📏 The Weekly Measure: 2026 W29

Sorry about missing last week! Had to take a bunch of trips to the doctor, the usual. I ordered a pair of prescription sunglasses yesterday but they won’t come in for a couple of weeks. Oh well. And for our second ever WiXoss tournament, I came in fourth out of four.

# Back on my Linux bullshit

I’ve tried and given up on Linux Mint Debian Edition a couple of times now. This time, I’m going with normal Debian 13 Trixie and KDE Plasma for my desktop. So far I quite like it! There is some weirdness due to my having an Nvidia graphics card (SIGH, I wish I had gone with AMD) and spotty Wayland support, but it’s mostly fine.

I’ve still got Windows on the other drive so I can dual-boot into either. But I love my Debian setup enough to make this my main for now. It is so nice to have my desktop customized to look almost exactly like how I want… that chocolate-retro look of the gruvbox color scheme is extremely good and easy on the eyes. I especially love the Gruvbox Plus icons, mm-mm.

# Adding custom emoji shortcodes to Eleventy

I’ve added some custom emoji to the site! The way I did it was a little bit hacky, but it works and that’s all that matters to me. Just like with my Mastodon instance, I’m using the Neofox emoji set by Volpeon! I love these little guys.

If you too would like to add some custom emoji shortcodes to your site, here is what I did. Add this to your .eleventy.js file:

module.exports = function (eleventyConfig) {

// emoji shortcode
      eleventyConfig.addShortcode(
      "emoji",
      (filename, extension) =>
          `<span aria-hidden="true" class="emoji-span" role="image"><img src="/emoji/${filename}.${extension}" alt="emoji: ${filename}" class="emoji-img"></span>`
      );

// other eleventy export config probably goes here

}

And then something like this in your style sheet:

.emoji-span {
    display: inline-flex;
    justify-content: center;
    align-items: center;
    position: relative;
    line-height: 1.6em;
    vertical-align: middle;
}
.emoji-img {
    display: block;
    position: relative;
    height: 1.5em;
    width: auto;
    margin: 0 .05em 0 .1em;
    outline: none;
    border-radius: 0px;
}

And then make the folder /src/emoji/ and drop your emoji files in there. Then you can add emoji shortcodes to your blog posts by writing something like {% emoji "smiley", "png" %} to use them!

I really need to put together my next volume of Eleventy tips and tricks…

# Stuff I’ve been reading

# Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life

I finished reading the late and great Alice Wong’s memoir, Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life. I wasn’t planning to post much about this because my thoughts on it can be summed up as: just okay. Which is maybe a mean thing to say about a memoir, and especially for someone recently deceased and who has done so much for disability activism. Before getting into this memoir, I highly recommend going through the Disability Visibility Project, and reading the anthologies Resistance and Hope, Disability Visibility, Disability Intimacy.

The Disability Visibility Project is an invaluable resources, and place her activism within the context of the disability community. This memoir is like a scrapbook looking back fondly over a lot of that material through a more personal lens, which is totally understandable for a memoir, but also makes it feel a little like… I’ve read this already, and it was stronger the first time around…

On the other hand, Alice Wong deserves all the flowers, and if she has to get them by writing a memoir pointing out just how much she has done (and seriously, I cannot overstate how much she has done to raise disability issues) then who am I to begrudge her that. Please read her books and get involved in disability issues, all of our struggles are connected.

# Sublimation

I’m also partway through Isabel J. Kim’s debut novel, Sublimation. I’ll probably write more about this at a later date; but for now, I’ll just say that you can and should read the original short story on Clarkesworld, Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self. I’m personally a huge fan of the short story because of how tight and well-paced it is, and much cooler on the full novelization. Which is a shame since I am a huge fan of Kim’s short fiction! Why Don’t We Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole and Day Ten Thousand are some of my favorite stories in recent memory. I’ll still look forward to seeing her name in the byline when I read issues of Clarkesworld, but I wish I had that enthusiasm for finishing the rest of Sublimation. Ah well.

# Clarkesworld 238

Speaking of Clarkesworld, the current issue is absolutely stacked with good stuff. The standouts for me this issue were Focus by Carlos Hernandez, a terrifying story of birdwatching and tech-induced Instrumentality; The Animator and the Glazer by Ju Chu and translated by S. Qiouyi Lu, which is another installment in Ju Chu’s near-future dystopia (please also read Tomorrow’s Beautiful Dream for more about soulselling; and Our Revels Now Are Ended by Thomas Ha, which is kind of like hacking the Matrix while you’re in the thick of it. The whole issue is a real treat and I ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting.

# 台湾漫遊鉄道のふたり (Taiwan Travelogue: Japanese Edition)

I’m also (very slowly) reading through the Japanese edition of Taiwan Travelogue, translated by Miura Hiroko. I read the English version when it came out and adored it to pieces, and am now reading the Japanese version along with Daikon, who is reading it for the first time.

