Every language I reach for comes pre-loaded. Biased. Stigmatized. Traumatized. Baggage.

Clinical language wants to diagnose. It hears “experience” and answers: pathology. It reduces the living to processes it can observe and name externally, or pretend to.

Literary language wants to aestheticise. It wraps lived truth in soft prose, diluting what overwhelms into what entertains, seeking clever metaphors for things that aren’t metaphorical.

Philosophical language wants to parse. It embeds ontology, epistemology, phenomenology. Frameworks that map the unknown to the known, assuming the coordinates always correlate. They don’t.

And no amount of mental or linguistic gymnastics can impose a Kantian architectonic on lived experience without mistaking the unassimilated for the unreal.

Every vocabulary has its uses. None of them are adequate for the blessings and burdens I now bear.

I’ve tried using the language of others: Jung, Corbin, Grof, Ferrer, Hillman, Nasr, Arabi, Bhārgava.

They all have their place. But here they are misplaced.

My search for meaning requires finding the right words.

Part of my journey is finding those words.

Another part is speaking them.

The rest is just life, however uncanny.

There is a moment that does not always look dramatic from the outside.

You are still functioning. You still answer people. You still do what needs to be done. But somewhere inside, you know the truth: you are tired of being the strong one. Tired of explaining. Tired of replaying what happened. Tired of telling yourself that tomorrow will be easier when you are not sure you believe it.

That is the place I was thinking about when I went back to what Jesus does when you feel broken. Not the polished version of brokenness that makes for a neat testimony later. I mean the kind that makes you sit quietly and wonder how much longer you can carry what nobody else fully sees.

Sometimes the hardest part is that pain changes the Jesus we think we are approaching. If people have been harsh with you, Jesus can start to feel harsh in your imagination too. If people left when you needed them, you may quietly expect Him to leave. I wrote about that in when the real Jesus breaks through the version we inherited, because sometimes the first thing that needs healing is not the circumstance. It is the picture of Christ that suffering distorted.

I want to tell you something simple tonight.

You do not have to be impressive for Jesus.

You do not have to know what lesson God is teaching you.

You do not have to explain why you still hurt.

You do not have to turn your pain into something inspirational before you bring it to Him.

You can just tell Him the truth.

I think we underestimate how much energy we spend pretending to be okay.

We say we are fine because the real answer would take too long.

We say we have given it to God even though we picked it back up before breakfast.

We say we forgive, but the memory still has a pulse.

We say we trust God, but some nights we are frightened by how little we can control.

Maybe that is not hypocrisy.

Maybe it is simply where you are.

Jesus already knows.

That is what gives prayer permission to become honest again.

“Lord, I am angry.”

“Lord, I miss them.”

“Lord, I do not understand why You allowed this.”

“Lord, I know I made mistakes.”

“Lord, I am scared that nothing is going to change.”

There is something deeply freeing about no longer trying to surprise God with a version of yourself He has already seen through.

Peter did not surprise Jesus when he failed.

Jesus knew the denial was coming before Peter did.

That has always struck me.

Peter thought his failure revealed something to Jesus.

It did not.

It revealed something to Peter.

And after the resurrection, Jesus still went looking for him.

He did not meet Peter and pretend nothing happened. He also did not make Peter spend the rest of his life proving he was sorry.

Jesus restored him.

That tells me failure can be real without becoming final.

Maybe you need that tonight.

Maybe the thing breaking your heart was done to you.

Maybe you did part of the breaking yourself.

Either way, Jesus is not confused about which category you belong in.

He knows.

And He still calls people toward Him.

I also think about the woman who touched Jesus in the crowd.

Twelve years of suffering.

Twelve years is long enough for pain to stop feeling temporary.

Long enough to forget what life felt like before it.

Long enough to become tired of explaining it.

She reached for Jesus quietly, maybe hoping to receive what she needed and disappear.

But Jesus stopped.

He called attention to the person everyone else could have missed.

There are days when I think that is what some of us need most.

Not a giant breakthrough.

Not a perfect explanation.

Just the reminder that Jesus has not lost sight of us in the crowd.

You can feel invisible and still be seen.

You can feel weak and still be loved.

You can feel uncertain and still be held.

You can feel broken without being abandoned.

I know those sentences can sound easy when somebody else writes them.

Living them is harder.

That is why I do not want to tell you to “just have faith.”

Faith is not always a feeling of certainty.

Sometimes faith is opening your eyes in the morning and saying, “Jesus, I am still here.”

Sometimes it is choosing not to send the message.

Sometimes it is finally asking for help.

Sometimes it is admitting that the thing you keep calling love is hurting you.

Sometimes it is forgiving without giving somebody permission to hurt you again.

Sometimes it is simply sitting with the Bible open because you do not know what else to do.

A small step can still be faith.

There is another thing I am learning.

Healing does not always mean becoming who you were before.

We spend a lot of time wanting to go back.

Back before the loss.

Back before the betrayal.

Back before the diagnosis.

Back before the mistake.

Back before we knew what we know now.

But maybe Jesus is not leading you backward.

Peter did not become the Peter who never denied Jesus.

He became the Peter who had failed, been forgiven, been restored, and knew something about grace he could never have learned from a distance.

That is different.

And maybe different is not always worse.

You may carry a scar.

The risen Jesus did.

I love that detail.

Resurrection did not erase the wounds.

It changed what the wounds meant.

They were no longer evidence that death had won.

They became evidence that death had lost.

Maybe that is what healing eventually looks like in some parts of our lives.

The memory remains, but it no longer controls the room.

The scar remains, but the wound is not bleeding anymore.

You remember what happened, but you stop assuming it predicts what happens next.

Tonight, if you feel broken, I do not want to give you a long list of things to fix.

Just one invitation.

Come to Jesus as the person you are right now.

Not tomorrow’s version.

Not the stronger version.

Not the version who understands.

This one.

The tired one.

The disappointed one.

The ashamed one.

The angry one.

The one who still has questions.

Bring that person.

Jesus already knows how to meet you there.

And if the only prayer you have tonight is, “Jesus, please stay close,” let that be enough to begin.

Watch the message that inspired this reflection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKKsorOkHyI

Your friend,

Douglas Vandergraph

Master Index: https://douglasvandergraph.com/douglas-vandergraph-master-index/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

There is a kind of disappointment that does not arrive loudly. It settles in slowly.

