so my website has two main feed sources: the main weblog, and this antisocial\nfeed that came into existence via rss club. until now they’ve been\nfully separate things, but i noticed:
\n\nso i decided to update this antisocial feed to also include posts from my\nmain feed. i apologize if this update caused you any displeasure due to\nyour feed reader marking some old-ish posts as unread or something. (the\nmain feed will continue to exclude these all-lowercase antisocial entries.)
\n\nif you’d prefer, the classic antisocial-only posts atom and json feeds\ncontinue to live on at new urls:
\n\nall of this is actually helping me make the design of my static site\ngenerator better. in making this change i uncovered a bug. my rss\nfeed builder supports building both atom and rss feeds. when i created this\nnew selection of weblog and antisocial entries, i failed to ensure both\ncanonical entry collections were set to use the atom format. this caused\nsome entries to be missing encoded html in the built feed. excellent win for\nme, since my current development focus is making arbitrary entry selections,\nand feeds for those selections, a better experience.
after deliberating for a while and doing some budget-math, i decided to take\nthe summer off of work and attempt to recover from burnout. maybe i’ll write\nabout that more over the next few months.
\n\nthis is the first time since i was fourteen that i haven’t either been\ndoing school or doing work (or doing both). as much as i know this break\nis necessary, i’m not looking forward to it yet.
\n\nas an adult, i have been risk averse when it comes to employment and\nmoney. i’ll be living leaner this summer, but i’ll be okay.
\n\nmy intention this week is to create a calendar. i want to ensure that i’m not\njust rotting away in my apartment full-time. i’ll plan out things i want to\ngo out and do; milestones for personal projects i want to make progress on;\nand well-defined chore goals (i’ve been putting off some things).
\n\nif you’re reading this and have experienced burnout, or are getting close,\nhello there. feel free to send me a message. :-)
\n"},{"id":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/12","url":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/12","external_url":null,"title":"admitting defeat (re: android development environments on guix)","summary":"for over a month i’ve spent a weird amount of my free time trying to set up an android development environment (via react...","image":null,"banner_image":null,"date_published":"2026-04-26 13:26:28 -0700","date_modified":"2026-04-26 13:26:28 -0700","tags":[],"language":"en","content_html":"for over a month i’ve spent a weird amount of my free time trying to set\nup an android development environment (via react native, and then\nnativescript) on my laptop running the guix linux distribution.\ni even had a bit of help thanks to some writing about this topic done by\nfranz geffke:
\n\nunfortunately, i couldn’t take franz’s configuration verbatim and make it\nwork. and beyond that, i also got nerd-sniped trying to make his setups more\nergonomic for me. (i am slightly allergic to having to remember to manually\nopen 2-5 shells, source a bunch of stuff, and then start a bunch of processes\nmanually.)
\n\non my own, i went down some rabbit holes, asked some questions in the\n#nonguix channel on libera, and attempted setting up my own bespoke\nenvironments via guix fhs containers, docker, and even a qemu virtual\nmachine. the closest working environment was the qemu machine. that one at\nleast did not require a bunch of harnessing to appease guix’s declarative,\nimmutable nature. if even allowed me to connect to my physical android device\nwithout too much ritual. i abandoned that strategy, though, because it became\na guix-related time-sink to learn how to set up a non-virtio filesystem so i\ncould continue to run a code editor, etc. on my irl, non-virtual host machine.
\n\ncould i get any of these strategies to work? with enough time, i think\nyes. but the personal-enjoyment accounting is already starting to be fucked up.\nthis blog post is me surrendering and trying to not feel horrible about all\nof the time i have just admitted to losing.
\n\nno hate directed at guix here. i appreciate it the more i learn it. but\ni’m bummed out i couldn’t get the guix container with fhs emulation\nworking with my physical android device. the core of the issue was that the\nadb server required for communication with a physical android device could\nnot be run from within the container no matter what environment shit i told\nthe container it could have access to. and running adb on the host didn’t\n“just work” with the processes inside of the container. with enough time, maybe\ni could get there. but at this point, i also just don’t know enough about the\nandroid sdk tooling to really be effective at creating the developer-harness.
