Blog

This is my bi-weekly “newsletter” delivered straight to your inbox with at least one guaranteed typo I’ll catch after hitting send! If email collectors’ items aren’t your thing, don’t hesitate to switch to the RSS feed or just bookmark loudpoet.com and check in now and then. You do you!

NOTE: I usually write these the night before and schedule them for Thursday morning at 7:30am ET, minimizing the number of typos and allowing for more thoughtful commentary via a few edits. The past few weeks have been particularly stressful, though, and I was going to skip this one outright, but I remembered the main reason for the bi-weekly schedule was to give me a reading and writing routine to stick to. Instead, I skipped my morning run (again) and put this one together to clear my head a bit. YMMV.

_ONE

The inevitability of anger | Baldur Bjarnason

The trick isn’t to prevent anger, to never become angry about anything in your life, but to recognise it when it arrives – the warning signs of when it takes hold of you – and defuse it before it does you harm. Walk away from the trigger. Talk about your feelings instead of what’s triggering your feelings. Focus on the facts, in context, instead of just the parts that enrage. All of which requires space and nuance.

If you’re not angry about something in October 2025, I assume you’re a complete stranger and have randomly stumbled upon my blog rather than reading this via email! This may or may not be for you.

Even the people who are arguably “winning” right now are driven at least partly (if not wholly) by their own anger about the state of the world. Bjarnason is one of a handful of writers I follow who can eloquently channel his anger into insightful long reads, and this post came at the right time as I’ve had to “walk away” from a few triggers in recent weeks, particularly social media, where I’ve been much less engaged of late.

I’m spending more time reading, playing games, and watching things that I enjoy, while limiting my exposure to current events to a handful of curated, trusted sources. I’m not any less angry, but I’m much less likely to lash out and say, or do, something I might regret later.

__TWO

Banking on It | Audrey Watters

What we are facing now isn’t simply a new technology (an “arrival technology,” Reich calls it); it is a new political and information environment, one that seeks the optimization of compliance and control, and one that is openly hostile to “literacy.”

I’ve always hated EdTech and Watters was one of my favorite critics back in Twitter’s heyday. I’d lost track of her post-Musk and was thrilled to stumble upon her new endeavor, Second Breakfast, and particularly glad to see she’s set up on Ghost rather than Substack.

If you’re not familiar with her old Hack Education blog or past freelance articles (including this old favorite from SLJ), this post is a great introduction to her writing — and then you’ll have two archives to explore!

___THREE

Most Citizens of the Star Wars Galaxy are Probably Totally Illiterate | Ryan Britt

But, what’s sad about Star Wars is that its inhabitants (save for our heroes) seem so complacent and lacking in imagination that this sort of thing was bound to happen in one way or another. In reality, if a whole culture relied exclusively on a group like the Jedi to not only guard justice and truth, but also be the only educated, literate people around, that culture would be seriously screwed up. Meanwhile, these people simply rely on their droids to do everything else.

I think about this old article often, especially in recent years. It immediately came to mind after reading Watters’ post above, for obvious reasons.

NOTE: Britt wrote this back in 2012, long before Andor added nuance and texture to that galaxy far, far away, which is seemingly getting closer every day.

____FOUR

It’s hard to join the Indie Web | Pablo Enoc

If we want to see more personal blogs from people beyond the tech world, we have to acknowledge that it’s not only that platforms make it difficult to engage with the wider open web, it is also simply difficult to create your own space on the web. And we haven’t done enough to address that.

Earlier this year I wrote something about why blogging is still worth the effort in 2025 and I stand by it, but Enoc makes a great point I’ve acknowledged often that setting up and maintaining your own blog can be a real hassle, especially if you’re trying to avoid being locked into someone’s walled garden. I’ve even considered moving on from WordPress, but inertia is real.

I’m not a developer so I can’t step up to Enoc’s call-to-action, but I hope his message gets some traction within that community because the indie web definitely needs to be easier for more people to engage with. Same applies to the Fediverse, which still requires a level of effort most people simply won’t tolerate, even when the alternatives are objectively terrible.

In the meantime, I’d encourage regular people who DO want a blog of their own that’s easy to use to check out WordPress.com or Tumblr (with fingers crossed that Mullenweg doesn’t tank either of them with his shenanigans) or Medium, which I wrote about recently and seems to be heading in the right direction again. And if you need some serendipitous inspiration during your blogging journey, check out Enoc’s PowRSS and click the random button a few times.

_____FIVE

The world is something that we make | Thomas Rumbold

This is not about an attempt to kill certain companies. It’s less naive, and quieter, and more pragmatic than that. It’s about nourishing others as if they are living like you are, as a practical movement towards using our collective power to grow a world we intentionally want to see more of.

Sometimes a post’s title sums everything up perfectly, but Rumbold’s long read is still worth the time to read in full. 10/10; no tldr.

If current events are making you angry and leaving you feeling helpless and/or hopeless, take a step back and look for small changes you can make for yourself that improve one single aspect of your life. While these individual actions aren’t enough to change the world, without them, the world is unlikely to change in any direction that you’d like to see.

Relatedish: I’m picking up an order of sourdough bread later today from a neighbor who got a cottage license and is selling out of her home. It’s a very little thing, but it’s also not nothing.

______BONUS

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