You wake up one morning and realize the future you were expecting is no longer the future in front of you.

Maybe the relationship changed. Maybe the job never happened. Maybe the prayer was answered differently. Maybe the door stayed closed. Maybe you did everything you knew to do, and still ended up somewhere you never planned to be.

That is why trusting God when life does not go the way you expected matters so much. Not because faith should make disappointment disappear, but because eventually every one of us has to decide whether we were trusting God or trusting the version of life we hoped He would give us.

And sometimes that realization comes only after the plan has already broken. That is why when God does not give you the answer you thought you needed can become such a personal lesson. You can love God sincerely and still struggle when His answer is not the answer you wanted.

I think there are moments when we do not even realize how attached we have become to a certain outcome.

We pray for it.

We picture it.

We prepare for it.

We begin speaking about it as though it is already part of our future.

Then something changes.

And suddenly we are grieving more than an event. We are grieving a life that existed in our imagination.

That grief is real.

You do not have to pretend otherwise.

You can tell God, “I really wanted this.”

You can tell Him, “I thought this was where my life was going.”

You can tell Him, “I do not understand why this changed.”

Jesus never taught us to hide that kind of honesty.

In Gethsemane, He did not pretend the road ahead was easy. He brought His anguish before the Father and still surrendered.

That is what surrender really looks like.

It is not pretending you never cared.

It is not forcing yourself to say, “I am fine.”

It is not acting as though the loss does not matter.

Surrender is being able to say, “God, this is still what I wanted, but I do not want losing it to make me lose You.”

That is a different kind of prayer.

And maybe that is the prayer you are learning now.

Sometimes we think faith is supposed to give us certainty.

But Jesus did not give His disciples certainty about every part of the road.

He gave them Himself.

They followed before they understood.

They walked with Him before they knew where everything was leading.

Maybe that is what faith looks like for you right now.

Not having the whole plan.

Not knowing what replaces what was lost.

Not understanding why the timing changed.

Just knowing who you want to keep following.

There is something very freeing in admitting that you do not need to understand everything today.

You may only need the next step.

Not the next five years.

Not the next relationship.

Not the next career move.

Not the full explanation.

Just the next faithful thing.

Make the call.

Finish the work.

Rest if you are tired.

Tell the truth.

Pray again.

Stop forcing the door if you already know it is closed.

Ask for help if you need it.

Sometimes faith becomes very small and very ordinary.

That does not make it weak.

Jesus taught His followers to pray for daily bread.

There is a kindness in that.

Today’s bread.

Today’s strength.

Today’s obedience.

Today’s grace.

Maybe tomorrow does not need to be solved yet.

Maybe today is enough.

I also think there is something painful but useful that happens when a plan breaks.

It shows us what we were asking that plan to do for us.

Maybe you were asking the relationship to make you feel secure.

Maybe you were asking the job to prove your worth.

Maybe you were asking money to make fear disappear.

Maybe you were asking success to reassure you that your life was going in the right direction.

None of those desires make you a bad person.

But they can show you where too much weight was being placed.

A plan can be good and still be too small to carry your identity.

A relationship can be meaningful and still be too fragile to become your foundation.

A job can matter and still be unable to tell you who you are.

A dream can be beautiful and still not be God.

Maybe that is what this season is exposing.

Not that you should stop caring.

Not that you should stop planning.

Just that your peace needs somewhere deeper to rest.

And if you are in a season where nothing makes sense, I do not want to give you a shallow promise.

I cannot tell you that the old plan will come back.

I cannot promise that every closed door will reopen.

I cannot tell you that every loss will be replaced with something that immediately feels better.

Sometimes Christians say those things because we want to make pain easier to explain.

But sometimes there is no clean explanation.

Sometimes all we can say is this:

The plan changed.

God did not disappear.

The future changed.

Jesus did not.

The answer changed.

His character did not.

That may not solve everything.

But it gives you somewhere to stand.

You are still allowed to grieve.

You are still allowed to miss what you thought would happen.

You are still allowed to wish things had gone differently.

But you do not have to let the disappointment become your identity.

You are not only the person whose relationship ended.

You are not only the person who did not get the job.

You are not only the person whose prayer was answered differently.

You are not only the person who is starting over later than expected.

You are still someone Jesus can lead from here.

That matters.

Because sometimes we spend so much time staring at the life we lost that we stop noticing the life still in front of us.

There are still people to love.

There is still work to do.

There are still prayers to pray.

There are still things to learn.

There are still ways to become kinder, wiser, steadier, and more honest.

There is still a life here.

Maybe not the life you pictured.

But still a life.

And God can meet you in this one.

Not just the imagined one.

Not just the old one.

This one.

The one you woke up to today.

The one with unanswered questions.

The one with changed plans.

The one where you are trying to figure out what comes next.

He can meet you here.

Maybe faith, in this season, is not getting the plan back.

Maybe faith is learning that you can lose the plan and still remain close to God.

Maybe it is discovering that you can be disappointed and still pray.

You can be confused and still follow.

You can grieve and still hope.

You can admit that the road changed and still believe your life has meaning.

That kind of faith may not look impressive.

It may not feel dramatic.

It may simply look like waking up tomorrow and taking one more step with Jesus.

And maybe that is enough.

A Question for You

What plan did you once believe would happen that you eventually had to let go of?

What did it teach you about the difference between trusting God and trusting an outcome?

If you are still in the middle of that season, you do not need to have the answer yet.

You may only need to know this:

The plan can change without God leaving you.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Douglas Vandergraph Master Index: https://douglasvandergraph.com/douglas-vandergraph-master-index/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

I think way back sometimes to the moment I first heard he was running for president. I laughed out loud, and rolled my eyes, and said, holy shit, they will let anyone run for president these days. Then it was like I went through stages in the following months. At first it was simply funny to me. Then it was like, wow, that is really happening. Then that changed to, omg that actually might happen. Somewhere in the middle it ceased being funny. Then it happened.

Thinking back again on another tangent, I believe I had kind of a naive impression of him more than an opinion based on any solid info. I didn't know very much about him. I like to look things up about favorite bands or musicians, actors, or authors. Important people. Real people I find interesting, or creative, or who had done great things. He lacks all of those things, so I knew only the basics about him. Like I knew he had a lot of money (that turns out he didn't earn), and a terrible show that didn't interest me even slightly. He and his family made the news a bit while they fumble fucked their way through their miserable lives.

