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Why I'm rebuilding my IndieWeb projects with Claude - Articles by Aaron Parecki

2026-10-17T14:46:17.000Z

I recently came across Brennan's post noticing that Claude Code has been showing up in the commit history of a bunch of my IndieWeb projects lately. That's true! I was wondering when someone would notice. I haven't been hiding it, but I also haven't written anything about why I'm doing it, so this seemed like a good time to finally get my thoughts down.

The principles are about what you own

Brennan's post summarizes the IndieWeb as:

the main idea being to empower individuals to own their own identity, data, and web presence rather than relying on centralized social media silos

That's a pretty good summary. But notice that no part of it talks about what tools you use, or what you use to build your tools. That was a very intentional part of the IndieWeb principles, which start with "Own your domain and your data." The principles are about owning your data and being able to choose where your data is hosted, not about how the code behind it was created. It's not even about everyone hosting their website from a server in their closet, although if you want to do that you definitely should!

These projects were old

I launched some of these tools literally 15 years ago. The two big ones for me are webmention.io and IndieAuth.com. Both are old Ruby codebases that use long-abandoned ORMs and ancient versions of Ruby.

Rewriting these had to happen at some point regardless. Frankly they are a security nightmare waiting to happen. If I hadn't done the rewrites now, the realistic alternative would have been to just shut down the services.

And IndieAuth.com has a particularly awkward history. Around 2016-2017 I realized it was too confusing to have a service called IndieAuth.com that actually did two separate things. It was an authorization server that let you sign in to IndieAuth apps with your domain (via an account like GitHub), and it was also a way for developers to add "sign in with your domain" to their own web apps. So I officially decided to split those into separate products. That's where indielogin.com came from, which launched in 2018. IndieLogin gives app developers a way to add "web sign-in" to their apps without having to implement RelMeAuth or the IndieAuth spec themselves. But I never got around to splitting out the other half, the authorization server that your website links to as its IndieAuth server, and issues tokens for Micropub apps.

Finally thanks to developing a style of working with Claude Code that I'm comfortable with, I was able to launch IndieKey. This is the replacement for the other half of indieauth.com. It has a bunch of features I'm excited about, too much for this blog post, but finally I am comfortable migrating people over from indieauth.com to this. Keep an eye out in the coming months for an automatic migration, which Claude has been very helpful in planning.

Modularity, demonstrated

One of my favorite principles is modularity:

The more your code is modular and composed of pieces you can swap out, the less dependent you are on a particular device, UI, templating language, API, backend language, storage model, database, platform.

The webmention.io rewrite is a pretty good demonstration of this. I was able to move webmention.io from the Ruby code to PHP without anybody who uses it needing to change anything on their end. That's the whole point of building things on open protocols. The implementation behind the endpoint can change completely and the rest of the web doesn't have to care.

Single point of Aaron

Brennan links to the wiki page single point of Aaron, which, yes, I know. It's been a running joke (and a real concern) for a long time.

I run these services for the community because I want to show what's possible. I never wanted them to be seen as the only option. I've wanted people to build alternatives to webmention.io and IndieAuth.com for years, and I'm always glad to see a blog platform build in Webmention support natively instead of relying on my service.

So if you don't like that I used Claude to help build the replacement, that's fine! You can treat it as though I shut down the service and go find an alternative, because that is what would have happened anyway. I fully admit I knew some people would be unhappy with my choice of tools. But honestly, that's great, because it might encourage someone to build alternatives to these services, which is a win for the community overall. In fact at least one has already shown up as an alternative to webmention.io: weepinbell as a direct response to my rewrite.

That's pluralism working the way it's supposed to. Hopefully this pushes more people to build their own tools and services, especially if they're opposed to the way I work.

Understanding matters more than the tools

Linus Torvalds had a good comment on the Linux kernel mailing list about people using these tools in kernel development:

The kind of expectations I have is that people do their best and I expect people to understand what they are doing.

But that understanding has very little to do with what tools they use.

And quite honestly, in my experience, the people I respect and call intelligent are not the ones that shy away from using new and interesting tools.

That matches how I think about it. I wrote many of the specs these services implement, and I still read and understand what gets shipped. Claude is doing the typing, not deciding how Webmention works.

Have fun

The last (but not least) IndieWeb principle is have fun.

The code was never the interesting part for me. I like thinking about things from the protocol and product perspective. Maintaining a large codebase is not fun for me. But I do like building things and making useful tools. I like figuring out how building blocks can compose into a larger useful product.

And now it's a lot more fun, because I get to focus on the product and design of these tools instead of getting stuck in the weeds of the code. I've shipped more improvements to these projects in the last couple of months than I had in the previous few years.

IndieKey - An IndieAuth server you can use for your website, built from scratch in the last month.
Webmention.io - Receive webmentions for your website, forward them to webhooks, or fetch from the API. A complete rewrite of the old Ruby app that is now much more maintainable.
Meetable - The events platform that runs events.indieweb.org, which I started developing in 2019. Recently I was able to ship a bunch of features on the todo list backlog: Proposed events, recurring events, code of conduct confirmation, a calendar heatmap, and many more!
IndieAuth.rocks - An IndieAuth spec validator. This has been on my todo list for literal years!
Quill - A Micropub client for posting notes, photos, articles and more, rewritten from scratch with a significantly improved UI!
IndieNews - I added an admin UI to manage block lists to deal with the influx of poorly written LLM posts that were being submitted.
micropub.rocks and websub.rocks - Turns out the email login forms were being abused to send spam, so I replaced it with passkey login.

Disclosure

While I don't work at Anthropic, I have worked with some folks there on launching Enterprise-Managed Auth in Claude.ai.

And yes I used Claude to help me draft this blog post, with a healthy amount of hand editing afterwards.

