2026-07-08 23:13:20
Ashur has a lovely website and a brilliant eye for detail (look at the URL!). I have been replying to folks' blog posts every now and then over the years, notably in #JulyReply season so I jumped at this nice bit of design work.
Basically inspired by social media threads, Ashur added an indicator to relevant posts to show it's part of a series or an ongoing conversation. As the whole point of this World Wide Web thing is to connect and converse with other humans, I'm planning on doing quite a bit more of it in future.
With that in mind, I created a new reply post type that is a build on a standard post type. I added custom meta to house the details of the post I'm responding to and an "eyebrow" (I think that's the technical term) to the h1 to surface those details. You can see it in action at the top of this page!
layout: reply
origin_title: "Adding UI for replies between blogs"
origin_author: "Ashur Cabrera"
origin_url: "https://multiline.co/mment/2026/07/adding-ui-for-replies/"{% if origin_url or origin_title or origin_author %}
<p class="credit">
<small
><i aria-hidden>📨</i> A reply to {%- if origin_title and origin_url and
origin_author %}
<a href="{{ origin_url }}">“{{ origin_title }}”</a> by
<strong>{{ origin_author }}</strong>
{%- elif origin_title and origin_url %}
<a href="{{ origin_url }}">“{{ origin_title }}”</a>
{%- elif origin_title and origin_author %}
<em>“{{ origin_title }}”</em> by
<strong>{{ origin_author }}</strong>
{%- elif origin_url and origin_author %}
<a href="{{ origin_url }}">this post</a> by
<strong>{{ origin_author }}</strong>
{%- elif origin_title %}
<em>“{{ origin_title }}”</em>
{%- elif origin_author %} a post by <strong>{{ origin_author }}</strong>
{%- elif origin_url %}
<a href="{{ origin_url }}">this post</a>
{%- endif -%}
</small>
</p>
{% endif %}
<h1>{{ origin_title | safe }}</h1>I am 200% certain this isn't as elegant as Ashur's implementation but, if it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.
2026-07-07 04:56:10
In their article "Wanting to Write More", Toronto blogger Joshua Maynard, mentions feeling like they're running out of things to say here
which, in all honesty, is something I've struggled with in the past too.
I have a couple of pieces of advice that may or may not be useful to Joshua or others.
My most consistent posting on this website is my weeknotes which I've posted every Sunday for three years but my (occasionally daily) volume of posting actually started with Friday Random Ten — a low-stakes weekly (or whenever) "challenge" that made me rethink what my website was about.
And encouraged a cadence. The fixed structure of the post allowed me to add as little or as much personal flavour to it as I felt capable of doing without "breaking" the format.
Kill not that part of you which is cringe but, instead, kill that part that cringes
This is where all that professional advice about just write
comes in. I had a backlog of drafts seeking perfection and a knot of anxiety every time I opened my CMS because my blog was empty and my drafts were full and I didn't have the time or the skill or the words to bridge that gap.
So I didn't try. I reframed some of my posts, I posted some as they were. I got happy with publishing 200 word articles in my own tone of voice instead of trying to create in depth tutorials using Andy Bell's. The world already has an Andy Bell and he's better at it than I ever will be.
I have built up a few recurring post types that I like to draw on from time to time; New and new-to-me Music is a brief explanation of a band or song I heard in the week, #TIL is something I learned today and it doesn't matter what that's about (I even created an annual "blogging challenge" around sharing daily learning called #TILvember which I promptly failed at!), and The Five is a really simple listicle format — pick a topic and tell me about five things.
I think, in an internet of increasingly generated "content", the most important thing a personal website should be is personal. Fill it with you from cellar to attic; what are your opinions on, well, anything Tell me about a book you read, or a show you watched, or a game you played, or a bus ride you went on. Tell me in great depth or short staccato sentences skimming the surface. But, please… tell me.
I like your idiosyncratic little voice ok? Your silly little grammars. You’re the only you there is.
Alice Bartlett, Week 407: Soho-mayo
2026-07-06 20:45:55
The Simple Sabotage Field Manual is a document written by the Office of Strategic Services (now CIA) in 1944. The manual was declassified in 2008.
The manual was used to train "citizen-saboteurs" in German-occupied Europe because Occurring on a wide scale, simple sabotage will be a constant and tangible drag on the war effort of the enemy
.
Below I have captured ten lines from the manual that seem to describe standard operating procedures for a corporation in 2026.
2026-07-06 03:48:19
It's light at 5am, the memory of last night's thunderstorm still lingers in an overcast sky and fat wet raindrops falling from leaves to the ground with a slow. rhythmic. slap.
The birds are clearing their throats to begin the dawn chorus. The air smells wet.
