I talked a little about Typst yesterday and some of its upsides compared to LaTeX, but I wasn’t super sure if it was capable of making presentations. I’ve been using LaTeX’s Beamer package to handle slide presentations for about 7 years now and I really didn’t want to lose that functionality. Low and behold, Typst has a fully-featured packaged called Touying!

It works remarkably well and I think it might even come out ahead of Beamer in terms of convenience and even extensibility. I walk through setting up this example in the video:

#import "@preview/touying:0.7.4": *
#import themes.university: *

#show: university-theme.with(
  aspect-ratio: "16-9",
  config-info(
    title: [bob],
    author: [Max],
    logo: [#image("Downloads/rpilogo.png", width: 1in, height: 1in)]
  )
)

#title-slide()

= bob

bob

== testing

Here's an equation
#pause
$
  integral^b_a f(x) dif x
$

Which looks like this:

I discovered Typst recently. It’s a document processing language much like LaTeX, but it manages to incorporate a lot of the features without the bloat. Typst is about 40 megabytes, whereas LaTeX is almost 10 gigs!

I’m using Typst to reroll the akathist/canon book I started major work on last year. Ideally, this will be finished sometime next week, but realistically probably some time mid-July.

If LaTeX is giving your hand cramps, take a look at Typst. I’ve really been enjoying it.

I spent the last 6 months of my life being monstrously busy and because I was really interested in a couple podcasts, I totally forgot to listen to music with words. I had some classical music playing from time to time or some Byzantine chant if I was trying to learn it, but beside those two and podcasts I would normally drive/work in silence. I talk about some of the upsides of that in the video, but here’s a quick summary:

When you don’t hear profanities and really powerful rhythms, you become very sensitive to them when you hear them again. I was actually astonished to hear swear words. That’s probably not a good thing (people swear all the time around here) but it is a testament to how the content of the music you listen to really does affect your cognition. I found this to be especially true when listening to high bpm music for running: you really do feel on top of the world and it really improves your performance.

You do need to be careful about what you’re consuming, but I have found platforms like qobuz and bandcamp to be good places to get DRM-free music files of CD-quality or higher. You should have ownership of your media and platforms like Spotify or YouTube Music are opponents of that. Just buying the music you listen to is literally cheaper anyway. Physically ripping CDs from a local store or ebay is a good option too.

I’m back to using proprietary software again! This time it’s permanent. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I’ll still be using free software tools like vim and zsh, but I’m migrating away from GNU/Linux and OpenBSD on my personal devices. I talk about it in the video, but here’s some additional lore:

I started getting into free software when I was about 16 years old, and when everything shutdown for COVID I had all the time in the world to tinker. I got deep into Gentoo, Artix, Suckless Software, OpenBSD, etc etc etc! I was taking apart used, decade old laptops and flashing Libreboot to their BIOS chips and using GrapheneOS on my phone. By 2023 I was hosting my own XMPP/Jitsi server to effectively emulate iMessage/FaceTime and I even merged my phone number to that system to make it seamless. It was really cool, but the time for that is past.

At the beginning of last year, the end of my master’s program, I started using a MacBook, iPhone, Apple Watch — the whole “Apple Ecosystem” — because my needs changed: I needed tools that worked where I could collaborate effectively. I really flip flopped back and forth on whether I should use my “free” Librebooted ThinkPad and GrapheneOS phone or these Apple devices. There was a lot of cognitive dissonance to process and I’ve settled on using the MacBook. Things like privacy, anonymity, and decentralization are cool but there’s something deeply vainglorious and proud about not accommodating the needs of those around you. For me this meant getting over myself and getting over my hobby.

“Free” (as in freedom) software claims to value your privacy and rights to modify and redistribute it. Monetarily free (as in free beer) software isn’t necessarily “free” software because it might not value your privacy and rights. What does this have to do with anything? Well, the Apostle Paul writes that, “[for] freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Gal. 5:1). In other words, true freedom for a Christian is freedom from sin and the passions.