Anyway

The one nit I will pick with Brennan's post is the title: "The IndieWeb Now Has genAI and Claude Built-in". Yes, many of the IndieWeb services I run have now had contributions from Claude. But the IndieWeb is not the services I run. The IndieWeb is a community of people, and a wide variety of tools and services based on a shared set of principles.

I don't expect this to change everyone's mind, and that's okay. People can reasonably draw their lines in different places. Pluralism means we can use different tools built different ways, but still interoperate. If you've got thoughts, write a post on your own site and send me a Webmention. It'll get to me, through the brand new PHP version of webmention.io.

Book Review: Are You Really The Doctor? by Matthew Hutchinson ★★★⯪☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-17T11:34:57.000Z

A few months ago, I went to see Dr Hutchinson record his stand-up comedy special for the BBC - it's about his experiences working in the NHS as a Black doctor. As the title of the book implies, some of the public can be a mite suspicious that anyone with even a hint of melanin can rise beyond being a porter or, at a push, a nurse.

Much like Adam Kay's "This Is Going To Hurt", this is part biography, part rant about the NHS, and part humorous look at what it takes to be a modern doctor. Hutchinson's book has rather less gallows humour and rather more racism.

The problems of racial inequality in the NHS aren't just focussed on patients; they're also reflected in the way staff are treated. Rather than just recounting all the abuse he's been subject to, the book takes a good look at the actual statistics. Of course, this makes for slightly grim reading at times, so the frequent injections of humour are most welcome.

The UK quite often seems in the shadow of larger cultures. As the book points out:

This same issue is understudied in the UK – to the point where the absence of research is glaring. While we are clearly not just a little America, we aren’t so different that we can be confident we’re not replicating the same here.

Because of that, at times the book does feel a little bit like the "we have [racism] at home" meme.

There's an almost relentlessly cheery irreverence to some of the issues - but what else can you do? Sometimes it takes a good dose of comedy to cut through the bleakness. There's a slight streak of ageism within the book - especially when it comes to older doctors trying to use new technology. Although, to be fair, that was also my experience when working at NHSX. There are some people within the system who are desperate for it to remain preserved in aspic as even minor improvements are a threat to their position in the hierarchy.

A minor grumble, the problem I have with books like this - and with The Secret Barrister - is that a lot of the moaning about how hard it is to become a professional doctor / lawyer just generates a giant shrug from me. Every piece of medical media in the last 50 years talks about how bone-crunchingly hard it is. All I can think of is "none of this should be coming as a surprise to you!" Should it be easier (and less sleep depriving) to be a doctor? Sure! But given it isn't, perhaps dial down on the clichés of how uniquely awful your chosen career is.

The book isn't just a list of complaints, of course, everything is backed up with statistics (although unreferenced). Thankfully, the book ends with some practical suggestions of how the NHS can improve. It would certainly be interesting to read a version of this from 2046 to see how much has changed - given the improvements already bearing fruit, I'd hope that the UK health service would become much less racist over time.

2026-10-17 11:37: We had a Hotpoint engineer come out to repair our washing machine yesterday. While replacing... - Kev Quirk

2026-10-17T10:37:00.000Z

We had a Hotpoint engineer come out to repair our washing machine yesterday. While replacing the machine, he forgot to connect the waste pipe and we came down to this mess this morning. 😡

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Weeknote #2022 - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2026-10-17T06:12:00.000Z

X is bad. Obviously.

Davey hits the nail on the head here:

People return to X just want followers in the strictest sense of the word. Sycophants that will just click like and subscribe on their posts without calling them out on anything. Much like the companies they cover, they just want to see number go up.

Couple of interesting game projects. The first, PS2 games in the browser with WebAssembly. Secondly, someone ported a bunch of N64 games to Miyoo Mini and a there was asecond project just for Mario Kart released around the same time. I'm going to have some fun with these.

This video about sketching was interesting even if it is trying to sell a course which, as best I can tell, everyone doing art on YouTube is.

CMFs new speakers look great — I'm sad I have no use for such a thing.

Converse have a new Hello Kitty range and I want them all.

Donald Faison jumped did an impromptu rendition of "Everything comes down to poo" in this interview.

Matt of Unch fame wrote up the financials for a year of running a cryptic crossword magazine (of which I've bought each issue even though I do not enjoy such things I've since learnt). Postage to anywhere outside the UK as usual becomes the most expensive thing to handle.

A 1692 guide to colour. This is cool.

I was looking at buying another pink AL Star (I did of course, vibrant pink to be specific) but I wanted to see how the colour compared to the other pink Safaris and AL Stars I had. This comparison was the most complete list I could find.

Two HTML boilerplate posts to keep for reference — one from Vale and one from Manuel.

Ioskeley Mono is a "monospace font crafted to match Berkeley Mono's aesthetic. Built by configuring Iosevka". I've switched to this everywhere I can.

Bunny have updated their CLI for better deployments of static sites. Nice.

Tiny Little Office is the kind of stuff we need more. No logins, no bullshit.

These pencil cases by Yup! are incredible and I want them all.

Autumn - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-17T00:00:00.000Z

The night-given crystalline coating on the red leaf shimmers with the burgeoning light of day. As I take a step forward, the light hits the ice crystals in a different way. We had our first frost last night.

I looked up to see an expansive winter-blue sky, with faint lavender on one side of the sky and the beginning of a yellow glow on the other. Day was about to break, but the sun had not yet risen.

Next to the red leaf that caught my eye there was neater red leaf, this one with veins made more definite by the frost; the fiery-red of the leaf became white. Around me, the occasional rabbit hopped over the path; birds sang. A peaceful whisper permeated the air reminding me of the forthcoming season. I came outside to feel the cold; to experience the latter part of autumn.

An evergreen tree is tipped with silver, the colour of the frost accentuating the droop in the leaves of the tree, almost as if the tree itself was being weighed down by the frost.