I also have a very distant and vague memory of my father laughing at him when he saw him on the TV. Not in the way a person would spontaneously laugh over something funny. Laughing at how over the top ludicrous of a human being he was. The way someone would laugh at an inappropriate offensive joke, or if the person walking beside them stepped on a fresh dog turd.

Those are memories I have of him in my household from when I was quite young up until he swindled his way into politics. I would say that to me he was sort of a caricature of a human being that appeared on the TV screen from time to time. Once he was gone from the screen I never thought about him at all until next time he did something stupid enough to be on TV.

Instead of succumbing to the needs of his toxic narcissistic tendencies, he could have lived out the end of his failure of a life, shitting himself and mumbling nonsense in the shadows of some gaudy abandoned rundown skyscraper. The T fallen from the sign long ago. No one left in his life but maybe a flunky or two. Or better yet, he might have been incarcerated for the heinous crimes he has more than likely committed. In the end, his death would have been barely noticed. Would have been one of those, oh shit, I didn't even realize that guy was still alive! A front page sidebar headline for a day, at best. Maybe a brief story in the back pages about what a fucking piece of garbage he was. We can only dream of alternate timelines.

https://thingsleftunsaid.ca/grateful

I am...over it.

Now, not only do I have to contend with books, videos, blogs, emails, etc. being completely AI. The Wall Street Journal is publicly acknowledging that it allows its journalists to submit articles that are 100% AI and it will publish them. Hell, even on this site there are editorials written about the dangers of AI and what not that are clearly written by AI. Do they acknowledge it? Of course not. They confidently parade around like they are a source of authority on the subject. I'm sick to death of it.

So many movies are AI slop that it is just brain rotting. I go to do a Google search on something, and even if not under the AI tab the first summary that comes up is AI. And it is wrong the majority of the time! Let me repeat that. It is wrong the majority of the time. Unfortunately, it would appear that most people are too uneducated on whatever the subject matter might be to recognize that it is incorrect. And because it responds confidently, they believe it.

It all gives me a massive headache and just makes me want to turn my back on so many things that I have actually enjoyed in my life. While I do understand that everybody wants to be able to do everything and anything that they have their heart set on, there is a reason for practice. There is a reason for education. I should not have to spend hours scrolling through lists of books trying to find something I want to read, only for half or more of the listings that I pull up to end up being clearly AI or written so poorly that they should not be on the shelf with other books.

And that's just a small topic of all the fucked up crap going on in the world today. I haven't even touched upon the horrors. I am sick of it all. I am sick of Christian extremists trying to shove their beliefs down everybody's throats while they piss and shit all over everything it is that they're supposed to believe in. I can't even get started on the current cabinet, because I will just get filled with rage and depression.

I try to find positive things to read just to balance it out in my head. There is so much hatred and finger pointing and ignorance being touted as “good” that I have to come to accept that I either do not like people or I do not like “goodness.” Probably a bit of both in all fairness.

This world makes my soul ache. We focus on all the wrong things. We are supposed to want our children to be smarter than us, not dumb them down. We are supposed to provide our children with information and the knowledge of how to obtain information and then give them the choice from their learnings. We are supposed to protect them. Not by making them stupid. But by keeping them well fed, keeping a roof over their head, making sure that they have access to everything that they need to have access to in order to grow wiser. Do you have any idea how much a child's brain grows in the first handful of years in their life? Nutrition is vital to that growth. Actual nutrition.

It makes me sad to say that I don't like people. I want to like people. I want to be able to see positive things in everyone. I strive to. The reality is, as much as I want imto, I don't think I like people very much. I find humans extraordinarily disappointing. I think an unforeseen asteroid wiping us out would be one of the greatest blessings in the history of our planet. I really do, because we are a cesspool of rot that is so caught up in our make-believe storytelling of greatness, that we cannot see we're the ones shitting all over everything.

This week, I am grumpy. I have gained 2 pounds because I obsessively, emotionally ate far too much yesterday. The migraines have gotten much better and are now just a dim background annoyance. I have succeeded in not throwing my phone against a wall multiple times. And other things I'm not going to write about publicly, blah, blah, blah. I replaced the seat on my one toilet, and added a new handle-ma-bobber on the second one because the metal arm literally snapped off. It is no longer metal. Go me! I am sure there are plenty of other things, but I just cannot think of them right now. Probably because I am just so damn annoyed with the world.

We sicken me. We really do.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

There are seasons when life becomes quieter than we expected. The phone rings less. A friendship changes. Someone who once felt close becomes distant. In moments like that, what Jesus teaches us about being alone without feeling abandoned becomes more than an idea. It becomes something we have to learn personally.

Sometimes the hardest part is not the silence itself. It is what we start telling ourselves because of it. We wonder whether we still matter. We replay old conversations. We notice who has not called. And that is where finding peace when people disappoint, reject, or misunderstand you becomes deeply connected to faith, because peace cannot survive if it depends entirely on another person's attention.

Jesus understood what it felt like to know people were about to leave. In John 16:32, He told His disciples they would scatter. Yet He could still say that He was not alone because the Father was with Him. A person can leave your life without God leaving your life.

The Quiet Can Feel Louder Than Noise

Sometimes silence magnifies everything. A thought that seemed small during a busy day feels enormous at night. A disappointment that was manageable while we were working suddenly becomes heavy when the house is quiet.

Maybe that is one reason we rush to fill every silent moment. We turn something on. We pick up the phone. We scroll. We look for distraction.

There is nothing wrong with those things by themselves. But sometimes we try to escape the silence before asking what it might be showing us.

Maybe the quiet is revealing how much we depended on someone's approval. Maybe it is showing us that we are grieving something we never admitted we lost. Maybe it is exposing how afraid we are of being alone with our own thoughts.

Sometimes the silence is not the enemy. Sometimes it is simply the place where we finally hear what has been there all along.

Jesus Did Not Avoid Solitude

Luke 5:16 says Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

I love that detail because Jesus was surrounded by people constantly. People wanted healing, answers, and His attention. There was always another need.

And still, He stepped away.

He chose quiet.

He prayed.

