59 posts with this tag.
Why I'm putting folk.zone's social services on hiatus? 500 spam users, my embarrassing WriteFreely database blunder, and the legal weight of self-hosting in a Canada without Section 230. On Bill C-22 and Psiphon's planned exodus, slowing down to a wintering and a beginner's mind, sharpening the axe in public on Cosmic Voyage, and why I reach out instead of blocking.
The essay I promised back in May. A history of public-access Unix from Dennis Ritchie's 'fellowship' and Grex's potluck dinners to Paul Ford's drunken tilde.club and ~vilmibm's birthday gift to themself; a tour of the seven tildes I call home (including the starship I captain on cosmic.voyage); what kernel exploits and an rm -rf / taught the tildeverse about fragility; and how to move in yourself.
The Internet isn't a story, but a setting—our agora and town square—where the stories worth telling are still human ones. Drawing on Nathan Jurgenson's digital dualism, Jessa Lingel's gentrification of the Internet, danah boyd's digital white flight, and Amnesty's digital landlords, I trace the enclosure of our commons and lay out my own resistance: redundant backups, Gemini capsules, pubnixes, and an enduring optimism that isn't for sale.
Why writing—and writing back—is never wasted time. From Patricia Lange's troll whispering to reparative civility, deep canvassing, Daryl Davis, Megan Phelps-Roper, and moral elevation, I defend engaging difficult people as a deliberate ethical practice rooted in curiosity, grace, and love.
The world needs more intentional kindness. There's a manufactured backlash against empathy from Elon Musk to Gad Saad's 'suicidal empathy.' Kindness already operates as a design constraint: the IndieWeb's eleventh principle, Elm's code of conduct, Recurse Center's social rules, Ubuntu's 'I am because we are,' Audre Lorde's anger as care, and Coraline Ada Ehmke's Contributor Covenant. We must reclaim Ruby's MINASWAN culture from the Rails era, and I announce LearnWebDev.fyi, my restoration of Flatiron's retired Learn.co curriculum with 1,672 free lessons.
man is not a certain breed of anonymous, nihilistic blogger who mistakes callousness for wisdom and detachment for depth. man is different. man is better.
I've finally became an ARPA member of SDF, a non-profit public-access UNIX system running continuously since 1987. I give a history from Ted Uhlemann's 300-baud Apple IIe BBS to today's NetBSD network of DEC Alphas and Opterons; a tour of the shell, gopher, and gemini services; how to join, plus two hands-on bonuses: writing a flat-file Perl CGI guestbook and making a site Dillo-compatible.
Written for a 32-bit Café thread asking where to even begin with static-site generators. I go over the free resources I'd learn first (and why hand-rolled HTML beats an SSG for your very first site), a plain-language glossary of the jargon docs never define, a brief history from HSC and Movable Type to Jekyll, why git gets recommended everywhere, my own beginner starters, and tiny alternatives like barf, bashblog, and kiki.
Responding to Coyote's essay on data ownership, I look at how genAI has democratized the kind of extraction that once required corporate infrastructure—iLands spam agents, scrapers, and agent swarms—why my apathy-and-ignorance approach to AI crawlers is no longer enough, the two competing realities of AI 2027, and the tools and organizing we actually have: ai.robots.txt, Glaze and Nightshade, tech-worker unions, and the CARE and OCAP principles of Indigenous data governance.
Creating your own corner of Geminispace: why you'd want to blog on a protocol with no JavaScript, no CSS, and no AI slop; where to host a capsule (SmolPub, the Tildeverse, flounder, Gemcities); how the community's gemlog conventions work; and the surprising social life of Gemini BBS, Station, and Astrobotany. Plus ASCII art, CGI scripting, and every gemini:// link I've found worth keeping.
Medium.com went from a defiant anti-AI holdout—blocking GPTBot, rejecting a multimillion-dollar training deal, banning AI writing from monetization—to launching an AI licensing standard and its own AI writing app under CEO Tony Stubblebine. What happens when one man's changing mind becomes a platform's policy, and why I'm still staying.
