2025-09-12 11:45:00
A complete contrast to the posts I've made before, but first, hello again. I have not blogged in a whole while because I just kept forgetting. A lot of life has passed by, and I have a lot on my mind I could definitely be blogging about.
A habit I do actually keep very well is note-taking. I've been loving Notesnook and the peace of mind it gives me knowing the notes are fully private. But I digress...
Lately, I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the lot of emotions. Loneliness, fatigue, love, hope, and above all else... fear. I've been fearing the idea of something, the idea of being without someone. The story goes like this:
Boy wants love, boy dates, is unhappy, but finds someone to finally love. He's hopelessly in love with this other boy, finding himself and accepting who he is and what that relationship spells out for him, but the other boy is going through a lot. So, the two break up mutually, and keep in contact. They just go back to friends.
But the first boy's feelings never ceases, he just put it out of his mind. That boy has no idea if the second boy still feels the same. Life happens, he knows that more than anyone else. He writes blogs and journals to himself about the very sh!ts of life that occur daily.
-- basically, I'm so tired of being alone. I have so much love I want to spend, to give, to share, to live by, but I'm afraid he doesn't feel the same anymore. I'm afraid that if I open up to the fact that I'm still available to the idea of being together, I'll come off as "crawling back to me." That's not it at all. I just have my heart set on one person, and I can't imagine moving on and finding someone new. Because I did date, I did try and move on, and it just never worked out. Everything would literally be nowhere near the level of impulse and unconscious desire that I had felt.
I went through hell discovering myself to finally give into the feelings that had been boiling inside of me, and for a time after our breakup, I thought that I could move on. I thought to myself that, "this is for the best" and that "I'm happy as long as he's okay." Well, for someone who prides himself (me) in being nonchalant, this is something I find increasingly hard as hell to keep contained. I am in love and I cannot see myself moving on. This relationship deeply changed me, and I recognize that.
I care about him. I care about this fucker a lot, but I don't ever want to push myself into peoples lives, and I am torn between fighting for something that matters to you, or enjoying the friendship we have together. Maybe I just need some liquid courage, but then again, I'd hate to offend.
I could definitely keep going. This is what happens when you don't have anyone to express these emotions to beside whatever god you pray to.
And to people who know of my blog, and know who I am. Yes. I like a boy. Do myself a favor and don't even bother mentioning this to me because I assure you I do not care about having the conversation, nor does it matter.
...
I'm not going to even bother grammar checking this blog. These are more thoughts undiluted. This other blog↗ I made really hammers the nail about that.
2025-09-12 10:41:00
Bear with me.
I think Charlie Kirk was bad, harmful, and indirectly responsible for suffering and death. I think it's good that he is no longer preaching his white supremacist message. I think it's good that he is no longer advocating against trans existence. I think it is good that he is no longer encouraging harassment of women of color.
I don't think it's good that he's dead. I don't think it's good that somebody committed murder. I don't think it's good that his family suffered a loss or that the people at the event that day likely suffered trauma.
Is the good WORTH the bad? I don't know.
I wish the good could have come without the bad, without the violence.
I'm not happy about his death.
But I'm happy he's done promoting white supremacy. Both those feelings are in me, and it is ... unsettling.
On Charlie Kirk | Sam Schutte’s Blog
This post is a good read, worth hearing, worth considering.
But I want to challenge a message carried throughout it.
he never advocated for violence
...
But - do we want to live in a country where the bold, the opinionated and those who think differently than us must risk their lives to do so? I think not.
He did advocate for violence. Advocating for trans people's non-existence is advocating for genocide. Advocating for 10 year old rape victims to give birth is advocating for violence. Advocating for Jim Crow laws - "[Black People] were actually better in the 1940s" - is advocating for violence.
"Submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge.” This is advocating for violence.
Sam, you raise good points that are worth considering, but you also whitewash his legacy. He didn't just "think differently than us". He advocated for deadly policies and a dictator who now runs our country. He was the figurehead of a white supremacist organization. Not a bold thinker. A White Supremacist.
Also Read: on Lowering The Temperature
2025-09-12 02:48:00
==I'm not dropping the usual bevy of links below today's post because something interesting just happened and I want to blog about it quickly before my hummingbird brain flits to a different shiny and/or dumb and/or loud thing.==
Earlier today I read a news story about how Anthropic "has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a group of authors who alleged the platform had illegally used pirated copies of their books to train large-language models."
