my home servers: whats in it?

This summer, I created my own home server(s). 

I got into self-hosting due to a friend I met through the indieweb (hello kliaagu) mentioning it once. My first server was a raspberry pi 4 and an ssd enclosure plugged into it. It was rough, but it's a server! Raspberry pi's are great to use if you have them laying around, otherwise it's not worth the current cost. This model is a pi 4 with 4 gbs of ram, my uncle gave it to me a long time ago. I installed ubuntu server on it and ran mainly jellyfin. The ssd in the m.2 enclosure is a 1 tb ssd nvme. With how the prices of nvme ssd's right now, it felt like a waste to use it like this, but fortunately I checked the drive on crystal disk info when I removed it, and there were no flaws, it still said it was at 100%. 

 

I then upgraded came from a secondhand computer I had laying around. The motherboard is an hp elitedesk sff (small form factor) which means the motherboard came from a small desktop pcs. These guys are perfect because they are built to be power efficient. The CPU is a i7 4th gen, which is miles more powerful than the pi. I put in 32 gb ddr3, two 2 tb hdd, and it runs on a 256 gb sata ssd. 

 

By the way, I was completely new to linux before my pi server, it was over there where I learned how to use debian based unix in the command line with ubuntu server. During my time in taiwan, I brought a thinkpad laptop I had that I installed Kubuntu on. I was having a lot of fun ssh'ing into my pi server and playing around with light docker containers. But now with a way more powerful server, I set up Proxmox and laid out my server like this.

Proxmox
+-- vm100(ubuntu server lts)
|    +-- docker
|    |    +-- ngnix proxy manager (forward 443, dns-01 challenge because isp blocks port 80 lol)
|    |    +-- Jellyfin 
|    |    +-- plex (amp)
|    |    +-- authentik
|    |    +-- crowdsec
|    |    +-- Nextcloud    
|    |    +-- dashy
|    |    +-- immich
|    |    +-- portainer
|    |    +-- cadvisor

|    |    +-- borgbackup
|    +-- crafty controller (minecraft server)
|    +-- notes
|    +-- glances 
+-- vm1000(lxc tailscale)
+-- vm101(debian12)(off)
+-- vm102(windows11)(off) 

I really should use more lxc, but I don't have a need for them right now, besides tailscale, because I only have 1 primary vm which I do everything through. Heres a breakdown of all my services and what they do:

Services:

  

Jellyfin! One of the best services you can self-host. Downloading my own media like movies, tv shows, anime and streaming it from my own hardware. No need to pay annoying streaming subscription fees. Note: all media I have on my server is acquired legally without tormenting (hehe).

 

Plexamp is my spotify replacement. I use both plex and jellyfin because Plex is for music, mainly because plex has a mobile app. Plex has been going downhill-ish which is why I stray away from hosting media there. But plexamp has been great so far. If I eventually replace plexamp, it's because I've been using mp3 players to listen to music instead. 

 

Immich is google images replacement. The UI looks just like google images. 

Nextcloud is same as Immich, but for general files. Like google drive! 

Crafty is my minecraft server dashboard.  

 

Security and reverse proxy:

The only services I have revealed to the public are Jellyfin, Nextcloud, and immich. I run them through Ngnix proxy manager which was trivially easy to use and setup. I only port forward 443 on my router, because my ISP doesn't allow port 80 to be revealed unless you call them up. Because of this, I can't use standard http-01 challenge to get a ssl certificate with let's encrypt. Instead, I use dns-01 which is perfectly fine for me. 

My security is: crowdsec for ip-banning and monitoring bots that port scan, http probe, and potentially brute force attacks. Authentik which lets me set up multi factor authentication: password, one time password. And after that, a login page to nextcloud. Authentik mainly protects nextcloud and immich. After that, I use fail2ban for login bans. It's redundant to have both fail2ban and crowdsec but I'm just lazy and don't feel like removing fail2ban yet.  

 

 

Dashboard and monitoring:

I eventually want to have prometheus and grafana for really nice charts and dashboard monitoring. But something that I don't like is the UI for self-hosted apps is always kinda ugly. I'm not talking about minimalist, creator didn't feel like investing time in GUI ugly. I'm talking about vibe coded claude UI ugly. As of right now I have use dashy as my main dashboard because it has custom CSS, and of course I had to hop on it. 

 

Ignore the errors right now I got lazy and didn't feel like fixing it haha. And the ip is a tailscale ip so you can't do much with it. I also have uptime kuma, which my pi is running and constantly pinging my main server, and if anything goes down, I get a notification on my phone on either discord or an app called ntfy.  

 

Just yesterday, I also added qbittorent and komga (self-hosted ebook reader)! And while a bit silly, my favorite part of this project is the fact I got to learn how to really use the linux terminal. Terminals always have that "hacking into the mainframe" idea stuck to it. What makes it great though, is 1. I am able to control a computer from hundreds of miles away, because text is very easy to send over the internet vs GUI, 2. You are controlling a computer the old fashion way, 3. It looks cool :3

 

Why I hate frutiger aero

The title is a lie. I love frutiger aero. One look at my neocities and personal website design philosophy will instantly prove it. But I hate what it's become post-2020; frutiger aero has become bastardized by a wrong form of nostalgia and a tiktok-isque community. Terms like "the future we were promised" and short form clips of a collage of frutiger aero images set me off. 

The other day, I was hate-watching this youtube video called "Frutiger Aero: How a Cruel Lie Stole Our Future." I've seen it and heard it all before: the video starts with praising the mixture of beautiful glossy design elements, with nature, and technology. It's a "throwback to a time where we were optimistic, and hopeful about new technology!" But alas, this was a lie, because now we have superflat design and awful new tech because of evil evil tech engineers at Microsoft! 

What makes me so irrationally mad at these slop videos that all parrot the same opinion is that I almost agree. I hate Microsoft and windows 11 with a burning passion, and I love frutiger aero in design principle so much I want to make my room, my computer, my electronics, all of it frutiger aero. What makes me so mad is the defeatist and hopeless attitudes that come from mass psychosis social media users. The same people who love frutiger aero so much that they are mass liking and scrolling on tiktotk, buying temu/tiktok shop (made by some child in china) products that are "frutiger aero themed" are the same ones who virtue signal about the environmentalism motifs in frutiger aero. The irony being, being on tiktok itself, buying slop things you did not need, is arguably one of the worst things you can do for the environment and is the opposite of the frutiger aero essence. 

People on tiktok and instagram reels are most tied down by their desires. The frutiger aero tiktok fanbase thrive off of little slop trinkets instead of playing around with operating systems on their computers. Have you met any of these people who treat frutiger aero as an "aesthetic" who actually have tried reinstalling windows xp, vista, or 7? Or even downloading linux desktop environments (like my favorite, KDE), following a tutorial on how to turn it skeuomorphic? Or even try window managers like enlightenment e16 or even window maker? 

There are companies, and there are mindless consumers. Companies love mindless consumers. Those who will just buy buy buy and use use use without a second thought. In capitalism, you get the option to choose your product. When I don't like the product, I don't buy it. Or I pirate it. Or I buy secondhand. The problem in the west, is that everyone is so rich, they throw their money and attention around like its nothing. And I don't want to hear the "You live in society, yet you participate in it" getback comic people always bring up. Tiktok is a luxury, starbucks is a luxury, temu is a luxury. You don't need any of these things in society. 

Corporations are only as strong as people make it. Corporations sell products, and since they clearly don't want to listen to us, then why not stop using... their product? If 10% of windows users just felt like leaving because their product fucking sucks, microsoft would have a full blown meltdown. You hate google? Try duckduckgo or brave. You like frutiger aero? Try any linux distro with KDE in a VM and give ricing a shot. 

I guess a better title would be "why I hate the frutiger aero community." I remember checking out the frutiger aero archive forums. And once again, I see the same problems. People all have the same 2 opinions. People talk about how awful the present day is, how much better the past was. Folks see frutiger aero as a sort of political/cultural movement, while what it really should be is a consumer movement. Quit throwing around phrases like "the future we were promised," because there is no divine intervention, if you want frutiger aero, make it yourself. You don't ACTUALLY trust microsoft to do it for you, do you? 

