heyyyyy

thanks for checking out my website! it's mostly here so I have a static, non-social-media presence on the web, and so I can put things I want to share all in one place.

here are some ways to read public domain books for free online:

• project gutenberg
• internet archive
• online books

also, if you're in the US and have a library card, which you can get by contacting your local library, you can type your library card number into the free website/app libby and get access to ebooks and audiobooks that your library carries. These books will automatically return themselves when your loan is up, preventing late fees. you can take in the ebooks and audiobooks directly through the website and the app, and the syncing works really well - I'm often switching between phone and laptop and libby makes it as seamless as possible. [this is still functional but we may lose this access soon due to Politics!]

recommended listening:

• Content Oscillator [Telehealth] - it's frankly the vibe this month year.
• Psychogeography [Anti-Spectacular] - hell of a first album. There Won't Be An Answer will not get out of my head.
• Bleed Out [The Mountain Goats] - my obligatory tMG pick for this month. hard to pick a favorite song off this one. Guys on Every Corner, Mark on You, Hostages, and Need More Bandages have all been in my head a lot lately.
• Infest The Rats' Nest [King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard] - good album for when you're feeling angry about mars-colonization-obsessed billionaires.

here are some cool websites and blogs:

• bookshop.org - a website that sources books through small bookstores near you for purchase, so you don't have to go through Amazon. now providing ebooks too!
• CD-ROM journal - description: "Exploring multimedia games and software of the 90s and beyond."
• Don't Just Do Nothing - description: a zine and article, "20 Things You Can Do to Counter Fascism"
• DOOM PDF - description: you can play DOOM as a PDF!
• Every Noise at Once - description: "a long-running attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space"
• The Handbasket - independent journalist Marisa Kabas has been keeping up with the nightmare rollercoaster of US Politics since 2022 and has put dozens of mainstream massive news organizations to shame with her ability to report expediently and clearly about precisely how we're getting fucked.
• Libby - description: a free avenue to take in ebooks and audiobooks from your public library!
• Math is Fun - description: "We offer mathematics in an enjoyable and easy-to-learn manner, because we believe that mathematics is fun."
• NetHack - description: "NetHack is a single player dungeon exploration game that runs on a wide variety of computer systems, with a variety of graphical and text interfaces all using the same game engine." One of my all-time favorite games, it was first released in 1987, is open-source and freely downloadable, has a miniscule file size, and is one of the original set of "roguelike" games.
• Project Implicit - description: some tests to see what your innate biases are.
• Public Domain Image Archive - description: a "hand-picked collection of out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse."
• TV Tropes - description: "TV Tropes is a wiki, sort of like Wikipedia but using different software and with a different purpose. We describe and collect examples of Tropes in Media." this database is great for cross-referencing media, especially comics, shows, and movies, in a very granular way! if you can't remember anything about a show except that a character did something very specific in a scene, this might be your best bet for tracking it down.
• United by Nature - description: "United by Nature is a collaborative effort to understand how nature shapes our lives, and how we can shape nature's future. We're building a first-of-its-kind national assessment of U.S. lands, waters, and wildlife. And we're creating the tools to help put that knowledge to work."
• Video Game History Foundation - description: "a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games." Also provides a digital archive of video game history research materials.
• We The Builders - a blog maintained by current and ex-government employees sharing some views and opinions about what's going on, with a focus on the actions of DOGE.
• Where's Your Ed At - a blog maintained by Ed Zitron, who has been keeping up with the intricacies of the AI boom and the signs of its inevitable bust. I've been expecting my home country of the Silicon Valley to enter a rust belt era my whole life, and when it happens, he'll be the one letting us know first.
• Wikipedia - description: "The Free Encyclopedia". If you want to get your own copy of Wikipedia to access offline, I have instructions on how to do that here.

here are some books I think are neat:

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer - nonfiction, autobiograpy, science - are you also megadepressed about how colonialism has affected everything it has come in contact with? this book feels like a necessary chaser for a viewing of koyaanisqatsi. determination, hope, life lessons, botany, important teachings, all woven together. the audiobook for this one is also read by the author, and worth listening to for the introduction all on its own.
• the Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin - fiction, fantasy - each book covers a section of the life of a wizard who Goes Through Some Shit. the second book is an absolute banger and could be read on its own imo.
• The Way Life Works by Mahlon B. Hoagland and Bert Dodson - nonfiction, biology - a beautifully illustrated and easy-to-read guide on the biological world we live in. one of my all-time favorite books. suitable for a small kid just starting to get interested in the natural world or for someone going through an intro course on microbiology, or anyone in between.

here's some stuff I made:

• an essay on the nature of the internet (flotilla theory)
• drawin's

thanks for visiting!

-jay

site last updated 04/11/2025