xayan.nu

The Adversary's Guide to the Galaxy

There are no stupid questions, only stupid people.

About

xayan.nu is a personal blog focused on interdisciplinary analysis, commentary, and critique covering a wide range of controversial and thought-provoking topics including:

• Technology & AI: LLM jailbreaking, prompt engineering, analytics implementation
• Philosophy & Epistemology: Critical thinking, religious analysis, logical reasoning
• Politics & Society: Migration policy analysis, political extremism, free speech
• Law & Sociology: European legal frameworks, societal tensions, institutional critique

The blog ventures fearlessly into complex and often contentious areas, prioritizing evidence-based analysis over popular opinion.

Tech Stack

• Framework: Hugo - Static site generator
• Theme: hugo-blog-awesome (heavily customized)
• Analytics: PostHog with custom engagement tracking
• Hosting: Static deployment with CDN
• Comments: giscus

Template & Customizations

This site uses the hugo-blog-awesome theme as a base but includes extensive modifications and overrides:

Layout Overrides

Due to Hugo's template system, many customizations required copying entire template files to modify small parts:

• layouts/_default/single.html - Added per-post analytics configuration injection
• layouts/_default/list.html - Custom post listing with series support
• layouts/partials/meta/analytics.html - PostHog integration with custom CID handling
• layouts/partials/comments.html - giscus integration with custom styling
• layouts/partials/bio.html - Author bio with responsive image handling
• layouts/partials/postCard.html - Enhanced post cards with TTR (Time to Read)

Custom Styling

• assets/sass/_custom.scss - Comprehensive style overrides including:
  • Custom color scheme with neon accent colors (#33ffab, #23ad73)
  • Chat message styling for LLM conversation displays
  • Responsive table containers with horizontal scrolling
  • Neon title effects and custom typography
  • Enhanced form styling and interactive elements

Custom Shortcodes

• layouts/shortcodes/chat.html - Renders LLM conversations in a familiar chat format

  • Supports user/assistant message threading
  • Markdown rendering within chat bubbles
  • Customizable participant names

• layouts/shortcodes/image.html - Flexible image embedding with optional attribution

  • Required url parameter for image source
  • Optional source parameter for attribution (auto-extracts domain)
  • Optional description via inner content (supports Markdown)
  • Centered layout with rounded corners and shadow effects
  • External links open in new tabs with proper rel attributes

Implemented Functionality

Analytics & Engagement Tracking

• Custom Analytics Script (assets/js/pikachu.js):

  • PostHog event tracking with privacy-focused implementation
  • Per-post configurable "valued reader" detection
  • Scroll depth tracking with smart thresholds
  • Engagement time measurement with idle detection
  • Session management and activity monitoring
  • Content selection tracking: Captures user text selections and copy behavior
    • content-selected: Fires 500ms after text selection (debounced)
    • content-copied: Fires immediately on copy events (Ctrl/Cmd+C)
    • Payload includes selected text (truncated to 255 chars), paragraph count, image sources, and link hrefs

• Per-Post Analytics Configuration:

  # In post front matter
  valued_time: 300   # 5 minutes (optional)
  valued_scroll: 70  # 70% scroll depth (optional)

Content Features

• Series Support: Multi-part post series with navigation
• Time to Read (TTR): Manual reading time estimates
• Table of Contents: Collapsible TOC for long-form content
• Responsive Images: Optimized image delivery with multiple formats
• Social Integration: Facebook, X (Twitter), GitHub, RSS feeds

Development Features

• Hot Reload: Hugo's built-in development server
• Asset Pipeline: Sass compilation with custom variables
• SEO Optimization: Meta tags, structured data, sitemap generation
• Progressive Enhancement: Works without JavaScript, enhanced with it

Privacy & Performance

• First-party Analytics: PostHog hosted on custom subdomain
• No Tracking Cookies: Uses localStorage and server-side CID
• Static Generation: Fast loading with CDN optimization
• Minimal Dependencies: Custom implementations over heavy frameworks

Content Licensing

• Code: MIT License - Free for commercial and non-commercial use
• Content (/content/ directory): CC BY-NC 4.0 - Attribution required, non-commercial use only

Development

# Clone with submodules
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/Xayan/xayan-nu.git

# If you already cloned without submodules, initialize them:
git submodule init
git submodule update

# Start development server
hugo server

# Build for production
hugo --minify

Note: The theme is located in themes/hugo-blog-awesome as a Git submodule. You must initialize and update submodules before development to access theme files that are being overridden in layouts/ and assets/.

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Built with ❤️ and a healthy dose of skepticism