Bloody Shovel 5
Welcome to Bloody Shovel 5. While our previous blog was well loved by the Best and Brightest, it had many technical issues that made it not live up to its full potential. To be perfectly frank it was somewhat of a tech demo. Which I enjoyed a lot building. But yes it was slow to the point of being unusable. Fast forward to 2026, AI has taken all the joy of programming from humanity, so there really is no point in subjecting my readers into putting up with my esoteric tastes in software. It is time to focus in proper features, in performance, in comfort and usability. So again, welcome, I hope you'll like it.
If you're new here, don't really know what is this or who I am, please visit the introductory blogpost where I go through my writing, summarize my ideas and provide links to my best hits. Then, as you get more and more excited, come back and read the rest of this page.
So yes, new site, again. What's new? BS5 inherits all the features of the previous site: the good-old Blog, with all my old content and yes, yes more new posts to come. Also back is the Chat, much renewed, the Forum, bringing back all the content from th old one, and the Cinema (TV we used to call it). We dropped the Wiki, but now we have a Feed, a curated timeline of short posts from the wider Internet for your doomscrolling pleasure
Chats with Order
Most importantly, the Chat section is now much, much richer in features. It's been the focus of most work on this new site. As many are aware the old blogosphere of yore, that society of erudite long-poasters sharing their ground-breaking insights on all things human, was pretty much murdered by a pincer attack of short-form tweets and casual groupchats. And sure, I won't deny I enjoy tweeting as much as anyone, and also participate in several group chats. But recently many of us feel the pendulum has moved again and the group-chat experience is getting somewhat stale. It's good fun in that casual shitposting way, but it's just too unserious. It lacks Structure. So I decided to give it some.
Chats (yes, there's more than one channel) now have two big new features: Discussions and Debates.
Discussions
Discussions happen when an admin, or a random user of the chat, proposes a topic of discussion. Once a Discussion has started, the chatroom focuses on the topic at hand. Users have to choose a side, so the room divides in two groups. Users who do not pick a side can't participate in the large chatroom, but can comment on a smaller chat window that will open on the right sidebar.
Discussions can last from 30 minutes to one whole day. After the end of a discussion we'll generate a recap/summary of the discussion with all the highlights as a Forum thread, so people can catch up there and maybe continue the conversation.
Debates
Debates are conceptually the same but they are one-on-one, not group affairs. There is a topic of discussion, and one people arguing each side of the issue. There is a #debates channel exclusively for debates, which will be scheduled in advance by yours truly to do a sort of text-based podcast session with people I find interesting. During a debate, only the participants can post to the chatroom. There is however a smaller chat window on the sidebar, same as on Discussions, where people can comment on the ongoing debate. The audience can also vote for whom they support or agree on in the debate. Users can also pay (yes! money!) to send questions to the debate arena, which the debaters will answer without fail.
Once debates conclude, again they will be summarized and posted to the Forum.
Other than the formal, scheduled debates, regular chat users can also propose a debate between themselves during those times where the #debate channel is vacant. The same rules of official debates apply to these too. Including paid questions. I'll have to figure out a way to share the proceeds with the debaters for these cases, but I'm sure we'll reach a satisfactory situation for everyone.
Chatbots
The chatrooms will have AI users now and then. Not always. At somewhat random intervals. We've been experimenting on the best way to make them work, as policemen, as translators, as summarizers, as punching bags. It's all good fun, if generally quite silly, but I think we'll find fun ways to play with them. Of course for the Butlerians among you there is one human only chatroom you can always stay to honor Uncle Ted.
Polls
There is also another new feature, rather more prosaic, but still nice to have. Users can start polls in both Chat rooms and Forum posts.
Membership
The previous blog had a rather special way to handle user membership: Urbit ships. Which again, was very cool at the beginning, but it didn't quite work out, no use denying that. That said Urbit is still alive, and it still houses some of the best men on the internet, so Bloody Shovel 5 will continue to support Urbit login. The exact mechanism is quite different but for all practical purposes it works the same.
