{
  "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
  "title": "unstory",
  "home_page_url": "https://unstory.eu/",
  "feed_url": "https://unstory.eu/feed.json",
  "description": "If this is the solution, I want my problem back.",
  "icon": "https://unstory.eu/icon.png",
  "language": "en",
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/emb/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/emb/",
      "title": "Own your content",
      "content_html": "<p>POSSE it, they say. Own your content.</p>\n<p>Publish once, fork it five times. RSS, Mastodon, Bluesky, webmention, pick your parasite.</p>\n<p>Fix the typo in two minutes. Already too late.</p>\n<p>Fossils wearing your name.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-07T00:53:40Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/toe/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/toe/",
      "title": "The cult list",
      "content_html": "<p>POSSE. Webmention. ActivityPub. AT Protocol. Fediverse. IndieWeb. Micro.blog. Bearblog. Pika Pulse. /now page. /uses page. Discovery feed. Own app . Own icon. Own font.</p>\n<p>Same rats, smaller cage, better lighting.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-07T00:19:55Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/jcf/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/jcf/",
      "title": "He sleeps fine",
      "content_html": "<p>Killed a man Tuesday. Checked his oil, packed a lunch, drove three hundred miles to do it. The boy looked like his nephew. Same jaw, same stupid haircut.</p>\n<p>Wednesday he kissed his daughter on the forehead. Told her to be good. Meant it.</p>\n<p>No animal forgives itself. It just eats and moves on.</p>\n<p>He needs God, a flag, and a stranger with more stripes. Three lies stacked on a fresh grave.</p>\n<p>Friday he is at his daughter's recital. Claps loudest.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-05T12:54:32Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/ixu/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/ixu/",
      "title": "The man",
      "content_html": "<p>AI flooded the internet.</p>\n<p>Google broke search.</p>\n<p>Company poisoned the river.</p>\n<p>Pharma knew, shipped anyway.</p>\n<p>Parliament voted.</p>\n<p>Fairy tales. A man did every one of those things. With a name, a face, a paycheck.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-03T22:27:17Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/adz/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/adz/",
      "title": "Your opinion is irrelevant",
      "content_html": "<p>Doctor says six months. Your opinion was five years.</p>\n<p>Prayer changes nothing. Morphine does.</p>\n<p>You argue with your father about it anyway. Right up until he stops breathing. You were right.</p>\n<p>He is dead.</p>\n<p>Heart stops. No referendum.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-03T20:36:52Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/kto/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/kto/",
      "title": "Pet lover",
      "content_html": "<p>Bella doesn't know she is humiliated.</p>\n<p>Sweater on, box ready, camera rolling. Confused face. Laughing. Share. Forty likes. Love you Bella.</p>\n<p>In nature, predator kills and eats. Clean. Honest.</p>\n<p>Bella gets something worse. Alive, dependent, no exit. Dressed up, laughed at, photographed daily. Death would be more honest.</p>\n<p>You call it love.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-02T21:10:48Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/xuh/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/xuh/",
      "title": "Pretend",
      "content_html": "<p>You read, you write, day after day. It either entertains you or not.</p>\n<p>You can read every fact that exists about food and human biology. All of it. You will order your pizza anyway. You can see all the data that random corporation extracts from you. You will open Gmail anyway. You have stances, ideals, and all that shit. On the surface. In words.</p>\n<p>You cry about the semantic web presented over 27 JavaScript files and broken HTML. You write about a book you read yesterday and one you will read tomorrow. Maybe split it with a banana cake and a picture of a bird.</p>\n<p>Your 2000-word deep analysis of some fictional character from the latest TV series is safe. Costs nothing. Nobody will punish you. Nobody will argue.</p>\n<p>Nobody will read it.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-02T19:38:07Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/ysj/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/ysj/",
      "title": "Frenkie left X",
