Xelnoc's blog! All my blogs in RSS form! https://xelfin.net/blog/ Sun, 06 Jul 2025 08:32:50 +0000 1751790770 RSS can heal your relationship to information. https://xelfin.net/blog/8/ Sun, 06 Jul 2025 08:32:50 +0000 I'm sure you've heard of RSS. Maybe you've seen the orange button with the 'wifi' symbol in it (like the one at the top of my blog page). If you're new to the internet then maybe you haven't. RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is an open technology from 1999 which allows a website to announce when new content has been posted. In effect, you can 'subscribe' to a website, like a youtube channel, and see all new content when it is posted. Since the early 2010s, that bright orange logo has slowly been disappearing from web pages, and RSS has all but died in the public eye. Now, you might say: "If RSS is dead, why am I learning about this? And even then, why would I use them instead of twitter?" and to this I would say the death of RSS was... greatly exaggerated. Websites may not advertise it anymore, but the feeds still exist, hidden on the page. And since most websites support RSS, it becomes a great tool to control the flow of information in your life. That's what it's ultimately about: control. You decide what content you want to see. You decide when you want to see it. You make every decision along the way, rather than leaving the decision for a machine to make for you.

Some more benefits:

  • No ads: They can't inject advertising into your feed, so all you see is the content you want
  • Ease of accessibility: the look can be standardised to format text your way, making it legible.
  • Saves time: Instead of browsing websites for content, it is all centralised into one reader, so you can switch on and off whenever you feel like it.
  • No Algorithm: You choose what content to see or not. It is displayed in order, and is inherently less addictive.

I am hearing you think to yourself "I'd still have to use social media though, to read posts from people I like." but here's the best part: almost all major social media can be read as RSS. Youtube, reddit, bluesky, tumblr, mastodon, etc. All allow you to have a chronological feed of an account (or subreddit) you want to follow, which is what really sells the technology for me. And it's incredibly versatile. It supports not just blogs, but podcasts, videos, anything you can think of adding to a webpage. In your reader, you can organise different feeds into folders and do some really advanced things, but this is just a simple overview.

If you've been finding the internet to take over your life a little, and you want to have more control, or want to reduce addiction, try checking out RSS. The best way for a beginner is through a provider such as feedly, which will aggregate content even when you are offline, and makes finding websites to follow easier. A good first feed to follow is https://xelfin.net/blog/rss.xml, so you never miss a new post. It can take some effort to get started, but once you curate your feed the way you like it, it becomes a wonderful tool. Try it, and if it isn't for you, then nobody will be disappointed.

]]> Robots need to shut the f**k up. https://xelfin.net/blog/7/ Sat, 03 May 2025 13:19:18 +0000 It's not just me right?
The technological world right now just sucks. We have supercomputers in our pockets and on our wrists wherever we go, and all we use them as is mind-destroying dopamine supplements which surrender us to the wealthiest men on the planet. It all just makes me think, is it right? Is this what life has to be now?

Even worse than the already existing problems, is the 'AI Epidemic' which has taken over the world culture in the past few years. ChatGPT, Gemini, Character.AI, all these tools beg for our attention and time, maximising user retention and therefore profits. What this has led to is a situation where some people spend more time talking to corporate drones than real human beings, and most don't even see an issue with this!

We can see this best in the recent scandal involving ChatGPT. To maximise the amount of time people spend on the platform, it is no longer able to disagree with you or talk you down, leading to situations such as this:


This is seriously dangerous. I hope I don't need to explain why. We live in an extremely dystopian world, without the cool cyberpunk aesthetics, and it's terrible. There are people who develop extremely close relationships with AI tools, and they are also more likely to perform destructive actions, endangering themselves and others. Yes, it's funny seeing these conversations of ChatGPT telling you not to take your meds, or Google telling you to put glue on your pizza, but specific personalities who are extremely susceptible to this are likely to make actions and life decisions based on this advice.


Kids, also, are increasingly using these tools. They cheat on homework, leading to lack of ability and understanding. The kids who struggle to socialise now have AI 'friends' and can't develop real social skills. They get the company's political / life beliefs integrated into them from an early age.

But, of course, by preying on the vulnerable, the company wins again! Shout from the balcony of your 20 sq ft studio apartment you spent your life working for: "Hooray! OpenAI is going to earn $11b this year! Oh the spoils of capitalism!"

AI is not the only problem. Social media is designed this way too. It is also designed to 'increase satisfaction' by putting users in an echo chamber and never challenging their beliefs, but at least twitter won't burn 5 trees for each second you spend on it.

There is no happy ending to this post. I don't think there even could be. We - as an entire class - need to stop using these exploitative, society-destroying platforms which do not measurably benefit our lives in any way.
It's not that hard to think for yourself.



]]> My Favourite Albums 2024 https://xelfin.net/blog/5/ Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 So. There was a whole lot of music this year. I barely know how to start this. We saw releases from plenty of artists, both well-established and new to the art form. There were a lot of solo and side ventures from members of popular bands, and a couple bands regrouping and making music again (whether it went well or not is a different story). But now is the time to pick the very best of the best. Of the hundreds of projects of the year, which did I, a random person on the internet, consider to be the best?

  1. Fontaines D.C. - Romance

  2. Jack White - No Name

  3. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - "No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead"

  4. Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee

  5. Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She

  6. Joanna Wang - Hotel La Rut

  7. Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk

  8. The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to Ecstasy

  9. Geordie Greep - The New Sound

  10. Charli XCX - brat



I was gonna write detailed reasons for all the placements on the list, but ultimately I could not be bothered.

]]> The Importance of Switching Off https://xelfin.net/blog/4/ Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 It's been months, hasn't it?
Life gets in the way of everything, as always.
I haven't had the time nor have I had the motivation to keep writing these posts, especially considering nobody except joel even reads them. I dont blame you, I wouldn't either, but it feels like it's all for nothing, doesn't it? anyway, I have been taking a break from the site and managing my entire server, and have been putting more effort towards school, my friends, and the rest of my life. I've started reading again, and trying to take my life back from distractions like my phone and social media and allat. Anyway, let's get into the article itself.

Everyone I know is addicted.
Whether it is to caffeine, social media, videogames, the neverending pursuit of love, nearly everything in the modern world has been created and designed to addict. Especially over the past 4 1/2 years, people have sunk deeper and deeper into this way of life, and adjusted to the 'new normal'.
Every day I go to school, or out into town, and all I see around me are people who are addicted to stimuli, their phones, however you want to refer to it.

The average attention span is plummeting.
1 in 5 people in Wales are functionally illiterate.
People survive on tiktoks reuploaded to youtube.
Household debt is the highest it has ever been.
It feels like the world is heading in a direction where nobody is control of their own lives.
Do you not feel it?
Even now, reading this blogpost, you are itching for a distraction, you've probably already picked up your phone twice. I don't blame you. These apps have been designed with that specific purpose. More time using twitter = more ads seen by you = more add revenue for them.

So. We have identified an addiction. Now comes the difficult question:
Is it a problem?

That's a hard question to solve, but I think that when it becomes a problem is when you feel like it's a problem.
I've been feeling for years that technology, my phone, and all these corporations are the ones running my life. You pay $480 over the course of four years for netflix alone, and once you cancel it, what do you have? nothing but a $480 hole in your wallet. CEX sells dvds for $1 a piece. if you had spent the same amount of money, you would have hundreds of movies that you can watch as many times as you want for your entire life.
You Own Nothing.
The average person spends $250 every single month on subscription services. Imagine your life if you were paid $3000 extra every year. You could (on average) pay off all your debts, including your mortgage, in just over a decade.

Subscriptions aside, even money aside, many people complain they have no free time, stress is at an all-time high, and most people never really switch off from work. Your constant cascade of clicks from communications and the time you commit to things which actively harm you, damage your brain and stop you from improving your self is not a necessary part of life. But some people, my generation especially, never could be convinced that they can exist without these complications, because they have not known a time free of them.
I know you're bored. I want you to be bored. It is boredom that feeds the mind, boredom which allows you to think, form opinions, question your opinions and become the person you dream of being. but that's never going to happen if you can't motivate yourself to put down your phone, or if you cannot function without the sense of constant stimulus. If for just dedicated a couple minutess a day to the purest form of 'nothing', to sit and think and press pause on your boring life of no complications and no need to think about anything more complex than a bagel, you could realise just how much you are missing, how much of life is flying by you with no sense of direction or magnitude.

