My blog turns ten years old today. The big 1-0. Thanks for reading!

Every now and then, someone asks me why I blog, and I don’t know really know what to tell them. I like writing and I had things to tell? There was a fire and I needed to stoke it? Something around there is approximately correct, but not the full story.

What feels closer is that a long time ago, I was looking for outlets to express myself creatively. Drawing didn’t appeal to me, coding weird digital toys didn’t either, and that left longform writing as one of the natural options. I had already written some long Facebook posts (back in the day where using your Facebook as a blog was a thing people did), so the jump was obvious. And I found once I got started, it was easier to keep going. (If anything, I think I have a harder time stopping things than starting things.)

Maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel like a big deal to cross the ten year mark. Like, I celebrate the milestones, but it doesn’t feel like an accomplishment. It’s more like, blogging is a thing I do which I want to keep doing. Why would it feel special to do something I like doing for 10 years? In life, I try to keep doing the things I find fun. It’s just good policy.

I think it also helps that I take this blog profoundly unseriously. When I wrote my last post, about brony musicians seizing the means of production, I decided to send a draft to an LLM for feedback. I prompted it to be honest and harsh in its criticism, and it told me:

Your post is too long and meandering.
You have too many personal anecdotes that aren’t relevant to the main story.
You’ve buried the lede.
Get rid of half the words.

On reflection, it wasn’t wrong that the post would be better if it were streamlined, without all the little frills I’d written into it. But I wanted the frills. So I took half its advice, ignored the rest, and that’s partly why it’s got the worst view-to-effort ratio of my entire blog. That’s the upside and downside of being your own editor.

But do I regret writing it? No, not at all. In a world of Substacks and Mediums, it feels good to have this corner of slightly old Internet, outside the storm of content platforms and monetization, where I can write 6600 words about My Little Pony and not feel bad about it. So, really, thanks.

Stats

I spent 93 hours, 7 minutes writing 6 posts this year, which is down from 139 hours + 9 posts from last year. That’s another reason I’m not celebrating 10 years with more gusto, I know I’ve been writing less.

Once again, I wish I could say I had a good reason for this, but the reality is that writing comes out of my free time, I got a new laptop this year, and the laptop came with a free 3 month subscription to Xbox Game Pass. So that turned on the engineer brain of “I need to maximize the value”, and I spent much of those 3 months playing all the Game Pass games I could. By the end, I was frankly pretty disappointed in how I’d spent my time, and decided not to renew it, but the damage was done, and the writing habit never really came back.

I want to be doing more writing, so I’m hoping the numbers trend back up this year. I also want to try some weirder stuff. One thing I’ve realized is that I’ve fallen into a groove with my writing. I did a lot more weird one-offs when I started blogging, when I was figuring out my voice, but now I know the typical style of my posts and it’s easy to stay in my lane instead of branching out. I want to try innovating, play a bit more with the craft of writing. Ten years is as good a time as any to try something new.

Lighthaven, the rationalist aligned event space in Berkeley, is hosting a blogging residency named Inkhaven. If you sign up, you pay $2000 plus housing, to live there during the month of November, committing to writing at least a 500 word blog post each day. If you don’t, you’re kicked out. They’re doing this because they think writing is good for the world, and want to get more people to write regularly. On one hand, the hosts are biased. Anyone familiar with rationalist culture knows that longform maybe-overthinking-it essays are the lifeblood of their community. Of course they have a high opinion on writing’s value. On the other hand, anyone familiar with the influence of those maybe-overthinking-it essays should find it hard to take the opposite position.

Am I going to do Inkhaven? No, they’re asking for full-time commitment and I both can’t and don’t want to do that right now. I’m not looking to spend money to become full-time Professional Writer Man. Did I think about it? Yes.

If the idea of paying to commit to a writing bootcamp appeals to you, you should definitely consider applying, if only because I bet you’ll find your people. Personally, I may do a post-a-day challenge anyways. I did one in 2016, and although most of the posts were trash, it was nice to prove I could do it.

