So I picked up Stoicism and the Art of Happiness in hopes of finding a more thorough and structured rendering of this topic. Robertson certainly delivers there. The book is structured like a text book with well-organized chapters that build on each other. Important points are highlighted and summarized throughout.

On top of being a solid general introduction, the book draws connections between Stoicism, modern psychotherapy (particularly CBT), and religion (particularly Buddhism). As someone who hasn’t studied philosophy academically, it was interesting to learn that ancient philosophy was used much more as a pragmatic approach to the “art of living” than it is today. It was the self-help and psychology of its time. Modern philosophy feels more like an academic exercise than a handbook for living the good life. Meanwhile, religion and psychotherapy have tried to fill the role of helping guide people towards happiness and fulfillment.

Robertson draws parallels between the concepts of mindfulness in Buddhism and the cardinal virtue of wisdom in Stoicism. Both encourage the act of catching emotions as they arise before they take control and paying close attention to the space between an event and our reaction. The event is not within our control, only our reaction is.

Connections are also made between the Buddhist practice of loving-kindness and the cardinal virtue of justice, specifically Stoic cosmopolitanism and Hierocles’s concentric circles. Without overtly making it his goal, Robertson presents Stoicism as a comprehensive and completely rational replacement for religion. It’s not a big part of the book, but I found that angle helped pull Stoicism into a more modern and relatable context.

While Buddhism and Stoicism seem to have developed independently, they are remarkably similar in both goals and practice. Conversely, CBT is very much directly inspired by Stoic teachings and happens to be the gold standard for modern evidence-based psychotherapy.

I enjoyed learning a lot more about Stoicism and appreciated this book’s pragmatic “handbook” style. It’s the kind of book I can see myself referring back to frequently in the future.

The reader is left to wonder at the character’s resignation and calm acceptance of their gruesome fate, until it eventually becomes clear that their situation is not so unique. The students know they’re going to die, but they don’t know exactly how or when, or what it will be like. And they’re left to figure out how to live with this knowledge. Sound familiar?

I was also intrigued by Tommy’s animals. Searching for images around this topic yields some interesting visual interpretations, like this one. The book questions the point of art if we’re all going to die. What is the point of anything, really? While it doesn’t give us the answer, it provides a lot of interesting context to weigh in on the conversation.

1. Use the website to post content, replacing the act of posting to other social networks
2. Syndicating that content to other social networks — either manually, automatically or on schedule
3. Pulling in reactions from other social networks — for example, displaying on the website if a post got a reply or like on a social network where it was posted
4. The ability to interact with social network posts by reposting and sharing content from external feeds

So I’ve just been mucking about with plugins to see what’s out there.

I tried a WordPress plugin called Blog2Social: Social Media Auto Post & Scheduler, but it couldn’t even connect to my Mastodon account without the paid version. I’d honestly just manually post rather than pay a subscription fee. But for $29/year, it can post to up to 25 social networks. I need at least the $11/yr version just to connect to Mastodon, which is the only social network I’m currently active on. Blog2Social has a silly complicated pricing structure. But if it works, and you want to post to a bunch of social networks from WordPress, the cost isn’t bad. It’s good to know there are options for this, but I decided I’m happy to just post a link to Mastodon when I need to. Doing that from WordPress isn’t particularly helpful for me.

What I really wanted was to make it easy to share and interact with the content on this site. I installed the AddToAny plugin for this. That’s one of the two sharing plugins we recommend to clients at work. Seems like Oracle bought the other one and now is shutting it down. Nice. I like AddToAny because it replaces the Blocksy theme’s less complete sharing options. It looks good and works well. AddToAny supposedly makes money by selling data, but its unclear exactly what data they are collecting and who they are selling it to. I could find nothing about this anywhere on the website, even in the terms of service. That’s pretty shady. There is no paid option. It wasn’t enough to keep me from using it, in any case. This is a public website, and if someone is sharing, they’re most likely doing that publicly too. So whatever, take public data and sell it, I guess?

