2026-02-10 04:57:21
Well, I did it! I finally found a cosy little spot on the web to call my own. (I played around with the appearance a bit, but will do so again later, once I've learned more coding and made some more imagery.)
This blog's purpose won't be anything special, to be honest. Just a place for me to casually spill my thoughts, record what I've been up to, and share photos (and maybe art). My memory's not amazing, so I hope that by writing things down, I can remember them better. Or... if not, then at least I'll have something to look back at to refresh my memory.
A quick bit about myself (though, I'll make a proper about page, eventually): The name's Tash. I live in the UK, with my husband, my daughter (whom I'm a full-time carer for), and my cat. I started getting into gardening just over a year ago, and it's been a great boon to my mental health. (I struggle with depression and severe ADHD, but I'm currently doing well. Amazing what less screen-time and more dirt-time does for the mind, body, and spirit.)
I need to go cook dinner now, but will write again soon. TTFN!
"My very hairy companion, Jaga."
Currently...
2026-02-10 00:21:00
My friend Ava recently dropped a post are you out of touch?. The gist of the post was a breakdown of Adam Aleksic's quote of saying that quitting or severely reducing social media was equivalent to sticking your head in the sand. With this quote giving me a particularly good chuckle:
Each Reddit argument and YouTube comment war is an epistemic basis for understanding the current state of cultural discourse. If you ignore those, you lose touch with reality as most people experience it.
I have been without social media for over a year at this point. It's telling of someone who is chronically online to think that a youtube/reddit comment war is in any way paramount for understanding the cultural zeitgeist.
I wanted to piggyback off of Ava's post and give my perspective of how I stay informed since quitting social media and daily-driving a dumb phone.
I agree with Ava that the importance of social media for staying informed is largely overrated.
Going back to Aleksic's quote about comment section wars, it's kinda laughable to take comment section arguments seriously. Comment sections are largely bots/trolls posting something inflammatory, people fighting battles of who can be the snarkiest for internet points, and dog-piling people who don't participate in the group think of that particular group/subreddit.
Social Media is not indicative of reality, because most people don't act like how they do on social media. Most people don't comment on social media, especially older generations (Facebook being an exception).
To give an example, if I based my views on American conservatives off of what I've seen on the conservative subreddit. I would think all conservatives were delusional and drinking the pro-Trump kool aid. However, if I go outside, I would see that all of my pro-trump neighbors have taken down their signs and instead going back to the pre-2016 generic freedom/America/God/guns shtick. Going to No Kings I saw plenty of anti-Trump republicans, my best friend's dad being one of them. This perspective would have been lost had I not left social media and chose to look at what is going on outside. There are certainly those nuts that are hell-bent on dying for Daddy Donnie and doing olympic-level mental gymnastics before they ever swallow their pride, but you'd be surprised how much of a minority these people are. There's a reason Trump has continued to lose Republican votes with each election cycle.
Another example, if you based your entire understanding of Atheists off of the infamous r/atheism you'd think atheists were all a bunch of pseudo-intellectual, fedora-wearing, neckbeards. You'd forget that most atheists are just regular people going about their life.
When you base your worldview off of what you see online, you're basing your opinion on people who hold strong enough opinions to go to niche-within-niche spaces. The internet is largely occupied by lurkers.
I stay in touch with the world largely by proxy of the creators I'm subscribed to on Youtube and family. I follow creators that will talk about social media trends, or the current political climate, or hell the news just shows up on the home page of the browser I use at my work.
Social media doesn't simply inform you, it inundates you, constantly. It's not just one article talking about something, it's post after post feeding you the exact same thing.
There was a quote I heard recently that stuck with me "once you've heard the message, hang up the phone".
We don't live in a monolithic society anymore. Everything is a micro-niche now. The latest tik tok trend that seemingly everyone is doing might go unknown to the vast majority of the people online. If you compare whatever trending dance is going on online to when Gagnam Style was popping off, it would be such a stark contrast because everyone knew Gagnam Style, nobody outside of the people who the feed explicitly targeted would see the new trending tiktok dance.
Having been chronically offline for some time now, I don't feel like I'm any less informed now than I was then. Yeah I saw the 24/7 news cycle on my feeds, but at a certain point most of that was just bullshit fluff.
I don't need to see every dipshit thing the current administration is doing. I already know they're already a bunch of pedophiles/pedophile-defenders who want to line their pockets with taxpayer cash and screwing over the working class. I don't need that reminder day after day after day. I got the message, now I have to hang up the phone.
I once heard that people aren't starving for information, they're malnourished. We have an abundance of information being sent to us, but how much of it is actually meaningful in any way? Not much I'd say.
The internet isn't what it used to be. Where it didn't matter what circle you were in, you were at least familiar with the big memes at the time, and those memes stayed popular for months if not years. The older you get the less "hip" you become. That's natural. You have a job, kids to raise, and bills to pay.
I grew up in a time where the popular memes were found in every corner and in every niche. Bad Luck Brian, Rage comics, hell everyone and their dementia-riddled grandma knew about Grumpy Cat.
We still have some big memes like Wojack or Skibidi Toilet, but they're far from how popular the most popular memes used to be back in the day.
Where the fuck am I going with this? I don't know, the HMS Pirate's Consciousness hit an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Anyway, I guess it's a really roundabout way of saying it, but you don't need the internet to stay informed. You just gotta be able to listen out in real life. That is the most indicative of what is REALLY going on. If people are talking about these things IRL, then it actually managed to transcend algorithms. Keep that in mind, and go touch some grass... especially you, Alex.
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I'm working from home. Been playing Ocarina of Time on my N64 and have gotten pretty far. Trying to find enough skulltulas to get the wallet upgrade to get the Zora armor. I'm understanding why this game is considered one of the best of all time. Despite it's age, there's so much stuff in it and so much to do. Side tasks actually mean something, the story is simple but engaging, the music is catchy, and the exploration is still plentiful. I've been making great headway beating games. Finally beat Portal 2 after first starting the single-player in 2014. Been playing the Restoration Mod for Payday 2 which brings back that feel that 2013 Payday 2 had with a lot of QoL balancing that makes the game feel fresh.
2026-02-09 21:05:00
Bear Hug is my latest creation for Bear Blog.
Unlike my other projects, this is not a theme in itself. It’s an add-on for the default theme.
It doesn’t try to replace what’s already there. The idea is simply to embrace the original design and add a layer of consistency, spacing, and a few extra touches. You can use the whole thing, or just pick the parts you like.
Bear Hug also comes with a few extra goodies, both for plugins and native features.
Alongside that, there are also a few optional styles that might come in handy every now and then. To use any of these, simply wrap the content like <div class="style-name">Content</div> and watch the magic happen.
Just to give you an idea of how it looks live, starting with centered text.
Centered text
And if you want to include something in a more subtle way, there's a style for that.
And there’s a curve divider to throw in anywhere...
...if you want a little breathing room inside a post or page.
Sometimes you might just want to add a little side note. It will look like this.
If you want to add a simple photo grid, Bear Hug takes care of that too.
And if you want to highlight part of a text...
Doing it with a pull quote like this will most likely get your reader’s attention.
Sometimes you might want to add a caption to a photo, but feel that using <figure> and <figcaption> tags is a bit too much hassle. Simply make the first paragraph italic, and Bear Hug takes care of the rest:
Behind the scenes of Bear Hug.
That’s all for now, but I have a few more ideas.
The plugin code snippets are available from Herman’s GitHub page, and if you have any wishes for Bear Hug, just let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
Happy blogging!
2026-02-09 00:56:00
I haven't been concerned with whether veggie, vegan, primal, or omnivore, etc is "better" or "healthier" for a loooooong time. A long time ago, when majority of people still thought it was weird as hell, I was vegan (before that vegetarian) for years. I was also very politically active. I was certainly a bit too "missionary" in my thoughts and expressions way back then.
Now, for a long time, I eat everything. Having a live-in partner that is vegetarian and at least three vegan friends I see and share some meals with regularly, I eat those ways plenty too nowadays.
Over the years at least on five separate occasions, and years apart, I spent two to six hours reading and learning about different diets, especially vegan, veggy and omnivore I read plenty on. Meta-studies, government & WHO recommendations and much more. Well regarded essays and sometimes books. From Peter Singer to Gary Yourofsky to extremely pro pro carnivore or primal books and documentaries, and a lot or sources in between those two extremes. Read and watched them all.
My conclusion was and remains: it's all somewhat horseshit.
Who, how much, when, what genes, what quality, where do you live, in what climate, how active are you, how much body and muscle mass, how processed is it, how far did it come, what you can easily afford and buy and prepare? Each of those things, and many more. can make such a massive difference, that saying anything akin to:
“The vegan diet or Mediterranean diet is best for everyone! or:
“XYZ (with animal or without animal products) is always bad or even the worst!”
