from Across the Purge Line

Hello! I'm Tyler.

This is a blog for writing about my projects. Over the past few years I've spent so much time bugging my friends with some rambling story about some mundane thing I spent all day doing.

I live in an apartment in Florida and have a tiny office where I work on stuff. I have a Bambu P1S 3D printer, a computer I built back in 2019 running Linux Mint, a Synology NAS, Multiboard tiles hanging on the wall to hold most of my tools, and a single dedicated workbench with just enough room for a Aixun soldering station, a cutting mat, and some papers or mats for drawing or painting.

I like modding electronics (with a special appreciation for the GameCube), making TTRPG terrain and rules, painting miniatures, creating storage solutions, writing Python scripts, and solving problems that only I understand or care about. I don't have any sort of formal STEM credentials, but I work in IT and test software and took a single C++ community college course. I do have a writing degree, but if I were actually using that for something you probably wouldn't be reading this (to be honest, you probably won't be reading this anyway).

My posts here are going to be pretty loosely structured and totally unscheduled. Generally I'll just talk about stuff I've finished, am actively working on, and plan to work on soon. It's my natural instinct to curate to the point where I only show the successes and what they look like, but I think it'd read better and keep me humble to talk about the many, many things I break or completely misunderstand. Every now and then I might talk about my TTRPG I've been developing for the past couple of years now or some things that have influenced or entertained me. It's my blog so I can do that.

There probably won't be any sort of community to spring up around this besides my friends occasionally checking in to make fun of each other for sleeping too much, but what else is the Internet for?

 
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from dutchapplepie

monday 5:36pm

happily smoking in bed while listening to a spooky podcast. I have things to do supposedly, and i may get around to do them. i made dinner, i even did an important errand on the way home. I still need to bathe the dog, and do my hair. I dont have to, but i will have a better week if i do. Its the small details.

I worked a 9 hr day but overall my mood was actually good. I even looked extra cute! boss promised i could go home a teeny bit early tomorrow too because i helped& stayed late today. I am contemplating getting rid of my threads account. but i have so many good fashion accounts i follow ugh. I just need to take a break lol . i hate feeling so watched on that platform, i really love interacting with the public on there but i do feel watched. Monitoring spirits.

 
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from Dan Kaufman

The Stories We Tell, and the Ones We’re Losing

I grew up in the 80s and early 90s when America still had something close to a shared culture. I remember seeing Back to the Future Part in a packed theater and watching Field of Dreams with my dad, who pretended he didn’t tear up at the end (he totally did). Die Hard marathons, Saturday mornings with The A-Team, and the first time I saw Prince perform, those moments still sit somewhere deep in the memory banks.

For a kid like, pop culture was a kind of roadmap. It was loud, colorful, and full of swagger. Everyone was tuned to the same channels. When Thriller or Purple Rain dropped, you didn’t need an algorithm to tell you. You felt it in the air.

Fast-forward to today, and it’s a different world. Kids aren’t watching Spielberg classics or quoting Ghostbusters. They’re watching creators on YouTube with usernames I can’t remember, people shooting videos from their bedrooms and somehow reaching millions. It’s a new kind of storytelling ecosystem, decentralized and deeply personal. But something’s been lost in the shift too.

Last week I read a sobering piece in the Wall Street Journal about how Hollywood’s creative middle class has collapsed. Not the A-list celebrities — the people who actually made the machine run: the gaffers, camera ops, editors, set builders, costume designers. The folks who used to fill every diner on Ventura Boulevard after a long shoot. In just a couple of years, the number of workers in L.A.’s entertainment industry fell from 142,000 to around 100,000.

One makeup artist took a 66% pay cut to become a phlebotomist. A baker who ran two cookie shops serving film sets had to close both. “Survive until ’25” became the local motto, but ’25 isn’t saving anyone.