If someone spends countless hours editing the source code and modifying the dotfiles of “free” software, then I think we can agree that person is wasting his time. That’s really what I was doing, and although I learned a lot in the process I think truly free software is that which doesn’t become a fixation and for me that’s a mix of proprietary and libre software.

First of all you should go and listen to Priestmonk Kosmas. His talks are an indispensable treasure for us Orthodox Christians living in the world. He emphasizes the need for an inner life, i.e. a real spiritual struggle starting from our station as beginners.

Fr. Kosmas spends a great deal of time — hundreds of hours — speaking about the need for true prayer: prayer where we pay attention to the words we speak, where we fully understand the words uttered in prayer, and where we feel them. This takes years of struggle and it all begins with a simple and humble prayer rule. Something given to us by a Spiritual Father that on the one hand curbs laziness (we should be able to do this rule consistently) and on the other prevents over-zealousness (we shouldn’t go further than the rule). Having these bounds really keeps us focused and this is what helps us grow!

In the video I recommend the Jordanville Prayer Book because it’s really in the middle of the spectrum of prayer book “rigorousness” and it’s current edition is well printed.

I totally fell for the meme and I got a pair of barefoot sneakers a few weeks ago. I’ve switched to them exclusively — for running, hiking, running errands, etc — and there’s no looking back.

Back and foot pain are virtually gone and the posture gains are immaculate.

I’ve actually had such a good experience with them that I have gotten rid of my other shoes (this needed to happen regardless). There’s something really minimal about having one pair of sneakers and one pair of dress shoes.

Lems and Xero are good manufacturers.

Good strength for the Apostles’ Fast!

The middle school I teach at has gone to summer break, so I have come across an abundance of free time. It feels so good to be on break. Aside from classroom cleanout, I’ve mainly just been resting, but I thought I’d share a few broad strokes about what I’ve been up to.

I started my week by going on a hike at the Blue Hill Reservation with a good friend of mine. We actually ended up getting lost because the conversation was so good. I’ve been on a lot of hikes in New England, but this was my first real hike within Massachusetts itself. I’m surprised at how clear the view of the city was.

Another friend of mine is really into bouldering — I think he goes at least 3 times a week — and I hadn’t been in a while, so I got back on the wall. Thankfully, I’m not as rusty as I was afraid I’d be, but he still utterly mogged me. Enjoy the world’s blurriest reference photo:

I also worked on a few book typesetting/reprinting projects that I plan on publishing within the month. A member of my parish also very generously lent me a few of his books. I have my work cut out for me!

This is a repost from March 24, 2026.

Recently, I’ve been making an effort to visit the monasteries on the east coast, so when I was parousing St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Monastery’s bookstore and saw that they were offering a Lenten retreat I knew that was my opportunity to check it off my list. I also hadn’t been to Pennsylvania since I was a little kid, so I was very excited to travel through the state for my little vacation.

Driving right after work probably wasn’t the best idea, but I did it anyway! With traffic it was a roughly 6 hour drive (I even had time for a Dunks run!) I made it by around 8:30PM.

Day 1

I started my day with an early workout and a good ‘ol Hilton breakfast. After raiding the local Wawa—seriously, why don’t we have these in New England?—I headed out for the remainder of my journey.

A few months ago, a friend of mine told me that I should visit Holy Protection Monastery of the Theotokos (aka Agia Skepi/Αγίας Σκέπης) if I’m ever in PA. It’s a Greek Orthodox women’s convent and is one of the 16 monastic communities founded by Elder Ephraim of Philotheou. Although I didn’t have an opportunity to stay for any of the services or go into any of the chapels, I did get to walk the grounds a little bit. It’s absolutely stunning and quiet there; I’ll have to return at some point on a weekend for a liturgy. I drove up to Scranton right after and grabbed coffee.

Day 2

I got to St. Tikhon’s early for their 7:40AM Hours and Divine Liturgy. Their choir is astonishing and we got to venerate all the holy relics in the church (including St. Ephraim, St. Alexis Toth, and St. John the Baptist!)