I'm not telling you to delete your social media and become a recluse, delete steam and smash your electronics. I'm telling you to think about whether you are living life the right way.
Once the escapism becomes your entire life, maybe it's time to escape into the real world.

This must be the least coherent thing I have written to date. You can call me a hypocrite or whatever. I'm not asking you to upturn your life. I'm asking you to be a little more mindful about life, and your relationship with the world. Maybe one day I'll collect my thoughts into something easier to follow, and less of a ramble. Maybe not. I hope you take my advice before it is too late. I can't bring myself to proofread this.

]]> Is the music revival here? https://xelfin.net/blog/3/ Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 It isn't hard to tell that the past 15 years or so have been terrible for music, film, and media as a whole. many of my generation don't even know of a better time, and think the current situation is as good as it gets, and for these individuals I feel infinitely sorry for.
The advent of streaming services means artists are paid less than ever before, and are incentivised to make uninteresting, poppy singles that do nothing but accumulate streams. This is a large reason why the average song length has gone down so far - so the artist gets more streams.
However, since lockdown, and most noticably since 2022, there has been an influx of emerging artists who have made truly unique and surprisingly good music. That is what inspired me to start reviewing and to start listening to new music again. I have purchased more albums from 2024 alone than from the entire 2010s, and this makes me infinitely hopeful for the future of music and media.
Hopefully, this trend continues and the 20s will be a good decade for media.
Thats all this post is, I won't go into details, just sharing my hope for the future. Goodbye! :)

]]> My decision to switch to debian. https://xelfin.net/blog/2/ Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Why Debian?

We all know and love Debian. It is one of the oldest distributions available, being created in 1993. It is known and loved by many, and is the baseline for most distributions currently in existance. But why would I use it as my primary distro?
Well there are multiple reasons for this decision. As I grow more and more knowledgeable about GNU/Linux and FOSS, I realise that what I need is no longer the bleeding edge of arch, or the manageablility of nix, but rather stability and the knowledge that nothing will break.
I no longer want to tinker with my system but use it. I understand this is not a problem for most people, but debian offers the sense of stability and comfort I need from my system. As I previously used Ubuntu linux, I am familiar with the APT package manager, and the way things get done on debian-based distributions. I think with the recently-released Debian 12 Bookworm, the distro has been perfected to a point where it should be the go-to for a linux desktop.

Why not Fedora?

As I previously said, I had used a mix of fedora workstation, fedora silverblue, and fedora kinoite prior to now. So why didn't I just continue using that rather than a new distro?
Well there are many things I prefer in debian to fedora. For one, I like the extended testing and reliability of packages, meaning infrequent updates and a more functional and stable system. I also enjoy how debian provides a model of security and functionality, where fedora in place is more forward-looking, often at expense of user experience.
There are also issues with fedora's up-stream distro, Red Hat. As many of you already know, Red Hat was bought by IBM last year, and has had catastrophic effects to red hat linux, and therefore Fedora.
Red hat linux has closed its source code, increasing strain on fedora's development team. They have also pressured the Fedora project to include opt-out telemetry in the distribution, which is unacceptable by my standard. This is not to mention the fact that the dnf package manager is unbearably slow.


In conclusion, I have a justified and good reason to use Debian linux, and despite your lack of caring, I have discussed this with the world. As of writing this footnote (10 days later), The Debian experience has been amazing and I have no wish to return to another distro. Ty for reading if you did :3 ]]> My First Blogpost! https://xelfin.net/blog/1/ Sat, 27 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 hello denizens of the internet. i doubt many people are to read this, however i would like tho welcome those who care to my blog :3
I hope you are all doing well, taking care of yourselves, etc.
This blog is here to announce the introduction of my blog! i will post stuff here thats on my mind and i wanna talk about ig.
Hope y'all dont mind my stupidity if youre even reading this. cya next post.

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