Most modern software treats the user like a passenger. You are given a seat, but you cannot see the engine. When you save a document in .docx or a dataset in .sav, you are locking your thoughts in a binary prison.

Text as the Great Equalizer

Plaintext (ASCII/UTF-8) is the only format that doesn’t age. A file written in 1970 is still readable today.

  1. Against Word Processing: We use Markup (Markdown/Typst) to separate thought from formatting.
  2. Against Spreadsheets: We use CSV and Awk to ensure our data is visible and verifiable.
  3. Against Black-Box Stats: We use scripts to make our research reproducible and accessible.

In the forge, we don’t want a “User Interface” to stand between us and our work. We want the raw material.

Forged in the terminal. Refined under the anvil.