2025-12-19 12:13:00
Last weekend I was building a mini RSS reader (you know how I do), and in the process I was going through some of the blog posts in my feed. One of them stood out:
This grabbed me particularly because I've been getting into cassette tapes as a hobby, both collecting and creating them. If you read the post you'll see that the tapes were originally released on something called Gemini. I didn't know much about it but I did know I wanted to download those tapes! After a bit of searching I found a Gemini client and was able to download the zip files which had everything I needed to make replicas of the original tapes.
The tapes are fantastic, but this whole event peaked my curiosity about Gemini. The more I learned, the more I liked. It's relatively new, only five or six years old, yet seems to have a small yet steady userbase. I found a better client to use in the terminal and I started exploring some more. Soon I found some gemlog (a micro blog on Gemini) aggregators which let me find some interesting capsules (a website on Gemini). I found one in particular that was really well done: loads of posts, cool links to other pages, and even a photo log! I had to navigate to each photo, press a key to open it, and then choose whether to download it or view it in my default app for viewing photos (Apple Preview in my case).
There was something magical about viewing bits and pieces of this person and their life through text on a screen and images that didn't load directly on the page. Who else knew this capsule existed? How many more people know Gemini exists? A small web floating on the internet with a vibrant set of people just wanting a peaceful existance. That is one of the primary reasons Gemini was created. The founders wanted a text based internet protocol that would let you link out to other pages, similar to HTML, but without CSS and JavaScript. The web had become too noisy and slowly invaded privacy down to the favicon. There were protocols like Gopher, but they had problems that went unsolved since is inception in the early 1990s. A new protocol was needed, and it became Gemini.
While I have become a new fan of Gemini, and will talk more about that soon, it's not the reason of this post. To be frank I don't think that Gemini is a replacement for the web or that it answers every single problem. I don't see myself ditching HTML altogether for something like Gemini. It's not Gemini itself the reason that I write this post, but rather the hope it brings. Gemini exists because a few people said enough is enough with the current state of the internet and did something about it. There were enough people who believed in the same idea and principles that now there is a decent community living on this network. People are sharing their lives, recipes, resources, you name it. It's not full of people who only talk about a niche topic or just talk about Gemini itself. They just use the protocol the way they envisioned the internet to be.
That, is what brings me hope. We don't have to take the abuse of our current internet sitting down. We don't need a VC funded company to build something that "saves us" by moving us to just another mental prison. We, the people, have the power to buid whatever we want. We can control our experience the internet, not the other way around. We can still connect with other people without social media, without noise, and to much surprise, we can do it without HTML.
I hope your main takeaway isn’t some kind of lecture on how you should use the internet and what it should look like. You can do whatever you want. However, if you’re like me, and you feel tired, worn out by the current state of the web, and you want to see a change: it’s already happening. That change starts with you, deciding to do something different, no matter what anyone else thinks.
I know this is a bit weird to make this post on HTML while boasting about another protocol, but I decided it was worth it to communicate the idea. If you're interested in Gemini and want to learn more or even get started, just follow these two steps:
amfora with brew install amfora or one of the many other install methods
amfora gem.stevedylan.dev/gemini-quickstart
I’ll see you in space 🫡
p.s. if you thought this post was about some coding CLI, sorry :)
2025-12-18 23:52:04
I just read Lou Plummer's post about the nicest thing a stranger had ever done for him. I've never had to go to the emergency room before, but there is a nice stranger I think about often, whose name I never found out.
The year before the pandemic, I was doing a mandatory summer semester at my university, between my first and second years there. I had severe, untreated social anxiety that hadn't shown up until I left my home town. Whenever someone showed an interest in befriending me, I assumed they had malicious intentions. Why else would they want to talk to me, unless for personal gain? My brain would constantly remind me of the fact that most violent crimes were committed between people who already knew each other, rather than strangers -- minimize the people you know, and you'll be safer, right? Maybe so, but you'll also be miserably lonely.
After class, one of my classmates tagged along with me as I walked to my dorm. I tried to stay calm, but I also wanted to shake him off, as if he wasn't doing a completely normal thing for people to do when they wanted to make a friend. At some point we parted ways, which gave my anxious brain the space it needed to make up all kinds of stories about what this guy wanted from me. Could he figure out where I lived? Could he get into my dorm in the middle of the night, while I was asleep?
