Sometimes, the prose felt inspired, marvelous and deft, and I luxuriated in it. Rufi made me laugh, made me worry, peppered little insights about humanity and art in here. And then the prose would shift into a didactic passage, like an informational segment on PBS, and I would recoil like a spider jumped on my face.
I liked the story overall. I wish she could have figured out how to write about some of these topics more subtly.
I don't think I'm the target audience for "Baby's First Class War", or "Baby's First Encounter with Sex Work". I am already well aware of how evil American society is, so I spent most of the book feeling existing anger and disgust rise up in me at the way our young heroine Margo is treated by everyone, and the moments of "wow, isn't this fucked up?" rang hollow because I'd seen them coming and was already yelling at the screen book.
I have commissioned an erotic piece of art. (You can see it in the brand-new Gallery.) As seen there, I previously commissioned a profile pic from Flynn Nichols, which I still use 3 years later and love dearly. Erotic art is different, however. I have a lot of mixed up feelings with sex and I've been struggling to untangle them.
I think the crux of the issue is that I am an erotic being, a bag of meat that experiences sensual pleasure, horniness, anticipation, climax, sweat and blood and saliva. However, we live in an age where such feelings are chastised if not downright vilified. Our tv shows are full of chaotic violence but a single nipple is enough to spawn a letter-writing campaign. Interpersonally, it can be scary to express such things because I have a family. What happens when a weirdo decides to attempt to ruin my life because they don't like something I expressed about sex? Am I so sure my boss, my church, my friends, even my family will be on my side? Hard to say with any confidence.
In the face of that pressure, I say, "I am who I am." I like erotic art and I will not hide that so.
Continue reading →Important
EDIT: I WROTE ALL THIS FUCKING SHIT AND FORGOT TO CREDIT THE AUTHOR OF MY JAVASCRIPT CODE! FUCK MY STUPID LIFE! I'M SORRY JONATHAN!
The javascript & css for the bluesky comment support from this post by Jonathan Moallem at Caps Collective. I modified it lightly for my purposes but otherwise it's copy-pasted from inspecting the source code of that page. I claim no ownership and thank him heartily.
back to the original post:
i've added support for Bluesky replies to my posts. they don't load unless you click the link that says "load bluesky comments", and the js comes to like 50 lines? not terrible imo. why support this site? it's run by shitty techlords and the "credible exit" is still unknown. however, i decided i wanted to host my own pds because i like having control of stuff and why not experiment with cool tech. turns out, it's pretty easy, so now everything i post to bluesky and other atproto sites flows into https://pds.noahbogart.com. additionally, i set up my own tangled "knot" (git server), so anything i host there is sitting on knot.noahbogart.com.
Continue reading →For the last year, I've been driving a 2025 Toyota Sienna, a boat of a minivan. It's got all sorts of fancy features that I won't get into right now, but the big one that bothers me the most is a "lane drift" sensor that makes the steering wheel vibrate if you start to leave your lane (without a turn signal) and will actually turn the wheel/redirect the vehicle for you if you drift too far. Ostensibly, this is a great feature, as it helps you notice a Very Bad Thing™, but I've found that it's had the opposite effect on me.
Even tho I can toggle it off, and I now do, I've spent enough time with it on that I've noticed that I drift in my lanes significantly more. I drive a "normal" car pretty frequently as well, a 2016 Subaru, and regardless of how determined I am to pay attention, the last year I've had more close calls and moments of lane drifting that in the 20+ years of driving beforehand. I have lost my habitual lane touching, my gentle turns and checks that keep the car centered in my lane, because I have quite accidentally learned to drive with bowling bumpers. Instead of staying consistently midline, I grew to accept and rely on bouncing between the edges of the lane, making me a less safe driver for my self, my family, and for everyone on the highway around me.
Having noticed this the last couple months, I've been making a concerted effort to relearn this skill, to focus my whole attention on staying centered in the lanes, to keep distractions to a minimum, to place my hands where they should go. It's slow work, truthfully, but I refuse to back down and will not allow myself to ever use such a feature again. Cars are evil, dangerous creatures and demand respect.
