Cris’ microblog

As a big fan of the SVG specification, this was fascinating to read.

In fact, it’s curious how diminutives in Portuguese and Latvian are so similar. They’re spelled “inho”/“inha” and “iņu”/“iņa” respectively, and sound exactly the same. How did that happen!?

I love that in Latvian it is socially acceptable for men to use diminutives.

It’s 12 degrees Celsius outside, and I’m running around in a t-shirt like it’s nobody’s business. If this ain’t proof that some switch flipped in my DNA, and I’m basically not Portuguese anymore, then I don’t know what is.

This video is an excellent summary of what “right to repair” is about.

An aesthete often claims to be a free individual. Life should be thrilling, full of “beauty and sparkle,” he says. And that means often casting off the shackles of society’s expectations and community ties. But Kierkegaard says that this is a very mistaken idea of what freedom is. The person living the aesthetic life is not master of himself at all; in fact, he is leading an accidental life. His temperament, tastes, feelings, and impulses completely drive him.

The only way for you to be truly free is to link your feeling to an obligation. Only if you commit yourself to loving in action, day in and day out, even when feelings and circumstances are in flux, can you truly be a free individual and not a pawn of outside forces. Also, only if you maintain your love for someone when it is not thrilling can you be said to be actually loving a person. The aesthete does not really love the person; he or she loves the feelings, thrills, ego rush, and experiences that the other person brings. The proof of that is that when those things are gone, the aesthete has no abiding care or concern for the other.

Indeed, it is the covenantal commitment that enables married people to become people who love each other. Only with time do we really learn who the other person is and come to love the person for him- or herself and not just for the feelings and experiences they give us.

Nearly everyone thinks that the Bible’s directive to “love your neighbor” is wise, right, and good. But notice that it is a command, and emotions cannot be commanded. The Bible does not call us to like our neighbor, to have affection and warm feelings toward him or her. No, the call is to love your neighbor, and that must primarily mean displaying a set of behaviors.

One reason we need to make this distinction is because of the sheer inconsistency of our feelings. They are tied to complex physical, psychological, and social factors. They wax and then wane, often in infuriating ways. Our emotions are not under our control, but our actions are. Most of our likes and dislikes are neither sins nor virtues—no more than our tastes in food or music. What matters is what we do with them. If, as our culture encourages us, we go so far as to define love as “liking”—if we only feel that actions of love are “authentic” if there are strong feelings of love present—we will inevitably be bad friends and even more terrible family members and spouses.

When you feel great delight in someone, meeting their needs and getting their gratitude and affection in return is extremely rewarding to your ego. At those times you may be acting more out of the desire to get that love and satisfaction yourself, rather than out of a desire to seek the good of the other person.

This only affirms that we don’t really love the person and his or her best interest. We love the affection and esteem we are getting from that person. All this means that you can indeed love, and love truly and wisely, when you lack the feelings of love.

So if your definition of “love” stresses affectionate feelings more than unselfish actions, you will cripple your ability to maintain and grow strong love relationships. On the other hand, if you stress the action of love over the feeling, you enhance and establish the feeling. That is one of the secrets of living life, as well as of marriage.

— The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller.

I published a new blog post about how to become an interesting person.

Watched an interesting video this morning about how AI is affecting the job market for gen Z graduates.

Watched a good video about how gen Z is experiencing what’s called “luxury poverty”. It was extremely informative, especially the first half, that explores the historical context of how we ended up here.

I finished preparing my reading list for 2026. I will be reading through the Conflict of the Ages series from January 1 to Dec 31, around ten pages a day. I will also continue the Testimonies for the Church series with volume 6, which is a lot shorter than volume 5, so I will only need to read one or two pages a day. I also wrote down a list of 33 books (from among the ones in my Apple Books app’s “Want to Read” list) that I want to prioritize. Those I’ll try to read about 30 minutes every day, if possible.