Despite integrating with a ridiculously large number of sharing targets, Instagram isn’t supported by AddToAny out of the box. I found some code on SO that adds it as an option. I tweaked it to reference a better Instagram logo I found and uploaded to WordPress, and changed the icon size to match the default AddToAny icons:

/*  AddToAny Instagram */
function addtoany_add_share_services( $services ) {
    $services['example_share_service'] = array(
        'name'        => 'Instagram',
        'icon_url'    => site_url('/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/instagram.gif'),
        'icon_width'  => 34,
        'icon_height' => 34,
        'href'        => 'https://www.instagram.com/',
    );
    return $services;
}
add_filter( 'A2A_SHARE_SAVE_services', 'addtoany_add_share_services', 10, 1 );

/*  AddToAny Instagram */
function addtoany_add_share_services( $services ) {
    $services['example_share_service'] = array(
        'name'        => 'Instagram',
        'icon_url'    => site_url('/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/instagram.gif'),
        'icon_width'  => 34,
        'icon_height' => 34,
        'href'        => 'https://www.instagram.com/',
    );
    return $services;
}
add_filter( 'A2A_SHARE_SAVE_services', 'addtoany_add_share_services', 10, 1 );

In the spirit of making this space more interactive, I enabled standard WordPress comments and registration. Because doing this creates a nearly instant spam honeypot, I installed Antispam Bee.

I also installed the IndieWeb plugin. This plugin wraps a bunch of other plugins that provide additional features. It’s a little unclear what, if anything, the core plugin does. But it collects a bunch of other plugins.

Webmention is like the standards-based implementation of WordPress pingbacks. I set up IndieAuth, which is a cool idea that is slowly gaining adoption. Syndication Links lets you reference where else you posted the same content or a reference to it. WebSub is a cool idea — basically web hooks for website notifications. I’ll be tinkering with this stuff. IndieBlocks seems to provide a set of questionably useful blocks. This one formats a repost, which is kind of cool:

At least for Mastodon, using their embed code looks a lot better:

Post by @Bagaag@indieweb.social

View on Mastodon

Finally, I added this site to the IndieWeb Webring, which is now displayed in the footer with links to previous and next sites in the ring. These are fun to surf through.

I’m curious to see what I can do with cross-posting to Mastodon. Can I capture replies and likes and boosts from Mastodon in WordPress?

Late breaking update: Mark Waters posted a comment suggesting a couple additional plugins for Mastodon integration. Share on Mastodon is an easy way to auto-post to Mastodon from the WordPress editor. And Replies Importer for Mastodon closes the loop, importing replies to posts on Mastodon that link back to a page here into comments in WordPress.

I use Spotify and YouTube for discovering and listening to new music, whether new releases or just new to me. That probably amounts to 30–50% of my listening time. The rest of the time, I listen to my collection of digital music. I have been collecting MP3 files for decades. Much of it was transferred from my large CD collection in the late 90s and early 00s. I bought a lot of music from MP3.com and eMusic back in the day. And from Amazon and iTunes. What I couldn’t find in digital format, I’d buy from CD Baby or elsewhere, rip the CD to MP3 and never touch it again.

When our child was old enough to start discovering music, I realized I was in a music rut and hadn’t really paid attention to new music in years. I discovered new music again along with my daughter as she started getting into music. My collection needed some new blood, and I wanted to at least be familiar with what is popular.

I used Google Play Music at first and just started listening to new releases across various genres and saving what I liked. Turns out I liked a decent slice of the new music coming out. Later on, because what had become YouTube Music kept dropping the ball on important midnight releases (my daughter, Taylor Swift), we switched to Spotify.

Here is my process for finding and collecting digital music:

• Listen to new release and recommended playlists each week. Listen to genre specific new release playlists. I often don’t have a lot of time for this, as it requires me to pay attention to the music rather than just have it playing in the background. I just do it when I can and feel like it.
• Add songs I like to my Liked playlist. New songs tend to fall in one of three categories: 1. I’m not interested. 2. It’s interesting. 3. I like it. Songs that fall into buckets 2 and 3 go into the Liked playlist.
• Listen to the Liked playlist. Remove anything I’ve added that I’m not interested in after a few listens. Maybe half of the “interesting” songs end up dropping off over time. Sometimes even a song I really liked at first listen sours on me after a few more listens.
• Every three months, purchase the songs that have been added to the Liked playlist since the last quarter and add to my collection. I do this seasonally, breaking up the year into Spring (Mar-May), Summer (Jun-Aug), Fall (Sep-Nov) and Winter (Dec-Feb).
• After purchasing and downloading, I tag the files for consistency, apply a standard set of genres, cover art, and add it to a new quarterly playlist, so I can always go back to that time.
• The music is then transferred to my Navidome instance, which runs on the same server that hosts this site. Navidrome is an open source self-hosted streaming service, and I love it.

I’ve been doing this methodically for 5 years now, adding around 100–150 songs each season.

You’re probably wondering why I go through this trouble and added expense instead of just making playlists on Spotify. There are several reasons:

• A preference to own my music and have full control over it, rather than renting it from a service. Streaming services are generally considered bad for artists. They can also raise their prices, change features or shut down at any time.
• The ability to organize things as I like and decide what does and does not make it in.
• Not feeling locked into a streaming service. This process works on any streaming service without having to migrate or rebuild my collection.
• The joy of tinkering, customizing Navidrome, grooming and otherwise maintaining the collection. Navidrome keeps a database that I can access to do lots of interesting things, and direct access to the files enables me to write scripts to do just about anything I want.
• The inclusion of music that isn’t available on streaming, including that of my own creation, friends’ creation, and local artists.

Sadly, purchasing digital music has become more difficult as streaming services have taken over. I buy mostly from Bandcamp, Amazon and Mp3Million. Aside from the subset of music available through Bandcamp, Amazon is the only legitimate source for digital downloads. If Amazon were to follow their peers and stop offering digital sales in favor of forcing listeners into their streaming service, there would be nowhere to buy most music digitally that legitimately compensates artists (or more specifically, their labels), and that’s a scary thought. I also hate putting money in Bezos’s pocket, so I’ll buy older music from Mp3Million. If a song is not available anywhere digitally, I record it from YouTube or Spotify. Those instances are limited to a few songs per quarter, though. If I like most of an album that isn’t available on Bandcamp, I may also purchase it on vinyl or CD and convert to MP3 from there.

Here are some stats from my collection, as of this writing:

• 1,527 artists
• 2,808 albums
• 12,747 tracks
• 6,465 “liked” tracks kept in regular rotation
• 4,700 archived tracks that are not in Navidrome at all

Tracks (total / liked) by decade:

Navidrome supports the ability to “like” tracks, and I use that in a Smart Playlist that I call “Like FM” to dynamically serve up 150 random liked songs that I haven’t listened to in 180 days or more. This is what I usually listen to — it’s like my own personal radio station available from anywhere and always serving up stuff I haven’t heard in a while. And since my music tastes are fairly broad, it always makes for an eclectic ride. Here’s the definition for Like FM:

{
  "all": [
    {
      "is": {
        "loved": true
      }
    },
    {
      "notInTheLast": {
        "lastPlayed": 180
      }
    }
  ],
  "sort": "random",
  "limit": 150
}

{
  "all": [
    {
      "is": {
        "loved": true
      }
    },
    {
      "notInTheLast": {
        "lastPlayed": 180
      }
    }
  ],
  "sort": "random",
  "limit": 150
}

Navidrome provides a nice web interface for listening, similar to streaming services. It also implements the Subsonic API, which is supported by a wide variety of clients and players. On the desktop, I like Supersonic. For Android, I like Simfonium.

Tagging for genres is a never-ending process. MP3 tags support multiple values, so I can tag tracks with multiple genres and use Navidrome or Simfonium to filter on them. My current strategy is to pick one or more primary genres that best describe the track, then add additional descriptive genres. Here are the primary genres, with track counts indicated in parentheses:

• Rock (6,038)
• Pop (2,128)
• Soft Rock (764)
• Electronic — not Pop or Dance (638)
• Jazz (577)
• Funk (318)
• Reggae — includes Dub, Dancehall, Ska, etc. (298)
• Folk (272)
• Hard Rock (205)
• Hip-Hop (187)
• New Age (175)
• World (154)
• Punk (153)
• Classical (137)
• Bluegrass (86)
• Dance (81)
• Fusion (67)
• Metal (32)
• Blues (33)
• Country (29)
• Ambient (14)

Then I add any of these modifier genres that apply, though most tracks haven’t been augmented with these yet:

• Mainstream (1,492)
• Instrumental (1,254)
• Jam — improvisational (799)
• Vinyl — ripped from a record (491)
• Soundtrack (193)
• Alternative — artsy/avant-garde/quirky (107)
• Minimalist (80)
• Childrens (41)
• Oldies (62)
• Vocal — solo vocal or highly vocal focused (29)
• Holiday (12)
• Chill (7)
• Cover (6)
• Psychedelic (5)

These have changed over time and are still changing. I’d love to get even more descriptive with genre tags like Drums, Guitar and Bass to denote interesting solos or parts, or tags to better describe the mood of a song like Happy or Melancholy. I use Puddletag for managing tags in my files, and I’ve also written a custom Python web app that I call Multigenre for doing large scale genre tag management. I’ll post about that in more detail sometime.

