Essays

A few years ago, I began the process of rebuilding my website using the static site generator 11ty. My goal in doing this was to create a hyper-performant version of my site that I could proudly show off on the world wide web. But I also set some fairly ambitious goals fo... Read More  

Recently I began the process of moving all of my GitHub repositories to Codeberg. I am far from the only person making this move in 2026; if anything, I'm well behind the curve. However, I did want to dedicate some time to detailing (a) how I am conducting my transition t... Read More  

I recently finished watching the conclusion of Linus Tech Tips's second Linux challenge. Unsurprisingly, much of the series focused on criticizing the overly-aggressive online Linux community. This is by no means a new criticism, but it did become a very central theme of ... Read More  

At the beginning of this year, I decided to leave the quiet comforts of the AUR, Pacman and my purpose built, minimal system for a bit of distro-hopping. I've been using Linux full time for about five years now. That journey began with, and has maintained Arch Linux as a ... Read More  

A couple of days ago, Donald Trump’s administration carried out a military operation in Venezuela. A Delta Force unit was deployed to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. The operation was accompanied by bombing inside the country, and between the airstrikes and ... Read More  

Unless you stalk my GitHub account relentlessly, you are probably unaware of it, but my website was developed using the static site generator, Eleventy (11ty). 11ty offers incredibly easy web development, not only because of its capability to play nicely with a massive am... Read More  

I got my first computer when I was eight years old. It wasn’t anything fancy, an old Windows 95 box that barely worked. But when my parents decided to upgrade to a shiny, new, Dell Machine running Windows XP, I was more than happy to do whatever it took to get my hands on... Read More  

What would have happened if, when Rosa Parks made her protest and sat at the front of the bus, no one tried to stop her? No police. No outrage. Just silence. Would we still remember her name? More importantly, would the decades-long civil rights battle that her quiet act ... Read More  

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been laser-focused on getting my finances in order. Like many Americans over eighteen, I’ve accumulated more than my fair share of debt—along with the bad spending habits that come with it. Credit cards, a car loan that’s longer than it shoul... Read More  

Ilya Repin's "Barge Haulers on The Volga Above is, without question, my favorite painting of all time. Barge Haulers on the Volga is a nineteenth-century work by Russian painter Ilya Repin. It comes as no surprise to me that I was immediately drawn to it, as, like so man... Read More  

Without a doubt, the best book I’ve read this year is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I only opened it because it leads off The Harvard Classics—a 51‑volume anthology I describe in a separate essay—but I was pleasantly surprised by how readable, engaging, and prac... Read More  

Having just finished reading The Journal of John Woolman, I was struck by a few different things, the foremost: just how early an anti-slavery campaigner Woolman was. I knew that the guy wrote about the evils of slavery around the time of the American Revolution. What I d... Read More  

The first exposure I had to this line of thinking, at least as far as I can remember, was in Nikos Kazantzakis' novel: Zorba the Greek (which, interestingly enough, might have since become my favorite book). The original quote is said by Zorba to the protagonist: "Ho... Read More  

I can't remember exactly when or how I first came across The Harvard Classics, but ever since that day I have been on a mission to get a copy of the collection for myself. The Classics, originally published as: Dr. Elliot's Five Foot Shelf of Books are an absolutely massi... Read More  

Before I start writing any opinions here, I’d like to take a second to talk about why I think I’m qualified to say what the best markdown editor is, and what my criteria in choosing a markdown editor looks like. There is no shortage of blogs and articles out there that se... Read More  

I couldn’t exactly tell you why, but I care a great deal about the progress of dark modes on modern software platforms. But I kind of always have hated the way that this feature is baked into software and websites. Almost always, you open a new app or website, and at some... Read More  

I just got back from Avengers: Endgame, and it was pretty incredible. It took advantage of its three-hour run time in a way I never expected, and formed itself into a quiet contemplation of the MCU’s past events. But what surprised me about the film more than anything els... Read More  

If you have read any reviews for the Harry Potter films online, you probably know that Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is widely considered to be the best of the films. The praise for this movie is off the charts. It has 91% on Rotten Tomatoes (a score beaten onl... Read More