Posts tagged 'blogging'

Black-and-white lithograph, a close cropped portrait of Christ's face and part of his shoulders, head tilted slightly, gaze directed up and to the side rather than at the viewer. The left side of the face is lit almost stark white, the right side sinks into deep shadow, giving the two eyes a strikingly different weight. One large and luminous, the other dark and sunken. Dark wavy hair frames the face, and a crown of thorns is rendered not as a neat circlet but as a chaotic burst of jagged black spikes radiating upward and outward from the crown of the head. The background is built from dense, crosshatched pencil strokes.

man.

September 25, 2026 · #culture #satire #blogging #Digital Culture #IndieWeb #nihilism #personal

man is not a certain breed of anonymous, nihilistic blogger who mistakes callousness for wisdom and detachment for depth. man is different. man is better.

A spacecraft photographed from a companion capsule during orbital rendezvous, its white and black cylindrical body lit against the blue curve of Earth's atmosphere. The photographing craft's window frame cuts across the upper left corner, and thin antenna wires trail from the target vehicle's rear section into the black of space.

Creating a Blog in Gemini://

September 18, 2026 · 2 comments · #technical #Small Web #IndieWeb #Digital Culture #decentralization #gemini #gopher #blogging #tutorial

Creating your own corner of Geminispace: why you'd want to blog on a protocol with no JavaScript, no CSS, and no AI slop; where to host a capsule (SmolPub, the Tildeverse, flounder, Gemcities); how the community's gemlog conventions work; and the surprising social life of Gemini BBS, Station, and Astrobotany. Plus ASCII art, CGI scripting, and every gemini:// link I've found worth keeping.

Colourized archival photo of a classroom full of boys at wooden desks, most bent over open books or writing with pens, in an early 20th-century schoolroom with a world map on the chalkboard and a teacher leaning over a student's desk in the background.

Proper English is a Myth: There's No 'Correct' Way to Write

September 15, 2026 · 2 comments · #personal essay #Social Commentary #Linguistics #writing #blogging #grammar #language

Responding to a blog post urging people to 'please learn how to write,' I pull rank with my English degree to argue there's no such thing as proper English. Looking at the 18th-century grammarians who invented 'correctness,' the linguistic racism of policing dialects from AAVE to Jamaican Patois, and why blogging should be about meaning, not mechanics.

Watercolor painting of a young farmhand in a red shirt, blue trousers, and straw hat, standing with his back to the viewer in a grassy yard, a pitchfork resting over his shoulders with both wrists hooked over the handle. Behind him a whitewashed and red-brick farmhouse, with a woman leaning out an upper window watching him, and two ground-floor windows lined with potted plants. Sunflowers and a black-and-white cat appear at the left edge of the scene. Signed 'Homer '74' in the lower right.

Tending the Garden I Have: A Current State of Affairs

September 6, 2026 · 2 comments · #personal essay #blogging #IndieWeb #digital garden #projects #self-reflection #small web #community

Taking stock of my digital garden before the first frost: an honest audit of everything I'm tending online, from Brennan.day and fanfiction.lol to my 565-day writing streak, plus the projects I've neglected, the intentional prunes I'm happy with, and the dead plants I need to admit aren't growing—including a shelved radio show, a dormant newsletter, and an unstarted school.

Vintage illustration of five kittens in a classroom scene. A grey tabby kitten wearing a pink bow sits upright on an open book, one paw raised as if reciting or answering a question. Facing it are a brown tabby kitten, a white kitten, and a black kitten with a light blue bow, watching attentively. At the far right, a black-and-white kitten wearing a tall pointed 'DUNCE' cap covers its face with one paw in shame. The scene has a mottled sepia-and-gold background typical of Victorian-era chromolithograph cards.