My morning was full of observations of the season. Two young deer stood with their parent, all grazing on a frosty field. A low white haze blanketed a field that was home to many sheep. A bird skimmed across the river. Heavy trees hid an abandoned, cobbled house. Shortly thereafter, the sky became more yellow. The sun is beginning to rise. Birds sat on a tree and caught the rising sun. I love watching the light change. Trees became golden.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Should there be any riches in the world, may they be Nature and friendship and warm coffee on a cool day. Nature is among my closest companions, there whenever I look out the window or step outdoors, existing always in memory and in the present. Even on a busy street, the odd leaf rests on the pavement.

While I gazed out the window drinking a warm cup of coffee – around which I cupped by hands to savour all the warmth I could – I smiled at a passer-by, who smiled back. I love moments like this. Shortly thereafter, a lady passed by with a suitcase, to which was affixed a sticker that said “HOPE” with an accompanying illustration.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Winter forces me to confront limits — of how hard it is to stay in cold for long. What keeps me going is the beauty of Nature. There are things I can only feel in Winter; there are things I can only see in Winter. The grass twinkles with the frost. The pulse of the song. What is the pulse of Nature?

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

As day continued, warmth interleaved with the cool air; the breeze was cool but the sun continued to shine down, creating conditions where it was pleasant enough to sit outside and watch the world go by in the park for a while. I thought about the fleeting nature of autumn while gazing at the trees and watching as people walked past. I wanted to look at the trees as much as I could so as to reinforce my impression of the colours; of how autumn transforms this place. I could see there were fewer leaves on the trees than in previous weeks, but the colours were as joyful as ever.

I take notes, holding onto some thoughts, while also letting some thoughts come and go, knowing that, as with the passage of seasons, I cannot rush my thoughts forward. I sat looking around at the world, seeing what I could see; appreciating the afternoon.

Notable links: October 16, 2026 - Werd I/O

2026-10-16T20:10:08.000Z

Most Fridays, I share a handful of pieces that caught my eye at the intersection of technology, media, and society.

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I've been blogging since 1998. A while back, I was very privileged to be interviewed about my journey writing on the web for 28 years as part of the Wonders of Web Weaving series. I think it's a great audio conversation; here it is in its entirety.

Two 23-year-olds used AI to create a daily audio briefing. It’s now the top news app in Argentina.

I think there are several notable things about this story.

The first, most obvious one is that two 23 year olds were able to create a news app that rose to become the top-ranked news app in their country, using AI. There is no way they would have been able to build this with the time, team, and resources at their disposal otherwise. From an engagement perspective, this is a bona-fide AI-in-journalism-distribution success story.

The second is that it’s not a success story for incumbent newsrooms. Clearly, a short, personalized news briefing is something people wanted; every existing newsroom could have built it, at least using their own content, but they didn’t. The gap they left meant that two newcomers could come in with very few resources and gain an audience off the back of existing journalists’ work. The app credits stories in audio and leaves citations in the chat, but my guess is that most people aren’t looking at their screens as they listen to their audio briefing. Very few people will click through; I think these listens won’t translate to pageviews or subscriptions.

The third is that outsiders are clearly much more free to build experiments than existing newsrooms. The latter have the weight of their brands and existing revenue operations to consider. Most outsiders have none of that: nobody expects anything from them, so they’re free to experiment. Most experiments will fail, but some may succeed. Left alone, this represents intermediation that could undermine the connection between newsrooms and their communities. But there’s an opportunity to partner more deeply and represent newsroom needs in the app. And then consider how they can foster an ecosystem with more experimentation, not less.

Election Night 2026

This prototype from Graze is pretty cool.

Graze, of course, allows you to create new Bluesky feeds. People have created feeds for news, sports, politics — anything you like. But they’ve mostly been consumed within the Bluesky experience itself.

Its midterms dashboard is something different. Here, you can view discussion of candidate races based on the races you care about, determined by who you’re already following. Because newsrooms, pundits, and politically active individuals are posting across the network, and because the network itself is based on a permissionless protocol that is open to analysis, Graze can show you what’s happening as well as the mood of the conversation in real time.

It’s all cited, so links point to newsrooms’s own accounts and websites. And it’s genuinely live.

Young People and the Future of Free Expression

Worth paying attention to:

“New Knight Foundation-Ipsos research among young adults and high school students points to a generation that strongly values free speech as a democratic principle, but is less confident about exercising it without consequences.”

Workplaces and classrooms feel the least free, but it’s good to hear that home is generally a space where they feel more free.

What’s surprising, and a bit worrying, is that AI chatbots are also one of the spaces where they feel free — and, in fact, 48% of high school aged respondents that used AI chatbots said they felt more free to speak to them than the people in their lives. Those conversations might feel like intimate spaces, private to them; in reality, they may be available to their vendors for analysis and even training. People from low income backgrounds felt this more than most. Young people worry about conflict: they hold back because of peer censorship and the fear of being judged. The perception is that the AI won’t judge them. In a world where chatbots have been linked to self-harm and suicide in young people, that’s quite dangerous.

The other findings here dovetail together to paint a pretty bleak picture. White and wealthier people feel more able to exercise their freedom of speech without consequence, and that number plummets to just 28% of Black respondents. Only around a half of college aged respondents felt like other democratic rights like voting were secure.

So we find ourselves in a world where people don’t feel free to express themselves — except to AI chatbots that happen to be produced by some of the tech companies who have directly contributed to this underlying authoritarianism. It’s obvious how those conversations could be compromised, and there are certainly betrayals to come — but more than that, it’s just sad that young people don’t feel they can speak and share with each other.

Why We’re Banning AI

The headline here is a bit of a misnomer. Current Affairs stresses that it’s not against technical innovation, but:

“[…] we need, first, to ensure that technologies are a tool used by workers to help them, rather than a tool used to replace workers. And, second, we need to make sure that readers aren’t being fed things that look like people’s genuine thoughts and creative expression but are in fact the product of disembodied mathematical formulas.”