I’ll leave this here for now. There will definitely be more posts on this topic in the future, and I may promote this post to a page that I can better maintain going forward.

If you’re a fellow digital music collector, hit me up in the comments or email me. I’d love to talk shop and exchange notes.

• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle — Never read this as a kid. Really enjoying it as an adult.
• Stoicism and the Art of Happiness, Donald Robertson — An excellent overview, written in textbook style by a student of CBT, Stoicism and Buddhism. Clear, pragmatic and useful. The connections between Stoicism, religion and modern psychology are particularly interesting. Wrote about it here.
• Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro — Wrote about it here.
• Intermezzo, Sally Rooney — A heart-wrenching but ultimately uplifting book about love and family. About grief, at once crippling and transformative. About relationships and their endless complexities. All the preconceptions, labels, societal norms and unspoken truths that get in the way, while love quietly holds it all together.
• Orbital, Samantha Harvey — BU’s inaugural Common Read. A fairly short, moving and mostly enjoyable love letter to the planet. Good choice.
• Cloud Atlas, David Mitchel — Loved it. Completely unique and absolutely top-notch writing.
• 1984, George Orwell — Good book, strong writing.
• 1Q84, Haruki Murakami — Absolutely loved it. Aomame, Tengo, Fuka-Eri, Air Chrysalis and the little people.
• Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata — While I enjoyed this book, I felt the autism angle muddied what could have been a more broadly applied critique on human society. While her autism is never named in the book, it’s made clear through her backstory and general thought process. Is it a book about being “normal” and living up to society’s expectations when doing so goes against your nature, or is it a statement on autism? To the book’s credit, it helps the reader relate to the protagonist — I can absolutely identify with the fulfillment she finds in her work and her reasons for wanting to stay there. But, to me, her autism felt like a crutch the book leans on to explain why she’s not “normal”. Does this woman’s place on the autism spectrum really change the message of the book?
• Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden — Really enjoyed this. Felt a bit betrayed by its choice of perspective. It’s fictionalized non-fiction? Written with liberties by an American guy who interviewed a geisha, which is also part of the book, and later sued him for defamation.
• The Midnight Library, Matt Haig — January 2025 — Nice story. Made me appreciate life a bit more. Didn’t love the writing style.
• Normal People, Sally Roony — Recommended by my daughter. Loved it. Great movie, too.
• Dune 3, Children of Dune — Also kind of boring.
• Dune 2, Messiah — Kind of boring.
• Indian New England Before the Mayflower, Howard S. Russell — A detailed account of how Native Americans lived in New England, their societal structure and the fingerprints they left behind that can be seen all over New England today. Highly recommended for New Englanders.
• Meditations, Marcus Aurelius — Meh, felt disorganized, repetitive, not particularly timely; way better sources for this info. If you’re studying Marcus Aurelius, this is a primary source. If you just want to learn about Stoicism, keep looking.
• Memoirs of a space traveler, Stanislaw Lem — 1950s sci-fi humor shorts, didn’t love it.
• The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu — Probably the most original sci-fi book I’ve read. Crazy mix of history and sci-fi and written beautifully.
• Xenocide, Orson Scott Card — Third book in the Ender’s series. Not as good as the second. Pales in comparison to the first. Still worth it.
• Hippie Woman Wild, Carol Schlanger — Fun memoir about a girl from Yale living in a hippie commune off the grid in the forests of Oregon in the 60s.
• Speaker For The Dead, Orson Scott Card — Second book in Ender’s Game trilogy. Not as good as the first, but still a good read.
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card — Sci-fi classic. Loved it.
• Breath, James Nestor — Changed how I breathe.
• Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline — Strong sequel to the first.
• Anthem, Ayn Rand — Quick read, nice intro to Rand.
• Pachinko, Min Jin Lee — Epic novel about Koreans in Japan, written beautifully.
• Being Mortal, Atul Gawande — Non-fiction about how people get old and die in America.
• Your Head Is a Houseboat, Campbell Walker — Light and entertaining self help read.
