2025-12-29 01:45:00
No matter how busy life is, there's always time to admire a beautiful sunset.
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2025-12-26 20:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Lars-Christian Simonsen, whose blog can be found at lars-christian.com.
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My name is Lars-Christian Simonsen. I'm a guy in my twenties. No wait, thirties? Actually let's just scratch that part. I was born and raised on an island deep inside the Arctic circle. Up there, I spent the first quarter century of my life, before relocating to the Norwegian capital, Oslo, while looking for work after getting a degree in finance and business administration.
There was also a girl and that girl is now my wife. As she was less than excited about the prospect of settling down somewhere where the number of what she considers a warm summer day per season is typically counted on one hand, and the dark days of winter seemingly never end, I simply could not convince her to move back north with me. Instead, we hopped on a train and found a quiet suburban neighbourhood when we were ready to settle down. A decade later, we're still here and we're raising two children in this community. We've concluded it was a good compromise.
My days revolve around the aforementioned children, and juggling keeping them alive and content (tall ask, but we aim high) with a nine-to-five and trying to find some time for other things I enjoy. This includes, but is not limited to, running, reading and writing. I also enjoy being outside in nature, hiking and camping in the mountains in particular. Alas, I don't find nearly enough time for it. In an attempt to compensate, I double down on exercise and reading, and try to spend around at least half an hour on each every day.
Circa 1995 my dad took me to a newly opened local internet café. It was the first time I went online, and I was hooked. A couple years later we got a state of the art ISDN line installed in our house. Back then we paid for usage by the "call unit" (the Norwegian term "tellerskritt", which translates literally to "counter steps", is far more memorable) and there were months where I wasn't looking forward to the day the bill dropped into our (physical) mailbox. My life as a chronically online person was underway.
Hanging out in local IRC channels, moderated by our community tech gurus, it didn't take long before I was inspired to make my own website. The year was 1998, and I used a program like FrontPage or some such to get my very first personal site online. Domains were expensive back then and the site was hosted on a directory provided by our ISP.
After that, I spent a few years making a website dedicated to a popular video game series. But when 2005 rolled around, blogging was all the hype, and I decided that I needed to have a personal blog as well. Domains had become more affordable, and I decided to register the .com for my given name, Lars-Christian. It has housed my personal website since.
As I have changed (grown?) as a person through these years, the blog has changed with me, and there have been many iterations through these two decades. Last year, however, I made a concerted effort to reconstruct as much as I could of the content from the earlier versions of the blog. (I relied heavily on the magnificent Internet Archive which I think everyone should support.) By my estimate, the posts archive now contains at least 90% of the posts I ever published to my blog. There honestly isn't much to be proud of. My 2007 phase of trying to fashion myself an internet marketing guru is particularly cringe. But I like the idea of my personal website as a reflection of my many past selves, so I leave everything for posterity.
The blog laid dormant for many years, before I decided to bring it back to life in late 2023. Like so many others, I had become disillusioned by the state of the big social platforms. Withdrawing from those, breathing life into my blog again as a place to express, collect and share whatever interested me seemed an obvious move.
Nowadays, I think of my website as not just a blog, but an online home. My personal space to do whatever I want. And a place to experiment and tinker with tech. You know, like we used to do back when tech was exciting and spoke to a world full of possibilities as opposed the dystopian timeline we stumbled upon as we ceded our lives to a handful of algorithms. Turns out that part is mostly optional, even today. I've built functionality to replace centralised services like Goodreads and Strava, and share my reading and workouts on my blog.
Admittedly, those are mostly just things that aren't doing the thing. Because the thing I really want to do is write more. To the extent that I have a goal for my blog, it is simply to write more.
There's a stanza from the song Marching Bands of Manhattan by Death Cab for Cutie. It's one of my favourite songs, by one of my favourite bands, and the particular line is this:
And it is true what you said
That I live like a hermit in my own head
To the extent that I have a creative process, it is living like a hermit in my own head. Always thinking, contemplating, obsessing over some thing or other. It can be exhausting, and often leaves me feeling restless. But committing my thoughts to paper is something of an antidote. The song continues:
But when the sun shines again
I'll pull the curtains and blinds to let the light in
Putting my thoughts to the sword by writing them down, examine if they make sense, sometimes feels like pulling the curtains and letting the light in. It helps me discard that which doesn't make sense. Which is to say most of it. I can then spend my energy on that which does make sense.
