2026-04-11 09:29:00
I was bummed thinking that Markdown didn't have a means of adding alternative text to images, but apparently it does! For those who might be new to digital accessibility, an image with alternative text (alt text) provides screen reader users with text that can be narrated in place of the image. WCAG is an authority on digital accessibility and gives more information on text alternatives: Understanding Guideline 1.1 Text Alternatives.
It's pretty easy to add using Markdown: all you have to do is come up with a brief description of your image that provides enough information about it based on the context (i.e. you are describing facets of the image relative to your post). Some say it should be 125 characters or less, but whether that's functionally necessary or a best practice is debated. I prefer to write something like "transcript follows" when the description gets long (which is often the case for graphs, charts, and infographics).
Once you have that, place it in quotation marks after the URL for your image's location. For example, if I were writing a post talking about my adorable doofus of a cat, I would write the following link:
If you hover over this image (or read it using a screen reader), you'll get that parenthesized text.
I only recently started adding alt text to images in my blog, but I will be from now on! I should say that you don't have to do this for every image: images that are just decorative and don't contribute to the post (for example, maybe you put some ivy in your footer) don't need alt text. No alt text just means screen readers pass over the image quietly.
2026-04-11 00:12:00
I know it’s been a while. 225 days or so, if anyone is counting.
Around the time I got laid off, my writing here began to slow down. It wasn’t right away, but gradually enough that I could feel myself slipping away. I remember telling myself I wouldn’t lose who I was in the process, and that my career wasn’t tied to my self-worth. In reality, I completely failed at keeping myself together. Still, I’d like to think I said all the right things in the beginning. They were the kinds of things that sounded solid and convincing in theory. I think some things are just easier said than done. Anyways...
I mean, really lost. The kind of lost where I wasn’t sure if I’d ever find my way back. Honestly, I’m still somewhere in the middle of it all. There were days when I thought I could see the light, and that I was getting close to something that made sense again. Then there were days I realized it might have just been my mind trying to give me grace, something to keep me moving forward. It felt like I was thrown deep in a forest with no clear path out, and for a while, even my own words couldn’t reach me there.
I kept writing, but just not here. I made a quiet decision early on to truly just write for myself. There was no audience, no pressure, no need to make anything sound polished, complete, or make myself sound put together. Most of them were just pages of thoughts I didn’t quite know what to do with. I poured everything into my journal including the messy parts, the unsure parts, the parts I wasn’t ready to share. Somehow, it kind of helped.
At that point, writing became the thing that kept catching me, like I was jumping off a cliff over and over again and my words kept finding a way to hold me before I hit the ground.
While all of that was happening, I tried, in small ways, to step outside of my own head. I went outside more and let myself sit in the warmth of the sun. On the plus side, my skin is starting to get that golden tan! I learned to appreciate running in solitude and even found comfort in the rhythm of it. I enjoyed the quiet, and the way it gave my thoughts somewhere to go. At the same time, I also found joy in running with others. In a completely unexpected turn of events, LC and I joined a run club. Somewhere in between those solo runs and group runs, I started to feel small pieces of myself come back. Baby (running) steps.
There’s a lot I could (and need to) say about these past seven months, including navigating my new norm of unemployment. I think at some point I’ll find ways to talk about it here and there. For now, I guess this is just a post to say hello, and that I am trying to find my way back here again.
Stay for a while, if you’d like. I have some stories to tell.
If you'd like to comment, please send me an email, respond on any social media of mine you know, or sign my Guestbook.