Reacting to the Omarchy and DigitalOcean news, I set out a curated low-spec, text-first alternative to the modern web: Gemini, Gopher, Spartan, Lynx-friendly sites, terminal readers, public Unix communities, and peer-to-peer networks like Yggdrasil, I2P, and Hyphanet.
Vagueblogging and subtweeting are the most toxic modes of online communication, yet research shows people prefer them to direct confrontation anyway. On the psychology of strategic ambiguity, insecure attachment, context collapse, and the online disinhibition effect. A case against the culture of passive aggression online, and a call for those with safety and privilege to stop hiding behind the same hedge as everyone else.
The spotted lanternfly is beautiful and terrible, an invasive species that illuminates even as it destroys. AI-generated content is flooding the Internet, and authenticity is becoming a premium commodity. We must refuse the premise that human writing is a niche product.
The world isn't full of critics, it's full of quiet kind people who don't get nearly enough time or attention from us because we're born with a negativity bias. We need to proactively choose to be lovers and proactively grease the quiet wheels.
So, my silly little fanfic project blew up like crazy and received some really negative feedback. And I think I understand why. Exploring the concept of boundary spanning and cross-pollination in online communities. Drawing on organizational theory and the work of Michael Tushman. We need people who move between different online subcultures to seed ideas and build bridges.
Finger from 1971, Gopher from 1991, and Gemini from 2019. These protocols offer decentralized, terminal-based alternatives to the modern web. The small web's is in a renaissance. On the solarpunk philosophy of intentional technology, and how these protocols meet you where you are, whether you're on a machine from 2005 or just tired of Chrome's monoculture.
With the AI bubble finally deflating, what can we learn from the gender gap in genAI enthusiasm? Looking at /r/SlopcoreCirclejerk's culture of contempt, historical Luddite parallels, crypto bro demographics, and why men are drawn to extractive technologies.
I am a compulsive archivist, terrified of losing my words, but many of history's greatest writers asked for theirs to be burned. Kafka, Dickinson, Plath, Virgil all had their reasons. A meditation on self-erasure, ego, and the difference between the writing and the written thing, with an interview with Bix Frankonis, a contemporary writer who one day decided he needed to be smaller online, not bigger.
A history of the word 'meme'—from Richard Dawkins coining it in *The Selfish Gene* in 1976 to Advice Dog and the death of shared internet monoculture—and what happens when you take memetics seriously as a theory of culture. Metal Gear Rising's Monsoon delivers the most honest account of how memes shape who we become. The lyric essay resists this process by design.
On the subscription economy, Walter Benjamin's aura, Pokémon scalpers, the rot of physical media, and the person at the photocopier making what the streaming model cannot touch.
We have the first human photograph of Earth from space in 54 years, and I can't help but meditate on what it means to be human on a fragile planet in 2026.
A quarter of the entire Internet uses Cloudflare. This is an existential threat to the Internet's ideals. I realized I need DDoS protection, but I could not use Cloudflare in good conscience. And so, I'm beyond excited to announce that I'm now using Deflect.ca for my website.
Looksmaxxing. Redpilled. Sigma. Mogging. Cope. Seethe. Malding. Goyslop. Gooning. Memes from image boards became cultural foundation for Generation Alpha. How rich, powerful men have coordinated a harmful online culture for nearly twenty years.
There's tension between creative authenticity and professional presentation in the IndieWeb space. What does it mean to be taken seriously as a writer while maintaining personal joy and rejecting the aesthetic standards of capital?
What does it actually mean to build a better web, and what do we owe each other in doing so? A response to the 32-bit Café thread about trust, onboarding, and the distance between knowing something is wrong and doing something about it.
A complete step-by-step tutorial for creating a bootable Catalina USB installer using mist-cli on modern macOS in order to downgrade an Early 2015 MacBook Pro from macOS Monterey to Catalina. Accidentally also a philosophical look at planned obsolescence, e-waste, and corporate control over hardware lifespan.