I didn’t take any photos of the inside of the church (it would have been inappropriate, and you can find photos online anyway), but I did take several of the grounds. After this we got together for breakfast and progressed into the first session in the museum with Fr. Sophrony. We talked about the 7/8 deadly passions according to St. John Cassian and he gave us so much wisdom. Here are some of the nuggets I jotted down:

Session 1

• Be open at all times to the word that God gives you.

• (About the above) St. Sophrony painted the icon of the last supper with Judas at the back, leaving because that is the moment when good will and openness are restored and Christ is free to speak.

• Addiction might be a better English word than passion because of its connotation.

• St. Paisios says, “I am in no state at all. I am learning about myself.”

• You’re fasting. Be hungry! Since 1970 plates have gotten a lot bigger, just look at eBay!

• The sign that you’ve eaten enough (not too much and not too little) is that you feel like praying!

• Orthodox Christians know how to fast up to Pascha, but we don’t know how to feast in the Paschal season. The most frequent confession I hear after Pascha is overeating.

• Successful people (Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, &c.) are successful because they have one-track minds.

• Tithe; give with pain of heart.

• In Greek avarice (φιλάργυρος) is literaly “love of silver”, whereas unmercenary (ανάργυροι) is literally “without silver”.

• Don’t surf the internet! Satan! *Click*

• Anger is drunkenness. You’re not Jesus. You’re not St. Nicholas. Don’t go around flipping tables. Don’t go around hitting people.

• Swearing and anger aren’t “new”, they were already a part of you and something scratched them out.

• Biting a piece of fruit doesn’t sound so bad, but it changed the universe.

Session 2

• The polyeleos-rank feast of the 40 martyrs of Sebaste is placed in Lent for a reason!

• Do evening prayers after dinner, or even at the table.

• “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” includes the speed limit. You don’t have the right to speed.

• St. David of Evia said to St. Iakavos of Evia, “the greatest sin of this age is depression.”

• You’re disillusioned? Good! Why would it be good to be “illusioned”? It’s all about perspective: for example, the crucifixion is the best and worst thing to have ever happened.

• St. Silouan says, “keep thy mind in hell and despair not” and St. Sophrony says, “thank God for everything despite your own worthiness.” These are the same word with a different articulation.

• Getting around fasting through loopholes is the real phariseanism.

• “Elder Ephraim really loved me. I know he didn’t know me, but he really loved me. I would have done anything he asked me.”

• Elder Aimilianos said that, “the most important time in prayer is the silence between words.” This is when God is heard.

• Unlearn overriding your conscience.

• Fr. Chrysostomos tells the story of how when he passed a monk’s hut he smelled cooked meat. He entered into the hut and asked the monk what he was cooking. The monk protested and showed that he was actually cooking leeks. As he said this meat fell out of one of the leeks, which had been craftily hollowed out to fit the meat inside. Ashamed and horrified, the monk then made excuses for himself by saying, “it was the devil who made me do it!” A disembodied voice far off in the distance responded, “no it wasn’t! I’ve never seen meat cooked that way!”

• People treat monasteries like zoos! They look at the monks and say, “look the monks are eating!”

After lunch and finishing our second session, we broke into groups to tour the seminary, icon studio, bookstore, &c. They have the relics of St. Nicholai Velimirović in the seminary and I had the blessing of venerating them. Me and a group of guys I met at the retreat sauntered around the monastery grounds. There’s a well blessed by St. Tikhon that is a constant source of holy water. The grounds are also populated with countless beautiful mosaics and wood carvings.

We reconvened for vigil and dinner at 4:00PM.

Day 3

Before leaving for home I stayed for Hours and Liturgy at St. Tikhon’s. The Sunday service was even more beautiful than yesterday’s and the confession line continued all the way out the narthex! This monastery has a great spirit to it, you have to visit. After a brief coffee hour and a second round of bookstore raiding I headed home, and the drive was—thank God—very uneventful.

This is a repost from February 20, 2026.

