Unbridled Thoughts 1
I'm enjoying writing some random thoughts and announcements out on Substack. I guess the thing I'm doing could be called microblogging? They call them "notes" over there on Substack, and each can be anything. It is pretty great, but I'd like to be in possession of and have control over my writing. Also, there are a lot of things I don't write over on the platform because I feel I'm fighting with social pressures and a yet another giant shady platform with some dark patterns. Here I can keep the things I like about microblogging, and do it on my own turf.
I write for me and get a lot out of it. I hope that by doing it semi publicly, it can help other people realize that frequent journaling (without monetary feedback or blessings from an abusive algorithm) is valuable in its own right and maybe a helpful practice for them to showcase publicly too.
I'll start microblogging in this series... not quite sure how often I'll publish but surely it'll be a series.
30/14/2026: Will a real human please help me understand something? How do I figure out which words in a chapter title are capitalized? The next chapter title is “how uncle henry got into trouble”. Thank you for your service.
03/15/2026: There are some good articles on here that the broken feed repeats over and over and it is driving me to block or x those accounts. My feed is composed of some new notes scattered between the same background of repeated articles. Is this the experience other people have here?
03/15/2026: Concerning Substack: I’m not sure about this place. Maybe the curated feed is broken on my account. The rate I’m finding thoughtful things vs the rate I’m encountering frustration and sloppy regurgitation may not be worth it for me. I worry that engagement through frustration is part of the design here. I want a place to feel calm and where I can be exposed to the abundant and plentiful body of work by thoughtful writers. Somewhere I can connect with real people and not their social media facade. Somewhere that doesn’t trigger addictive behavior. Am I in the wrong place? It certainly appears to be the case.
03/15/2026: I think that people who profit off of harming people know that a ceremony of flashy pretend will distract you from witnessing and thinking about their acts.
03/16/2026: “Are we going to see this queer King?” asked Jack, with interest.
03/06/2026: Hello. I’ve spent so much time learning about web development that I feel a little detached from people. I think teaching about it would be fulfilling. Therefore, if you (yes you) are interested in learning about a technique I’ve refined to make a simple modern “single page app” to publish a piece of work independently, please do reach out. This is a free public service I’m offering as the self-appointed librarian of my independent web library; I’ve limited capacity but am eager to help anyone who is eager to learn.
03/17/2026: Did you know that you can use a few simple lines of JavaScript on your website in order to store data on your visitor’s devices? No cookies involved. This way you can figure out if it is the first time that the visitor has visited, or other information that was set by their last visit. Here’s an easy way to start: Mozilla Dev Network
03/19/2026: “My smile,” said Jack Pumpkinhead, “is worthy your best attention. It is always the same.”
03/19/2026: I’m not a writer. Maybe that’s why I haven’t ever really experienced writer’s block when writing. Overthinking things and perpetually refining is another story. In the spirit of carelessness, I’m glad to be improving in that overthinking aspect lately.
03/20/2026: Concerning Substack: I like to follow people on here but then I feel bad that I can’t justify being a paid subscriber immediately. Then I’m frustrated at a pushy system. I need to see what you are up to for a while, surely. Also, $8 a month per author is more than I’ve ever spent on reading outside of buying school textbooks. It would add up way too fast if I paid for even a small portion of everyone I want to support. Then, am I expected to revolve around a select few? I guess don’t quite get how it works yet.
03/20/2026: What are your thoughts on using Ghost? I just started playing with it. To me, it seems like I can write here or there, each has slightly different uses and trade-offs. I can imagine continuing to use both.
03/20/2026: I think more people should be aware that everyone and their gov’ment has long had access to technology that makes it possible to see the position and pose of human bodies inside of a building using wifi. Here’s one open-source example
03/20/2026: I feel like groups of people scattering food off of a cliff with the hollow hope that members of another group of people below might catch it is not a model that makes much sense. Why doesn’t each individual with excess make friends with one or two with less, and invite them to dinner? I think this way most of the food won’t go to waste and pretentious posturing from either group wouldn’t have room to exist.
03/20/2026: I started writing on a Ghost blog as well. I like that it is my own sanctuary and I can control the looks of things to some degree. Also I can comment and like my own posts. Today I read a comment that I forgot I wrote and got excited to see a comment. So then I liked my own comment.
03/20/2026: Hola. Quiero practicar español sin las maquinas. Si eres un norteamericano quien quieres practicar inglés con un humano real, aun qué hacer muchos errores en español, vamos.
03/20/2026: There is a limit to the number of people I can interact with as a human. If I exceed my natural capacity, all interactions will degrade. If I greatly exceed that capacity, I will not be a human interacting with humans but a voice interacting with a mass. I’m not online to have degraded interactions or to try to influence a large group. I just want to find a close tribe.
03/21/2026: Sometimes pure meditation is too hard to plunge into. I know there are gradual steps to get there from a noisy mind. Reading from the Oz series lately has been something that is helping me.
03/21/2026: If this judgment is unbiased and correct, and the little folks find this new story “real Ozzy,” I shall be very glad indeed that I wrote it.
L. Frank Baum in the intro to Ozma of Oz
03/21/2026: I started a new book club yesterday. Ozma of Oz is the 3rd in the Oz series. English as a Second Language (ESL) learners and their friends are especially welcome. Here’s a link to the book club.
03/21/2026: Hey there to all you awesome webmasters. I have a quick ask: please consider using WebP images instead of PNG images. That part of your website could be 10 to 100 times lighter and faster. It really adds up with multiple images!
03/22/2026: Goodness gracious please stop telling me what things aren’t —- but what they are.
03/22/2026: I have a hard time trusting voices with a large following, for obvious reasons. It isn’t usually worthwhile for me to listen to the opinions of celebrities. But here I see a celebrity who is stepping outside of their zone and trading their general-audience marketability in order to educate people about important issues. I think it is very admirable. I want to listen and support them.
03/22/2026: A solicitor left a card on my door. It is impossible to read because there are stock photos on both sides that camouflage the dark, cramped, cursive text. If they successfully disrupt me at home I hope they are prepared for a graphic design tirade.
03/23/2026: Life can be full of pain and panic sometimes. I like to make things that help me detach and relax without further inflaming my body and emotions. I have a few of these “paper games” at my web library. Guaranteed to be perfectly boring! Please stop by and check em out sometime.
03/23/2026: I have a hard time getting stalled as long I can keep bouncing between a set of projects. Challenge in one arena is always potent creative fuel elsewhere. For this reason, I feel like there are many writers whose literary productivity could benefit if they try making a simple website.
03/24/2026: The patterns used by LLMs in writing are often very distracting and make me feel that I’m reading garbage. I’m biased and have a hard time seeing through these predictable patterns to hear what you are attempting to say. Even if you can’t see the pattern yet, it is there. Please stop the slop. Lemme hear your voice.
03/24/2026: Hello web developers and webmasters. Real human experience and its expertise sure is valuable these days! Spaghetti and generic instant gratification can only go so far. Are you stuck on something? Try describing the issue to your peers without expecting an immediate overconfident solution; you may be surprised at how elegantly you can work through puzzles this way.
03/24/2026: Have you started your Ghost blog yet? A fistful of dollars per month makes setup seamless and supports the project. I like it a lot so far. Personally, it is important for me to have alternative places to write, but also to have a place within my control where I can duplicate important ideas. Having another outlet running is especially important if things ever go south here.
03/24/2024: Famous voices are really incredible sometimes. I’m trying to calm down after reading the most BS dense hypocritical and multi-level irony that is the interaction between this award-winning filmmaker’s work and how they talk about it. All while waggling their finger at an exact replica of the same problematic formula they followed in their realm of performative expertise. Simultaneously, at another level of meta hypocrisy, they are not aware they are currently talking about not doing the thing they are writing about?? This person made a movie I was subject to and gaslit by throughout my childhood by people incapable of critical thought. Thanks, I hate it.
03/25/2026: Oohhwee thank you spring sun 🌤️
03/25/2026: I’m thinking about the architecture for a simple free streaming site. exptv.org is my guide. My goal for the architecture is to minimize maintenance costs and difficulty so it could be a free public service that could be recreated and hosted by anyone. If you had your own dedicated public access network outlet, what type of videos would you stream?
03/27/2026: It feels strange to see someone insist that everyone is using AI to write on here. I can tell a lot of people are, for sure. But claiming it is expected, necessary, and universal feels like an unthoughtful position. The patterns LLMs produce are noticeable and stick out like a sore thumb and are super annoying as they give predictable repetitive quarks to many different writers. When I don’t see those annoying patters, I really enjoy reading.
03/27/2026: I sure felt it with coding. And then reliance becomes like an addiction. It got very stressful before I was able to jump off.
03/28/2026: In terms of code, that sloppiness can be more expensive to run or fix than it is initially useful. Even using AI to “rough draft” systems that will later be rebuilt by hand usually doesn’t feel like a rewarding approach. AI’s nature results in it producing software with high-level bugs. These bugs hide behind complexity that is impossible for the human to see if they don’t author the code. Finding or supporting that type of bug costs more than writing a system that isn’t tainted with toxic logic.
03/28/2026: Sometimes I make the mistake of trying to read along with subtitled short-form video.
03/31/2026: If you can’t write for yourself, how are you going to write for someone else? Please write for yourself. I’m tired of seeing the same structure everywhere. Butchering slop just results in butchered slop; it isn’t a result that passes as human.
Unbridled Thoughts 2 (coming soon)
Feel free to comment with your thoughts, unbridled or otherwise. It is an interactive journal you know.
<3 Grant