We love and miss you, Stanley. Thanks for protecting your family every day of the 1,311 you were ours. ❤️‍🩹

I deactivated both of my Meta social media accounts today — Instagram and Facebook.

Both have veered heavily towards pushing short form video content based on algorithms. This is not what I want from social media, I want to see my friends and their life updates. And these days those are few and far between. So I’m taking a break.

I’m enjoying mastodon more and more and without being so algorithmic it’s easier to open and then close.

From Bright Angel Trail

A bit of rain yesterday lead to some really spectacular clouds and storms.

You don’t have to be radical.

​Christianity is not reserved for radicals. The Lord does not help those who help themselves. By a miracle, he helps the utterly and pathetically helpless—of whom I am chief. That’s truly good news. It’s also a terrible scandal. And that’s the point.

It’s been five years since we adopted my son. He’s 21 now. I feel such a well of pride for how far we’ve all grown on the journey. A thousand things I wish I could have done better. But so glad we did it at all. ❤️‍🩹

Chai for breakfast.

I just upgraded to the new iOS release on my phone and while I think Liquid Glass notifications look cool, I find them incredibly distracting to read and interact with. I’m not a fan.

Great hike on Buffalo Mountain.

Okay, all the blogging hype finally got to me. I put on 20lbs in my weighted vest and did 2 miles of rucking at my local open space.

I think this will be a good winter hobby to keep up my fitness endurance.

I love the new orange color option for the iPhone pro. But good heavens, I don’t know if I could bring myself to spend that kind of money on a phone.

I love this song and in different seasons of life, lyrics hit differently.

​I may falter in my steps
But never beyond your reach

❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

Sometimes By Step

https://music.apple.com/us/album/sometimes-by-step/303182485?i=303182488

There’s a new proposal to create a graduated tax rate system in Colorado where the higher your income, the more income taxes you’ll pay. Putting aside the economics for such a system, I want to talk about some of the common arguments against such a tax system I’ve recently read.

“Why should the rich pay more?” There are many variants on this, including the basic idea that the government hasn’t don’t any thing to create wealth, so why should it share in it? I understand the appeal of this position but find it utterly ridiculous.

Society is the greatest invention of humanity. Stable societies enable property and contract laws, ensuring that commerce can be conducted in a predictable way, enabling folks to invest resources. The poor have always had to live hand to mouth, but police forces, court systems, and lawyers are what enable predictability in commerce, a pre-requisite for investment, and investment is what enables significant wealth accumulation. Not to mention that investment flourishes when countries have strong national security forces and investors don’t have to worry day to day whether they will be invaded and have all their investments stolen from them by another country.

In addition to all of the above, a well-educated work-force enables rich investors to hire smarter and more capable employees that build, invent, and do more. A workforce that has good health care enables much more employee productivity.

The rich benefit greatly from a stable society with all of its expenses.

This is why I get so irritated at the nonsense of libertarians who say tAxATiON iS tHEfT. Look, I don’t like paying taxes either and I do it as begrudgingly as anyone else. However, I have seen plenty of countries that don’t have strong institutions that protect commerce and protect the rule of law — and I benefit greatly from our form of government. The ultra rich benefit even more, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to pay a bit more to keep the lights on in court rooms, police stations, and military bases.

Finally, I’m a Christian. I’ve heard all my life that Jesus talks about money more than he talks about heaven and hell. But it’s not just Jesus, the whole Bible is full of a repeated theme: God hates when rich people oppress people.

There are zero verses about being transgender, only one about abortion (and it’s not what you think: Numbers 5:21 commanding an abortion), a handful about homosexuality — and hundreds condemning the rich.

But you would have absolutely no idea listening to how most Christians talk about politics. And I am utterly fed up of it.

Wanted to let you all know that I have released the first major update to this blog since I launched it in 2022:

It’s now powered 100% by my own static site generator named Marginalia. 🙌

​Moving From Wordpress

Wordpress has always been a great blogging platform but it has some deficiencies. For one thing, I’ve been paying $10/mo for a VM all this time to run it. And a VM means I need to regularly patch it, and patch Wordpress, and patch all the software involved. This expense and this work is just too much for a little blog like mine.

Much better are static site generators. These allow you to write your posts (usually in Markdown), they’ll generate the HTML once and you just need a place to host the HTML files. There’s no database. There’s no execution that happens on each page load. They’re super efficient. All you need is a place to store your HTML files, and hosting for that will cost pennies in comparison. This blog should go from $10/mo to probably about $0.30/mo.

​There’s just one snag

Static Site Generators are certainly a nerd’s dream. But almost all static site generators are meant to run on your computer. And most SSGs require you to finagle images yourself. This is problematic for me. I want to be able to post while on the go, this site is meant to replace social media for me. And I don’t really use social media all that much when I’m sitting at a computer, I’m using it when I’m out and about.

Secondly, social media is all about images. (Well these days it’s even more about video but I’m not that into it) And so if posting updates from mobile was a little janky — posting images to a static site is FAR worse. Way too much friction.

​Enter Marginalia

I often call our phones “pocket computers” because they are just SO powerful. So I have long thought, “Why don’t we just put together a static site generator that has an interface optimized for phones?” This has been an idea of mine for about 7-8 years. Well earlier this month, I decided to do JUST THAT.

I’m writing this from my own static site generator running on my iPhone. It is designed to be similar to social media, but instead of posting to a social website, it uploads to your own static hosting. Adding images and locations is just a few taps. It handles creating thumbnails and galleries and linking to locations for you. Easy peasy. What I’ve been dreaming up for years.

​All this to say

Now that I have made posting so much easier, especially pictures and media, expect content here to really pick up.

And if you are interested in a static site generator for your phone, please stay tuned. My intention is to release it on the App Store in the near future.

(And thank you for bearing with any problems! I already found several new bugs just posting this.)

Wanted to let you all know that I have released the first major update to this blog since I launched it in 2022:

It’s now powered 100% by my own static site generator named Marginalia. �

​Moving From Wordpres

Wordpress has always been a great blogging platform but it has some deficiencies. For one thing, I’ve been paying $10/mo for a VM all this time to run it. And a VM means I need to regularly patch it, and patch Wordpress, and patch all the software involved. This expense and this work is just too much for a little blog like mine

Much better are static site generators. These allow you to write your posts (usually in Markdown), they’ll generate the HTML once and you just need a place to host the HTML files. There’s no database. There’s no execution that happens on each page load. They’re super efficient. All you need is a place to store your HTML files, and hosting for that will cost pennies in comparison. This blog should go from $10/mo to probably about $0.30/mo

​There’s just one snag

Static Site Generators are certainly a nerd’s dream. But almost all static site generators are meant to run on your computer. And most SSGs require you to finagle images yourself. This is problematic for me. I want to be able to post while on the go, this site is meant to replace social media for me. And I don’t really use social media all that much when I’m sitting at a computer, I’m using it when I’m out and about

Secondly, social media is all about images. (Well these days it’s even more about video but I’m not that into it) And so if posting updates from mobile was a little janky — posting images to a static site is FAR worse. Way too much friction

​Enter Marginali

I often call our phones “pocket computers” because they are just SO powerful. So I have long thought, “Why don’t we just put together a static site generator that has an interface optimized for phones?” This has been an idea of mine for about 7-8 years. Well earlier this month, I decided to do JUST THAT

I’m writing this from my own static site generator running on my iPhone. It is designed to be similar to social media, but instead of posting to a social website, it uploads to your own static hosting. Adding images and locations is just a few taps. It handles creating thumbnails and galleries and linking to locations for you. Easy peasy. What I’ve been dreaming up for years

​All this to say..

Now that I have made posting so much easier, especially pictures and media, expect content here to really pick up

And if you are interested in a static site generator for your phone, please stay tuned. My intention is to release it on the App Store in the near future

Shooting sunsets might be one of the coolest things.

I am just so down from the news about the school shooting in Minnesota. Lord, have mercy.

There’s this growing trend where every account will automatically email you a code you need to enter before logging in. I hate this trend. I get as a SaaS operator why we are trending this way, but the way auth is trending in the world is unsustainable.

Soon I will be spending a-not-insignificant amount of time just logging into things.

I was particularly peeved the other day when I was setting up an account to have my fingerprints taken for a background check I need to do. They had extremely bespoke password rules. They wanted a second factor. All to just simply schedule a time for me to go into a place and physically hand over my ID. They don’t need such security. It should just be a “one way” system where I enter my information and I have no way to retrieve it back, and then there would be no need for such security measures.

It’s particularly annoying because I only need to do finger prints every five years, and the odds that this platform will be the same platform they ask me to use again in five years is almost exactly zero.

So I spent about 20 minutes setting up an account that I will, in all likelihood, only ever use once in my life. And that was 20 minutes as a very technical user, I can’t imagine someone’s grandma trying to use this system. All for something that if they had thought of for more than five minutes, they could have design to only accept any needed data (name, address, driver’s license ID, etc) and to never show data — and then they would never need such stringent security measures in the first place.

And as AI takes over the world and software quality declines so much more these user-hostile security measures will just grow and grow and grow.

/rant over

Another great song! I’m loving this style of music.

Citizens

https://music.apple.com/us/album/citizens/1507343679?i=1507343681

So beautiful!

Looking forward to trying this.

The New ChatGPT Resets the AI Race

With GPT-5, OpenAI is making its strongest effort yet to hook users.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/08/gpt-5-launch/683791/

Mount Royal and the ten mile range.

Sunrise beauty.

The Gore Range is so spectacular.

Loving this song: American Gospel

A little on the nose.

Fixed the kayak. Lovely. Even with a few leaks.