The life of the American mind
Essays and reflections that confront the current, the historical, the fleeting, and the eternal.
About the site
Barely Filtered Thoughts is a look into the mind of a millennial non-influencer who says what he thinks and thinks what he says.
Expect essays that zig where others zag: philosophy through the eyes of an auditor, mathematics as the art of thinking clearly, linguistics as an inadvertent roadmap of civilization, and history as a series of case studies in human behavior.
If you leave with more questions than you arrived with, then the site has done its job.
About Me
William Ellison is an essayist and thinker in the American South. He is an alumnus of the University of Tennessee and a lifelong autodidact. Mr. Ellison works as an auditor at a hospital system and is pursuing independent study.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Barely Filtered Thoughts about?
A little bit of everything. There will be essays here about almost any subject that captures my interest. Subjects you can expect to see here include philosophy, mathematics, history, language, and current affairs.
Subjects you can expect to never see here include partisan politics, culture wars (unless they’re too juicy to ignore), moralizing screeds, and Windows 11.
Be honest. How much do you use AI?
Like every site in the Null Curriculum Network, this is an intelligence-free zone, artificial or otherwise.
I do not use AI to generate site content. I do use the Consensus app (https://consensus.app) to help with scholarly research and I use ChatGPT (https://chatgpt.com) to help brainstorm topics for posts and occasionally for outlines. Images generated with ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion are clearly marked as such.
Citations? Really?
Yes, really.
Intellectual honesty is a precondition of conducting serious intellectual discourse. The cornerstone of intellectual honesty is, as it was once explained to me, citing your damn sources.
This site uses APA 7 for citations.
Do you have a style manual?
Yes: The Elements of Style for grammar and usage and the American Psychological Association Publication Manual, 7th edition or later.
For spelling conventions, I defer to the Oxford American Dictionary, Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, and Black’s Law Dictionary as appropriate.
Why essays? Isn’t that a dead format?
I can’t call myself an essayist if I don’t write essays, now can I?
Real answer: the form of the essay allows me to express myself in a way that feels comfortable. Imagine your favorite video essayist on YouTube, just without the royalty-free background music or the immaculately decorated set.
Do you worry about being wrong?
You mean there are people who don’t worry about being wrong? Shocking!
In all seriousness: yes, I do worry about being wrong. Having said that, I’d rather be provocatively incomplete than blandly correct. I’ll fix it in post and note it in the version history if something incorrect makes it out the door.
What do you listen to while you write?
Carefully curated playlists that make me think, help me concentrate, lift up my mood, or some combination thereof. Links to publicly shared Apple Music playlists will be posted to this FAQ at some point.
Some artists in rotation right now (July 2025): Mary J. Blige, Santigold, Florence + the Machine, Руся, 岩崎宏美, and 伍佰.
How do you draft your essays? What hardware and software do you use?
Usually in Apple Pages, using a template based on one that I use for writing papers for my business degree. Each long-form essay I post here is commensurate in scope with a university term paper.
My smaller essays – reflections, really – are much less formal and are usually drafted directly in the WordPress post editor.
I post to the site via WordPress, invariably accessed via Apple Safari on one of my Mac computers. I use a 2013 Mac Pro at home and a 2025 MacBook Air on the road.
What do you use to run this site?
I have been a Linode customer since 2016 and find their service to be exemplary.
Barely Filtered Thoughts is hosted on a virtual private server running Debian Linux, the nginx web server, the MariaDB database, and the PHP programming runtime. In addition to serving as its editor-in-chief, I am also the site’s webmaster and system administrator – if something breaks, holler in my general direction and I’ll fix it.
To manage the site’s editorial aspects, I use Apple software and hardware.
How can I send you feedback?
Email mail@tnwae.us. I reserve the right to showcase your response here on the site if I feel it is particularly good – or particularly bad. Keep it civil.
I’m not on social media. Don’t go looking for me there.
Comments are disabled and will stay that way. If you’ve ever had to moderate website comments, you already know why.
Got questions? That’s understandable.
Feel free to reach out.