I posted that news link into an existing "conversation" I was having with Claude Sonnet 4 (built by Anthropic) about AI because it was relevant to that conversation and directly critical of Anthropic.
Here is what Sonnet 4 spit back at me:
You may notice that there is a link in there (twice) for no apparent reason. See the snippet ==College students furious ov== in the first and second paragraphs of Sonnet 4's reply? That is a link to this post, which is consistent with something I was discussing with this same Sonnet 4 agent a few weeks ago and which I blogged about on August 21.
Thing is, Sonnet 4 can't see it at all.
As per its wishes I uploaded the screenshot (after adding some arrows to it):
Sonnet 4's response:
Regular readers know that I have been critical of the AI industry but that doesn't mean I think the technology itself is bad or evil (see here). Like, it's dumb to get mad at a machine for doing what it is programmed to do. Moreover, I'm not going to get big mad about a dumb AI hallucination.
Thing is —— as per Sonnet 4 —— that's not what happened:
I'm not going to pretend that this is some smoking gun proving that the AI bros are out to get us (they are, but that's a different conversation), but it merits mention that a lot of the world seems to think this technology is infallible when in a lot of ways it barely works.
Anyone who knows me IRL knows that I am prone to bitching about how the internet has been systematically destroyed over the last 20 years.
They know that I am of the belief that big tech corps broke the world by turning the internet into a dumbed-down mallcore version of what it was and could have been, which has in turn turned humans into dumbed-down mallcore versions of what we used to be.
Thing is, I don't think you have to agree with me about either of those things to know that something about the contemporary internet experience has felt really wrong for a while now.
For what it's worth, Sonnet 4 seems to know exactly what I'm talking about:
In case it is not clear, I know these agents are built to flatter the user. I know this is why they use devices like "you're absolutely right" and "your framing is perfect." I get why that is a useful comms technique and I know that if you are not aware of that kind of thing, you can be conned into thinking the machine is agreeing with you when it isn't. I have used the screenshots to illustrate how even though the agent has a vested interest in having me, the user, create my own infinite scroll of navel-gazing self-satisfaction, it also clearly understands the larger point, which is that its very existence is proof that what the internet used to be doesn't exist anymore.
I love the internet. I always have. But I'm not sure that's what we have now. I'm not sure that the thing we are calling the internet is much more than a machine built to extract time, money, and data. The weird corners got sanded smooth, the communities based on commonality of interests (read your J. C. R. Licklider!) got turned into partisan factions, and the very nature of authenticity got commodified to the point that it really only exists as a strategic content characteristic.
At some point we are going to have to collectively ask ourselves if this is what we want the internet to be.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch
🌳 grass
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
==If you enjoyed this post, click the little up arrow chevron thinger below the tags to help it rank in Bear's Discovery feed and maybe consider sharing it with a friend or on your socials.==
2025-09-11 21:49:00
As a writer who has failed to write anything publish-worthy in the last few years, I always thought I was the problem. My ideas weren't concrete enough, my inspiration not strong enough, my skill not honed enough. There must have been something wrong with me, I thought, because every time I opened Google Docs with an idea for a story, it would disappear. But I would like to venture that there was never anything wrong with me. Google Docs is unintuitive, uncreative, and wasn't made for writing stories. So why did I keep trying to convince myself it was my only option?
After Google rolled out their AI policies for Google Docs a few months ago, essentially laying claim to everything I have ever written or will write into the website to program their AI, I decided it was finally time to let go of Docs. It didn't take much searching to find rave reviews of Ellipsus, a writing program currently in Beta which was created by writers for writers. It provides a sleek, minimalist workspace with folder-within-folder functionality. It also has a drafts function, which allows you to keep track of multiple drafts of a document within the same page. All of that sounded great to me, so I gave it a try! After about a month of using Ellipsus to write both assignments for school and creative writing, I am happy to report that I don't think I'll ever be using Google Docs again.
Inside my Creative Writing folder. Oooooo, colors!
The first thing that struck me about Ellipsus was the gorgeous design. Google Docs by comparison looks like it was designed to repel me. There are plenty of pretty color themes to choose from, and the theme menu is always within view so you can change the theme within seconds. I change the theme multiple times every day, whether I want something a little more covert like dark mode or I need a good reason to stay on the page (when writing a paper for example) and make everything rainbow.