As part of the Urbit-exclusive membership scheme of the previous blog, the idea was to take user subscription money, and give them an Urbit ship in exchange, which would make them full members of the site, and also own an Urbit ship, which is nice. I'm still happy to sell Urbit planets to anyone who wants them, but now, at last we have a proper, fully automated subscription system for Bloody Shovel 5.
Users can become members of the Bloody Shovel 5 Club, the most based and erudite gathering of men in the planet, by paying a modest subscription fee. In cryptocurrency. Yes, I'd love to take your credit cards but I don't think Stripe is going to support my intellectual activities, and I'd rather not doxx myself to Israeli intelligence for the low probability that it works out in the end. Vibe shift we have had, but it hasn't shifted that much.
Prospective members can sign up by paying with Bitcoin or USDC (Ethereum mainnet). Upon confirmation of receipt, you will receive an email with a login link. No need to email me now and do things manually. It just works. Or should. Of course feel free to email me if it doesn't and we'll sort any problem out.
What's the point of becoming a member of the order of Bloody Shovel 5, other than the bragging rights? Well you get a lot of privileges.
- Access to member-only chatrooms.
- Access to the Search functionality in all sections of the app, which is now blazing fast and works on both text matching and embeddings, so you can search for stuff that said "something like" and it kinda works.
- Ability to start threads in the Forum on any topic. Anon, non-member users can only start threads on the #plebs board.
- Ability to reply on any forum thread. OPs of any thread can choose if they want anons to be able to reply, but members can never be excluded.
- Ability to vote on any poll. Again, members who start polls can choose to exclude anons from voting.
- Ability to comment on the blog.
- Ability to propose media for the Cinema.
- And more stuff I'll come up with later at some point.
Membership costs $5 or equivalent per month. Payments aren't real subscriptions; We won't take money from your account with some convoluted smart contract. We just receive the money and add it to your account. Every month we'll substract $5, if your credit runs out we'll send you a reminder email, and suspend the account if you don't refill. Your credits can also be used to do the sort of "superchats" during debates, so feel free to top up your account and use the money for this on that. We'll find other interesting features for Members to spend credits on in the future, I'm sure.
Roadmap
Yes yes, I vibecoded this whole thing, of course I did. But hey even with AGI assistance it still takes time to architect a site with good features and a tasteful design. But sure, we do live now in a Brave New World, perhaps already in the midst of Singularity, where if you have any aptitude for software you can really do anything. So expect this site to expand in the future with great new features. There's a lot in planning, and a lot that will come out of random inspiration in the shower and get done in another lucky weekend when a Usage Reset hits.
The design has a few choice of themes, and two different art styles for the images. Grecofuturism shout out @Pabloantonio and a sort of Chinese version that's been doing the rounds lately based on a video by a Chinese artist called 栖光. I know a lot of people dislike AI images, so you're very free to choose a theme without them. If you have better ideas for an art style by all means reach out with good prompt examples.
Online communities are in a very weird state right now, nobody likes the status-quo. But we've all made good friends over the past years, many many years of sharing joys and horrors on the Big Tech Dungeons. I've always wanted something better and I know you do too. So please join me, participate, enjoy the community and share your ideas of how to make it better. I'm very eager to hear your feedback and harness the power of the Robot age to accelerate things.
I have friends building videogames right now. Imagine Bioleninism, the game. A strategy game where you try to get ahead in politics by forming a coalition of people and juggling the eternal dilemma between competence and loyalty. Or graphic novels. Or outright film series on some of the many topics I've been writing about for more than a decade. The sky is the limit. We are going to have a lot of fun. Don't miss out to stay doomscrolling to the usual array of social media grifters. Come join your friends and let's make good stuff.
Not writing, though. Some things are still sacred. And writing is, amusingly the one thing AI can't do. And I can, if I may say so. So as we destroy the globalist entertainment industry with our turbo-charded meme energy, rest assured the Blog here will remain a temple of human intellect.
Again, welcome back. Make yourself cozy.
-- Yours Truly.
PS: For feedback on the site I can be reached on Twitter, Urbit (~docteg-mothep) or email: (site [at] spandrell.ch)