Something I learned from the Japanese version is that it loses the whole metatextual translator’s notes and “I found this old Japanese journal and translated it into Mandarin” framing. Which, if you think about it, makes sense… the idea that this was originally a “lost” Japanese book that finally got a translation, is unnecessary for the Japanese edition. Like, what, in-universe this is a Japanese book that got translated to Mandarin and back to Japanese? That’s a lot of unnecessary steps, haha.

So instead, the Japanese version (and maybe ONLY this one?) opens with a fictional news article about famed writer Chizuru doing the professional talk circuit in Taiwan, like establishing that she is a “real” person (in this fictional setup). All of the meta translator notes from the English version are gone and instead explained organically in the text itself. It’s kind of interesting how it’s such a vastly different book in Japanese, out of necessity.

It doesn’t have an intro from the “translator’s” (true author’s) point of view. And unlike the English edition, there isn’t a passage from the Japanese translator’s POV since again, in-universe, this hasn’t been translated to Japanese. I haven’t gotten to the end yet but I wonder if it will have the equivalent of the translator’s epilogue from the English/original. It’s really cool how these three versions of the same book can be so radically different!

mojilove also had this to say about the differences between the Japanese, English, and original Mandarin:

got the Japanese version of Taiwan Travelogue from the library the other day, and the (real-world) author’s postscript mentions that they intentionally used language typical of translations from Japanese in the Chinese original. very cool - i suspected that a similar approach was employed for the English version as well when I first listened to that

(edit: also it’s interesting to see that both the author and Japanese translator put such a large focus on the sapphic elements of the novel in contrast to the English version not really paying mention to these aspects in its introductions and afterwords)

『台湾漫遊鉄道のふたり』の日本版あとがきに「台湾原初では更に、日本文学の中文訳でよく見られる翻訳調の文章表現を意識して使い」とある。面白い。英語版も翻訳調の表現があった

あと、英語版のまえがきやあとがきではあまり百合要素についての記述はなかったように思うけど、日本語版では著者あとがきにも訳者あとがきにも冒頭部分から百合百合書いてるのはなんでやろうなぁとぼんやり思う

# This Week in Links

Well, more like these past two weeks in links since I missed last time!

# Around the Blogosphere

Nina Kalinina wrote a great post about her drawing journey! It inspired me to dig out my old sketchbook and some pencils to restart the learning process…

Speaking of drawing, Claus blogged about doing a whole month of #pixel_dailies using Sprite Shelf in Picotron! It looks really cool, and now I want to do this too, ahaha.

Brianna Townsend celebrated four years of working on Chronicles IV: Ebonheim and has put out a call for playtesters! Check it out!

My happy place is making progress on my game and occasionally writing about it, it’s something I legitimately enjoy. Even when it’s super hard technical problems or refactors, all of it is still something I look forward to! I own all my own tools, all my own code, all my asset creation. I think that really personally helps keep the frustration levels down. It’s just so fun to be able to be creating something.

I feel a little like a broken record but for my own sake I often need to say out loud “Be proud of what you’ve done, look forward to getting to do more, and it’ll be done when it’s done!”

I missed this before the last link roundup, but Brianna also wrote a great post-manifesto manifesto.

Daikon has been writing up a storm over on our blog. It’s all in Japanese and sorry, I have no intention of translating these (at least, not right away) but if you can read Japanese and want to know his thoughts on jumping in 2D games plus a followup, and the background behind the Hamayumishi’s character design, there ya go! We also streamed Happy Hour last night if you want to check out the games we played.

And if you liked discovering cool indie blogs via Warp Point, you should also check out smallweb.cc which “is a carefully curated collection of neat indie websites that get less attention than they deserve.”

I quite enjoyed Within & Between: On Sex, Dreams, Love, and the Consideration of Art by Mike Horowitz of Fungus Zone:

Let me tell you a bit about Titanium Court, the 2026 game by AP Thomson. It’s a game whose gameplay has been notoriously hard to describe and a lot of players have entered into some unspoken agreement that the game is best experienced purely, with as little prior knowledge as possible. It gives it an incredible sense of potential, of magic. Which makes sense because the game is about that at its core. Its central thesis is that the deeper we play a video game to completion, the more we dispel its potential magic, to our detriment. It reduces everything to “staleness” until we are left with no more mystery. A quiet death.

While I don’t agree with everything Titanium Court is preaching, it’s an interesting idea to wrestle with. And it runs parallel to my argument about consideration: that a work can stick with you and grow more powerful in your mind long after you walk away, if you let it. That there is a potent kind of magic at work when we give art more focused thought after the central experience of engaging with them is over, even if we don’t manage to take in the full scope of the work in front of us. Especially if the work isn’t particularly good!

This is the kind of magic where a set of screenshots from an old gaming magazine we once read can open our imaginations to a potential far beyond what a game might actually deliver. A song half-heard at a party one day that introduces you to a new possibility of sound. An age-inappropriate movie we might have watched as a child that turned into a positive, transformative experience. Experiences that, when coupled with persistent consideration of the way these works have impacted us and the way they converse with others over our lifetimes, fuel entire careers and artistic philosophies.