The school I teach at gave us all the week of Presidents’ Day off, so I took the opportunity to recharge my spiritual batteries before Great Lent by returning to St. Dumitru Romanian Orthodox Monastery for a few days. I had previously spent a night at the monastery (I did this last May) and the experience left such an impression on me that I knew I had to go back.

Day 1

St. Dumitru’s is roughly a 4 hour drive from my house which isn’t that bad, but I have a friend who lives at about the mid-way point who I hadn’t seen in a minute. Two birds, one stone: I pulled up to his house for the day. We tried to hit up our favorite Greek restaurant in the area, but unforunately the owner is out of town for the week. We got coffee and pastries instead and toured a local library.

I also spent some time catching up with my RPI friends. We all met up at one of their apartments and shared pizza. I then went to another friend’s house to catch up and play with his dog. He made us espresso in his $1,200 machine. It was really good. We ended the night by chanting Paraklesis to the Mother of God.

Day 2

I woke up around 6:00AM today in order to have enough time for a shower and small breakfast before I headed out to the monastery. My friend is full of philotimo and made us both amazing breakfast bagels and fresh Greek (or is it Turkish?) coffee. Even though he had work at 8:00AM, he still made time for me to do this and make sure I was all packed and ready to go. S-tier friend. The drive from Albany is actually really straight forward (literally I-87 to I-84 and then you’re basically there) and I had to make a quick stop on the highway for gas. New York rest stops brutally mog the ones we have in Massachusetts so this was more a “privilege” than a set back. It’s actually really crazy how much nicer they are, but I digress.

I pulled into the monastery at around 10:15AM and made my bed. One of priests briefly settled me in and showed me the new relic they have in the guesthouse chapel: the cover that the Miracle Working Iveron Icon had for a year and the same analogion the icon had soaked which I was able to venerate back in May (in the picture below you can see where the myrrh soaked). The monks had to do their obediences, so I was able to pray in front of the cover, do some reading, and enjoy a cup of coffee until around 4:30PM—this was actually awesome because this was the perfect excuse to finish The Soul After Death which has been collecting dust on my shelf for at least a year—when I shared a very cheesefare week meal with one of the priests I know.

Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of this (it would have been inappropriate to take any), but we had Vespers and an Akathist at 6:00PM. They had me read the Akathist to St. Parascheva of Iașa antiphonally with one of the brothers. After a short break, we reconvened at 8:00PM for Compline and Paraklesis to the Mother of God. Following this the abbot invited me to pray Jesus Prayer with them for an hour. It was truly heavenly.

We were finished by around 10:00PM and I could barely keep my eyes open. I brushed my teeth, said a few prayers, did some prostrations, and totally narced.

Day 3

Today is the first full day that I have ever spent at a monastery. I was justifiably pretty apprehensive, so I got to the church at around 5:50AM. It was pitch black out and there was ice everywhere, but I made it in one piece. The abbot asked me to read Matins; the First, Third, and Sixth Hours; and much of the Divine Liturgy. I made a lot of mistakes (Romanian services are arranged differently than Greek/Antiochian ones), but the brother chanting with me and I spent much of the service giggling as a result. It was really wonderful and full of peace and joy. Following this was a memorial service for the mother of parishioner who was being buried in Romania the same day. The fathers chanted the Romanian hymns angelically.

I was left alone to clean up in the church after the services today, so I had the opportunity to take some photos. Since I was last here much of the iconography has been touched up and the dome has been entirely redone. The whole church is so breathtaking.

As before, the vestments that Saints Parascheva of Iași and Dumitru the New had previously been buried in are enshrined here as well as the fragrant relics (I only know this because of the beautiful smell that met me when I venerated them) of Saint Jacob of Putna. The same priest as yesterday, as well as the women present for the memorial, and I shared another truly wonderful meal—complete with koliva, wine, and fish. Fasting food has never been so good!

I spent the rest of the afternoon going through photos, doing some more reading (the rest of The Soul After Death and, fittingly, some of Saint Sofian of Antim: The Urban Hesychast), praying in the chapel, and nursing my food coma with more coffee.