Of course, what I'm thinking about is, to a large extent, determined by input. That would be the "content" I consume. And that's why I had to step back from social media. The hot-takes and constant negativity and never-ending dread made me depressed. Now I try to control my inputs to a great extent. Avoiding the 24 hour news cycle and social media. I don't really watch TV either. Instead, I read books and listen to audiobooks and long-form podcasts, for education and entertainment.
Inspiration to write comes from these sources, but also my daily life — particularly my children. They never cease to amaze me and they frequently force me to challenge my own assumptions and perspectives, letting me (hopefully) grow with them. To the extent that I've written anything worth reading, it was probably inspired by my children.
My technical setup is as simple as can be. I do all my writing in my plain text editor of choice, Sublime Text, using simple Markdown for formatting. If I have one enormous weakness as a writer, it is my aversion to reading my own writing. I believe it induces similar feelings in me as many people experience when hearing a recording of their own voice. I dread it. Proof reading… well, let's say I have room to grow. It's usually just write it, and if I have a vague feeling of what I wrote having made some sense, I try to be quick to publish. If I don't publish something the same day I write the bulk of it, it is likely to end up in my enormous pile of mostly not even half finished drafts.
That's easy.
The sun is about to come up. I'm sat at the kitchen table and through the window I see world come back to life. I'm sat at the kitchen table. My laptop in front of me, a cup of coffee on the side. The rest of the house is still asleep. No matter how sleepy I might be, I can access something in these moments that is locked off and unavailable at all other times. Creativity never comes more naturally to me.
Unfortunately, life often gets in the way and too often I only find myself with time to spare for writing in the evenings. At night, I'll be tired and groggy and anything that requires effort feels like a tall ask.
Surroundings definitely influence my creativity and ability to get work done. Concentration is hard to come by in an untidy environment. Usually, I start any work session by tidying up the room around me. Some people excel in chaotic surroundings. Me, I'm at my best, creatively and productively, in quiet, comfortable and familiar settings.
Dialogue is especially distracting to me, and it will consistently throw me off. Even music will eat into my concentration. I've found one exception: ambient music. A pair of noise cancelling headphones and Brian Eno's Music for Airports (good luck purchasing that in a digital format) and Boards of Canada's Tomorrow's Harvest have saved me many times.
I mentioned earlier that I do all of my writing in a plain text editor. This after a desire to simplify my tech stack a couple of years back. In the same process, I also threw out my CMS and — because all the existing static site generators confused me to no end — put together a few Python scripts to generate a static version of my website based on markdown content files. It was quite a challenge, but an enjoyable one.
When I've finished a post I dump the file in a specific directory. The scripts take over, generate the new and updated pages of my website, before uploading it to my web host. Speaking of web hosts, I rent a Virtual Machine (VM) from OpenBSD.amsterdam. They are an independent host that contribute to an independent Free and Open Source (FOSS) initiative. That, and the opportunity to learn more about working in the command line and doing some simple server administration, was why I chose them. And they've been great! If I have a question, I just send them an email. An actual human being responds within a reasonable time frame, answering my question. What a luxury!
My domain registrar of choice is Hover. I think I've been a customer for close to fifteen years. I've never had any problems, which is all I want from my registrar.
That depends entirely where you're coming from. For someone who wants to start a blog primarily to write and share their thoughts, I certainly wouldn't recommend going down the path of obsessing about the tech. Do the thing! Get a domain name and start with a service like Bearblog or Micro.blog. Both are small, independent services that work for the betterment of the open web.
A virtual machine from OpenBSD.amsterdam costs €69.00 per year, and I pay Hover $18.99 per year for my domain name. Let's consolidate that in a common currency, and say that keeping my blog alive each year costs me £74.76. Were I more cost conscious, I could easily get away with half or less. I'm privileged to be able to afford some idealism in these choices.
