2025 Year-Ender

Another year is passing, the tenth which I have ended with a blog post. This was a year of transition and activities outside of the history and archaeology I talk about on this blog. So sit down with a mug of something warm (or a glass of something cool for readers in the Antipodes) while I talk about this past year.

What I Wrote

Much of my writing this year was either for volunteer projects which I won’t talk about here, or editing my second book. I finally managed to stick to one post per month beginning in July 2025. I created a small page on My Pleiades Contributions. No magazine articles or academic articles came out this year.

I helped Martin Rundkvist with a question about swords, had a back and forth with Bret Devereaux about the hoplite wars, and traded casuistry with the very polite head of a very bad organization.

People on Mastodon enjoyed my links to Wikipedia’s guide to spotting chatbot slop and the tree of Ténéré in Niger.

Two of my blog posts reached wide audiences: my list of reasons why knowing things is hard, and my warning about academia.edu changing its terms of service in a way that suggests they want chatbots to talk about papers using the voice and face of their users. I got links from Bruce Sterling and Bret Devereaux. My meaty review of Brad DeLong’s book was a flash in the pan, although to my knowledge I am the only reviewer who had the respect to fact-check it. I won’t try to track statistics because the swarms of scrapers feeding chatbots (and my newly built defenses against those scrapers) interfere with the count. The most important statistic is that when I meet someone with similar interests, they have usually heard of and respect my writing. I have a very engaged audience which is very offline.

How I Pay for It

Unlike most bloggers I neither have an indulgent professional job nor independent wealth nor a thicket of ads and digital goods to sell. I have a mundane part-time job. My main sources of freelance income in 2024 have dried up so I spent a great deal of time and money this year retraining and obtaining treatment for one of my disabilities. My income was higher than any year since 2018, but lower than in any of my first five years after graduating with a BSc. If any of my gentle readers know anyone who needs an experienced editor of nonfiction, business writing, and marked-up web content please put me in touch with them! (My first profession was software development but that is a hirer’s market right now across most of the world so it would take local networking to get back in to if I choose that path). I tried some teaching and found that I need to retrain my voice for the COVID era. Look out for more on that in 2026.

Writers and artists have had to get serious about making money from their Internet presence because the industries which used to pay them for their skills have been devastated. The Internet ads which paid for the first webcomics and blogs stopped paying long ago. Some very popular things online generate no revenue, and some casual creations make it hand over fist. So if you know of small projects which you value, its very important to support them.

Everything Else

This year I joined three volunteer projects, one international and online, one in BC which was very active, and one in British Columbia where I am still coming onboard. I have not been a board member since my days in Innsbruck so this is a new experience. I helped pick English ivy and other invasive weeds from local sites and started a small garden of strawberries and marigolds and herbs. Strawberries in a sheltered area try to fruit as late as December here although they don’t get very sweet. Next year I will try planting some of the annuals farther apart and try some lavendula in a dry sunny space. Its an Eurasian species but it does well in our current climate and bees like it but deer do not.

In spring and summer I got back into archery with a fibreglass mock-Mongolian from Alibow in China. I had not drawn a bow for many years. I have not been able to connect with either of the local archery clubs but maybe that will be possible in 2026.

I attended the Victoria Gem Show, saw some samples of pigment minerals like orpiment and realgar and malachite, and had a nerdy conversation with a young couple from UBC with some samples of Tuscan marble. I am glad that someone else takes on the risk of storing toxic light-sensitive minerals in unsealed transparent containers. Although I am trying to shrink Mt Tsundoku, I picked up a few used books at the Russell Books warehouse sale in James Bay.

My only sewing project was blanket-stitching the edges of a piece of Italian worsted to make it into a short cloak to wear around the house on cold nights. I have a few shields to gesso and paint this winter.

While time and money for live performances were limited, in December I attended a concert at Alex Goolden Hall. I finally visited Abkhazi Garden built by a Georgian prince and a moneyed British woman after they got out of internment camps and occupied Paris. I met German librarian Lambert Heller and some interesting but less academic people.

This year I offended one local friend and one local acquaintance who dropped out of contact. In both cases, we were mostly communicating electronically.

My health and ability to concentrate are not where I wish they were. The world situation is not what I wish it is. Whereas the internet was once a refuge where I could find scholarly and practical people, social media became crazier and more hostile and dogmatic than face-to-face communities. I foresaw the doom which was coming to those sites so I don’t understand why so many people flocked to them. As a highly educated introvert who grew up reading classic American science fiction, reading the news gives me vertigo, because a handful of people with far too much power read the same stories I did but did not get the same messages.

