Happy Summer Solstice and Father's Day!
I do strength training with a personal trainer 3-4 times a week. Almost every time I'm a few minutes late and I always inform him that I'll be late. He says I'm so traditionally late that I don't even need to mention it. I guess the same applies to my weekly updates.
A lot was happening this week. So here are fragmented updates instead of a single overarching theme.
{{< figure width=600…
It was a packed weekend, so I couldn't publish the weekly update on Sunday.
Another one-day-late edition.
Fascism became a catch-all phrase for leftists to criticize their adversaries.
It is a term that has a historical meaning, and I don't want to repeat the same
mistake of muddying the definition. By fascism I mean:
the biggest news of this week was definitely the exhibition at OtonomArt. after
~50 hours of work, it was so exciting to put Syzygy on display. it was also
thrilling to see my name as the artist on the label.
i'm glad i photographed the sculpture after every session so i could see the
gradual process. now, looking back, i find it eerie to look at the
first photos. i created this thing from mud…
_One day late reflection on the previous week._
Last weekend was so busy that I couldn't find an hour to sit and write a few
paragraphs. Yesterday, we had a Mother's Day dinner with my in-laws (where
did the morning go? who knows!). On Saturday, I watched my first ever American
football game. My hometown team, the Halcyons, was playing against the ITU
Hornets. Unfortunately we got our asses…
Contemporary art is often criticized for being extravagant, farfetched or
nonsensical. You might think of the paintings and movies of David Lynch,
sculptures of Miquel Barceló or even the banana (Comedian) of Maurizio Cattelan.
They are definitely strange and hard to interpret, and in Cattelan's case, give
the finger to Art as an institutional practice. I have no problems with this
kind of art. I…
Sunday reflection on the passing week.
I charged my car battery! This might sound unimportant to you, but it was a
big deal for me. My father was a handyman and I helped him a lot on different
projects throughout my childhood. So in theory I have a good grasp of how to use
tools. But it was not enough. One also needs to be willing to do this kind of
stuff, which I was not. My experiences of…
_I was in Antalya, Turkey for the company offsite last week. This is a reflection on the past week. photo dump._
The worst type of leader is the one who needs to be the leader. The second worst
type is the one who just can't accept that they are the leader.
I'm a leader. Writing this fills me with dread because it sounds megalomaniacal
to my ears. However, it's true. I am a leader. I've been a…
I'm writing this in haste before packing my laptop for travel. This will be a short one.
Random thoughts on the passing week.
{{< figure width=600 src="/images/2026-03-amsterdam-photolog/IMG_0019.jpeg" caption="\"We are always open.\"" >}}
{{< figure width=600 src="/images/2026-03-amsterdam-photolog/IMG_0031.jpeg" caption="It used to be a recession indicator, now it's another commodity to sell." >}}
{{< figure width=600 src="/images/2026-03-amsterdam-photolog/IMG_0061.jpeg" caption="The bridge to my hotel." >}}
{{<…
i'm writing this in amsterdam. i'll be in the city for kubecon till friday.
let me know if you want to meet!
it's been almost a month since i wrote that i'm yearning for a digital
community that runs preferably on
irc. guess what, there's now the dealgorithmed irc
server. if you
want to believe in the magic, voice your intentions more.
halloy.chat might be the prettiest software i've…
Pluribus
We were watching _Pluribus_ for the last 10 days and finished the first season
today. I have mixed feelings about the show. I especially found the first few
episodes hard to watch because I couldn't stand Carol. It got easier towards
the end of the season but I can't say that I loved the show. Nevertheless, it
was an interesting watch. I especially liked the depiction of the…
2026 is definitely the year of blogging for me. I already published twice as many posts as I did last year. Last Friday I published a post in my technical blog in the same vein as this post: a reflection on the week. Today I posted another one there about the women who shaped me in my career. Happy Women's Day to all women around the world!
I'm writing this while my neighborhood is under siege…
_Another Sunday, another weekly reflection._
This was a really busy week. I worked more than 8 full-focus hours every
single weekday. This means I probably spent more than 10 hours in front of the
computer. It's a lot! Thankfully this week was a 4-day week so I had time to
rest.
On Friday I spent the whole day working on my sculpture. The bust is coming
along. I decided to do something strange…
_Another Sunday, another weekly reflection post._
This is the 8th week since I created hypersubject.net. The effects of this experiment are already tangible. Compared to last year, I have already spent twice as many hours working on my blog(s) and nearly half that time writing even though we are only two months into 2026. I have already published 12 posts this year, which is far more than my…
I find myself once again yearning for a digital community. I believe the future of social media (for me) is some kind of invite-only group chat where the conversation flows like a river. It might live in Discord, Slack or even IRC, I don't care. Physical community is important but as a millennial I need text-based friendships too.
On Friday, I got a message from kerey on WhatsApp saying that…
At the beginning of this year, I decided to merge all things I wrote in different corners of the internet. After 5 weeks of that experiment, I decided otherwise. My old writings are worthy in their respective contexts. Visitors of this blog are probably not interested in technical posts about Kubernetes nor political posts about Turkey. And I am not interested in writing about them here.
So, my…
Richard Stallman had a Marxian effect on technology in the 1980s. He started
the Free Software movement. His ideas mobilized a vast number of programmers
and the ideology he initiated still has a great gravity in the software
ecosystem. Since the year 2000, thousands of developers travel to Brussels
every February like pilgrims for Free and Open Source Software Developers'
European Meeting…
Weekends feel busier than weekdays lately. Time flew, and I just noticed that I didn't manage to finish this week's post. This was bound to happen. It's okay. Shhh... it's okay. IT'S OKAY! Discipline is not punching yourself into the mold of a wireheaded soldier. Discipline is the ability to flow around, between, and through various slip-ups. Discipline is persistently looking at the horizon.…
This was a busy week and an even busier weekend.
I started my first bust this week. The number of details on a human face is crazy. And what's hard about reflecting all those details on the clay is not the technique but actually noticing them. Making art requires a lot of noticing. Noticing requires giving a fuck. You need to give a fuck to create something. But too much of it can also paralyze…
OtonomArt
I finally did it. I finally found a tutor for sculpting. Actually, what I found is much bigger than just a tutor. I found a workshop, a collective, a mirage in the middle of the desert. Actually... in the middle of an industrial zone.
On Friday I went to OtonomArt for an introductory sculpting class. I made this relief with mud:
{{<figure width=300…
I'm excited for 2026.
2025 was a good year for me. After quitting my startup, which was going nowhere, at the end of 2024, I entered 2025 rejuvenated. As a result I read more, experimented more, travelled more, did more... I feel like 2025 was a stepping stone for 2026.
What I was up to in the first week of 2026?
hypersubject.net
My online presence is highly fragmented.
I have a personal…