Noahie's Link Log

Link Log 30

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Article from TechCrunch on the US government letting private firms do offensive cybersec</a>. This has been happening under the table and off the record for some time now, so at least we're finally getting somewhat more above board with it. Clearly, Karp and Thiel are cracking the champagne open about this, but seeing increased privatization from this neo-Reaganite administration isn't really anything to write home about. Hopefully this privatization won't affect my SSDI case; while some folks have been whispering about cuts on the psychiatric front, I'm confident I'll get by okay. Thankfully this silly website doesn't count as Substantial Gainful Activity, right? Right?

Article from Orthodox Ethos highlighting a passage from Archbishop Averky of Syracuse on contemporary demonic possession</a>. This passage dates back to 1980, and yet here we are, still struggling with the same problems—timeless and timely as they are. I find that it's more important than ever to avoid a holier-than-thou disposition; the same sins everyone else struggles with, I do as well. That classic saying "hate the sin, not the sinner" comes to mind. The problem, as pointed out in this passage, is that even if I hold that disposition, those who revel in their sin will come to hate me regardless of my compassionate ethos. The only thing I can do is pray—not for their repentance, but for my own. As much as I can claim to hate evil, I know I love it just as much as they do. That's why I have to meet them with open arms and a gracious heart, even if they hurt me, even if they kill me. I'm fine with that.

Throwback to 2004 with a long forum post on Tony Soprano's Vicarious Patricide</a>. Nowadays we have dummies trying to make these kinds of effortposts on Substack and the like, but back in the day, the real kings did that shit for clout on the forums. Seeing how Tony killed Christopher as a vicarious act of patricide is an interesting position, and the subtlety of Tony's father problems was a beautiful piece of writing from the show's writing team. Looking at it today, it's clear that it's a study on the now-loaded term "toxic masculinity," but it was easier for the writers to shove that mirror in our faces given the characters they were studying. Still, I think it was a timely display because, in the early 2000s, we had a lot more optimism about the future, and shows like The Sopranos helped sober that mentality quite a bit. Now that we're in the aftermath of that era, it's become clear that people feel more lost than ever, but I hope we can try to make fewer diagnostic psychological observations—and instead figure out a way forward with the hand we've been dealt.

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Link Log 29

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000


I skipped last week because I didn't have enough links. I haven't been actively curating and digesting my feeds like a good boy, so sorry about that.
Article from Orthodox Ethos showcasing the thirty-sixth letter of St. Joseph the Hesychast</a>. An absolute master class on noetic prayer, St. Joseph gives a wonderful explanation for the Jesus Prayer and shows how a simple, circular prayer cannot lead to any kind of spiritual delusion. I've suffered from a lot of delusion, spiritual or otherwise, and these words help me remain bold in my prayer life, even when I feel too tired to come to God.
Baffler symposium on the profession that doesn't exist</a>. I'm glad to know that I picked probably the worst job at the worst time in history to do it, and even more glad to know that it was never a job to begin with. That makes me feel so much better about my capacity to make decisions, and perhaps I should make more of them. Who knows what'll happen after that?
Been bumping Nightride FM</a> recently. I was being kind of a ditz and was using mpv to stream the Lofi Boy YouTube stream, but that was such a waste of internet. This has given me my synthwave fix, but with less bloat and better sound quality to boot. How lovely is that?
Article from WIP on daycare pseudoscience</a>. It's true that a lot of right-wing people have been villainizing daycare for quite some time, usually opting for home schooling or some other kind of community-based alternative. Both seem to speak to the same thing: whether it be in the hands of cold bureaucrats, some weird neighbor, or an auntie, it always takes a village to raise a child. Parents can't be asked to handle working life and childcare at the same time all by themselves; leaning on family, neighbors, or the government is all a part of a child's growth process. Growing up is stressful, silver spoon or no spoon. At the center of it all are the values those children learn from their environment, and hopefully it's one where they can find the good in people, regardless of ideological leaning or predisposition.
Article from Noema urging AI companies to take public feedback at scale</a>. There are a lot of things I have wrong with this. First of all, the prose from all of these Noema "writers" is so laden with AI psychosis it makes me sick. Even if they came up with their lines and arguments themselves, it's grossly apparent that they have spent way too much time in the hypostatic prose chamber that is the LLM chat interface. Gross. Second, there's a certain implication of "progress" in the primary argument—that the changes in communication technology have led to overall change for the better in the name of a bleak sense of "democracy" and "freedom of choice." Have you seen the median person? Seriously? I don't think someone who wears their pajamas to shop at Walmart needs to give any input on political or social matters, quite frankly. That's a bit of a crass statement, but I'm sick of this intellectual dialogue on AI being this revolutionary thing. It's neat, but it's snake oil at this scale. We all know it, but keep going along with the lie for the sake of what? To keep from social collapse? I don't fucking care, man.
I discovered the Hermitix Podcast earlier this year, but was thrown off by a lot of the guests and subject matter because what it deals with is quite heavy for me. Occult things are a tough pill to swallow, but thankfully this episode</a> with Paul Kingsnorth was nice for me. Kingsnorth helped establish the well-known Dark Mountain Project</a>, and I didn't know he also converted to Orthodox Christianity some time ago. I think the beautiful thing these fringe philosophical movements have provided is a teleology that helps us remember the strangeness of life, and that there is so much more beyond our material conceptions. In the podcast, Kingsnorth pointed out that 96% of the universe is "dark energy," which is at best a tenuous concept. To focus so much on the material world is a dastardly thing, and hopefully these projects of mine help remind people to look beyond base hedonistic tendencies.
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Link Log 28

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Light on links this week since I've been low energy, sorry.
Three Cushions — Isao Suzuki</a> Sickest album cover I've seen in a long time. Also, Suzuki is an awesome bassist.
LATIN MAFIA, Fred Again.., bby — Quiereme</a> The man with the Midas Touch at it again. Not much else to say, really.
Article from Aeon on epistemic convergence in the study of world philosophies</a>. I had this bookmarked when it first came out, and after revisiting it to finally give it a read about a week later, the cover title changed to The taming of Black thought. I see you, Aeon. Anyway, I think the author made the same points I heard over and over again in my undergrad philosophy courses: continental philosophy bad, and implicitly, analytical philosophy good. I still remember that one professor I had who was lecturing on it. "See, the word 'continental' implies the European continent, so how can it possibly be endemic of philosophy as a whole?" I'm paraphrasing there, but that was basically her point. Also, I felt that the author's "antidote" was quite banal. Read more non-Western philosophy and authors. Read more philosophy by women. I remember reading Huey Newton and Simone de Beauvoir in college—really trying to understand their perspective—just to get called a racist by some person of color anyway because I said something that was a bit "insensitive." I'd be nuanced if there was any room for it, but there's not. Also, the author made a point at the end about how Western people studying non-Western philosophy need to actually learn the language of the culture they're studying. My defense: weeaboos. That is all.
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Link Log 27

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Short read from WIP on growing up in medieval England</a>. So much has changed, but one thing hasn't: life still fucking sucks.
Hey, if you're European, are broadly of European descent, or grew up in one of those kinds of countries, did you know you are actually fluent in a secret language called Interlingua</a>? It reads like me being really drunk and trying to speak Spanish.
Here's a compilation video of some TV preacher paired with fart sounds</a>. An internet classic, and I'm just now finding it. Wonderful.
The town of Geel in Belgium is known as a model for psychiatric care</a> where residents with severe psychiatric conditions live not as patients, but as boarders with host families. It has a long-standing tradition, with it starting from a church in Geel whose patron saint is Saint Dymphna</a>, the patron of mental health professionals and those struggling with mental illness. As more established readers know, I suffer from bipolar disorder; my older sister also has autism and an intellectual disability. I think a lot about our future and what it'll look like once our parents are gone, and things like this give me reassurance that we'll be okay. The Lord loves us very much, and I know He will provide for us as we become older. The virtue and compassion of others extends so much farther beyond what I can perceive, and I know that even when I suffer from the ailments I have, that Christ is greater. May He have mercy on us.
Article from p4k spotlighting Kevin MacLeod, king of royalty-free music</a>. Man, I love how Kevin is just as disillusioned as me. "My god, I hate the world so much right now. Just so much on so many levels. The amount of people scrapping just to exist." Same Kevin, same.
Looking for a job and need some extra interview prep tips? That's easy—all you need to do is show them that you are the gold standard</a>.
Check out the website of Ashley Johnson</a>, a true internet OG. Her monthly column is so funny, and the fact that she has used her hyperfixation with vintage technology to create a Garfield phone and answering machine that works with VoIP is—nothing short of fantastic. One of the best websites I've discovered in months.
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Link Log 26

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Article from Noema on AI Rewriting Human Nature</a>. I can't believe I got through this whole article without closing it, and that's mostly because I needed to yap about how self-centered and delusional this writer sounds. This whole notion people have about AI revolutionizing industry and changing the dynamics of work is a load of hot garbage. AI, and more specifically robotics, is not advanced enough to change how most industries work. We will not be seeing robotic tradesmen in this lifetime; we will not be seeing robotic surgeons; and we will most certainly not be seeing robots of any kind doing jobs that are critical to societal infrastructure. Sure, we might see self-driving cars (barring all the regulatory havoc that's already causing), and we might see even further automation of manufacturing, but these glowies need to respect our intelligence enough to stop trying to convince us that any of this is already here. It's not, and this charade needs to end before a bunch of idiots take an LLM (that's actively getting worse, not better, due to recursive training on synthetic data) and actually try putting it in the driver's seat, creating massive critical failures. I don't want to see planes crashing into each other; I don't want to see hospitals completely shut down; and I most certainly do not want to see what happened back in 2024 with Crowdstrike</a> happen again at 100x magnitude. This shit sucks, and I'm afraid those things and more are going to happen, bankers are going to pull the rug from the tech companies, and no systemic change will have taken place.
Look, I know I've made my position as an anti-podcast person clear before, but a friend from my parish recommended this one</a>: Rod Dreher and Winston Marshall discussing the occult. I listened to it because I learned that Rod used to be a member of my parish, and before listening to this, I had never heard of Rod and his work. Man, I always get jealous of other cool writers who are way more successful than me :P and what's even funnier is that I have finally found someone whose work is very similar to mine, and he writes more than me. I briefly remember hearing about The Benedict Option back when I was in college, but I didn't pay much mind to it since I had no spiritual inclinations at that time. Man, I can't believe I was glazing my own nuts so hard the other day</a> with my measly 50–100k monthly site views; this guy used to get a million views a month, and his Substack has over 35,000 subscribers. What a weird mixture of admiration and envy that is, but it gives me hope for my own future as a writer. Even though I find Rod's ecumenism slightly distasteful, I empathize with it as a fellow writer; we are curious and driven, and that can lead to a little too much open-mindedness. Where Rod is more sensitive, I want to try and use my youth to write with more bite while my blood still boils. Well, one can hope anyway.
Article from Compact on how French theory lost its cool</a>. Even though I don't have the Ivy League pedigree of people like Eakin or Shullenberger, I shared their fascination with French theory and deconstructionism as a whole when I was a younger man. This was, of course, by way of the famous public intellectual and Lacan acolyte Slavoj Žižek; I remember thinking that Vice interview</a> was so fucking cool, but now that I'm a bit older and part of whatever nouveau you want to label me as, I find the decades of deconstructionism to be stupid and dangerous because of all the occult bullshit it popularized. Overall, I agree with the article's sentiment: we need to construct something out of all this mess those French child molesters created, and hopefully it'll be something more sustainable than capitalism—that is, if the needed collapse ever actually happens.
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Link Log 25

