Hello,
I'm Axel.

Writing

This sections contains both medium-to-long blog posts, and short and quick thoughts from the stream of consciousness (stream for short) section.

• Just as a quick meta note: I added a new setting: switch to a simple (single-column) layout, for those of you who prefer to go straight down with not too many distractions. Can't do much about the distractions, but with the straight down I (now) got you, boo.

  

  Those are the settings, in case you haven't noticed them before. They're right up in the header :)

  Thought #35  •   Jun 03, 2026

• The Comments Rabbit Hole

  This past Saturday I was fighting the comments embed on this site, trying to adjust it for some changes and make it look like it belonged with the rest of what I have going on here. At some point I looked at the giant list of overrides I was maintaining just to make it feel somewhat integrated and realized it didn't make much sense.

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  meta  •   Jun 01, 2026

• I'm seriously considering switching my current comment system (EchoThread) for an email form. Taking it slower. Actually, writing it here just made it feel like a better idea. I want something that integrates more naturally with the rest of the website, and I value deep connections way more than immediacy. Let's get to work.

  Thought #34  •   May 30, 2026

• Publishing Photos

  I've been thinking a lot about publishing photos for myself and my close circle, and in a second iteration of memories. The principal lines of thought are these:

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  software internet indieweb  •   May 28, 2026

• The Headphonist Refresh

  A couple of nights ago, I was about to post a song on The Headphonist, my music journal, when I decided the design I'd put up a couple of months ago wasn't doing it for me anymore. And because who needs sleep?, I went ahead and started hacking together a whole new structure for the website.

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  design code projects  •   May 26, 2026

• My Favorite Thing

  Back in 2019, before the world ended, I was trying to learn JavaScript. Serious JavaScript, not just hiding and showing things like I'd always done for microinteractions in websites.

  As one of my exercises, I published an app to collect people's favorite things. It was centered around a single sentence saying "My favorite [a] is [b]". There was no purpose other than having fun, it was totally anonymous, and I didn't know what I was doing at all, so as soon as it started breaking apart I had to put it away.

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  software tools internet  •   May 21, 2026

• Taste as Resistance to Algorithms

  Taste dictates what music you listen to, your favorite food, your drink of choice, your clothing style, the books you read, the TV series you follow, the movies you watch — and rewatch. How you speak, how you flirt, how you react to other people. How you present yourself to the world.

  Beyond that, taste dictates who you're friends with, and that's either because they match what you value, or because you appreciate their own taste. In some wonderful cases, it's both of these things.

  Social media goes against all that.

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  social media opinion  •   May 21, 2026

• Every time I dare to use an em dash—like this one right here, a thing I've loved since I learned of its existence, I'm very self-conscious that somebody somewhere is going to declare with total self-confidence that the text was generated by AI. Because using punctuation isn't human anymore, apparently.

  Thought #33  •   May 21, 2026

• I need to find new podcasts. I used to eagerly wait for Hard Fork every Friday, but lately they sound more like AI shills than journalists. That, and the sensationalism in every note they cover about LLMs going rogue. I might still be mourning Reply All, four years later.

  Thought #32  •   May 19, 2026

• Comments

  A few days ago I stumbled upon this blog post by Matizeta where he talks about "the alive internet" and shares several ways to bring humanity back to the web.

  Continue reading →

  meta internet  •   May 14, 2026
• Older →

Web Rings

I participate in several IndieWeb and SmallWeb webrings.

If you don't know what a webring is, you're probably too young and/or too cool. Here's an explanation.

• IndieWeb Webring

  A webring to find (and be found by) other folks with IndieWeb building blocks on their sites.

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• Generation Lissa

  People who started making websites in the late 90s/early 00s and are still here.

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• CSS Joy

  A webring for people who take joy in messing around with CSS.

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• Retronaut Webring

  "Some of us miss the messy old days of the Internet where we tried to get along and we'd link to each other's sites and it was all so much fun."

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