Continue reading →Every 2 years I enter a state of frenzy, where I become obsessed with the Olympics. I grew up watching the Olympics in prime time with my mom. The whole family and friends would watch, but my mom cared the most and so I did as well. I took many years off of watching for various reasons, missing 2006-2016, and each year since 2018 I've increased the amount I watch. This year is the most yet, relying on Peacock's streaming service that is equal parts shit and excellent.
Here's all the events I've watched so far (as of 2026-02-13):
Continue reading →saw credits in 25 hours.
i finished god of war and it was fine. a perfectly reasonable use of time but nothing inspiring or compelling, tbh.
Continue reading →Vacations are hard. A lot of work to make happen, filled with joy and stress throughout, and the ending which hangs heavy. Another one has come to an end in our family and I'm left with a familiar poignant ache, mourning the loss for my children as well as for myself.
It's hard to handle how sharp endings are, the finality of it all. I've spent 5 months looking forward to this trip, planning for it with my wife, talking it up with my kids, and now in the blink of an eye it's all over? As soon as it started it's done? It feels unfair. It goes no faster than life at home, and yet I don't spend months anticipating doing the exact same stuff i've been doing the rest of the time.
I hope they look back on these trips with as much fondness as I did as a kid. Spending time with cousins who live far away, going to the beach, eating treats night and day, falling asleep in my arms at a restaurant because they played too hard...
Continue reading →cohost made it very easy to post. bluesky makes it easy to post but posting there sucks. even tho cohost was public, it gave a wonderful illusion of being out of sight (if not actually private) which enabled more freeing posting. the nicer post editor helped too. it's hard to imagine posting shorter things here but where else should i post them?
blogs feel so weighty compared to microblogging.
spoiler warning for the ending of jedi survivor.
i finished the game and thought the ending sucked ass. i wrote a bunch to some friends and have adapted it to a longer rant here.
Continue reading →I began to update the Now page and realized that because it's ephemeral, I should put all of my transient thoughts in a post first.
Continue reading →I have some plans for the new year that I'd like to put to paper as a small measure of accountability and internal pressure to follow through. I don't expect to do all of these, all goals are transitory and cannot account for future changes, but I do plan to hold these in mind as I move through the year.
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Every so often I decide to get a latte from a coffee shop instead of black coffee (pour over preferably). It is nearly always a mistake. I like the taste of black coffee, especially if it's a good bean like a single origin Ethiopian or Guatemalan. Lattes have a nice flavor on first sip, but they tend to sit heavier and don't go cold as gracefully.
The other issue is that lattes want to be cortados, but it's harder to justify paying $3-$5 for 3 oz of drink compared to $4-$6 for 12 oz of coffee. A bit of milk to lighten espresso is great; a bit of espresso to go with my heated milk sucks actually.
I just gotta stop buying lattes, it's almost always a mistake.
I'm trying out Working Copy on ios to post from mobile. It's more cumbersome than Cohost's excellent editor, but I'm hopeful that in the long run this will suit me. Because the number one change I felt over the last two years was a freedom to post when I had the urge, which is traditionally hard with static sites.
Previews??? who needs em, i know what i'm doing 🥲
Conspiracy theory: Parks and Rec was a psyop to make people hate Hillary Clinton-era liberals.
Yes, my wife is rewatching Parks and Rec, why do you ask?
my wife is preggers again and we're back on that grindset, trying to find a "boy" name(i know, don't at me lol).
if you had to name a kid born with a penis, what would you choose?
My current blog system uses Cryogen and compiled all markdown into html when I ran it locally. This sucked, so I've switched to relying on Github Actions to deploy the generated content to the pages site. Thankfully, it's much better now.
Note
I wrote this hours before the website https://cohost.org closed.
i have never blogged so much, made so many dumb jokes, or engaged so fervently and honestly. i've made some friends, learned some things, and found that it feels good to share without having to self select or edit my thoughts (compared to facebook, the previous site of my mostly honest thoughts).
i've enjoyed no numbers, the css crimes, and eggbug.
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