The result is something that seems entirely reasonable to me: journalists are free to use AI in the course of their work, but may not write or illustrate their pieces with it. This ensures that they remain in control of the work published under their bylines, while allowing them to take advantage of automation when it can serve their process.

The side effects entirely benefit Current Affairs. Readers can trust that the work they read is produced by real people who have applied editorial judgment; the publication is also structurally incapable of publishing articles at a high volume or speed, forcing them to focus on quality rather than impressions. Journalists also know that their jobs are safer than they might be in an organization that doesn’t see a problem downsizing its newsroom in favor of predictive models.

The piece runs down the effects generative AI have had on creative industries, and touches on the fallacy of using Milton Friedman economics in mission-driven spaces. But the most important thing the piece has to say is: we will produce better journalism this way. I tend to agree. And what’s exciting is that it’s baked into their contract with their workforce — there’s no way to back out.

Design Your One-on-Ones

I like this approach to 1:1s from Corey Ford. Although some very high-profile founders have said that they don’t do or even like them, I think they’re a vital way to maintain a relationship with your team, make sure they’re well-served, and keep things running smoothly. But it’s also very easy to get caught into a reactive pattern — or, worse, just turn them into tactical status reports.

The trick, like all meetings, is to take the time to design them and have a well-defined agenda ahead of time. I also like Corey’s thoughts on cadence here: an hour every two weeks feels like the right rhythm to be able to make room for depth. And the one-on-one gift exchange makes for important punctuation that turns 360-degree feedback into a habit rather than something that drives anxiety and asymmetries.

What I’d add to Corey’s advice here is to space them out. Back-to-back 1:1s don’t give you the opportunity to reflect on what’s been said, take appropriate actions, or follow through on commitments, and they may get lost. As he suggests in another of his pieces: go slow to go fast. Take the time to set the relationship, take the time to design the meeting, take the time to work on the right things.

My Laptop Stickers - Joel's Log Files

2026-10-16T17:00:00.000Z

I saw Wouter going mad for stickers to put on his laptop and I decided I would do the same!

I have had like a couple dozen loose stickers that I got from AliExpress ages ago, some were gifts and some were included in videogames I’ve gotten, so I put a mix of eerything here and well, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out!

Behold my glorious creation!

My laptop with a bunch of stickers on it, enjoy!

The ones I got from AliExpress are the following: The IBM computer, PSP, Game Boy Color, NES Controller, Xbox-style Controller

Some were gifts from friends or family! Such is the case for Kiki—from Kiki’s Delivery Service—saying “I’ll be waiting!”, Princess Mononoke—from… Princess Mononoke—and Link—from The Legend of Zelda—weilding his sword.

There are some that I got for free from StickerMule’s Unix Stickers pack, which I got as a sample: an Intel-like “Linux Inside”, the Python, Arch Linux and Debian Linux logos, and of course, Tux!

Two of them came from the UFO 50 Collectors Edition: A Pig Magician holding a card, and a Pig Knight wearing armor and a sword.

There are also two that were given to me by the AntennaPod team: Their mascot–a microphone with an AntennaPod shirt—and their app logo!

The stickering of my laptop is still ongoing. I would love to get stickers for some projects and logos I’ve made myself—such as the one for Clew or Bookrastinating—and for other videogames like Outer Wilds, Metroid and of course, Chrono Trigger, or hobbies such as SpeedCubing and Fountain Pens.

The shipping from Redbubble to my country is rather expensive, so I’m looking for local alternatives to see how much it would cost me, or maybe I’ll venture with a huge sticker pack from AliExpress again.

Anyway, I’ve decided to rank my stickers on a tier list, in plain text because I can’t be bothered to make a graphic for that.

S: Linux Inside, PSP, Arch, AntennaPod logo, Kiki, Pig Magician,
A: Tux, AntennaPod mascot, Game Boy, Princess Mononoke, Pig Knight
B: IBM PC, NES controller, Link
D: Debian, Python, Xbox Controller

I may eventually replace all of the D tier because I just don’t feel like they represent me as well as the other stuff.

In any case, I have written way too much about laptop stickers now. Have a good day!

This is day 54 of #100DaysToOffload

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Published on Citation Needed: "Issue 111 – Back the winners" - Molly White's activity feed

2026-10-16T16:16:46.000Z

Published an issue of Citation Needed:

Issue 111 – Back the winners

A Trump crypto adviser’s firm took millions from Tether while he shaped stablecoin rules in their favor, a Senate probe targets Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s not-so-former firm, and crypto’s biggest super PAC plays it safe

2026-10-16 13:51: The amount of AI generated sales emails I get these days is astonishing. If you... - Kev Quirk

2026-10-16T12:51:00.000Z

The amount of AI generated sales emails I get these days is astonishing.

If you can't be arsed to write your own sales pitch, why the fuck should I be arsed about your product?

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Book Review: Africa Is Not A Country - Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa by Dipo Faloyin ★★★★⯪ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-16T11:34:14.000Z

It's hard to craft a book with so much righteous indignation - let alone make it funny, accessible, and informative. Nevertheless, Dipo Faloyin has succeeded in writing a spectacular takedown of the myths which are often perpetrated about Africa.

It starts in the best way possible:

[Insert generic African proverb here. Ideally an allegory about a wise monkey and his interaction with a tree, or the relationship between the donkey and the ant that surprisingly speaks to grand gestures of valour. Sign it off: Ancient African proverb]

How many times have you seen that? Think about all the tropes played out in every Hollywood movie set vaguely in Africa - would you accept the same stereotypes about your continent?

And yet, it does rely a little too much about internalised stereotypes:

The point is: there are a lot of people in Lagos. None of them are shy.

I'm sure there's at least one introvert in Lagos who cringes every time people expect them to be boisterous!