Jules: Regarding your post on BearBlog, "Finding My Way Back." I just wanted to say, "Hello there." I, too, find it very helpful to write for myself (from time to time) without any intention of publishing it anywhere. It's always given me the private space I need to sort out my feelings and thoughts without any fear of being criticized or judged. I would recommend it to anyone, because not everything needs to be shared. Some things are just for us. Thank you for sharing your post. -jp
Syl: Welcome back! It was lovely to see a new post from you pop up on my feed reader. I'm glad you've been able to find some peace in running, being outside, and journaling. I keep a journal separate from my blog that's solely for me, and it helps a lot when I need to arrange my thoughts or get something out of my head. Nature always helps as well. I look forward to reading more of your writing, but it's important to take time to yourself if you need it. ❤️
2026-04-10 16:19:23
Like, seriously. I have no power to persuade people to leave mainstream social media to start blogging, so I won't even try, but my desire is strong. I wish everyone had a blog, so far away from algorithmically managed social media. That way, people would be somewhat forced to pay attention, or at the very least more inclined. I don't want to keep up with my friends because a feed reminds me of their existence. I want to keep up with them because either I'm genuinely interested in seeing what they've been doing, or because they had something interesting to say about a movie, a book, a recent trip they took or a visit to a local restaurant. A thought, an idea, a craft. I don't know what the Internet would look like if it were more like Bear and less than Instagram, but I imagine it would feel a bit more positive, smaller, less overwhelming. Surely there would be some thorny stuff I can't really anticipate. But I think I'd love that.
Some of my favourite memories of people I know have to do with their blogs, and because blogging went out of fashion ages ago, these memories are really old. A friend once posted about her team on Pokémon Platinum, detailing each Pokémon she trained and making up a personality for each of them. An acquaintance I knew when I was 13 got into rollerskating and opened a blog dedicated to chronicling her progress with it; a few years after she got really into mountaineering, and now shares her love for trekking and hiking.
There is a vulnerability in blogging, because by using our words, we're not relying on our appearance, which is something we've gotten used to in recent years. We know how to sell ourselves by the proximity to things or people we like, and pictures (whether they're photographs or videos or even slides made with Canvas) can communicate an awful lot of things, but most importantly, they can communicate status. We are so used to placing ourselves on the ladder, and using it to place other people too according to our view of the world. I think blogging changes that.
With blogging, I'm asked to show up and be myself. I'm only as strong, efficient, and captivating as my ideas and my words. And because I'm not used to this kind of social space, I'm still finding my footing. There are some things I'd like to talk about with a post, but I feel like they could be seen as childish, useless, or god knows what else—truly, this is just a projection of my own doubts and vulnerability. At the end of the day, people are free to judge me and my words however they want; my fear of being perceived as less shouldn't stop me from curating a space for myself where I can feel free to express whatever I'd like. I feel like, if more of my friends curated their own space, and if I could follow their journey through life, then I'd feel a bit safer in openly sharing mine.
But here's the crux of the matter: I've been blogging for roughly 10 days and many of my posts have been about blogging. I love it as a topic, and I find it quite interesting, but surely I need to break through this obstacle if I want to use this platform in the most rewarding way. One day, when I'm older and looking back at past posts, I won't be really interested in musings about Bear. I'll probably want to know what 2026-me thought of a film they watched, or a book they read, or a day trip somewhere where grass is lush and there's no buildings in sight. One day, this place will look like more like a diary rather than a log, but somehow I still feel like I need other people to share themselves like this before I get the courage to just do it.
2026-04-10 15:58:00
The past week has been fairly reflective. I've been a bit inundated with AI stuff creeping into my peripheral with regards to our collective future or lack thereof.
I, like most of you, consumed too much world news about how we're all about to be blown up or priced out of existence (while I thank any of the available gods that my bicycle works again and I don't need to pay €2.41/L to get stuck in traffic).
I've looked at my bank account and the assets I have and realised that my financial future is sound enough as long as we never move apartments, I question every extra purchase as if I am twenty years in the future and need to answer why that money didn't go into an ETF to bankroll some asshole billionaire so I can have some scraps of whatever is left over ("please Sir, can I have some more?"), and that honestly, it's boring as fuck and I wouldn't mind if the lottery that I don't play because I don't want to waste the money and statistically it's stupid, would just decide to give me a million so I can just put THAT into ETFs and retire off the gains (all while still lining the pockets of billionaires).
Bah, this is tiring. And I don't even have kids, so really shouldn't complain.