I also got to make my “visit” to Fr. Vasile Vasilachi and Vladyka Victorin. You can read about the two saintly men a little here (in Romanian) and here (a series of blog posts in English). Fr. Vasile is buried on the premises and both his and Vladyka’s vestments are on display in the guesthouse. The monks have a pious tradition of kneeling before Vladyka’s vestments, putting his omophorion over their head, and asking his blessing.

We got back together at 5:00PM (a little earlier than yesterday) for Vespers and an Akathist to St. Jacob of Putna (the same saint I discovered earlier!) We then had a “small” dinner (left overs from that amazing lunch).

Just like yesterday, we had Compline with the small canon to the Mother of God at 8:00PM, but instead of an hour of Jesus Prayer another pilgrim and I helped one of the monks string candles (this is his obedience) until 11:00PM. Another very full and very blessed day.

Day 4

According to the Typicon, Cheesefare Friday is aliturgical meaning that the Divine Liturgy is not served on this day. So unlike yesterday, we “only” prayed Lenten Matins for St. Leo Pope of Rome and were done by around 8:30AM. This was actually really serendipitous because a pretty nasty snow/freezing rain storm was rolling in and the early wrap-up gave me enough time to leave without getting into an accident. (As a matter of fact the snow mostly held off until I got home!)

The drive back itself was very chill and I had enough time to get some coffee. The Supplicatory Canon/Akathist to St. Benedict books that I typeset and printed arrived also (they came out great). If you would like a copy (or just the pdf), shoot me an email.

Tl;dr:

St. Dumitru’s Romanian Orthodox Monastery is a place where the Orthodox Faith is lived. There is earnest prayer and repentance. You will learn a great deal about the services if you get to visit, but above all you will enter into the rhythm of the Church’s heartbeat. I had the great blessing to spend three days here and I strongly recommend that you spend at least a night. I will definitely be returning for a longer stay, God willing, some time in the near future.

I got to spend some time innawoods at our cabin and I also visited the local OCA parish. There’s also a wonderful monastery in Harrison that’s tightly knit with the surrounding parishes, but unfortunately I didn’t get an opportunity to visit.

Given the time of year, the weather was outstanding — it hit 80 degrees despite snowing nearly two weeks ago! We also got to spend some time in yellowstone. It’s always great, but this time I had my iPhone’s 48MP camera with me. The photos are pretty spectacular.

I spent the past week as a counselor at the inaugural session of Camp St. Joseph of Damascus. My experience there was absolutely grace-filled and I made strong connections with fellow Orthodox Christians that I know will last a life time. We were blessed to have Fr. Joseph Kimmett as our session priest and to have visits from Sayidna John and Fr. Bogdan Bucur.

This session’s focus was on the Theotokos and on her Dormition in particular. We particpated in orthros, vespers, and paraklesis services throughout the week as well as fun activities, sports, and Christian education classes. These activities and services prepared us for — and culminated in — the celebration of the divine liturgy on the feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos.

A complete album of high-quality photos is available on SmugMug, but here are some highlights:

If you know me personally, you know that a few months ago I got over my like 6-year long free software phase and started using an iPhone again. Obviously I still dabble, but I started using a MacBook, got an Apple Watch, and got into other things generally considered taboo by the free software “community”.

Nevertheless, a lot of the habits/principles/fears I have from being a free software “advocate” have, for better or worse, been ingrained in my DNA. I guess you could say this puts me into the digital minimalism camp, but I’m not a huge fan of labels. I spent some time talking about this before when I brought up what rubs me the wrong way about Instagram and Spotify.

I’m an ‘02 baby, so I’m not that old. But, my parents basically raised us like it was still the ’90s. We didn’t have cable (or even a proper TV for that matter), so we rented VHS tapes from the library and played them on a little CRT with a built-in player about the size of a milk crate. When we wanted to search something up, we had to boot up a painfully slow Windows XP desktop and our internet was slow even for the early-mid 2000s.

