Posts tagged 'social-commentary'

A collection of 3.5-inch floppy disks arranged in an overlapping, flat-lay pattern filling the entire frame. The disks span a wide range of colours — yellow, blue, red, teal, orange, dark brown, purple, and grey — creating a vibrant, saturated composition. The metal write-protect shutters and circular hub windows are visible on several disks, shot in close-up with bright, even lighting.

How has a lack of ownership changed art?

April 8, 2026 · #Social Commentary #Digital Culture #Cultural Criticism #Analog Living #philosophy

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.

A photograph of Earth from deep space, slightly off-centre and partially in shadow, with a thin luminous blue atmospheric halo visible along the sunlit edge. Australia's arid interior is visible as a rust-coloured landmass on the left side. Swirling cloud systems cover much of the Pacific Ocean to the right. Stars are faintly visible in the black background, and a bright lens flare appears near the lower right.

That's Home. That's us.

April 6, 2026 · #personal essay #Social Commentary #Digital Culture #philosophy #Space #Environmental Justice #Mental Health #gratitude

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.

Oil painting depicting the interior of a giant cylindrical O'Neill 'Model 3' space colony habitat, viewed from within. The curved interior wraps around the viewer in a panoramic arc, with rust-orange and amber cumulus clouds massing near the central rotation axis overhead. A dark, star-scattered corridor runs through the middle of the composition, framing a brilliant solar eclipse where the colony has entered Earth's shadow at the L5 Lagrangian point. The entire scene is drenched in deep ruddy amber and burnt sienna tones, evoking the simultaneous light of every sunrise and sunset on Earth.

The Internet's Landlord Problem

April 3, 2026 · 1 comment · #Technology #Digital Culture #Privacy #Political #Security #Social Commentary

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.

A dramatic expressionist oil painting depicting a figure with long, wildly flowing auburn and flame-orange hair that bleeds into the surrounding darkness. The figure's face is rendered in sickly yellow-green and white highlights, with an intense, brooding downward gaze. One eye caught in shadow, the other luminous. The chest and throat glow as if lit from within by fire. Dark, massive wing-like forms sweep across both sides of the composition, merging with a deep blue-black background. The overall palette contrasts volcanic oranges and golds against cool dark blues and greens, evoking a fallen or defiant supernatural being.

Incels Won the Culture War

March 30, 2026 · #Cultural Criticism #Digital Culture #Social Commentary #Feminism #Politics #Media Criticism

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.

Oil painting (1904) of a man seated at a cluttered desk, writing with a pen while pressing one hand to his forehead in concentration. He wears a dark jacket and glasses, surrounded by open books, stacked papers, and an inkwell. The background is a muted blue-grey. Signed in Cyrillic in the upper right corner.

Being Taken Seriously as a Writer

March 26, 2026 · 1 comment · #personal essay #IndieWeb #Digital Culture #Social Commentary #writing

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?

Painting depicting a sun-drenched coastal scene in a classical mythological style. In the foreground, purple wildflowers carpet rocky terrain where a reclining nude male figure reclines while a draped woman in white and blue leans toward him. Behind them, two robed women tend to goats near the water's edge. In the background, several nude figures wade and play among pink-orange boulders along a vivid turquoise sea. A rainbow arcs across a pale blue sky in the upper left. The palette is warm and saturated. Coral rock, lavender bloom, aqua water.

Building the Good Web

March 22, 2026 · 1 comment · #personal essay #IndieWeb #Digital Culture #Social Commentary #community #philosophy

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.

Vintage linen postcard reading 'Shenandoah Valley — Land of Luscious Apples, VA.'' A comically oversized red apple, rendered in the exaggerated style typical of mid-20th century novelty postcards, dominates the center of the image against a background of pink-blossoming apple trees under a blue sky with white clouds. A handwritten number '89303' appears in the upper right corner.

Downgrading to macOS Catalina: A Sermon on Obsolescence

March 21, 2026 · 2 comments · #Technical #Digital Culture #Technology #Social Commentary #Sustainability #Tutorial

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.

A black ink illustration on a rainbow gradient background that shifts from yellow-green at the left through orange, pink, and purple to blue at the right. The illustration depicts a large spider web rendered as concentric semicircular arcs radiating outward from a central point at the bottom, with radial lines crossing them in a dotted, hand-drawn style. At the center bottom sits a stylized spider figure surrounded by a geometric mandala of triangles and star-like forms, set against a bright magenta-pink circle. The entire composition is framed by a rectangular border decorated with repeating geometric diamond and triangle motifs along the edges. Small flies are scattered throughout the web

Trust and Faith in Our Web

March 20, 2026 · 1 comment · #personal essay #Digital Culture #IndieWeb #Social Commentary #philosophy

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.

A Baroque-style allegorical ceiling painting depicting classical female figures representing virtues or goddesses, including one crowned figure in pink robes and one in blue holding a quill and documents, seated on clouds surrounded by cherubs. Additional allegorical figures appear in the lower register, one holding an olive branch with a molecular diagram drawn on her chest, another carrying a shield and spear. Scattered legal documents float in the lower right corner. Overlaid across the entire composition is aggressive graffiti tagging in black and deep red, with a graffiti rendering of the scales of justice at the top center.

A More Perfect Morality: The Progressive Failure of Ethics

March 14, 2026 · 1 comment · #Philosophy #Personal Essay #Ethics #Social Justice #Human Rights #Activism #Cultural Criticism #Social Commentary

Liberal democracies selectively apply universal human rights, and there is a progressive failure to extend moral consideration to: Palestinians, Congolese, Rohingyans, Uyghurs, trans people, women, Black communities, Indigenous Peoples, the chronically ill, mentally ill, poor, sex workers, the disabled, the houseless, children, elderly, Jewish people, immigrants, gender/sexual/romantic minorities, incarcerated people, Romani and Dalits, and animals. True universal rights require principled solidarity beyond tribal boundaries.

The Big Arch Distraction (while the World is Burning)

March 5, 2026 · #cultural criticism #politics #media criticism #social commentary #personal essay

A CEO took a comically small bite of a burger. The internet erupted. Meanwhile, the US is bombing Iran, Trump is drafting executive orders to seize control of the midterms, and civil unrest is reaching a boiling point. We need to talk about what we're choosing to look at.

Two men carrying a dark green couch across a street in a tropical urban setting with palm trees. The couch has 'THIS IS STOLEN' written on it in large white hand-painted letters. Background shows commercial buildings, power lines, and vehicles on what appears to be a sunny day.

My Malware Story Gets Stolen; Yet Another Argument for the IndieWeb

February 21, 2026 · #Digital Security #IndieWeb #Journalism #Open Source #Digital Culture #Social Commentary

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.

Ten matches arranged vertically, showing progressive stages of burning from top to bottom. The first match is nearly pristine with only a slightly charred tip, and each subsequent match shows increasing burn damage, until the last two, where one is burned to a fragile black sliver and the final match has completely disintegrated into ash.

The 1% Rule: An Open Letter to Everyone Who Doesn't Post Anything Online

February 16, 2026 · #personal essay #Social Commentary #Digital Culture #IndieWeb #community

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."

Black and white photograph of a store window displaying a large 'CODING BOOTCAMPS CLOSING DOWN' sign. Surrounding signs advertise clearance sales including 'WATCHES £7', 'LAPTOPS & GEAR £75', 'EVERYTHING £5', and 'EVERYTHING £50', all marked as 'GOING OUT OF BUSINESS'.

The Final Coding Bootcamp: A Eulogy for Lighthouse Labs

January 25, 2026 · #personal essay #Social Commentary #technical #political #Digital Culture

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?