week notes - january

January came and went, quite fast I might add. The first week involved travels and the last two involved winter weather, bad roads and everyone being stuck at home. The middle is kind of a blur. All of that has left me in something of a daze.

what i wrote...

• My thoughts on Stranger Things.
• A review of 2025 (from my perspective).
• A review of the app my family has been using to keep track of lists.
• A look at some of the albums I missed in 2025 but found in January.

links worth clicking...

tech stuff

• I love reading systems and processes that people create for themselves so I loved reading this post about a music setup.
• Journelly is such a good iOS app so it's really interesting to read how the dev uses it to create a media list. I'm tempted to see if I can get it going without using a claude code agent (I'm not interested in going that route)...
• Ghostty is my terminal of choice so I really appreciated that they created an AI policy. Silverbullet.md did the same (in creating a policy).
• There are other reasons to leave substack besides a fascist problem...

politics

• ICE employees are complaining online about not getting paid or insurance. I'm not surprised and can only say, "It's a great time to get out..."
• Anyone surprised the ICE pastor has a problem following court orders? No?
• "The Trump administration has a nazi problem." Yep.

faith

Jesus comes to take away the sin of the world, John proclaims. World here literally means the cosmos. While individual transgressions are certainly included, the meaning is clearly wider. John’s contemporaries would have understood the cosmos to include malformed systems that curtailed collective liberation and wholeness.

Making this connection matters. In this sense, sin cannot be confined to individual wrongdoing; it also names the systemic inequalities embedded in lived oppression. As the scope of sin expands, so too does the scope of salvation. Christ’s work encompasses the righting of systemic wrongs that shape the lives of the many.

from Rohadi Nagassar

• This video on evangelical ties to the CIA is well worth a watch (specifically how it was infiltrated and used). You might think "ah, conspiracy" but watch. I spent a lot of time embedded in evangelical spaces and this is very much an open secret.

apps i'm considering...

• Explo: Explo is very intriguing; it's a music discovery service you self host. I'm a bit skeptical though as it seems to be dependent on downloading music unofficially (something I'm not keen on) and making consistent use of the youtube API which I don't know if I want to sign up for. Any use it and have thoughts? Is it legit and non-pirate-y?

social media worth sharing...