Similarly, I have no real need for, or interest in, monetising my blog. I've long dreamed of carving out a little niche of my own on the web and spend my days providing something people value enough that it could generate enough income to sustain my lifestyle. Today, my blog is not that. It is a public notebook, a playground and a biography.
Monetisation is, to me, inherently linked to providing something of value. I'm just not providing anything of value on my blog. Nor would I want to commit to doing that. If someone else thinks differently about that, I have nothing against it at all. In fact, I've supported a few independent web writers whose work I enjoy in recent years.
The 2007 internet marketing guru version of me would probably be full of advice on how someone could best earn a pretty penny from their blog. Today, though, I have fewer opinions on the matter. What I will say is this: If someone is creating something that you enjoy on a regular basis, whether that's writing, audio, software or whatever, you should find a way to help them sustain their practice. Otherwise, you have no right to be upset when they change or disappear.
You should interview V.H. Belvadi. Venkatram's writing often makes me stop, think and question myself. His blog is also one of the most aesthetically pleasing websites you'll find.
There are so many blogs out there worth mentioning, but I'll try to stick to a few:
Slice of pi is always a delightful read. Pete writes in a playful and unpretentious manner, which I find inspiring.
Alex Chan's writing is equally inspiring, in a completely different manner. Her language is precise and to the point, while still remaining personable and engaging. A very difficult balance to to strike.
Likewise, I enjoy Meadow's blog as well, but for another entirely different set of reasons. He is a smart thinker and a gifted writer who isn't afraid to be personal. He also become somewhat of a hero to me when he told me that, just like me, English wasn't his native tongue.
My friend Fabian writes with both curiosity and authority at once, and comes across as wise beyond his years. I always sit up straighter and try to get ready to learn when he's published a new post.
Through the 32-Bit Cafe forum (another recommendation!) I also recently came across Stephanie's blog. I've been enjoying her well thought out posts.
One last suggestion will be Ye Olde Blogroll. Whenever I'm in the mood for some "doom scrolling" I go there and visit a few blogs I haven't visited before. It'll leave you feeling much better than spending an hour or two on your algorithmic engagement-farm of choice. Promise!
I've got nothing, so I'll end by sharing a profound experience and a call to action.
My daughter, four years old, started dancing ballet this year. Yesterday, she was part of her first recital. A big production. In the local theatre with professional sound and lightning. Hers was a small role. But she got on the big stage in front of hundreds of spectators and did her dance together with her ballet classmates. It wasn't so much her role, but the whole spectacle that blew me away.
There must have been several dozen dancers on stage throughout the two hour show, and they were (to my admittedly untrained) eye so, so great at what they were doing. Sitting there and watching all these children, small and big, perform at an amazing level, I realised that each and every one of them must have worked diligently and with passion for years to be there that day.
The kids are alright.
My call to action, therefore, is this: If you have the chance, get involved with someone in your local community who is working to provide opportunities like these for children. Be it sports, dancing, singing or theatre, or computer clubs or whatever. If you can't get involved personally, make a donation. Give money if you can, or some old stuff you've got lying around. You can make a difference to someone. Providing as many kids as possible with the opportunity to explore their interests, find ways to express themselves and become part of a community is how we ensure that they continue to be alright.
Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 121 interviews.
Make sure to also say thank you to Ilja Panić and the other 131 supporters for making this series possible.
2025-12-22 02:35:00
Every now and again, a post I read on Mastodon weeks ago pops back into my head. It said:
We should keep the bigots out and let all the good normal folks in.
It does sound simple, doesn’t it? Everything is such a shitshow. Why don’t we simply keep the bad ones out and let the good, normal ones in? This was in the context of social media, but why stop there, I wonder? This solution applies to everything. It’s so simple and effective.
I keep thinking about this tweet because to me it embodies one of the core issues I have with general social media discourse: the lack of depth. The idea expressed in that single sentence is so devoid of details and substance that it is effectively meaningless.
Call me insane, but I believe two things when it comes to the other ~10 billion human beings out there:
The whole concept of being able to divide people into “the bigots” and “the good normal folks” sounds so insane to me. And by the way, I have zero doubts in my mind that I’d be left out and not be labeled as a “good normal folk” in this scenario.