      "content_html": "<p>Last week, Frenkie left X. He joined Bluesky. He wrote an essay about it. Kept the account &quot;just in case.&quot; Frenkie is now free. He can write about climate change. His first manifesto from his new MacBook. The temperature in the room is good. The air conditioner works, delivered just yesterday by Amazon delivery.</p>\n<p>Life is good.</p>\n<p>His next piece is an essay about digital minimalism and independence. His minimalist platform allows him to post his piece over email. The essay is perfect. Ten language tools smoothed every edge. All good, loading frenkie.privacy@gmail.com and sent. Published. Job done. Frenkie can continue to scroll through other helpful videos about freedom and humanity.</p>\n<p>300 000 years. The same brain. The same performance. Different costumes.</p>\n<p>It's futile.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-01T00:19:17Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/mjk/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/mjk/",
      "title": "I like email",
      "content_html": "<p>Technical issue on the website. Emailed after midnight. Morning got the answer and the fix. Source: https://bubbles.town/</p>\n<p>Try this with some corporation. If you are lucky and waste like an hour on their website cluster, you may find some contact form. The answer will be the same. They value your feedback. They can't respond to you. Terms, privacy, and your rights. Reading for a weekend. A year has passed, and your issue persists.</p>\n<p>Recently, I somehow clicked on some website. The author writes like crazy about accessibility and other noble things. Lady was even part of some accessibility working group. They defined accessibility as a social problem. She does some talks and shit.</p>\n<p>Her website uses a 12.5-pixel font. Probably passed some checklist and will talk next Friday about accessibility. I emailed her. Zero feedback. Probably busy talking about accessibility. Understand. Source: https://www.aleesteele.com/</p>\n<p>On another website, I post a comment. Deleted. Most authors don't want comments. They want clapping. This confirms my thought about comments. They are pointless. It looks like a dialogue. It's actually a fan wall. Source: https://forkingmad.blog</p>\n<p>The third ignorant person was some Matt behind some informational website about RSS feeds. The web assumes that a web feed is an RSS feed. Not on my watch. I emailed the author and pointed at the nonsense. I did not get an answer. The man behind the scenes says he worked with some of the world's largest firms. He is also pretty busy with AI. I got it. Source: https://aboutfeeds.com/</p>\n<p>I got a few emails. Positive. One peasant named Gonzalo probably got annoyed by my answer when he asked that I serve him a web feed in XML. Well, it sounds almost like a joke. I know some archaic feed readers still don't support JSON Feed. I don't blame them. Web feeds are all bad. Gonzalo took it probably personally. It's weird when people identify with some technology or company.</p>\n<p>Email is easy. One click, everyone knows how. Yet you get more reactions on social media than emails. No publicum, no performance, no point. Maybe it feels too intimate or too real for many.</p>\n<p>I like email.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-29T21:37:25Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/zye/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/zye/",
      "title": "Garbage for humans",
      "content_html": "<p>Few months ago Cloudflare introduced Markdown for machines:</p>\n<blockquote><p>As a business, to continue to stay ahead, now is the time to consider not just human visitors, or traditional wisdom for SEO-optimization, but start to treat agents as first-class citizens.</p></blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Feeding raw HTML to an AI is like paying by the word to read packaging instead of the letter inside.</p></blockquote>\n<p>You get HTML, trackers, cookie banners, popups, and JavaScript. This needs a browser built by thousands of engineers just to show you a paragraph.</p>\n<p>Machines get the clean version.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-29T01:49:08Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/lzj/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/lzj/",
      "title": "human.json",
      "content_html": "<p>Someone invented human.json protocol. A protocol for humans, about humans, to make the web more human. In JSON. Braces, quotes, colons, commas. Needs a parser to read it.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile Google shipped Open Knowledge Format for AI agents. Markdown files.</p>\n<p>The people building the human web chose the machine format. The machines moved to the human format.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-29T00:01:08Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/qaa/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/qaa/",
      "title": "Why web browsers don't support Markdown",