The thing that sucks the most about anxiety is that on some level you know you're being irrational. You have to watch yourself think things and say things you know aren't true. I called my mom to tell her about this guy, hoping she could talk me down from what was becoming a panic attack. She sort of did, but I also just needed to ride it out. I couldn't go up to my dorm room, because I was crying, and I didn't want anyone to see. I went to the side of the building where the fewest people walked and sat with my back against the wall, holding my legs close, trying to steady my breathing.
The stranger that I still think about didn't do very much at all. She walked by me, stopped, and without saying anything, gave me a thumbs up and raised her eyebrows, as if to ask, "Are you okay?" That made me smile a little, and I gave her a thumbs up and a nod. She returned a smile and a nod and continued on her way.
It meant the world to me at the time, and I think that's why I still think about it. It showed care while not smothering me, at a time when I needed space. It was a solid "I see you, you're not alone" without the (I felt at the time) terrifying quid-pro-quo obligations that came with friendship. She did not expect anything in return, that was clear. She didn't even expect a conversation. She just wanted to know that I was alright, and that was all I needed.
2025-12-18 20:17:09
Just wanted to complain a little, bear with me.
Something that pisses me off to the moon and back is when people say your disability is a "superpower".
With all due respect, super power my ass.
It's called a disability for a reason. It's disabling. It prevents me from doing things as they should be done. It stops me from living the life I could live or succeed as I could have, or connect with people as they (and I) deserve.
I do understand where the sentiment stems from, and I do appreciate and am aware that neurodivergency and other disabilities can open new windows for knowledge, understanding and perspective -- even scientific advances. I swear, I understand that.
But.
The average ND person struggles. Every. Single. Day. Until the day we die.
I remember having to completely leave a group chat with cool, interesting people because of a dumbass saying "oh I love my depression, it makes me special". As a person with dysthymia, fuck you very much. Contemporary internet culture created this romantization of neurodivergency. You can been a cool ND person and still admit your shortcomings and how it makes life fucking hard without saying "I love my depression", you guys. I promise. I promise.
Jesus this makes me so MAD.
Yes, I may or may not been going THROUGH it with my ADHD lately (we'll never know lmao), so I'm particularly short-fused for ND bs right now.
Having said that, there's two things I found out that don't work for me in the slightest and alternatives that do:
New Year's resolutions: okay, this one doesn't work for most people I guess, but there's a good chunk of people who follow through it or at least try to and gets it partially done. That's a no for me, dawg. But in the year of our lord 2025 I've discovered that making resolutions for the end of the year can work pretty OK. As in, "I gotta do this stuff before January 1st". It would be funny if it weren't just an actual symptom of ADHD.
I forgot the second one (I swear to god 🤡).
Well. At least I remembered to eat today.
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2025-12-18 02:36:00
When writing this, I have five links on the Bear discovery home page. Thank you to everyone who thinks some of my posts are worth an upvote. I’m truly grateful.
But to be honest, I also feel a bit embarrassed. I’m currently taking up about 25 percent of that page. That doesn’t really feel fair.
Maybe it’s just the Scandinavian jantelagen (Law of Jante) in me speaking, but I have a feeling others have thought about this too.
I’m sure most users agree that the discovery feed is one of the reasons Bear feels like such a lovely platform. There’s so much great content out there, and it really adds to the sense of community. My RSS reader is filled with blogs I’ve discovered this way, both through trending and most recent.
Herman has created something truly beautiful and useful. It’s a joy to publish your own content, and the discovery feeds are great for finding other people’s writing.
Still, maybe there’s room for one more section. Something that isn’t purely based on algorithms and recency. Something in between.
What about an Explore section? A place where trending and recent posts mingle in a nice little symbiosis. A place where a single blog can only appear once per page.
I would love such a feature. Then again, maybe this is just my inner overthinker chiming in again. Either way, I felt like I needed to get it out there.
Keep on blogging, no matter how “trendy” you are.
2025-12-18 02:34:04
Recently, I've been trying to locate my "writer voice," and what I find amusing, almost comical is how violently I tend to oscillate between Live your life! Start now! Pursue your goals! and, a few blogposts later, I am still depressed.