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2025-12-20 18:00:00
I was listening to a recent Vergecast episode the other day, and in there, there was a whole segment about MCP servers and AI-powered shopping. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been more confused about something tech-related. The more I read and listen about this whole topic, the more I think everyone is doing a marvelous job at gaslighting themselves. Or maybe I’m just too skeptical, that’s always a possibility.
There’s a passage in that podcast where they’re discussing the issue of current middleman apps, like DoorDash, taking a cut out of every transaction, and that being a motivating factor for stores to implement MCP so that AI agents can talk directly to them, skipping the DoorDash step, and in this way they can avoid having to give the middle man that %. Wonderful idea. This all sounds great in theory. There are a couple of issues with that plan, though:
Are we just assuming the AI companies are not going to become the new middleman? Because this is exactly what they are in this scenario. And I have precisely zero faith in any of these companies. They will inject themselves into every transaction if they can because it’s what every single company is attempting to do online since forever.
Are we just assuming the current middlemen are simply going to roll on their side and die? Or it’s more likely that they’ll work out a deal with the AI companies, and suddenly you have two middlemen instead of one.
This entire idea that we’ll just ask AI tools to place orders and buy stuff for us is so fucking insanely crazy to me. I hear people both criticize current tech companies for doing all sorts of shady stuff when it comes to online prices and then be on board with the idea of letting AI companies buy stuff for them, trusting that they're not going to do some equally shady stuff? Am I the only one who thinks this sounds insane?
And then there are the people who are confident that we’ll not be using AI tools powered by mega corps, but we’ll all have our own servers at home, with our own local AI models. And I don’t even know where to start with this one. Most people aren’t even capable of running a printer at home. There are precisely zero chances we’ll suddenly all have a server running local AI tools. Heck, most people don’t even have a computer at home. People use phones for the most part, and they’ll use what’s available on them. And you think Apple and Google will give us all AI tools that run locally on our devices and will not try to extract as much value as possible from them?
I don’t know, man, this whole scenario sounds like another nightmare waiting to happen to me. But maybe I’m just becoming a tired old man yelling at the digital clouds.
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2025-12-19 20:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Kathleen Fisher, whose blog can be found at aspeckledtrout.com.
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My name is Kathleen and I am a Kansas City resident for over thirty years. I came to this area when my late husband was offered a job as a biochemistry professor at a university medical center. The initial plan was that this would be a 5-10 year stay before moving on to another opportunity. We had moved from the DC area and everyday living seemed so much easier which was a welcome change. We were both raised in the Chicago area and I still have traces of an accent and bouts of homesickness – most often in the summer when the Cubs are winning.
For the last five years I have been working for an interior design firm. We do residential design and I work on the admin side. It’s a combination of accounting work as well as doing all the edits on invoicing for designers’ billable hours. I love that part of my job. Designers write a brief description of what they’ve done for a client and I clean up the wording and grammar for billing purposes. I’m not sure that any of our clients look at it outside of the total but I am proud of the work I put into it and believe it has made me a better writer.
I have three grown kids – a daughter who is a school librarian and married mom of three, a son who is an interior designer, and my youngest daughter who is getting her masters in clinical psychology. They have weathered some tough storms due to their dad’s death and have maintained their kindness, their humor, and their empathy and are, without a doubt, my favorite people.
When we made our move to Kansas City from DC, we needed to let people know our new address and so we sent out Christmas cards with the dreaded newsletter. I wrote it as a spoof of what most people typically get and everyone loved it so it became an annual thing. I loved writing it and from there decided to start a blog.
For years I was on Blogspot and switched to Wordpress seven years ago. It was at that time that my husband ended his life. We had been married for 35 years and dated five years prior to that. It was devastating and a shock to everyone who knew him. He was my biggest cheerleader when it came to writing so it made sense that I would write the eulogy for his funeral and then read it in front of hundreds of people. To date there is no piece of writing that I am more proud of than that one. After that I kept writing and writing to try to process the all-consuming grief. What started as a light-hearted and fun blog became a real-time look into the life of someone whose entire life had been crushed beyond repair. I didn’t sugarcoat any of it and I think for many people it gave their own sorrow validity.