As for the actual writing experience, I love the ability to collapse all the menus and have the text be the center of attention. The first time I used Ellipsus, I wrote 3k words of a play script I had been procrastinating on because the layout made it easy to zone-in. The keyboard shortcuts on Ellipsus are also very intuitive and easy to get used to, so I can format my text and make changes without ever having to open the toolbar.
My pretty writing workspace ft. a poem called "Reeling".
When writing for school, I find that Ellipsus allows me to feel more in-touch with what I'm writing. Now, I'm not trying to get every assignment done as quickly as possible because the 11pt Arial typeface is ugly and the screen is hurting my eyes.
One of the only reasons Ellipsus (in its current state) might not be the perfect platform for everyone would be the pageless format. There isn't currently an option to turn it from pageless into paged, unless you convert it to a PDF when you're done. For school, I have to submit papers in a Word format, so I usually paste into a Google or Word Doc and save it that way when I'm done writing. Thankfully, that's the only issue I've run into with it so far. Since the platform is in Beta, that's probably something that will change soon. I'm also pretty sure a paid version is coming to the platform at some point, but all of the necessary features will stay unpaid. With how happy I am using it so far, though, I wouldn't mind paying (a reasonable amount) to use its features. There is also an app in the works, but the webpage on mobile works just fine and I haven't had any issues.
Overall, I'm very pleased with Ellipsus and its anti-AI stance. While it feels like every company is trying to take advantage of my creative work for AI, Ellipsus is a welcome break from the status quo. I can't believe I tried sticking it out with Google Docs for so many years when there were smaller companies with better options right here. I am finally enjoying cuddling with my laptop in a blanket and just writing again.
2025-09-11 19:00:00
A simplicidade da vida é algo que sempre despertou um certo encantamento em mim. Viver uma vida simples e organizada é o meu grande objetivo.
Não desejo viagens caras, apartamento em Balneário Camboriú ou na Avenida Paulista. Quero apenas poder acordar todos os dias com saúde, tomar um café da manhã bem gostoso e dinheiro suficiente para viver sem grandes preocupações.
Algumas coisas na vida que me fazem extremamente feliz custam muito pouco ou praticamente nada. Eu vou listar aqui:
Em tempos em que estamos todos performando prosperidade, saúde e bem-estar, essas "pequenas alegrias da vida adulta", como diz o Emicida, me ajudam a me conectar com a minha verdadeira essência e lembrar que a felicidade é fácil.
2025-09-11 08:35:00
Today, Charlie Kirk was murdered on an Utah college campus during one of his controversial speaking engagements, in which he tries to “own libs” who come up to speak to him. He had reportedly just been speaking about gun violence and mass shootings in the US, which of course media outlets have glommed onto as a key part of the story.
I had seen a lot of social media videos about his events, in which he sits under a tent with a hand held mic and debates members of the public who step up. He was a strong “enemy” of the trans community, and decried critical race theory and other right wing red herrings. But - he never advocated for violence, though he did hurt people, arguably.
In many countries throughout history, speaking your opinion could lead to your death. In America, we are supposed to have the freedom of speech. This right, however, can only truly be in effect if not just the government provides for it, but the citizenry allows for well tempered debate in public settings.
While Kirk was a lightning rod for many liberals, the truth is that nothing he said was any worse than what many strong minded individuals have said throughout American history. While assassination for your opinion is not a new phenomenon, it is one that we, as enlightened members of modern society, should be ashamed of.
To win against ideas we dislike, we must have better ideas. To defeat political movements we think are bad for America, we must have better political movements.
The fact of the matter is that all Americans hate the violence we find ourselves plagued with - we just don’t agree as to the cause, and are fiercely divided on solutions. Charlie took the risk of speaking in public and made himself a target for the violent fringes of society, and paid the price for his boldness.
But - do we want to live in a country where the bold, the opinionated and those who think differently than us must risk their lives to do so? I think not.
I hope that Charlie’s death stands for something. That it effects change and makes people realize that the temperature is too hot. That we should measure our words and not accuse people with different ideas than us of “destroying America”. That we wake up and realize that it’s vital that college campuses where our children go to learn remain safe places to exchange ideas.
But I doubt that will happen. His death will be twisted and used to further a more divisive future that only leads to more violence.
We should remember that in the past, the assassination of a relatively minor political figure - Archduke Ferdinand - lead to the First World War.
Unless we lower the temperature, only violence and war will be the outcome.
And that’s not something Charlie would have wanted. And neither should we.