Both are pretty crazy things to say much less advise. Especially unasked or unsolicited.
I've seen people become seriously ill from eating a purely vegan diet for a few years (I lived with very strict vegans for years). Sometimes the damage was not reversible, for example nerve damage due to severe B12 deficiency or a generally less robust immune system.
Yet there are also extremely fit and healthy vegan ultra-marathoners, combat sports professionals and body-builders. They tend to supplement and be very aware of their diet.
I've also seen people who ate a massive amount of, or sometimes nearly exclusively meat and animal products, for 6 to 12 months and become much healthier, lose a lot of weight and get back vastly improved blood-work from their doctors, have a lot of energy, and visa versa.
I have also tried a big array of diets at some point (for a few months to a few years): Atkins, no sugar, Low Carb, water-fasting for a few days, intermittent fasting, Primal, Vegan, Vegetarian, Onmnivore etc. I also really monitored if I felt any big changes in quality of life and health when I did one or the other. In the end, it turned out it made very little difference to me! Whether it was mostly animal or entirely plant-based, barring any extremes, it just didn't matter much at all.
With some of those ways of eating, I was able to lose a lot of weight well, with others less so or not at all, but in the end, the most important factors were always: “Calories in & Calories Out” and whether I had varied food with all the necessary nutrients. Of course YMMV with all of that! I would not presume to make a generalization out of my experiences.
Nobody informed would seriously argue that a vegan diet likely isn't better for animals than a heavily meat-based diet.
However, it is all so pointless to argue about food and health choices, let alone give people a really hard time. I know a friend who almost every other day, writes in a group chat about how:
"People should move more, not drink, eat healthy and eat very little or no sugar!"
One day I asked him why.
"Why are you telling people this in chat group, the same few people, and over and over again for months?" "Do you think they do not know that and have not known that for many years? That what you suggest is likely the healthiest? And have you noticed how almost all of them drink (very) moderately, very likely eat more sugar than you and move a bit less and are okay with that? They are not responding in the chat nor changing. Why not talk about anything else?"
To his credit, he has always responds kindly. And also has very much toned down that rhetoric and repetition since I wrote him.
My conclusion for me personally has always been: do what's good for you, and your body, health (including mental health!) and fits your life and circumstances...
Preferably, try to do better, at least to a degree, for the planet and animals. And that's that.
For the rest: I try to shut up, truly enjoy my food and give thanks,.. and leave others alone!
2026-02-08 20:40:00
I used to wear makeup every single day. In fact, I felt ugly without it. I used to be extremely overweight, so makeup was the only thing that made me feel better, made me feel more feminine.
But now I am sick of it. I will never wear makeup again.
First of all, it's for my health. Look, I don't know exactly what's in these products, but I know makeup used to contain arsenic and other harmful substances that have now been outlawed. Who's to say the stuff we're using now won't be on that list in twenty years? I just don't want to take the risk anymore.
Second, it was actually messing up my skin. I used to wear a lot of concealer, and my under-eyes started feeling very dry with a lot of darkness. It never used to be like this! When I stopped wearing concealer, my under-eyes cleared up tremendously. I don't care if that's just my experience. it's my experience, and it was real. Now I feel beautiful without it, even though I'm genetically predisposed to have undereye circles. If you look at beauty YouTubers without makeup, you can just tell they wear a lot of it. I don't know how to explain it further, but just look at them! Their skin looks different.
The third reason is that makeup feels patriarchal to me. Why do men not wear makeup, and I have to wear it? I'm simply not going to do things men aren't expected to do. If they want me to beautify myself, they should be expected to do the same thing for me. And makeup pushes this one intensified version of femininity: red lips, higher contrast, elongated eyelashes. I do not have long eyelashes, and I do not want to fake it using mascara. I am okay with my features the way they are.
The fourth reason is the texture. I hate the texture of makeup. Just simply having something on your face is uncomfortable.
Now, I get it. I don't live on Mars. I get that beauty privilege is a thing and aging is a thing, but I honestly feel more beautiful than ever just exercising, eating healthy, and stopping makeup products. I use oils on my skin and tinted oils for my lips and I honestly feel more beautiful than ever.
I look awake and truthful to myself, and more importantly, I just feel like me without any sort of fakery or deception.