That tells me solitude is not automatically a sign that something is wrong. Sometimes it can be a place where we become more honest with God.

It can be where we finally say, “God, I miss what used to be.” Or, “God, I do not understand why this changed.” Or even, “God, I know You are here, but I still feel lonely.”

Faith does not require us to hide those feelings. It lets us bring them into the presence of God.

You Can Miss Someone Without Losing Yourself

There is a difference between missing someone and believing you cannot be whole without them.

When someone becomes part of our daily life, we naturally begin imagining the future with them in it. We build routines. We form expectations. We get used to their presence.

Then something changes.

Sometimes we are not only grieving the person. We are grieving the future we had imagined.

But someone can be important to your story without being the author of your story.

The disciples scattered, but Jesus' purpose did not disappear. Peter denied Him, but His purpose did not disappear. Judas betrayed Him, but His purpose did not disappear.

Other people's choices affected Jesus, but they did not define His identity or end His mission.

You can miss someone and still move forward. You can wish things had gone differently and still trust God with what comes next. You can remember a beautiful season without trying to live inside it forever.

Maybe You Do Not Need to Fill the Space Yet

We are often in a hurry to replace what leaves.

A friendship changes, so we look for another connection. A relationship ends, and we wonder who will come next. The house gets quiet, so we keep noise running constantly.

But maybe not every empty space needs to be filled immediately.

Maybe some spaces need to breathe. Maybe some losses need to be grieved before we cover them. Maybe some questions need to remain unanswered for a while.

I am not saying God caused every relationship to change. We should not make claims we cannot know.

But I do believe God can meet us in the space change leaves behind.

Sometimes that space becomes where we learn things we could not learn when everything was full.

Being Needed Is Not the Same as Being Loved

Sometimes what we miss is not only a person. We miss being needed.

When people depend on us, we feel important. When they call for advice or ask for help, we know where we fit.

Then they stop needing us in the same way, and we wonder whether we still matter.

We do.

Being useful is not the same thing as being valuable.

Jesus served constantly, but His identity did not come from how many people needed Him that day.

Neither should ours.

If nobody calls today, you still matter. If nobody asks for your help this week, you still matter. If your role changes, you still matter.

Your value is deeper than your usefulness to another person.

The Room Is Not Empty Just Because It Is Quiet

Psalm 139 reminds us that there is nowhere we can go beyond the presence of God.

That means the room we call empty may not be empty at all.

You can sit alone and still be known. You can drive alone and still be accompanied by God. You can walk through a season nobody else fully understands and still be seen.

That does not mean loneliness disappears instantly. Loneliness is real.

But feelings do not always tell the entire truth.

You may feel alone without being abandoned. You may feel forgotten without actually being forgotten.

Jesus could look at the reality of people leaving and still know that the Father remained.

Maybe that is the kind of faith we need in quieter seasons.

Do Not Build a Wall Around the Quiet

Learning to be comfortable alone does not mean deciding we never need people again.

Jesus withdrew, but He returned. He prayed alone, and then He went back to people.

Healthy solitude should make us stronger for relationships, not bitter toward them.

If you need connection, reach out. Call someone. Go to church. Invite a friend to sit with you. Serve someone who may be lonely too.

The goal is not to stop needing people.

The goal is to stop asking people to carry the weight that belongs to God.

Maybe the Quiet Has Something to Give You

I do not know what kind of quiet you may be living in right now.

Maybe it feels peaceful. Maybe it feels painful. Maybe you are still trying to understand why something changed.

But I hope you do not automatically treat the silence as proof that something has gone wrong.

Jesus knew crowds, and He knew solitude. He knew companionship, and He knew people leaving. Through all of it, He knew the Father was with Him.

Sometimes the deepest truths are the ones we hear when everything else gets quiet.

You are allowed to miss people. You are allowed to want connection. You are allowed to grieve what changed.

But you are also allowed to discover that your life still has meaning when the room is quiet.

You are allowed to learn that someone leaving does not erase you.

You are allowed to sit with God and slowly realize that being alone is not the same thing as being abandoned.

A Question for You

What has God taught you in one of the quieter seasons of your life?

Maybe you learned to pray differently. Maybe you discovered how much you depended on another person's approval. Maybe you realized you needed healthier community. Or maybe you are still in the middle of that season and do not know yet.

If this brought someone to mind, share it with them. They may need a quiet reminder today that people can leave, life can change, and the room can become still without God ever disappearing.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Douglas Vandergraph Master Index: https://douglasvandergraph.com/douglas-vandergraph-master-index/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

A checklist before any AI-generated news video goes out

I handle communications for a small organisation that publishes to a local audience, and I started generating video summaries of our written pieces about a year ago. I have also killed four of them before publication, which is the part worth writing about, because everything I have read on this subject is either a product pitch or a general warning that AI is dangerous, and neither helped me build a process.

What follows is the process I actually use. It is not elaborate. It exists because I got things wrong early and would rather someone else skipped that.

What actually goes wrong

Only one of these is the failure people expect.

Invented detail. This is the famous one and in my experience the least common, because I generate from a piece I have already written rather than from a prompt. The tool works from my document, so it does not invent facts. What it does do is generalise. A sentence saying the council approved the plan for the eastern section became narration saying the council approved the plan, which is a different and false statement. Summarisation drops qualifying clauses first, and in reporting the qualifier is frequently the accuracy.

Collapsed sequence. Written pieces establish chronology through structure. Narration is linear and has to commit to an order, and twice I have had a generated script imply that one thing happened because of another when the original text only said both happened. Causation appears without anyone adding it.

Borrowed certainty. This is the one I did not anticipate. My written pieces hedge properly, with attributions and words like reportedly and according to. A confident synthetic voice reading a hedged sentence somehow lands as less hedged. I do not fully understand the mechanism, but I have watched people take a stronger impression from the video than from the article, and that is on me rather than on them.

The four checks I do by hand

Every generated script, without exception, before anything renders.

One: every attribution survived. I search the script for the names and sources that appear in the original. If the article said a spokesperson stated something and the script says it happened, that is a rewrite, not a summary.

Two: every qualifier survived. I go through the original looking for where, when, if, among, reportedly, alleged, and check each one is still there. This is the check that catches the most.

Three: no new causation. I read the script asking whether it implies any because that the original did not contain.