On Bear, these contradictions sit side by side, and in them I've recognized a fragile line: the difference between something you're experiencing and something you are. I find depression erodes that boundary. It blurs experience into identity, perpetuating a narrative of your life that feels totalizing but not necessarily true.
When I was struggling, I assumed it must've been because I was cynical, ungrateful, fundamentally flawed. My utter disengagement for living became evidence of a personal failure, an innate disposition rather than a passing state. We were fused together, depression and me. Where did it end, and where did I start?
I find it oddly consoling in the way my blog reads like a tug-of-war between motivational exigency and despair. These contradictions are not incoherence but proof of life. Proof that I exist apart from what I once collapsed into for years, what made me desperately ask myself: What is making me feel so different from everyone else?
The fact I can write, stubbornly, about goals, productivity, and forward motion at all is evidence (to myself) that a part of me hasn't yet surrendered. Depression is something I live with, but it's not my identity. My writing stands a quiet testimony to a person existing alongside an illness, resisting absorption and refusing erasure.
2025-12-18 01:04:00
This came out yesterday, but Larian's CEO has claimed that people there are at peace with the AI use they're being actively required to perform (which I doubt). The idea that an exec is requiring craftspeople to maximize AI use when it doesn't even improve a single thing about their workflow should make anyone second-guess their ambition to work there. However, a bigger reason to avoid applying is their terrible application process.
Larian requires a truly insane number of interviews - someone has reported 12 before they were turned down for their resume - and massive, unpaid writing tests, for which the writer is required to turn in something playable. Applying to Larian is like having a second job. It's a job where the manager is uncommunicative, withholding, and mean to you. I've heard multiple stories about people being ghosted entirely.
Apparently, they have stated to applicants that their writing style cannot be taught. Anyone who's been a narrative manager in games before, like me, knows that this is preposterous.
I have never applied to Larian because I've been hearing these stories for years. I would not willingly apply to work there unless I saw some public announcement from the team that the hiring experience had changed and that they regretted the old one. I do think that Larian should consider these process improvements high-priority - it's been destroying their reputation among the best of the best for years, to the point where many skilled writers and narrative designers I know would never apply there. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely to change.
I've completed both paid and unpaid writing tests. If you're going to assign an unpaid writing assignment, it's good practice to keep the assignment short enough that a busy person - an adult with kids or other major after-work and weekend responsibilities - could fit it in around their life without negative impact to the people who rely on them. This means limiting it to a several-hour task (including revision time). I believe my unpaid editorial test for Riot took around three hours. Much longer unpaid tests - the kind of thing that takes several days, or even a week - are undeniably extremely exploitative.
I've applied to only a couple places which paid me for my work on writing tests. I was paid by Brace Yourself Games, by whom I was eventually hired to write the early access content for Industries of Titan. Paying for a writing test allows the studio to use the material applicants write in the game itself, if they want. Pursuing this strategy also allows them to treat the person like a contractor, send out an NDA, and actually test the writer's ability to learn and use a project's real IP.
It's as good for them as it is for me, because it reduces the negative impact of long hiring processes on the studio by allowing them to harvest useful material from failed applications. (This isn't possible for every type of game, but you can often find at least one "harvestable" asset type to assign in a test somewhere.)
Unfortunately, paying for tests also requires a studio to be judicious about how many tests they assign per open role. Rather than using it as a giant filter sent out to many, many people, they'd need to budget for it and limit the number of payouts they're doing. So it requires a studio to be good at assessing resumes, good at seeking references, and good at interviewing. A lot of studios are very, very bad at interviewing.
The reason more people don't write about this is because there are so few writing jobs out there generally. It is risky to criticize the hiring department of a studio that does the exact kind of writing many games writers dream of doing - massive, story-led projects full of strong personalities and branching dialogue. It is kind of crazy for me to be posting this at all now that I don't have a job! But it's worth talking about. I've had a couple encounters with other game devs who have been surprised to hear me say things like "Oh my god, no, I would never apply to Larian as long as they still do that writing test." For some reason, the story just hasn't penetrated the industry very far beyond the writing and narrative design professions.
But it's penetrated the narrative side of the industry completely. Almost everyone I know who works in this space has heard these stories from multiple friends and acquaintances. It's the worst of the worst as application experiences go, and everyone knows it.