My statement about 2026 and this site

from February 24, 2026 | back to blog home

Get ready for the longest of my blog entries yet.

The times have changed

As the founding fathers of Haven Social put it, "It's a bleak time to be on the Internet." But it's not just the Internet getting worse. It feels like we're all wounded by this knife of distrust (♪ ni'o le kamtolylacri dakfu pe'a cu ♪) that we didn't feel coming for us, the all too mundane folk that makes up the majority of the people on Earth.

For instance, AI is taking jobs everywhere. Yes, it does happen in Poland, but not on as much of a scale as in America, where it seems to be driven by the incentive of multiplying corporate profits, which were already through the roof, and driving infinite growth even when there are finite resources.

Online services are getting worse in the name of investor profits and making the Internet closer to a panopticon. I'm being compelled left and right to switch from Discord to another platform, because they're rolling out age verification everywhere, even where it's not required by law. I haven't yet made my decision, but once I do, I'll let the people know, on my new site. However, the more likely outcome is that I would join multiple platforms. For example, I am on the Matrix homeserver as @c.ezra.m:matrix.org, but I don't use Matrix often because I'm still on Discord.

I'm being torn apart due to the state of the Internet and tech in 2026. Yes, I do know about Google wanting app developers to register to even be allowed to develop apps.

Major changes are coming

I am turning 20 this May. This also happens to coincide with the Matura exams.

Later, I'm also going to be applying to higher education. I chose to take advanced math and English exams, but this was motivated by helplessness, because I was not 100% sure of my future, and because my parents never went to college.

I chose to apply for an IT track in a college close to home. I have been on the programming track in high school, but I also applied for the IT track. Thank God I didn't choose the IT track in the end, because at least two of the guys there turned out to be really disrespectful.

I know it in my heart that I should choose to study linguistics, mostly due to my affinity for conlangs. But the college takes into consideration the score from the advanced German exam in addition to English, and my situation with German at school hasn't been the best in my last two years (see below). Plus, I am already overloaded with schoolwork as it stands, and also already have extracurriculars for the purpose of preparing for advanced math and English exams.

About the German situation: In my 4th year, my first German teacher took an extended leave, and I had to wait months before my second teacher was assigned to substitute. (My school, for whatever reason, prefers to not require classes to be taught by a substitute.) Then, in my 5th year of high school, I had my third teacher throughout September, and my fourth one started teaching us since October.

After the exams at school, I'll once again be attempting the practical portion of the driving exam.

I've also been longing to try new things. For example, I recently translated jbini canlu, a song by la janbe in Lojban, into Toki Pona, and I'd want to try actually singing my cover! Another one is a translation of Everybody Wants to Rule the World into Globasa, which was even earlier than that, and inspired by its other covers: Cadanghen eiskwt waldhe Dunia in Sambahsa and Omnes optant mundum regere in Classical Latin.

The planned site update

Yes, I did release the new footer to not keep pushing an update to every page when I update only one page, and also released this blog post. But this is, for now, the final update to the site.

Originally, I was going to keep updating the site as-is, but I realized that both the user-facing structure and the codebase is all over the place, and is a result of me not knowing much about the indie web in the past, but I've gradually learned more.

I found the skin switcher to be overwhelming to maintain, in that I felt that adding new skins always had to be tied to a bigger site update. Instead, I'll use a much simpler system, which mostly just distinguishes between dark mode and light mode.

I know, folks did like the Mena theme.

In conclusion, I have decided to archive this site and move it permanently to GitHub Pages. The link will be provided on the new site. But it's going to be quite a process of its own, because I have to find the credits for badges, adjust some Astro settings, and remove unnecessary stuff. Some stuff from the current site may still be available after the update, and I'll just have to remove it.

The new site will be, instead of Astro, built with Eleventy. It will, first and foremost, be a blog, and it will have an RSS feed. Its layout will be like below. I'll use the familiar 3-box stacked layout, and add a pixel art version of Ezra on the title bar, a switcher between light and dark mode (not pictured, but it's supposed to be on the right-hand side of the title bar), a content section, and a footer.

One obvious consequence is that links will break. One of them is in one of the issues of the Toki Pona newsletter sin kulupu. But no worries, the new 404 page will have the option to go to the same path on the old site.

Some content from the old site will be on the new site, but other types of content won't be there.

Conclusion

I don't like the state of online services and tech in 2026. I am still willing to develop my site, but it will be a new start. The old site will still be available, but now under a new address, which will be announced on the new site. I'm looking forward to this new chapter of the website, and my life.

I've come a long way with developing my site. I loved it, hated some parts at times, learned more about static site generators... From my explorations of the indie web, I will apply the lessons I learned to the new version of the site.

Stay tuned!