On the walk down the dirt track around the bog, I see a clump of tall nettles completely covered in furry black caterpillars climbing over each other. Eventually they'll become tortoiseshell butterflies, dancing over the long grass that rings the wetlands.
A magpie, clearly displeased by my intrusion, barks a loud chakka-chakka that reverberates around the fields like a gunshot.
Picked up a couple of books at the charity shop that have been on my To Read list for a while. Not entirely sure how I haven't read "Eragon" before!
Midweek trip to the People's History Museum for a team away day. Laptops off, OOO's on, and exercises to help us plan better ways of working.
These things can be kind of lame, sorry not sorry, but our leadership team did a really good job of avoiding the dreaded "write buzzwords on Post-Its®" format and, I think, ably demonstrated that every discipline has something to offer at each stage of the project lifecycle.
Back of a fag packet maths one idle morning suggests I have around 100 followers of my RSS feed so thank you! Small numbers by Taylor Swift standards but more people than I've ever presented to in real life.
Whenever Thomas writes a book review, chances are quite high that said book goes immediately on my “to read”-list. Not only do I love the same books that Thomas does, I’m also in awe of his writing and website style.
Ruben Verweij, "Junited 2026"
2026-07-04 05:05:21
I am an absolute sucker for female protagonist urban fantasy surrounding books and libraries, and this is a good example of that sub-sub-sub-genre. Sitting in the Venn diagram intersection of library-based urban fantasy and disabled characters as protagonists, this is quite a rare book indeed.
On the main character's disability: Bridger is, of course, writing from experience here. He explains in the cover notes that he contracted an M.E. virus in a military hospital and the book is seemingly dedicated to the person who provided his pain medication during his recovery, which is fucken adorable.
The book weaves multiple tropes together from various fantasy genres into a cohesive whole. We've got the "dreamwalker" type narrative — people who can traverse between different planes of existence. We have druids, mermaids, dragons, Conan the Barbarian, Arthurian legend, and then a descent into hell itself — the third mystical world of fire ruled by demons, which, fair play to Bridger, he interrogates deeply. His world-building there is considered and measured, detailed, and whilst it leans on some clichés (obligatory rivers of lava) it feels as real as any of the other magical worlds described, indeed as real as our world.
For the most part, Storywalker maintains a decent, steady pace. I was a little concerned when I hit 90% and it didn't look anywhere near ending — I'd assumed I had accidentally picked up part one of a trilogy or series — but then Bridger managed to wrap everything up. The last nine percent of the book felt a little rushed as it hurtled into a satisfying conclusion, but not in a confusing Drac Von Stoller fashion.
I don't want to come across as mean-spirited — it's a decent book. I rattled through it quite quickly and, on the whole, it was enjoyable and rich.
I'd like to read more from this world, and definitely more stories about Molly Matthews, our disabled protagonist.
2026-07-02 20:40:27
We had packed lunches every day for 10 years and retired at 40
Auntie Beeb
Just reading an article about the FIRE (Financially Independent, Retire Early) movement and I have Opinions™. First, my obligatory declaration that I'm not talking about you.
The headline centres around a couple who big up their coupon clipping and explain how they charge their phones away from home. The BBC skims over their actual salaries with Aside from their good incomes
which is a significant aside; he is a self-employed lifestyle coach and she works in the financial industry.
The other story outlined in the article similarly buries the lede under frugality. An American from Texas retires decades earlier than the average retirement age –lauded for her ability to do so– which she did by moving to countries like Japan and Singapore to take advantage of high wages in private education, living frugally, sharing expenses with a housemate, and then retiring to Bali to exploit their low cost of living.
All of which seems to ignore the fact that most people are not capable of doing this, for many, many, many reasons.
Immanuel Kant posited if it's not possible for absolutely everybody to do it, then it has moral and ethical imperfections. It's simply not possible for the entire world to migrate to areas of high wages, stockpile cash, and then flood areas with low cost of living to exploit the dynamic there. It's simply not possible.
The article also places great weight on the FIRE community's belief that living frugally is the key. Actually, the key there is stockpiling wealth, and a primary component of FIRE, as I understand it, is investments. It's passive income — making money in your sleep. This is a strategy blending financial nous and some degree of luck as The value of your shares can go down as well as up
.
We had packed lunches every day for 10 years and retired at 40
doesn't fully explain the mechanics; yes, living below your means but also well paid to begin with and investing the difference between income and outgoings.
I have myself lived frugally for my entire life; no expensive cars or lavish trips, no ostentatious jewellery or latest tech. Plenty of secondhand, factory seconds, and charity shop purchases. I've rented for most of my life. I've worked well-paying jobs, nothing incredible. No investments. I've lived a largely average life.
I never managed to stockpile cash in a way that would allow me to retire in my forties.