philosophy

tomek.org is my public exocortex, where i collate and present my thought-repository. i have a private exocortex, but that one won’t be public for a while. this site is like an epistemically-relevant-to-me knowledge hub. i’ve focused on longevity, clarity, and technical elegance in designing it. the #1 aspiration: zero lag.

it is meant as a tool, and should evolve alongside me. i want to frictionlessly document, reflect, and experiment. with that, i hope to inspire you to own your own personal digital space—carve out a part of the internet to future-proof your work.

content

i write on things i know about,
don’t know about,
and am unsure if i know about.

tech

this site is built in astro, a javascript front-end framework that stays performant with ssg, ssr, and islands architecture. i used to build in gatsbyjs, which has since been retired.

styling is in vanilla css. i tried tailwind and it bloats my html and weakens reusability–i prefer semantic, reusable styles. try to convince me otherwise! with partial hydration, react is selectively used for interactive components, ensuring that only necessary scripts are loaded on the client.

writing is in markdown, which retains portability. for why this is important, and other reasons markdown is superior, see ryan elston’s explanation.

njalla is the domain manager—their privacy standards are unparalleled. they are technically a proxy, so i rent the domain while retaining full control. git and github are used for version control and file hosting. netlify is used for deployment to a global cdn.

there are no analytics on this site. i do not collect any data from visitors. i’ve explored options like plausible, but i could not morally or financially bring myself to justify them.

design

there are a few thoughts behind the site design (that remain ever-evolving):

but i do want a wow factor sprinkled in, where some interactive elements excite and inspire the visitor (like the visited countries globe). this isn’t just a personal wikipedia!

attribution

thanks to gwern branwen for inspiration, especially in metadata implementation (epistemic hygiene and tagging), and for motivating me to articulate my site principles.

thanks to gpt-4o for ongoing drafting help.

for feedback on this site, you can always contact me.