Speaking of time: Next year I will also track the seconds and milliseconds. This year I’m only tracking the minutes, so the total amount that I get on my spreadsheet is actually significantly lower than it would be if I tracked the time more precisely. Either way, I’m very pleased with my progress. 2014 was about getting back into reading after quitting social media. 2025 has been about systematizing my reading. 2026 will be about consistently reading (this year I significantly slowed down between April and July due to becoming depressed).

Roman numerals look better when they are serifed, so I changed the font of the post titles to Times New Roman.

When you first fall in love, you think you love the person, but you don’t really. You can’t know who the person is right away. That takes years. You actually love your idea of the person—and that is always, at first, one-dimensional and somewhat mistaken.

But not only do you not know the other person, but the other person does not really know you. You have put on your best face (often quite literally.) There are things about yourself that you are ashamed of or afraid of, but you don’t let the other person see your flaws. And, of course, you cannot show your partner those parts of your character that you cannot see yourself and which will only be revealed to you in the course of the marriage. There is an emotional “high” that comes to us when someone thinks we are so wonderful and beautiful, and that is part of what fuels the early passion and electricity of falling in love. But the problem is—and you may be semiconsciously aware of this—the person doesn’t really know you and therefore doesn’t really love you, not yet at least. What you think of as being head over heels in love is in large part a gust of ego gratification, but it’s nothing like the profound satisfaction of being known and loved.

— The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller.

No one but yourself can do your work. If you withhold your light, someone must be left in darkness through your neglect.

— Ellen White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p. 464.

I watched this video on “late stage screen addiction”, and the author convinced me to introduce more moments of silence into my daily routine. I just tried it out while I ate lunch and washed the dishes, and guess what? I came up with (and wrote in my Notes app) almost an entire sermon. Wow.

I want to buy a digital alarm clock someday, so I don’t have to grab my iPhone first thing in the morning.

I can’t possibly be a normal person, can I? I eat between 100 to 150 g of garlic every week.

I just found something that I wrote many years ago. Wow. I had totally forgotten about this. What a find!

I started my dating advice blog.

I’ve been watching a few videos on relationships from this YouTuber, and they’re excellent material. I highly recommend them.

My weight went down by another kilogram. I’m at 75.3 (166 lbs). Let’s go!

It is possible to feel you are “madly in love” with someone, when it is really just an attraction to someone who can meet your needs and address the insecurities and doubts you have about yourself. In that kind of relationship, you will demand and control rather than serve and give. The only way to avoid sacrificing your partner’s joy and freedom on the altar of your need is to turn to the ultimate lover of your soul. He voluntarily sacrificed himself on the cross, taking what you deserved for your sins against God and others.

But when the Bible speaks of love, it measures it primarily not by how much you want to receive but by how much you are willing to give of yourself to someone. How much are you willing to lose for the sake of this person? How much of your freedom are you willing to forsake? How much of your precious time, emotion, and resources are you willing to invest in this person? And for that, the marriage vow is not just helpful but it is even a test. In so many cases, when one person says to another, “I love you, but let’s not ruin it by getting married,” that person really means, “I don’t love you enough to close off all my options. I don’t love you enough to give myself to you that thoroughly.” To say, “I don’t need a piece of paper to love you” is basically to say, “My love for you has not reached the marriage level.”

One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love. Taken together, these convictions lead to the conclusion that marriage and romance are essentially incompatible, that it is cruel to commit people to lifelong connection after the inevitable fading of romantic joy.

Modern people think of love in such subjective terms that if there is any duty involved it is considered unhealthy. Over the years, I have often counseled with people who were quite locked into this conviction. This is particularly true when it comes to sex. Many people believe that if you have sex with your spouse just to please him or her though you are not interested in sex yourself, it would be inauthentic or even oppressive. This is the thoroughly subjective understanding of love-as-passionate-feeling. And often this quickly leads into a vicious cycle. If you won’t make love unless you are in a romantic mood at the very same time as your spouse, then sex will not happen that often. This can dampen and quench your partner’s interest in sex, which means there will be even fewer opportunities. Therefore, if you never have sex unless there is great mutual passion, there will be fewer and fewer times of mutual passion.

