: Untitled
I'm creating this site so I can have a fresh start on the internet.
It's not my first webpage, and it probably won't be my last. But I wanted to experience the feeling of starting from nothing again: plain HTML, writing words off the cuff, not worrying so much about whether I used straight quotes or curly quotes or formatted my code correctly or whatever.
I also wanted to have a site that isn't tied to my real name. I have other sites that are also not tied to my real name; some of them are known to my IRL friends as a bit of a joke, others are truly anonymous. But I have used them mostly for "experiments"--trying to learn a new technology or write in a new format.
The purpose of this site, on the other hand, is to have no purpose. There will be no update cadence, no rules about beautiful semantic HTML, just kind of some pointless pissing into the wind to see if I can shake loose some of the habits and insecurities that I have acquired in my travels on the internet.
I would also--and I'm really sorry about this--like to write about politics. I have done a lot of that, too, in more or less transparent terms, including on my real-name blog. But now I have a job and things to lose, and this has put a damper on how honest I am willing to be about my political beliefs in public spaces.
Since you are probably wondering if I will go left or right, let me start off by reassuring you that I go left. I voted Clinton/Biden/Harris. Wasn't of voting age before that, if that helps. If you were to poll me on individual issues, I probably align with the typical progressivism of people my age. But I also feel like I "know too much" about how the other side thinks, and this means that I think the left has made some big strategic fuckups over the course of my lifetime, mostly by leaning too hard into progressive activist movements that, for all their virtues, were alienating to moderates. I would like to have a place where I can blab about that without people getting suspicious that I am some kind of right-wing extremist in disguise.
But people will think what they want to.