Begun sophomore year of college, considering transferring colleges

I just moved into my college. I'm starting my second year now, and I don't... believe I'm in the right place. I've been considering transferring since last year, in the middle of the first semester at this college. A wise man once said, "if you start thinking about transferring, then you're not satisfied with your current college, and you should probably transfer." My "I hate my uni" phase has long ended, but I still don't like this place very much. I attend a 4 year state school for Engineering. The main reasons I don't like it are: I don't fit in with the people/school culture here, it's not that good for my major, and I don't feel like I'm getting value for my money.  

So why did I pick this college? Unfortunately, the reason I picked this one is because I naively cared about the "college town" and "social life" this university "had." For any upcoming american college students that may read this blog: I learned quickly that when college students say "social life" they're talking about parties. And when they say "college town" they're talking about frat houses and bars. I don't care if people like partying and drinking, I enjoy both too. But a lot of students at this school center their entire social lives around partying. That's not really "social life". 

Regretfully, I fell for another college marketing traps: "prestige" and "selective-ness". My college has a low acceptance rate, and as a high school senior then I guess I thought "hard to get into = good". That's just not true for colleges. I got into another state school which has twice the acceptance rate but has one of the best programs for electrical engineering, and they gave me a scholarship. 

So where am I going now? I'm going to apply transfer to a couple state schools. One being the aforementioned school with a good electrical engineering program, and another one that is in my city and would allow me to live at home, basically cutting all the cost needed for dorming (I'll call it school B). My mom hates school B. She thinks it's "downgrading." I've been trying to explain to her that, it's not a "prestigious" school but it provides pretty good value for the price, and I'll be able to work real jobs for experience during the year. I'll be a commuter, so yeah "social life" will be nonexistent. But tbh, I don't think I'll see a difference, because my social awkwardness has been skyrocketing, and I've struggled to make friends for years. 

On better note, I got an internship for this fall! It starts next week, and I'll get paid 19-20 an hour. I'm planning on working 15 hours a week. 

Back from taiwan: beauty in taiwan mundane

I came back from taiwan 2 days ago, here's my obligatory return afterthoughts blog

Taiwan was fast this year... I was there for 5 weeks, and it passed in the blink of an eye. I think I did a lot on this trip. A lot of things I wouldn't traditionally do, like cafe hopping with a laptop and work on schoolwork/website/server. It was really mundane, but I really tried to enjoy every last bit of it. I wanted to enjoy the mundane little things and simple personality taiwan has. I don't actually like visiting very crowded and popular places like Ximending in Taiwan. My mom and sister actually went to Japan together for 4 days for a vacation while me and my dad stayed in taiwan. My sister is a part of the Jirai Kei subculture so she was happy to go and spend money lol. She's also my biggest influence for fashion since we have similar varying fashion tastes. She bought me some subcul clothing too! 

My sister asked me why I didn't go with them, well the main reason was that I was in class and school, but then something in the back of my head also caught my attention. I don't think I would have gone because the golden route of Tokyo (shinjuku, shibuya, akihabara), Osaka, Kyoto don't really interest me, it won't really feel like Japan. Similar to how Times Square is not NYC, Ximending is not Taiwan, and Paris is not France. 

This ties back into how I expressed feeling more enjoyment in the mundane things; like going to a local breakfast store run by kind elderly taiwanese at 6 am who will serve you the best 蛋餅 (egg pancake), 蔥油餅 (green onion pancake) 蘿蔔糕 (radish cake) and soy milk for great prices. Walking around my local area before the sun rises too high and it gets too hot to walk around. By the way, I personally believe Taiwanese breakfast should start being spread around the world. I love taiwanese breakfast, you have many options and many of them are bread-y with egg, meat, and plenty of good flavors. I like the taiwan that is not trying very hard to be something else. Taiwan has an identity problem: a country that was native, Chinese, Japanese, and then Chinese again. When going to the Financial district, you can see a lot of western influence, while going to Taichung, you see Japanese influence. Sometimes, I feel like Taiwan is trying to hard to be Japan, or trying too hard to be China. Taiwan is far too rude to be Japan, and Taiwan doesn't slap LEDs on our deteriorating buildings and call ourselves Cyberpunk to be china. And that's good, because there is a perfect imperfection in Taiwan. Yes, the ugly buildings and ton of power lines, make taiwan seem very frozen in time. Like it is still the 90s. And that's all great.  

 

 

 

 

A month in taiwan, petty pet peeves

 I've been in taiwan for nearly a month now, which is crazy to think about how fast time went. The classes I'm taking are very easy. For the most part, I spend most my time with my family like it's a normal family getaway. When I was way younger I would return to taiwan and stay there for way longer. This place is a second home to me, it's really different from the city I live in america because I live in a more rural area in Taiwan. But it only takes a 15 minute bus ride and I am in the main bustling city of Taipei! 

Now... some of my pet peeves...

First of all, goodness the heat. I can never get used to it. Since my mom was a teacher we came back during summer break during the american school year, which is the months of June, July, and August. Also known as the hottest months of all time. Taiwan heat is especially awful. Daily temperatures of 90-100 F (33 to 36 C) and 70-90 % humidity. Your sweat will stick to you. Now, I can wear long pants in taiwan, but when I was 5 years old I threw tantrums a lot. Thinking about it now I feel very bad for my mom. Because of the heat and where we live, there are a lot of bugs too. Certain bugs I don't care much about, but roaches I can't stand. Thank god for AC nowadays tho! A lot of places blow strong AC. 

And then, old people can be very rude. This is very common for asian countries, particularly those with any sort of Chinese Confucian influence that old people can be quite the assholes! In my experience, all the old people who just chill at home or going on walks in your local area are super friendly and will say good morning and chat, especially if they recognize you. But the moment you get on public transport and the main city, it's like completely different group of old people. Pushing, shoving, staring. 

Anyways I don't have internet at home (My parent's don't pay for it because they don't need it), so I've been enjoying going to cafes and libraries, getting free wifi and torrenting anime and music in Taipei. I've been torrenting anime to add to my server database, and selfhost a media server using Jellyfin. As I write this, I'm sitting in a Louisa Coffee and coding. By the way, I've been experiencing with Linux a lot. On this laptop, I'm using KDE Plasma on Linux Mint (weird combo, I know.) Linux is great! On my thinkpad T490s, everything runs incredibly, and the terminal, which I used to be really scared of, is now my best friend. The terminal is just super powerful. Anything from converting videos, downloading videos, moving files (moving 30 gb folders in an instant), sorting files, accessing my server from 7000 miles away, even updating my website on neocities, it's just really easy to do on the terminal. And most importantly, the terminal looks really really cool! 

 

Use duckduckgo!

The other day, I was peeking over at my dad's phone when I noticed that when he searched something on safari, he didn't get any "AI overview" like what has become commonplace on google. I noticed he was using Duckduckgo, and I asked him about it. He told me it felt nicer to use so he has been using it. Here are some of the pros and cons for me as I've been using it on my phone and laptop for the past 2 weeks. 

The first main features that I think will make most people very excited is the ability to turn off AI search overview AND filter AI images. Duckduckgo allows you to set how often you want AI overview to pop up. That's the best part, that you get the choice. You're able to completely turn it off or leave it on demand, or just show up naturally. The next part, is the ability to filter AI images. As far as I'm concerned, this feature relies on users reporting images as AI, which is a good reason why I'm writing this blog. It would be great if people read this blog, became users of Duckduckgo, and passively reported images that are AI during their time using it. 

Also, duckduckgo pushes significantly less reddit that google. Something I've noticed after using duckduckgo is just how much google pushes reddit. The first or second result on google is almost always something on reddit. Reddit is no longer the "front page of the internet." It's one of the most polarized platforms of all time, with plenty misinformation, bitter people and mods with superiority complexes on it, and a lot of bots. Not to mention, a lot of AI is trained on reddit (reddit sold tons of user content to OpenAI to train with). When searching something on duckduckgo I usually get an article that would've been the 4th or 5th result on google search. It feels like how old google was, when it worked. 

Duckduckgo also prides themself on privacy. In all honestly, I don't completely trust that any search browser doesn't have some sort of trackers in it. It's just how search engines and SEO works. Despite this, Duckduckgo still feels miles ahead of Google and Bing. The best bet is to use uBlock origin alongside duckduckgo for maximum security. You also get customization options too.  