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Here's a soundbite of a girl having explosive diarrhea</a>. After hearing about that parasite</a> going around or whatever, I thought to myself, "What does explosive diarrhea sound like?" And so now we're here. You're welcome.
Essay from Aeon on the science behind getting ghosted by your mom</a>. That's not really what the article's about; it's more about how estrangement causes lapses in memory. Although, if you're willing to get an essay published about how much of a bitch your mom is in a widely read and syndicated philosophy publication, that probably tells us all we need to know about why she doesn't talk to you anymore.
doom.haus</a> is a digital mandala. Nice.
A brief and comprehensive analysis of Ukraine's efforts to fight against Russia</a>. I haven't kept up with the developments of the war because it's a sad thing, but this analysis raised some pertinent questions for me. Even with the overwhelming support of the US and Europe, Ukraine still has to bank on Russia eventually deciding to cut its losses, and I don't think that will be the case for quite some time. Sure, the Ukrainians have won key victories and have been holding their own against the Russian onslaught, but how much longer can they keep this up? At this point, even if they have developed competent military leadership, the entire war effort relies on the resources and sophistication of their allies. Given how much Russia refuses to lose, particularly due to the horrendous levels of propaganda fed to its people, it doesn't seem like it would be in the interest of Ukraine's allies to sustain their support indefinitely. Sure, the US military-industrial complex has been making immense profits from the war, but the US government's expenditures can't keep up with this pace much longer, especially considering everything else on its plate. I worry that if the war doesn't end with Ukraine officially joining NATO and the EU by the end of this year, the Russians will keep pouring everything they can into it for the next several years, no matter how much they lose. By that point, Ukraine may be fully annexed by Russia, and the whole thing will have been a complete waste of Western diplomatic resources.
Story from p4k on corporate raves</a>. Gatekeeping the concept of a rave is stupid; quite frankly, I think people who do so only want to keep their marginalized communities, well, marginalized. It's weird because there's a certain kind of pride that some oppressed people have in being or having been oppressed. While it's important to acknowledge those ramifications historically and moving forward, I find that the first step is to understand that the objective should be to not be marginalized anymore. Consider the main organizer of one of these corporate raves: "Are you just drinking your profits away? Are you getting high? We’re sober. We’re serious professionals. You take it seriously, you can make more money." Those old-school raves, while enriching and capturing a certain zeitgeist for some, are ultimately excuses to be promiscuous and debaucherous. While I don't necessarily support the notion that rave culture should be something that's profiteered, I do support the notion that it has the power to help people in one way or another. If that's done through large corporate cash grabs, then so be it; what isn't a cash grab these days anyway?
Video of Jonathan Pageau and Rachel Wilson discussing the occult roots of feminism</a>. This is probably one of the more contentious links I've shared. I wasn't aware of the extent of the ideological roots of feminism, and hearing Rachel discuss the writings of those suffragettes and their objectives was edifying. Personally, I see much of that not entirely as a standalone satanic movement (though clearly many of its roots are there), but as a reaction to the sins found in patriarchy that men struggle with. I think the idea Rachel espoused—that women had plenty of freedoms in the 19th century—is blatantly false. It's common for people to paint false representations of the past as something more complicated, particularly because the people of those eras are gone, and all we can do is build ideas from the remnants they left behind. For instance, a common device people used back in the 19th century was a scold's bridle (which I mentioned here</a>). So while it's important to hold feminists accountable for their satanism, I think it's also important to understand that what we are all striving for is a reformed patriarchy; while it'll be tough to find in our current industrialized and post-modernist era, I know that the Lord will lead us in the right direction as long as we stay vigilant in work and prayer.
Takyondansen</a>. That is all.
Internet Girl's Boiler Room set</a> was really good. A very good ideological successor to BROCKHAMPTON, if you ask me.
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Link Log 24

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Pierre — Hey Ya!</a> This was an exciting cover, and the energy of this show looks intoxicating. Shows like this still happen, no doubt, but the energy of a specific show can never be denied. Sadly, I haven't been to a live show in quite some time. Too loud, overstimulating. At least I have my headphones and a hard drive with 250 GB of storage.
Personal blog post on the importance of being demanding and supportive</a>. A good leader can definitely be both of those things, and I unfortunately have difficulty with the former. I used to struggle a bit with having a rescuer complex, but these days I think I'm the one who needs most of the rescuing.
Samara Joy — You Stepped Out of a Dream</a> I think this is probably the greatest female—no—the greatest jazz vocalist to ever have lived, and she's alive right now. The range, the precision, the absolute dynamic control—no wonder she won six Grammies. I'd probably have to disqualify her from getting any more, or else she'll just win all of them. And she is gorgeous, beyond stunning. A woman like that would make me shake in my boots, I tell ya what. Samara, if you ever read this and find yourself in need of a new muse, hit me up.
A deep cut from Hank Williams: The Angel of Death</a> is probably my favorite song he ever did. I hope God saves Hank, man, even though he was a drunk and at times a bitter man. I hear the cries from beyond the grave, Lord. Save us, even if we're not worthy. Make all the harsh vibrations stop, even if just for a day. I'm so sorry we keep forgetting. Don't make me forget.
Article from The Creative Independent interviewing Andy Pizza</a>. Even though I generally have a distaste for Cal Newport shilling and the Rick Rubin Kool-Aid that is meta-discussing creativity, it can be good to read through stuff like this sometimes. Not necessarily for any new insights, but just to connect along the lines of the creative process. To know that other people are out there managing their creativity and finding ways to not burn out is reassuring; it gives me a greater sense of purpose in my own creative pursuits, as meager as they might be. More than anything, it helps me remember to find nourishment in this process; even if it's work, it can be that eustress that Pizza discusses in the interview. Ideally, no stress ever would be awesome, but some self-imposed eustress is fine, I suppose.
Article from Noema on Pakistan's emergence as a "middle power."</a> I've become extremely skeptical of this "multipolar" idea that these geopolitics nerds keep on spouting. This is mostly because I see an odd contradiction: how can wealth be consolidating further into a smaller set of hands while, at the same time, political power is now "multipolar?" That doesn't make sense to me, and I'm starting to think that word is some stupid think tank psyop. I didn't know Pakistan had nukes, though; that shit's crazy.
I have been bumping a.m. ambient</a> for most of this week. Wonderful tracks, particularly because I basically need to have music on at all times, and having these soft and low-key tracks throughout the day really helps me get through in a peaceful way. Well, mostly peaceful anyway :P
Remember the flop that was AI 2027? Well, they've decided to come back with another even more delusional one: AI 2040</a>. This is what happens when you give people who did well on their SATs laptops and a six-figure salary; they just spin their gears over and over again, flopping on the ground gasping for air like the fish they are. Sigh.
In other news, have you ever wanted to run ChromeOS in a web browser? Check out AnuraOS</a>. More broadly, the Mercury Workshop</a> seems to be doing some cool hacking with ChromeOS in general. I have an old Chromebook I was able to get EndeavourOS installed on with the help of Mr. Chromebox</a>, and while I don't use it for literally anything, it was nice just to know that I have the power to do so.
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Link Log 23

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Miniature dioramas by Derrick Lin</a>. Colossal is such a great publication; they consistently feature such good artists. I always love seeing this amazing work, and it gives me a greater sense of optimism for humanity and what we can achieve.
n10.as</a> is another cool internet radio find. I had to dig a bit to find the direct streaming link, and in my journey, I found this Github repo</a> for basically every internet radio station out there. Hopefully, I can keep this for reference and go through the gems. I LOVE INTERNET RADIO!!!
Space Age Pop set from NTS</a>. I love 50's pop, man.
Essay from Aeon on how AI changes investigative workflows</a>. Sorry skids; the discourse on AI has given us an immense level of fatigue, but we simply cannot deny that it's interesting. Paradigm-shifting? Kind of, but not at the scale Silicon Valley predicts. It's true that AI has changed how we think through things and process information, and the author makes a very salient point: the querying process for questions has gotten faster, and what we see now in writing isn't a change in the fundamentals, but in how we investigate the questions that get us there. AI cannot replicate your unique voice, and that still takes years of disciplined effort to master. Better yet, it is a continuous work in progress, which is why I am so passionate about this medium. However, for more polished work, the polish can get done much faster and more cheaply. I still find my best work done in the drafting process, but revisions have gotten a lot easier for me; since I don't have an editor, LLMs do a great job at catching my basic mistakes. Many would argue that the mistakes are what make the writing more genuine, and that's just a massive cope. Proper grammar and syntax are the most effective signals we have for intelligible thought, so I want my writing to be unique in voice and grammatically sound. Having an LLM assist in that is not a problem for me, just in the same way spell check was never a problem for my entire life. Is it worth all the legal investment fraud? No, but we're going to live in the moment anyway. Whatever comes from that will work itself out as it always does. Trust in the process, skids.
Another personality quiz, the vibe-coded AI Compass</a>. Most of these archetypes are stupid. Most of the "patron saints" are people I don't really care too much for (but am envious of their followings, full disclosure), and I found its assessment to be quite gauche—such is the problem with any psychological assessment. I got "The Tired Parent," which I found funny because I am neither tired about AI (see previous paragraph) nor a parent (maybe one day), and most of the archetypes are, uh, not really anything that gets to the core of the actual issue. I'm still working on that response to the Palantir Manifesto so I don't want to give the whole thing away, but basically y'all, this is all it boils down to: these are technologies used to fight wars. Keep that in the absolute forefront of your mind whenever people talk about this shit, lest you become another cognitive victim to it. The discourse is fraught with disinformation, so hopefully, you'll find your way to the core root of the issue that literally nobody else wants to talk about. If other people have already made that point, I'd be happy to read or listen to them; but right now, no one seems to be saying the quiet part out loud, and that's the scariest part to me.
Article from p4k on this year's Fête de la Musique</a> at the French embassy in D.C. It led me down a short rabbit hole to find out more about the DMV</a> music scene. DMV stands for D.C., Maryland, and Virginia—it's an interesting blend of sounds found in larger hip hop metro areas like Atlanta and NYC, and while I haven't been too interested in the genre these last few years, I enjoyed the write-up I read about the festival. Many would like to make themselves known as artists, but from reading the article, I found the sacrifices people make for it to be disconcerting—mostly in trying to gain and maintain relevance through Big Social Media. I always find it odd that my work here is basically one big fat counter-signal to it, but hey, at least I don't know who's actually reading this stuff, right?
Article from Slavoj's Substack on the case for the European Union, even 70 years later</a>. I used to pay to read this publication, but giving Substack money is stupid, and I still can't figure out an easy way to bypass the paywalls. But honestly, after reading this piece, I don't think I'd want to return to Slavoj's work again any time soon. I remember when I was younger and liking Slavoj was really cool and hip, but now that I am a bit older and significantly less leftist, I find his prose to be loquacious and long-winded, and realized just how much of a chore it is to actually read. Worse than that, most of his talking points in that piece lacked a throughline; the Lacanian stuff he constantly invokes no longer feels esoteric, and it's just cheap at this point. Even worse, the idea of collapse he and many others on the left like to espouse (even more so these days thanks to Trump) is brutally exhausting; at this point, the only thing justifying European sovereignty is the fact that the French have nukes. Otherwise, Europe will always be a melting pot of hapless nation-states that somehow manages to be even more pretentious and racist than the US.
A post</a> from a personal blog and my Indie Web neighbor. A funny take on my read: I initially opened this up in LYNX</a> and so I couldn't see the photo of donthatedontkill upon first perusing his site. While reading the post, I was under the impression that the author was a woman, and when I opened the link in my full-feature browser, I was surprised to see the author is a man. It made me think of how easy it is to make implicit assumptions from the things I read, and jotting down this little note about this experience will hopefully help me remember to drastically reduce the assumptions I make. Either way, this was a very interesting read from this well-designed personal blog, and I look forward to continuing to read his work.
I'm begrudgingly sharing this link because it's a dumb podcast with — shudders — a journalist, but here you go</a>. I have no idea why I listened to this entire thing, but I did. The journalist, a self-proclaimed ex-American, went on an essentially uninterrupted yapping spree mostly about how fucked up and self-destructive Latin America is, and of course had to blame it on every leftist's biggest boogeyman, the American (and more broadly Western) "imperialist" regime. I want to say about the Venezuelans: they had every means to not fuck up their nation if they just copied Norway or Canada's playbook, yet instead of taking all their money and properly diversifying it into a sovereign wealth fund, Hugo Chavez wanted votes and popularity—so he gave the people welfare instead. Leveraging your country's entire economy on a single resource is obviously going to make your currency worth nothing when that resource's market—a literal cartel—decides to make that resource worth nothing on a whim. But even if you want to blame oligarchs for their lavish and selfish lifestyles, I think it's important to understand that social services of any kind—welfare, state-sponsored whatever—don't fucking work. They generate no tangible value because people don't give a fuck about stuff if it's simply given to them. Worse than that, they grow entitled and start to think that they themselves are inherently valuable for Metaphysical Reasons They Do Not Wish To Elaborate On, and run those state-sponsored services to the ground. The money required to finance those services doesn't move around, doesn't generate growth, and is the economic equivalent of putting your life savings under your mattress and then burning your mattress because you never cleaned it. Delusional, man.
On a lighter note, check out paperchan</a>, an imageboard inspired by pictochat where every post is written and drawn by hand. Yes, they're drawing penises.
The Parable of Alien Chess</a> from revered FOSStuber, Luke Smith. However, it's not a video, but an article from his website—that I read—with my own two eyes! I enjoy Luke's writing, though he clearly has a better talent for public speaking. His colloquialisms come off much more cleanly in his videos than in his prose, but either way, I respect the rigor behind this essay. I particularly enjoyed his illustration of the local maximum, and how getting off of one mountain to climb a taller one might look like taking steps back, but it's only in the service of going higher. Honestly, with where we're at in the AI space, that's kind of how it feels. Sure, parts of the internet are getting worse right now because of it, but we genuinely might be getting off the smaller mountain to climb the taller one. We'll see, anyway.
Article from Compact on why we need to stop talking about mental health</a>. Interesting how the mental health discourse has been making its waves in the publications again, isn't it? A hard truth: destigmatizing mental health conditions is a good thing, but it doesn't just lead to clinical over-diagnosing and a pathologizing of certain social behaviors; the true population that it should be meant to serve is a small, deeply oppressed minority. Despite the increased press, however, their voices still remain unheard: people shouting at traffic, people so unable to live because of paranoia, delusions, and depression—there are no campaigns for those people, are there? What we've seen is a further stigmatization of those people because some receptionist with ADHD and GAD can look at a homeless schizophrenic and say, "Hey, I know exactly what you're going through, champ. You've got this!" while proceeding to make absolutely no progress whatsoever. Well, at least I keep seeing those Caplyta and Austedo commercials on TV, right?
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Link Log 22

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Article from Aeon on trauma creep</a>. Yeah, people calling everything "trauma" these days sucks and is stupid. But those same kids who complain about their "trauma" and "anxiety" won't tell you that they've seen videos of people dying brutal deaths on Instagram Live. They won't tell you they've seen the footage, and when we get bombarded with it every single day, that's what's really adding up. Earlier this week, I saw a video of a Ukrainian soldier's entire bottom half get blown off by an $800 bomber drone. No, I'm fine, really.
Another article from Aeon on Zhuangzi's rejection of meritocracy</a>. Reading through this reminded me a lot of Spinoza and Nietzsche's critiques of morality, and I've always agreed with them. Morality exists not because of a greater sense of virtue, but because it helps perpetuate existing social power dynamics. Out of that, of course, come things like laws and norms, and generally that stuff is fine. But where it gets dicey for me is when people think that following the law entitles them to certain things like rights or whatever else. Rights are, as Stirner would put it, a spook. They help people cope with the cruel realities of nature and humanity, but when we treat them as a pillar outside of a deeper sense of spiritual understanding, we end up inviting ourselves to be oppressed in some way. However, that doesn't mean I advocate for political dissidence or thievery; it makes me remember the writings of Stoics like Epictetus and Seneca: the worst prison we can build is one we build ourselves.
Freedom of Form</a>: Transcendental Furryism. Back in 2024, someone donated $200k to make this happen. Furries, even for their strangeness and proclivity to attract socially maladjusted people, really do come from all walks of life. A strange and interesting fandom, truly.
Unmade on HKCR</a>. Dreamy pop and shoegaze vibes, whatever that means. There's a really good cover of "Duvet" in this set, so there you go.
Article from WaPo last year on Thiel lecturing about the Antichrist</a>. It's a stale meme at this point, but from reading the article, I found a very interesting quote: "'It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money,'' Thiel said, according to the recordings. 'An incredible machinery of tax treaties, financial surveillance and sanctions architecture has been constructed.' Wealth gives the 'illusion of power and autonomy,' Thiel added, according to the recordings, 'but you have this sense it could be taken away at any moment.'" Financial struggle is a universal thing at this point, regardless of your net worth, AUM, or whatever. It's funny how freedom seems to be the most elusive thing in the world, and how it's something that even the mega-rich struggle with. The Stoics had it right from the beginning: it's found inside ourselves. Pray for the billionaires, skids.
Demonstration of how easy it is to stop thinking</a>. Here's a link to the full lecture</a> if you're interested. My favorite piece of advice Ajahn gave was that when you're trying to meditate or be still, you can ask your mind, "What do you want to do?" instead of commanding it to do stuff like watch your breath. Harmony with the mind is important, especially because it can either be a prison or a nice Zen garden, and the choice is entirely up to us as to what it'll be.
do not resurrect x KEDALOS - Sarcophagus</a>. IDLEGLANCE is a rather popular channel for finding underground music, and I remember discovering it a few years ago. After going through the intense process of getting over my YouTube addiction, I've come back to the channel to find some good music. Most YouTube videos aren't worth watching, but there are still a few channels I follow via RSS, particularly wow_mao</a>, Mental Outlaw</a> (Odysee), and Boiler Room</a>. What's disappointing, though, is that much of the music promoted by IDLEGLANCE feels somewhat stale, and the sounds produced from the linked track seem stuck in the early 2020s—not just in hip hop, but in most commercially released music these days. Something something Mark Fisher and hauntology, blah blah blah. More than staleness, I just feel somewhat unfed, but I've sort of written about that</a> already.
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Link Log 21

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Great short article from The Creative Independent interviewing Sarah Wang</a>, where she discusses her writing process and gave me another Literally Me moment. I love those moments, don't you? My favorite quote: I think I was able to sustain myself in part because I can't do anything else. I can't hold a traditional job down. I've gotten fired from almost every job I've had. I'm not that functional in a lot of ways. Literally. Me.
I've been playing this new game recently called Wesnoth</a>. Well, it's not a newly released game, but it's one I caught on the Linux Mint Software Manager. I'm generally not the best at strategy games, but I've wanted to play them so I can at least attempt to become a more strategic thinker and flex my muscles in that way. I couldn't even beat the damn tutorial level at first, but once I did, I felt good enough to give the campaigns a solid shot. It's a really small game (about 500MB) and it's got a ton of replay value, so hopefully it'll turn into a fun little hobby and won't be as frustrating as Go was.
Former pickup artist Roosh V on his conversion to orthodoxy</a>. This was a great testimony, outside of the conspiratorial tangent on depopulation. Why are right-wing guys on that stupid shit, anyway? I really liked the anecdote he gave about giving a young guy advice about asking a girl out from church. "Don't ask her; ask her brother." Insanely based.
Article from Compact on Argentina President Javier Milei's hard bet on AI</a>. Uh, yeah, Argentina has always been kinda sus to me, man. Of course, Milei's whole schtick about being a hardcore techno-libertarian who wants to "destroy the state from the inside" is clearly cannon fodder for larger economic powers to avoid taxes. That's what it always is, man: avoid the taxes and keep the money from going stagnant. Well-being? Personal stability? Nah, baby, we gotta keep the gravy train moving or else it's all gonna crash. Reading shit like this makes me want to open three credit cards like right now.
Michael Silverblatt on his love of reading</a>. This was a talk he gave to the Cornell creative writing program back in 2010, and it made me cry like a baby. I was a fan of Bookworm</a> after discovering it back in 2017, and delighted in Silverblatt's sensibility and enthusiasm when discussing books with their writers. He made a distinct criticism of the current lit crit circuit: that most of them spend time either talking about books they don't like, or even worse, not reading them at all. We have all this talk about post-literacy or declining rates in functional literacy among children, but truthfully, it's less about being able to read, and more about not being able to read good books—the ones that challenge us emotionally and intellectually. We need more books where writers aren't afraid to use obscure words or turns of phrase; there shouldn't be so much concern about readability, and there should be infinitely more concern about unreadability—that's how reading helps us actually grow.
Longer essay from Aeon on the emotional struggles of being born wealthy</a>. Most of the anecdotes in this article aren't from wealthy people themselves, but their beneficiaries: children, siblings, nieces, nephews, etc. Coming from money, but not actually having money, is a weirdly torturous existence, I must say. You have access to all these powerful people, all these immense resources, yet you're still under the thumb of whatever patriarch or matriarch you had to give your Power of Attorney to. That's gotta be tough, and I understand their struggles with personal agency and trying to fit into the dead concept of the "middle class." Most people who are "middle class" these days are just wealthy, but don't have the business sense to do anything with their money other than put it away and invest it into monolithic ETFs or some other "diversified" asset class. Still, some of these people are insane with their liberal delusions; putting their money to work by investing in refugee camps is stupid; those refugees wouldn't even care if you lived or died, so helping them is a weird way to cope with this self-imposed guilt. Maybe, uh, I don't know—pay some fucking taxes?
Cool short piece by Taylor Troesh</a> about pumpkins.
An article from BBC exalting Finnish libraries</a>. When you're in a rich, high-trust society like Finland, good library systems are a fairly predictable symptom of that. Here in the US, our libraries are less opportune for the public, particularly in cities that are liberal like Finland, because they usually just become makeshift camps for homeless people. And of course, those people end up stealing any resource given to them that isn't, well, a book. The article tries to describe the success of Finland's libraries as a result of higher government spending and historic roots in sharing things like farm equipment. Unsurprisingly, they didn't go into why that is exactly, so I'll spell it out for you: when everyone looks the same and speaks the same, it's easier to get along.
Tiffany Day's Boiler Room set</a> was awesome. Hyperpop nostalgia beats.
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Link Log 20

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000


The image is a Spanish translation a friend did of a Walt Whitman poem.
Article from NYRB on a library that's been getting audited yearly for the last 800 years</a> or something. It's funny how writing is the single oldest way to preserve time; it's older than photos by a long shot, and I'd say we were writing way ahead of drawing or painting. Yet in spite of that, it's still bound to language: a mystical set of symbols meant to put specific images into our head. Of course we were writing before we were painting, man. How could we not?
Great article from Compact on Clavicular, Bryan Johnson, and the perils that come with trying to transcend death</a>. The big sin guys like that fall for is vainglory, through and through. No one likes a boastful asshole, especially if they flaunt wealth and these grand aspirations while forgetting that we're all just trying to survive the day. It's so easy to get caught up in all this cultural criticism and forget to just look outside your window every once in a while. Life is a beautiful thing, and there is no need to shorten it or prolong it. We all have a set amount of time here, and it's up to us to bear with each day as it comes, regardless of what's fair or not. God has good things planned for us, so there's no need to squirm so much.
Short essay on Ezra Pound's use of free verse</a>. For centuries, iambic pentameter</a> was seen as the pinnacle of poetry in the English language. With the rise of modernism in the late 19th and early 20th century, there came a greater exploration of form that accelerated in large part due to advancements made in audio technology. Once music became a more widespread medium, it became easier for people to harness a deeper sense of lyricism in English, and that's evident in the rising popularity of free verse. People were no longer bound to specific performance rituals, and the greater freedom found in recording audio gave way to more freedom in poetic expression. But honestly, I think we're just going back to realizing that iambic pentameter was king all along.
Bros, how the fuck did I miss the 22-point Palantir Manifesto</a> that came out like two months ago? This one absolutely requires an IOKTIKN post, which as of posting today I am currently working on right now. It's turning into a bit of a monster.
A beautiful comic about sex by Owen Cyclops</a>. I'm glad there's someone else out there who gets it. To get weird and vulnerable myself, I had Owen's problem with casual sex, but instead of finishing early, I couldn't finish at all, and got the same kind of flack from my partners. Man can't win either way, I guess. I have no idea how women perceive me or what they say when I'm not around, and quite frankly, I don't want to know. My little heart couldn't handle it.
Saint Pepsi re-releases the classic vaporwave album for vinyl: Hit Vibes</a>. Can't wait when Saint Pepsi gets clowned on by the kids as "Dad Music." That's gonna be so fun. The p4k write-up</a> was generous, and while it's sad that Saint Pepsi could only go for one banger year, there's a beautiful irony to his Reaganesque rise and demise; what was supposed to be almost satirical of the glamour of the 80s became shut down by a now more mature, suitable for advertising Pepsi Co. Whatever, man, the music's still pretty good.
An old RFC informational doc on "netiquette," released in 1995</a>. As a young guy born in 1998, this was an absolute trip to read. My favorite quote:
Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you have really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it via FLAME ON/OFF enclosures. For example:
FLAME ON: This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth it takes to send it. It's illogical and poorly reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with me.
FLAME OFF
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Link Log 19

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000
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Cool article from WIP about Edo Japan</a>. A pre-nineteenth-century panopticon seemed pretty interesting, but I think the subtext of the article is that great peace established by rent-seekers comes at a large psychological price? I guess? Caring more about status than civil unrest does seem like a distinctly human feature, though, and today's panopticon proves that indelibly. Still, being a nobody is way better than being a somebody; that's probably my favorite lesson from the Didache</a>: "Your soul shall not be joined with lofty ones, but with just and lowly ones shall it have its intercourse."
Article from NYRB on Joan Semmel</a>, a painter who was in art school during the abstract art explosion of the 1950s and pivoted to painting nudes in the 70s and throughout the rest of her life. It was sad to see that so many people back then thought that there could only be room for a woman to be either her career or something else, and I think the criticism we see of the Girlboss</a> is a weird indication of certain societal progress and a fundamental identity crisis we find among women and men respectively. Still, though, there's a certain honesty in Semmel's work that makes me more empathetic to struggles women face in Current Year. There's a realism to the nudes; it's definitely not something you'd see on OnlyFans or Instagram. It's real people, flabs and weirdly shaped nipples and all—with no real concern for the viewer. An interesting irony is that these paintings portray a more real human nude than most photos I see of naked women today. Wait, um—I mean—I don't look at photos of naked women. Shut up!
Quick post from Gwern</a> on using "retcon planning" to help train AI dungeon masters</a>. I've played a good bit of D&D before, and what I've discovered is that the best DMs are the ones who can make shit up on the fly and build their world around player experiences. If a DM tries too hard to keep players built into their swathes of pre-written lore and worldbuilding, they end up being a total railroader and not fun to play with. I tried doing some AI roleplaying adventures a few years ago, and thought it was alright for a fun quick solo adventure. But unfortunately, LLMs are not that creative, so many of the stories you engage in are cliche and predictable. Even today with LLMs being cheaper and somewhat more accessible, this is still a major bridge to cross. There's definitely some hardcore nerds out there who have trained their own models to be totally personal to their preferences and play style, but I'd still rather just do it the old-fashioned way. Maybe if there's a way for people to combine their personal LLMs and have them be part of a group adventuring party, that could add a decently fun layer to it, but even then I feel like it would still be overkill.
Great article from The Argument on the Mississippi Miracle</a>. People have been lambasting Mississippi and the South in general regarding education standards for quite some time, but in the background, Mississippi was quietly killing the game. Literally just teach phonics, train teachers on the actual curriculum, and hold kids back a grade if they don't pass the tests. No Child Left Behind was a mistake. That new stupid reading technique was a mistake. Kids need to be told when they're not performing well; no more participation trophies, skids.
A more recent article from The Argument about the so-called Messenger Class</a>. I've heard this group of people referred to as the Laptop Class too, from Cory Doctorow I think. I'm not gonna pull up which one of his blog posts said it, just trust me bro. Anyway, it's mostly people who work what I would call basically bullshit jobs a la Dave Graeber: journalists, software engineers, academics, people who work at non-profits. The article basically just says that people in those fields live in specific parts of the country—namely the Bay Area, D.C., and NYC—try to make sweeping claims about society despite the fact they live in small insulated neighborhoods themselves. Like, it doesn't matter how much data you have access to or how you analyze it; the only way to know what's going on in a community is to live in it day by day, talk to your neighbors, and actually experience things for yourself. These insulated messengers don't wish to do that, so of course their worldview is going to be skewed in some snooty kind of way.
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Link Log 18

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000
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An article written last year on the death of the post-left</a>. In my younger, more virulent days, I had the label of "post-left" attached onto me by some friends. It made sense; being a Joe Rogan acolyte was cool back in like 2015, but nowadays there's a clear funnel that people of my milieu took. We wanted to break into the class consciousness, have a full picture of the systems at play; but instead all we became was a new contingent to sip the Kool-Aid of the groyper alt-right nouveau. Here's the thing man: guys like me are easily persuaded by where the memes are funniest. My problem, however, is that while the left can't meme, the right can never be cool and get women to be sexually attracted to me. So where is a man like me to go? I'm not sure, but the one thing I do know is that the political "solutions" of tomorrow aren't going to be found on major web platforms. I hope to find myself in the rooms where I can actually feel like a part of my community and work my influence in a positive, tangible way. Online, nothing ever happens.
Someone recently turned me on to Ploopy</a>, and I've been wanting a trackball mouse for some time. They look so cool, right?
I think a lot of folks have heard of Ethnoguessr</a> by now, but it's one of my fun daily games I like to play. Most people are into these hot indie or AAA video games with thousands of lines of code written just to render some stupid shades. For me, I like to consider myself like an old man who plays my fun little daily minigames just to pass a little bit of time. I also found a good website to play Go</a> on, and man lemme tell ya, that game is hard. I'm still a total beginner, and I've been practicing here and there on the 5x5 board. The strategy for Go is deeply complex, and while I've never been a majorly strategic thinker, it's been a cool way to keep my mind sharp in a way that feels healthy.
A post on blogger burnout</a>, which I pulled from the illusory Bix</a>. It's a real thing, that demon of perfectionism. But the way I see it, the imperfections are what really counts, especially writing in the face of LLM precision and cultural dominance. People like those imperfections, and while it might not be guaranteed to reach a wide audience, it will reach one nonetheless. As I've said many times before, if just one person reads my writing and feels changed by it in some way, the job is done. But you've gotta do the job in the first place for that to happen.
This is an article written over twenty years ago on the ideological incoherence of conservatism</a>. The Mises institute, being an organization that strongly endorses Austrian economics, is fair in making a libertarian critique of neoconservatism. Especially during the Bush era, neoconservatives became increasingly statist in their rhetoric, which made sense given the propulsion of the US into the war with Iraq. What's strange is that neoconservative politicians, usually running as republicans, have had to figure out many weird ways to convince their increasingly libertarian constituency of a generally national socialist platform, while still maintaining a front of loosely libertarian values. When I think of all those republican ads of politicians with guns, that's the kind of dissonance I'm talking about. Many boomer republicans want the convenience of statism, but without any of the trade-offs. That's why we see those guys harp on about taxes and illegal immigration while collecting social security checks. Funny world we live in, huh?
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Link Log 17

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000
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low income $quad</a> is a great label I've been bumping these past several weeks. Good neo-trance and happy hardcore.
Roger Radio</a> is an internet radio station where their crypto, The Holy Roger, determines what gets air time. If you have a song you want them to play, get your hands on some Roger and spin some tracks. Fun crypto deep dive with memes, good tunes, and an interesting take on how currency shapes taste and behavior.
An interesting article commentating on Trump and NATO relations</a>. I've always told my European friends that the EU should just call itself the United States of Europe already (in jest, obviously), but it's true that Europe's reliance on the US as an uncontested superpower is important for intercontinental relations. However, Trump's disdain for his allies is one that might make it hard for European countries to retain sovereignty in the future, and while I don't see a major Western European conflict on the horizon any time soon, I think it's important for the American hegemony to lean to our European allies in ways that directly support their sovereignty. It's also important to recognize that much of Trump's strong-arming is mostly seen-through at this point, and that the true leverage of the United States is understood and acknowledged. If we can learn anything from the PR-Wizard-in-Chief, it's that true control comes from indirect perception rather than anything direct and in-your-face. We've all become so "immune" to propaganda that we forget the constant waves of it we must endure every day.
I've been concerned about whether to be received solely through Chrismation or combine with baptism during my conversion to Orthodoxy, and thankfully this article</a> assuaged my worries. I have immense love and respect for the man who baptized me, and reading this helped me find comfort in my decision to not get rebaptized.
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Link Log 16

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000
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Light on links this week. Sorry!
Some guy had a collection of bones bigger than most museums</a>. He worked as an electrical engineer for the Manhattan Project, then decided to LARP as Indiana Jones and start robbing grave sites. You know the "anthropological" difference between humans and animals? Humans are the only species on the planet that bury their dead. Well, at least that's what I remember reading in my AP World History textbook my sophomore year of high school. Before converting to Orthodox Christianity, I used to want to get cremated after I died; many in my family have the same sentiment. But now that I understand that my salvation is on the line, I'm hoping for a good Christian burial after my repose.
Louis Rossman whining about YouTube taking analytics data from his audience</a> while also posting that video onto YouTube, and letting them take more analytics from his audience. I generally support Louis Rossman's main cause, right to repair</a>, and I think his platform has done a fair amount of good work in that space and fighting against enshittification and blah blah blah—but when asked if I think his content is "emotionally manipulative," I am going to answer in the affirmative, honestly. Louis is a classic hard-nosed engineer, a type I've seen many times. His aim is not to stir any kind of emotional resistance, but to solve legitimate problems. Unfortunately, those same types of people get lost in the elusive stew of social signaling, and while they don't intend to be emotionally manipulative, they typically do so by accident through their supposedly "rational" argumentation style. People like Louis seem to have a strict divide in their head between emotional and rational thinking, but they are more overlapped than they are mutually exclusive. I think Louis sees the irony in making a video like this, but I think if his movement is as important as he thinks it is, he'd understand that he doesn't need large platforms like YouTube to reach the right people.
A woman's perspective on a dating crisis in the Orthodox Church</a>. So, you're saying there's a chance?
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Link Log 15

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000
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Oh yeah baby, Animal Collective is back and her new name is Chanel Beads</a>. I caught their NTS set</a> and thought it was bonkers awesome, but was a bit disappointed to find their main work is more electronic than the jazz/modern classical vibe from their NTS set. Still, Shane Lavers is cooking with some sauce, and I'm here for it. I tried figuring out who plays the piano on that NTS set because it's so fucking good, and the closest I have is from articles about Shane where he mentions that he's not a classically trained musician in any way, so I'm going to safely assume that it's the cute girl playing the piano. Can someone track her down and send her my email? Please? It might also be the guy on violin but I'm not sure. Or it could be just some random sub they got for the gig, I don't know. Whoever it was, send them my email. Also the cute girl, thanks.
Ever wonder what them Victorian people with the first microscopes were looking at? Well wonder no more</a>. Microscopes are cool, and looking at really small stuff and seeing the intricacies of these unseen structures really makes you think about the tapestry of it all. Also, can we bring the word tapestry back? I know the LLMs went kinda crazy with that word, but that's totally fair for them to do that, come on. Moving through this tangent a bit more: I'm not sure what the new taste trends for prose are with LLMs. I remember like ten years ago, it was super in vogue to be laconic and minimalist with punctuation like Hemingway or McCarthy but now we've totally pivoted back to punctuation maximalism and dense clauses. What, you haven't written a sentence with like five clauses recently?
M.I.A. got kicked off of Kid Cudi's tour for being based</a>. Who the fuck even listens to Kid Cudi anymore anyway? Also, can you believe that woman is 50? What a babe.
I just learned what a scold's bridle</a> is today. For all the flack people give fourth-wave feminism, there's some truth to it, man. I mean, imagine being at that time and place and having to wear that and not being able to take it off because your husband is such a deranged chud that he won't take it off of you. The sexual revolution wasn't a good thing, I don't think, but all this talk of going "back to tradition" makes me a bit sick to think about it—especially when I find out that shit like this used to be normal. Shudders, man. Shudders.
My one-way relationship with Cory Doctorow is complicated. The way he does his work is great, and I definitely agree with many parts of his ethos. However, his blog Pluralistic can be a bit too much for me sometimes. I'm sure that's how all of (You) feel with my shit, but man, Cory keeps making me come back. This post</a> was a very interesting read, and I think there's a good bit of truth on taking a guy like Ashley Keller</a> and comparing him to a vulture—a little gross, but still quite useful. He stated that "capitalists hate capitalism" because what they really want is feudalism and a total "self-determination – for themselves, at everyone else's expense." The problem is that underlying this is the assumption that self-determination is not only a good thing, but something everyone should have—classic American liberalism. Have you ever seen someone so stupid and destructive and remember "man, that person can technically vote." This is kind of on the same territory as that stupid Voltaire quote, "I wholly disagree with what you say and will contend to the death for your right to say it." Some people really shouldn't be allowed any kind of self-determination, okay? Before you whine about me just saying this regarding people I disagree with, let me give a more "moral" argument. There is a growing contingency of people with immense intellectual and physical disabilities in the world today, and those people, if given that same "self-determination" as everyone else, would be so immensely harmful to society that it would make people hate them instead of plea for their right to live. People like Cory think that you can have a right to life and self-determination, but you can't have your cake and eat it too. For me, I'll take life over self-determination any day of the week.
Are you trying to achieve the flow state? Just pinch and roll your balls, dawg</a>.
Having to remind myself every five years or so how much of a genius Jaco was</a>, man. I don't think anyone will be that innovative with the bass ever again—truly a shining star.
Here's some more discourse on the problem of hard consciousness</a> for the philosophy bros here. The writer, an astrophysicist, makes the claim that the soul is no metaphysically different than sensory experience. Tsk tsk, typical astrophysicists. Anyway, while the guy's obviously Roman Catholic philosophy is mostly bunk and basically one "Did Jesus really do all that?" away from monist pantheism, I relate to his general line of metaphysical thinking. Being all composed of star dust will make you start huffing that demonic Kool-Aid pretty quickly, though. There really is no explanatory gap between thought and experience, and that's because all of our thoughts are just lesser spirits possessing us anyway. Don't give into them if you can.
Going back to Jaco, this set</a> at Montreal was a total banger. Randy Brecker, Mintzer with the fro—just insanely amazing how hot this set was, man. Listen, I don't care if my wife is about to give birth to my first born son; if you get the call to go to Montreal, you drop everything.
Check out IDA Radio</a>: like NTS, but Finnish.
Interesting article</a> from WIP on the irony of "artificial" stuff being bad. From SF weirdos making sushi out of stem cells to naysayers of 19th century "artificial" ice, we seem to forget how much of what we do is a result of our creative impulses and never-ending desires. I've been on a kick lately about how the dichotomy between artificial/natural is bogus anyway, so whatever is cheap and helps me stay fed is a good thing in my book. As humans, we seem to think we're oh so powerful that we'll snap the world in half one day. This little place of ours will be here long before us, and long after us. We ain't shit, man, so let's go eat some fake sashimi while we still can.
Article about NYT</a> using LLMs to track and analyze manosphere podcasts and generate comprehensive metasummaries. With the sheer volume of media out there, using LLMs to parse through it is a rather sound idea for journalists, and I respect the hustle. Friends I know use their mainstream LLM accounts to do this and make "personalized podcasts" for themselves, which to me is cool in theory, but in practice I might get kind of tired of it. That's not even because of potential misinformation via model hallucination; I just like to know the hand that feeds me, I guess. Taste and curation has always been an important thing in determining one's outlook and decisions, so finding ways to make that better for one's self is crucial. But honestly, I've never been a guy who cares too much for staying in the loop. I can be a Certified Digger for things that I find personally interesting, usually music and good fiction books; however, I've never been a big fan of super intensive "research" because knowledge is always such a fickle thing. To me, it's less about gathering and synthesizing data, and it's all just a grand chase of novelty. Novelty is good in certain doses, but there's so much power in the mundane.
You guys know about burger music</a>? I'll spoil it for you: it's just music being played in Current Year that's derivative of Playboi Carti</a>. But it seems that the real diggers are gonna start co-opting burger as the new "whack" or "uncool" or "mid," so I'll keep y'all tapped in. You're welcome.
An old viral hit for you: DubFX feat Mr. Woodnote—Flow</a>. This track inspired the shit out of me back in high school, but then I saw how much the gear cost and thought "eh, I'll try something else." Sometimes I think I was meant to be a songbird; ah well.
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Link Log 14

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Pretty sure deadAir - Transmissions</a> is my favorite NTS show now. Jane Remover</a> really is the truth, man. Really, deadAir is absolutely where it's at right now. Quannnic</a> has been a favorite of mine since he released Kenopsia too. The kids are alright. (Midweek update: all the sets have been on repeat this whole week. Shit bangs, skids.)
Okay, so I might've talked about how much I love Ran Prieur</a> before, but since it's on my mind literally right now, I have to give out my thoughts. Peep April 27. I'm not too big a fan of how much Ran is into REDDIT DOT COM, but whatever. These days if you're getting ruthlessly downvoted on Plebbit, you more than likely have something closer to the right opinion. Anyway, I'm not as collapse-pilled as Ran, but generally there is a growing sentiment toward it. However, I think instead of harmful ideological positions like collapse or accelerationism, a more apt word I'd use to describe it is "deflation." Like, yeah, the US will not be a global power anymore and there might be full corpo-backed secession of most likely California and/or Texas and the other states that follow either of those two. Yeah, China and its subsidiary Russia will become the global powers and Israel will flop over to them (because of course they would, come on) and NATO will really and truly become an international laughing stock. Whole nations will cease to exist by 2050, not through violence but good old-fashioned attrition and annexation. This probably won't happen in my lifetime, but there won't be a hundred and something countries in the next hundred years, but probably just about a dozen or so. From peeping January 14, 2014</a> on Ran's archives, can you guys believe he actually just called it? Can you? PRAY FOR RAN PRIEUR, LOVE GOD AND YOUR NEIGHBOR, AND NEVER KILL YOURSELF!
I'm gonna be honest with you guys: I never read Infinite Jest in its entirety. I've read bits and pieces here and there, but honestly, if you want a full grasp of the whole thing without having to read 500,000 words of dense DFW prose and footnotes, just read an essay by someone who read it. Here's one for you</a>. A lot of these themes I was more or less familiar with, and honestly if you want the best primer for DFW and his life philosophy, just listen to This is Water</a> and you'll get what he's going for. In a sentence, it's this: everyone devotes their life to something one way or another, but the power you have is in choosing what that is. For me, it's writing and the pursuit of God. I come here to you every day with these words and these little findings because to me, finding Christ is the ultimate pursuit one can have in their life. Any ambition, trade, or craft is a meager byproduct of that pursuit, so while I might have my anxieties like the kids in that tennis school and an approached earnestness like the fuck-ups at the treatment house, all of it is in pursuit not even for any kind of evangelical means, but for my own personal journey in coming to know the Lord and all his love and splendor. Pray for me, skids.
I think I've just found the best video I've seen so far this year</a>. Hong Kong, 1930s, 60 FPS and colorized. Words will barely do this one justice, but I'll try. A culture and time I will never truly know was just given to me in a brief series of snapshots. All the people are human, industrialized in a way that to our standards today makes a hundred years ago feel like a thousand. There's no way I can know what those people were going through, but all I can do is get that little snapshot and have this feeling that I love, ache, laugh, cry, and toil just like they do. I otherwise would never have known this world existed, but God decided to give me that gift today even though I don't deserve it. I'm alive, just like they were, and that won't be the case one day. What will my snapshot be, I wonder? Also, I learned what a palanquin</a> is today. And also that type of vehicle is called a litter. That's cool.
Cool article about the invention of buses</a>. This was where I pulled those last couple of links from. If Pascal wasn't already cool enough, the man also invented buses but got stopped by bureaucracy. Many such cases!
After unsubscribing from MetaFilter's</a> RSS feed, I really don't have as much material for these logs. I might resubscribe to it, and perhaps refrain from clicking on articles that use the words "CIA Asset" in them</a>. But man, too much media consumption really is a problem, and there's an obviously sinister irony to having this project of mine. I mean, we wouldn't have had this problem like 200 years ago, but if those guys had basically infinite access to media, you bet the confederates would've been doomscrolling instead of seceding from the Union. But I digress; more links next week, friends.
Stay loved.
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Link Log 13

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000


Blake Whiting</a> is perhaps the most prolific historian of our time. You're never gonna believe how he does it!
Okay, so I thought the whole Artemis II thing was kind of stupid and didn't pay any attention to it, but this article</a> changed my mind on it a bit. Yeah, once you go outside of Earth, you reach the upper limitations of everything we know, do, are, feel, think, and whatever other all-encapsulating word you want to say. Do we really have to send rockets up to the moon and spend billions of dollars to figure that out? Apparently yes. The thing with poetry or art or whatever all-encapsulating word you want to say is that all of experience will always be right behind our eyeballs. I get wanting a sense of wonder, of wanting to explore and further understand being-in-time, but I don't know man, just spend all day by yourself doing nothing; it achieves the same thing.
The Onion finally bought InfoWars</a> and they publish the breakout story on 4/20. Something in me wants to say "yay! That's so cool!" But honestly, like, what does it do for anyone? What does satire really accomplish anymore? I'm so exhausted with people thinking that irony is the only means to say something true in the face of propaganda. Can't someone be funny and not have to make a broader cultural point about it? Or just be stupid for no reason? The world's broad definitions of truth are in and of themselves bullshit because we have this consensus now that truth is this fluid thing. It's fucking not, okay? Fuck the Onion. Fuck science. Fuck sex-positivity. Fuck transcendental humanism. Fuck comedy. Fuck any spectrum and continuum you can think of. Fuck moral relativism. Fuck renegades. And most importantly: fuck you, the girl reading this.
An interesting article about little red dots</a> at the far edge of the universe. The author speculates that they could be "baby pictures" of a supermassive black hole, but these observations are so new that no one can come to a straightforward conclusion. Tsk tsk, typical astrophysicists.
This guy built a 1:2,400 model of New York City out of glue, acrylic paint, and balsa wood</a>. He works as a truck driver and over the course of 20 years, created a piece of art so astonishing it got to be put in a museum. This is the dream right here. All that stuff about being famous or whatever is absolute trash when you look at something like this. Stuff like this makes me want to stay alive, just a bit longer.
Sick set from edv3ctor</a>. Post-punk techno. Get with it, skids.
This article had me at India</a>. But after reading it, something about it feels fishy. Wired is obviously infiltrated with glowies, but it seems to me the baited reaction is so weirdly placed temporally speaking. Really, as I'm going through this week's log, the anti-AI sentiments are growing; and if it's like any trend or movement of ideas, it's to manufacture a narrative to serve someone's interests. My theory: when Anthropic openly refused to let the Department of Defense use its models for piloting drones, that's right when the anti-AI sentiment started really boiling. Clearly, the sub-vocal feud happening between Trump's administration and the transcendental autists in Silicon Valley is getting a bit more dicey. The glowies think that if they can get enough people to hate this stuff, they'll stop using it enough to give the feds leverage to twist these corpos' arms enough to let them do their bidding. You guys know about the subterranean data centers they built back in 2013, right?
Have you been Klages-pilled</a> yet, Anon?
Frank Hurricane</a>: The Last Folk Singer. The true embodiment of Modern Americana; I look forward to listening to some of his music.
HowToBasic is still going at it, guys. He taught me how to make a cheese sandwich</a> this time. Thanks, HowToBasic!
Skub</a> means "push" in Danish. Fun daily puzzle game. Push a ball and boxes to get the ball to hit a target.
Where Hope Goes To Die</a>: Don't worry guys, it's not some sad article or documentary. It's a new release from heavy metal band Despite Exile. Listen man, if hope is dead, then Italian metal lives on, okay? This was a good album; it's got a solid mix of death metal and metalcore, enough to give any metal fan particular to a certain subgenre enough to feel satisfied. What, you haven't been keeping up with the Italian metal scene?
Having a slow afternoon? Here's a playlist from rare phonk</a> to get you through it.
Clearly I've been on a music discovery kick lately. Always a joyful time to have that in my life. Anyway, check out this Memphis rap mix</a>. I remember seeing this stupid shit</a> a while back and learned the lore behind this meme. In Memphis, the way they say "shorty" is "shota" and the latter just so happens to be the same word used to refer to a Japanese term I'd rather not explain here</a>. Man, internet people are so fucking disgusting. Not me, though, Anon. I'm cool.
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Link Log 12

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fat guy does a water fast for 55 days</a>. He only lost like 45 lbs, which is insane. I'd think one would lose a lot more, but the numbers don't lie. As of writing this entry, I am on day 3 of a fast myself. (Update: I made it through 5 days.) I'm only doing water, coffee, gum, and hard candy. I'm also taking all my usual supplements and medications still. This was inspiring. Also, the guy who made this documentary is from Greenville, TX and I've been there tons of times. Small world!
Track the NYC subway system, and take each movement from every train and turn it into a free form jazz piece</a>. Super epic and based!
Watch a simulated desktop environment of 9/11 happening in real time</a>. Crazy stuff.
Haha, I remember my first day in the infohazard department</a>.
Your Face is a Saxophone</a>: a bizarre animated series satirizing the advertising industry. I remember watching this when I was a young kid, and was sad to see that it couldn't take off. Shit was funny, man.
This NPR Interview with Terrace Martin</a> was really good, but I am disappointed that he censors himself when referring to Christ for obvious reasons. He grew up Evangelical, he knows the Lord's name, but can't find himself to say it. When I think of my own relationship to The Media, it pains me how subtle and covert Christian persecution is. Of course, any group that stands for what they believe in faces persecution; none of us are invulnerable to that. But Terrace is a Christian, and I expect more from someone in the faith opposed to someone outside of it. I pray that the Lord gives Terrace and other people with larger platforms to be unafraid to say Christ's name out in the open. People talk shit about Ye being a Nazi or some kind of provocateur hack, but at least he made Jesus is King. Terrace wants to talk about his "spiritual mission," but he doesn't have a concept for how dangerous that mission actually is.
Jazz 24</a> has become my favorite jazz radio station to listen to. Great mix of old hits and contemporary favorites.
Ever thought about staging an accident with an 18-wheeler to get a fat insurance payout</a>? Well, some folks in the Big Easy did, and it, uh, didn't go so well.
"No one you love is ever dead."</a> Thanks Ernest, very cool!
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Link Log 11

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Happy Pascha, everyone! He is risen!
Hypercuriosity as a way to explain ADHD</a>: it is such a weird diagnosis these days. So many folks use ADHD—which many feel that they have due to Stage 4 Screen Addiction—as a poor excuse to put themselves on an amphetamine so that they can, uh, spend more time in front of their screens. I will say that ADHD is an interesting way to map a certain temperament, and the idea of hypercuriosity is an interesting one. There certainly are different environments where getting into rabbit holes and seeking new information and stimuli can be a positive, and the ideal circumstance for someone with ADHD is one where they can find an occupation that aligns with their cognitive predisposition. I've found that when it comes to "treating" ADHD, the best way to do so isn't through swallowing amphetamines, but through adopting strategies around routines. Yes, people with ADHD are more handicapped when it comes to establishing and keeping routines, but routines are still one of the great cornerstones of mental health. And with that, there are many things one can do to make their routines more accommodating to their condition. A future IOKTIKN post, perhaps?
I looked up the history of vampires because my mom was watching Twilight and found this nice little article</a>. My mom quickly changed the channel because she just "didn't get it." Same, mom. Same.
Did we lose the battle against misinformation</a>? The author here makes a loose implication that the misinformation problem started around 2016, but real knowers understand it started way before that. It's been this way since the invention of the printing press. When you ask yourself "who should I trust for my information?" and your answer is a mainstream news outlet or the government, you've already lost. I will say that the author makes a good point at the end where he calls for us to go on an "information diet." This article would've been way cooler if he went more into that. Good thing I kind of did that with my Nowmina essay</a>.
People are of course worried that once Trump finishes his term, the Groypers will take over the GOP</a>. Literally the only difference between MAGA Republicans and Groypers is that Groypers are antisemites. That's it. Other than that, same shit, different toilet. And given the whole debacle between Iran and Israel, it doesn't make much sense for either party to be as Zionist as it is. I mean, what's next? Are we gonna go to war with China on behalf of Taiwan, too? How about we fuck with North Korea while we're at it. On a completely non-political note, I've actually found that my life during Trump's terms has been pretty good. During Biden's term it was horrible. Despite how poorly Trump has performed as president, you cannot deny that it's been interesting. American corruption was so boring and professional for so many decades, but Trump's blatant in-your-face corruption has weirdly enough been, dare I say, kind of a breath of fresh air?
Have you considered the wonders of drywall</a>? I remember back when I worked in construction, I used to have to figure out how much drywall was gonna go into a certain building and how much it would cost. Usually, we had to put several layers of it around the building for fire safety reasons. I remember back when I got bids for it, they'd usually charge around $10 a square foot. But with the way the world's gone over the last few years, I'd say it's every bit of $16 or even $18. Gross!
ASMR Skateboarding</a>: hot girl does comfy tricks in parking lots and strip malls. Simple as, really.
Jour de Vent</a>: a short animated film about a gust of wind going through a park and fucking up everyone's day. Well, I guess they turned out alright. SPOILER ALERT: I didn't get the section with the teenagers. Like, I guess it was supposed to be about like how breakups can turn out alright, but the way it panned out just kind of went over my head. The business guy was obviously the best character.
The Little Convent</a>: a documentary about a small monastery in Canada. Watching this along with reading Everyday Saints has been spiritually enriching, to say the least. I consider many parts of my life to be monastic in nature, so there's a certain pull I have to it, I suppose.
Just in case you needed a few more reasons to hate smart glasses, here's a few more</a>. I already despise the fact that we have FLOCK cameras and other security cameras anywhere anyway. Shit like this does not help with my paranoia, but what is there I can do?
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Link Log 10

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fred Again.. X 1/2 of Daft Punk have an amazing set</a>, to the surprise of absolutely no one.
Dylan Brady also had a great mini mix</a> at the Piñata store. I hope he ends up doing more solo stuff and keeps working with Skrillex. Hearing sets like these make me want to get a turntable and try a crack at another DAW</a>. One day, perhaps. I found out about this set from Kieran's interview</a>.
Conservation of Bass</a>: a puzzle game in which a fish tries getting glasses of water. This is a creative take on block puzzle mechanics. And like that law of thermodynamics, you can neither create nor destroy them; they can only be rearranged.
Want to go to a useless website? Well, here's your chance</a>!
The world's smallest QR Code</a> will make even bacteria victims of remote code execution attacks!
Yo, check out this video of sperm whales headbutting each other</a>.
There was this article about Woody Brown</a>, a novelist with nonverbal autism who was able to "break out of his cage" through the help of speech aids. However, this case is unfortunately reminiscent of Anna Stubblefield</a>, a woman who claimed that she and a man with nonverbal autism fell in love and that this love was consensual due to those same speech aids. These cases hit close to home for me as my older sister has a similar condition. She's verbal, but her speech is limited. It's clear that she has an intellectual disability along with her autism, and thankfully the science over the last decade or so has learned to make that distinction. As a child, my parents attempted to get my sister to use those same speech aids, thinking that they'd help her "break out," but they didn't do anything. Since then, research has backed this up.
So with that, I will flat out say that Woody isn't writing those novels—his mom is ghostwriting them. How can someone obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine make allusions to Sisyphus in the same breath? That's because he can't. More than that, the fact that the literary community seems to be going along with it and eating it up is a real disservice to people with those conditions and their loved ones. Shame on his mother for putting her son through that, and shame on those assholes at UCLA going along with this charade so they can service their agenda. I hope they get the punishment they deserve.
American Diner Gothic</a>: I didn't want to share this piece since it's been making the rounds literally everywhere, but whatever. Obviously the delusional chauvinist tech bro that wrote this is an out-of-touch dipshit, but his general observations are salient. However, the idea of young people being "placeless" doesn't really capture the phenomena fully. It's not that young people are placeless, but that all the places are being homogenized into one place; anglophonic, loosely American, and while seemingly catering to any niche, actually serves none of them. It's not socioeconomic precarity that's to blame, but the given of constant connectivity. No longer is culture bound to institutionally elite cities; even someone living in podunk Wisconsin can participate in the wider conversation. Is it liberating? Is it just the panopticon growing and mutating? Weirdly enough, it seems to be both.
Bo Lueders, guitarist of hardcore band Harms Way, dies at 38</a>. Harms Way is an awesome band, and I was fortunate to discover them back when that running man meme</a> was popular. Seriously, y'all, you are not alone. If you're struggling, reach out to someone</a>.
schrodingers.cat</a>: philosophy for beginners, for free.
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Link Log 9

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

John Berger and Susan Sontag discuss how they tell stories</a>. I just want you to know that my pinky was up while holding my cup of coffee the entire time while listening to this video. Sontag said that she inducts the stories she tells through language as the sole mediator, while Berger asserts that his stories come through what he sees in his head and that language is simply a byproduct of that. I'd say that historically, I lean more towards Berger's disposition, but that my ontology of what I see is unique to me as a result of being a giga-dreamer and seasoned psychedelic user. To me, that's the world I am emboldened to capture through language because it's more real than anything in meatspace. However, I think Sontag has the more apt process because while I have intensely vivid dreams, my thoughts are bound almost entirely to language here in meatspace, so it's a balancing act I have to perform here.
100 Jumps</a>: new Sisyphean task just dropped. I've been playing the shit out of this game. I love games that are deceptively simple in concept and mechanics. After several attempts to hit 100 jumps, the meta keeps getting deeper. Also, I appreciate how good the UI is on web and mobile so I don't have to download some stupid app littered with microtransactions.
Henry Miller on turning eighty</a>. Henry Miller is a writer I discovered recently after going down an autofiction rabbit hole, and I am very glad I did. It's been a great inspiration for Cogito, though I would say my work is less overtly sexual and more cerebral. Either way, the clippings shared by Maria Popova gave me a bit more comfort about the idea of maybe becoming an old fart one day. I have no desire to grow old, and given my health conditions I most likely won't, but God sure does love irony.
I finally got around to watching The Amazing Digital Circus</a> and it deserves all the hype. Short synopsis: a woman puts on a headset she finds in an abandoned office and wakes up trapped in a 3D animated circus as a cartoon jester along with a cast of other victims who are forced to go on stupid adventures directed by a sentient AI. The writing is quite good. It's got a mix of humor and existential dread, and the writers do a really good job of laying small clues across the narrative that reveal the nature of the world these people find themselves in. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.
The Circularity</a> is an audio drama that sits at around 90 minutes. It was done by Adem Luz Rienspects</a>, a 4chan alt-lit guy who's recently been making the rounds in more established literary circuits. I enjoyed the audio drama, even if there's a stupid fucking ad for boner pills in the middle of it.
The idea that everything is signaling</a> rings pretty true, but I don't agree with the writer's cynicism here. He said that signaling is just transmitting information, but seemed a bit caught up on the idea that it all goes back to status. Of course, he gave the naturalistic argument for it ("Monkeys do it too, bro!") but I'd say that signaling goes deeper than petty status-seeking. Everyone wants to be seen and acknowledged, but this isn't because they want high-status things like money or access to sex with hot people; they signal because they're afraid of being alone. No matter where you are in a social hierarchy, the worst place to be is not in one at all. Even if things like politics, charity, and education are ultimately status games, the underlying principle behind playing those games isn't to "win" them so to speak, but to find connection with our fellow humans and the world we live in.
Send a message in a bottle</a> and find some too.
Clavicular X Channel 5</a>: this interview was a weird one. Clavicular seems to be deflecting the fact that he is influencing culture in a way that people haven't seen before. It's as if looksmaxxing is a veil for him; all the anxiety from growing up, especially as a teenager during COVID, has manifested into an ethos that rejects all facets of the human experience in service of the mog</a>. To him, "ascension" can only be achieved through dominance, with vanity as the driver. But in this ascent, what is he hoping to find up there? Also, this whole narrative of young men being dejected is getting out of hand. Double standards exist, but for these men to act like there's no way out is harrowing. As much as Clavicular wants to claim that looksmaxxing is apolitical, it's anything but that. I hope that as he continues to confront the media, he'll understand the position of responsibility that he's thrust himself into and holds himself accountable.
Speaking on men's issues, Of Boys and Men</a> is a publication that tries to take issues that young men face in a more grounded way. In short, men need to understand that it's okay to ask for help. If they don't, no one else will.
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Link Log 8

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Psychedelic Entities</a>: are the DMT aliens real or just fancy optical illusions?
What it feels like to get struck by lightning</a>: spoiler alert—you do not get superpowers!
A piece in the NYT by Sam Kriss</a> about shitty AI writing style. AI discourse is really starting to bore the shit out of me. I do NOT want to talk about it anymore!!! Please!!! Still, I'll take a free piece from Sam. Man, he's so cool. I wish the NYT would pay me to write for them one day. An idiot can only dream.
Wait, NYT isn't letting their articles get archived</a>? Maybe I don't want to get paid to write for them after all.
FOSS people are raging about systemd installing "age verification"</a>. Honestly, I've tried understanding the systemd hate, but it really doesn't make any sense. One of the main guys behind systemd refuted a bunch of the criticisms</a> people have for it. It's also kind of insane how people's biggest gripe is that it doesn't follow UNIX philosophy while literally using an operating system called GNU's NOT UNIX!!! More than that, if you really don't like all the other stuff that systemd has that isn't the init system, you can literally just not have them on your machine because systemd is a modular program with over 60 binaries. Most distros do this already and don't use a lot of those binaries out of the box.
Morrissey, the guy who sang for The Smiths, canceled a show because he got sleepy</a>. Most famous musicians are temperamental types and Morrissey is a cantankerous old fart now, so this checks out. Having a hotel experience so bad that he thinks it'll take at least a year to recover from is pretty funny. I wouldn't go to a show anyway though; his music kinda sucks.
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Link Log 7

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The death of the mass market paperback</a>. Makes sense in today's world. I never really liked paperbacks in general and have always preferred reading books on my phone or computer. Also, digital publishing via websites is by far the best way to read these days, anyway. It's way easier to spin up a website to bring your work into the world as opposed to getting gatekept by publishers. Fuck those assholes. I'd rather more people make zines; they're way cooler.
It's not just balloon animals</a>: a blog post written by Dylan Reed, a clown turned creative technologist on latex as an artistic medium. Made me look up "awesome balloon art," and I was not disappointed.
On the Education of Desire</a>: an edifying blog post by John Michael Greer showing how desire isn't a chain, but a tool.
This project is really opening up my eyes to how much slop I consume on the internet. Most of the stuff I see are either memes from mainstream social media cross-posted in different group chats I'm in or shitty imageboard discourse. I think I've also been pretty disappointed in my RSS feed lately. I don't want to just post links from social media on here either, y'all deserve better than that. But really, I've been having a hard time finding anything really impactful from blogs or online magazines and stuff. I don't expect every week to be a boon for good content, but I might want to readjust my expectations here a bit.
The internet, like the world we live in, is a big place filled with lots of stuff. I feel somewhat limited in my perspective on it, though. I think I also forget to catalog certain things I've read on here, but also my judgment of what I feel is worthy to share might be skewed too.
Sorry for the weak output this week. Hopefully next week will come with more finds.
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Link Log 6

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Check out this cool art made of used teabags</a>.
Microsoft banned the word 'Microslop' from their Discord server</a> and shut their Copilot server after the backlash. A sign of the times to come!
An amusing story about a teacher with a face tattoo</a>.
The dangers of aurora borealis</a> and how a small group of Alaska scientists are figuring it out by shooting rockets into the sky.
your ai slop bores me</a>: make man become the machine.
Car Crash While Hitchhiking</a> is a short story written by Denis Johnson. Gritty, vivid fiction.
Number Research</a>: they're finding all the numbers. I found like 12 of them in less than two minutes. The best kind of data mining, really.
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Link Log 5

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ye Olde Blogroll</a> is a list of personal blogs from around the web. Lots of good finds here.
Nearly Free Speech</a> is a web hosting service that only makes you pay for what you use. It offers dynamic website support as well, with dozens of different programming languages.
From Big Brother to Big Sister</a>: an interesting article about how modern society is like 1984, but not quite.
The Shaq-Fu Liberation</a> is easily the most important social cause of our generation. Easily, not even close. I want to see the Shaq-Fu Liberation before we cure cancer (at this rate, this is actually what will happen lmao)
J. Cole's The Fall-Off is Inevitable</a>: a hip-hop song telling the story of J. Cole's life in reverse, providing a different perspective on the rising and falling of the times. Shout out to the director, Ryan Doubiago, for releasing the music video on Vimeo and putting it under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license. Fuck YouTube.
An interview on the unchecked rise of the credit card industry</a>.
Why aren't smart people happier?</a>
Hackaday</a>: a publication discussing things at the intersection of engineering and art. Cool projects, cooler ideas.
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Link Log 4

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I've been listening to chant playlists</a> from the Orthodox Squad lately. Wonderful.
Clavicular x TAFS</a> was an interesting interview. My favorite comment: "He was just one cool older brother away from being normal and happy."
Another solid invidious instance</a> for those needing another good one, especially considering how scant they are these days.
The GOAT of privacy YouTube frontends: Ikatube</a>
Free TV stations</a> from all around the world.
If you're a writer, Absolute Write</a> is a great forum to check out. Share your work, get feedback, and hang out with writers of all ages and experience levels.
If Noah Yoo</a> wasn't already cool enough, he just got even cooler when I found out he wrote a Pitchfork article</a> about MF Doom.
The folks who run the U.S. suicide hotline made an ad for /r9k/ and made this landing page</a>. If you're struggling, there is always help.
Buzzheavier</a> is a free, fast, and no-bullshit file hosting service. I mean, I'd just buy a thumb drive or something (AI hasn't gobbled those up yet, guys!), but hey, more options are better than none right?
Here, have some Free sci-fi stories</a>
The Last Intellectual</a>: a series of vignettes on a burned out UCLA PhD. Well, maybe he was a phoenix, I don't know.
An essay explaining the history and impact of the great robots.txt file</a>
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Link Log 3

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you to korrok</a> for adding me to your webring. Check it out to find some more cool sites!
Lifewasters</a> is a short film by artist Vewn. The film centers around a lolcow and a documentarian filming his life. Most beautiful piece of art I've seen this year.
An essay naming Putin's fascism</a> through the lens of Umberto Eco</a>.
Duion</a>, as he's known online, has been around for a while. I met him in Diggy's MUC before it got nuked. Check it out. (Disclaimer: no HTTPS)
Cobalt</a> helps download songs and videos found on common social media sites. I'm more of a yt-dlp guy myself, but it's good to have backups.
Need some filters for your ad blocker</a>?
Catbox</a> is a cute file uploader. If you use Discord and want to share a longer video but don't have Nitro, you can upload it here, get a link, and then it'll automatically embed when you send it in Discord. Thanks Catbox, very cool!
Quad9</a> is a nonprofit DNS resolver run out of Switzerland. It's extremely easy to set up and makes you instantly more private on the internet.
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Link Log 2

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The End of Political Hypocrisy</a>: an essay on the effects of the US finally taking the velvet glove off of its iron fist and what it means moving forward—and what it meant the whole time.
View an interactive version of Epstein's Gmail account</a> because why not?
Check out Litourgiya</a>, a black metal album using Eastern Orthodox chants and Church Slavonic lyrics.
Last week we saw Moltbook, but it seems that AI wants to replace shitposting on /b/ too</a>.
Disroot</a> provides privacy-oriented online services such as email, cloud, XMPP, videoconferencing, and more.
Tinfoil Hat</a> is the personal website of a fellow internet person. Good stuff. His tutorial on creating a hidden service</a> was informative and useful.
Dr. Alex Malpass</a> is a philosopher at the University of Bristol. His blog has dozens of philosophical essays that are as edifying as they are approachable.
Want to get off the grid? Buy some cheap rural land</a>!
Are you a Linux Mint or Ubuntu user looking for ways to optimize your system performance? Check out this blog</a>. I've been on Linux Mint since mid-2024 and it's been great.
The XXIIVV Webring</a> has a few hundred great personal websites to peruse. Still haven't made the pull request to add mine though :(
KNON</a> is the premier non-commercial radio station of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It's been running strong since the early 1980s and has some of the longest standing non-commercial shows in the United States. I've been a fan for years and have so many good memories of this station.
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Link Log 1

noahie@fastmail.com (Noahie Valk) — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the first edition of my link log!
MLG edits</a> are still alive and well. That's awesome.
Fred Again..</a> has the Midas touch. I'm not a big fan of too many hip hop artists, but all of his collaborations with them have been great. I think Fred's opened up a new lane for those guys.
Moltbook</a> is letting AI replace Reddit; praise God!
A site to help you figure things out when you feel like shit</a>.
Nightwave Plaza</a> is an internet vaporwave radio station. Good vibes all around.
SomaFM</a> is an internet radio platform with tons of different stations. My favorites are Vaporwaves, Beat Blender, and DEF CON Radio.
Seraphina</a> is an AI chatbot that's free to use and helps when you need to vent and you don't have anyone you can immediately reach out to. It is not a substitute for reaching out to a loved one or someone else you trust, but can help when you're in a bind. I've used it myself a few times and I think it works well.
ClipMusic</a> is a tool that helps you find the track ID of a song that you find on YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, etc. Great when you find a tuff edit and can't find the track ID.
Cara</a> is a site for artists to share their portfolio. Basically, art Instagram but not bad.
Ocean of PDF</a> is a site that lets you download books for free, seriously. This is where I get most of my books these days.
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