So, I think it’s really important that our devices are use specific. For example, I have Safari and the App Store disabled in my phone through a screentime setting. When I need to look something up (like when when I’m lost and my GPS is confused), I can just enable it for the 5 minutes I need it. Outside of the BofA (lol) app which I need to scan checks — seriously, why do I need the app for this? —, Whatsapp, and some other banking apps I don’t have anything else installed. Social media is really so dangerous to keep on your phone and it really bothers me that society demands we carry around so many distractions with us. Living in suburban New England basically makes smart phone use mandatory.

Now of course I like the phone: it takes good photos and iMessage is great. But, I’ve been trying to keep things as analog as feasibly can. For example, I write everything down in a Moleskin notebook I got for maybe $10. I don’t think nostalgia is what’s driving a lot of people to limit their screentime and general internet use, though this is certainly part of it. There is definitely an aesthetic to using less technology, but this is going to be true of all minimalist tropes. I think people genuinely can tell that it’s all just too much and I think we can learn a lot about how to operate from how our parents chose to integrate technology into their lives. Computers were new and something really revolutionary in the 90s and early 2000s — they got their own space and were used for accessing information. Phones lived somewhere central, but usually just on the first floor. Nowadays, I think you’d be hard pressed to find somebody whose laptop and cell phone aren’t in their bedroom.

Doom scrolling is so easy to fall into because our brains want the dopamine. Normally we’d get it from doing chores and finishing up a project, but it’s just too easy now to fall into the social media trap or, even if you don’t have any, just mindlessly perusing YouTube. I think getting our devices into use-specific locations (i.e., out of the bedroom) or introducing an intermediary (like a notebook or a dedicated alarm clock) can help keep the “fall” from happening. I know this helps me a lot.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled for long enough. I’m doing my best to limit my screentime and I think you should too. If I think of some other strategies, I’ll write about them here.

If you live under a rock, the dead internet theory is the idea that since about 2016 or so that the majority of social media posts, comments, and SEO manipulation are done by bots and algorithms, not by real people. Having floated around free software circles, I can say that the dead internet theory is generally taken as truth.

Since the theory gained popularity, the complexity of algorithmic content has increased dramatically. Because of how powerful LLMs are now, a growing amount of content has become AI generated, and AI generated comments can be virtually indistinguishable from generic human comments. Whenever we interact with the dead, algorithmic part of the internet, either by watching AI generated videos or simply by allowing an algorithm to curate out interests, we are subconsciously molded by it. We’ve even seen people embrace AI content, even if just ironically, with “Italian Brainrot”. To someone like me who barely uses social media, the internet feels even deader than ever. But…

There are real people on the internet

I was on YouTube the other day and I came across a video titled Alive Internet Theory and it surprised me because the idea that the internet isn’t dead hadn’t occurred to me. Even though the internet feels dead, it’s still very much alive and in a “wild west” state. People still make artisinal webpages (like this one!) and join webrings to combat the algorithmic, corpofascistic take over of the internet. Even highly curated sites like Instagram and YouTube are home to some very niche “anti-algorithmic content”, it’s just not as popular.

Also, the free/libre/open source movement is literally the antithesis of the dead internet because virtually every line of code was written by a real human being with a strong guiding principle. This is especially true if you’re interfacing with the internet using libre software, and—if you’re connecting to a linux or bsd webserver—you’re interacting with a project started and maintained by real people.

Taking the hope pill

Much of the internet is dead, but you already knew that. The actually interesting parts of the internet are alive. (That’s really all you should be on the internet to “consume” anyway.)

If you really take a moment to think about it, is living part of the internet any less lively than it was before? From what I can tell the living segment of the world wide web is growing and is just as whacky and “punk” as it was in the early 2000s. In that sense, the internet is more alive than ever.

How can we make this actionable? Create and post the things that you want to see online. It has literally never been easier. Actually taking the time to craft something thoughtful will also help you reorient your internet use into something much healthier. Don’t be a doomer—dead internet theory is only true if you act like a bot.

