§ I. About me
Hey there, I’m Peregrin Orien, and welcome. I also go by the handle Peririn on my art accounts. I write essays to synthesize disparate domains and disciplines, I had always been interested in epistemology and history and a lot of my work and personal philosophy concerns that.
I’m also an artist (Peririn), working in both traditional and digital media. I’m interested in a lot of things, so there’s probably going to be a bit of variety around here.
If you know me from Discord from old days, welcome! And if you’ve stumbled across this place some other way, welcome to you too. (●'◡'●)
"It is not certain that everything is uncertain; but it is certain that we ought to doubt, and this is why we ought to examine everything."
§ II. Contact
I’d love to hear a word from you. The best way to reach me is through mail or Discord, where I’m usually easier to find. I do check my email from time to time, though I may not always be quick to reply. Feel free to get in touch.
§ III. FAQ
It’s my notebook I keep in public. I use it to work through ideas, and share them with the world. It’s also a home for my more finished academic work. I also post paintings, guides, and other projects here so they’re easy to find and remain accessible over time across my different social media accounts. I think of the site as my own piece of the internet... a kind of personal real estate where things I want to keep can live and be displayed in a way I want it to be displayed.
It comes from the Hebrew for the night watch, the watchman on the tower after dark and it is a nod to myself, besides the fact I just like how the word sounds. It sounds fantastical.
I studied Economics and Military Strategy, but most of what I write about is history and on Genealogy of Ideas. I'm usually more interested in why something happened but the why must always be grounded in absolute rock solid clarity of what did happen.
Both are about making hard choices with limited resources. Economics looks at that in general, strategy looks at it when someone is working against you.
Yes I think I can call myself one, though not professionally. I thought about doing it for a living when I was younger and have sold commissions when I was little, but I haven't made any commercial art since 2018-19. Many assets and design of this website was planned by me.
The RSS feed is the easiest way. Add it to any feed reader and new posts show up there, no email signup needed. This is way better than an email service. Check it out on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS. It’s unpopular these days, but trust me when I tell you it’s better than an email service.
Yes. Every essay has a Cite button that gives you Chicago, APA or BibTeX, and it includes the DOI when there is one.
Justified text looks like a printed book, so that's the default. It can leave odd gaps on narrow screens though and I know some people do not like that, so the button switches to left-aligned, and the site remembers your choice, rendering justified this way, I am using pretty for a better look, though nothing can beat the beauty of Knuth–Plass TeX rendering.
No. There are no analytics or cookies here. Your theme and alignment choice are saved in your own browser and never sent anywhere. If a page has a YouTube video embedded (or something else), YouTube's player might set its own cookies.
Not really. I don't mind a service using my data to recommend songs or improve search results, since that's part of the deal when I use it. What bothers me is data taken without my knowledge, like a washing machine that needs Wi-Fi, or local files being scanned without asking. That's also why this site doesn't track anyone. This website has content curated by me so it is not needed but I am not straightforwardly entirely against tracking, given it is done in ethical ways.
I hope so. The site has fallbacks for older browsers, going back to Safari 12 on an iPhone 6 (＾▽＾)
No date yet. It's for my worldbuilding project and will have its own layout, separate from the rest of the site. I'd rather build it once there's actual writing to put in it than set up an empty template. Honestly I might as well make it a separate website on a subdomain, I'll see what I need to do.
I use JavaScript only when it makes things better, nicer. It handles themes, menus, search, footnotes (popup, which is very useful by the way) , reading progress, sharing, and a few nice features like gallery lightboxes and keyboard navigation. E.g. The Archives are JS-driven by design, They load once, so switching views and browsing them feels instant. Since people usually visit archive to dig through old posts, that trade-off makes sense. The homepage meanwhile is static HTML. JS weighs about ~33 KB, with no libraries or third-party scripts. Update — 30 September 2026: Native KaTeX support uses it too, it's again a necessary quality feature, not bloat.
Bodoni Moda SC for titles and drop caps, Cinzel for the menu, Old Standard TT for headings and reading, and Basis33 for the pixel bits. Licences and credits are on the attributions page.