The horrors and complexities of colonisation and its aftermath are on display for all to see. In many way, much like cryptobros discovering why banking regulations exist, some African countries are speed-running Europe's history of bloody internecine warfare and mad kings. A predilection that some parts of Europe (and America) are still struggling to move past.

I think it could have benefited from just a few maps or illustrations. I also found some of the language a little… infantilising? The way he capitalises certain phrases like "These Powerful Men In The Capital" felt to me a little out of place. That said, there's some excellent caustic humour and some quite beautiful prose.

In the end, it shows that while Africa is not a country, the stories are often of different countries tackling the same problems in the same ways. [Insert something about everyone's hearts beating to the rhythm of an African drum, while an elephant wanders into an impossibly huge sunset.]

Note published on October 16, 2026 at 1:41 AM UTC - Molly White's activity feed

2026-10-16T01:41:03.000Z

This WSJ investigation exposes yet more Tether-related corruption at the White House, revealing that they paid Bo Hines' consulting firm millions as he was ensuring the Genius Act stablecoin law would benefit them.

I needed a diagram.

Food Questions Challenge - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-16T00:00:00.000Z

There is maybe a fun blogging challenge in writing about our favourite snacks from where we live...

After a discussion with Joel and Zachary, I started writing a few questions about food to which I’d love to hear others’ answers. This is in the same vein as the “Bear Blog Questions Challenge” and other similar challenges. To participate, copy and paste the questions below and answer them on your own website:

What was your favourite food growing up?
What is your favourite food that is made locally? (In your region/country.)
What is your favourite food generally?
What is one food you have had in the last year that you remember warmly?
What food do you really want to try?
Do you take photos of your meals?
Savoury or sweet?
Spicy or no?
Tea or coffee? (Both? Neither?)

Once you have answered the questions, feel free to send me an email with a link to your post. I will add a link to your writing here.

Submissions

I will add contributions to the challenge here when received.

My responses

Below are my responses to get us started.

What was your favourite food growing up?

It has to be my grandmothers’ jam, especially the blackcurrant and gooseberry (or apple) jelly. Blackcurrants are my favourite fruit and my grandfather gardened a few bushes of them. Granny would use as much of the fruit from the garden as possible to make jam; every summer’s harvest was enough to make a year’s supply of jam, with leftovers. I would only have the jam when visiting them, so it was always a special treat. Blackcurrants to this day are my favourite fruit, although I haven’t had them in a while.

I also loved eating scones growing up. I didn’t have them very often; only when visiting cafes. But they were – and still are – so delicious.

What is your favourite food that is made locally?

I had a colleague who once called me, affectionately, Mr. Oats because I liked porridge and other oats products. Here in Scotland we make a food called an “oatcake” which is essentially a thin slab of oats. It is ideally served with cheese on top, but I have in the past enjoyed eating them plain. (I like plain foods as snacks.)

I also enjoy Tunnocks' confectionaries, in particular the caramel wafter.

What is your favourite food generally?

I like lots of foods, but I think pasta and fish are my favourite food categories. (Although as the days go by I think more and more about what it would take to reduce the amount of fish I eat.) My favourite dessert is a small, well-made tiramisu (or, really, any dessert, so long as it: (i) isn’t too sweet, and; (ii) isn’t chocolate cake).

What is one food you have had in the last year that you remember warmly?

I have a lot of good memories with food this year. One that stands out is a delicious vegan schnitzel I had in Nürnberg, Germany. The lingonberry sauce that accompanied the dish was delicious; my first time, I think, trying lingonberry. What made the meal was that I was surrounded by friends. Food is almost always better with conversation.

Going back a bit further to a few years ago, one meal that stands out was a I had a pizza with capers on top that I had in Rome, on my first trip abroad. The weather was warm, almost 40 degrees. I had never experienced a climate like it before. I didn’t expect how salty the pizza would be. With that said, it was delicious. That day I remember drinking several bottles of water, too.

What food do you really want to try?

I love trying new foods (especially vegan/vegetarian). The one food I have been wanting to try for a few weeks was 100% dark chocolate, which I was able to taste yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Savoury or sweet?

Sweet. 100%.

Spicy or no?

I like spicy foods, and do enjoy challenging myself to see what spice I can tolerate. With that said I wouldn’t say I seek out spicy foods.

Tea or coffee?

Both! I like tea most of the time, although I do enjoy the occasional cup of coffee, especially when I am out and about. When I am travelling, I like to seek out new coffee shops to try; I walk a lot while travelling so I need all the energy I can get!

Bear Blog Questions Challenge oatcake Joel Tunnocks' confectionaries Zachary

Current Affairs says it's banning AI - Werd I/O

2026-10-15T19:54:23.000Z

Link: Why We’re Banning AI, by Nathan J. Robinson in Current Affairs

The headline here is a bit of a misnomer. Current Affairs stresses that it’s not against technical innovation, but:

“[…] we need, first, to ensure that technologies are a tool used by workers to help them, rather than a tool used to replace workers. And, second, we need to make sure that readers aren’t being fed things that look like people’s genuine thoughts and creative expression but are in fact the product of disembodied mathematical formulas.”

Treat your 1:1 relationships with intention - Werd I/O

2026-10-15T18:49:51.000Z

Link: Design Your One-on-Ones, by Corey Ford at Point C

I like this approach to 1:1s. Although some very high-profile founders have said that they don’t do or even like them, I think it’s a vital way to maintain a relationship with your team, make sure they’re well-served, and keep things running smoothly. But it’s also very easy to get caught into a reactive pattern — or, worse, just turn them into tactical status reports.