View Counts

484  2024-08-18-nine-years.markdown  
5230 2024-12-04-late-o1-thoughts.markdown  
271  2025-01-09-destruct-o-match.markdown  
944  2025-01-28-mh-2025.markdown  
356  2025-04-01-who-is-ai-for.markdown  
69   2025-07-21-babscon-2025.markdown

Appendix: Video Game Reviews

Look, if Xbox Game Pass took over 3 months of my life, I at least get to review how it did.

UFO 50: This wasn’t part of Xbox Game Pass, but it was the game I played the most last year, I have to shill it. A great game if you’re a person who’s played a lot of video games. If you’re new? Start somewhere else. There’s a very particular thing going on in playing through the catalogue of a fictional video game studio, that makes you appreciate the evolution of game design all the more, but it works best if you’ve got the shared history. There are many games I’ve barely even tried, but I still have so many hours in the ones I did. Mini & Max is GOATed and worth the price of admission on its own.

Starcraft II Campaign: In a past life, I played a lot of Stacraft, enough to know I sucked and to appreciate the pros who didn’t. Coming back, I’ve learned I still suck at this game, but beating up the AI is still fun. I think unfortunately it only ever made it to “okay” though. The story of Starcraft II starts out strong in Wings of Liberty, but gets incredibly bad in Heart of the Swarm. Legacy of the Void redeems it a bit, and then the finale falls all the way back down again. Gameplay wise, it was fun for a while, but at some point rebuilding a base and deathball every game felt like a chore instead of play.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: I don’t know how they did it, but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was just fun all the way through. I got surprisingly invested in the story, it’s voiced well, and the gameplay has a nice balance of exploration, puzzle solving, stealth, and frantically using your whip on Nazis when the stealth inevitably goes wrong. My one complaint is that the hand-to-hand combat feels like the worst part of the game, so of course they put a bunch of upgrades behind learning parry timings you’ll never use later.

Another Crab’s Treasure: The devs of Another Crab’s Treasure are now most famous for Peak, their small side project which is now their main project after it sold 5 million copies. I have not tried Peak, but Another Crab’s Treasure was really good and is worth playing if you’re interested in a Souls-like. I’ve been told it’s easier than other Souls-likes, but I still found it tricky. What really carries it is the game’s humor and story. In between the typical Dark Souls story of a dying world are real character arcs and jabs against capitalism privatizing profits while socializing losses.

Chants of Sennar: A short language-based puzzle game themed after the Tower of Babel, where you need to learn how to translate between languages to help people communicate with each other and ascend the tower. I will always shill Return of the Obra Dinn, and this felt very like that game, complete with me doing some brute force to resolve a few words I just didn’t get. Would recommend.

Superliminal: I remember seeing the trailer for this game a long time ago, and people talking it up as a Portal-like first person puzzle game. This game…is not Portal. It’s really not. I mean, it’s alright, but I’m definitely glad I played it for free on Game Pass rather than buying it. A lot of the set pieces were just okay rather than exceptional, and there are only so many tricks to pull out of the perspective toolbox. Doesn’t overstay its welcome but also didn’t have a lasting impression on me.

Gris: A very pretty game with good music that’s lacking in gameplay. Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay exists, but the game is much more about absorbing the vibe of the world and solving some light traversal puzzles rather than overcoming some great challenge. The character you’re playing as is going through something, but that doesn’t mean you are. Another game I don’t regret playing but which I’m glad I played for free.

Powerwash Simulator: I tried it and just don’t get the appeal. It’s satisfying to slowly bring a scene from messy to clean, but I get equivalent joy with less monotony by solving logic puzzles.

Unpacking: In contrast, Unpacking is a banger. Behind the surface level gameplay is a really cool narrative experience of seeing the protagonist grow up, as viewed only through the items they keep, the items they throw away, and the places they move to. There is a moment shortly after the college level where most people go “ohhhhhhhh man”, and it’s conveyed through finding where to unpack stuff. Just super neat. Unfortunately, also quite short.