I was watching this fella a while back on YouTube (which somehow sinks its claws back into me every so often) build this tiny house on a tiny plot of land and reflect on his life a bit and why he had chosen to get into this lifestyle. I really appreciated Anders' approach: focusing on feeling more with less, trying to reduce impact as an individual (which is admirable, yet I believe the burden lies almost completely on massive corporations working to bleed the planet dry), and finding a sense of peace by living in harmony with the land and what it can offer us.
It's touching and speaks a lot to me, yet I find myself complacent in our apartment, hanging out in my job that is challenging, but I can see that I'm becoming the tentacles of the AI brain, sitting in the chair while the cloud moves my limbs. Is it that hard to break out of this shell of saving for the future, scrounging for what is left for us?
Maybe my desire to win the lottery says a lot about who I am as a person: perhaps expecting free rides as opposed to working hard, bootstraps, yada yada, to get to a place of comfort and security. Maybe I'm actually contradicting myself from the two previous paragraphs in that I still think, "if I just had enough to get free money to get by, then I'd be happy", as opposed to just living off what we have, what the planet has for us; as Anders does.
I was reading with my colleagues yesterday something about all the billions that some dickheads in the US have, and we saw that Elon Musk is worth like $800bn. A year ago I made a video talking about this topic, and at the time, he was worth $200bn. Cool.
Maybe this is what I am feeling: this absolute travesty of a social paradigm we are in, in that these monsters simultaneously evoke so much rage for their hoarding when this could be put to such better use (curing world hunger, eradicating diseases, lifting people out of poverty, providing basic infrastructure for everyone in the world), and at the same time leave me with a sense of jealousy that they can do whatever they want at any second. I don't even think it's about the money. They can do anything they want. We must sit under the table and grab whatever crumb falls to us (and if you get in my way then you're in trouble!).
So let's go ahead and start more wars, watch big fat pricks like Trump, Putin, and Orbán syphon money from us to all their fat friends pockets instead, deflect away any action that might be considered charitable or good for humanity because, you know; profit, and collectively twiddle our little toesies and thumbs while the planet heats-the-fuck-up and we all get real hot, real fast, and watch tens of millions of people run away from whatever climactic shitstorm they've been trapped in: likely in our direction up her e in the north.
Fuck it, I'm going to buy a balcony solar panel and repot my plants which I didn't do last week. Stupid Claude, bet you can't even mix soil with Perlite. Dumbass.
2026-04-10 11:07:00
2026 is doing something right for the small web. People are building tools that don't try to replace things. They just make them better.
Bear Roll is one of them.
Bear Blog's Discover page moves fast, especially if you frequent "New".
Miss a day? You miss posts.
Check too often? You forget what you've already read.
Bear Roll turns Discover into a daily snapshot.
That's it!
Only the stuff that makes it up top gets saved.
Which is the point.
The creator, Josh, mentions being inspired by hckrnews.com, which solves the same problem for Hacker News. Tom Waits would call him a "Raised Right Man" for putting real effort into performance.
He tuned it using Lighthouse (Google's site audit tool), which basically means:
You can feel this in action. It's as snappy as the official Discovery page.
We're seeing more tools like this lately.
Not bigger platforms, just smarter layers on top of what already exists.
Bear Roll doesn't try to change Bear Blog. It accentuates it. It's the Yang to Bear Blog's Yin.
If you use Bear Blog, this is a no-brainer:
If you would like to keep up on the happenings on Bear Roll here is a link to the blog and here are stats for us nerds out there. ■
🎧 Darling West - 12th And Porter via Folk Forward on SomaFM
2026-04-10 05:46:00
I had a whole post written about the fucked up state of the world with a particular focus on, among other things, the abject rottenness of the United States, the toxicity of bandwagon Blue Jays fans, and the impact social media has had on the minds, hearts, and souls of billions of people...
...and then I deleted it all because sharing some awesome Frazey Ford songs is a better use of my time. All links are to Spotify even though I don't pay for Spotify because every time I link out to Apple Music, which I do pay for (and which is objectively better in most ways), someone whines about it.
🎵🎵 "Done"
🎵🎵 "Lovers In A Dangerous Time" (cover song, obv)
If you are also a Frazey Ford fan, you should know that you are very cool and a son of a son of a gun.
🌲 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.