One of the reasons we believe in our culture that sex should always and only be the result of great passion is that so many people today have learned how to have sex outside of marriage, and this is a very different experience than having sex inside it. Outside of marriage, sex is accompanied by a desire to impress or entice someone. It is something like the thrill of the hunt. When you are seeking to draw in someone you don’t know, it injects risk, uncertainty, and pressure to the lovemaking that quickens the heartbeat and stirs the emotions. If “great sex” is defined in this way, then marriage—the “piece of paper”—will indeed stifle that particular kind of thrill. But this defines sexual sizzle in terms that would be impossible to maintain in any case. The fact is that “the thrill of the hunt” is not the only kind of thrill or passion available, nor is it the best.

Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love. A wedding should not be primarily a celebration of how loving you feel now—that can safely be assumed. Rather, in a wedding you stand up before God, your family, and all the main institutions of society, and you promise to be loving, faithful, and true to the other person in the future, regardless of undulating internal feelings or external circumstances.

— The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller.

For some reason, I never sleep too well when my wife doesn’t sleep next to me (she had to stay overnight elsewhere).

If Christ were our pattern, His life our rule, what zeal would be manifested, what efforts put forth, what liberality exercised, what self-denial practiced! How untiringly should we labor, what fervent petitions for power and wisdom would ascend to God! If all the professed children of God would feel that it is the chief business of life to do the work which He has bidden them to do, if they would labor unselfishly in His cause, what a change would be seen in hearts and homes, in churches, yea, in the world itself!

— Ellen White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p. 460.

This post was encouraging for me to read, because I often feel that I’m an endangered species of human who prefers text-only websites. No. There are others like me out there.

So, I just learned that Germany wasn’t the only country that became culturally and economically divided between east and west after WWII. Poland suffered a similar fate.

I have noticed in recent years that gambling mechanics have crept into pretty much every consumer-facing industry, and I viscerally hate it. I never gambled in my life; I think that gambling is dumb and dangerous; and I’m astonished that not only is society normalizing gambling more and more, it’s also making it more accessible to increasingly younger audiences. The makers of this video that I just watched, seem to have caught onto this phenomenon as well.

You cannot come to God as you aren’t. You can only come to God as you are.

— Inspired by something David Asscherick said.

The only chance that God will not give you, is the chance that you refuse to go back to Him to take.

— Inspired by something David Asscherick said.

The number of sins that we have committed is finite. God’s mercy, grace, and love are infinite.

— Inspired by something David Asscherick said.

I just made the realization that all three patriarchs were maimed in some way, yet God accomplished His designs through them anyway:

1. Abraham was circumcised in his old age, yet still begat Isaac.

2. Isaac was blind and wanted to give his blessing to Esau, yet Jacob still got it.

3. Jesus literally made Jacob to limp, yet He also saved him from the wrath of his brother Esau and increased his descendants, as promised.

I wonder who the first person was who toppled a line of dominoes and thought that would be a fun hobby.

As much as I like to complain that winters in Latvia are cold, and that summers often have cloudy and rainy days, I also have to admit that I’m glad that I don’t have to deal with the extreme heat that I used to experience every summer back in my home town.

Just published almost 3,900 words on how not to overreact.

My wife and I love watching PewDiePie’s newest family vlogs, whenever they come out (they’re very wholesome), but they also make me feel so sad and hurt on the inside because I know that I’ll never be able to have children of my own.

I can’t remember when was the last time that I ate a doughnut. It must have been years ago. I kind of feel like eating one.

How would we live if we instinctively, almost unconsciously, knew Jesus’s mind and heart regarding things that confronted us? When you received criticism, you would never be crushed, because Jesus’s love and acceptance of you is so deeply “in there.” When you gave criticism, you would be gentle and patient, because your whole inner world would be saturated by a sense of Jesus’s loving patience and gentleness with you.

