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Brenden’s Blog
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/about/
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<span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:decoration-2 group-hover:underline-offset-2">About</span>
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/posts/
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<span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:decoration-2 group-hover:underline-offset-2">Posts</span>
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/tags/
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<span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:decoration-2 group-hover:underline-offset-2">Tags</span>
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/posts/on-the-edge/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">On the Edge</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2026-03-08 12:42:55 -0400 -0400">Mar 8, 2026</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">3 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">I like to stand right on the edge of the subway platform. I stand right atop the yellow tactile paving they install at the edge of the platform for blind people. I stand there, facing outward toward the trains, staring into the abyss. It’s my morning ritual now. And evening. And whenever I take the train.</div></div>
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/posts/on-evidence/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">On Evidence</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2026-02-07 17:05:17 -0500 -0500">Feb 7, 2026</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">6 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">Images are interesting because, in the digital world, it’s trivial to alter them, and yet we still tend to treat images—photographs, video—as a kind of proof. If you see a photograph in a news article, most people don’t really stop to ask whether the thing actually happened. The photograph is the thing, or at least it stands in for it. Light hit something, a camera was there, therefore this event occurred. That association feels almost automatic, and it’s been reinforced culturally for a long time.</div></div>
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/posts/who-are-you-when-no-one-is-watching/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">Who Are You When No One Is Watching?</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2025-12-30 15:52:10 -0500 -0500">Dec 30, 2025</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">3 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">If a “true” self exists at all, it probably only appears when no one is watching.
The rest of the time, we’re adapting to context. At work, we perform the professional self. With friends, we’re relaxed, funny, interesting. With family, something else entirely. Online, where the audience is abstract and potentially infinite, we often project an idealized version of ourselves—the highlight reel.</div></div>
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/posts/doubling-down-on-here-and-now/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">Doubling Down on Here and Now</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2025-10-26 15:41:20 -0400 -0400">Oct 26, 2025</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">12 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">What exactly does it mean to be present? It’s a question I’ve written about before, yet here I am again—writing another version of it. Maybe that’s the point. Presence isn’t something you figure out once and move on from. It’s a practice, a remembering.
It’s a tricky concept—hard to describe, slippery to pin down. Presence seems to have layers. So I keep ending up at the same place: noticing what pulls me out of it.</div></div>
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/posts/falling-out-of-love-with-computers/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">Falling Out of Love With Computers</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2025-10-12 15:31:36 -0400 -0400">Oct 12, 2025</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">7 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">I’ve been thinking about when I first fell in love with computers. It started early—somewhere around the third or fourth grade. Our first family computer was a 486, running some version of Windows and, more importantly, MS‑DOS. I remember typing random commands into that black screen, trying to make sense of it. I wasn’t very good at it, but it felt like magic.</div></div>
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/posts/nice-vs-kind/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">Nice vs. Kind</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2025-09-23 20:38:52 -0400 -0400">Sep 23, 2025</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">8 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">Kindness and niceness aren’t the same thing. This may sound like I’m splitting hairs, but once you notice the difference it’s hard to unsee. I first bumped into this idea through the New York stereotype—how people who don’t live here love to say New Yorkers are rude. I don’t buy it. New Yorkers just have a different concept of what counts as rude.</div></div>
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/posts/every-day-is-a-gift/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">Every Day Is a Gift</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2025-08-24 14:30:21 -0400 -0400">Aug 24, 2025</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">8 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">It’s easy to be negative, cynical, and pessimistic. What’s incredibly admirable are those who manage to stay positive in difficult times. Everyone’s version of “difficult” is different, and what’s easy for some may be incredibly challenging for others.
I think one reason we might go down the path of negative thinking is that we forget to put things into perspective. At any moment, there are an infinite number of things that could go wrong, which could suddenly turn your delightful Sunday afternoon into a weekend disaster.</div></div>
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/posts/fake-connection/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">Fake Connection</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2025-08-17 08:57:12 -0400 -0400">Aug 17, 2025</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">12 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">The sales pitch of various “social” websites is that they provide you with human connection in the form of “friends,” “followers,” and so forth. I definitely bought into this idea once upon a time, but I no longer buy into this narrative.
A hardy begonia from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden—real, tangible, alive. No filters needed.</div></div>
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/posts/do-a-bad-job/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">Do a Bad Job</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2025-07-30 10:26:01 -0400 -0400">Jul 30, 2025</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">6 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">As a recovering perfectionist, I’ve been learning to embrace a radical idea: it’s better to do a bad job of something than to do nothing at all. The wisdom is everywhere—you miss every shot you don’t take, perfect is the enemy of good, done is better than perfect—but living it is another matter entirely.</div></div>
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/posts/wrapped-up-in-our-identities/
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<div><h3 class="flex items-center text-xl font-semibold"><span class="decoration-darkly-500 group-hover:underline group-hover:underline-offset-2">Wrapped Up in Our Identities</span></h3><div class="text-sm text-neutral-500 dark:text-neutral-400"><div class="flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center"><time datetime="2025-06-21 21:17:55 -0400 -0400">Jun 21, 2025</time><span class="px-2 text-darkly-500">·</span><span title="Reading time">7 mins</span></div></div><div class="pt-2 prose prose-stone dark:prose-invert max-w-prose line-clamp-5 md:line-clamp-4 hover:overflow-hidden text-neutral-600 md:text-neutral-500 hover:text-neutral-800 dark:text-neutral-400 md:dark:text-neutral-500 dark:group-hover:text-neutral-200 font-libre-baskerville">I’ve always been wrapped up in the idea of my own identity. Lately, though, I’m trying to let that go.
Identity is a curious thing. It’s tricky to define, yet most of us carry some concept of who we are, some internal story we tell ourselves. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who’d spent time at an ashram in India. He went there to meditate, to simply be, perhaps to do nothing at all.</div></div>
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