What is trust in an AI-saturated internet? And a related question, how do we reckon with the barriers to onboarding people to the IndieWeb? We must cultivate faith in our digital interactions and make independent web spaces more accessible.
genAI code is now in Python, curl, and systemd. We face an ethical crisis. Slopware means we have two possible responses: absolutism or harm reduction. This moment demands the same principled stand that free software absolutists have taken for decades.
I've written 120 blog posts in the past 140 days, averaging 1,900 words per post. 250,000 words total on my blog currently. It's as good a time as any to review my work so far and speculate on the possibilities of my future.
My nostalgia is hypercapitalist. My nostalgia is the worst of the unregulated Internet. I cannot decouple my fondest memories from the corporations and the loss of innocence that produced them, and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that.
I was permanently banned from r/Calgary for posting my own writing about local public library funding. What does this say about the state of local journalism?
The Calgary Public Library is offering $8,000 for an AI Artist Residency while Canadian artists face funding cuts and 16% grant acceptance rates. There are programs like this around the world. Why?
What will the Internet look like in 2036? 2046? How do we reckon with the challenges of digital preservation, link rot, and building for the Long Web in an age of ephemeral content?
What do we do with Virginia Woolf's concept of creative space in the digital age? Examining how domains, Queer dance halls, and collective spaces redefine what it means to have a room of one's own for contemporary writers.
My second principle for the IndieWeb requires good faith writing excludes the misanthrope. I want to reconsider that, carefully. Because the question of who gets to be here, and why, is more interesting and more complicated than I first let on.
On executive dysfunction, the tyranny of perpetual drafts, and choosing messy immediacy over cultivated perfection.
A response to Cory Doctorow's defense of generative AI, examining the contradictions in supporting Ollama while championing open source principles, and an examination about what purity culture and hypocrisy really means.
We need to be good neighours to each other. But what does that mean on the IndieWeb? A look at mycorrhizal networks, Indra's Net, and the importance of building intentional connections between independent websites.
A few days after writing about a weird malware campaign, I discovered that half a dozen cybersecurity news outlets had picked up the story. They now outrank me on Google. A metacommentary on the state of internet journalism, attribution, and what it says that a netsec industry has to rely on amateurs to break stories.
A call to action for the 99% of internet users who consume but never create. If that's you (and it most likely is), then please read and consider what I'm asking."
I decide to throw my hat into the ring and define what exactly the IndieWeb movement is, the core principles, and why it matters for the future of the Internet.
A roundup of recent developments: building a terminal-based writing organizer, being interviewed by Le Monde about AI social media, and thoughts on Medium's Partner Program changes.
You don't need to be a developer to own your corner of the internet. A guide for writers, poets, and creators who want to escape algorithmic feeds and reclaim their digital presence. No computer science degree required.
What is the future of coding bootcamps? Is there a future? And, more importantly, what is the future of junior developers in an industry with an effortless AI bubble?
Beyond tipping culture, there are meaningful ways to support independent creators that don't involve money. Here are eight of the best.
A month of building, connecting, and discovering the independent web. Small technical joys that turned solitude into dialogue. Treat the Internet like a personal playground and lab!
Part 3 of a series on the AI Crisis
Using the Methods of Journalists from the Past to Inspire Your Writing Today
What is cringe? The feeling when you see somebody deeply love something you don’t understand.
Why You (yes, you) Should Join Medium, Tumblr, and NeoCities.
There's a lot to the forgotten past of Medium’s most successful writer.
This will give you the most amount of hope you’ve had in a long while.
If you’re a writer that’s active and consistent, I’m looking for you. Yes, you.
and How I’m Trying to Save It
Are you a writer? Do you want to be? Read this.
My experience writing on Medium for the past 10 years
From watching 'Her' every Valentine's Day for over a decade to witnessing AI's real-world evolution. What are the boundaries between human and artificial love, consent in digital relationships, and what it means to connect when technology mediates our most intimate moments?
Our Memory is Disappearing Before Our Eyes