Four: nothing is stated more strongly than the source. A generated script tends to tighten prose, and tightening removes hedges.

This takes about as long as the video runs. It is not optional and it does not get faster, and anyone who tells you the workflow is push button has not published anything they were accountable for.

Disclosure, and why I stopped debating it

For the first two months I put a line in the description. Now I put it in the video, on screen, in the first five seconds, and I say it in the narration.

The reason is a conversation with a reader who asked whether the presenter was a real person at our organisation. She had not been deceived exactly, since the information was accurate and the description said so. But she had spent forty seconds thinking she was being addressed by a colleague of mine, and when she found out she was not, her question was what else she had assumed wrongly.

That is the actual cost. Not a complaint, not a correction, just a small permanent reduction in how much someone trusts everything else you publish. The line costs nothing.

The wider standards conversation is worth following rather than reasoning about from scratch. AP's news values and principles set out how attribution and sourcing are supposed to work regardless of format, and Poynter publishes ongoing work on how newsrooms are handling synthetic media specifically.

What I use it for

The list has got shorter over the year rather than longer.

Visual summaries of pieces already published and checked. The article is the source and the video points at it. This is the bulk of what I do.

Structured information that does not change interpretation. Meeting times, service changes, opening hours, results. There is no judgement in this material and the risk of distortion is close to zero.

Explainers on things that keep coming up. How a particular process works, what a term means. These are written carefully once and reused, and they are the ones where the effort is most repaid.

Multilingual versions of the above. This is the biggest practical gain for us. I use Leadde.ai, which will translate a finished video and produce a separate version rather than overwriting it, handling the on screen text along with the narration. Our audience includes a substantial number of people who read a second language more comfortably than English, and until last year we simply did not serve them.

I have someone check every translation. Ordinary prose comes through well. Place names, official titles and anything legal do not, and an approximate translation of a court outcome is not a thing I am willing to publish.

What I never use it for

Anything unverified. If I am not certain, the answer is to not publish in any format, and the existence of a fast production route makes that discipline harder rather than easier.

Anything involving an accusation against a person. The wording in those pieces is chosen sentence by sentence, and a paraphrase is a different document with the same apparent authority.

Anything about a death, an injury or a disaster. Partly judgement about what the format conveys, partly that these are exactly the pieces where the reporting is most conditional and the summarisation risk highest.

Anything time critical. This is the one that surprises people, given the category name. My check takes fifteen minutes, and a genuinely breaking story does not have fifteen minutes. So breaking news is the thing I use this for least, and if I ever find myself skipping the check because something is urgent, that is the moment the process has failed.

Corrections after publication

Publish something wrong in text and you fix the text. Video is harder, and I did not have a plan for this the first time it happened.

What I do now: correct the source article first, regenerate the video from the corrected article, replace it at the same location, and add a correction note that is visible without playing anything. I keep the superseded version as a duplicate rather than deleting it, because someone may have acted on it and I want to be able to say exactly what it said.

The thing I got wrong initially was editing the video directly to patch the error. The article and the video then said slightly different things, and I had created a second problem while fixing the first.

Questions I get asked about this

Does it save time overall? Yes, but less than people assume. Generation is minutes. The check is roughly the runtime of the video. Against filming and editing it is a large saving, and against publishing the article alone it is an additional cost that has to be worth something.

Do the videos perform better than the articles? They reach different people rather than more people. The audience for a three minute summary overlaps less with our article readership than I expected.

What settings actually matter? The audience and objective fields, and keeping the length setting short. A generated script pitched at nobody in particular is the default outcome and the main reason first attempts feel generic.

Should captions be on? Always, from the first version. Most of this is watched with the sound off, and adding captions across a back catalogue later is much more work than turning them on at the start.

Is the technology the risk? No. The risk is that publishing becomes cheap enough that the checking step starts to feel disproportionate. That is a process problem and it has to be solved before the tooling arrives, not after.

How do you decide who appears as the presenter? We use a generated presenter rather than a likeness of anyone who works here, which sidesteps a whole category of problem. If you do want to use a real colleague's face, get their agreement in writing, be specific about what the avatar will be used to say, and agree what happens if they leave. A former employee still presenting your output is an awkward conversation nobody plans for.

Does any of this replace a reporter? It replaces a production step, not a reporting step. Everything I generate comes from something a person already researched, wrote and checked. If there were no article underneath, there would be nothing worth summarising, and the format would just be a confident voice reading an unverified claim.

What would make you stop using it entirely? If I found myself publishing something I had not fully checked because the video was already rendered and it felt wasteful not to use it. The sunk cost is small enough that this should never happen, and the day it does is the day the process is running me rather than the other way round.

Where I would start

If I were beginning now, I would take one already published explainer that gets referenced repeatedly, generate a version, and run the four checks slowly enough to notice what they catch.

Whatever the checks find on that first attempt is the thing to watch for permanently. In my case it was qualifiers, every time, and knowing that has been worth more than any setting I have adjusted since.

You are three weeks into something and you find the source. A ninety minute conference talk, or an interview with the one person who actually did the work, or a lecture from 2019 that half the field cites and nobody summarises.

It is exactly what you needed. It is also ninety minutes long, and you have no idea which ninety seconds of it matter.

So you do what everyone does. You scrub the progress bar, land in the middle of a sentence, back up, overshoot, give up and start from the beginning at 1.75x while checking your email. Forty minutes later you have a vague sense that he said something important about sampling, somewhere, and you cannot find it again.

This is not a discipline problem. It is a property of the medium.

Text takes up space, video takes up time

A book sits in front of you all at once. You can see the shape of a chapter before you read a word of it. Your eye can jump to a subheading, drop into a paragraph, decide within four seconds that this is not the section you want, and leave.

Video does not offer that. Video releases its content on a schedule, and the schedule belongs to the speaker. The only control you have is the speed at which the schedule runs.

That is the whole difference, and almost everything annoying about working from video sources follows from it.

The raw speed gap is real but modest. A 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert, pulling together 190 studies of reading rate, put average silent reading of English non-fiction at around 238 words per minute. Conversational speech and most recorded talks land closer to 130 to 160. Call it one and a half times faster to read the same content, which is nice but hardly life changing.

And you might reasonably point out that YouTube will play at 2x, which closes the gap and then some. Fair. There is even research supporting the habit: a 2021 study by Murphy and colleagues at UCLA found that students watching lectures at 1.5x and 2x scored about as well on comprehension tests as students watching at normal speed, with the losses only appearing at 2.5x.

So speed is not the argument. If watching faster were the only thing text bought you, transcripts would be a rounding error.

The argument is that there are three operations text supports and video does not support at any speed.

Skimming is not fast watching

Skimming is a different activity from reading, not a faster version of it. When you skim you are running a search, visually, at a level of comprehension deliberately set too low to actually understand anything. You are looking for a shape. A name, a number, a section break, the paragraph where the tone shifts.

You cannot do this to a video, because the low comprehension pass is not available. At 2x you still have to process every sentence in order. There is no equivalent of letting your eye fall down a page and stopping when something catches.

Which means the cost of checking whether a video is relevant is roughly the cost of watching the video. For one source that is fine. For twelve, it is a week.

You cannot search what you cannot read

Try to find the exact moment someone said a specific phrase in a two hour recording. The chapter markers, if the uploader bothered, are labelled at the resolution of ten minute blocks. The search box on the platform reads titles and descriptions and knows nothing about what is inside the file.

So you scrub. And scrubbing has an error rate, and the error rate compounds, and after the fourth attempt you are no longer sure whether you imagined the quote.

With a transcript this is a keystroke. That is not a small convenience. It changes which sources you are willing to use at all, because a source you cannot re-enter is a source you can only cite from memory, and citing from memory is how people end up in corrections.

Quoting from memory is how errors get published

Here is the failure mode that should actually worry you.

You watched the talk. You took a note that says something like: he argued the dataset was never validated externally. Three weeks later you write that sentence into your draft, in quotation marks, because you are fairly confident that is close to what he said.

It is close. It is not what he said. He said the external validation was underpowered, which is a different claim, and the person you are quoting will notice, and so will anyone who has watched the talk.

Text is what gets copied accurately. Every stage between the audio and your draft that runs through human recall introduces drift, and quotation marks are a promise that no drift occurred.

Can you get a transcript of a YouTube video?

Yes, and the honest answer has two parts, because YouTube already ships some of this.

Many videos have a transcript panel. Open the description, look for the option to show the transcript, and you get a scrolling list of timestamped lines that you can click to jump. It is genuinely useful and a lot of people do not know it is there. YouTube documents it in its own help centre, and if that solves your problem then you are done and can stop reading.

It often does not solve the problem, for reasons that are all mundane:

The panel is missing whenever the uploader has disabled captions, which happens more than you would expect on exactly the kind of niche technical content you most need transcribed. Automatic captions in some languages arrive without punctuation, which turns a lecture into one continuous unpunctuated sentence. There are no speaker labels, so a panel discussion becomes an undifferentiated wall in which four people take turns being indistinguishable. And every line carries its timestamp inline, so copying two paragraphs into your notes gives you two paragraphs interleaved with numbers that you then delete by hand.

None of that is fatal. It is just enough friction that most people bounce off it and go back to scrubbing.

The alternative is to run the URL through a dedicated tool and get clean prose out the other end. To transcribe a YouTube video with Vomo you paste the link and get the text back, with punctuation applied and speakers separated where the audio makes that possible. Basic transcription runs without an account, there is no cap on how long a single video can be, and the free tier covers thirty minutes of transcription per week, which is one conference talk or two short interviews. Export is TXT, DOCX, PDF or SRT.

Two features matter more than the file format. Speaker labels turn a panel into a readable document instead of a monologue by a committee. And with a free account you can put questions to the transcript in plain language rather than reading it end to end, which is the difference between having a transcript and having a source you can interrogate.

What the text is for, and what it is not for

A transcript is raw material. It is not a note, and treating it as one is the most common way this workflow goes wrong.

Ninety minutes of speech is roughly twelve thousand words. If you paste twelve thousand words into your research folder and move on, you have not reduced your problem, you have relocated it. Next month you will be searching a folder of transcripts with the same helplessness you currently bring to the video itself.

The transcript earns its place through three passes, and they are quick.

First, search it for the terms that made you open the video. You usually find in ninety seconds whether the source is worth the rest of your attention, which is the skim you could not perform earlier.

Second, pull the passages that matter into your actual notes, with the timestamp attached. The timestamp is the part people skip and later regret, because it is what lets you go back to the audio and hear the tone, the hedging, the qualifier that the transcript flattened.

Third, write the claim in your own words directly underneath the quote. Not later. The gap between reading a passage and paraphrasing it is where misunderstanding sets in, and closing that gap immediately is worth more than any tooling.

Then archive the full transcript and stop thinking about it. It is there if you need it. It is not a note.

Check the quotes against the audio

Automatic transcription is good and it is not perfect, and the places it fails are precisely the places you are most likely to quote.

Proper nouns go wrong. Technical terms get replaced by more common words that sound similar. Overlapping speech, which is most of any real conversation, produces confident nonsense. Numbers survive better than names but not reliably.

So the rule is simple and not negotiable. Anything going into your draft inside quotation marks gets listened to at the timestamp before you publish it. Everything else can stand as transcribed, because the cost of a small error in a paraphrase is low and the cost of a small error in a quotation is your credibility.

That check takes about a minute per quote. It is the only part of this that cannot be automated, and it is also the only part that carries any real risk, which is not a coincidence.

The part that actually changes

The thing you notice after a few months of working this way is not that you save time on any individual source. You do, but it is undramatic.

What changes is which sources you are willing to open. A ninety minute talk stops being a ninety minute commitment and becomes a document you can assess in two minutes and reject in three. So you check more of them. Some are useless. One is the thing your entire argument was missing, and you would not have found it, because you would not have watched it, because it was ninety minutes long and you were busy.

Video has been the default format for expert explanation for about fifteen years now. An enormous amount of what people actually know is sitting in recordings that nobody will ever scrub through twice.

Turning it into text is not a productivity trick. It is just making the material readable.

🤘 I went to see Iron Maiden for the fist time this weekend! It's something I've always wanted to do but never had the chance.

The funny thing is that I never thought it would be possible for me to see them. You know this “Run For Your Lives World” is celebrating their 50th anniversary, since their formation in 1975. And the set list is basically from their first album “Iron Maiden” from 1980 until their ninth album “Fear of the Dark” from 1992.

I didn't think they would still be doing big world tours.

Last year I was in a store to buy an Iron Maiden t-shirt (as you do) and I was chatting with the shop assistant who mentioned that Iron Maiden was coming to Canada in 2026. And I was like “Really??”.I was completely out of the loop.

Fast forward to this weekend, I saw them at the Scotiabank arena in Toronto. And it was awesome! They really do a flawless show, and Bruce Dickinson and all of the other members are in top shape.

The set list was excellent, and I gotta say that seeing “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” being played live was worth it just by itself. I feel like this setlist was made for me, it's just the best of Iron Maiden “Best of”. I was singing along with them on all the songs, because basically I know them all by heart.

The opening show was Megadeth. I'm not the greatest Megadeth fan, I know a couple of albums. Their concert was okay by itself, but there is no comparison with Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson charisma and energy. Also there was something odd about their setup, I don't think they were using the main sound system that Iron Maiden used, Dave Mustaine's vocals were a bit off, and I couldn't understand well what he was saying most of the time.

Anyway, I was impressed with the big digital screens and the pyrotechnics of the Iron Maiden show. It was really well done, matching the songs lyrics and all. Also, giant Eddie was there as well!

It was totally worth it and I'm glad I took the chance to go see them.

I'd like to thank Andreas for helping me out to get a good earplug. I used the high fidelity Alpine MusicSafe Pro, and it worked pretty well. I've got no headaches or ringing or anything.

—

Post 13 of #Blaugust #NoisyMusings #music #heavymetal

De sidste par måneder har jeg lidt af hjernerystelse. Den 12. marts var en smuk forårsdag, om end lidt kold, og mit forhjul skred ud i høj fart, mens jeg cyklede sydover ad Mathildevej i Jægersborg Hegn. Det er grunden til at jeg ikke har opdateret mere, og jeg har med stor ærgrelse måtte opgive mit nytårsfortsæt om at udgive en tekst om måneden hele dette år.

Som menneske har det været frustrerende at gennemgå det her, men på en pervers måde også lidt fascinerende. Hjernerystelse er en mystisk lidelse som man ikke rigtig forstår eller tænker på, når man ikke har oplevet det. Det ved jeg fordi jeg engang boede med en der slog baghovedet op i en hylde hos en veninde, og siden måtte blive hjemme fra studie og arbejde i flere måneder. Det har de sidste måneder pint mig meget hvor lidt forståelse jeg havde dengang. Jeg vil ikke sige at jeg forstår hjernerystelsen nu, kun at jeg forstår hvor nedern det er. Som en der skriver piner det mig at jeg stadig ikke rigtig kan forklare det her. Jeg ved ikke hvordan lige nu, men måske en gang i fremtiden. Jeg har haft konstant hovedpine i fire måneder nu, men de fleste har prøvet at have hovedpine. Det egentlig slemme er at man bliver dum, man kan simpelthen ikke tænke ordentligt. Det er svært at beskrive netop fordi det ikke er noget. Det er en lidelse i negativitit: Men prøver ligesom at tænke over noget, men så sker der ingen ting. Det er derfor ikke rigtig som noget, fordi det ikke rigtig er noget. Det bedste jeg kan gøre er en analogi: det føles som at hjernen lagger, som på en computer. Man gør det samme som man altid har gjort, men af en eller anden grund som man ikke kan gennemskue, så sker tingene bare langsomt eller slet ikke.

Jeg er små småt begyndt at skrive igen, og jeg har en del idéer som jeg selv synes er gode. Jeg håber derfor at jeg med denne tekst kan genstarte min cyklus, og udgive en tekst om måneden året ud.

Det som jeg vil dele med jer, er et gammelt projekt som jeg begyndte på for snart 10 år siden. Det har fra starten af båret titlen „500 regler for livet“, og jeg deler det her i sin ufuldstændige, nuværende form. Det startede ved at jeg blev opmærksom på en række ret succesfulde bøger om det gode liv, henvendt primært til mænd, og eftersom jeg på daværende tidspunkt var ret fattig, så tænkte jeg at jeg kunne tjene en del penge på at udgive en bestseller i denne genre. De fleste titler havde en række regler eller bud, men jeg synes som regel at de var lidt uambitiøse. Det var titler som 48 Rules of Power, Stoiske Leveregler, eller den klart mest populære, megabestselleren 12 Regler For Livet af Jordan Peterson, der på grund af bogen er blevet en public intellectual, noget jeg ud over penge også drømmer om. Derfor besluttede jeg at 500 regler klart ville slå de andre, i overbevisning om at jo mere jo bedre.

Jeg er stadig fattig, og derfor fast besluttet på at komme ud af mine gældsposter ad denne vej, men det har imidlertid vist sig at være temmeligt vanskeligt helt at komme op på 500, men jeg er overbevist om at jeg vil nå det inden for de næste par årtier. Man skal også have en vis aldersbetonet visdom for realistisk set at kunne sælge sig selv som en vis mand, og der har jeg – på trods af begyndende grå stænk i håret – endnu til gode.

Dette er mine regler. Hvis man vil dele nogle med mig, så vil jeg sætte pris på en email på caluhv@gmail.com. Jeg lover at dele en vis andel af mine fremtidige indtægter med dig.

1. Man skal drage omsorg for alt det, som ens hænder rør ved i løbet af en dag.

2. Man skal altid skrive dagen efter.

3. Man skal, når man skriver noter eller skriver på en tavle, altid være omhyggelig med hvad pile betyder.

4. Man skal kysse langsomt.

5. Man skal søge sandheden.

6. Når man er færdig med at vasker hænder, så skal du ryste hænderne kraftigt og beslutsomt med håndfladerne vendt opad fem gange.

7. Man skal give uden forventning om at få tilbage, dog ikke altid.

8. Man skal ændre på det, som ikke føles rigtigt.

9. Når man kommer hjem til nogen, og de tilbyder dig noget, så tag i det mindste imod et glas vand.

10. Man skal huske på at nogle ting er også andre ting.

11. Man skal kun bruge ét stykke papir til at tørre hænder. Desuden skal man folde det én gang på midten.

12. Man skal tillade andre at gøre en tjenester, og finde en måde at vise din taknemmelighed.

13. Man skal lære at binde mindst fem slags knob.

14. I tilfælde af at man skal noget svært, så skal man ikke planlægge udførelsen, men være omhyggelig med at planlægge omstændighederne.