 

The primary con is people use duckduckgo less. Because of this, search results might not be as polished as google. Google is simply the default for a lot of people now. So google simply has more traffic and can fine tune their searches exceptionally. 

Switching to duckduckgo is really easy too. For my phone, all I needed to do was go to safari settings and switch my primary search engine to duckduckgo. On my laptop, it's even easier. I use firefox, and the option to switch is right there on the search bar. If you're reading this, give duckduckgo a shot for a day or two! You likely wouldn't need to download anything, because most browsers have a setting you can switch to it instantly. 

Highschool was the worse

I would do a lot of things to be able to go to high school 10 years earlier. 

There are a lot of things I would sacrifice to be able to go to high school without the existence of instagram, tiktok, mobile smartphones. Having now taken the full step to not just delete the instagram app, which I did 4 months ago, but to also deactivate both my accounts, let me write about just how shit highschool was; and how long I have been lying to myself. 

I started my website and subsequently my blog in my senior year of high school. In my earliest blog posts, you can see the remnants of phony optimism in the words I typed. I say 'phony', because I still consider myself pretty optimistic, but in those posts I can clearly see me lying to myself in order to feel a little less of a loser. 

Yeah, high school was the worse. I was invisible. I wasn't even a background character. I was non-existent. To other people, I may have been just okay to be around in school, wanting to do anything outside of school with me was not even a consideration. And no matter what I did to at least become background character B, it just was never really my time to shine. High school is always portrayed as the best time of your life. Even before I was in high school, I already knew it was all bullshit, there was no high school musical, and I was fine with not having a flashy, eventful life. But what really hurt, was not having any of the mundane. There were no train rides chatting with a friend home. There were no detours to stop by a place instead of going straight home. There were no spontaneous hangouts, stopping by a friends house, or late night chats. No long text message conversations right after something happened, and no phone calls. At least for me. Normal highschool activities, I feel like I completely missed out on. 

I lied, actually, in my first year, there was train rides, detours, hangouts, and chats. For about 6 months in freshman year. I still had friends from people who went to the same middle school as me. And then I didn't. Calling it a falling out is too dramatic, but calling it drifting away is too understated. It wasn't a falling out because there wasn't some big fight that split everyone, and it wasn't a drift away because the group continued to be relatively close. It was just me. I don't know what started it, but one day you aren't invited to a hangout. Then, the group chats you're in go silent. Then, when you ask what they're doing they go silent. "The best years of my life" are words I thought of when I tried to invite one of those 'friends' to a christmas hangout, and he just starts walking away faster and faster. I never really celebrated my birthday. I hated that day. Opening my phone and seeing no notifications. In modern teenage culture, on someones birthday, people would post happy birthday wishes on their instagram stories, and tag the person. That person would then repost it. It was always a force of flaunting to me. "Look at how many friends I have, who want to wish me happy birthday!" 

I can't even blame them for not wanting to be friends with me anymore. I was awful to be around. Always angry, always negative, always insecure, and argued with everyone over stupid shit. I was not interesting in the slightest, I had zero hobbies or interests outside of studying and playing video games, and being on discord. I probably deserved it. 

To be split from that group was one thing, but I think I rather have just spent my entirety of high school alone than to know that for the next 3 years, they were laughing at me. Because of how insecure I felt about this, I tried to compensate in other ways to lie to myself that, I was doing ok. In the rare times I hung out, it was mainly to convince myself that "see! I'm doing normal high school things too! Like hanging out with friends!" Needless to say, I didn't enjoy those times. I did not like the people I was hanging out with. I tried clubs. Forced myself to stay in the godforsaken high school building for another 2 hours just to try to see if I would fit in. It was even worse because I knew it was bad, but I kept telling myself that it wasn't. I found myself within the fence of many groups. Not really particularly part of any of them, but just there so I could be less lonely during lunchtime. I didn't have that much fun because I had 0 connection with any of these people, but I pretended and adjusted to every single conversation, every single person, just to feel like absolute shit at the end of it because they would never reciprocate the effort I put in. Any efforts into hanging out was just "I'm busy." I never talked to them outside of the 45 minutes of a lunch period. Yeah, I ate lunch alone for most of high school. Actually, I didn't even eat lunch for the first half. I was far too insecure to take off my mask in freshman and sophomore year. That's how I dropped to 90 pounds. There was a retarded social media thing called "mask fishing" where people would say you looked way better with the mask on and ugly as fuck with it off. Insecure me, who was already insecure with my face since elementary school, started to get more and more pimples, and there was just nothing I could do about it. 

I'm still in a 6 year battle between me and my skin. I have some of the most painful and bad hormonal acne, face, chest and back acne, that I can't do anything about. I've been using tretinoin for my face and body for 2-3 years now, where it did help clear up the worse of my face, but my body is still left awful. Some of my old shirts have blood stains on the back because of my acne. The derm said it typically lasts up until 19-22. 

High school was the worst. I hate smartphones. Every interaction was spent between the phone. Sometimes they'd get distracted as we talked and start scrolling. Get a notification and start texting. Instagram and tiktok made it hell. It was always about who's attractive, who's smart, this and that. I never had tiktok, and not having it felt like being 10 miles behind in a marathon I didn't want to run in. It interfered with everything. It changed everything. People didn't even have hobbies anymore. All they wanted to do was scroll.

Interestingly, the year after I graduated they banned smartphones in schools in my state. I was in support of it, but everyone else I knew complained. They need it. The ban is a good thing 

I wish I could restart highschool. Click play and restart as many times as I want to. In particular, choose a time, any time before smartphones. It ruined me. It changed everything. It changed how people talked, how people treated each others, how people viewed things. I wasted my high school years, having nothing and in denial about everything. I was never happy and hate myself so much. So many actions I wish I never did, so many words I wish I never/should've said. Hearing how my millennial cousins describe their time in school made me so envious. Is the grass really always greener on the other side if the grass on my side is dead and withered by famine, and the other side so luscious and gorgeous? 

In Taiwan

I'm in taiwan now, I'm gonna be here for around a month. A combination of study and here for my mom to take care of family things. I was gonna write this blog about how I am glad to be away from people and making my own server (very exciting!), but I think it's ok for me to air out just how absolutely stupid everyone, excluding my mother, is in my family on my mother's side. 

I like staying anonymous online, and while I would've been worried about the possibility of my family finding this blog, the chances of such are slim to none, and they don't understand english anyways. In my immediate family on my mother's side, my uncles and cousins are troubled and all have criminal records. In short this is because of the way they were raised. They were very spoiled and bailed out always by my grandfather, who paid to get them out of debt among other things. One of my uncles, who I actually know and love despite him being not very intelligent, died very recently. His death was very abrupt and very likely shaken his two sons, my cousins. This came very quickly after the death of my grandfather, who died also recently. 

But a really dangerous thing is that just two weeks ago, the other uncle (my mom's other brother) got out of jail. He went to jail for something really pathetic. Robbing a 7-11. My mom said in her own words, "Robbing for pennies! 7-11 at midnight doesn't even have any money!" After getting out of jail, he has to come back to the house my cousins live in, because there's no one else to take him in. I don't really know this uncle at all. I can't remember his face. I met him yesterday, I don't know him. Frankly, I don't trust him. We bought food from the night market, and my mom brought us to drop it off. When he looked at me and my sister, I think he was shaken up because of how much we had grown. He probably met us when we were babies. But then, my mom told us to leave and go back to our home (we live seperately in another home nearby.) I'd assume it's because they had some serious business to talk about. And today that was confirmed when my mom told me that he was basically saying useless stuff like "I am so poor" and "When I die no one will care about me" my mom straight up told him "Yes, no one will care about you, you should be grateful for having a home to come back to, and you're poor because you never worked a day in your life." This is true by the way, apparently he was a handsome young man and was able to trick a lot of girls into giving him money. Jerk. 