It’s not just strikes or AI, though that’s definitely the next tidal wave. It’s a perfect storm: runaway costs, new filming hubs in cheaper states, the streaming bubble bursting, and audiences staying home. Fewer shows are being greenlit. Production days are down nearly 60%. The world’s storytelling capital is bleeding out.

It reminds me a little of New York in the early 2000s, when the magazine world I loved began to hollow out. Those were the people who made the city sparkle, the ones who always had a story, a deadline, and a theory about where culture was headed next.

Now it’s L.A.’s turn. The dream factory is going dark.

Look, I know sympathy for Hollywood doesn’t come easy. But this isn’t about red carpets. It’s about an entire creative class — people who built careers, raised families, paid mortgages, and took pride in their craft, suddenly finding the ground gone beneath their feet.

And here’s the thing: it’s not just them. The same forces are coming for all of us. AI is already writing songs, producing videos, and designing ad campaigns. Even MrBeast, the biggest YouTuber on Earth, posted recently, “When AI videos are just as good as normal ones, how will it impact the millions of creators making content for a living?”

That’s the question we should all be asking, because at some point, it’s going to hit our own corner of the world too.

When the ways we make a living start disappearing, what do we hold on to?

Maybe the answer is the same as it’s always been, each other.

— Daniel

.

 
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from TechNewsLit Explores

Washington Nationals position players, standing for the national anthem, before playing the Chicago White Sox, 27 Sept. 2025. Photo: A. Kotok (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Alan Kotok. CEO, Technology News & Literature.

13 Oct. 2025. A photo I took of the eight position players on the Washington Nationals that started the game on 27 Sept. 2025 is now available on our Smugmug and Flickr pages under a Creative Commons license.

In baseball, position players are all those in the game except the pitchers. All position players are batters, and except for the designated hitter, all are fielders. The eight Nationals players are shown in our photo standing during the U.S. national anthem before the first pitch. They’re wearing the team’s City Connect uniforms, special gear worn by major league baseball, or MLB, teams at weekend home games that emphasize something special about their cities.

The Nationals had a rough 2025 season, with 66 wins and 96 losses, ending up in last place in the National League East division. In this game on 27 Sept., the Nats won 6-5, but lost the two other games with the Chicago White Sox, one of only two other MLB teams with a worse record.

Creative Commons is an international voluntary licensing scheme that offers writers, photographers, and other content creators a standard protocol for making their work available to the public under specified conditions. This photo carries a Creative Commons attribution share-alike (CC BY-SA version 4.0) license that allows users to use the image without renumeration, including in further derivative works, but requiring attribution in all instances.

Copyright © Technology News and Literature. All rights reserved.

 
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from 💚

Our Father Who art in heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

 
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from 💚

Apocalypse putin

Your war is sold Forever blind on the road and in the year of cold and mujahideen Your hearse is being towed At last to the Greek In shame for four lives Who roundedly count out the perfect steps Were it murder you would know about Introspection And Falun Gong And last pact at sea But by air And was nice not to worry As you, “the great”, Who didn’t believe in Tripoli Or lines to Scandinavia fire For the bored young columns And most are at war In Trinitarian by Doldrums Asking for rent by reparations This is the referendum In season, Lefthand you, Spinning death to Oslo And corner-judging your way to iconoclasts veer We vote as we can, Your mess is for grafting And piles of garbage be-rot Sycophantic flame Eponymous spark and writhing new This on dynamite and yours is fresh Time lost and women spent To Cuba or Wreckhouse The flooring diamonds of sweet hell Come to the street and burn it down Your death is so and pre-esteemed No-one makes it possible but you- In your tent And fires to Rome that fail In case of solemn poor who will- Who will kill you without fail And in the wind ashes blow- themselves to Moscow As Kremlin fires burn your own hand And forests new but of your petroleum six Your mother sang For the hands of a child Who murdered free And played with a pilot Who’s forgotten your name And is tired of war

