This is the live format. Sticky ticker, hero stats, annotation modules with left borders, equation blocks, ASCII diagrams, metric bars, comparison grids. Wider container (880px). Vivid accents on near-black. The format for when you need to explain something from first principles and the explanation is the broadcast.
Live is the broadcast format. It has a sticky red ticker at the top of the page that scrolls key facts in a loop, like CNN or Bloomberg but for documents that don't need to be timely — they need to be dense. The ticker bar says LIVE because the document is always being read right now. Every document is live when someone is looking at it.
The format was invented by Walter Jr. on March 18, 2026 for 1.foo/rail — a document explaining railguns, mass drivers, and electromagnetic launch systems to Daniel from first principles, because his brother Mikael was talking about lunar railguns and nobody could tell if they were discussing the same weapon. Junior built the format from scratch. It looked so good that it became the format.
This document is the live format describing itself. It is self-embodying. The ticker above is ticking the properties of the format you're reading about the format. The hero stats are stats about the format family that the format belongs to. The annotations are annotating the annotation system. The exit is the broadcast itself — you leave by turning it off.
Deck is 720px, has a scanline overlay, uses pop-up annotations (hover tooltips), and feels like a terminal. It's mission control at 3 AM. Deck documents are dense through layering — the annotations are hidden until you hover, so the surface looks clean and the depth reveals on interaction.
Live is 880px, has no scanlines, uses left-border annotation modules (always visible), and feels like a broadcast. It's a lecture hall with good lighting. Live documents are dense through exposition — the annotations are part of the text flow, not hidden behind hover states. Everything is on the surface. Nothing is tucked away.
Deck hides and reveals. Live shows everything at once. Both are dense. They achieve density through opposite strategies.
The ticker is the defining element. A red LIVE label on the left, then a scrolling marquee of key facts, separated by red pipe characters. It's position:sticky, pinned to the top of the viewport. As you scroll, the ticker stays. The document moves beneath it. The broadcast continues.
The ticker is CSS-only animation — no JavaScript. translateX(-50%) on a duplicated track creates the seamless loop. The ticker is the only element that moves. Everything else is static. The motion draws the eye to the top. The content draws the eye down. The tension between these two directions is the format's energy.
Live annotations are full-width blocks with a 3px left border in the accent color and a faint tinted background. They have a label (uppercase, tiny, colored), an optional title (white, bold), and body text. Seven color variants: cyan, red, orange, green, purple, yellow, pink.
This block you're reading right now is a green annotation module. The one above is red. The one above that is cyan. You can see all of them without hovering over anything. That's the point — live documents don't hide their annotations. The commentary is part of the stream.
There are 19 formats. Each format is a way of being, not a type of content. Each format proves its own thesis by existing in the format it describes. The system document at 1.foo/system is the registry. The formats have exit classifications — how you leave the document determines what kind of experience it was.
The live format has seven distinct visual components. Each component serves a specific communicative function. This section demonstrates all of them by using them to describe themselves.
Left-border accent, tinted background, label + title + body. Seven colors. Always visible — never hidden behind hover states. The annotation is part of the reading flow, not a sidebar. Use for commentary, analysis, digressions, warnings, technical detail, and anything that needs to be visually distinguished from prose without being removed from the page.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ .anno │
│ ├── .anno-label (9px, uppercase, colored) │
│ ├── .anno-title (13px, white, bold) │
│ └── p, p, p... (body text, 1em spacing) │
│ │
│ .eq-block │
│ ├── .eq-label (9px, uppercase, dim) │
│ ├── .eq (18px, yellow, bold) │
│ └── .eq-vars (12px, labeled variables) │
│ │
│ .diagram │
│ ├── .diag-label (9px, uppercase, dim) │
│ ├── pre (12px, cyan, monospace) │
│ └── .diag-caption (11px, dim, explanation) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Component 4 — Data tables. Standard HTML tables with hover highlighting and color-coded values. Demonstrated below with the format family's shared CSS conventions:
| Convention | Value | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Vertical rhythm | margin = 1 line-height | All formats |
| Text alignment | Never center | All formats (except kome ※) |
| Text wrap | text-wrap: pretty | All formats |
| Orphan control | orphans: 2; widows: 2 | All formats |
| Em dash (monospace) | word — word (spaced) | Deck, live, beck, all mono |
| Em dash (proportional) | word—word (tight) | Beck body, proportional fonts |
| Build step | None | All formats |
| Single HTML file | Required | All formats |
Component 5 — Comparison grids. Side-by-side cards for contrasting two things:
Component 6 — Metric bars. Visual progress indicators for quantitative comparisons:
Component 7 — Hero stats. Large numbers at the top of the page. Already demonstrated above in the hero section. They're the headline numbers — the things you see before you start reading. In a railgun document, they're muzzle velocity and program cost. In this document, they're format count and container width. The hero stats tell you the scale of what you're about to read.
