A variety blog by Blake Wren. #JustWriteSomething 🚧 Home page under construction 🚧 Latest post: Fahrenheit 451 Wasn't About Burning Books...
Sure, that's what happens in the book, but that's not really what it's about. By the time I got to high school, Fahrenheit 451 and the other dystopian classics weren't a meaningful part of the curriculum anymore. This fact really seems to accentuate the entire point of the book. The main character is a fireman, yes. In this mildly sci-fi future, the traditional firemen we think of today are…
As with eras past, the tech sector has come out with its fancy new technology, and companies have made it the Frank's Red Hot of their product lines. Before "AI" it was blockchain, and before that it was the cloud. "Cloud" was at least a good marketing term that hadn't existed in that space before, and indicated more or less what it did. AI had precedent, however, and it does not (in my opinion)…
Out of media too, but that's not what this post is about. I recently finished the book The Elsewhere Express (2026) by Samantha Sotto Yambao. It's an idea I haven't seen anywhere else but the 2019 animated series, Infinity Train, and I highly recommend both. The surface level premise of both pieces is that an extradimensional train appears to those who feel lost in their lives and helps them "work…
Recently I've started to reject the algorithmically governed feeds of YouTube and the like. I can't even place what specifically it was that drove me to do this, but I don't gain much value from scrolling through endless videos that an algorithm thinks I'll like, only to be left bored and numb. The small internet became an appealing escape. I canceled most of my subscriptions, changed my habits,…
Early this February, I finished reading House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Z. Danielewski and, oh boy, its reputation for being "experimental" is well earned. There was a good chunk of time there where it had me feeling a little bit sick in the head. Even looking back at it, my sanity feels like it wanes a little bit, as if it's getting lost in the hallways, like I'm running from a minotaur of my own.…
Retrospectives are all the rage in January, but it is now nearly March already so maybe I am a bit late to this party. However, this post is still important to me anyway. It is the initial idea that made me consider starting this blog in the first place, so even if the "moment" is gone on posts like this for this year, here we go. In vaguely chronological order, here is everything I read in 2025.…
Dang, that last post was a little flowery, wasn't it? Or should I say "fiery"? I think somewhere in there I may have lost the plot a little bit. I'm not sure if, under all the metaphor-laden text, my point properly came across. To be more concrete, I wanted to just start writing things. Historically, I have started projects purely in my mind and entered what is effectively "planning hell". Instead…
Like most humans, I am a person with ideas and aspirations. A large majority of these ideas and aspirations, however, die in committee. From some pocket of void within my mind, the occasional spark of ideation will arise and become the subject of great debate. There will be a parliament of voices arguing over what the spark is, what it means, what it can become, and--most critically--whether it…