But yeah, to me the most frustrating part is that it seems like this uncle and even my cousins who now have jobs (both were unemployed with on and off jobs before this) don't understand the value of money and how money works. What do I mean by this? Well all of them basically have one of the biggest burdens alleviated from them, which is having a home to live in. They inherited the family home from my grandfather, so they don't need to pay rent or mortgage at all! But despite this, despite the fact they probably have a significantly higher take home pay than most other people in Taiwan, they spend so much money on stupid things, gamble it away, and just aren't aware of the real world. And they keep asking my mom for money too. To give my cousins credit and understanding, they had very rough upbringings. They did not have a mother, because she ran away, and their father (my uncle) was not a good father figure. My mom raised them herself. The oldest one is the one who has a bad criminal record, while the younger one doesn't have a record but has psychological problems. Even though we are cut from the same cloth, I've always been very wary about money: I hate spending money at all, and I always save. I barely touch my savings at all, I'm a very boring person. It makes me mad to no avail, I wish I could scream sense into them, but my mom has been doing so for the last 30 years, and it only took "The tree being cut from under them" for them to understand. She's a tough person, and it makes a lot of sense why she cares so much about me and my sisters education. Because of how none of her nephews and brothers finished high school let alone consider college. 

This is it for this blog, I just wanted to get this off my chest. Incoming blog about me creating my server and also my personal feelings about being in taiwan and stuff in general.  

First year of college

I finished my freshman year of college 2 weeks ago, ending it the way I started it. Getting sick and having a 101 F fever. That marked the 5th time I've gotten sick in around 8 months of college. Last week, my grades came out. I'm happy to say my effort paid off and my grades are good right now. 

In this blog from 4 months ago, I wrote about not fitting in and not having energy for anything. Much of that sentiment stayed the same. I remember hearing "try to stay in your dorm as little as you can" from some silly instagram post before my first semester, so for my first semester I forced myself to be in the library and events I really just didn't want to go to or do. On my second semester, I stayed in my dorm a lot more, which I think was better for me. Because I got to relax and be more comfortable. I really only spent energy on stuff I cared about or wanted to do, like a robotics club and also the smash club that hosts tournaments (though that was way later down the line). 

I think I gave up on trying so hard and was ok being in solitude. I deleted all my socials a quarter way into the semester. I was tired of a lot of things and one of those was people posting their fake lives with their fake friends and fake groups with fake personalities. My resentment was growing, so I just deleted it to get away from it. In the months following, I was definitely way more calm. It didn't solve all my problems but it was a good change. 

I think I was pretty "locked in" in certain ways. I was pretty consistent with piano practice, and someone I know helped me with a gym routine. I began going to the gym 3 times a week to take care of my physical health. Every one yells at me to gain weight (including my gymrat friends), gain muscle, but honestly, I don't give a crap about that. It actually kind of annoys me. I'm at a healthy weight, even if it's at the lower side. It just annoys me everyone has a picture of what a man should look like, especially with the 2020s explosions in gym content. Going to the gym is great, but not every guy wants to pursue bodybuilding. Focusing on being healthy, getting stronger, and being more athletic is my goal. And mogging xd

Though something I have to complain about is when I need to talk to people at the gym. I always went to the gym alone, and when it was packed I HATED it because I would need to talk to people and ask to "work in" with them, or share equipment. I really did not want to talk to anyone, I just wanted to blast music at max volume and do what I want and leave. Our college gym is pretty small too so this happened often. 

I was being more of a delinquent, skipping a LOT of class (I'm a smart skipper though, I only skip when I know it won't affect me), and someone I met was honestly a stoner and got me to try stuff. It's ok because he respected my boundaries and never pushed me to try anything. I tried smoking weed for the first couple times. I tried it, but I couldn't get high. It was only until I tried edibles I got it, but I didn't have a good trip at all because I was sick during it. I also tried nicotine, hated it, and will probably never do it again. I still like drinking alc over anything else, but I reserve drinking for special occasions. Some of the people I met, goodness they were gone. Hitting the vape like every 20 seconds, telling me they get withdrawal symptoms. 

With the exception of these stoner friends who I didn't hang out with all that much, I really hated social interaction at all. Even when someone I loosely knew said Hi and had some small talk, I wanted to leave within 10 seconds. I couldn't help but hate how fake it all was, and I struggled to even remember peoples names. My social anxiety got to an all time high because sometimes I would see someone I talked to in class walking around and I had no idea if I should say hi or not so I either pretended to not see them or just looked down so I literally did not see them. 

I hate hate hate being perceived. Especially when I'm walking around trying to get to class and someone, or a group of someones, pauses to look me up and down and just think unwarranted thoughts about me. I'm not that important, and psychology says my mind is just extending that millisecond glance into multiple seconds. I don't care though. Stop looking at me. Stop thinking about me. I do not want your thoughts about me. Why do you care? Am I strange enough to look at? Keep talking with your friends.

A new pastime for me now is to watch Vtubers. Streamers always felt boring to me, I don't understand people who watch Kai Cenat or HasanAbi for hours on end. But a few too many youtube compilations and now I put on a fuwamoco stream in the background while I do something. I was always dissuaded from Vtubers because there's this guy I knew from middle school who was super cringe about them. Posted like NSFW fanart on his instagram close friends story. This is the part where I'd say they aren't like that. But reading through youtube comment sections, lurking in some reddit posts, yeah these guys are fucking weirdos lmao. Unfortunately, I'm a rare fan who knows they all play a character, and I'm not a retard who believes that the streamer loves me. There's actually a term for that kind of vtuber fan I learned, it's called "unicorn." 

For me, watching hololive is very comforting. It melts away a lot of my stress even if it's just for a little bit. I like watching it like it's a reality TV show, minus the drama and cancer. Some people care so much about their personal lives. I couldn't care less, just seeing a bunch of people play video games and do stupid stuff together is enough. It makes me happy. I'm glad I stopped caring about being a loser. 

Once again, in previously mentioned blog from 4 months ago I said I didn't hate my roommates. And that's the truth, but it also does take another 4 months for you to get prettyy fed up with some of the things your roommates do. For one, I'm in a triple room, and my room is pretty cramped. We have a small-ish room, then the bathroom with piss poor ventilation, so a lot of times they'd take a shower (or take a shit) and the steam from the shower would make the room super stuffy. So I would always be the one to open the window,  then close it, and monitor all that stuff. We only got our bathroom cleaned once a week which is pretty crazy in my opinion. If it were any other teenage boys, that shit would be a steamy hot pile of shit. 

And it's not just the shower too. One guy was super addicted to ramen noodles to the point he was making it 4 times a week, and he would use his rice cooker for it because he had no other way to boil water. And then the room would now be steamy and now have the smell of shin ramen, so again, I was the one who was opening the window, spraying the room with Febreeze. Additionally, while one of my roommates was pretty aware about smells, the other, just wasn't. I brought to the room a lot of those plug in Febreeze so the room would never stink, but this guy bro. He'd put his sweaty clothes into a bag that he put into his closet for it to ferment. We had to tell him so many times that he should NOT do that. (Also he'd come back from a day and without washing himself just hopped into bed? I mean it's not my bed, so whatever, but I don't think I saw him wash his sheets). The main saving grace is that all of us were chinks and chinks don't have the worst BO, though it can absolutely get really bad. 

That wraps it up for this blog entry at least. 
Bye 

I've been killing slimes for 300 years...

 

Link back to manga page: https://hym.neocities.org/more/manga# 

Synopsis 

You know, of the all the isekai anime/manga I've had the displeasure of watching, two of my favorites have slime in the title.

I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level! starts pretty typical. An overworked office lady in Japan, Azusa Aizawa, DIES and is reincarnated as an immortal witch. Hmmm... where have we heard this plot before? But all she wants to do is relax and live a cozy peaceful life without working. She has no problems doing this, facing no hardships in her life. Azusa kills 20 slimes everyday for 300 years until she discovers shes the max level, super overpowered, and one shots dragons. All the sudden, people start showing up to her doorstep after hearing how powerful she is. One is a dragon, another an elf, and then two children that claim they are her daughters who were born as slime spirits from all the slimes Azusa killed over the years. Her family keeps on growing.