      "content_html": "<p>Web browsers are not document viewers. They are customer acquisition channels for massive tech ecosystems. They don't serve users, but corporations. AI features, VPNs, crypto wallets, and countless of other nonsense.</p>\n<p>Markdown, on the other hand, is a public good. It would empower writers to publish their words independently. It would strip out countless CMS systems, frameworks, trackers, and ads. All those things where the money sits. Markdown is practically anti-platform. It's simple.</p>\n<p>Why implement simple Markdown when there is already a bloated PDF viewer and you can play AAA games in a tab, or generate images in some chat window? Markdown is an alien in that world.</p>\n<p>Not supporting Markdown in a web browser is a choice. That choice tells you exactly who the modern web is built for.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-27T00:18:36Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/lcn/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/lcn/",
      "title": "Your shit is unreadable",
      "content_html": "<p>I can open a feed aggregator, click 20 random links, and close them one by one without reading a whole title. My brain does a fast check on the shape and style, filters it out, and trashes it. </p>\n<p>Everything is sterile. Zero pulse, no risk. Nice grammar, nice syntax, dead words. It's polished sludge copied from the same content mills, where every bit of emotion is sanded down by some checklist and fear of getting canceled. Everyone plays it safe, writing like they are sitting in a corporate lobby cafe. No position, no stance, just a &quot;topic.&quot;</p>\n<p>And the fucking length. Why does one short thought need six paragraphs of metaphors, fake warmth, and 10 angles of neutrality? Hook, problem, solution, three subheadings, and a conclusion that repeats everything three times. The same rhythm from start to finish. Competent-looking filler that completely buries whatever tiny idea was actually there.</p>\n<p>It's summer. It's hot, like it has been for thousands of years. Thanks for the 1,000-word coverage and your recommendation to drink water. You saved humanity.</p>\n<p>Where is the fucking hate? Everyone loves everything. Sunshine, rainbow. You stripped out the ugly parts, thinking it would make you more likeable. It just made you empty.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-26T00:08:16Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/peb/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/peb/",
      "title": "The tyranny of the XML tag",
      "content_html": "<p>Feed readers and aggregators often permit the import and export of a web feed list. Typically in a single dreadful XML format.</p>\n<h2>OPML - Outline Processor Markup Language</h2>\n<pre><code>&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&gt;\n&lt;opml version=&quot;2.0&quot;&gt;\n&lt;head&gt;\n&lt;title&gt;Minimal web feed opml cluster&lt;/title&gt;\n&lt;/head&gt;\n&lt;body&gt;\n&lt;outline text=&quot;pure garbage&quot; title=&quot;Garbage collector&quot; type=&quot;rss&quot; xmlUrl=&quot;https://example.com/rss.xml&quot; htmlUrl=&quot;https://example.com&quot;/&gt;\n&lt;outline text=&quot;Atom is not RSS&quot; type=&quot;rss&quot; xmlUrl=&quot;https://example.com/atom.xml&quot;/&gt;\n&lt;outline text=&quot;xmlUrl and rss fit here&quot; type=&quot;rss&quot; xmlUrl=&quot;https://example.com/feed.json&quot;/&gt;\n&lt;outline text=&quot;text is required&quot; type=&quot;rss&quot; xmlUrl=&quot;https://example.com/leaf.txt&quot;/&gt;\n&lt;/body&gt;\n&lt;/opml&gt;</code></pre>\n<p>For a human like me, a list is just a list. Sharing a list of web feed URLs is simple.</p>\n<h2>Plain text version for humans and machines</h2>\n<pre><code>https://example.com/leaf.txt\nhttps://example.com/feed.json\nhttps://example.com/atom.xml\nhttps://example.com/rss.xml</code></pre>\n<h2>The barricade around the castle to keep the peasants out</h2>\n<p>Complexity is a power structure. A 10-page API documentation page just to figure out how to send a sentence from one computer to another is not progress.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-23T09:36:07Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/uml/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/uml/",
      "title": "The off-grid fantasy",
      "content_html": "<p>The cabin. No signal. Chop wood, carry water. Birds and trees.</p>\n<p>What a romance. Exactly as in that 20-minute video. The premium edition of the internet trap. The off-grid fantasy like a dotfile with mosquitoes and a septic tank.</p>\n<p>Nature is not a therapy. It's expensive and physically punishing. The office is boring. The wood is boring. Winter is long. A frozen pipe and a septic tank backup at midnight in minus twenty. Unprepared in the office, you lose a job. Unprepared in the woods, you lose a finger.</p>\n<p>Just you, insects, weather and the same brain that drove you there.</p>\n<p>At least the internet is warm.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-20T18:12:08Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/xlr/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/xlr/",
      "title": "The seeking",
      "content_html": "<p>It started as exploration. Chats, forums, ICQ. Joomla to WordPress. Windows to macOS to Linux to OpenBSD. Small break in Plan 9. Old ThinkPad and netcat. IRC, Gopher, scripts, HTML. Someone in a Battlefield game chat figured it out a decade ago with &quot;get a life.&quot;</p>\n<p>We knew.</p>\n<p>The perfect setup. The config file. The window manager. The script nobody needs. The dotfile never finished. For someone else, it may be the note-taking app, the TV series, the desk setup. The tool everyone is talking about.</p>\n<p>The trap that worked.</p>\n<p>Kill it and almost nothing is left. The noise is the trap. The internet was never that useful. No random scrolling, no news, no platforms. The internet goes quiet. The computer is idle. Shut down the computer and there is nothing waiting. The screen just filled that empty space cheaply. No risk. No failure.</p>\n<p>Cleaned the house and only time stays.</p>\n<p>Time for what?</p>\n<p>Replaced Battlefield with a feed reader and IRC with a static site. Same search. Different costume. The hunger just moves. Online, offline, it doesn't matter. Offline the hunger finds a mortgage, a relationship, a career. Real wreckage.</p>\n<p>It's futile.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-20T15:26:14Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/wio/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/wio/",
      "title": "RSS, Atom, JSON Feed and leaf",
      "content_html": "<p>4 web feed formats:</p>\n<h2>Leaf -  9 lines</h2>\n<pre><code>https://unstory.eu/leaf.txt\nhttps://unstory.eu/ unstory\n---\nhttps://unstory.eu/wio/\n2026-06-19\n# I love leaf file\nSharing my **leaf** of https://unstory.eu/ with the world.\n\nThe world is not the same.</code></pre>\n<h2>RSS - 15 lines</h2>\n<pre><code>&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&gt;\n&lt;rss version=&quot;2.0&quot;&gt;\n  &lt;channel&gt;\n    &lt;title&gt;unstory&lt;/title&gt;\n    &lt;link&gt;https://unstory.eu/&lt;/link&gt;\n    &lt;description&gt;unstory&lt;/description&gt;\n    &lt;item&gt;\n      &lt;title&gt;I love leaf file&lt;/title&gt;\n      &lt;link&gt;https://unstory.eu/wio/&lt;/link&gt;\n      &lt;guid&gt;https://unstory.eu/wio/&lt;/guid&gt;\n      &lt;pubDate&gt;Thu, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000&lt;/pubDate&gt;\n      &lt;description&gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Sharing my &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;leaf&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; of &amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;https://unstory.eu/&amp;quot;&amp;gt;https://unstory.eu/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; with the world.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;The world is not the same.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&lt;/description&gt;\n    &lt;/item&gt;\n  &lt;/channel&gt;\n&lt;/rss&gt;</code></pre>\n<h2>Atom 16 lines</h2>\n<pre><code>&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&gt;\n&lt;feed xmlns=&quot;http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom&quot;&gt;\n  &lt;title&gt;unstory&lt;/title&gt;\n  &lt;link href=&quot;https://unstory.eu/&quot;/&gt;\n  &lt;link rel=&quot;self&quot; href=&quot;https://unstory.eu/atom.xml&quot;/&gt;\n  &lt;id&gt;https://unstory.eu/&lt;/id&gt;\n  &lt;updated&gt;2026-06-19T00:00:00Z&lt;/updated&gt;\n  &lt;entry&gt;\n    &lt;title&gt;I love leaf file&lt;/title&gt;\n    &lt;link href=&quot;https://unstory.eu/wio/&quot;/&gt;\n    &lt;id&gt;https://unstory.eu/wio/&lt;/id&gt;\n    &lt;published&gt;2026-06-19T00:00:00Z&lt;/published&gt;\n    &lt;updated&gt;2026-06-19T00:00:00Z&lt;/updated&gt;\n    &lt;content type=&quot;html&quot;&gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Sharing my &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;leaf&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; of &amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;https://unstory.eu/&amp;quot;&amp;gt;https://unstory.eu/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; with the world.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;The world is not the same.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&lt;/content&gt;\n  &lt;/entry&gt;\n&lt;/feed&gt;</code></pre>\n<h2>JSON Feed 15 lines</h2>\n<pre><code>{\n  &quot;version&quot;: &quot;https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1&quot;,\n  &quot;title&quot;: &quot;unstory&quot;,\n  &quot;home_page_url&quot;: &quot;https://unstory.eu/&quot;,\n  &quot;feed_url&quot;: &quot;https://unstory.eu/feed.json&quot;,\n  &quot;items&quot;: [\n    {\n      &quot;id&quot;: &quot;https://unstory.eu/wio/&quot;,\n      &quot;url&quot;: &quot;https://unstory.eu/wio/&quot;,\n      &quot;title&quot;: &quot;I love leaf file&quot;,\n      &quot;date_published&quot;: &quot;2026-06-19T00:00:00Z&quot;,\n      &quot;content_html&quot;: &quot;&lt;p&gt;Sharing my &lt;em&gt;leaf&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;a href=\\&quot;https://unstory.eu/\\&quot;&gt;https://unstory.eu/&lt;/a&gt; with the world.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The world is not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&quot;\n    }\n  ]\n}</code></pre>\n<p>All 4 feed formats include the same information. One shared article.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-18T23:17:34Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/kts/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/kts/",
      "title": "Minimal peasant leaf file",
      "content_html": "<p>Peasants are usually lazy, so their text feed can be too. Example of lazy peasant <strong>minimal leaf</strong> file: </p>\n<pre><code>https://example.com/leaf.txt\nhttps://example.com/ Example\n---\nhttps://example.com/src/xqj.txt\nhttps://example.com/xqj/\n---\nhttps://example.com/src/urd.txt\nhttps://example.com/urd/</code></pre>\n<p>Machine knows the domain, site name and the path for all sources. Any other details are served in individual article files. URL of the website is optional. Content can be shared just over the leaf.</p>\n<p>When a peasant writes a new article about his farm and new political view he adds those 2 lines with a separator. The reader checks the source file from the first line if new article is there. Then crawls it.</p>\n<p>Lazy minimal source of peasant's article:</p>\n<pre><code>https://example.com/src/xqj.txt\nhttps://example.com/xqj/\n2026-06-17\n# Web feed without brackets\n\n20 pages of postmortem. Markdown allowed.</code></pre>\n<p>That's it. First line tells the source of this file, the second is optional web URL, and the third is optional date. The rest is article. No other information is needed. Date is mostly pointless, it can be part of the article if it's important. Article source is unique. Reader asks itself if it has already. For ordering across feeds, date on the third line can do the job.</p>\n<p>Feed reader is just something that can get a file over HTTP and a Markdown viewer (separate program or web browser extension). Easy life for a peasant, brutally simple for a machine.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-18T22:08:54Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/grz/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/grz/",
      "title": "The fake party",
      "content_html": "<p>Look at the sheer absurdity of it. A man sits in a chair and shouts because some millionaire kicked or threw a ball. Another waits for a multi-billion corporation to tell him what his phone will do next year.</p>\n<p>Do people realize it is not real? That it is just business? Simulating missing belonging with a logo on a machine or a t-shirt is a fake party. There is no tribe, just your wallet and attention. You buy the excitement. You pay to feel part of a pack that does not know you exist.</p>\n<p>This theater is annoying to observe.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-18T14:59:36Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/xqj/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/xqj/",
      "title": "Web feed without brackets",
      "content_html": "<p>Feed readers typically just need some basic styling and typography on top of plain text. They don't need to deal with HTML, and they don't need &lt;channel&gt;&lt;item&gt;, brackets, version, namespace. Just a person's name and shared thoughts. The whole XML structure is pointless for all of them, same like complex HTML is pointless for a human reading in a text editor.</p>\n<p>How could a human <strong>leaf</strong> file looks like, that can replace all current circus in the web feeds:</p>\n<pre><code>Site: unstory\nURL: https://unstory.eu/\nAbout: If this is the solution, I want my problem back.\nLeaf: https://unstory.eu/leaf.txt\n\n@ 2026-06-17\nTitle: Web feed without brackets\nURL: https://unstory.eu/xqj/\nReply-to: https://webfeeds.junk/specification\nmood: rotting tomato\nweather: rain\n\nEveryone is excited to share their leaf file.\n2026 the year of the **leaf file**.\n\n## In the first week, a million people sharing their leaf file\nSubsequently, the seven largest companies went bankrupt.\nPeople write and read like crazy. Everyone left their job.\n\n@ 2026-06-12\nTitle: The biggest cabbage\nURL: https://unstory.eu/urd/\n\nThe biggest cabbage captured in Slovak village\nimg: https://slovak.village/cabbage.jpg</code></pre>\n<p>If client does not understand some line, it just ignores it. No schema to validate against, no version number to check, nothing to break. You want add location or a phone number to your post, you just do it. Without asking permission from anyone.</p>\n<p>Web demands HTML, sure. Convert Markdown into HTML is relatively easy task. Simple script (Perl, Python, or even ancient AWK) is able to take this file and make from it beautiful website, separate articles, add header, style and whatever is needed. Same script, can make the feed too. Same file can be the entire source for your website. One file, no database, no folders, no corporate nonsense.</p>\n<p>Humans don't syndicate, they share. We don't need ({[]}) in our files. We don't need XML, JSON or whatever other junk is spit at us. Machines can read plain text for as long as they exist. No escaping required, no unreadable incantation inside a file.</p>\n<p>Plain text for humans. Even if all your software, browsers and readers fail, the file is still readable. Your grandchild can read it in 30 years in any text editor.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-17T23:31:42Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/qvl/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/qvl/",
      "title": "Web feed formats",
      "content_html": "<p>One of the default &quot;auto modes&quot; for writers is the <strong>RSS feed</strong>. They want to share their writing somehow. Plenty of writers don't own a domain name, but somewhere on their site sits a clunky RSS file in XML format. A horrible-looking file. If you have never seen one and feel like hating yourself, open any rss.xml from a random website or read the spec:<br>\n<a href=\"https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification\">RSS Advisory Board</a></p>\n<p>The website name explains most of it. RSS is supported in practically every feed reader and aggregator out there.</p>\n<p>Some &quot;rebels&quot; go with <strong>Atom</strong> instead. Another piece of internet history. The more adventurous people can read the badly written novel known as RFC 4287:<br>\n<a href=\"https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4287/\">The Atom Syndication Format</a></p>\n<p>Standard reading material if you were sentenced to life imprisonment.</p>\n<p>In simple terms, Atom was created to fix the inconsistencies in RSS by introducing a clear, fully standardized format. It defined things like unique IDs, timestamps, content types, and extensions more consistently, making it easier for publishers and feed readers to work together reliably. Cleaner on paper, more rigorous as a spec. In practice, from a writer's side, it fixes nothing you would notice. Readers and aggregators end up treating Atom feeds exactly the same way they treat RSS. Most readers and aggregators support this format too.</p>\n<p>There's a third, rarely used option: <strong>JSON Feed</strong>. Simple, slightly modern, a human-readable JSON file. It doesn't carry the whole history of the internet. The spec is short and easy enough for a human to read:<br>\n<a href=\"https://www.jsonfeed.org/version/1.1/\">JSON Feed</a></p>\n<p>The homepage of the JSON Feed spec ends with &quot;subscribe via RSS.&quot; That tells you everything you need to know about this format. Not every reader supports it. Many modern ones do. Most writers probably don't even know it exists. The people who use it tend to treat it as an alternative sitting next to RSS or Atom, not a replacement. Creators of JSON Feed themselves still ship RSS alongside it.</p>\n<p>All three are garbage, just in different shapes. Atom fixes nothing from RSS that a writer would notice. JSON Feed fixes nothing from either, beyond swapping XML for JSON, which mostly helps the machine parsing it and slightly the human reading it. And every one of them is busy escaping HTML. Imagine building a format for sharing HTML content that requires you to escape HTML to use it. Isn't that crazy? It looks like the actual goal was never to share HTML. Just to ship something over XML or JSON.</p>\n<p>JSON Feed is nicer and cleaner, sure. Next to those archaic formats, it feels almost sane. But the escaping is still there because the JSON format demands it. RSS and Atom let you hide HTML content inside the &lt;![CDATA[]]&gt; shenanigan, except that the exact closing sequence I just typed can't appear inside it either. An impressive little hack for escaping the escape hatch.</p>\n<p>Choose your pain.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-16T22:12:03Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/kxf/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/kxf/",
      "title": "Simple tools are not popular",
      "content_html": "<p>Simple things, especially in tech, are not popular. Some may be used silently behind the scene, but they are rarely visible or promoted. The reason is simple. It's impossible to create a business around them. You can't create an industry around a plain text file. There are no conferences, books, or presentations about primitive utilities. Those tools are simple, and they work. Nothing exciting. Hard to extract money from it.</p>\n<p>Complexity is a feature for the people who profit from it. Companies and developers can talk, explain, write about it, and build the whole ecosystem around it. If you create some simple format for sharing, syndicating content, or connection, it may attract a few enthusiasts, and some articles and comments pop up. Most likely, you will also get feature requests.</p>\n<p>But if you have a budget and create some complex nonsense like AT Protocol, you get into the news. People start building tools, libraries, and the entire ecosystem around that thing. Talks, videos, and long articles about implementation and its superiority. For those people, probably even such a circus as ActivityPub feels too simple. Excited groups want to implement it sooner than it's even ready. Often just because you can list it as a feature for your paid service.</p>\n<p>Those complex tools are hard to manage and control by a single human. They typically require some company or authority. The perfect examples are web browsers and practically any new technology standard. If something is too complex and hard to understand, that's the business opportunity and the power structure.</p>\n<p>Then shiny apps and services are created around complex protocols. Nobody understands how they work, and they definitely can't be run, managed, and controlled by a random peasant. So people voluntarily jump into walled gardens and pay the rent.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-15T21:11:21Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/aie/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/aie/",
      "title": "The last peasant on the internet",
      "content_html": "<p>I feel like I am the last peasant on the internet. I have been online for two decades. I already opened some websites during that long period.</p>\n<p>Most of the time, I find the &quot;about&quot; page starts with a position in a work. All those senior managers, product whatever, team something, this and that. People like to announce their job position in some company, but if you ask them what they do, they struggle to tell. There is usually no output. They do something on paper, yet they produce less than nothing. Typically they need several other people to help them do nothing and play the role. We can call them parasites, as they are more harmful than people who do nothing.</p>\n<p>Then there are some professors and academic people who list all the 20 books they wrote, and nobody reads. Of course, artists, programmers, and writers. Then all kinds of activists, people who think they are cats, and those who feel the need to announce their mental illness.</p>\n<p>But it's 2026, and all those above are obsolete. Nobody gives a cucumber about them anymore.</p>\n<h2>It's time for peasants to rise up!</h2>\n<p>Where are simple people who actually do something or do nothing at all? Random no-name cashier, waitress, cleaner, janitor, watchman, food delivery guy, or any other unnamed peasant? Don't they have their own website? They are definitely online. I see them staring at their smartphones all the time.</p>\n<p>Where are you lovely peasants? The internet needs you.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-13T15:56:37Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/urd/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/urd/",
      "title": "Nobody talks about smoking a cigarette",
      "content_html": "<blockquote><p>Shopping, traveling, health, entertainment, news, weather, games, celebrities, money, food, tech, AI, sports, music, movies, memes, fashion, cars, pets, relationships, dating, fitness, cooking, beauty, home, DIY, education, crypto, politics, travel, vacation, viral challenges, celebrity drama ...</p></blockquote>\n<p>Such nonsense. The internet is full of this crap.</p>\n<p>People should smoke more. There is nothing better than a cigarette on my balcony. Cigarette smoke as a filter for all the stupid things people do.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-13T12:11:16Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/mkj/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/mkj/",
      "title": "Constant movement",
      "content_html": "<p>There is such a phenomenon, people are constantly going somewhere. They pay so much for their houses and apartments, yet nobody is at home. It's probably more common in cities. Roads full of cars, constant movement. They drive, walk, or take a bus. They never arrive. Otherwise, they would not do the same thing the next day.</p>\n<p>I have no idea where they are all going, only that they will never reach their destination. And one day their bodies will just fall off.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-13T09:29:23Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://unstory.eu/otb/",
      "url": "https://unstory.eu/otb/",
      "title": "Contact forms",
      "content_html": "<p>Is any channel worse for communication than a contact form? Maybe a postcard when you don't know the address.</p>\n",
      "date_published": "2026-06-12T15:56:16Z"
    }
  ]
}