A Few Small Things

August 29, 2026 · 1 comment · #personal essay #Social Commentary #blogging #IndieWeb #community #Technology #web development #mental health

Reflecting on the mental fatigue of posting every day during Blaugust, I share a few small things that cheered me up: a new keyword filter on Bubbles.town, Jan Miksovsky's Origami Projector, and the ongoing, hand-made goodness of the independent web.

A watercolor landscape painting depicting a serene, classical scene. In the foreground on the left, a stone bridge with an ornate balustrade, large spherical ornaments on pedestals, and a visible arch is bathed in sunlight. The bridge angles diagonally down towards a dark, calm river. On the water, a small red rowboat carries two figures, one rowing with an oar while the other sits facing them, casting reflections in the water. There's dense, lush green trees and thick foliage that partially obscure the base of a building. The background features a symmetrical classical structure with arched windows, tall chimneys, and two towering gothic spires. The sky is a soft, hazy pale yellow-blue. In the bottom left corner on the stone wall of the bridge, the year '1889' and an artist's signature are visible.

Creating an Open-source Blogging Studies Syllabus

August 28, 2026 · 4 comments · #personal essay #blogging #IndieWeb #open source #digital humanities #academia #web development #writing #community

Announcing a new open-source, asynchronous Blogging Studies syllabus that blends writing craft and independent web publishing, built on Codeberg. I trace the decline of free MOOCs, outline my curriculum's anti-capitalist and community-driven pedagogy, and invite contributors and learners to help shape it.

Oil painting of a young man in a loose beige coat, leaning out through a stone window ledge, blowing a large soap bubble on a straw. He grips the ledge with one hand while a smaller child peers over the sill beside him, watching intently. A cup of soap solution sits nearby. Dark, muted background typical of 18th-century Dutch/French genre painting.

Bubbles.town: Four Months Later

August 25, 2026 · 3 comments · #personal essay #IndieWeb #Social Commentary #blogging #community #aggregators

After several months of using Bubbles.town, I share my long-term review of the IndieWeb aggregator. The good: discovering diverse blogs across niche topics. The issues: glacial pace of content changes, popularity contest dynamics, categorization problems, and sparse community participation. Overall, Bubbles is a valuable tool among many for web discovery, but not without its problems.

A cluttered wooden table holds a row of obsolete beige desktop computers and CRT monitors, including a Dell and Compaq, with tangled cables, stacked against a stained wall lit in a pink-to-yellow-to-green gradient. Wooden stools and a chair sit in front of the table, suggesting an abandoned classroom or office.

A 450-year History of Blogging

August 24, 2026 · 2 comments · #personal essay #blogging #IndieWeb #history #Technology #Social Commentary

A four-century etymological journey from wooden ship logs and logboards to the modern web log, tracing how the word 'blog' emerged from centuries of record-keeping, computing, and online publishing. On Peter Merholz's coinage of 'blog,' Jorn Barger's 'weblog,' Justin Hall's online diary, the rise of Blogger and Medium, and the state of the blogosphere in 2026.

A vanitas still life painting of a human skull crowned with a lush bouquet of flowers (yellow chrysanthemums, blue cornflowers, orange daisies, morning glories, and a red poppy), with a butterfly and small snail resting among the blooms. A curled sheet of music and a stalk of wheat lie in front of the skull, a long bone rests beside it, and a guttering candle and hourglass-like object sit in the shadowy background, all on a stone ledge.

Writing By Accident & Surrendering On Purpose

August 20, 2026 · #personal essay #IndieWeb #blogging #writing #philosophy #community #purpose

Reflecting on three weeks of consecutive writing for Blaugust, I explore the tension between writing by accident versus on purpose. Through correspondence with Unstory and the IndieWeb carnival theme of purpose, I contemplate the accidental nature of my blogging journey, the finite fragility of life, and finding meaning in the surrender to compulsion rather than the pursuit of purpose.