 
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from Telmina's notes

そろそろ本格的に来月からの仕事探しをしなければならないにもかかわらず、ほとんど身動きを取れない状況のテルミナ™です。

 昨日までの三連休は自分も文字通り休んだ(というかゲームやAIお絵描きばっかりしていた)のですが、今日からは自分も能動的に動かなければなりません。

 もっとも、あさってには千代田区の区民検診も控えていますが…。

 閑話休題。10月14日は「鉄道の日」です。

 昨年および一昨年は、ちょうど休日と被っていたため、日本における鉄道発祥の地である横浜に行ってきました。

 昨年、一昨年とも、自分は「汽車道」と呼ばれる道を歩いていましたが、周囲が観光客だらけということで、一人寂しく歩いていた自分はまさに心をえぐられるような思いでしたよ。

横浜のみなとみらい地区周辺を一望

 なお、今年は恐らく自分が「鉄道の日」をそれらしく堪能することは無いと思います。冒頭で述べたとおり、そろそろ仕事探しをしなければなりませんし、そもそも今の自分に小旅行を決め込むような精神的および経済的な余裕はありません。少なくとも横浜に行くことはあり得ません。

 そもそも、小旅行であれば先週おこなっていますしね。もっともそちらは鉄道が主目的ではなかったのですが、東急田園都市線の脱線事故に間接的に巻き込まれるというある意味貴重な体験をできましたしね(ぉぃ)。

電車が運転見合わせであるものの大きな混乱がなかった、2025年10月6日・11:08頃の二子玉川駅

 世間一般では普通の平日である上に、自分は冒頭で述べたように仕事探しをしなければならないため、今日は恐らく電車に乗ることもないでしょう。乗ったとしても数駅分の移動でおしまいになると思います。

#2025年 #2025年10月 #2025年10月14日 #ひとりごと #雑談 #鉄道の日 #鉄道

 
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from CSF Quarterly

Pay attention when you encounter the same idea multiple ways in different contexts.

  • Calibration to grace and for recognizing sin will increase as you journey with your halo.

  • Be amazed: what was written by Saints hundreds or thousands of years ago so often seems written for me, today, with what is happening.

#Halo #Marriage #Parenting #Catholic #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

 
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from CSF Quarterly

Jesus tells us in the Gospels: What God has joined into one flesh, let no man tear asunder. Saint Paul extols: Wives, obey your husbands; husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the Church.

Every wife and husband are joined by God to reveal God's love to the world, bear new life into the world, and provide, protect, and defend hearth, rearing their children to come to know God's breath in them and breath it into the world. Wives and husbands, each in their own way, reveal Christ to each other and are called to be humbly obedient to Christ in each other, running toward Jesus our sweet Christ hand in hand, sharing the delights and challenges of this pilgrims' journey. For each married person the path to salvation is their marriage, serving each other in Christ ... their primary halo, their marriage.

#Halo #Marriage #Parenting #Catholic #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

 
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from CSF Quarterly

Never entertain sin or thoughts of sin! Upon the first whiff of sin, immediately draw the sword and pray:

Heavenly Father,

Forgive me for being foolish! Help me see how ridiculous (name the temptation) is!

Jesus,

Grant me the humility to accept your gift of the grace of (name the counter virtue for that temptation’s deadly sin), which always defeats the temptation of (name the deadly sin that tempts you).

Holy Spirit,

Guide me to see and immediately take the one next step to breathe my Breath of God into the world. Specifically, my next step is to (name the immediate next step). Give me the fortitude to go and do it now. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen! ____

A few notes

God always answers this prayer.

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7).

Asking for the weapons of the Salvation Arts always remains in God, making His words remain in us. The prayer to the Father asks for the Salvation Art of Mindfulness to see how ridiculous sin is. The prayer to Jesus asks for one of the virtues, another Salvation Art. And the final prayer to the Holy Spirit asks for the gifts needed to breath our inner breath of God into the world.

The Father’s Gift

Freedom and laughter. If you don’t feel light and free immediately after calling Satan’s temptation ridiculous, you didn’t name the temptation clearly or specifically enough. Satan fights us in this prayer and does all he can to hide behind rocks on the battlefield that he may attack us with renewed vigor when we arrogantly think we’ve won. As long as Satan remains hidden behind a rock, we aren’t able to accept the gift of wild freedom God the Father always offers us. We have to exercise our will against Satan and name with clarity the temptation — not the detailed circumstances, but the flavor of the deadly sin.

Thus, “help me see how ridiculous my sin is!” fails because it isn’t specific in naming the deadly sin, leaving lots of rocks for Satan to hide behind. Likewise, “help me see how ridiculous it is when Sam is praised at work and all my hard work, which was hours and hours and which Sam needed to do his work, for which he was praised … is!” fails because rather than being prayer that simply names the temptation it repeats and deepens the sin itself.

Instead pray: “Father help me see how ridiculous it is when I am jealous of Sam for succeeding!” This removes all hiding places without entering into the turmoil of the sin, inadvertently repeating the sin anew. Instead, it is short, simple, specific and clear.

If you pray to the Father and do not immediately experience the gift of wild, jubilant freedom, you prayed it wrong. Dig deep, examine how to name the specific deadly sin without repeating the sin, and pray it again. Like using any weapon, the more you wield the Trinity Sword Prayer, the more effective you will become! This is spiritual warfare, you are exercising your will to trust God over Satan, to choose your inner Saint over your inner Sinner. Satan attacks where you are weakest, so naming where his attacking frees you to accept God’s abundance, and graces (weaponry). Fight to get this prayer right, and you will be stunned by God’s loving abundance!

Jesus’ Gift

Courage. Being emboldened. Again, if we do not immediately feel emboldened on praying it, we are allowing our Sinner to hide in how we are praying, preventing us from being able to accept the gift Jesus freely offers us. One way this happens is in our asking for something that isn’t a grace. If it isn’t one of the seven heavenly, life giving virtues, it may not be a grace. As long as what you ask Jesus for is a grace, it will be given and you will feel emboldened.

The Holy Spirit’s Gift

Action. If you don’t immediately find yourself with your first two gifts (wild abandon and and courageous) doing the next step to breathe your Breath of God into the world, free of the burden of temptation, you prayed it wrong. Take some time to get to know your Breath of God. Understand that it is through everyday ordinary tasks that miraculous things happen to transform the world, to help build God’s kingdom here and now. Make your next step simple and specific and something you can do right now. Open the gift of the Holy Spirit by going and doing it, right now!

Pray without Ceasing

Saint Paul extolls us to “pray without ceasing.” A powerful way to do this is to realize all activities worth doing ought to be prayer. Promote that way of seeing the world by praying the Trinity Sword Prayer, changing the prayer to the Father to:

“Father, thank you for your wild abundance in the beauty of today. Help me build your kingdom!” Then continue with the prayer to Jesus and the prayer to the Holy Spirit.

Suddenly, your value, meaning, purpose as a gift of wild abundance from God is clear, as is the single thing you need to do next to breathe God’s breath into the world! Go get ‘um!

As seen in Scripture!

Is there reference to any of the Trinity Sword Prayer in scripture? Yes! It appears in the Gospels is concept, John 21:15–19. Peter, called Simon again in these versus by Jesus to point out how his sin (how ridiculous he has been), has fallen for the sin of cowardice in the face of his fear during Jesus’ trial — denying Jesus three times. Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him three times — to directly counter and overcome the bigger Sinner Simon Peter has because of his sin. Each time, Jesus then tells him the next concrete action he is to take: “Feed my lambs … Tend my sheep … Feed my sheep” — aka: be Pope and take care of my Body, the Church! What other scriptures reveal this pattern of seeing how ridiculous sin is, asking for grace, and concretely moving forward?

Ask and it shall be given you: multiple places in the Gospels Jesus says if we ask for things in union with God they will be given. As referenced above, John 15:7 is one of these.

It really is “Digital”!

Either our faith is “on” or it isn't (just like the zeros and ones in the digital world). One of the amazing gifts of the Trinity Sword Prayer is it helps us discover areas where we aren't trusting God as much as we might think, giving us the opportunity to exercise our will and choose to trust where trust seems impossible. “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”

One question I've received about this prayer is what about (soon to be) Saint Mother Teresa's years of despair? Surely there must be more nuance here to the “pray right and these gifts will be given”? If a Saint, like Mother Teresa or Padre Pio experiences despair, surely they know how to pray right?

First, Saint Ignatius in his two “Discernment of Spirits” appendices to his 30 Day Retreat, reveals there are three causes of despair (desolation), all of which have some form of sin at their root. Somehow, some way, if we are in despair, there is someplace in our soul we don't yet trust God with wild abandon. This is true for all of us, Saints included.

What is amazing about Saints who experience desolation in their prayer life is they understand it is part of their purgation, or purgatory, and challenging as it is, they embrace it, trusting God to heal them even as they anguish, and they continue to persist in their ministry despite it all. This is what Jesus calls us to do, because faith bears fruit in all seasons, including desolation. In the Gospel of Mark (11:11-26), Jesus curses the fig tree because it is not bearing fruit out of season. To the eyes of the world, this seem unjust. But this is Jesus, who defines justice. Through faith, we are called to bear fruit in all seasons, even the season of despair.

Learning from Praying it “Wrong”

One of the powerful gifts of the Trinity Sword Prayer is that praying it “wrong” is an invitation to examination of consciences, as well as a guide map to discovering where we are deaf, blind, dumb, and stupid — where and how our inner Sinner is hiding. The more we discover this, the more we are able to open ourselves up to Christ's light, which always abolishes the Sinner, and receive the abundant gifts God has already given but we have yet to unwrap! Even in our despair, God is a God of wild abundance!

#CurrentEventsTimelessTruth #Halo #Marriage #Parenting #Catholic #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

 
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from CSF Quarterly

Sin twists our vision like we are wearing a pair of invisible fun house glasses. Our vision is skewed, twisted, topsy-turvy. Instead of “up” being up, we are turned around so we think up is a squiggly line to the lower left; true left as a spiral to the upper right, and so on. Each person’s pair of sin’s fun house glasses distorts reality differently. Thus, if you tell me to turn left, I take an erratic lower right backwards, believing I am following your instructions.

Weird as all this looks to an outside observer, everything seems normal to us nibble-wits on the inside, even if most other people are doing things that make no sense.

Imagine how foolish we must look to everyone else! Moving about in odd ways to a distorted vision of the world only we see. Now imagine how a bunch of us look, each with our own differently distorted pair of glasses.

“Help me, please!” I call out.

“I’m right here, how can I help?” you offer, concerned.

“No you’re not,” I respond in frustration. “You’re not near me at all. You’re by that tree.”

“What?” you reply confused and a bit agitated. “You’re crazy. There is no tree.”

In reality, we both stand together, trying to hold each other up.

“Oof! Hey!” you holler. “Why’d you punch me?”

“I didn’t. I was getting the sliver out of your eye.”

Absurd as this interaction may seem, it represents the type of miscommunication that happens so easily between two people, even if they’ve known each other for years, even if they have the best of intentions, even if they are married and deeply love each other. Strife often enters relationships because of sin’s fun house glasses.

Strife, however slight, in relationship always indicates the presence of sin. Sin makes us deaf, blind, dumb, and stupid. Join a Halo. Start a Halo. Halo together, lose the fun house glasses, and run toward Jesus our Christ, with clearer sight, together.

#CurrentEventsTimelessTruth #Halo #Marriage #Parenting #Catholic #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

 
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