When we engage in consideration, every experience we have with a work of art, no matter how fleeting or unremarkable, has the power to transform us at any time. It lies dormant within us as we carry on with our lives, continuing to nestle and bridge connections in the background, waiting for a moment of focused thoughtfulness to let it blossom. To help us grow.

# Games

The cool folks at Nokorpo put together GATO, a collection of demos, documentation and plugins that aims to make implementing accessibility features easier for Godot games!

Evil Hat Productions has put together a fundraiser bundle for Rae Nedjadi, creator of “Apocalypse Keys, Our Haunt, Once More into the Void, BALIKBAYAN, Memory Hunter, Cozy Town, Oathbreakers and so many more wonderful games that explore identity and foster the magic of creative play.” These titles look excellent and I cannot wait to dive into them!

Millie the Zine Queen released a new Janky Theramin for Decker Fantasy Camp 2026! You still have a couple of weeks left to make something in Decker and get it in before the deadline!

# Fuck AI tho

I know that last time I recommended the Ahoge event, but I may have to rescind my glowing recommendation since they apparently now allow for works created with genAI. From their rules:

# 生成 AI の利用について

時代とともにツールが進化していくのは当然ですが、「自分が作った」と堂々と言えるのか、そこが重要だとあほげーは考えています。

アセットを使ってもいいですし、素材を使ってもいいですし、生成 AI を使ってもいいです。でも「自分で作った」作品でエントリーしてほしい。

生成 AI を使用したゲーム制作を一律に禁止するものではありませんが、よく読んでエントリーしてください。

生成 AI を使用して制作した作品をエントリーする際のルール

• ゲーム制作の主体が人間であること
• ゲーム制作の作業をすべて人間が作業したと仮定したとき、半分以上は人間が自らの手で制作をすること
• ただし、ゲーム制作作業に「生成 AI に何らかのデータを生成させるために必要な作業（環境の構築、プロンプトやチャットの考案・入力等）」は含まない

My rough translation:

# Regarding genAI use:

In this day and age, it’s just a fact that these tools are becoming more common, but we think that feeling of “I made this myself” is an important part of Ahoge.

You can use genAI to create assets, for materials, and to generate the code in AI. But we want you to feel “I made this game myself” when you submit your game.

We don’t have a blanket ban on games that were made in AI, but please read the following conditions before submitting.

Rules for games that were made using genAI:

• Your game must have been primarily human-made
• The game itself should be human-made, and more than half of the materials should be made by you yourself
• However, this does not include tasks that require genAI (such as the programming environment, devising and inputting prompts for brainstorming)

And my, perhaps less-than-measured response to them allowing genAI:

Making rules trying to allow for genAI without sounding like you’re embracing genAI is like judging a baking contest and making a rule that contestants are allowed to use cat shit as an ingredient, they just can’t bring in a Ziploc of cat shit and claim it’s a cake and serve it to the judges. They have to gussy up the cat shit if they want you to eat it and consider them for the top prize

But. now hear me out. what if you didn’t allow people to make you eat food that had cat shit in it

Then again, maybe it’s mean to pick on Ahoge specifically when the Japanese games industry and its periphery are absolutely overrun with the stuff. Over 70% of companies using generative AI in creative work in Japan don’t actively disclose it so who even knows the true extent of the damage. I hate it so bad.

This isn’t limited to Japanese games either, since even venerable institutions like IFComp now allows for LLM-assisted coding and such. (Though they did at least scale it back from last year, when people were submitting whole ass prompts meant to be put into ChatGPT. Embarrassing.)

# Books 'n Zines

New Djuna short story anthology is up for pre-order on Honford Star! Memoir of a Joseon Bride, translated by translated by Adrian Thieret, Jihyun Park, Gord Sellar:

The stories brought together in this collection introduce the dazzling speculative imaginings of Djuna, one of South Korea’s most provocative science-fiction writers. Whether describing how a species of interplanetary machines brings Korea’s North-South divide into the heavens or satirizing the vampiric nature of Confucian patriarchy, these stories evoke a universe at once familiar and clearly fantastical. Blending influences ranging from genre fiction (zombie, vampire, science-fiction, you name it) to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Djuna’s stories illuminate the past, present, and possible futures.

I learned that July is International Zine Month! Nina Zina has a list of zine ideas if you wanted to make something before the month runs out. I should have posted this sooner… d’oh.

Trans Reads has a ton of books and literature by, about, and for trans people. EDIT 21 July: Retracting my endorsement of Trans Reads upon learning that they straight up steal trans writing without permission

# Music

I’ve been getting into Tokyo Cuban Boys recently. Min’yo combined with Latin-American beats… I am in heaven.

Chiptune Monthly also released Chiptune Monthly #26: July 2026, get yer fresh chiptunes!

Faircamp is a static site generator for music albums and looks super slick.

# Potpourri

Gender is fake but this website is real good.

# Henry Time

I actually had a ton more links I wanted to dump in here, but it’s getting late and I need to get some chores done! I’ll probably be back sometime in the next couple of days with more links. But in the meantime, look, look at this guy.

Be back soon!