Metropolis (1927)

Going to get a bit meta here (dw not that meta). So I’ve spent the past day or so wrestling with an LLM in order to make my site more useable. Ofc, it started off working fine, but I had to break every single part of the template I started off with. I had to rip apart a perfectly functional thing just so it looks nicer, which is very on-brand for me sadly lol.

And I don’t regret it , but it did create a situation in which I was, for the past couple of weeks and much to @Ash’s amusement, ”manually blogging”.

In practise this meant having to spend almost an hour each time I posted updating links across the site and adjusting html. I don’t recommend it, and it stands as a testament to my absolute desire for autonomy in the face of any reason or efficiency. Of course, some friction is to be expected with this enterprise, otherwise I’d be using squarespace or better still treating my substack mirror as my actual homepage. But I needed to feel the joys of janky html, the likes of which I’d not enjoyed since the days of MySpace.

Anyway all of that is basically sorted now thanks to robots, and I’ve got a script that automates that stuff. This is the first thing I’m writing since, and it feels so different knowing how low-friction it’ll be to publish it haha. And I wanted that, cos I’m not here just to write Pieces✨, I want to be able to be quite effortless with it all when the mood takes me.

Broadly, I’m still sort of figuring out what I’m even doing with all of this. My resolution this year was to write/publish something every single week, just to really get into the rhythm of doing this after almost two years of false-starts.

It’s an interesting process, not least because over the past few years I had been working as a freelance content writer for web marketing companies. In practise this meant that I was writing and publishing thousands of words each day, like reams of meaningless bollocks. Thankfully(?) AI has put me out of a job there, and the whole industry is going under, freeing me up to make words about stuff I like. (no really I’m stoked, I’m starting a new role v soon in a much more embodied sector)

What I do know is that I want to be writing stuff I would want to read myself, be that the latest tea on dinosaurs, or an exploration of what Mongol hordes have to say about our present moment. But it also includes more off the cuff stuff like this. Really this year is about getting really comfortable with this process, so I can build on it as a foundation of practise for more ambitious things I’m plotting down the line. Major Capricorn 2 MC culture.

The social media landscape is going so insane at the moment that with each passing day the effort I’ve put in to creating this little part of the internet that I own and control seems more and more worthwhile. If you’re tempted to do something like this yourself, you’ve got to trust me when I say with the tools available today it’s literally so easy to do basically whatever you want. If I can make, break and then fix a website again, so can you.

In other news, I’ve been in my Venus 1h year for just over a month, and I’ve resolved to get properly back into painting as a means of devotion and attunement. Before my Saturn return I used to paint a lot, but things got very wayward and exciting for a few years in between there and I was pretty rootless. I just didn’t feel like approaching that kind of thing for a while. Not to mention, the last time I was painting seriously I was crafting hypersigils that were having… interesting effects.

Anyway, I bought a canvas. It’s staring at my right now. I’m going to throw paint at it, and it’s going to be great. Speak soon x