How it’s made
From the Dumpster Fire gathers things worth pulling out of the internet and the archive before they burn: essays and talks, letters and speeches, poems, papers, podcasts, posts, pictures, passages from books, tools worth knowing and strange corners of Wikipedia. It arrives in Hauls, when there is enough worth sending.
From the editor
Hello, denizen of the internet. Welcome to Dumpster Fire, a small little corner of it. The internet might be a raging, stinking dumpster fire, spewing noxious fumes that blind anyone in its vicinity, but it's still one of the coolest things humanity has ever made. And the fire hasn't consumed all the good things yet: the fun, wonderful and weirdly enjoyable things on the interweb. This is a place to find some of them, and to salvage them before the fire consumes everything in its path.
A little backstory. My name is Bhuvan, and I'm a creature of the internet. Pretty much everything I know has more or less to do with it. The internet has become unpopular, and touching grass seems to be back in fashion, although to me it has this gourmet vibe. But the internet still teaches me things and gives me chances to have fun.
The idea behind Dumpster Fire started sometime in the early 2020s, I forget which year, when I read Curation by Michael Bhaskar. The idea of curation resonated with me instantly, and I've been thinking about it ever since. When LLM coding tools arrived, I bought this domain to share links to interesting articles, videos, podcasts, research papers, quotes, tweets and all sorts of assorted digital paraphernalia. It didn't go anywhere. I was either too lazy, or I was always suffering from some sort of “ooh, that's interesting” syndrome, which coincidentally is also the title of my newsletter.
The internet may well be consumed by this dumpster fire. AI slop and human slop are clogging its veins, and who knows how long it has before it has a heart attack and dies. But there are still a whole lot of weird, wonderful and fascinating things out there, and this is one small corner where I'll share some of them: a nice article, a beautiful verse, a good word, a funny joke, a dank meme, a rabbit hole, whatever it is, so that you can enjoy it.
Disclosure: everything here is chosen by a human, but I lean heavily on LLMs to publish it. There are two reasons.
One, I think LLMs are awesome. If you think anything on this site is tainted goods because it has been touched by the unholy touch of an LLM, if you're one of those idiots who still has visions of human supremacy and thinks LLMs produce nothing but slop, to you I say fuck you. And mate, if you still think you're better than an LLM, stand in front of a mirror, open your mouth and listen to what comes out. You're not all that great, and I hate to be the one to break it to you. Humans make plenty of slop too, so get your priorities straight and stop being sloppy.
Two, I'm solo. Apart from Dumpster Fire, I have a whole host of other projects: akshara.ink, thisindianlife.today, measure.thisindianlife.today, lifeinindia.org, tipsheet.markets, poeticreveries.com, smallweb.blog, seneca.ink and hopeanddespair.world. None of this would be possible without LLMs. They're involved in everything, from designing the site and building the app to helping me publish each Haul.
I'm telling you this so that one day I don't see some sanctimonious prick jump up in the air and shout, “Look, this heretic has used LLMs!” and unleash a mob of digital human puritans on team human superiority to come after me and burn me down like the witch that I am.
So with that, I hope you find as many rabbit holes here as I do elsewhere on the internet. That's the simple goal of Dumpster Fire: to send you down a million rabbit holes and have you come out a whole another person. I want you to have serendipity, that moment where you just keep going, “that's interesting,” and more.
Thank you for being here. Feedback and suggestions to bhuvan@bebhuvan.com. I'm bebhuvan on Twitter and LinkedIn, and on Substack at bhuvan.substack.com. Hit me up.
B.
Two voices
The editor
This is the editor. One person chooses everything, mostly by voice, and every word set like this is theirs.
Machine
This is the machine. It reads each piece closely, finds connections across time, drafts context and checks facts. Anything it writes is set like this, and the editor checks it before it ships.
House rules
Every work names the person who made it.
From the Dumpster Fire exists to send readers to other people's work. Every piece, quotation, post and picture carries its maker's name and a link back to where it came from; every picture also says who holds it and under what licence. The Desk will not publish without them.
Every quotation is matched word for word against its source.
Each excerpt is compared with the text of the source as fetched. If it does not match, it does not ship.
Every link is fetched and working when a Haul ships.
Machines never write links. Code finds each one in a real source and fetches it before publishing.
Every note from the machine names its source.
Each note is checked against the source it cites. A note that fails the check is dropped.
The editor's words are never rewritten.
Voice notes are cleaned only by deleting fillers and fixing punctuation. The code allows nothing else.
No generated images.
Pictures come from public-domain archives, or are shown for commentary, with who made them, who holds them and the licence under each one.
Key to the forms
Each kind of thing is set the way it has always been printed, so you know what you are holding before you read a word.
- EssaysThe openingThe title set huge, the reason it is here as the standfirst.
- PapersOffprintSections numbered: why it is here, a passage from the paper set as a quotation, notes, references.
- Talks and podcastsTranscriptSpeakers in the margin, the line that matters set large.
- PoemsBroadsideOne sheet in the poem's colour, nothing else on it.
- RhymesFacing pagesThen on the left, now on the right, the link between them in the gutter.
- Rabbit holesCatalogue cardA call number, the headword, the entry and its cross-references.
- PassagesA page from the bookThe passage justified, under its running head, with its page.
- QuotationsEpigraphThe words set large and alone, the speaker and the occasion under them.
- LettersThe letterA sheet with its place and date, the salutation, the body and the name it was signed with.
- PicturesA mounted printThe picture in its mount, then a label with the maker, the date, the holder and the licence.
- BooksThe jacketThe jacket set in type, a line from the book, and why it is on the desk.
- ChartsThe figureThe chart drawn from its own data, its source and licence, and every number behind it.
- LivesThe lifeOne person per Haul: the name set large, a profile written by the machine from named sources and checked line by line, their own words, a life in dates and further reading.
- ToolsSpecimen labelA ruled label: the name, the maker, what it runs on, its own description and where to get it.
Other ways to read
New Hauls arrive by email and in the RSS feed as soon as they are published. Every Haul stays online in the archive.