• Crying In H Mart: A Memoir, Michelle Zauner — Japanese Breakfast singer is also a fantastic writer with an incredibly relatable story.
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson — Hacker sci-fi fun.
• Bush Craft 101, Dave Canterbury — Informative and fun.
• Jimi Hendrix: The True Story of Jimi Hendrix, Sharon Lawrence — Surprising and quite sad.
• Emmanuelle, Emmanuelle Arsan — A masterclass in erotica.
• Tis: A Memoir, Frank McCourt — Almost as good as Angela’s Ashes. More fun and less depressing.
• Neuromancer, William Gibson — Sci-fi fun with AI.
• The Cannabis Manifesto, Steve DeAngelo — Eye-opening.
• Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain — Vivid and entertaining.
• 80/20 Running, Matt Fitzgerald — How to train when running.
• ChiRunning, Danny Dreyer — How to run.
• Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami — Beautifully written and mysterious.
• A Long Stride: The Story of Johnnie Walker, Nicholas Morgan — A wonderful read about one of my favorite Scotch brands (try the Green).
• After the Banquet, Yukio Mishima — Engrossing Japanese fiction. Absolutely loved this. Such beautiful writing.
• Whiskypedia, Charles MacLean — All the Scotch distilleries.
• Whiskey Master Class, Lew Bryson — Informative.
• Friday, Robert A. Heinlein — Fun sci-fi romp.
• Dune, Frank Herbert — Better than the movie(s), though the new ones are fantastic.
• High School, Tegan & Sara — Captivating memoir from the Canadian pop duo full of 90s kid nostalgia. The TV show they made was canceled after one season, which seemed odd given how good it was.
• Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid — A fun fictional trip through the 70’s rock touring scene.
• Designing Connected Content, Carrie Hane — My fellow tech doc nerds will like this.
• Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir, Frank McCourt — Devastatingly sad and exquisitely written.
• Ready Player One, Ernest Cline — A fun ride through 80s nostalgia and retro-future tech.
• The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood — Kind of tepid on this one.
• Mother American Night: My Life in Crazy Times, John Perry Barlow — Who knew Bob Weir’s lyricist was a living Forest Gump? Highly recommended for Deadheads that have the main story line down and are looking for more context.
• Rat Girl: A Memoir, Kristin Hersh — Throwing Muses singer is a little nuts and a fantastic writer.
• Mini Farming: Self Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre, Brett L Markham — This book got me into gardening.
• A Still Forest Pool, Achaan Chah — If you read one book about meditation, read this one.
• America’s First Daughter, Daniel R. Covey — Interesting historical novel about Thomas Jefferson’s daughter.
• Lost in Shangri-La, Mitchell Zuckoff — I remember enjoying this, but that’s about all I remember of it.
• John Muir: Nature Writings, John Muir — Best nature writer of all time. Have read several of his books.
• Wildwood, Colin Meloy — Death Cab singer can write, too.
• The Book of God, Walter Wangerin — The Bible in novel form. Really enjoyed it.
• Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein — Sci-fi classic must-read.
• Sh*t My Dad Says, Justin Halpern — Funny.
• Old Path White Clouds, Thich Nhat Hanh — Beautifully written. Perhaps the closest thing Buddhism has to a narrative Bible. I’ve read more than a dozen of Thich Nhat Hanh’s other books, too — they never disappoint.
• The Dhammapada, Eknath Easwaran — A luminous translation of the Buddhist classic that wonderfully summarizes Buddhist thought.
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand — Loved it almost as much as Fountainhead.
• The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand — Top notch fiction. Must read for anyone.
• The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien — Read in college. Crazy powerful and well written book.
• Jack London, a big compilation of his works. Loved it.
• The Long Walk, Steven King — I’ve read many of King’s books, but this is the one I remember the most. Really grabbed me. The other one that really sticks out is Hearts in Atlantis.
• Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse — I love this book and have read it multiple times since high school.
• Tao Te Ching: Backwards Down the Path, Jerry Dalton — Turned me on to Eastern religion, via my brother. Really poetic and beautiful.
• Walden, Henry David Thoreau — Perhaps my favorite book of all time.
• Danny the Champion of the World, Roald Dahl — First “real” book I remember reading, some time around 3rd or 4th grade. Did not become a reader for pleasure until college.

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