\n\n"},{"id":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/11","url":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/11","external_url":null,"title":"new light colourscheme","summary":"it’s a bit weird: yellows and blues and reds. what do you think?","image":null,"banner_image":null,"date_published":"2026-04-05 15:10:38 -0700","date_modified":"2026-04-05 15:10:38 -0700","tags":[],"language":"en","content_html":"it’s a bit weird: yellows and blues and reds. what do you think?
\n"},{"id":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/10","url":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/10","external_url":null,"title":"my notetaking system, early 2026","summary":"the process is still evolving, but i’m going to describe my notetaking system as of right now.","image":null,"banner_image":null,"date_published":"2026-04-05 14:37:58 -0700","date_modified":"2026-04-05 14:37:58 -0700","tags":[],"language":"en","content_html":"the process is still evolving, but i’m going to describe my notetaking\nsystem as of right now. i started from zero in novemberish last year and am\ngetting happy with the cadence and quality of my notes as of starting this\nnew system.
\n\nthe biggest change that comes with the new system is that i’m now paper\nfirst, even if i’m sitting in front of a computer. the procedure for taking\nand processing paper notes is on a weekly cadence:
\n\nthat’s kind of it for now. it’s a very lightweight process i don’t have\nto think about. i think the next refinements to occur will be on the\nprocessing/digitizing side of things.
\n\nbecause i tend not to live by task lists, i only write down aspirational\n tasks that i’d like to complete for the week, not every boring thing\n i need to complete to continue living. ↩
\ni’ve published two (small) non-antisocial blog posts this month, which is\nabout one more than usual:
\n\n\n\nthe topics probably aren’t interesting to most people, let alone most rubyists.\nbut lately, i’ve been inspired by some authors and creators (rss club\nmembers included), and the edges of wikipedia, that are pleased to publish\n“the boring” information. i’m not trying to denigrate anyone by saying\nthis. writing what you know, for yourself, to clarify your own thinking,\nand to present information clearly to the maybe one someone somewhere\nwho needs to absorb it, is a good instinct.
\n\nsaid another way: i have relearned that we don’t have to write something\nthat’s interesting to a giant venn diagram of people. most of us aren’t the\nnew yorker and don’t need to be.
\n\ni know many of you reading this who write already know this. maybe one of you,\nlike me, needs to be reminded.
\n\none of the creators i’ve been inspired by is the biblical scholar dan\nmcclellan. to quote his bio:
\n\n\n\n\nhis research focuses on the languages and history of the bible, as well as\non the conceptualization of deity, of scripture, and of religious identity\nthrough the methodological lenses of cognitive linguistics and the cognitive\nscience of religion.
\n
he has made over three thousand videos now. he isn’t afraid to repeat\nhimself. he says lots of boring stuff that scholars in his field know quite\nwell. as someone with no credentials in this field, i appreciate that one\nof his goals is to better communicate what the consensus view of scholars\nis when in comes to controversial social and/or theological issues with\nregard to christianity in the west. he also is skilled at “stitching” videos\nthat spread misinformation about christian shit and dunking on the content\ncreators. sometimes he can get pretty mean.
\n\ni am not interested in many of the videos he publishes, and i definitely\ndon’t watch them all, but seeing how consistent he is in form, content, and\nmessage, and how he bravely repeats himself in such a tireless way, gives\nme hope that i can continue to be at least as prolific as i’ve been this month.
\n\ncheers to us boring people.
\n"},{"id":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/08","url":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/08","external_url":null,"title":"oscar predictions 2026","summary":"these are not the things that i necessarily would want to win, but what i think will happen.","image":null,"banner_image":null,"date_published":"2026-03-13 21:14:30 -0700","date_modified":"2026-03-13 21:14:30 -0700","tags":[],"language":"en","content_html":"these are not the things that i necessarily would want to win, but what i\nthink will happen. (i’ve got nothing better to do.)
\n\nbest picture: Hamnet
\n\nbest actress: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
\n\nbest actor: Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
\n\nbest supporting actress: Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
\n\nbest supporting actor: Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another
\n\nbest director: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
\n\nbest original song: “Golden” from Kpop Demon Hunters
\n\nbest original score: Hamnet, Max Richter
\n\nbest animated film: KPop Demon Hunters
\n\nbest international film: Sentimental Value, Norway
\n\nbest documentary feature: Mr. Nobody Against Putin
\n\nbest casting: Marty Supreme
\n\nbest sound: F1
\n\nbest cinematography: Train Dreams
\n\nbest original screenplay: Sinners, Ryan Coogler
\n\nbest adapted screenplay: Bugonia, Will Tracy
\n\nbest live action short film: Butcher’s Stain
\n\nbest animated short film: The Girl Who Cried Pearls
\n\nbest documentary short film: Children No More: Were and Are Gone
\n\nbest visual effects: Jurassic World Rebirth
\n\nbest production design: Sinners
\n\nbest film editing: F1
\n\nbest makeup and hairstyling: Frankenstein
\n\nbest costume design: Frankenstein
\n"},{"id":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/07","url":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/07","external_url":null,"title":"your mime type is showing","summary":"hi.","image":null,"banner_image":null,"date_published":"2026-03-04 23:21:54 -0800","date_modified":"2026-03-04 23:21:54 -0800","tags":[],"language":"en","content_html":"hi. rss club showed up in my feeds\ntoday, and then\ni remembered that this feed is linked there and i haven’t used it in a\nwhile. and then i clicked on the feed and realized that nginx was rendering\nthe feed with a mime type of text/xml rather than application/rss+xml. so\ni fixed that.
text/xml will likely tell your browser to render the feed as an xml in the\nbrowser. whereas application/rss+xml, application/atom+xml, and so on,\nwill tell your browser to use whatever application is configured to be your\nfeedreader. on my ios device, for example, clicking a link to this feed now\nresults in a dialog modal. “open this feed in reeder?” it asks. this is much\nnicer than the browser rendering a fucking unstyled text file.
i noticed some other rss club feeds have similar issues, so if you’re reading\nthis and your a clubber, do consider checking out your feeds.
\n\non my main feed (html,\nrss) i succeeded in my informal goal\nof posting one-ish thing per month in 2025. i intend to keep it up, and\nmaybe i’ll even throw some more stuff in this antisocial feed this year, too.
\n\nbye.
\n"},{"id":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/06","url":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/06","external_url":null,"title":"prefers-color-scheme: dark","summary":"i decided it was time to make a dark colour scheme for this website.","image":null,"banner_image":null,"date_published":"2020-09-16 12:00:00 -0700","date_modified":"2020-09-16 12:00:00 -0700","tags":[],"language":"en","content_html":"i decided it was time to make a dark colour scheme for this website. i haven’t\ntouched the styles on here in a while, and it was weird to go through them and\nsee how my brain had decided to organize them.
\n\ni didn’t do a bad job. but, i dunno, definitely a younger version of me did it.
\n\nthere’s no way to “toggle” the colour schemes on the website itself. it depends\non you telling your browser (or in some cases your OS) which colour scheme you\nprefer: either light or dark.
\n"},{"id":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/04","url":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/04","external_url":null,"title":"assessing my role in software freedom advocacy","summary":"over the last year i’ve become increasingly conscious of how my life and work intersects with free and proprietary softwa...","image":null,"banner_image":null,"date_published":"2019-02-24 19:11:02 -0700","date_modified":"2019-02-24 19:11:02 -0700","tags":[],"language":"en","content_html":"over the last year i’ve become increasingly conscious of how my life and work\nintersects with free and proprietary software. notably:
\n\nthis list is rambly, and it’s not clear what i (let alone you) should be\ntaking from these experiences. today, this list is telling me my role in\nsoftware freedom advocacy is too small. i say this as someone who isn’t\ninterested in being a professional advocate of any kind, but as someone who\nloves computers, software, and the potential of the internet (which becomes\nundermined a bit more each day).
\n\ni can make my role larger by contributing to free software projects more and\nmore often; by choosing to use free and open source alternatives to proprietary\nsoftware (ahem, lucidchart); and by advocating for diy solutions to\nproblems that big companies solve if you’re willing to throw money at them. most\nimportantly, i can socialize the idea of software freedom when i speak to people\ninside and outside of the tech industry: i can write about it more, i can write\nabout why i feel it’s important, and so on.
\n\nrecently, i was introduced to the oggcast/podcast free as in\nfreedom – which relaunched at the end of 2018 after a two-year\nhiatus. it’s hosted by bradley m. kuhn and karen\nsandler who are professional free sofware\nadvocates. if you found my rambly thoughts on this topic semi-interesting, i’d\nrecommend listening to the following (recent) episodes:
\n\ni’m moving this month, and so far it’s going smoothly.
\n\nin the last nine years, i’ve moved ten times. most of the time, i only had to\nworry about my own things – but on one occasion i moved with two other people. i\ncan’t yet call myself a moving expert, but i’ve become increasingly efficient at\nmoving. i want to offer you, readers, some tips.
\n\nsome of these are uninsightful, common sense tips – but things to hold close to\nyour heart. when you’re moving: things get stressful, and common sense\nbecomes… uncommon.
\n\nwithout further adieu:
\n\nspend at least a week thinking about the move. and prepare to spend at least two\ndays moving (if you’re able to take two days).
\n\nand don’t inventory by room – rooms are too big. create zones that you need\nto pack, and use this to better plan your moving-tetris.
\n\ni super-recommend writing the inventory down, on paper or using a to-do list\napp on your phone.
\n\nwhile you’re inventory-ing, make a list of things you no longer need – or need\nto replace. you could go the extra kilometre and make a list of things you\ndon’t have but would like to.
\n\nagain: write this plan down somewhere. it’s no good to you if you forget half of\nthe plan.
\n\nyour small objects (books, records, kitchen objects, etc.) are the heaviest and\nmost time consuming things to pack. get them packed and out of the way. these\nare also the easiest things to tetris and put into a moving vehicle.
\n\nthis can apply to your moving experience in a number of ways. for me:
\n\nalright, so these are my initial moving tips. as i continue this next moving\nprocess, i may need to amend them.
\n"},{"id":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/02","url":"https://benjaminwil.info/antisocial/02","external_url":null,"title":"using jekyll collections for a secondary, rss-only feed","summary":"this post outlines how i’m generating this feed as a separate, secondary feed using jekyll collections.","image":null,"banner_image":null,"date_published":"2019-01-21 23:17:12 -0700","date_modified":"2019-01-21 23:17:12 -0700","tags":[],"language":"en","content_html":"this post outlines how i’m generating this feed as a separate, secondary feed\nusing jekyll collections. this is completely possible using the\ncurrent version (as of this post: 0.11.0) of the\njekyll-feed plugin. this plugin is included in all new jekyll\nprojects that have been generated with the jekyll new command.
the main blog feed for this site is at the default location:
\n\n\nhttps://benjaminwil.info/feed.xml\n
and the feed you’re reading from now is at:
\n\n\nhttps://benjaminwil.into/antisocial/feed.xml\n
there is one caveat: jekyll-feed doesn’t provide a way to set a custom name\nfor your secondary feed. any other feeds you make use basic site metadata:
site.title or site.name variable’s value | )this can look a little bit stupid if you aren’t careful:
\n\n\nCool Website | My-new-collection\n
yeah, that’s the feed name that would show up in your friends’ rss readers.
\n\ni have a pull request open on the jekyll-feed repository that fixes\nthis. but if you want custom names right now, you’ll have to use my fork of the\njekyll-feed gem.
when you create a new jekyll site using the jekyll new command, the version of\nthe jekyll-feed plugin included is ~> 0.6. to create a secondary feed, you\nneed to manually update your Gemfile to use jekyll-feed ~> 0.11:
ruby\n# Gemfile ...\ngroup :jekyll_plugins do\n gem \"jekyll-feed\", \"~> 0.11\"\nend\n
and add this git argument if you’re comfortable using my fork of the plugin\n(until my – or another similar – pull request has been merged):
ruby\n# Gemfile ...\ngroup :jekyll_plugins do\n gem \"jekyll-feed\", \"~> 0.11\", git: https://github.com/benjaminwil/jf\nend\n
in your site’s _config.yml file, you need to add the name and metadata for the\ncollection you intend to use for the feed. in my case:
yml\n# _config.yml ...\ncollections:\n antisocial:\n output: true\n permalink: /antisocial/:name\n
output: true ensures a separate file is generated for each item in the\ncollection (the permalink page), and the permalink: setting is probably\nfamiliar to you: use it to set your collection post’s uris.
the jekyll permalinks docs include a list of available collections permalinks\nvariables. the variable i’m using (:name) just attaches the\nfilename to the uri.
your new collection can be created in the directory _collection_name (unless\nyou’ve set a custom collections_dir: in your _config.yml). in my case:\n_antisocial.
you can either use your standard post layout or make a new one. if you’re a\njekyll user, you likely know all about layouts: so i won’t go into any more\ndetail here.
you can either set a layout: value in the frontmatter for every collection\nitem, or you can set each collection item’s layout globally from your\n_config.yml:
yml\n# _config.yml ...\ndefaults:\n -\n scope:\n path: \"\" # an empty string here means all files in the project\n type: \"antisocial\"\n values:\n layout: \"your_preferred_layout\"\n
this is some ugly yaml, but that’s what is has to be according to the front\nmatter defaults docs.
\n\nwe’re pretty much done now. we just have to configure the secondary feed\ninformation using the provided jekyll-feed configuration\nsettings.
again, in your _config.yml:
yml\n# _config.yml ...\nfeed:\n collections:\n antisocial:\n path: \"/antisocial/feed.xml\"\n
where antisocial: is the name of your collection and the path: value is a\nstring with your preferred feed location.
now that you’ve configured the feed, you can start to add new posts to your\ncollection directory.
\n\nnote that if you’re keeping a blog you still need to use date: front matter to\nensure your posts get to the feed.
test.
\n\ni’ve been made aware of a thing called rss club and i am interested in it. not\njust because i’m a feed junky, but because i’m nostalgic (even whimsical) for\nthe web as i experienced it as a kid.
\n\nso, i’m calling this antisocial feed not to be antisocial towards you, reader.\nand not to be reactively anti–social media.1
\n\ni’m calling it antisocial feed because of me: if you knew me, before we hit\n201x, you’d know that i used to be social: i used to have curiousity, attention,\nand so on. i used to (think i had been) thoughtful about my (multitude of)\ninteractions with strangers online.
\n\ni participated in forums: about video games, japanese rock music. i wrote\ncollaborative poems with my friend staxu. these are not things i feel up to\ndoing anymore, probably because i feel anxious about them: it’s vulnerable,\nor unprofessional, or exposing; i worry that i’d be misunderstood.
\n\nare there like-minded people out there? willing to communicate with me, even\nin passing? sometimes other people seem inaccessible to me. sometimes i am\nworried that the only people left are trolls or deluded alpha-male wannabes.
\n\nsorry – what an intro. i haven’t really made it clear what antisocial feed is\ngoing to be. for now, expect posts about the following topics:
\n\nyeah, thanks for reading this far. i’m writing this on a static site generated\nby jekyll, and there’s no html view for this yet. it’s also separate from my\nmain feed. more about this later.
\n\nreprise to self: all literature and media is inherently a little social. ↩
\nhow do you feel about this idea? this is something i did today: i ported all of\nthe reviews from my letterboxd account to\nmy main weblog, here, on benjaminwil.info.
\n\nit’s something i’ll continue to think about: it kinda looks like i changed\nhistory, after all. that said… it is content that i wrote on those dates. i\ncould add notes to the posts to contextualize? but my blog isn’t important or\nwidely read anyway.
\n"}]}