FrostEcho

Stoicism Feels Like Emotional Suppression in Disguise

Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A while ago a guy asked me the question if i was a stoic. I replied with a no.

The guy then proceeded to look at me and said that he really thought that I was; he said that I looked cold, silent, hard to read.

Being quiet doesn’t make one stoic and looking detached does not mean you abide by Stoic philosophy. In my case, the reasons are very different, and to be honest, I very much dislike being put into that box.

About Me

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m frost,

Here are some mostly useless details about me:

Age: 17 (at the time of writing)
Gender: Male
Pronouns: He/Him
Location: Somewhere on Earth
Status: Unemployed

I’m still figuring things out. I want to be employed by the end of this year, though I’m not sure how realistic that is yet.

Right now, I spend most of my time on:

computers
the internet
systems and behavior

But, that will probably change.

The Internet Is Turning People Into Performers

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve started noticing this thing people do.

Before doing something, there’s this small pause.

Like they’re thinking— How will this look? What will people think?

And it’s not always obvious, but it changes things.
The way they talk, the way they stand, what they choose to show.
It stops feeling like they’re just doing something for themselves.

And after a while, it doesn’t even feel like a conscious choice anymore.
You don’t really stop and ask: why do I want to do this?

SEO Is Destroying The Internet Culture

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

SEO has killed the soul of writing.

Not slowly. Not accidentally.

It replaced human expression with something safer, flatter, and easier to rank. What we’re left with is content that looks useful, sounds confident, and says nothing.

SEO Removed the Soul of Writing

Writing used to carry a trace of the person behind it. You could feel it in the way sentences were structured, in the words they chose, even in the small imperfections. It wasn’t always polished, and it didn’t try to be. But it felt real. It felt like someone was actually trying to say something, not just produce something.

Everything is Now an App

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I watched a donghua “God Troubles Me” in episode 4 of season 1; apps were shown as concubines competing for attention.

Each one wanted more access. Contacts. Notifications. Background activity. Even the ones that had no reason to ask for it, like in the show the camera app was asking for Su Moting’s contacts. And the ones with more access had more power.
That’s exactly how it feels now.

By the way, I recommend you to watch it it’s a really nice show. It currently has 4 seasons with 12 episodes each.

Not Everything Needs a Price Tag

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Nothing is done for its own sake anymore.

People don’t help because they want to, they help because it might come back to them.
People don’t talk because they enjoy it, they talk because it might be useful.
People don’t create because they feel like it, they create because it might sell.

Everything is measured. Everything is weighed. Everything is expected to return something.

Perhaps the most disturbing is people putting a price tag on kindness itself, the act of kindness is supposed to be based on selflessness yet, I rarely see someone actually do something from their heat.

Ricing Is a Trap (And I Still Do It)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What Is Ricing?

For those who don’t know:

Ricing is the practice of heavily customizing a system’s appearance—window manager, colors, fonts, bars, icons—primarily for aesthetics rather than function.

A major influence on ricing culture is r/unixporn, where users share highly polished setups. It sets the visual standard and often drives the cycle of tweaking, comparing, and re-tweaking.

Why I Started Ricing

This goes back a while. I was 13, using an old HP 630—i3, integrated graphics, 6 GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 720p screen. A 2011 budget laptop that I somehow used until 2024, when it finally died (it got smashed on the floor).

Secure Email Is a Marketing Scam

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed with this push toward the Proton ecosystem as the “privacy-friendly” replacement for Google’s ecosystem.

Yes—ecosystem. That word should bother you more than it probably does.

Because we have already seen how this goes. A company starts small, does one thing well, earns trust. Then it grows. Then it expands. Then suddenly it is not just email anymore. It is VPNs, storage, calendars, AI, and whatever else can be bolted on next.

Email Is Not Secure (So Stop Pretending It Is)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Email is not secure.

It never was.

The problem is not that people don’t know this. The problem is that companies pretend it isn’t true.

Privacy is becoming mainstream, which is good in my opinion. But like anything that can be monetized, it gets turned into a product.

I keep seeing the same message:

This email service is more secure.
That one is not safe enough.

Different branding, same idea.

Minimalism Is Not a Theme

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a somewhat of a long post. Read it slowly or come back to it later.

I have been seeing too many posts regarding how the above kind of design is minimal.

So let me ask you:

Does this actually look minimal to you?

If your answer is yes, then you’re not thinking about how things work— you’re only looking at how they look.

These days minimalism has been reduced to a color palette which includes things like:

Modern Websites Suck

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago I had to create an Instagram account. Some of you may ask why not use IRC, XMPP, or even Matrix; well it’s not fully possible to convince everyone to switch. So I did the browser setup. I was on Android using Ironfox (a fork of the Mull browser, which was based on Firefox; “was” in the sense it isn’t exactly “alive and thriving” anymore), I forgot too even connect to a VPN. Instantly I was prompted to enter my phone number, with the option for email verification being grayed out so as to stop you from using it. So I first tried to use a temporary email service but it turned out to be blocked. Then I remembered I had a throwaway email ID from proton (not that I recommend it but I had it so I decided to use it). After using the email to confirm I’m a human I was finally given an account at last -.-.

All Posts

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Links

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the sites here may contain NSFW content.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything I link.

This is not a list of endorsements — just things I found interesting, useful, or strange enough to remember.

This page is quite empty right now I’ll add more sites soon.

Dig Deeper: Was my introduction to the world of indie sites. He acted as perhaps the biggest inspiration for this site, maybe this site wouldn’t have existed without me stumbling upon his website. Some of his articles really are an eyeopener some of which I thought were interesting were: