Xavier Roy

A 100-day streak

Aging is when the grey hairs colonize your head and beard, but your ear hair stays defiantly black. Nature has a sick sense of humor. (https://xavierroy.com/t/NH)

Messaging apps force one identity everywhere. I want different profiles per group—'Xavier (Max's dad)' in school chats, just 'Xavier' elsewhere. Let me contain multitudes digitally.

A folder called Arena. A game with no save option. And the first time I learned to disappear into something completely...

On an earworm (or the quiet flicker of memory) - https://xavierroy.com/b/MK

A silver hair drifts to the floor, a loss is loss, whether of color or of presence.

Watched Superman (2025) ★★★★

Finished reading The Reluctant Dungeon by Lise Eclaire - ★★★★

Hell, mate! If you're not wearing a helmet… and there are cops nearby. Hell, mate! If you're wearing a helmet under a Virgo sky at noon in Chennai… (https://xavierroy.com/p/M5)

A couple of days back, I found myself thinking about names in fiction—how much weight they carry, how much they whisper before a character ever acts.

Watched Jurassic World Rebirth, 2025 - ★★★½

Reading Naval's post about being 'incompressible' got me thinking about the quiet stories we tell ourselves—and how they might be our best defense against algorithms.

The quiet narrative that algorithms can’t touch xavierroy.com/b/LM

Finished Reading Return of the Runebound Professor - ★★★

Rewriting isn’t just editing. It’s a kind of time travel. And sometimes, the consequences are emotional.

On listening to music It's been a long while since I listened to an album without doing something else at the same time. Just sitting, doing nothing but listening. After driving for eight hours, I was tired. I didn't want to take a nap. So I lay down on the bed, drew the blinds, switched off the lights, and wanted to simply relax. While browsing Spotify, I realised I hadn’t listened to Kate Rusby’s latest album, _When They All Looked Up_ , since it came out. I hit play and closed my eyes, letting the Barnsley Nightingale sing me into stillness. _Today Again_ reminded me why I started listening to her. I got the same goosebumps as when I first heard her sing. That song felt especially personal—a balm for my tired, restless soul. And when _Let Your Light Shine_ played, I felt strangely at peace with everything. I realised that while music has always been a constant background in my life, it’s been years since I simply sat down to listen—really listen—to an album. As I trundled through my memories trying to think of any recent times that I listened to music for the sake of listening, I was bereft of any such memories. The only instance I could think of was listening to James Blunt whenever I have a headache; it seems to alleviate the pain though I'm not sure why. When did I become too busy to spend an hour doing nothing but listen? Share this post on social media.

On listening to music (https://xavierroy.com/x/Kd)

Thoughts on Asimov’s Cal
I read Asimov’s Cal before breakfast and couldn’t stop thinking about #creativity, ambition—and murder. What if your writing assistant wanted the byline? A thread on #AI, #authorship, and what Cal teaches us. xavierroy.com/thoughts-on-...

Thank you.
Anything you liked or didn't like.

I think of my notes as a biome:https://paperarrow.com/notes/knowledge-biome

A quote from The Simulacrum by Peter Cawdron: Could AI ever enjoy fiction? To Dawn’s mind, reading for enjoyment would be a better test of sentience than fooling dumb humans like her with plausible conversations.

Would such an AI become an AGI? 🤔

I use @msty.app to connect my vaults.

Just because you don’t know how to do something, that does not mean it’s impossible. It only means that you don’t know how it can be done. - Chainfire, Terry Goodkind

Inbox is unpolished, notes is polished. Books go into refs. Outbox is notes updated for publication

I adopt this approach:
* `00 Assets` - non-md files
* `01 Inbox` - raw notes
* `02 Notes` - processed notes
* `03 Journals` - dailies
* `04 References` - sources/references
* `05 Outbox` - public posts
* `06 People` - persons
* `08 Scopes` - dataview queries
* `09 Meta` - non-content like templates

chrysalism n. the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm. Latin chrysalis, the pupa of a butterfly. Pronounced “kris-uh-liz-uhm.”

I was hoping to have a similar situation with Chennai weather today, but alas...

“Work will always be work. Some people work doing what they love. Other people work so that they can do what they love when they’re not working. Neither is more noble.” - Anis Mojgani

“Work will always be work. Some people work doing what they love. Other people work so that they can do what they love when they’re not working. Neither is more noble.” - Anis Mojgani

Authors have started adding the equivalent of the robots.txt file to books.
From The Simulacrum by Peter Cawdron @pcawdron@aus.social

"The starting point for becoming a good writer is to be a good reader. Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose." - Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style

"The starting point for becoming a good writer is to be a good reader. Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose." - Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style

Quote from Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey: "Reading a book requires a good deal of attention—and with attention becoming a rare commodity, fewer people are able to devote themselves to reading without distraction."

"Reading a book requires a good deal of attention—and with #attention becoming a rare commodity, fewer people are able to devote themselves to #reading without distraction." (Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus)

Very very true. 😂