— The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller.

But each of us comes to marriage with a disordered inner being. Many of us have sought to overcome self-doubts by giving ourselves to our careers. That will mean we will choose our work over our spouse and family to the detriment of our marriage. Others of us hope that unending affection and affirmation from a beautiful, brilliant romantic partner will finally make us feel good about ourselves. That turns the relationship into a form of salvation, and no relationship can live up to that.

— The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller.

I’m confused over what to do in the future. My wife will start her residency on October 1 this year. Sometime in 2028, we will need to move to another town, far away from where we currently live, where she will continue her eduction at a certain hospital. What I will do though? I highly doubt that I can find a job in a town of 20,000 people, when I already struggle so much to find a job in a city with over 600,000 inhabitants. Should I just forget about all this and trust that God has prepared a work for me to do, or should I try to figure out what to do in the meantime before we move?

I woke up this morning feeling completely exhausted.

Imagine what a job as a switchboard operator must have been like.

I’m reading this piece on the history of the Internet and it never fails to amaze me that its “father” is still alive.

This blog post was a fun read. I learned that there is a browser called Yandex. Apparently it’s the second most popular browser in Russia. Wild!

Just received an audio message from my mother-in-law saying in very poetic and loving words that both her and her husband watched the sermon that I preached last Saturday and were touched by it. Praise God!

There is something that I wish Bear Blog allowed, that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense: I wish that I could manually arrange the post order, and completely get rid of the dates. This is because I want the posts on my blog to be “timeless”. I don’t want a reminder of when I wrote them to be present in the attributes. I also have a lot of great writing that I wrote sometime in the past and I just don’t care to put up in chronological order. It’s too laborsome.

The second best solution that I came up with is to set the time and publishing date of the post that I want to be the “oldest” to Sep 16, 2019, at 4:03 PM, which is the date of Herman’s first post. (I just needed a “random” time and date.) Every subsequent post will be set to the same time, but just one day later. That way I can just copy-paste the attribute and change the smallest amount of characters, while keeping everything in order. Publishing dates are hidden away with CSS on the actual page.

Just shared this message with a few friends:

I know that I keep deleting and starting blogs from scratch and all that, but I’m always so impressed with what I come up with. lol This probably came across weird, but just look at my microblog, for example. Isn’t it such a beautiful and simple thing? Believe it or not, I’ve actually been posting mostly with my iPhone. It’s that simple to make use of the system that I came up with. It takes me less than 20 seconds to set up a new post and start writing. It looks great on desktop, and even better on mobile. Furthermore, it feels so good when I have a thought and instantly put it out there.

It’s 4:30 PM. I finally parked the car to eat. The clients kept calling me today, conspiring against my mealtime schedule.

Incidentally, I just saw the most Latvian thing ever: a guy literally munching away at a ball of green cabbage.

Forgot to mention that my wife and I watched a very informative video at breakfast about the period that immediately succeeded the revolutionary war.

Nope. I helped my wife with the documents for her residency, and only had enough time to clean the kitchen before I got called to go to work. At least the kitchen is clean.

To do before I go to work this morning:

1. Clean the kitchen counter, stove, and wash the dishes.
2. Review the next blog post.
3. Prepare the spreadsheet for next year’s reading schedule.
4. Prepare outline for my next two books.
5. Start writing the first chapter for one of them.

Can I do all of that in time?

Don’t give your future to someone who took your past.

— Dr. Jennifer Jill Schwirzer

Randomly remembered that today, while driving at work, I heard David’s friend say that when he studied philosophy in university, his secular professors aimed at teaching the students that when it comes to truth, out of the three available options (there’s one, multiple, or none), believing that there are multiple truths is the only completely incoherent choice that one can make.

Loved Sophie’s new post about how Ai is not welcome on her website. The theme switcher on the top right is impressive. My favorite theme is “midnight city”. I love the color palette and the readability.