On my state in life - Joel's Log Files

2026-10-15T18:40:00.000Z

I have come to the realization that I could keep going with life as it is right now and be just fine. I have a decent job, I get to save a lot living with my parents. I get to play games and read and have most basic needs fulfilled…

Most days I wake up, pray, shower, walk to the bus, play/read/listen/watch during my commute, get to work, work, have brunch, work, have lunch, work, go back home, play/read/listen during my commute, get off the bus, buy a snack, walk home, get on my computer, scroll, play/read/listen/watch, have dinner, play/read/listen/watch, then sleep.

On Fridays I may go out with my parents, walk around the mall, have some food. On Saturdays I may go cycling, do plenty of house chores, go to my church’s youth group or activity. On Sunday I dress up, go to church, read, sing, listen, and interact the most with friends and community. The routine however, is mostly the same.

My bedroom somehow ends up a mess every week, and I keep forgetting to bring my lunchbox to work, and I am yet to go to the gym again, and I only go cycling once a week or less, and I feel my weight going up after every snack I buy, and I keep doing so anyway.

The other day my mom told me how I always seem to do the same thing after returning from work, getting to my bedroom, using my computer or playing on my Switch or something. She glanced at my backpack and saw three crumpled bags of snacks on a side pocket. My room was a mess as already stated—the stationary bike was a clothes rack.

Sometimes I feel like she is just nitpicking, I fulfill everything I’m asked to do, I do try to clean up after all, and the rest of the house has clean floors and dishes done.

However my siblings when visiting, did notice the same. I’d get grumpy whenever they or my parents entered my room because I would be expecting to get lectured or distracted or asked to do something. Perhaps that’s a valid response but at the same time, an assumption that would end up with both sides annoyed.

I should do more to improve on my fitness, I should stop buying snacks daily. I should be less forgetful. It’s all small stuff to me. But all together it may be a little bit of a bad sign.

I am genuinely happy though, I enjoy myself in everything I do. I love the games I play¹ and the books I read, I am entertained by the movies I watch, I love going to church and being in community with others on Sundays and whatever extra times that happens. But I tend to let little things build up, and once it gets messy I’m too lazy to change it.

All my mom truly asks for me is to take care of myself and take some steps outside of my comfort zone. She wants me to learn something new and broaden my horizons. Maybe continue going to the gym or at least exercise at home.

At the same time, she doesn’t know of the great friends I’ve made on the internet. She sees a computer and a keyboard and she misses the connections and the friendships and the learning I’ve already done in the digital realm. She doesn’t understand what a fiction book or a videogame are capable of. It seems like a waste of time.

Then I look at my parents doing the equivalent too, I guess, watching k-dramas, scrolling on Facebook, watching Instagram reels in full volume. And I guess we all have our own things that some may call “distractions.” But after all, if she sees a recipe she likes, she does it, if she finds some eating habit for us, she applies it. Wether it works or not it’s different, but she acts on things, and that’s something I lack sometimes.

Basically, I guess I am too comfortable right now, and yes I can get a bit grumpy when my parents push me to do something a little different than the norm—like that one time I was pushed into a date out of nowhere even when I had a great time by the end—and I guess part of that could be interpreted as some sort of psychological issue I am trying to deal with. But I don’t know, I just feel normal!

But then I look at all the cool projects some people have going on, like my online friends building whole communities and platforms, or adding actually new stuff to their websites, or sending letters to each other, and organizing and going to conventions or something.

Maybe I should try and go offline for a while again, live without the internet and stick to the basics once more. Find new things to do instead, be more present in real life and more visible for my parents as well.

Perhaps I am giving way too much weight to her words and it’s simply her perspective and I don’t really have much to worry about.

But I want to do better. I don’t mind the cycle and the comfort, but I want to find a better balance. There really is no reason for my room to be a mess, and for the amount of snacks I buy, and I am repeating myself at this point. How am I supposed to have a family and build up my future further if I keep going back to my bedroom and goofing around?

In a couple weeks I’ll do something kinda drastic. I’ll take a trip to visit my sister and we’ll go to a concert. A different city, staying with some friends and all, but with a lot of free time on my hand. Will I do something with it? Catch up with people in the area, go sight-seeing some touristy places, or what? I hope the change in scenery and routine helps a bit.

Advice is appreciated, though remember these are incomplete thoughts. It’s a slice of my life at the moment. I love my parents, I love where I am, I am worried about the future, and about change. However all things considered, I trust that things will work together for good.

This is day 53 of #100DaysToOffload

Okay maybe I don’t love being extremely stressed out during my playthrough of Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eye but it’s still fun. ↩

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Catch a Bird (or, Happiness) - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-15T00:00:00.000Z

What made you happy today? asks Catch a Bird. I love this question, and the website. For the last five minutes or so, I have been both answering the aforementioned question, and trying my best to make some people smile. Here are a selection of my answers to the question:

Trying 100% dark chocolate for the first time.
Playing the guitar.
Singing my heart out.
The joy of autumn.
Have a wonderful day :)
Taylor Swift!
Seeing two cats while wandering the neighbourhood.
You’re an amazing human :)

I love technology that can highlight the best of us; technology that brings us together.

To you, dear reader, I hope you have a wonderful day.

See also: Frances’ Sharing good things online.

Catch a Bird Sharing good things online

Links I was sent via email - Joel's Log Files

2026-10-14T23:00:00.000Z

As a somewhat popular blogger, plenty of random stuff is sent to me via email from people that want me to try stuff out.

To be honest though, a lot of the time bots keep spamming services and tools that nobody cares about. This makes surfacing what’s actually good from all a bit annoying to sort out.

Therefore, I am doing the bare minimum here, which is sharing some links, writing what they are supposed to be, and leave it there! Some of them I’ll keep in plain text because I have doubts about it. I’ll also edit this post to note if some more of my readers can vouch for any of these as legit.

