February 2025 update

Hi everyone.

I wrote about two things that are really important to me personally: the treachery of disgust and ask culture on the web.

Some friends and I played Hades and read the Iliad over much of last year, and we finally finished reading in October. This was a great experience even though the Iliad itself was difficult, and after a brief interlude into some literary candy that doesn’t deserve a mention here, we’re now reading Pale Fire and playing Tunic, with a theme of “alien culture”.

I have a goal for this year to read every book in my backlog. So far progress is… rocky, as I’m probably 3 books behind schedule so far! But it (nearly) goes without saying that when one makes a new goal, one must update their website to support that goal, so I’m now tracking my bookshelf with a new tool I wrote called bibliographer. Technically this doesn’t count as procrastination from reading because when I was working on this I had intended to be working on another project.

Speaking of goals for the year, I also want to see a sunrise every month and practice context switching and spend the right amount of time on everything, among other things. The sunrises are going great :)

Those focalarium links are part of another new aspect of my site, really intended just for myself. They’re web pages that are designed to be set as a desktop background so that I can be reminded of what’s important to me while I’m at my computer. (The styling might be a little weird on mobile, sorry.) I was inspired by The quotes on my wall by Linus.

I’d love to hear from you: me@micahrl.com.

PS: Did you know that the phrase “hold your horses” may have come from the Iliad?