I spend a lot of time in my head thinking about a story and how I want to write it before I actually sit down and do the work. The best laid plans, however, can take unexpected detours. I think artistic people tend to be very observant to life and their surroundings so when I see something that touches or surprises me I file it away. It’s usually when I’m doing something mundane like walking the dog or driving to work. I have no idea why it has meaning or why I can’t stop thinking about it but I trust that it will be revealed when I’m writing. It nearly always is part of the detour and I have learned to get out of my own way, shelve my pre-conceived notions of how the story was supposed to go, and follow the fork in the road.
When my kids grew up and moved out of the house, I turned one of their bedrooms into a writing studio. It was a very creative environment and I rarely used it.
For the past two years I have been in a relationship with another scientist (a colleague of my late husband). He was building a house four blocks from the one I lived in for decades. When things got serious between us and before the house was even finished, we walked in each of the upstairs bedrooms and he asked me which room I wanted for my writing. To this day the memory of that night still touches me, how he wanted to make space for me, how he knew this was important. We took one of the bigger bedrooms and made it a dual office space. I rarely use that space either. I’m writing this at the kitchen island where the windows are big and the light is good which seems is the best creative environment for me.
As I previously mentioned, I have been on Wordpress for several years. Blogspot was easy for a beginner but I then learned they owned the content and knew I needed to switch. A friend did it for me and it has been a learning curve that has been incredibly frustrating at times. At one point all of my posts were switched to private so nobody could read them and my experience has been that their tech support is non-existent. Then my blog was hacked so it was a stressful few months to get everything worked out. That being said, I am considering moving to Substack based on reviews from other friends who are writers.
The only thing I would do differently is I would have started sooner. I took a creative writing class in high school where the teacher read a piece she’d written about eating watermelon on a hot, summer day. I was mesmerized and wanted to write like that, to be transformed into another place for a brief moment. There is so much self-doubt when you’re putting your work into the world. You daily think that you absolutely suck as a writer but if you keep at it you find your voice and if it’s authentic it will resonate and you will find your audience.
I pay about $70 a year for my domain. I don’t generate any revenue from it mainly because that has never been in my wheelhouse. As far as people monetizing their blog, I’m okay with that. I’m always taken aback when people complain that something is behind a paywall as if access to all creative work should be free.
Orlando Soria is a freelance interior designer who writes often about the field he’s in, financial upheaval, and observations about life. I love his writing for its authenticity and humor.
Anna Whiston Donaldson was my first introduction to writing about grief. She lost her son suddenly and her blog was a chronicle of that time when it was so raw and devastating. She doesn’t write as often now and I miss her voice. She made me unafraid to write about my own grief when my husband died.
Tom Pochapsky is a scientist and was one of my husband’s dearest friends. He’s a fabulous writer and his take on current events is spot on.
It has been my goal for a very long time to turn my blog work into a book. After my husband’s death I literally felt like I was losing my mind. Writing helped me in so many ways and I have found that most people are grieving something. We learn as we go how to carry our losses and my blog has shown me that there is an audience that is desperate to be understood. I hope I can shed a small light on them.
Secondly, we are living through such dark times so whatever your creative outlet is bring it out into the open. The arts help us make sense of the world. Become part of that company – you are desperately needed.
Lastly, thank you, Manu, for reaching out to me and inviting me into this club. I had to read your email three times to make sure it was legit because who does this sort of thing? Highlights blog writers? My sincere thanks to you. What a gift to be able to do this.
Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 121 interviews.
Make sure to also say thank you to Henrik Wist and the other 131 supporters for making this series possible.
2025-12-16 16:35:00
With the growing trend of countries proposing laws to restrict access to the web based on users’ age, I feel compelled to say two things:
A) No, age-gating social media is not going to kill what’s left of the internet. If you think “the internet” = “social media sites,” then that’s your fault, and you should be ashamed. But don't get it twisted: this doesn't mean that these laws aren't bad, because they are.
B) How about, instead of preventing “the kids” from accessing social media, we go in the opposite direction and keep all the adults out? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You also get the added benefit of kicking probably billions of people off social media, and that would for sure screw with the finances of Meta and Co.
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