2026-08-11 19:20:00
Yesterday I was emailing with the always lovely Robin Harford, who has a wonderful website over at eatweeds.co.uk. We were discussing the sad state of the web, and wondering what can be done to prevent Google and the others from abusing our content. And within that discussion, he mentioned his hate for the word “content”. He’s not the only one who feel that way; I’ve seen quite a few people mentioning this issue of the use of the word “content” to describe the product of someone’s creativity.
As I said to him via email, I don’t have the same issue with the word, but that’s maybe because I’m not a native speaker and to me “content” doesn’t carry a connotation of any kind. If you say “content creator”, though, that’s a different story. He used the word “art” to describe the product of his work, and I have no issue with that. He’s a writer after all, and writing is an art form.
My 5 years of high school were spent at an art school, studying traditional goldsmithing, as well as art in general. And maybe this is how my brain is wired, but to me the word “art” usually isn’t attached to written content. I also don’t consider myself a writer. Which is funny because when I get asked to describe what I do the most succinct definition I often use is “writer of code and words” since that is what I spend my time doing in front of this screen. But reflecting on the use of these words made me wonder what even is this thing I’m doing here on this site.
This is clearly writing and, therefore, I am a writer. But in that case, we’re probably all writers. We all text and send emails and post online. Are we all writers? What makes a writer a writer? The medium? The length? The meaning? The time spent?
As I said to Robin via email, I think of what I do here as public emailing. I sometimes have thoughts appearing in this brain of mine, and I decide to share them in a way that’s public. These are attempts to communicate, to make connections, to encourage dialogue. But maybe that’s also what artists try to do with their art? As always, many questions, not as many answers.
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2026-08-10 16:45:00
I just went through the queue of submissions to blogroll.org and probably deleted 95% of what was in there. This is not unusual, and has become more and more common lately. A big reason for this is clearly AI. The amount of slop submissions I’m getting is trending upwards, unfortunately. The other big reason is people attempting to use the blogroll as a way to get traffic for their shitty marketing sites, which is obviously annoying and a waste of my time. There’s people who have submitted their stupid marketing sites multiple times, and I’m starting to contemplate the possibility of blacklisting domains because some people out there clearly don’t know how to behave.
But all this is making me question the value of big lists in an age where content is becoming more and more abundant. There are people out there—idiots, if you ask me—who think that coding has become a commodity, that everyone can make a site with just a few prompts, and that producing content worth consuming has become so incredibly cheap and easy. If you believe in all that, what even is the point of having a big list of sites worth consuming since content worth consuming should just flood every corner of the web and be easily accessible?
I do not believe that to be the case. I believe, in fact, the opposite to be true. Good content, content worth consuming, is becoming harder to find, and it’s getting buried under a sea of low-quality crap, which makes me wonder if it’s time to start rethinking how blogroll.org works. I have ideas for how to tweak both the site itself as well as the submission process (and no, that doesn’t involve the exchange of money), but it’s obvious to me that the only way out is to raise the barrier to entry, which is pretty much the opposite of what the web has been all about for the past 20 years.
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2026-08-04 13:15:00
About two months ago, I discussed my fitness challenge where the goal was to get below 85.3kg, the oldest measurement I have on record on the scale’s app, starting from 89.6kg. We’re halfway through this challenge, and things got a bit out of hand because, as it’s often the case, I tend to go a bit extreme when I set this type of goal. I hopped on the scale this morning and logged an 81.1kg, which is the lowest weight I have on record since I bought the scale 10 years ago.
I’m feeling incredibly well, at least physically, if we ignore the heatwave with its endless series of days at 39°C. The mental side of things, well, that’s a different story, but I can assure you it’s not related to the loss of weight. That’s helping a lot actually, but this is something I plan to write about once this challenge is over in a few months.
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2026-08-02 00:05:00
It’s a very chilling 38°C outside at the moment. Those are at least 35 more that the max temperature this dog considers acceptable. But he’s doing his best to ride the heatwave, like the rest of us.
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2026-07-29 18:40:00
There is nothing I hate more than doing self-promotion. The idea of talking about something I’m doing, I’ve done, or I'm going to do makes my skin crawl. But the opposite, promoting things other people are doing—especially friends—fills me with so much joy that I’ll never miss out on the opportunity of doing it.
And that’s why I’m excited to let you know that my longtime friend Mattia is about to embark on another of his trips, this time touching Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, and as usual he’s going to share thoughts and pictures on his newsletter “Missives From”. I’m sure he’ll figure out a way to get himself into some sketchy situation since he seems to have a knack for that.
So, “Missives From” Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, first newsletter dropping sometime this week (maybe). Go sign up and tell Mattia Hi and let him know I sent you.
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2026-07-26 03:00:00
This morning I finished reading Snow Country by Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata. The book was suggested to me by my cousin who, after our most recent dinner together where we talked at length about books, sent me a list of a dozen titles for me to read.
When it comes to books that are suggested to me, I like to know as little as possible about them: I don’t research the author, I don’t read the blurb, I don’t seek reviews. I like to think that if someone suggested a book to me there might be a good reason for it and so I simply pick it up and read it. And that’s exactly what happened with this book. At the beginning of July I ordered 3 books from the list provided by my cousin: Neuromancer by William Gibson (already finished it), Kokoro by Natsume Soseki (started reading it today and I’m enjoying it a lot), and Snow Country.
This morning, after I finished it, E. asked me if I liked it. And as I said to her, I’m not sure I know how to answer that question. It happens a lot with books. And if you were to ask me to describe this one to you, I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s a snapshot of life, suspended in time, left there hanging without what most people would consider a proper conclusion. But at the same time it felt complete, as if nothing more needed to be added.
I don’t know if I enjoyed the book, or if I liked it, but I can for sure say that it left me with something, and that’s more than enough for me.
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