About
I’m xtalBiskit (pronounced “crystal biscuit”) and this is my website. I’m a human person that lives in North America. I’m going to be intentionally vague about personal specifics as I value my anonymity and privacy. Also, putting your name to your opinions on the internet these days is like painting a target on yourself. No thanks.
Here’s some things I can tell you: I’m a 50-ish man. I guess that makes me a Xennial, meaning that I know what TikTok is but I have also owned VCR.
I’m married, I have one kid. I live in a rural area in the western half of the United States. I wouldn’t say I’m average, nor would I say I’m terribly exceptional. My vocation is jaw-droppingly boring to explain but tolerably interesting to me, as well as being somewhat lucrative.
I’ll tell you a little bit about my beliefs, mainly to put the other writing on this site in context.
Philosophically I’m basically an absurdist. In short: The universe is ridiculous, life has no meaning so I made up my own. I work to improve the lives of myself, my family and my community. When I stare into the void, it stares back, but then it hands me a turkey sandwich and a vintage TV Guide and sends me on my way.
Politically I identify as a Very Tired American. I’m definitely way to the left of center, but I have a number of views that do not endear me to that group. For example, I’m very pro LGBTQ+ rights, but I’m also very pro responsible gun ownership. That said I am not any form of “moderate”. Where I go left, I go hard left.
A word on my privacy an anonymity: I do not openly disclose my name or identity here. I’m sure if you were particularly keen on finding out who I am, you probably could. I will politely ask you not to do that. Also, if you happen to know who I am, please keep that to yourself.
I do not use social media anymore. At all. That said, I love getting email and I answer every single one. You can email me at xtalBiskit@protonmail.com
About This Site
silencing machine is a handmade website in the late 90s tradition. I built it myself with a text editor and a head full of weird ideas. I did it because wanted to get back a piece of that joy that comes with building something and sharing it with other people. I missed that feeling of excitement and fun we all had in the beginning. We could suddenly communicate with like-minded strangers all over the world. Everything felt new, opportunities were everywhere and no one new what cool thing was going to happen next.
That “cool thing” turned out to be three to five massive social media corporations trying to get every last drop of our attention by any means necessary. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. We can claw it back. We can make our own websites. We can visit other people’s. We can be people again.
Site Production
This site is an extravagantly custom built thing that uses the hugo static site generator. The templates are all hand coded. The JavaScript is all my own work and more or less vanilla. That’s not necessarily a religious choice, I just wanted to see how far I could go without any frameworks. It’s hosted on a CDN. All the writing, artwork and programming are done by me as a hobby on my own time.
I worked hard to make everything responsive, mobile friendly and accessible. If you are differently-abled and have trouble with any part of this site, please let me know and I will fix whatever needs fixing.
A neat little thing you will only really be able to conveniently see on the desktop version of this site is that almost every link has alt/title text in which I make bad jokes and inane commentary you can see if you hover over them.
Super basic ground rules
There are parts of this site where you can participate in conversations and contribute things. Use these as opportunities to be awesome and to observe the awesomeness of others. Do not be a dick. Being a dick takes many forms, and I don’t have the time or energy to spell them all out here. If you’re in doubt about saying something, probably just don’t. I mercilessly delete false and mean words, so don’t waste your time writing them.