2016 was the first year I was eligible to vote in a presidential election. I was away at college, so I completed an absentee ballot, and, like most, felt confident in what I thought would be the result. I was no big fan of Clinton’s — I voted for Bernie in the primaries — but the other option was laughable: I couldn’t believe that a major political party put such a clown up as their candidate, and I thought the electorate was smart enough to see him for the fraud (and fascist) he was.
Automattic recently launched their Write Brief AI assistant for folks using Jetpack with WordPress.1 It is automatically available to anyone using wordpress.com, which I verified by logging into my 14-year-old account.
I decided to test it out on my recent post about The Basic Eight. I chose this because it’s one of my more recent posts that isn’t #week-notes . I pasted it directly into the Gutenberg editor with all of the AI settings toggled on.
Welcome to cassie.ink, the new home of my blog and web stuff.
Previously, this blog was hosted at bearblog under the domain cassie.land. Now, I’m using the SSG Hugo to create the site, which deploys to Github Pages for hosting.
So why the move? I love bearblog and recommend it to just about anyone who wants to get into blogging and the small web — it’s dead simple for folks with no web expertise, it has an awesome community, and the discover page allows you to share your content and connect with folks also using the platform. Unfortunately, I am, at heart, a tinkerer — bearblog felt a little too easy, and a little limiting for some of the visions I have. And, ultimately, I just want to own my content and embrace new technologies and challenges.
The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler. Handler’s Adverbs is often what I cite when folks ask what my favorite book is, and I loved Watch Your Mouth, too. I need light reprieves from The Odyssey, too, so this seemed an excellent time to round out my reading of Handler’s bibliography. I’m about halfway through and enraptured by the narrative voice. It’s pretentious, as a story narrated by a precocious high school senior should be, without being cloying, and with Handler’s charming humor throughout. I love it so far and have faith that the feeling will continue. I normally hate books set in high school, but this one takes me back to my high school self — somehow, in a good way, which I don’t think I’ve ever felt before.
Write a blog post about words of wisdom your younger self would have appreciated hearing.
(via blogprompts)1
I’m trying out doing blog prompts in an effort to populate this blog with more than just weekly round-ups and to get more comfortable writing about personal things.2
I’m going to select two quotes — both song lyrics — that have resonated for me.
The first is from “Banshee Beat” by Animal Collective, which I first heard in my late teens (maybe 16?) and still consider one of my favorite songs.