Owning physical media is more important than ever; moreover, DRM is evil.

If you purchase your movies/music through Amazon, Spotify, SiriusXM, AppleTV, &c. you really only purchase a license for use that can be revoked at any time. This makes your media access fragile: your access to the things you have purchased is one inter-corporation lawsuit away from being revoked.

Whether or not you should be consuming mass-produced, copyrighted media is another question, but purchasing (i.e., legally obtaining) DRM-free versions of your media has never been easier. In fact, buying/ripping CDs or downloading music from Qobuz can be cheaper than a spotify subscription. These days, you can even play Blu-ray discs from the command line. (Generally speaking, you can find most Blu-ray disks on eBay for less than the digital asking prices for the same movies!)

So, the point I’m making is that purchasing media like people did 15 years ago is better than the current system. The trade-off of course is that you lose the convenience of streaming, but is it that much of a convenience anyway? I think the healthy approach, the one that most self-effacing people would agree with, is to interact with the digital sphere intentionally.

In December I resurrected my Spotify and Instagram accounts after deleting them in 2020. After two and a half months of using them both here are my observations:

Instagram

Initially things were pretty great. I was able to reconnect with some friends I hadn’t been in touch with since high school. Instagram also has a really great format for sharing trip and event photos. Nevertheless, 99.9% of what you see on Instagram is Tiktok-adjacent shortform content and ads. Even though you can add accounts to “Favorites” and “Close Friends”, there is no easy way to cut out all the cruft.

Compared to when I deleted my account, Instagram is a dopaminurgic minefield and I realized very quickly that I wasn’t missing out on anything. Frankly, I spent most of my time on it scrolling reels. And if I really want to share pictures of what I’m doing, I can just put them up here or text them to people. You’re not missing out if you don’t have an Instagram.

Spotify

Spotify’s music discovery features are pretty great and the selection of music is huge. For a little less than a CD per month, you get to have all your music downloaded offline on every device. That’s pretty cool, especially if your primary mode of getting music was by ripping CDs.

After two months, however, the novelty wore off and I realized that I don’t listen to $12 of new music every month. Amortized over the life of CD ownership, the cost of listening to the music you already own asymptotically approaches 0 where with Spotify you pay to listen to the music you already “own” forever. Qobuz can be a good bit cheaper than buying physical CDs also, so an equivalent $12 monthly budget for music consumption can go further with DRM-free purchases than with Spotify. (If for some reason you really need Spotify’s music discovery features, you can still access them with the free version!)

I used to get all my music off Qobuz, which let me download everything locally, or by purchasing CDs and ripping them with OpenBSD’s cdio. Since getting a Macbook, I found that MacOS actually has a built in CD ripping utility in its music program and automatically compresses music to your prefered bitrate and syncs when you connect your phone. This is infinitely more convenient than what I was doing with rsync and cdio to move music around on my old setup and less expensive than using Spotify. Given that the iOS music app works with CarPlay &c. you don’t lose any functionality that the Spotify app would otherwise deliver. It also means I have physical ownership over my music. This seems like a pretty clear cut Nash equilibrium.

Summary

In conclusion, you can get by without Spotify and Instagram in $CURRENT_YEAR. They aren’t all bad, but I don’t see the need (personally) if you aren’t running a business (especially if you already have a personal website). I definitely appreciate the convenience of them, but this is just my two cents.

A few friends and I just got back from a short pilgrimage to St. Dumitru’s Romanian Orthodox Monastery in Middletown, NY (about two hours from Albany).

This was my first time in a monastery — I really enjoyed it. The church and monastery grounds were beautiful, and the services were prayerful and somber. Although we missed the myrrh-streaming Holy Theotokos Iveron Icon, the analogion it had rested on was thoroughly soaked with extremely fragrant myrrh and we had the blessing of venerating that.

If you have an opportunity to visit this monastery, go. The atmosphere was full of grace and I’m already looking to return for a longer stay. The wood carvings and iconography are breathtaking: