Structure
This isn’t a blog in the “traditional” sense—I’ve structured it in a way that you could easily access some concepts I’d like to explain personally, much like a wiki. You’ll see some posts like these, and some general concepts (provide an example here).
You’ll regularly see new blog posts and concepts added to this site, as well as some updates to less fleshed-out pages. So if you see a page with only one or two sentences on it, rest assured it’s in my backlog. If you see a link to a stub page, it’s definitely at the back of my head, or somewhere proximate.
How to subscribe to new posts
This website has RSS built-in. By default, it will push every single page, but I modified it in such a way that posts in the RSS feed are hand-picked by me. You can use extensions (I use Feeder to check myself) or an RSS-to-email tool.
No newsletter? Personally, this isn’t a platform for “content creation” or “influencing.” I’ve moved away from the game of getting as many views as possible—so this website is built for posterity and for you to pick my mind. Maybe if I get to it (and have the budget for it) and there’s an evident demand for it I’ll reconsider my thoughts.
Raison d’être
Convenience
I’d like to believe I reached a point where making a dedicated YouTube video for a topic I want to talk about takes too much time. Hours spent fleshing out a script, filming takes, and editing are hours I’d like to save for something worthy of that.
Furthermore, viewers of my content and members of my Discord community know well the disdain I have in making my own podcast. So that rules out me also spending hours rambling over (and editing) random topics only to be amorphized into a two-hour listening session, summarized with a title and description, with an “Episode 103” plastered over it.
Which is why I think text form is the ideal dumping ground for these thoughts:
- It shouldn’t be like you’re reading thick prose, I can use bullet points like this
- Page-specific organization is easier, via a table of contents
- Site-wide organization is also easier, via folders and tags (and a search function!)
- I’m personally fond of Wikipedia rabbit-holing—nothing beats digging your own rabbit holes
- This takes significantly less time to make
- And for a lot of people, this takes also takes less time to consume
I’ve privately compiled notes via Obsidian back when it was released in 2020, and only recently found out about Quartz where you can compile these Markdown files as static objects for lightweight hosting (since I don’t want to pay for hosting a CMS). Given these two tools, I’ve found a way to (1) easily author and publish my notes and (2) keep costs low.
Keeping the blade sharp
Similarly with my YouTube channel now, I no longer primarily intend my content to reach virality. I’d like to believe that regular “distillation” of your thoughts into text or video form helps you hone your communication and critical thinking skills.
Surely I’ll come back to this page after some due diligence and cite some sources, but personally it has worked for me and still works for me now.
Language and AI use
Ninety-nine percent of the site will be in English. You may find some text in Kapampangan or Tagalog—but only when necessary for the purposes of context. Rest assured I’ll provide my own translation.
You may also notice the liberal use of em dashes (this symbol ”—”), which is typically an indicator of LLM use. I regularly use these dashes as part of my writing style and I will decline from imposing a moratorium on punctuation just because of that. Expediting the writing process through LLM use defeats the purposes of this blog, so I will personally guarantee you that I do abstain from it.
With that said, you’ll probably also find a ton of grammar issues on these pages. You may sometimes (funnily) find that I go back to a page just to correct some grammar. Despite my writing style, I try my best not to be a pedant myself and simply embrace the mistakes—I guess that’s what makes us human.