashed potatoes and ice-cream for the next week (oh no!).
“Clive Thompson, in his 2019 book Coders, profiles [computer people] as puzzle addicts who often struggle to empathise with normies. Their religion is efficiency for efficiency’s sake. The pleasure they find in an elegant database merge solution may not be as widely shared as they assume” (via FT Alphaville).↩