Despite being a generic isekai, it's instantly is on my good side for being a yuri-bait and having the main character be a girl. It's the purest form of yuri-bait. The best blueprint for yuri bait. What do I mean by yuri bait? Well Azusa keeps growing her family, taking new girls under her wing like a mother. It's heavily implied that Laika, one of the first characters that shows up and joins Azusa's family is very in love with her. We don't get to see any developments in any romantic relationships very often, the author kind of just implies to us that "These girls live together and are practically married and everyone else in the house they live in are their children"

Likes and Dislikes

As I've already said, I love the comfyness of this. Everyone likes comfy, cozy stuff because of how unproblematic it is. It's a simple blueprint. Azusa goes on adventures after sticking to herself for 300 years. She's super overpowered, so typical isekai challenges like strong monsters and boss battles are not a problem. There's very little conflict in this world, the demons and humans are best friends to the point some of the strongest demons are best friends with Azusa and also part of her yuri family. The story focuses way more on the characters and their quirks and world-building. If I have to hand something to every isekai author out there, its that despite literally using the same blueprint of (You die in japan and get born in medieval magic RPG world) it's cool to see the kinds of twists they put on the worlds they create. The characters are somehow really memorable, because they all have their own stories and reasons for staying with Azusa. The fact that the main character is a women literally makes this series 10x better than if the main character was a guy. If the main character was a guy, it would be a standard harem and be really, really, really fucking boring. But since we get Azusa instead, we get to see how she treats everyone in her adoptive family well, whether it be making snacks for her daughters or solving her (wife) Laika's red dragon and blue dragon conflict. 

Like how it's hard to be problematic with cozy anime, it's also really hard to.. do anything. You can't create conflict without ruining the vibe. Most conflicts and plot points in the story only exist for new characters to be created, and then basically be taken under Azusa's adoptive wing. And only so many characters can be created without it getting boring. As of following the manga for 4 years, and watching both seasons of the anime. I haven't gotten bored, but I'm not exactly remembering every character by heart either. Usually, I only remember characters when they show back up in a chapter and I think to myself, "ohhh, I slightly remember that girl's existence!" Yet to most of the target audience, none of this is THAT much of a problem. But you want to know what's a problem?

Isekai mangaka have an obsession with food. It's honestly annoying. So many times, these mangaka spend entire chapters just letting their characters chase ingredients and cook food that subtlety resembles Japanese dishes, just so they can feed the isekai world people the food and then they have a food wars "ouhhh, ahhh, I've never tasted something this good before!" moment. If you have zero idea what I'm talking about, I'll lay out how this always plays out. 

    Main character: "This world's food is good, but I really want to eat rice!!!"

    Conveniently shaped rice paddy suddenly appears

    Main character: "Great, but now I want curry!"

    Conveniently created character that just so happens to be from a nation that closely resembles Japan provides MC with curry

    Main character: "Perfect, now I need katsu, but this world has no pigs!"

    Convenient pig replacement exists

    Main character: "Great! Who wants to try this katsu curry that doesn't exist in this world"

    Everyone: "ohmygodthistastesogoodyouresotalentedatcooking"

 I don't even hate these food scenes that much, but they just appear so often it's kind of annoying. The author has the opportunity to showcase some food that could only exist in a magical world like rainbow meat or something like that, but they always default to Japanese food that everyone around them glazes to no avail. 

Final rating: 8/10. It's hard to give a bad rating to something so cute.  

Manga review: Gal Oshi JK wa Gal ni Naritai

Link back to manga page: https://hym.neocities.org/more/manga#

Gal oshi JK is a very brief 1 volume yuri that I started following last year. It’s a very lighthearted manga that is mainly about a Gal/gyaru who is a “gal otaku.” Meaning she really loves gals and gyarus, to the point she’s an otaku ABOUT gals. (Mangas really like to stretch the definition of gyaru, because I personally would barely classify Yuuhi as a gal, but that’s for another time) Mimiru (main character) goes through a high school debut, studying up on fashion and makeup to look like a gyaru in high school. In high school, she makes friends with other gyarus, joining a friend group of gyarus. She meets Yuuhi, who’s a tall “cool” type who doesn’t show much emotion, but she’s always thinking “Mimiru’s so cute” in her head. They basically love each other.

The art is beautiful, and I’m a sucker for any kind of school slice of life yuri. But the pacing is very slow, and the ending is incredibly boring. Spoilers here, but we didn’t get a kiss, or anything official as a matter of fact. The way it was paced, I’d assume the author wanted to write another 3 volumes, but it randomly ends at 1. The main assumption for why it ended so quickly is that the author probably got bored. It was a web comic, so it likely didn’t get axed in the traditional way, but just didn’t get enough attention that the author wanted. A mangadex commenter put it best: 

Final rating: 6/10

Still cute, lighthearted, amazing art, if it didn’t have those it would be a 4/10. The main issues in my opinion is the lack of gyaru/gal knowledge and of course the ending. 

My first Smash tourney

Oh my god! Suddenly nearly another month has passed before my last entry

Today I went to my first Smash tournament. I would barely count it as a real tournament though, because it was just my universities club setting up a tourney for Smash Melee and Smash Ultimate. Even though I knew it wasn't really a big deal, I was still pretty nervous because of the.. social interaction. I think it's time for me to admit to myself that I am very introverted. People get misconstrued that introverts are just people who hate talking to anyone and prefer being quiet 100% of the time. But that isn't the case. Actually introverts can love talking to people, having friends, and be in social events. For me, I always get nervous because I'm scared of being around people I don't know and being awkward. 

Background: I met some of the people earlier this week from another event I went to. It was for Smash Melee, I had to swallow my awkwardness and force myself to go because I really really wanted to play Melee with a gamecube controller on a CRT. I don't have a gamecube controller, adapter, or even Wii to play Melee on my own so this was the only opportunity I could get. It was so worth it because I had a bunch of fun AND I got the peak experience of the "gaming room" which is a room on campus the smash club uses in the basement of one of the main buildings. It looked like it was straight out of 00s (probably because it's a neglected room the university doesnt give a shit about). and Yes the people in the club did pass the smell check, which I am very glad about. I told them it was my first time playing Melee and I wanted to play jigglypuff because I like Hbox and I play jigglypuff in Ultimate. One of the guys was excited because "No one else wants to play puff even though she's so good and cool, so I'll teach you." 

Fast forward to today, I was pretty scared walking in but the people who I met called out to me instantly so I felt more comfortable after that. I kind of awkwardly sat behind the guys playing Ultimate, waiting for my set, until people started striking up conversations with me. Of course, like most clubs in college clubs are already friend groups where it's hard to interfere (looking at you asian culture clubs), but unlike gatekeepy, cliquey clubs I think the people here were very happy to see a new person show up and want to talk and play some games. Anyways, about my sets, in Ultimate unsurprisingly I went 0-2 round 1 0-2 losers, that is not surprising to me. I played Game and Watch round 1 and we went random in losers to troll. (all the really good players were going random because apparently they were partying too late and got no sleep and didn't want to play hard). But very surprisingly in melee, I actually went 1-2 round 1 and 0-2 losers. I won round 1 against another jigglypuff where I landed 2 rests in the first game. It was very hype, but then I lost the two other games (albeit pretty close, we got to last stock on both). In losers bracket I lost all momentum and steam and got rolled, but that's ok with me. I ended up playing some friendlies with some ppl after and watched the bracket end to see who would win. 

I think I was just so glad to finally be able to talk to other people who just liked the same stuff I did, and also to get to play against someone else, because whenever I play smash I only play against one guy. It was refreshing to meet “real nerds” (I say this in the nicest way possible) because nowadays we just be letting ANYONE say they are a nerd but when someone with actual nerdy interests outside of valorant show up it’s cringe and stuff. I’m gonna be entering another tournament on Weds, I’ll keep updated! 

(Minecraft drama!) thoughts and journalling part 2

 View part one here: https://ahaehym.blogspot.com/2026/03/recent-thoughts-and-journalling.html

There is more gaming drama, and this time it comes from my home turf of Minecraft! I have long since retired from Minecraft PVP. I played from 2016 to 2021, and I primarily played on the 1.8 version (still superior in my eyes). But for a long time now, PvP has moved from 1.8 to the more recent versions. Because the entire PvP community was built on 1.8, 1.9/modern version players have created their own community. Nowadays it’s way bigger than the 1.8 PvP community I used to play in. I like to watch the “new” wave of MCYTbers (the wave after dreamSMP) and they have massive channels: average around 1 mil subs. 

There was a server called MCtiers that popped up as the prime PVP server and where you got your skill level tested, from what I know it didn’t even use an elo system, it was based on what OTHER players thought your skill level was (wtf is this bullshit lmao). So you would fight a “tester”, they would evaluate how they thought u did and give you a rating/rank. The top player was a person named “Marlowww” she was also the server owner I believe. She dominated all of categories and was considered the best Pvper..