15. Man skal ringe en gang i mellem.

16. Man skal være ked af det.

17. Man skal have trøjen nede i bukserne, når man dyrker sport.

18. Hvis man gør noget forket, så skal man sige undskyld.

19. Man skal stille flere spørgsmål end man giver svar.

20. Når man løber, så skal man trække vejret ind i tre skridt, og puste ud i tre skridt. Desuden skal man kigge op.

21. Man skal lytte til sin cykel.

22. Man skal snuse til blomster med hele næsen.

23. Man skal lære at synge med maven.

24. Man skal lukke øjnene når man drikker vand.

25. Man skal som regel bestille en lille fadøl.

26. Man skal aldrig kun have sokker på.

27. Spis tre måltider om dagen.

28. Lad være med at ryge.

29. Man skal lære sig selv at tillade andre at gøre noget for en.

30. Man skal ikke stole på systemet.

31. Hvis nogen spørger dig, hvordan det går, så er det nogle gange fordi, de gerne vil have, at du spørger dem om det samme.

32. Der findes en rigtig og en forkert måde at binde sløjfer på, som dog ligner hinanden. Man skal lære at kende forskel.

33. Hvis man tørrer af, så skal man folde og bruge viskestykket mens det ligger dobbelt.

34. Man skal som regel ikke bruge smøremiddel der kommer i en sprayflaske.

35. Selv om man kan regne det ud, så kan det være bedre at lade være.

36. Hvis man ikke kan regne det ud, så skal man nogle gange beslutte sig for det alligevel.

37. Man skal få motion mindst to gange om ugen.

38. Man skal lade sin telefon blive i jakkelommen.

39. Hvis man sidder alene på en café ved et bord med to stole, så skal man sige nej hvis nogen spørger om de må låne den anden stol. Man skal holde pladsen åben, hvis nu.

40. Man skal ikke sige „man“ hvis man kan sige „jeg“.

41. Man kan godt være venlig mod individer mens man er kritisk overfor systemerne.

<3

some masks are not a choice.

Absence became Its own power.

It dwelt unseen.

Not beneath a dark lord's polished shield,

A fell face lurked behind a disposition

As bright and terrible As the day.

Aglow with sparkling eyes And a brilliant smile.

There hides the creature within.

A villain who would lay innocence low

If it meant he could never lose what was held.

Again.

trip

A grocery store peach.

I didn’t expect much, Just to know it. Did it smell of chemistry? Which they usually do—

Or of peach.

Faint fuzz. Firm flesh, yielding. Stem, single leaf.

Surprise! It electrified me. My whole body racked by chills.

I — ECSTATIC!

Aroma! This wide door to memory… But few passages tonight Go to my youth.

But one.

My grandmother’s peach trees.

Three black things that had once been spindly, having become young fertile.

Where the fruit lay Brown and fetid, Food for the ants.

But, god! How I love this scent.

---

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS

In “Slingshot” (2024), two determined men face a cosmic divide, caught between duty and destiny in a high-stakes space thriller.

My Rating: ½ (0.5/5 stars)

Don't waste your time. It looked interesting and had some big-name actors and actresses, but it wasn't worth it. The movie was too long for the ending it had, and the plot was weak.

#movies #review

Inbetweeners Part 9- Dolly

Thogg, a goblin ranger focusing on taming animals with a background as a surface performer, was one of the more colorful PCs to be brought back by the Interloper. Thogg was initially dismayed though as his familiar, a panther named Polly, did not come back with him. He asked the Interloper if he could retrieve Polly, and in classic Interloper fashion, Polly was returned... different. She came be renamed Dolly.

Dolly's notes were sparse, and had a lot more informal mechanics I never ended up writing down, but here were the basics:

Oakley’s Panther Dolly – 50% of all attacks miss it. Acts erratically, doesn’t follow the laws of physics

Hidden Abilities:

Static Reincarnation: When it dies it instead reappears in the gray room.

Shocking Bite: Deals 1d6 electricity damage in addition to normal damage with bite. Goes up 1d6 at levels 6, 11 and 16.

Phase: Can teleport at will to a random location nearby.

Glitchout: It goes completely static and releases a burst of destabalizing energy. Everything must make a con save (15) or be stunned for 1d6 rounds (may try again each turn). Also has other random effects on creatures (50% chance, both damaging and helping). Panther will then disappear until the end of combat.

Most of what Dolly did and how she manifested was improvised. I had her take on a biomechanical appearance, a deep blue/purple color with metal plating and wiring in place of flesh. The noises she made to varied, everything from the sound of a trumpet to a mechanical recording type sound of a dog barking. Her reactions to NPCs and different environments varied immensely as well. She was generally very protective of the group, Thogg in particular, but she was immediately interested in Zariel and allowed Zariel to pet her. Dolly also moved non-linearly, appearing through walls, walking on the ceiling, and disappearing and reappearing at random. She also was able to break rules, like leaving the bounds of the “room” that players were trapped in. Lastly, she served as a nice way for me to balance encounters in the early campaign when they would otherwise be too difficult.

Later on I gave Dolly the ability to transform into any single beast or monster up to CR 5. Thogg chose the form of a chimera, which ended up being very useful in boss fights as mainly a hitpoint tank, absorbing several attacks while the players could get their offense off. They also made use of Dolly by having her run errands, bringing things back and forth from the Grey Room when they were stuck. The first time Dolly “died” their was much sadness in the group, until they discovered Dolly couldn't in fact die and instead respawned elsewhere. Dolly ultimately served as a glitched out creature, companion, comedic relief, encounter balancing force and genuine NPC, all in one. I think towards the end before Thogg retired we had a mechanic where Dolly could actually turn into an Iron-Man suit type armor around Thogg to protect him, but I'm not sure how much we fleshed out that mechanic.

Though Thogg's character is retired, I may bring back Dolly once or twice more before the campaign is over... I'm still undecided.

The only game I intend to follow today has my Texas Rangers playing the Milwaukee Brewers. This afternoon MLB game is scheduled to start at 1:10 PM CDT. As I usually do I'll follow the game's scores and stats in real time via MLB's Gameday Service where we can also find links to the radio-call of the game provided by announcers of either team we choose.

And the adventure continues.