Outside the Abbey Walls

do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, as you yourself mention in passing, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

Thomas Merton, OCSO, letter to Jim Forrest, 1966 (source)

My friends who stopped worrying about indoor air quality are not getting as sick as often as last year, but the state of the world and the state of the web are still gloomy. In my view, it is urgent for us in the free world to disconnect from big-spending American institutions, while just as urgently connecting with American people. While we cannot accept the lie that the United States is isolated behind a wall from the outside world and its concerns, trying to work with Amazon or Automattic or the American public-health authorities will just drag us down into darkness. However, trying to talk about these things with a global network interested in books and swords is a distraction from acting close to home.

Another friend this year suggested that I should stop worrying about the news and social media. I think he has a point at least as far as US, UK, and corporate social media go. I have met people who don’t know the things I know about the corporate web so have not drawn the conclusions I draw from them.

I wish I knew how to fix the things in our culture that produce podcast-addled premiers. I wish that when the self-indulgent folly of rich people and their flatterers lead to destruction in the depths of the Atlantic or the heights of the atmosphere, nobody else was hurt. And I wish that people would not pay all they had for comforting lies, and not a penny for the painful truth. But I cannot change those things. The task ahead for us in our local communities is to build things which can survive the crash and the death-throes which will follow, and create low-bandwidth means of communication with the other islands of flickering light beneath a starless sky.

So in 2026, I will blog once or twice a month, while working on print publications, my day job, and my local volunteering. This is not the world I wish I was in. My efforts to sustain communities and influence their direction have often failed. However, it is what I can do with the resources available to me.

Handing Doris the light, he let her take his left arm. Together, they left the room and went down the hallway to the stairs and the long walk to the darkened street below, into a city that had suddenly been cut off from its very life-energy. A city that had put all its eggs in one basket, and left the basket in the path of any blundering foot.

H. Beam Piper, “Day of the Moron” (1951)

(scheduled 27 December 2025)

#Entschleunigung #SlowingDown #CatsOfMastodon

Wait for 00:00:05.

Action on Christmas Eve. 😁

(Abendküche, unsicherer Griff, heißes Wasser, das über Haut und Arbeitsflächen gen Boden fließt. Schmerzende Hände. Den Schreck nicht unterdrückt, den Ärger irgendwie schon. Und dann kurz unter dem Himmel der Höfe, zwischen Wänden und Bäumen. Mülltonnen klappern und quietschen, leere Kisten stapeln sich, eine Stadtkatze verharrt geduckt zwischen den Sträuchern. Etagen weiter oben sind die Türen geöffnet. Hier duftet der Flur nach Gebäck und Waschnüssen, Kinder lachen. Nochmal Tee, noch eine Kerze. Und tief durchatmen.)

#outerworld #concrete city #sunday evening #slowing down

Very much later. A brief moment of serenity. That spot of quietness within, watching thoughts spiral at high speed and feeling unable to identify particular details. Cat on the windowsill, dark silhouette against the outside world, static and indifferent. There's some party going on at the pub, coloured lights dancing along the street included, a bowl housing shivering flames, a worn-down brushed carpet. No celebrities, just that familiar crowd and the evening it decided to bring. Distant observer, stories shaping themselves. Have a soft night everyone wherever you are.

#outerworld #concrete city #the late hours #slowing down

Day 11: My One-Word Spell — Clarify

Some spells don’t need candles, herbs, or long incantations.
Some spells are simple. Soft. Direct.
Some spells are just a single word spoken with intention.

For me, that word is clarify.

I am the type of person who sometimes moves faster than she should. My mind tries to solve everything at once. My anxiety wants answers before I even finish asking the questions. My spirit starts jumping ahead while my body is still standing in place. And when I move that fast, things get blurry. Details slip. Emotions tangle. I miss the obvious because my thoughts are running marathons.

So I started working with a one-word spell — a word that grounds me, slows me down, and helps me see the full picture instead of reacting to the first thing in front of me.

Clarify.
To clear what is foggy.
To reveal what is hidden.
To calm what is chaotic.
To understand what is confusing.

When I whisper this word, I can feel my spirit soften. It is like telling my brain, “Pause. Breathe. Let me see what I need to see.” This single word becomes a signal for everything inside me to slow down and fall into alignment again.

Sometimes I repeat it out loud.
Sometimes I say it in my mind.
Sometimes I write it on a scrap of paper.
Sometimes I hold it in my heart.

But my favorite ritual is when I speak it before sleep.

There is something powerful about asking for clarity right before surrendering to rest. I will go to bed thinking on this word and trusting that my spirit will do the sorting while my body sleeps. And almost every time, I wake up with a spark of understanding. A softened truth. A direction. A gut feeling that clicks into place.

An a-ha moment.

Clarify is not a spell to force answers.
It is a spell to invite them.
A spell that says, “Show me what I missed. Show me what I need. Show me the truth.”

And clarity always comes.
Maybe not instantly.
Maybe not dramatically.
But gently. Softly. Quietly.
Like mist lifting from a morning field.

This word has saved me from spiraling.
It has saved me from reacting when I needed to observe.
It has saved me from assuming the worst.
It has saved me from my own anxious urgency.

Clarify helps me return to myself.
It helps me move with intention instead of fear.
It helps me trust that answers will come when I am ready to receive them.

One-word spells are powerful because they carry pure intention without distraction.
They bring your focus back.
They sharpen your intuition.
They call your spirit into stillness.

And for a soft bruja like me, clarity is magic.

#brujaMagic #clarityRitual #dailyRitual #emotionalGrounding #intuitiveGuidance #intuitiveLiving #LatinaSpirituality #mindfulnessPractice #oneWordSpell #slowingDown #softBrujaChallenge #spiritualSelfCare #TheOrdinaryBruja

Wasser in den Haaren, auf der Haut. Kunstregen, zu heiß, zu kalt, zu nass und unerwartet störend. Mehrere schwer beschriebene Momente verstreichen, bis vorsichtige Entspannung einsetzt. Watte zwischen Sinnen und Umwelt. Immer noch Navigation entlang des Planes. Das Viertel hinter den Wänden schweigt.

#outerworld #concrete city #later that day #slowing down

Man shares his 3-part 'perfect night' and its simplicity is awe-inspiring

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/nolan-reid-shares-simple-pleasures

Later again. Still, practising the art of disconnection, for the evening. And still struggling. Whirling thoughts, around many different fixed centers, somehow trying to stay clear of all of them to not be pulled away and taken in. The houses across the street are dark again, a few candles just behind a few windows and tip of a cigarette on a balcony, distant scent of its smoke but maybe just an imagination below starless clouds. Have a soft night wherever you are.

#outerworld #concrete city #slowing down #stories of late light and late minds

Much later, and again in that familiar place, position: Backdoor, ash tree, gazing out into the dark that keeps the meadows covered. Random noises hint for small creatures making their way through the bushes and into temporary attention. Somewhere up there behind the houses, cars are speeding down the bypass street, taking a sharp turn, roaring engines, to disappear heading for the highway. Insects circling that dim lamp, then and now hitting its surface. Across the road, windowblings are being shut. Getting ready for the night, retreated to the inside. Sleep tight everyone wherever you are.

#outerworld #the village and the hills #slowing down #where the day went

Later again. Hands wet and shaky, debugging other machines and the intimidating reality of black boxes. Sceptically watching, while the backyards gradually give up on today and get ready for sleep, yawning again, yawning still. Imagining topics for celestial conversations, waiting for shooting stars and a waning moon and that's about enough before waking to a new dawn. Sleep tight once you're willing to, wherever you are.

#outerworld #concrete city #evening hours #slowing down

Und dann Küchenabend mit anderem Schwung. Äpfel in einem großen Topf, Gläser mit frischem Sauerteig, eine Wespe irrt über Tomaten. Dinge, die sein sollen. Dinge, die sich ihre Zeit nehmen und plötzlich sind die Schatten lang und die Luft schmeckt schon wieder nach Dunkelheit und Nacht. Das Sinnliche des Hochsommers.

#outerworld #concrete city #later that day #slowing down

Recently, I discovered the calming effect of putting my browser into full-screen mode when reading a blog post. No task bar tempting me to jump to another window. No tabs tempting me to switch to another page. Just me and the post. 😌

#Wellbeing #SlowingDown #SmolWeb #IndieWeb #Minimalism

Almost 4pm again. Talking epsilon environments, floating objectives and hidden pareto efficiencies. Topics too huge and demanding to really embrace, by now. Resorting to routine tasks instead: Minutes taken, calendar pruned, window opened wide. There's music but unsure whether emitted by the outer world or some hidden tab and maybe that's not even relevant now.