Anyways, Marlowww was a cheater who used many hacked clients, and was exposed to have not even been a girl and was catfishing. This was huge news because Marlow using their high status in the community would keep people silent by banning, rallying their fans, to silence other creators. The part where Marlow pretends to be a girl is important (and really funny!) because players within the community have BEEN suspicious of Marlow, but people would chalk up any criticism as sexism and jealousy. And I won’t even lie that the Minecraft pvp scene is like 90% guys. Now this is absolutely awful for women in gaming. So far in 2026, we have had the Kingsman situation in marvel rivals, now the Marlow situation: both events basically set women in gaming back 50 years. Now if there’s a good Minecraft pvper who happens to be a girl, people are gonna assume she’s hacking, or that she’s a guy… 

Now to my thoughts and what I found the craziest: so apparently Marlow was previously known as “DangerMario” some kid known for griefing in Minecraft spaces. He realized he could use his high pitched voice to pretend to be a girl, gain some legitimacy, and create this Marlow persona. The FUNNIEST part is someone said DangerMario’s balls dropped during the 4-5 year activity of the Marlow persona, so he couldn’t fake his voice anymore, so he used an AI voice changer! If you go to the  most recent Marlow videos where he responds to the allegations, you can hear the voice changer, it’s SO OBVIOUS! How did people not immediately realize! This is why the 1.8 community was better (it’s not) 

So someone got Marlow in a call and asked them to sing “do re mi fa so la ti do” and Marlow couldn’t because the AI would so obviously fuck it up, so he pretended his electricity cut out… at this point it was cooked, now the memes of “Marlow vs do re mi” were spreading. I think the worst part is a lot of girls actually did look up to Marlow, it must suck for them. But this is why Minecraft PVP is a curse. Technoblade is our king of PVP and the only one we could trust. 

I haven't told people but I have been taking Japanese in school for the past 3 months and I think I will be sticking with learning it independently for a while. I've been grinding Anki and hope to take it seriously. There is many reasons why I don't exactly tell people though, because of the connotations... the weeb "I'm gonna move to japan when I turn 18" people, the "Japan is living in the year 3000", and the nature of the people who learn japanese and feel the need to flaunt it. But moving on to my class, I really like my teacher. My class is very small, 7 people in total actually. It helps gives a lot of opportunity to speak, my teacher does many turn and talk speaking activities. And surprisingly, the people in my class are super cool too! I think this is mainly due to the fact the class I am taking is a more mellow class, and people in my class are seniors, graduate students, people who want to learn but are very busy outside of class. But there is one guy who I find interesting. 

He a tubby guy who looks rather old, but apparently he’s a freshman. Compared to the masters student in my class, he looks 10 years older lmao. Maybe he is older because he entered college at later date. Anyways, he talks a lot about anime. Sometimes my teacher will do a speaking exercise and ask us things like "What did you do this weekend?" in japanese and have us respond in Japanese to practice. He would respond with: I watched anime. My teacher is very nice, she asked him what anime? I braced myself for the answer he dropped: my dress up darling. 

Ok. I know people like my dress up darling, but it my eyes its another ecchi hetslop romcom with a teenage girl with big boobs and the main character is a mid as boy. I know that in this anime the main character is a good person and not a complete BUM like rent a girlfriend, but it doesn't matter because why would you watch that shit when you could just watch cosmic princess kaguya. anyways my teacher looked around and asked was like "wow, has anyone heard of this anime before" and I was holding back ANY sort of facial expression super hard. I basically never talk about this in real life unless it's mainstream stuff like JJK that's easy to latch into conversation. Actually I barely watch anime now, I don't know whats happening in chainsaw man, nor JJK, or spy x family or something. Im an og watching naruto when i was 8. I could tell you most the plot points from Naruto to Naruto shippuden. 

Naturally during class we would have turn and talk exercises so I do talk with him and get some pieces of the puzzle. I recall during one instance when I asked him something like "Where would you like to go to in Japan (preset question from my teacher)" he said akiharabara and that he wanted to buy anime figurines and take photos of cosplayers. Ok fair enough, im not gonna judge a book by its cover, but he REALLY does seem like the stereotype; if he's actually a pure soul i apologize deeply for my assumptions. I eavesdropped a bit in a different convo and listened to what animes he said he liked, but he dropped pretty basic ones like love is war, chainsaw man. Like I thought he might have SOME sort of ball knowledge and like maybe at least bocchi the rock or k-on? Those r pretty mainstream, but nah he not even a real one like that. As for me I silently judge everyone's taste in anime because I literally only read yuri manga and unfortunately everything I read is "niche". Not niche enough to be considered cool in actual geek circles but niche that i dont want to talk about it irl. I mean how many people irl know slow start? I wonder if he knows what Touhou is... because he looks like he would have some mediocre surface level ball but maybe he's just hiding it. Or maybe he just watches hentai. I hope the latter is not the case. I am very judgemental I hope I am wrong.

Part 3 incoming... maybe! I actually have a bunch of thoughts I just wanna ramble about 

Recent Thoughts and journalling!

 Ah! I gotta stop "disappearing." I've been very motivated on my website but not updating very often. Along with my blog as well. So many things I wanted to write about but I just forgot to actually write! It's already been a month since my last blog? Time just goes way too fast. 

Recent thoughts. I've just been taking education seriously because it serves as a good distraction and reminder of why I'm here. At the very least, I am in college to learn. It feels like a lot of people forget that college is for education. 2 weeks ago on a monday morning as I walked to my 8:00 AM class I deleted Instagram, then I deleted twitter. There was no planning for this, no performative taking a mental health break! story. I just did it because I wanted to. I didn't do it to focus on education, mental health, or anything like that. I don't even know what I did it, because Instagram was my primary messaging platform for everything. But last year ago or two years ago I wouldn't have deleted instagram at all with the same excuse of its "my primary messaging platform". To be honest, instagram being "primary messaging platform" is a lie now, because no one actually messages me directly anymore. The only messages I get are from 3 people consistently sending me reels, and group chats I am in that I do not interact with that all. I have a spam instagram acconut that I was doing what I said I would do: start using the app like how people used to use it: making random posts 1 photo square posts. But I won't be keeping up with it I guess

Well what changes did I notice? Well not much, there is probably a benefit somewhere. It does make me happy I am finally able to not always be hyper-updated in the lives of others. Particularly this one guy I absolutely hate. Oh, I just realized I could write an entire blog about this one dude I cannot stand. The gist of it is that in high school he used to be so mean to me for no reason, but in college he started to see me as "cool" so then he tried sucking up to me, and basically copying anything I did. I know this stupid guy from volleyball, and half of the reason I hate him is because he would be such a fucking dick in volleyball. Actually, I haven't played volleyball since last year, and while most of it was just losing motivation and interest, I won't lie that he made it unbearable to play because he was in my friend group. He was not great at the sport, but always wanted to give me advice, and would do it in the most annoying way possible. He would even give advice to people (way) better than him! I talking about people who won championships. 

Lastly, for someone who always talked big he would NEVER live up to it. For example, he would want to play front row so he'd ask to switch, I'd say yes, but then he wouldn't switch back. And he was swing straight into the net, because even though I feel bad for saying this, he is 5'3 with no hops. Of course short people can still play front row, I'm not much taller than him. But he doesn't exactly have a good vertical jump. He had a big ego problem, he was not capable of playing for fun: get mad, give you dirty looks, but mainly stay completely silent with a big fat frown on his face. But tying it back to instagram: This guy was chronically on instagram! I think he had to have had 5 hours on the app DAILY! Anytime you saw an instagram reel he'd probably have already liked it. He'd repost a fuck ton of stuff, and post on his stories oh god his stories were so bad. "We won the tourney and our entire team slept at 5 and was hungover lmaooo" <-- Something he actually posted. I could go on and on but maybe I'll save it for next time.

I guess I have been watching more youtube, but I always liked doing that anyways. Overall still a net positive. With less things to do on my phone there is less reason to use it. I am playing more games recently, completely addicted to Smash Ultimate. I've actually been playing more and more since around october of last year. With my friends we would go and play on his switch. I don't have a switch, so I use an Emulator on my computer and connect my roommates ps4 controller to play. Cost me 0 dollars to play, fuck u nintendo. Playing through the new Planarcadia on hsr is nice too, and playing puella magi madoka magica on my psp.. 

