Mitch Blog

2026-07-24T16:58:29Z

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Saved quotes from the past

2026-07-24T00:00:00Z

Long story short, I had a Blogger site that I had started soon after COVID. I went back to it to see if I wanted to salvage any pieces I was proud of, but they were all truthfully embarrassing.

However, the quotes I had on the site were quite interesting. So I've decided to just migrate those here.

It was summer. The room was dark in spite of the door and window open on the great outer light. Through these narrow openings, far apart, the light poured, lit up a little space, then died, undiffused. It had no steadfastness, no assurance of lasting as long as day lasted. But it entered at every moment, renewed from without, entered and died at every moment, devoured by the dark. And at the least abatement of the inflow the room grew darker and darker until nothing in it was visible anymore. For the dark had triumphed.
And Sapo, his face turned towards an earth so resplendent that it hurt his eyes, felt at his back and all about him the unconquerable dark, and it licked the light on his face. Sometimes abruptly he turned to face it, letting it envelop and pervade him with a kind of relief. Then he heard more clearly the sounds of those at work, the daughter calling to her goats, the father cursing his mule. But silence was in the heart of the dark, the silence of dust and the things that would never stir, if left alone. And the ticking of the invisible alarm-clock was as the voice of that silence which, like the dark, would one day triumph too. And then all would be still and dark and all things at rest for ever at last.

- Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.

- Samuel Beckett, Molloy

Now I was making my way through the garden. There was that strange light which follows a day of persistent rain, when the sun comes out and the sky clears too late to be of any use. The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.

- Samuel Beckett, The End (From 'Three Novels')

The way in which you quit it rewrote the story of your life in a negative form. Those who knew you reread each of your acts in the light of your last. Henceforth, the shadow of this tall black tree hides the forest that was your life. When you are spoken of, it begins with recounting your death, before going back to explain it. Isn't it peculiar how this final gesture inverts your biography?

- Edouard Leve, Suicide

The hand went away and she had hold of something else but it was the ceiling he’d never looked at that she wanted to grip though it was beyond the birth of her baby which was happening and happening.

- Joseph McElroy, Women and Men

Solomon described in one lecture a very personal experience he had while a medical student at the University of Michigan. He recounted how he stumbled as if by chance into a crowded lecture hall. He was rather unhappy in his medical studies at the time, and was perhaps seeking something different that day. He got precisely that. The professor, Frithjof Bergmann, was lecturing that day on something that Solomon had not yet been acquainted with. The professor spoke of how Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return asks the fundamental question: "If given the opportunity to live your life over and over again ad infinitum, forced to go through all of the pain and the grief of existence, would you be overcome with despair? Or would you fall to your knees in gratitude?" After this lecture, Solomon quit medical school and began studies in philosophy.

- Robert C. Solomon - Wikipedia

The issue with social media (or more specifically Instagram)

2026-07-23T00:00:00Z

One of the earliest concepts in software that I learned when getting into the industry was "decoupling".

It's the idea that basically says, in software development, it's better to build many smaller pieces, that have their own limited functions and usecases, and to combine them to create a bigger project, rather than having a single behemoth program handling everything. This makes for easier reusability of the parts in other projects, and easier maintenance, since debugging/fixing individual pieces is easier than having to understand the whole machine. And importantly, these factors allow for the pieces to be used, and trusted for use, for a long time.

What strikes me as ironic is that software engineers who have learned this concept, most probably in college where they majored in Computer Science, go on to work for companies like Meta, and contribute to social media platforms that are anything but decoupled.

Sure, the code itself must be decoupled; the front- and back-end servers are split so communication exclusively occurs via APIs, which must again have their own specific and limited use cases. I get that.

But it does signify a lack of self awareness to only utilize a powerful concept for the inner workings of the product, and not the product itself.

If you take Instagram, it started off as a straightforward social media platform: you follow people you want to hear from, and you get their updates, or talk to them directly. Now Instagram's just a content machine. My top page doesn't even show me people that I follow. I open the god forsaken For You page and it's the same thing, except it's exponentially overwhelming. The app quite obviously does not care for I find familiar, or that I even want that. [1]

It's a personally important point for me so I'll say it again: Instagram does not care to show you the people - i.e. friends and family - that you follow. [2] The algorithm doesn't distinguish between your high school friend and Tung Tung Sahur or whatever the next brainrot meme is; that's clearly not a priority.

Of course, I understand that it's because they are financially dependent on keeping you on their platform longer. And the main tactic is - and always will be - novelty, not familiarity. [3]

What is specifically insidious is that this was a change so gradual, I didn't question it until it was right in front of my face. Before I knew it, watching Reels and zoning out was a bad habit that I had somehow happened to get myself into.

But I couldn't get myself to uninstall the app, or just quit, solely because my friends are there, and if they message me, I have to be there to answer them. And I believe this is why most people are still using the app as well.

In fact, I believe this is why Instagram still keeps this feature to begin with. It's no longer an app that helps you stay connected with others while you enjoy content; it's a hellhole that tethers you by threatening the loss of those connections.

The result is this hodge-podge platform that has no other objective but to bounce you off walls of enticements and obligations, hoping you get stuck on at least one of them.

This website started, in part, from experimenting how decoupling social media would look like for me.

It would mean breaking up the main features that I used social media for:

Messaging/Communicating
Sharing
Content [4]

and finding viable alternatives.

For communication, I already use messaging apps which are used solely for that purpose.

For content, there are a ton of options that are less of a headache to use than Instagram.

Sharing was the one aspect that I didn't have a clear alternative for.

Obviously, posting on a centralized platform with authentication/authorization features would be a nice security blanket to allow for sharing personal information. But as I've touched on a bit in the About page, even that doesn't feel incredibly safe.

A personal website, while I wouldn't have the same authorization wall, would allow me to have full control over what I do and don't share.

This is a very new endeavor for me. And since nobody around me is doing anything similar either, I'm mostly winging it, seeing what feels right and what doesn't.

I've never been a person to post much on Social Media to begin with, so I'm not entirely sure how much I'll even update. But it is starting to become an interesting experiment to see just how much more frequently I do post, which could be indicative of how I was unconsciously discouraged from posting on traditional platforms. [5]

But for now, I just knew I wanted to be able to share without getting my attention vacuumed.

To be clear, I'm not saying that there is an issue with Instagram is currently this way. What I have an issue with is that Instagram used to be a social media platform, and is currently this way. For example, TikTok is similar to Instagram. I don't use TikTok. It's a content platform, and if I don't like a platform and the content there, I just won't use it.

I know you can set "Close Friends" and get a separate feed for that, but I don't get why users are the ones who have to specify this...

I am really bad when it comes to controlling myself with short form content. There were times when I would be on my phone for two hours straight scrolling Reels. I wish I were joking.

Which, by the way, barely constitutes as being "a part of" social media to me.

I already do feel a lot more, relaxed and lighthearted, about what I post. I think the lack of reactions and comments makes it easier for me to just post what I want, without worrying about the reception of it. If no one cares about what I post, then that's fine because I wouldn't know, and if someone does care, they would care enough to reach out to me about something I wrote and that would be special as well. Or maybe they reach out saying they are angered or disagree vehemently. Which I hope doesn't happen.

2026-07-22T23:21:01Z

Was thinking of getting a split keyboard; Keeb Iris

2026-07-22T23:20:01Z

Had a dream that the Opera Garnier was an AirBnb and I stayed there with like 200 other people

2026-07-21T14:01:12Z

Probably shouldn't write so much about what I'm doing for the website. Feels like circular logic if I've built a site to complain about what I have to do for the site lol. Like a rapper who only raps about how rich he got off of rapping

2026-07-21T13:58:54Z

Finished reading Plato's Timaeus. Probably will read The Republic next

2026-07-20T23:52:53Z

Responsive imaging is broken too so I need to fix it. Photos look weirdly stretched out on mobile

2026-07-20T10:03:13Z

Oh also RSS feeds. Although that would definitely be something that people don't use... but I do want to live in a world where more people use it so be the change you want to see I guess

2026-07-20T09:54:44Z

want to figure out favicon soon

2026-07-20T09:53:19Z

Another boiling hot day in Japan where I will have not left my apartment a single time...

(Book Review) Bill Walton, Back from the Dead

2026-07-20T09:21:34Z

I originally wrote this book review in September 2024, on a different blog (now defunct). I liked it so I've decided to post it again here.

One of my biggest inspirations in life is Bill Walton. I became familiar with him through listening to him cover Pac-12 basketball games as a color commentator, during when I was in college, and especially right after graduating and moving back to Japan, when I ironically was watching even more of those games. To me, he completely revolutionized what it meant to call basektball games; that sometimes you didn't even have to be talking about the game to be effective. I remember him asking Dave Pasch (the play-by-play announcer that Bill would be paired with a lot) one time about if he had read Infinite Jest. And then in true Bill Walton fashion, he would ramble on about the 7 Wonders of the World, and then the Vietnam War. And then Bob Dylan.

He would know an incredible amount of detail about the personal lives of the college athletes, and while that wasn't really the thing I cared about when listening to him, there was this feeling that you were listening to a person who was curious and interested in the world around him, including even the very proximate Pac-12 basketball community, and you could get a glimpse into this wonderful web of knowledge and history he'd been able to weave in his head. I remember he would call every sporting event he called a "Celebration of Life", and you could feel how happy he was to partake. He was also someone who wouldn't shy away from controversy, even on air, and to me that was badass; I struggle to recall specific things he said, but I remember laughing about something Bill said while watching a game with my brother, imagining how furious the producers must have been. But to me, for us, the best part was just being able to listen to a person having fun, enjoying a basketball game as a fan, cracking a few jokes at the expense of Dave and maybe a few higher-ups at ESPN or wherever, just a free man being who he is.

So when Bill's death was announced a few months ago, a little after the final basketball season of the Pac-12 as we knew it then, it came as an incredible shock, and was very sad. It's still hard to believe, that a person who was so full of vigor and enthusiasm, who was calling games up until a few months before his passing, would be gone so suddenly.

I told some people about this, but I had somehow always assumed that within my lifetime, I would meet Bill Walton. There's this fairly well-known book called "The Artist's Way" which I used to read and do exercises from back during COVID, exercises that were supposed to help you understand who you truly wanted to be, what you wanted to do, stuff like that - and one of the exercises was to think of 5 people you'd like to have lunch with. I think I had picked some writers that I was into at the time; DFW was definitely in there. Then the book tells you to pick 5 completely new people; the idea was that the initial 5 people you picked would probably be people who you felt you had to say were your top picks, as in they were proper picks. But these next 5 people would then be people who you actually really wanted to have lunch with. Bill Walton was one of the first people on the list. I had just assumed that we would probably have lunch together someday - it didn't seem that crazy, since his wife is Japanese, and I felt decently well connected with the American community here. But stupidly I forgot to take death into account.

And so as a way to commemorate Bill's life the best way I felt I could, I decided to read his autobiography, "Back from the Dead". Being familiar with his broadcasting style of spontaneous tagents, refreshing and brutally honest remarks, and most of all overwhelming positivity and joy, I thought it would simply be the book version of that. But I ended up being pretty wrong.

One thing that struck me the most about the book was the amount of pain Bill had struggled with throughout his life. I knew that his basketball career had been riddled with injuries, but when you read the book and more than half of it ends up being about the hardships and the pain, it was hard to skip the details the way I had done until then: as just part of the footnotes in the record books of basketball, and of the life of Bill Walton.

In fact the book started with, and lingered on, suprisingly dark and negative themes which stuck out to me the most vividly. I remember the book starting with Bill Walton crawling on the floor in his house because he is unable to walk properly. The details of Coach Wooden expressing his remorse that he had "failed his students" stuck as well (although why exactly he felt that way, I can 't recall...). My view of Bill's life changed drastically then; for someone who seemed to be having the most fun out of everyone whenever he was on air, his life story was uncharacteristically somber.

Looking back, this dark theme is actually the backbone of his whole story; the injuries, the chronic pain, his basketball career that was disappointingly cut short because of it, and the deaths of his coach, teammates and family, although redeemed in parts by his athletic (multiple NBA championships) and academic (studying at Stanford Law School while playing for the San Diego Clippers, which I had no idea about) successes.

Up until reading this book, I had always assumed that writing is the best way for someone to communicate their ethos. But when reading Bill Walton's book, I felt that the part of him that I wanted to connect to the most - the fun-loving, gracious, gregarious, spontaneous, welcoming, encyclopedia-like, insanely interesting to the point of being, for me, almost mythical - was not there. When the facts are laid out, it's hard to deny that it was a story with a lot of sadness, frustration, and disappointment.

But there's the other interpretation that maybe this is purely Bill communicating his ethos. That this book was simply as accurately as Bill could have depicted his own life. That the Bill I thought I knew through his broadcasting was him when he got to briefly forget about the pain he was constantly going through.

Whatever the reason may have been, one thing that can be said for certain is that I couldn't see anything resembling Bill's broadcasting in Bill's writing. In fact Bill the broadcaster and Bill the writer feel like they very well could be completely different people. It made me aware (and it makes me feel embarrassingly naive when I type it out) that the medium in which a person expresses their art can have such a large effect on what's communicated.

I'll miss Bill. Thanks for giving many people a reason to feel excited even with everything you were going through.

2026-07-20T08:49:17Z

though if I'm only going to be posting text here (can't post images with current limitations), and I'm definitely not going to implement a search feature, it actually might be better if I didn't have pagination at all

2026-07-20T08:16:23Z

figured out how to organize these "tweets" in a more sophisticated fashion, which allows for things like having links to each of them. and hopefully pagination

Reading updates, 2026-07-18

2026-07-18T00:00:00Z

Well, since I started a blog, I've got to write something... I'll talk about what I usually like talking and thinking about the most, which is what I'm reading at the moment.

I got The Mahabharata from a local bookstore in 神保町 called 一誠堂書店. It's a very nice bookstore with some seriously rare, good quality books. I didn't really think I would be able to afford a purchase from here, but alas this was a great bargain and I'm glad I jumped on it early.

I got it a few weeks ago so I haven't been able to get too into it (although I had read the abridged Penguin version of the Mahabharata a year ago, which made me really want to own a proper copy). But even reading the introduction has been fruitful. You can see a lot of parallels between, say this book and the Bible, where the generations of descendants are described on and on in this endless fashion, which seems pointless other than as historical markings, but the translator says that at least in the Mahabharata it seems to be a carefully deliberated riddle. The Bible (Old Testament, especially Genesis) has this very deliberate nature of layering stories one after another that serve to capture a sense of totality through division; that is, of combing through all the patterns of what could be possible (I'm thinking of the origin of the universe story obviously, as well as details on acts of trespassing committed between various levels of family (father-son, father-daughter, father-mother, etc...), and the ways that people in the bigger history of the origin of Israel seem to mirror each other in what they did, coming and going from the same lands, conducting the same rituals. So seeing these similar themes in other religious scriptures is intriguing.