Antique textile sample mounted on a tan card, featuring black silk fabric with horizontal teal wave-stitched lines. Along the lower edge runs a colorful floral embroidery border with pink and yellow lilies, red poppies, pink roses, brown carnation-like blooms, and clusters of small pink and white flowers, connected by green and teal leaves. A row of small white and pink flowers forms a trim along the very bottom edge. Handwritten catalog markings '1992,' 'vie.,' and '537.' appear in the left margin.

What Remains? My AuguStory

August 6, 2026 · #personal essay #IndieWeb #blogging #writing #Social Commentary #community

On the shutdown of EchoFeed and the ephemeral nature of services, why I blog (legacy, existentialism, making a mark), participating in AuguStory, academic studies on blogging benefits, and the paradox of 'nobody cares' as both a source of freedom and as a reminder that we all deserve to be heard, seen, and loved regardless of metrics or response.

Illustration with the title 'IT’S A WHOLE GREAT BIG FUN THING' in large green letters above a whimsical scene. A cheerful green frog wearing a jacket, vest, and purple bow tie rows a small boat across calm water while reading an enormous open book that nearly fills the boat. In the foreground, a fish pokes its head above the water beside a much smaller open book, appearing to read as well. Reeds grow at the water’s edge, gentle ripples spread from the oar, and a bright blue sky creates a peaceful backdrop.

You Don't Have to Blog

July 31, 2026 · 1 comment · #personal essay #IndieWeb #blogging #community #Social Commentary #web culture

Responding to Dan Q's post on blogging expectations, I argue that you don't need to blog at all to participate in the IndieWeb. Your website can be shrines, art, or anything else. A retrospective on the poisonous gamification and commodification of blogging from the early 2000s, and the IndieWeb as a return to original weblogging where the Internet belongs to humans.

Oil painting of a dark-haired woman in a purple cardigan over a white blouse, seated and knitting with black yarn, eyes downcast in concentration. She's set against a patterned white cloth backdrop with a mustard-and-blue geometric background behind her. A dark green stocking hangs at left, and a ball of black yarn with knitted items rests at her side. Signed 'G.C. Smith' in red at the lower left corner.

Knitting the Web: We Need Interlinkers!

July 27, 2026 · 2 comments · #personal essay #IndieWeb #web development #community #blogging #link culture

Responding to Coyote's critique of Bubbles.town and feed aggregators, I argue that the IndieWeb needs more interlinkers—bloggers who meaningfully synthesize and weave together the writing of others. On the garden/stream/campfire metaphors for the web, the difference between linkdumps and synthesis, Justin Hall's early web work, and how every link out is a stitch that strengthens the fabric of the blogosphere.

Screenshot of the People and Blogs interview page featuring Brennan Kenneth Brown on zacharykai.net. The page shows the People and Blogs series, interview details, and the start of a conversation about blogging, IndieWeb, and creative workflows.

People and Blogs Interview: Brennan Kenneth Brown

July 18, 2026 · #interview #IndieWeb #writing #blogging

I was interviewed in Zachary Kai's People and Blogs series, founded by Manuel Moreale. I share about my background, the evolution of my blog, creative and technical workflows, philosophy on monetization, and advocacy for the IndieWeb.

Post-impressionist oil painting of a bearded man in a dark suit and tie, seated at a desk with his forearms resting on an open book. Behind him, a bookshelf holds rows of colorful volumes, and a chair with a yellow patterned back is visible. In the foreground, stacked books in red, green, and blue bindings sit beside a glass of white and pink roses. Loose, visible brushstrokes in warm gold, blue, and coral tones.

The True, Unglamorous Life of a Writer

July 16, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #Writing Process #blogging #creativity #creative nonfiction

Let me be unglamorous and honest about the actual furniture of a writing life. What do my private, invisible days look like? What does it cost and what does it pay? A look at the 4 a.m. writing routine, the physical setting, and what I hope my writing will do for others.

Vintage-style illustration of a hen walking left with five small yellow chicks following in a line behind her, set against a solid dark teal-green background. The hen has cream and tan feathering, a red comb and wattle, and a black-tipped tail; the chicks are pale yellow with orange beaks and legs.