Some other things I think I wanted to journal about is AI. So today in class during a engineering lab class, the lab was stupidly made. It was a matlab lab, they told us about how AI is a useful tool, and basically told us to use google gemini, copy and paste the code we were provided and ask AI "what does this code do"? and then made us write a short paragraph about what the AI told us the code did, then they warned us and said "don't use AI to generate your code and stuff use it as a good tool" and that if you use AI make sure to put it in the appendix. 

Ok sure whatever, but then they just threw us into the second part of the lab which was basically more time wasting: Explain what this code does, then do the code. I thought it was stupid because why did they even make me waste my time using AI and writing the first part of that lab. I actually spent more time writing explanations than actually working on the code, than coding itself. I didn't even need to use the AI, since I know matlab code pretty well. But even if I didn't why not just throw us into the second part of the lab, and then just teach us... what the code did? Plus, it's mainly retards who rely on AI so much, they're gonna use AI to code, they’re gonna fail and not get far at all, just like how they’re gonna fail in life. I hate those who use AI for everything because you already know just from how they use it they are so incompetent, lazy, and uninspired. 

But with AI I have different views about it too. I get annoyed when people are just vehemently anti-AI and they get all their information from tiktok. For example, my university announced it was building an AI research center. Keyword, research, because it's not a data center. But all the comments on LinkedIn, instagram, and reddit was just brainless college students saying "oh great water and energy prices going up, wow you guys so evil, evil capitalism". And the funny thing is, if they just using their eyes and read, they would've been able to see it was a research center dedicated to learning about the "ethics, morals, and safety of using AI." So it was literally stuff they probably would've agreed with anyways. But who am I to expect American university students to be able to read.

Additionally I was browsing the neocities reddit one day when I've been seeing some conversation about AI. One was someone who used AI images on their site, got called out for it, then deleted their site (AI images are incredibly gross, but this person got kind of witchhunted but whatever it's not my business) what did pique my interest though was a post about someone asking whether it's ok to use AI to learn HTML. It turns out they were someone who was very inexperienced in anything computer related. Many comments were of the mild side, saying don't generate your entire page using AI because that's cringe, and I agree with that. But some people said you shouldn't use AI at all and never. My input is that AI is ok to use if you are confused and want to ask "What does this line of code do?" But never use it to create images, or create your entire website. I think all people who want to learn HTML can start with W3schools and the other resources there are in the world. But AI is awful at creating but it is good at answering questions. 

Anyhow, I'm gonna write a part 2 of this later

I am incapable of love

Since today is valentines

I do not think I have ever felt love, it is not that I am asexual or whatever the term is, because I surely do crave romantic intimacy. Of course I feel familial love all the time. I feel happy when I’m with my family. But I will admit that even with my family I feel a degree of emotional fatigue from myself, where I believe I am merely pretending to be happy and loving near my family, meanwhile I’d rather wallow in my emotions alone on my bed. It’s a shameful intrusive thought that I have never been able to shake off since I was a child. I can’t remember the last time I felt love or loved someone (of course this is including the exception of my family, I already expressed how I love them dearly but cannot explain a certain anxiety). I’ve never dated, I’ve always been terrified of it. But I crave warmth and human touch or some sort of touch or just kindness and affection in general. I’ve never confessed to a girl before. I think it’s because I’m hiding, if I never get rejected, I’ll never feel ugly. It doesn’t work though, I feel ugly every day. I’ve had crushes before. Girls I found cute. I never ever did anything about it. What am I looking for? The perfect soulmate? I really have no clue. But I really want to badly. Every year since I was 13 (since that’s when teenagers start thinking about love) every time valentines rolls around I feel a very big hole in my chest. And eventually that hole does not just exist on February 14th. I am unsure whether I am capable of love. I do very much desire it, but I have always been so so scared. I’ve never asked anyone out, never confessed to anyone. One time in middle school a girl I knew from school confessed to me on discord, and I didn’t know how to react so I ignored her message for hours until she rolled it back and said “SIKE”

  

So in the past I lied. Told myself I don’t want a relationship. I said , next year when I’m more confident, comfortable, mature. Next year when something changes. I’ve been saying that for years now. In fact, I think I’ve been saying that since I was an elementary school child. I believe that I cling on to an idealized princely form of love and that contributes to my inability to feel it. I am not my ideal and I am incapable of reaching that ideal, so I am unwilling to love until a prince(ss) will come sweep me up on my feet. I am unable to love myself, therefore I am unable to even dare consider the possibility of tainting the beautiful Cinderella fairy tale I created for myself. I am not Cinderella, so I am unfit for love. It is true I only want to find someone who will be comfortable with me. Unfortunately I very much desire touch and warmth. On many days I fall asleep dreaming there will be someone who can hold me with true care. Even if platonic, I still want true warmth. I have not had a true friend who would truly accept me for everything I am. But the only person to blame for that is me. I am too many things at once, an amalgamation of people, interests, ideologies, strong emotions, and discontentedness. In many of my diary entries, I frequently revisit an "ideal." This ideal is inspired by the one psychology class I took in my senior year of high school. One unit talked about the different studies of Psychology. I forgot a bunch of shit from this class, but still remember "Humanistic Psychology" and the idea of self-actualization, which is that humans spend their entire lives trying to become their "ideal self."

I am a very greedy person. I don't think I would stop until I know everything I want to know. It is torturous that my dream shows me impossible images crafted into a creepy, incorrect peace and I will never be able to experience it. My dreams and filled with places I have never been and times I could have never experience but once the scene has been set, the seed has been sowed. I don't think I will ever stop until I can see those places in my dreams. If death came and gave me the opportunity to be everywhere, know everything, and experience the things I could have never experience, whether it's purely magical and fantastical or just a bygone era, it would be very difficult for me to turn down the allure of death. I think this may be a prime reason why I am incapable of love. I desire impossible things like to experience the dreamscape in my reality. This is an incredible hurdle that thinking about stresses me out. So I won't think about it, and right now I can think about love. 

When it comes to love, I real a lot of stories about it. I always wonder what it feels like. I wonder whether it does fill the hole in your heart and bring you something to look forward to it. I haven't crushed on anyone since 2 years ago. Perhaps some people find that the chase of love is the most exciting part. I can't say, because I seem to think I lack one of the most human features there are. I likely don't, I'm probably capable of love. I wonder if I'll be ok like this I’m just a normal teenager ranting about teenage things like how lonely I am. It’s not anything deeper than that. Then why does it feel so excruciating. It’s so easy for everyone else. It’s just normal for everyone else. Everyone has their love stories. It’s just a simple part of life for them. A romantic story like none that has come before. I’m jealous.

Intelligence is psuedo

 Note: This is a reblog from my blog archives, but edited because I wanted to change some stuff. 

Utopia is poor writing but dystopia is world renowned fiction. Everything good is fake and to be speculated on. There is no charm in the good, and you’re only smart the more you see wrong. Children are deemed intelligent by how much they understand the world and understanding the world is defined as only how much you hate the world.

There are happy people in the world. According to the internet, you are a happy ignorant. “You don’t understand. The world is collapsing. Check r/collapse.” Japanese manga and music is seen as thought provoking because it is skeptical of the world. Or because it's depressing. Depression is more interesting. Highs are only entertaining if there was a low.

The world is full of ignorance and pseudo intellectuals. Pseudo intellectuals– the mention of a pseudo implies there is a true intellectual. Now which one is it? Left or right? Existential or Nihilist? Communism or Fascism? You wouldn't want to be a wrong side of history, would you? You're a fascist, I'm a fascist, we can be fascists together. “The Evil American empire has fallen” – said the zeitgeist of every decade. It's difficult to grasp the zeitgeist for this decade though, because there is no collective consciousness it is DEAD as a matter of fact it never existed. 

“Why is how intelligent you are equated to how much you hate america?” The more tiktoks and instagram reels I have scrolled is the more information I have. It’s equivalent to educating myself! All you need to do is listen to the nth number of alt/goth/punk girl/guy/they with socialist/communist/anarcho views on twitter/tiktok/instagram/youtube to teach you surface level wikipedia information then you’ll finally be an intellectual. One more tweet. I promise. One more tweet. One more string of words to tell you the obvious: Epstein didn't kill himself, but you know who did? I know who did. IT WAS THE ____ <--- Fill in the blank with group you dislike. It's interesting how we all have access to the same files but everyone wants you to believe they were always right. It obviously flew over many peoples heads that the 3 million files the FBI released are muddled with truths, allegations, and outright schizophrenia ramblings. 