Beware of clicking on stuff, I am simply shouting into the void, for all I know, you should avoid all of these for daring to invade my inbox! (ok some are still cool)

Projects

Pixel Area (pxlarea.com) - I already wrote about this project, but I still wanted to acknowledge it one more time! I still enjoy it and it looks like it continues to grow at a steady pace1 If you haven’t claimed your pixel and you have a website, you should check it out!
Quxnet (quxnet.net) - This project seems to be a whole community of forums and profiles and it looks very old school cool, my friend JP already made a profile there so, this is one that seems fine. I didn’t click through enough pages there to see anything suspicious, if anything I enjoy the vibes. Not a fan of the sender using a gmail account instead of the actual domain, but alright.
Slashfriends (slashfriends.org) - There are a lot of neat slashpages, and this one in particular seems neat enough. I haven’t made the time to link to my online friends and a part of me feels weird about it for some reason. ~~I don’t want to left anyone out by mistake or make someone feel bad and such. It also feels kinda corporate?~~)
Be Kind (bekind.berru.info) - This is a pretty interesting project where you can throw bottles with messages and reply to bottles you receive, it tries to be a more meaningul way for online interactions that takes more time and is kind of anonymous too. It seems rather minimal and risk-free and the project is also open sourced on SourceHut, which is a good sign.
Wusoup (www.wusoup.com) - I have not bothered to check this one yet, but it looks like a text chat community sort of place, maybe like IRC? Has anyone here seen what this is about? It doesn’t require an app and it has apparently been worked on since 2008 by a single person. The email was from the actual domain this time.
Copus Network (copus.network) - I have no idea what this is, it’s subtitled as “Internet Treasure Map”, some sort of curator that is actually filled with mostly AI-generated articles, slop and ads for some reason, stay away from this one. I don’t even know why I bother to mention it other than to warn you about it, I guess.

Games

Lala is Bound (mymadnessworks.itch.io/lalaisbound) - When I played Resident Evil, this game was suggested to me via email, as well as the other horror games found in the itch page of this artist. The suggestion was by a different individual though so I figured I’ll share it here!
Fantasy Online 2 (fantasyonline2.com) - This is a 2D pixelart MMOPRG. I was asked to test it out but I haven’t found the time for it. I don’t really play MMOs and I have plenty on my backlog, but the game looks cool enough. The dev did say there was some AI assistance for coding, but not for art/music.

Podcasts

Grammar Girl Podcast (quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl) - On my post about blogposts turning into different blogposts, I was recommended this podcast to get some grammar advice about some questions regarding em dashes and commas. I don’t really feel like listening to a lot of episodes of it, but some seem cool and it may be up your alley.

Finishing up

For some reason I’ve gotten more than one email from different websites asking me to add them to my blogroll. One website in chinese that seems to be a genuine blog (although very pushy on LLMs) and some other chinese website that also does a lot of LLM posts, this one looks very sus because the urls are super obfuscated. I don’t even know you people, why even try?

I ain’t bothering to link those, and I probably shouldn’t have bothered to link to a couple things listed here. In any case, if you find yourself curious about what those links may entail, I can’t stop you.

Also, if you have gotten emails from any of these projects or heard about anything here, feel free to vouch for them being neat stuff.

This is day 52 of #100DaysToOffload

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I expect nothing of my games and books - Joel's Log Files

2026-10-14T18:20:00.000Z

And somehow, if I get to trying it, I am often able to enjoy it. A side of me thinks my taste is pretty good because of this. I’ve never finished a book or videogame thinking that it wasn’t worth it.

To tell the truth, I also happen to get recommendations from friends and reviewers with good taste, excellent podcasts, YouTubers I trust, and all the cool bloggers that I follow here, there is so much good stuff to enjoy, I rarely put myself in a position where I think of something as a slog.

I like to think I’m not easy to please though. I enjoy quality and the effort put into an artwork that goes above and beyond. I have experienced enough to differentiate between something made with passion or lack there of.

Even if the book is not particularly enjoyable, or if a mechanic in a game feels a little unfair, I am willing to let myself appreciate it. I’d even allow my brain to be fooled into thinking it’s great. I will always try to focus on the intent behind any piece of media. To align my mindset with the artist’s.

When I played Resident Evil and its sequel early this year, I wasn’t thinking about the future beyond tank controls, I didn’t worry about the scarce save points. I put myself in the shoes of someone who just bought a PS1 and wanted to try this neat game and it was how it was. Perfect experience. I didn’t worry about outdated elements or cheesy voice acting, I lived in 1998 and everything was glorious.

As I read all of The Expanse, I wasn’t expecting the beat space opera ever, or well explained hard sci-fi. I never thought I’d completely understand the cosmical anomalies present throughout the series. I enjoyed the characters and the bombastic action sequences. I let my brain shove away any magic technology or whatever and focused on the epic character moments and intrigue of it all.

While completing Metroid Prime Remastered it didn’t even cross my mind to compare the 2D games. When someone said “this is just Super Metroid in 3D” I wasn’t even considering Super Metroid’s existence. When that one area had no save points nearby I simply took it as the challenge it was, fair? unfair? It’s a game, and I can go elsewhere to find more upgrades too. So, win?

After finishing Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss, I wasn’t worried about the countless modern sci-fi books that have done generation ship plots better, I didn’t mind the non-sensical biology of some of the world-building. I fully committed myself to the environment and its rules, and I had a wonderful time going through all of it. When annoying characters showed up, I am meant to be annoyed, and I push through that anyway.

If a game happens to have a lot of cutscenes, I push through. If I am told to backtrack for the 9th time to the same place, so be it. If a book lacks emotional moments and is more of a dry reporting of events, it is so. If the romance is outdated and cheesy, I still find it kinda cute.

This is pretty much the case for all the books and videogames and movies and pretty much any media I experience. I can pretend quality of life improvements don’t exist, I can imagine myself in the worlds even if I despise the decisions or the politics or a particular character.

Every game I’ve played this year could be in someone’s Top 5 of all time—maybe not the smaller titles/DLC that can be completed in an hour. Perhaps that can’t be said of the books I’ve read this year, but they are still pretty good as well!

~~Now this is where I’ll get challenged by a friend into reading through some boring stuff or playing a game that will make me suffer.~~

Even if a work is not as impactful for me as it may be for others, it’s usually a 4/5 stars experience for me.

Perhaps I should be more critical, as my ranking system ends up kinda useless. Or maybe my standards are too low. Or I simply happen to choose excellent games and books.

Good thing I don’t rank anything on my reviews.

This is day 51 of #100DaysToOffload

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Proposed Events for Meetable - Articles by Aaron Parecki

2026-10-14T17:06:31.000Z

Meetable can now replace your Doodle polls! Meetable, my open source event listing website, now lets you propose an event with several possible dates/times. People vote on which one works for them, and the organizer can choose the best date from the votes later.

Up until now, every event in Meetable needed a date before it could be created. That works fine when the date is already known, but a lot of events start out as "we should do this, when can everyone make it?" That part of the planning had to happen somewhere else, in a poll or a chat thread, and then someone would create the event on the calendar once the date was decided. In the meantime, nobody browsing the calendar would know the event was being planned at all.

I was a little unsure of how best to add this since almost everything in Meetable is built around the event date. The home page sorts by it, the ics feeds need it, and even the permalink of the event is made from it. I also didn't want the calendar to end up full of events that are "maybe" happening, mixed in with events that are actually scheduled. So the goal was to support this without the proposals getting in the way of the regular calendar.

Here's how it works:

Proposed events are off by default, and can be turned on in the site settings.
Anyone who can create events can also propose one. There is a new "Propose an Event" option in the "Add Event" menu.
It's the same form as creating a regular event, except instead of a date, you enter at least two possible dates. Times are optional, and you can give a date an end date to propose a multi-day event.
Proposed events don't appear in the main event list, ics feeds, Discord notifications or search. Instead they're listed on a new "Proposed Events" page in the navigation, and there is a banner on the home page when any events are looking for a date.
Anyone who is logged in can vote "Yes", "If need be" or "No" on each date. Votes are saved as soon as you click, and the profile photos of everyone who voted are shown with each answer so you can see who can make which date.
The date with the most "yes" votes is marked as "Leading". (Ties are broken by the most "if need be" votes, then the fewest "no" votes.)
When it's time to decide, anyone who can edit the event clicks "Schedule this date" next to one of the options. The event gets that date, shows up on the calendar at its normal permalink, and voting closes.
The old proposed event URL redirects to the new permalink so that any links shared during the vote keep working.
The poll is kept on the event page after the date is chosen, collapsed under a note like "The date was chosen from 4 proposed dates", so you can see how the decision was made.
If you ask for a Zoom meeting when proposing the event, the meeting is scheduled once the date is chosen, since there is no time to schedule it for until then.
If you edit the proposed dates later, votes are kept for the dates that didn't change. Removing or changing a date removes its votes, since those votes were for a different date.

There is currently no deadline for voting and no reminder sent to the organizer, so a proposed event will sit there until someone chooses a date or deletes it. I'd like to see how this gets used before adding anything more to it, so if a voting deadline or something like that would be useful for your community, let me know.

Hopefully this makes it easier to get events on the calendar earlier in the planning process! You can install your own copy of Meetable from the source code on GitHub.

Argentina's top news app was made by two 23 year olds using AI - Werd I/O

2026-10-14T17:05:34.000Z

Link: Two 23-year-olds used AI to create a daily audio briefing. It’s now the top news app in Argentina., by Hanaa' Tameez in Nieman Lab

I think there are several notable things about this story.

Shellsharks Blogroll - BlogFlock

Why I'm rebuilding my IndieWeb projects with Claude - Articles by Aaron Parecki

The principles are about what you own

These projects were old

Modularity, demonstrated

Single point of Aaron

Understanding matters more than the tools

Have fun

Disclosure

Anyway

Book Review: Are You *Really* The Doctor? by Matthew Hutchinson ★★★⯪☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-17 11:37: We had a Hotpoint engineer come out to repair our washing machine yesterday. While replacing... - Kev Quirk

Weeknote #2022 - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

Autumn - James' Coffee Blog

Notable links: October 16, 2026 - Werd I/O

Two 23-year-olds used AI to create a daily audio briefing. It’s now the top news app in Argentina.

Election Night 2026

Young People and the Future of Free Expression

Why We’re Banning AI

Design Your One-on-Ones

My Laptop Stickers - Joel's Log Files

Published on Citation Needed: "Issue 111 – Back the winners" - Molly White's activity feed

2026-10-16 13:51: The amount of AI generated sales emails I get these days is astonishing. If you... - Kev Quirk

Book Review: Africa Is Not A Country - Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa by Dipo Faloyin ★★★★⯪ - Terence Eden’s Blog

Note published on October 16, 2026 at 1:41 AM UTC - Molly White's activity feed

Food Questions Challenge - James' Coffee Blog

Submissions

My responses

What was your favourite food growing up?

What is your favourite food that is made locally?

What is your favourite food generally?

What is one food you have had in the last year that you remember warmly?

What food do you really want to try?

Savoury or sweet?

Spicy or no?

Tea or coffee?

Current Affairs says it's banning AI - Werd I/O

Treat your 1:1 relationships with intention - Werd I/O

On my state in life - Joel's Log Files

Catch a Bird (or, Happiness) - James' Coffee Blog

Links I was sent via email - Joel's Log Files

Projects

Games

Podcasts

Finishing up

I expect nothing of my games and books - Joel's Log Files

Proposed Events for Meetable - Articles by Aaron Parecki

Argentina's top news app was made by two 23 year olds using AI - Werd I/O

Book Review: Are You Really The Doctor? by Matthew Hutchinson ★★★⯪☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog