Why a website

2026-02-07

A hallmark internet experience when I was in high school was visiting StumbleUpon, a website that served up random, interesting webpages.

It's probably obvious where I am heading with this. StumbleUpon appears to have been bought out and turned into another junk app. The world of interesting websites it rabbitholed into has been replaced.

To echo a now-common lament: the internet is now a much more contained (platforms) and homogenised (algorithms) experience.

I have a strong dislike of social media, in particular its incentives and opaque rules. Being a believer that journalism requires getting information to people where they are, though, I see its function and have returned to the platforms in the past year to try grab a fraction of the attention being paid there.

I've been especially unsuccessful at cracking the vertical video game, and getting better at this is one of the big goals for 2026.

This website clearly serves a more boring function - it's essentially an expansive digital business card - and I expect near-zero traffic to this URL. I may not even write here much, if at all.

So why a website?

I figure it makes sense stake out a little spot on the world wide web that won't be subject to the algorithms and whims of the global platforms.

The advent of AI coding tools has made doing this possible in a way that was previously expensive and lacklustre.

Meaning the possibility of the web being more interesting again is now in reach.