2026-01-06 18:35:00
Recently, Kev posted a survey on his site to figure out how people access his content. Big fan of asking people directly and the results are not at all surprising to me. As I said to him, RSS traffic on my server is VERY high.
But it's fun to get more datapoints so I created a similar survey and I'd really appreciate it if you could take probably 10 seconds to answer it. It's literally 1 question. I'll keep the form live for a week and then publish the results.
Thank you :)
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2026-01-06 01:35:00
The year is 2026, and RSS is still, by far, the best way to keep up with sites on the web.
If you already know what RSS is but you’re not currently using it, consider this a reminder for you to dust off that RSS reader of yours and put it back to use. And don’t listen to the party-poopers that claim that RSS is dead. It is not.
If instead you don’t know what RSS is, here’s a very brief explanation: RSS is a technology that allows you to create your own personal feed, using an RSS reader app, where content from different sources is aggregated and displayed—usually—in reverse chronological order.
The same way you use a browser to access my site, you can use an RSS reader app to access the RSS feeds available on my website. Keep in mind that not all sites have RSS feeds available. It used to be the norm, but then the web got enshittified.
I wrote a longer post about RSS years ago, but the web is full of resources if you want to get into RSS. And you should, because RSS is awesome. So go get an RSS reader app, stop being spoon-fed slop by algorithmic platforms, and start consuming content at your own pace.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2026-01-02 20:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with V.H. Belvadi, whose blog can be found at vhbelvadi.com.
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I’m currently a Trinity–Cambridge researcher at the University of Cambridge, pursuing my PhD on the development of climate models. I’m also a researcher on the Cambridge ThinkLab group examining the credibility of AI models. My background is in condensed matter physics, which previously led to my research in astrophysics studying a type of eruptive variable star, and that in turn helped broaden my interests in the fascinating field of the history of science, about which I remain very passionate today.
I’ve enjoyed writing for as long as I can remember and I write on my website about a wide range of topics, but mostly centred around science, technology, history and society. I also run an infrequently despatched newsletter that discusses similar themes. In my spare time I make photographs and engage with my local photography club, read a lot, punt on the Cam, ride my Brompton, take long walks or participate in the Cambridge Union, which happens to be the world’s oldest debating society.
To be honest, it’s quite unremarkable. I first came across the idea of a weblog through an explainer in a physical magazine. My earliest website was a bunch of hard-coded html pages uploaded to my ISP’s free subdomain. I eventually moved to LiveJournal and then to Vox, which had just been launched (and about which I still have fond memories). In 2008 I moved to Wordpress, because that’s where seemingly everyone was, and I stayed there for about eight years. Between 2016 and 2018, in search of better alternatives because I had started to feel Wordpress was bloated, I tried Kirby and then Hugo and finally Statamic. Over the years my blog has had many names, all of which are best forgotten. Today it’s eponymous.
My perennial motivation has been the joy of seeing my thoughts printed on screen. The general structure I have on my website now, besides my ‘notes’, has been the structure I’ve had since the early 2000s. (My notes were on Tumblr.) Besides all that, I like that in my website I have a safe space in which to engage with a multitude of ideas and sharpen my thinking through my writing.
I’m starting to get the feeling all my answers are going to be unremarkable. I don’t really have a creative process mostly because I don’t force myself to write at specific intervals for my website and because I find I do not work well with ‘knowledge gathering’ disconnected from a purpose for that knowledge. What this means is that ideas incubate in my head as I read things, and over time one, or a set of ideas, will reach critical density, prompting me to write something. Consequently, by this point I usually know what I want to say, so I just sit down and write it.
I already do a lot of writing as an academic and deal with plenty of deadlines, so the last thing I want is to replicate that environment on my personal website. As a result some things I do tend to be polar opposites: I keep no schedule, I give myself no deadlines, and I publish my first drafts – warts and all – with little proofreading, or throw away entire essays at times. This is not to say I never refine my writing, but I generally try not let a sense of perfection get in my way. I also, therefore, permit myself plenty of addenda and errata.
I write in BBEdit and publish from BBEdit using SFTP. I have a bunch of scripts, clippings etc. on that wonderful programme and am yet to find an equal. If I am on my mobile I use the dashboard built into my site, but usually only for fixing typos and not for typing entire essays. I may type entire notes this way, however, because notes on my website are usually quite brief. And if I ever want to make note of something for later or return to a webpage, I either save it to my Safari reading list or make a note on Apple Notes. However, I rarely make separate, atomic notes anymore (I did try to at one point), choosing instead to write a few lines summarising a source and saving the source itself. In case of my RSS subscriptions (I use NetNewsWire) I star posts for later reference but prefer to read on the actual website, as the writer intended.