To My Readers: What Do You Want To See More Of?

July 8, 2026 · #IndieWeb #personal essay #writing #community #blogging

I finally curated my blog posts into collections, revealing what I write about most: the IndieWeb, the craft of writing, community, technical tutorials, politics, culture, and more. A call to my readers to tell me what they want to see more of, and a reflection on how organizing my work helps me understand my own writing patterns and what I want to write more of.

A Japanese woodblock print of a nighttime fireworks festival by a riverbank. Golden fireworks cascade down the dark teal sky in the upper right, trailing sparks. A row of red-and-white paper lanterns strung on a wire crosses the scene, reflecting in the water below along with distant lights and hills. In the foreground, a large silhouetted crowd watches, including children climbing a wooden ladder or scaffold for a better view.

Shake Off the Dust!

July 1, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #creativity #blogging #IndieWeb #poetry

Completing #100DaysToOffload twice in under two years, and somewhere along the way the wet clay hardened at the edges. Invisible ruts form inside the habits you love, and there's a difference between a window and a mirror in writing. The hermit crab outgrows shells, including the ones that still fit fine.

Extreme close-up, grainy film photo in warm sepia-and-purple duotone: two faces nearly touching nose-to-nose, with an open palm and curled fingers resting between them in soft focus. The framing and tight depth of field create an intimate, hushed mood.

Vagueblogging and Subtweeting Are Awful

June 28, 2026 · 1 comment · #personal essay #Social Commentary #Digital Culture #psychology #blogging #community

Vagueblogging and subtweeting are the most toxic modes of online communication, yet research shows people prefer them to direct confrontation anyway. On the psychology of strategic ambiguity, insecure attachment, context collapse, and the online disinhibition effect. A case against the culture of passive aggression online, and a call for those with safety and privilege to stop hiding behind the same hedge as everyone else.

Watercolour painting of a lush garden scene dominated by deep and yellow-greens, with clusters of soft lavender-pink flowering lilacs blooming throughout dense foliage. Small white wildflowers dot the lower foreground. The brushwork is loose and impressionistic, with washes of colour blending into the cream-white of the unpainted paper at the upper left. Hints of red stems and teal leaves add contrast within the greenery.

Blogging Saved My Life

June 17, 2026 · #writing #blogging #community #creative nonfiction #personal essay

Writing publicly and frequently for the past seven months has saved my life. Six ways consistent public writing transformed me: cultivating curiosity, building connections, investigating rabbit holes, starting new projects, creating accountability, and seeing life's patterns in real-time. An invitation for others to begin writing without restraint.

Screenshot of the writer-cli homepage. The page header reads 'WRITER-CLI' followed by the headline 'Write from your terminal. Publish with one command.' A subheading describes it as a command-line tool for bloggers with a static site who want to open a terminal, write something, and have it live on the Internet. Below is a dark install command: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brennanbrown/writer-cli/main/INSTALL.sh | bash, with a 'copy' button. A note below states it installs to ~/.local/bin/ and links to the installer source. Navigation links at the top read: home, guide, reference, source, GitHub.

Introducing writer-cli: a bash tool I built from scratch to blog in the terminal!

May 24, 2026 · #bash #technical #tools #blogging #indieweb

After finding the tildeverse and the Tilde.town feels engine, I decided to build my own simple command-line tool for blogging that handles the full lifecycle of a blog post (creation, editing, building, and git push). A walkthrough of the design decisions, the modular architecture, and the tradeoffs of writing 700 lines of plain bash.

A trompe-l'œil painting depicting a scattered collection of aged historical documents, letters, and newspapers overlapping one another. The papers are rendered in warm sepia and cream tones, suggesting significant age. Documents include handwritten letters in German cursive script (Kurrent), printed newspapers with Gothic blackletter typefaces bearing dates from 1817, official-looking certificates with wax seals and decorative borders, folded correspondence with red wax seal remnants, and what appears to be sheet music. Several documents feature ornate engravings of coats of arms or figures on horseback. A few pieces of red sealing wax are scattered among the papers. The arrangement creates a sense of historical layering, as though the viewer is looking down at a desk or archive drawer full of early 19th-century European correspondence and ephemera.

