In an airport, my practices improved my life.

2025-07-08

I am currently in an airport operating on about 2 hours of sleep, a can of monster, and nmg of something. For some reason, I am allowed by society to operate a blog in this state.

I am waiting for my gate to open. I searched the waiting area for a socket in order to charge my electricals, but alas all of the plugs were otherwise occupied, or not of the correct protocol and untrustworthy. I did not bring a usb condom with me, and there is no way I'm plugging a usb cable into a random socket in an airport. These people take me for a fool.

Eventually, I discovered an unoccupied socket, attached to a pillar in the middle of a concourse. I sat down cross-legged and attempted to use it, but it quickly became clear that the reason it was unoccupied was due to it not working. I believe it is locked by some sort of airport staff apparatus. After knocking over my bag and water bottle in a display of my typical clumsiness, I began to draw unwanted attention from the other denizens of this strange environment, so I decided to move on. Thus I am writing this post on battery power in vim on my ThinkPad x220. I am not the fastest vim user, I'm far from a vim wizard, but I've used it for a long time and I am comfortable in it. I wrote my dissertation for university in vim.

Anyway, after booting my ThinkPad and rapidly opening a terminal window to cover my rather lewd anime wallpaper, I quickly wondered what I even intended to do on this device. I decided to connect to The Internet, and here, my lifestyle choices saved me. I'm not fucking with airport wifi, so instead I connected to a wifi hotspot on my phone, using wpaupplicant. Phone hotspot wifi is typically slow, but in an environment like this, it is especially slow. Fortunately, I have ordered my life such that I have an rss feed of text based websites and blogs which are lightweight. I simply opened newsboat, and enjoyed myself reading through blog posts without even opening a browser. Modern mainstream web design does not account for individuals on slow or unreliable internet, but thankfully, I don't have to engage with modern web design! Pretty much, I was just thinking about how this event was kind of cool. It feels like I am being rewarded for having lived a pure and godly life on the independent web. You see, this is not just an autistic LARP, even beyond just the simple fact that I enjoy reading blogs a lot in my regular day to day life, another advantage has shown itself! <3

Thank you to everyone who runs a lightweight text based website, you have created a moment of joy in this harsh environment.

I hate airports, they are the socially accepted zone of fascism which is deemed "necessary" for things like "national security". Here we are intensely surveilled (sp?), policed, assumed guilty until proven innocent, and all the while herded like cattle through endless storefonts. But I and I survive.