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Aesthetic Education: Missing in Action

September 16, 2025

In a recent discussion we had, my friend Igor used the term aesthetic education to refer to being exposed to a diverse set of artistic experiences in one’s formative years. I quickly realized that was a deceptively simple term, one containing vast universes of meaning.

More importantly, I realized aesthetic education is a concept both misunderstood and (as a result) absent in modern times, where everything is about quantification and measurement.

Aesthetic education – which I will define more precisely in a moment; likely it isn’t what you think it is – has been missing in action for a long, long time.

aesthetic education. image of man with a peacock feather.
Aesthetic education today can teach about color symbolism, what tight cropping does, or what a peacock feather might allude to. Real aesthetic education is about relating everything to lived experience as well as finding connections with other, (only apparently) irrelevant concepts.
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Scammers and Spammers: 5 Ridiculous Emails

September 7, 2025

It’s no accident “scammers” and “spammers” are only one letter apart. In most cases, their roles overlap. That is to say, scammers send a massive number of unsolicited email (spam) hoping a few naive people will take the bait.

Obviously, Home for Fiction also receives some such traffic. I’ve several safeguards in place, so I can’t complain, and ever since I moved Home for Fiction to a different server, which I control fully, the situation has improved further, as now I can implement more fine-tuned defenses.

Still, every now and then messages by scammers and spammers get through. And that’s fine, because they’re hilarious! So here are 5 ridiculous such emails I’ve received, for me (and you) to have a laugh with.

Spammers and Scammers. Image of Punning Walrus holding a sign reading: grumpy mode activated
Spammers and Scammers make Mr. Walrus very, very grumpy…
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Goodbye Bluehost, Good Fucking Riddance

August 27, 2025

If you missed the “new beginning” post, I recently decided to shake things up regarding Home for Fiction. By the way, this was a few months after I had already taken control of my own site, reprogramming it from scratch (on top of WordPress, of course) and getting rid of all the useless stuff. And a few days ago, I was finally able to say, Goodbye Bluehost and if I ever see you again it will be a million years too soon.

You see, after programming my own theme and moving the site away from Bluehost’s shared servers to my own virtual private server, where I have full and total control, there was still one thing left: move the homeforfiction.com domain registration away from Bluehost.

The utterly appalling overall experience inspired me to write this post. You can consider it a review coming after I spent almost eight years with that bottomless pit of deception and predatory policies. Considering the fact that Bluehost – and its super-aggressive marketing – is what attracts most newcomers to it, if I manage to contribute to even one person’s informed decision, that’d be a huge win.

goodbye bluehost. image of laughing woman
Actual footage of myself laughing demonically after I cut off the last ties I had with Bluehost.
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