Motivation

Over the years, I’ve created several blogs, but each time I’d only post a few times before abandoning them, and eventually the platforms would shut down and disappear. Looking back now, there are things I wrote that feel embarrassing and I’m glad they disappeared, while on the other hand, some things I wish I had kept. What they all had in common was that they were merely using a blogging platform and didn’t feel much attachment to it. I had always thought about creating a proper blog someday, but years passed without me taking action.

Back when Google Reader was around, I eagerly subscribed to people’s blogs. Even after it shut down, I tried several other RSS readers for a while, but none of them quite hit the spot, so I gave up on them. After that, reading other people’s blogs gradually vanished from my routine. Recently, I set up an RSS reader that felt just right, so I imported some RSS feeds I exported ages ago and restarted my blog-reading habit.

Among the feeds, I found updates on former acquaintances I’ve since grown distant from, learning they’re doing well, which gave me a positive feeling. I also came across technical articles that made me glad I discovered them. In recent years on the internet, it feels like all you ever find through searches are press releases or business-oriented documents. But I think what I really like are the writings where people pour their personal experiences and thoughts into them.

Given that generative AIs have become capable of generating vast amounts of highly sophisticated text at speeds hundreds or even thousands of times faster than humans, the proportion of human-written content within the overall volume of text is likely to decrease going forward. Someday, it might even be considered outdated for people to deliberately think and write text themselves. Yet, within this very context, I created this blog to deliberately carve out a space for myself as an individual to write.

Content Policy—What to Do and What Not to Do

As for starting this blog, I’ll list my policies here. I may update them as I feel appropriate.

No AI generated images

Recent advances in “AI” have been astonishing, with not only text but also images and videos beginning to be created at an impressive level of quality. I have mixed feelings about this point. While creating illustrative images based on text might help readers understand, I feel that using images automatically generated by a model trained on someone else’s resources inherently conflict with self-expression. There are systems that feed pages to AI to generate images, so I’ll leave that to readers and keep my content AI-free unless otherwise noted.

No ads

I have absolutely no intention of monetizing this blog. Even if I were to introduce any products, I would not receive any direct financial benefit from doing so. I believe this discipline helps prevent unintended biases.

Express myself without pretense

Once, when I realized someone on a blog was pretending to be much older than the author was, I felt kind of disappointed. Not mentioning something is different from telling a lie, and I want to be honest. Besides, if false images pile up, they’ll surely become a burden on my heart. So I won’t pretend to be someone else or appear more capable than I truly am.