A Love Letter to Everything

May 17, 2026 · 1 comment · #personal essay #IndieWeb #community #writing #blogging #internet #open source

My first IndieWeb Carnival entry—the theme is love letters, and I couldn't pick just one thing. A letter to the infrastructure that holds my corner of the internet together, to the strangers who maintain the open-source tools I depend on every day, and to the IndieWeb friends I've met over the past few months. And finally, to curiosity: the embarrassing willingness to fall in love with a static-site generator or a transit system or a protocol nobody's heard of, which I've come to believe is what kept me alive.

Printed pages burning on rocky ground outdoors, with tall orange flames rising from the center. The pages are from a book, and visible names include Steve Wozniak, Stanley Kubrick, and Leslie Stern, M.D., with a section header reading '[End Of Tra...' and a headline at the top beginning 'Why Did Navidson Go Back To The Hou...' The surrounding area shows ash, gravel, and dry vegetation. The image has a subtle chromatic aberration effect, giving the edges a yellow-green fringe.

Writers Who Burned All Their Words feat. Bix Frankonis

May 2, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #Literature #Digital Culture #blogging #IndieWeb

I am a compulsive archivist, terrified of losing my words, but many of history's greatest writers asked for theirs to be burned. Kafka, Dickinson, Plath, Virgil all had their reasons. A meditation on self-erasure, ego, and the difference between the writing and the written thing, with an interview with Bix Frankonis, a contemporary writer who one day decided he needed to be smaller online, not bigger.

Dozens of origami paper cranes in a wide variety of colours and patterns. Blues, pinks, reds, greens, white, and earth tones, many made from patterned washi-style paper with florals and stripes, suspended from thin strings against a blurred warm-toned background.

A THOUSAND CRANES: Why I Write Every Day

April 19, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #blogging #culture #history

My daily writing is a practice of releasing messages in bottles and folding paper cranes—from Montaigne in his tower and Johnson writing in poverty, to Sadako Sasaki folding 1,450 cranes in a hospital ward. What the essayists, drift bottles, and Senbazuru share, and why the attempt itself is the whole math.

Great News: brennan.day is being acquired!

April 1, 2026 · 2 comments · #Announcements #Blogging #IndieWeb #Ad

After MONTHS of hard, gruelling work being completely independent on my personal site, I've been lucky enough to find healthy, sustainable partnerships with several incredible companies. Today, I'm sharing some significant changes to how brennan.day operates—and what that means for you, my readers.

French illustrated card titled 'Le Langage des Porte-Bonheur' (The Language of Good Luck Charms), featuring fourteen labelled lucky symbols arranged around the title: a red heart charm (Amour / Love), a fish (Paix / Peace), a horn (Joie / Joy), a red shoe (Santé / Health), the number 13 in a circle (Longévité / Longevity), a dice (Gain / Gain), a bouquet of daisies and forget-me-nots at centre, an anchor (Espérance / Hope), a pansy flower (Souvenir / Memory), a horseshoe (Veine / Luck), a pig (Prospérité / Prosperity), a red horseshoe magnet (Argent / Money), and a four-leaf clover (Bonheur / Happiness).

The Blogging Übermensch, or, Being the Luckiest Person on Earth

March 31, 2026 · #Philosophy #Personal Essay #Blogging #Gratitude #Self-Discovery

Exploring constitutive moral luck through Nagel and Williams alongside Nietzsche's Übermensch and amor fati, I reflect on the recursive gratitude I feel for who I constitutively am—and argue that blogging is a philosophical practice of self-overcoming: a daily, recursive Yes to existence.