You should make the timefor this long read from Keyana Sapp about how a few megacorporations bought up all the cookware brands you know and love and enshittified them. Or at least scroll to the bottom for the few brands that are still great. Personally, I just bought a Mauviel carbon steel frying pan and I’m absolutely loving it. Check it out!
Lately, I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the open source community, and I no longer believe that open source for open source’s sake is inherently good. In too many cases, critical libraries that hold up the entire computing ecosystem are thanklessly supported by unpaid volunteers, while megacorporations profit from this work without contributing anything back. (There’s not a lot that I can…
I’ve just added two new designs to the stickers available in the shop: Build Small Build Local and I’m From The Government and I’m Here to Help ! As always, you can get one for free with your charitable donation to a good cause! Check them out
Alex Russell does a fantastic job of exposing the cult-like mentality of the JavaScript industry today, and how we’ve lost our way in this space. Check it out!
In case you missed it, I enjoyed this post from Ed Zitron about the rise of popular but mediocre leadership across industries. Check it out!
Chris Given talks about his team’s work on IRS Direct File, which allowed the American people to file their taxes for free, no strings attached. This tool is now open source for anyone to use! It’s a shame this amazing and impactful project was cancelled by the federal government. Check it out!
If you’re building or even thinking about social networks, you really need to give this talk from Erin Kissane an hour of your time! “The liberty of our work is not actually an adolescent freedom from caring what we do to other people, but the freedom to actually care as much as we fucking want to about the effects of our work in the world” Reminds me of my favorite Tolstoy quote (via Gorky)…
I’ve just released my latest series of shirts, featuring three new designs: I’m From The Government And I’m Here To Help That’s A Problem for Next Fiscal Year Unfunded Mandate Check ‘Em Out!
When I say Go Be Weird, this right here is the stuff I’m talking about. The legendary Moby has provided a 100% free archive of hundreds of songs that you can use for your films, streams, videos, whatever. Absolutely incredible resource for all of us content creators! Check it out!
The CFPB Union has set up a shop to raise funds, and they have some amazing Govpunk shirts! Check them out! Check it out!
In my last post, I talked about how to save our world from a consumer standpoint. Today I’d like to talk about the other side - how we move forward as people who build and create things. Between government layoffs and the tech sector ones, there are not enough IT jobs to absorb all of the firings over the last few years. Again: there are not enough IT jobs in the U.S. to absorb all of the layoffs.…
I know a lot of folks are out of work right now, so I spent some time to refresh my website to help keep track of what jobs you’ve applied for: Job.Hunt.Works . It’s not a jobs board (like the one I already run ), but rather a tool to keep track of where you are in the process for all of the jobs you are applying for. I had originally created it years ago, back when I was out of work the last…
Something a little different this morning. Ido Agassi is an incredible bookbinder and craftsman, and in this video he shows the intricate process of making a multi-slot box for a book. It’s rare to get to see such an expert at work! Incredibly calming and peaceful content. Check it out!
This article makes a compelling case for communities investing in themselves to provide services people need. Some might call it socialism, but I think it’s just being a good neighbor. Check it out!
Another good article on community investment. This one from The Maintainers blog describes how a community in Italy provides resources for at-risk groups when the government won’t or can’t by founding social co-ops. Check it out!
There are a lot of articles right now telling folks to call their elected representatives or show up to protests or to do one-day boycotts, as ways of showing resistance to the current administration and the shocking things being done to the U.S. government and democracies all over the world. These actions are important, but they do nothing to address the actual root causes of the problems we’re…
Check out these amazing pixel fonts from somepx! I want all of them. Check it out!
In 1996, Netscape - who would later become Mozilla - launched a new suite of tools called Netscape Communicator. The core of this suite was Netscape Navigator, their flagship web browser, but also bundled was mail, newsgroups, and an html editor. The web has largely been going downhill since then. Navigator eventually became Firefox, the mail client later became Thunderbird ). Most recently,…
Back in August, GSA announced that any U.S. government agency - federal, state, local, or tribal - can now use Login.gov ! If you’re not already familiar, Login.gov is my favorite government shared service program. It allows government agencies to do identity verification for people once, and reuse that identity across a variety of services. So, for instance, you could use a single login to update…
Last week, voters in the U.S. overwhelmingly chose to re-elect 45. Personally, I am still reeling from the fact that so many folks chose to pick a candidate that calls for hate and violence and xenophobia. One that has promised to eliminate many of the liberties and benefits that folks hold dear. I was hired into the federal government in the waning hours of the Obama Administration. I chose to…
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged or worked on web-projects. Honestly, I’ve been wrapped up in my YouTube channel (where I play building-related videogames and just hit 1100 subscribers!) so other projects have fallen by the wayside. Over there, I’ve found a very engaged community with lots of communication. Unfortunately, a lot of that communication is through a large number of separate…
XOXO has started posting some amazing talks from this year’s festival. Definitely make the time to watch the ones from Erin Kissane , Molly White , and Darius Kazemi at the very least! Check it out!
I love this proposal for standardizing links that appear at the top level of a domain. Many of us have been doing /contact or /about for a long time, but I’m very tempted to add a bunch of these as hidden pages in my site! Check it out!
Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon discuss the need to decentralize the internet monoculture we’ve beccome locked into. Check it out!
I’ve just released SIX NEW SHIRT DESIGNS for my series three run, celebrating a variety of hot topics including Login.gov, the DATA Act of 2014, Artificial Intelligence, and Agile software development. Check them out!
Molly White talks about how we can reclain the web, and rebuild what we’ve lost. Check it out!
This is a must-read piece from Ed Zitron describing how the major internet corporations have become actively hostile to users. “It’s the hallmark of a tech industry dedicated to creating problems that it charges you to solve, a sickly beast borne of venture capital and a lack of innovation. When you’re rich and powerful, you no longer face real problems, and as a result fail to consider the…
Carter Baxter talks about how as a culture we’ve traded ethical values for shareholder value. Check it out!
Baldur Bjarnason lays out how the current AI-obsession is backed by chicanery usually employed by psychics. Check it out!
Cory Dransfeldt provides this excellent list of AI scraping bots to put in your disallow list for robots.txt. Check it out!