Hello World
First post. Why this site exists, what to expect, and why it looks like this.
Every personal site starts with a hello world. This one is no different.
I wanted a corner of the internet that I actually control. No algorithm, no feed, no engagement metrics. Just text I wrote, rendered the way I want, on a page I can break and rebuild whenever I feel like it.
What to expect
- Blog — long-form writing. Essays, post-mortems, things I figured out the hard way.
- Projects — things I’ve built and still use.
That’s it. No newsletter popups, no cookie banners, no tracking.
Why it looks like this
Most personal sites look the same because they use the same templates. I wanted something that felt like mine. Brutalism forces you to make decisions — what’s the accent color, how thick is the border, where does the grid break. You can’t just drop in a theme and call it done.
It’s a reaction to a decade of sameness — the same drop shadows, the same gradients, the same rounded corners, the same Inter font on every landing page. Brutalism on the web borrows from brutalist architecture: raw materials, exposed structure, function over form. In practice that means:
- Thick black borders instead of subtle dividers
- Hard box-shadows — solid offset, no blur
- Oversized typography that isn’t afraid to be loud
- High contrast — black, white, and one screaming accent
- No rounded corners — everything is sharp
- Visible structure — you can see the HTML bones
Good brutalist design is deliberate. Every border, every offset, every monospace label is a choice. Bad brutalist design is just ugly. The difference is intention.
It’s also fast. No animation libraries, no parallax, no scroll triggers. Just HTML, CSS, and the occasional page transition. The page loads, you read, you leave.
More soon.