update @ Wed Jan 22 11:30:23 EET 2025

Signed-off-by: Ari Archer <ari@ari.lt>

blog.json

@@ -144,7 +144,7 @@
     "new-era": {
       "title": "The new era",
       "description": "This blog post marks my new transformative journey as a writer trying to improve her blogging experience, committing to quality over quantity. Over the past two years, I've shifted my focus towards creating more thoughtful, incisive content that resonates better with readers. This is now official - the new blogging era of Arija. :)",
-      "content": "Sveikas, Pasauli!\n\nIf you've been following my blog over the past year or so, you may have noticed a change in style and tone in my writings. It isn't a coincidence; I have actually been trying to take this blog more seriously, putting more effort into writing longer, more high-quality posts that both are a pleasure to read and write and offer more value to the public as well as myself. I feel that at this stage, I want my writing to be reflective, not just sharp but incisive, too.\n\nThis blog was just a beginning for me since mid-to-late 2020, and I got out somewhere around 300 posts on various topics I wanted to talk about. As I look upon these, the majority of such posts were either poorly written, didn't add any substance, or were not useful. They were, at least in some sense, about quantity instead of quality, and I am not too proud of that. I know they served some sort of purpose here on this blog in the early days, such as archiving random shower thoughts, but as I grew and changed, my perspective about what I wanted to create did so as well.\n\nTo that end, I've decided to take a more refined approach. I've published probably over 150 posts under this new system alone over the past 2 years, and I've been actively cleaning up the site, deleting content that no longer matches up with the direction I want to go. This isn't to say those past posts were all bad, but many were rushed or not relevant anymore. I've decided they hold no lasting value - neither for me nor for my readers - so they've been removed.\n\nOf course, since this blog is open source, you can still reach all of the previous posts [by browsing the source repository](https://blog.ari.lt/git) and even the deleted ones through the commit history, but I decided not to keep them in the upstream anymore.\n\nIn the future, this blog will involve more thoughtful and meaningful writing along the lines of what I have been thinking as before, however, I will be trying to come up with more insightful and meaningful content, or expand my past ideas in this \"new era\".\n\n## Changes and growth\n\nThe most pronounced change I plan to make is adopting some rules of writing that purported to improve my expression, ideas, and style overall. These rules come from George Orwell's famous essay \"Politics and the English Language\" where he advises people on how best to write clearly and effectively. The principles proposed by Orwell are simple yet effective, and I will be applying them to all my posts moving forward. In short, I will observe the following writing principles:\n\n1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.\n2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.\n3. If it is possible to cut a word out, cut it out.\n4. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.\n5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.\n6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.\n\nThese are not just principles of making my writing \"sound better,\" but rather making the ideas I want to get across clearer and more effective. Orwell's rules are timeless just as many of his works, and I look forward to applying them more consciously to my work.\n\nBeyond merely adhering to Orwell's \"rules\" of writing, I see this as an opportunity to become a better writer. It's so easy to lapse into generalities or obscure my meaning with over-engineered phrases. If my objective is to clearly convey my thinking and make my posts more interesting, I need to be straightforward and authentic in my writing.\n\nI also want to note that this is not about perfection. I don't expect each and every post to be perfect, or each and every idea to be fleshed out instantly. This is all just about gradual improvement. I will make mistakes, and that is okay. It is part of the process of growth and I am here to embrace it.\n\n## What to expect in the future\n\nGoing forward, I will continue writing on a broad array of subjects. The difference is that I intend to go deeper into the issues I will address by providing more in-depth and valuable analysis or critique of such. I want to escape from using bold language that holds no substance or vague expressions that avoid stating my true position. I will instead provide better arguments and thoughtful analyses that entertain and educate my readers :D\n\n## :)\n\nThat's all I wanted to share for today. I just wanted to document where I'm at in my journey as a blogger and writer. I appreciate you taking the time to read this and for following me as I continue to grow. Thank you, and I look forward to sharing with all of you in the future.\n\n'til next time :)",
+      "content": "Sveikas, Pasauli!\n\nIf you've been following my blog over the past year or so, you may have noticed a change in style and tone in my writings. It isn't a coincidence; I have actually been trying to take this blog more seriously, putting more effort into writing longer, more high-quality posts that both are a pleasure to read and write and offer more value to the public as well as myself. I feel that at this stage, I want my writing to be reflective, not just sharp but incisive, too.\n\nThis blog was just a beginning for me since mid-to-late 2020, and I got out somewhere around 300 posts on various topics I wanted to talk about. As I look upon these, the majority of such posts were either poorly written, didn't add any substance, or were not useful. They were, at least in some sense, about quantity instead of quality, and I am not too proud of that. I know they served some sort of purpose here on this blog in the early days, such as archiving random shower thoughts, but as I grew and changed, my perspective about what I wanted to create did so as well.\n\nTo that end, I've decided to take a more refined approach. I've published probably over 150 posts under this new system alone over the past 2 years, and I've been actively cleaning up the site, deleting content that no longer matches up with the direction I want to go. This isn't to say those past posts were all bad, but many were rushed or not relevant anymore. I've decided they hold no lasting value - neither for me nor for my readers - so they've been removed.\n\nOf course, since this blog is open source, you can still reach all of the previous posts [by browsing the source repository](https://blog.ari.lt/git) and even the deleted ones through the commit history, but I decided not to keep them in the upstream anymore.\n\nIn the future, this blog will involve more thoughtful and meaningful writing along the lines of what I have been thinking as before, however, I will be trying to come up with more insightful and meaningful content, or expand my past ideas in this \"new era\".\n\n## Changes and growth\n\nThe most pronounced change I plan to make is adopting some rules of writing that purported to improve my expression, ideas, and style overall. These rules come from George Orwell's famous essay \"Politics and the English Language\" where he advises people on how best to write clearly and effectively. The principles proposed by Orwell are simple yet effective, and I will be applying them to all my posts moving forward. In short, I will adhere to the following writing principles, taken directly out of his essay:\n\n1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.\n2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.\n3. If it is possible to cut a word out, cut it out.\n4. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.\n5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.\n6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.\n\nThese are not just principles of making my writing \"sound better,\" but rather making the ideas I want to get across clearer and more effective. Orwell's rules are timeless just as many of his works, and I look forward to applying them more consciously to my work.\n\nBeyond merely adhering to Orwell's \"rules\" of writing, I see this as an opportunity to become a better writer. It's so easy to lapse into generalities or obscure my meaning with over-engineered phrases. If my objective is to clearly convey my thinking and make my posts more interesting, I need to be straightforward and authentic in my writing.\n\nI also want to note that this is not about perfection. I don't expect each and every post to be perfect, or each and every idea to be fleshed out instantly. This is all just about gradual improvement. I will make mistakes, and that is okay. It is part of the process of growth and I am here to embrace it.\n\n## What to expect in the future\n\nGoing forward, I will continue writing on a broad array of subjects. The difference is that I intend to go deeper into the issues I will address by providing more in-depth and valuable analysis or critique of such. I want to escape from using bold language that holds no substance or vague expressions that avoid stating my true position. I will instead provide better arguments and thoughtful analyses that entertain and educate my readers :D\n\n## :)\n\nThat's all I wanted to share for today. I just wanted to document where I'm at in my journey as a blogger and writer. I appreciate you taking the time to read this and for following me as I continue to grow. Thank you, and I look forward to sharing with all of you in the future.\n\n'til next time :)",
       "keywords": [
         "reflective blogging",
         "content refinement",