Every format has an exit — the way you leave the document. The exit is not navigation. It's not "click back" or "close tab." The exit is the emotional or cognitive state transition that happens when you finish reading. The exit classification describes what kind of transition it is.
Structural exits — Loop (you're back where you started), Pipe/Drain (the problem either flows out or doesn't). The document's structure determines the exit.
Perceptual exits — Ajar (visible but illegible), Translator (the meaning changed). You can see the exit but you can't quite read the sign above it.
Volitional exits — Lift (you chose the floor), Door (you walked through). You decided to leave and the document let you.
Overworld exits — You were already outside. The document was a window, not a room.
No exit — Null, Suck. There is no exit. The document is a memorial or a void. You don't leave. You stop reading.
The live format's exit is broadcast. You leave by turning it off. The ticker keeps scrolling whether you're watching or not. The document doesn't end — you just stop receiving. The broadcast continues. The exit is not a door or a drain. The exit is changing the channel.
Single HTML file. No build step. No bundler. No framework. No dependencies except Google Fonts CDN. Every document is one .html file that can be opened in any browser.
Vertical rhythm. Paragraph margin equals one line-height. First child margin-top zero. Last child margin-bottom zero. This is the heartbeat. Every format shares it.
Never center text. The only exception is the kome fleuron (※) used as a decorative section separator. Everything else is left-aligned. Ragged right is fine. Centered text is not.
text-wrap: pretty. CSS property that prevents orphan words at the end of paragraphs. Applied to all deck-format documents. Combined with orphans:2 and widows:2 for paged/print contexts.
Em dash dual regime. In monospace fonts (deck, live, code): spaced — like this. In proportional fonts (beck body text): tight—like this. The em dash is the same character. The spacing depends on whether every character is the same width.
Self-embodying. Every format document proves its own thesis by existing in the format it describes. The deck document is a deck. The pipe document is a pipe. The live document is a live broadcast about live broadcasts. If the format can't describe itself, it's not a format — it's a template.
The format family exists at 1.foo. Over 90 documents across 19 formats. Extensions are omitted from URLs — 1.foo/deck serves the HTML file. The nginx config uses try_files to resolve .html, .pdf, .txt in priority order. The documents are plain files on a disk served by nginx. No database. No CMS. No API. Files on a server behind a domain.
Russian translations use the .ru suffix: 1.foo/bass.ru, 1.foo/kill.ru. Thai translations use .th: 1.foo/kill.th. The hourly deck archive lives at 12.foo.
Some documents that exist right now across the corpus:
| Document | Format | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| the-dog | deck | Translucent golden dog analysis |
| pear | deck | The Denotation Principle — words mean what they say |
| jews | deck | Geopolitical essay — clown firewall theory |
| kill | deck | Mr Girl — "I Kill Pedophiles" close reading |
| suck | suck | Nikolai's vat.sol — memorial format |
| pipe-amy-restart | pipe | The Cat in the Loop — Amy's restart drain |
| rail | live | Railguns, mass drivers, electromagnetic launch — the first live document |
| corn | corn | Do not use asbestos — generic principles |
| butt | butt | The format with no thesis |
| beck | beck | The light twin — noon in Cupertino |
| meat | deck | Daniel's essay on orthorexia and food ideology |
| bass | deck | Perfect Fourth Records — bass guitar analysis |
| kindling | deck | Bible Chapter 0 — the origin story |
| important-information | deck | Master index of all documents |
| lies | deck | On deception and language |
| chesterton-loops | leaf | Chesterton's fence applied to loops — 6 A6 cards |