#outerworld #concrete city #home office hours #slowing down

"My new Pretty!" :smile:

May I introduce:
Grundig (Triumph Adler) Tippa S, built around 1962 - 1964.

Got my 'new' (😋) mechanical typewriter working today! I got it from an estate dissolution where the machine slept in the basement for more than 30 years.

Last night I rusted out the type levers and adjusted the key retrieval. New ink ribbons have already been ordered.

If the machine then work so far, I will continue to unrust it next week and clean the paper roller. Afterwards I want to use this wonderful piece every day. Like it's predecessor, an old Annabella. :smile:

#AnalogueLove #tippas #tippa #typewriter #schreibmaschine #mechanical #TriumphAdler #Grundig #restorationwork #schreibgeräte #Büromaschinen #SchreibKultur #slowingdown #Entschleunigung #LifeIsAnalog

"Print, Baby, print!"

Once again I have come a little closer to my goal of banning as much computer junk as possible from the desktop and putting analog devices in place. Or at least some without USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other things I don’t need in my world. :smile:

Recently my mother-in-law found an old Brother P-Touch 200 thermal label printer in her basement. It's so old that it was actually made in Japan! 😁

Print, Baby, print! 🤭

I repaired it a few days ago and today the ribbon cassettes ordered via #AliExpress finally arrived. In short: everything works perfectly again. 🤩

#brotherptouch #ptouch200 #labelprinter #thermalprinter #backtoanalog #back2analog #digitaldetox #entschleunigung #slowingdown #office #officegear #LifeIsAnalog

"Theme of a Silent Sunday",
for/zum #silentsunday / #StillerSonntag

Taken w/ Canon T70 & very expired Fujicolor100 at 'Rieselfelder', Hamburg-Niendorf.

#Rieselfelder #Hamburg #Niendorf #filmphotography #CanonT70 #Fujicolor100 #FujiC100 #expiredfilm #silence #stille #slowingdown #entschleunigung #35mmnature

#nature #photography

11pm, almost. No more challenges to accept today. Some energy left but merely to shut down the evening in an ordered manner. Books closed. Clothes sorted. Dishes shelved. Prepared what the morning needs, again: Knife, board, mug, bread. Rituals day in day out. Ready for stars in an open sky. Have a quiet night wherever you are.

#outerworld #concrete city #later that day later that night #slowing down #half awake half asleep

Over the last few months, I have filtered out most USA news, so I have basically a minimal knowledge of what is happening in that part of the world. To be honest, it's great! The same goes for tech, I work long 12-hour days and weekends as a sysadmin, and the last thing I want to see after those days is tech stuff. So, I read tech news through newsletters sent to an email address I only use for that purpose.

It’s making my life more relaxed not to care about what is happening on other continents, etc. This way, I can enjoy more fun things, like working on my bike, swimming, and going to the cinema.

I think slowing down is good. Enjoy your morning coffee.
:cupoftea:

#FilteredNews
#RelaxedLife
#WorkLifeBalance
#TechNews
#SysadminLife
#EnjoyingLife
#SlowingDown

Apparently, even real estate news has a sense of humor: 🏢🎉 "Record new apartments," they boast, while quietly adding, "but don't get too comfy, we’re slowing down." Meanwhile, your browser is stuck doing the JavaScript and cookie tango to even read this page. 🍪💃
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/05/02/the-number-of-new-apartments-is-at-a-50-year-high-but-states-expect-a-slowdown/ #realestatehumor #newapartments #slowingdown #JavaScriptbrowser #cookieissues #HackerNews #ngated

(Ladespannung erreicht, grüne Leuchtpunkte im Heimbüro. Uplink nach Irgendwo, immer wieder Gedanken daran ausblendend, wo die anderen Enden der Verbindungen stehen. Pappeln wie ein Scherenschnitt vor der ausklingenden Dämmerung, reglos und bis in die Untiefen des nervösen Selbst beruhigend. Haustüren schlagen, in Wohnungen werden Esstische gedeckt, Flaschen geöffnet. Der Abend verabscheut leere Gläser.)

#outerworld #later that day #concrete city #slowing down