The far right Nick Fuentes cocksuckers want you to believe the Jews did everything, there are genuinely chronically online douche bags that think epstein watching FNAF porn and being on the 4chan yuri board is more important than Epstein deserving to suffer in all 16 hot and cold hells of Naraka, and the Far left... also blame the Jews. More specifically, they want you to believe that this is proof Russia, china, and over east are morally correct. Lets not forget Epstein got his hands on clothes from the Kaaba, that sacred Muslim rock thing, that a UAE higher up gave him. And Mao impregnated a 14 year old. and Stalin did the same with a 13 year old. Some claims, were told by an unemployed schizophrenic man who "recovered repressed memories" and believed both his feet were cut off ritual style: Found with both feet still attached. People wonder why the FBI did not take some allegations seriously.  But yeah, men can't wear women's clothing and gay people can't get married because of my bible/quran sai- Just stop. 

Adults are deemed intelligent by how much they "get it" and how much they "get it" is defined by how far along the political spectrum they are, and who they surround yourself with. There is no excuse to any form of conservatism, because conservatism, despite it's large ranges of definitions and personalities, is a fascist violent ideology that kills those who disagree! By the way, Charlie Kirk deserved to get shot. 

No, I understand, the world IS collapsing, and the root of all evil is obvious, it’s monarchy religion atheism patrichary capitalism! Because I solved the worlds equation, I understand, I know, meanwhile when I walk outside and look at the people near I grin because they don’t know. They don’t know about the boogeyman evil therefore they are lower than me. They are happy, they are stupid. They are happy, they are not intellectuals. Everything is bad. If there is good, it must be secretly bad. I have solved the equation to reality, to the system, to the country, to the institution, to the Earth.

Intelligence is knowing the problem but not the solution. Scratch “is knowing” from that sentence.

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.”

-Ursula K LeGuin

The moment someone read this, they'll immediately try to determine my political ideology and label me into an umbrella term I do not consent to being a part of. This is a grave insult to me, because it undermines my retardedness. People create political labels because-- getting to know someone, understanding their political views and nuances, that takes time and effort! It's significantly easier to create a label, strawman someone's beliefs, to make it more comprehendible to you. Then you know if someone is a Nat-zee. Because being an intellectual is all about labels. The number of books you read, number of degrees you have, the score you have on the ideological purity test. You can't be Aryan, unless you're a South Asian man with a twitter account that solely defends lolicons. Don't even call me a centrist. 

One day or one month or one year this will be archived maybe in the wayback machine and someone will read this and they’ll call me pretentious. But they’re wrong, I’m not pretentious, I’m a pseudo intellectual. Because sounding sophisticated is far more important than getting your point across, or explaining what you mean. Everyone knows that a sesquipedalian style of writing makes you cool. I quoted Omelas not because it inspired me to write this “higher than thou” satire but because it’ll make me sound like a college professor, since I’m in the minority: you haven’t read it, but I have.

“The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.”

By the way, did you know the MISO and MOSI pins on SPI protocols on your average microcontroller stands for "Master in, Slave out" and "Master out, Slave in"? Incredibly strange names to describe the roles of electronic modules... I mean it makes sense though..

Sinophobia is FAKE!

 HI EVERYONE! I have a hot take: 

Today I would like to talk about a concept that came to me when I was drunk. SINOPHOBIA IS FAKE~! Sinophobia is a psyop created by the big Xi and his greatest soldier, Li Jingjing, and our resident dog ZAPPER Hasanabi. The idea of sinophobia was invented by insecure chinese americans who are upset that Japan has anime, korea has kpop, and China has temu... Sinophobia was invented by big alibaba to make chinese americans think it's about West vs. East, trying to distract us from the riot games kernel level anti cheat!  

OK I'M DONE TROLLING, (or am i) BUT sinophobia is as real as "americaphobia" During covid when there were racist attacks done to asian people but racist people were not going up to asian grandmas saying "konnichiwa! ok ur not japanese... saranghae! ok ur not korean... NI HAO... YOU'RE CHINESE?? TAKE THIS!" they were just going after people with small eyes. racists can't tell no difference. Realistically, americans get hella flak online, people literally create fanfics of them "OWNING an american in a bar" then post it on reddit to get UPDOOTS! There's no word called americaphobia... and there shouldnt be. how stupid would it sound if I got called a FAT BURGER YANK in london and then i yelled "americaphobia!" by the way, i love burgers and i am a yank but i AM NOT FAT! I AM 110 POUNDS AND 5'8! FREEDOM UNITS ONLY!

I also have been getting this "asian fatigue" <--- I coined this term btw. I AM SO TIRED OF ABGS AND ABBs. "asian baby girl, asian baby boy" This archetype of asian has surprassed the kevin ngyugens, and they have DESTROYED THE STEREOTYPE THAT ASIANS ARE SMART. I have gotten profiled by OTHER ASIANS. they look at me and say, you look like you listen to keshi, and play valorant or league, and wear stussy. I HATE KESHI, HIS MUSIC SUCKS, and i HATE VALORANT i peaked only at gold 1. and i would never wear stussy in my life! I am not an "ABB", i like to do makeup and wear womens clothing, i like to play with electronics and build esp32 wifi 2.4ghz jammers! there is a difference! When i tell you i am tired of asian americans, i mean it fully. I have been around them for too long. BUT DO NOT TAKE THIS AS A "i want to hang out with white americans instead" BECAUSE I DONT! All they care about in my uni is drinking alc, doing drugs, and going out to frats, and rushing. and these stupid ugly frat boys, all they do is NOTHING. they walk around like they're the shit, with this certain strut. and they are SO loud. 

I WISH THE NRF24L01 range was longer, so I could jam bluetooth devices from more than 100 meters away! Tell me why these CLOSETED GAY FRAT BOYS are blasting their shitty playboy carti at 3 am. Don't they know about real music like, Plastic tree and glamscure and MUCC?? 

Winter break is over

Today is my last day of winter break. In a couple of hours, I go take a bus back to college. I'm not excited... It's a combination of a lot of stuff.

I guess I really just don't have energy for certain things. It's only about to be my second semester of my first year, but I already feel like I don't fit in. I don't have energy to socialize, but I feel obligated to. I don't particularly like a lot of people at my college, because all of them are prioritized on partying and greek life. It's not that there isn't cool people, I bet there are. Not to mention my dorm building is so noisy. It makes me so mad, why are people up at 3 am jumping up and down in the hallways? Oh and the food. I hate it. It's so bad I want to cry. Well it's not BAD as in inedible, it's bad as in super unhealthy and I NEED to eat it because I have a meal plan. 

My schedule this semester is the worst too. I am taking, two engineering classes, physics, geography, chinese. It sounds like it would be reasonable, but for physics I need to meet 6 times a week. I have physics twice on tuesdays... what?? And my uni has the worst physics professors from what I've heard. I actually despise this schools engineering curriculum

I don't really fit in with the people here, but I think that's just going to be the same no matter what university I go to. I've discovered that I hate frat parties and I'm not going to go out to parties this semester at all. I made friends in my first semester but just didn't click with most of them. I still kinda forced myself to talk to them because they aren't bad people + I selfishly didn't want to be lonely. Luckily I do like my roommates. I'm just exhausted and winter break was great because I could hang out with people that I liked whenever I wanted, and stay at home and read yuri whenever I wanted. It also sucks that I won't be able to do my DIY's anymore, because I'm not bringing a sewing machine all the way to college. I will bring my fabric paints, but I don't know whether I'd get the time to use it. 

My friend told me I just need to find my people, and he's right because I don't have a set group. I do have people I consider myself close to, but we are in different majors, different dorm buildings, and there's some other circumstances. 

I'm just worried I'm going to spiral again, being at home and having free time defintely did calm me down for now. I also want to find a job. 

 

Here's the last DIY I did yesterday, my last screen printing. Similar to the last one, I just turned this pullover hoodie into a zipup, did the faux fur stuff, then screen printed a design I stole from pinterest