My friend Ava published a spicy take on people who constantly change what software tools or online services they use. Before publishing it, she warned me not to feel called out. I still do, but I loved reading it nonetheless. It’s the kind of tough love that I need.

his paragraph describes my problem well:

At the same time, the view you have of yourself is ruining it too. You are constantly devaluing and putting down your past selves and what they created. You dismiss your own writing as yapping, rambling, trash. You think it’s old, it’s cringe, it’s embarrassing, it’s not deep enough, no one cares about it, it doesn’t reflect your mental space 2 weeks later, so you burn it all down. You reinvent yourself over and over like an act of shame. Believe me, your stuff is great, and if you don’t become comfortable with sitting with old thoughts that aren’t how you currently feel, you’ll repeat this no matter what tool you use.

Before that, she asked two very good questions:

Why don’t you see it through for once? Why can’t you decide on a tool and stick with it for a year or more?

Boy. I would love to do that, but can I? Can I actually resist my desperate desire to delete my blog and start from scratch for an entire year?

I made a good call today by not taking the melon with me for lunch, as that would have had to wait until close to 7 PM and would have been completely fermented by the time I ate it. I got to eat my red lentil fusilli with my secret sweet-and-sour sauce. It tasted amazing! It’s been a while since I last ate it. I’ve been on this fruit diet for a good three months now. I can actually see and feel that I’ve lost weight. Good on me.

Boy, did I have a long day.

I thought of some items that make for a good sermon or a good piece of writing about biblical topics that I want to use as guidelines moving forward:

1. The message must flow from a personal experience with the topic in question (whether I mention it or not), so I can share it with conviction and enthusiasm.

2. The message must contain personable, practical lessons about matters of living that most people can relate to.

3. Stories, whether from the Bible or elsewhere, are to be the primary conduit for sharing the message. Proof texts should be kept to minimum and, so far as possible, not interrupt the narrative.

4. The message must contain some related lesson about God’s character of love, particularly and preferably as it was manifested in the sacrifice of His Son.

When I deliver the products to a client, I have to get them out of the car and bring them into their store, restaurant, or warehouse. That can take a while if an order is large. Some clients get impatient and begin to tell me that this or that product is missing, and unfortunately, I immediately get into fight or flight mode trying to get the client to stop complaining to me, and letting me finish bringing everything in so we can actually start going through the list in the invoice. The product that is “missing” is usually just in waiting in the car. Impatience breeds anxiety.

A client just kept insisting that I was trying to give her 2.5 kg of red lentil fusilli for the price of 25 kg. After much debating and me calling my colleague, it turned out that she confused them for the bag of 25 kg of plain red lentils that her company also ordered. Somehow I didn’t see them on the invoice either. I got anxious over nothing.

It’s not even the middle of August yet, and the leaves are already falling.

I’m pretty happy with how my new design turned out. Time to go to work though.

I think that I figured out a good system: Posts will remain as such. I set their published_date attribute to 2019-09-16 16:03, which is the date and time of Herman’s oldest post. (Don’t judge me. I just needed some kind of significant value for all posts.) On the website itself, I hid the date in the posts via CSS. For each tag, I will then have a page that embeds the corresponding post list, from which I will also hide the date. This way I can make my posts more timeless. I already published the first one.

Published this post from my iPhone. It was easy enough. The website is surprisingly well-optimized for mobile browsers.

So, as of now, I have my main website, which contains my autobiography, and this microblog. I’m not sure how seriously I should invest myself into blogging anymore. I get so discouraged that I don’t ever get any feedback, and I had sworn off trying to build an audience on the Internet anyway. I also don’t like the idea of binding my creative writing to a timeline. I want it to be timeless instead. Maybe I need to publish everything as pages...

Watched this video by Kurzgesagt about alcohol. I think (I hope) that, in a few years, we’ll treat drinking alcohol the same way that we treat smoking cigarettes now.

Started a new microblog. Here’s to hoping that I won’t delete it like all the others.

Test.