I can write anywhere but there certainly are some things that make writing a more pleasant experience. Good music has no equal and I prefer classical music (which varies widely from Mozart to George Winston) or ambient works like those of Roger Eno and Enya; if push comes to shove, anything without words will do. I prefer quiet places, places from where I can see the natural world around me and a warm cup of coffee, none of which are absolute necessities. The environment on my computer is probably a bit more controlled: I like to write on BBEdit, as I said before, and in full screen with, perhaps, Safari on a neighbouring workspace.
My website is hosted on a VPS with Hetzner, which I also use to self-host a few other things like a budgeting software, a reference manager, Plausible and Sendy. It runs on Statamic and is version-controlled with Git. My domain is registered with Cloudflare. In the past I used mostly shared hosting. I also maintain an updated list of stuff I use daily on my website for some inexplicable reason.
It costs me about £5 a month to run my website, including daily automated backups. I neither generate revenue through it now nor plan to in the future.
I do not have thoughts on people monetising their personal blogs. However, if their attempts at doing so involve ruining their writing, presenting misleading content or plastering ads all over their page, I might not be inclined to return to their site or recommend it to others.
I know how wonderful it felt when people showed support for my website through small donations so I like to give similarly when I can afford to do so.
Amongst those who have not already been interviewed on People & Blogs, here are four people who are far more interesting than I am: Juha-Matti Santala, Pete Moore, Melanie Richards and Anthony Nelzin-Santos. (This in no way means there isn’t a fifth person more interesting than me.)
I feel a strong urge to apologise for my responses but I’ll instead take a moment to nudge people to subscribe to my newsletter if that’s something they’d like, or visit my website and start a conversation with me about something either they found interesting or with which they disagree.
If you have 30 min to spare, head over to ncase.me/trust/ for an interactive website designed to illustrate the evolution of trust according to game theory. But if you have less than 30 min, here’s a ‘tediously accurate scale model’ of the solar system that is the internet edition of Carl Sagan’s pale blue dot.
Besides all this, I’d encourage people to help build a better, more inclusive and kinder world for everyone by engaging meaningfully both online and offline (although not at the cost of your own mental health). Slow down, read more books and please don’t lose your attention span.
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 122 interviews.
Make sure to also say thank you to Chris Hannah and the other 129 supporters for making this series possible.
2026-01-01 18:35:00
I distinctly remember waking up early, on January 1st, 2017, going downstairs with my laptop, making myself some coffee, and coding what ended up being the first iteration of this blog. I wanted to write weekly updates to hold myself accountable. I failed spectacularly. Reading that post from 9 years ago made me smile: 27-year-old me wanted to cut down on distractions and get the habit of waking up early back. Guess what? 36-year-old me also wants to cut down distractions and get the habit of waking up early back. Some things apparently never change.
On the first day of 2017, I published my first blog post; I’m posting the 620th. I also sent out the 1st edition of Dealgorithmed because I guess I’m a sucker for starting projects on the first day of the year. It does make it easy to remember when there’s an anniversary to celebrate, though.
I genuinely think this is going to be my last digital project. I said it many times before, but this time it does feel different. I don’t know about you, but I’m seriously starting to feel digital fatigue. I’m cruising towards my 15th year as a freelancer—I’ll officially hit that milestone on July 1st, 2027, even though I started working solo at the end of 2011—and I find myself reflecting a lot on the possibility of completely changing career and doing something completely different that has nothing to do with the digital world. Time will tell if this stays an idea or it becomes a concrete plan.
I do know that no matter what I end up doing, I’ll still continue posting on this blog. Because blogging is fun, it’s therapeutic, and more people should do it. Plus, I want to become one of those oldheads with a blog that is 30 years old!
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2025-12-30 00:40:00
The year is about to end, and it’s unlikely I’ll finish more books, so I think it’s a good time to recap the books I read in 2025. I’m not going to include links to buy these books. There’s no point in doing that because you know better than I do where you like to buy books. Some I read in Italian, others in English, but I’ll list the English version here when possible.
That’s it, that’s the whole list. Those are the 35 books I read this year. How about you, though? What did you read in 2025?
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2025-12-29 01:45:00
No matter how busy life is, there's always time to admire a beautiful sunset.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs