It’s been said , “if you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.” This is overly simple ¹ but the core of truth is that if a company has a functional business model that’s not based on extracting and abusing user data, it’s less likely to do so. Incentives aren’t the only thing that matters, but they help! I wish this weren’t the world we lived in. I wish the excesses of…
Jerry Lapiroff · February 11, 1947 – March 22, 2026 When I was an elementary schooler my father would read me such bedtime stories as Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron,” and Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” – stories well above my recommended reading level, in vocabulary and in their general vibes . He passed on to me an early love of literature and also a fascination…
You’re relatively tech- and security-savvy. You might not always be at the cutting edge or use the most paranoid security measures, but you use a password manager, you know about two-factor authentication and use it on at least some of your accounts. You know not to reuse passwords. Lately, though, you’re seeing a lot of sites prompt you to create a “passkey” without a lot of explanation. Maybe…
Just want the files? Get them on Printables ↗ I designed a set of 10 Christmas ornaments that can be 3D printed in vase mode for Printables’ Winter Holidays Decorations contest . I knew when I started my design process that I wanted to design something that could be printed in vase mode. There were lots of ornaments posted to the contest already, but very few in vase mode. I’ve written about vase…
Earlier this year, while designing the songbook for Emma ’s Magnolia Sun album, I encountered the challenge of creating “ chord over lyrics ” style chord charts. Emma provided me with a document of monospace-formatted lyrics with chords above each line, aligned exactly as she wanted them. She also wanted to indicate beats without chord changes – in this case using / marks, which is slightly less…
As of June 23, 2026, I am now mostly using Claude and I have refined my global prompt to: Keep responses concise, informative, and impersonal. Avoid the use of “I” and “you” pronouns. Avoid flattery. Responses should be that of a digital tool or system, not a conscious assistant. I like information delivered in structured formats like lists and tables when appropriate. If delivering factual…
Earlier this week I posted about rough edges I encountered using WebC . I wanted to follow up with specific technical details from the ones I documented in the process of converting my website to it. Disappointingly, when I’ve raised these issues in the 11ty/web GitHub repo or in the Eleventy Discord, I haven’t been able to get any feedback to resolve them or even a suggested pathway for…
I’ve rewritten this blog’s templates in WebC . As with many architectural refactors, the site will largely look the same – with the exception of a few minor design tweaks I made in the process – but under the hood it’s using an entirely new template engine. What is WebC? WebC is a template language created by Eleventy creator Zach Leatherman and maintained under the Eleventy project. It borrows…
One minor travel annoyance I’ve regularly encountered is that airplane outlets don’t hold U.S.-style power plugs ( types A/B ) snugly. My devices come unplugged frequently during a flight. This is especially frustrating to manage in the awkward under seat area. While taking a couple trips to Europe this past year, I noticed that airplane outlets are international and found that type C/E/F plugs…
Jump to shortcut ↓ The web is full of links designed to track and surveil the people who share and receive them. With these links, corporations gather data about your interests and associate it with information they already have. They use it to construct a social graph, internally drawing connections between people who share links and those who receive them. I’m focusing on two techniques…
I’m in the process of a major technical rearchitecture of this website ¹ and as part of that restructure I’m foregoing the use of CSS preprocessor SASS in favor of vanilla CSS. Vanilla web technologies have improved significantly in the past decade. Reducing dependencies like SASS makes my code more portable and future-proof. Lots of features I used SASS for, such as variables and nesting , are…
Recently, as some of my friends are leaving or thinking about leaving Facebook, I’ve had more of them share forms to collect contact information from friends they might otherwise lose touch with. I think this is a great idea – to make our connections robust against the whims of social media platforms – and to that end I will happily fill out as many contact forms as my friends want to send me. I…
First off, here are two things that are true and not contradicted by my writing that follows: The Trump administration is full of people who are incompetent, malicious, and bad at their jobs, whose primary qualifications are sycophancy. Signal is an excellent secure messaging app for most people, who are not coordinating military operations. With that out of the way, I’ve seen a Facebook post…
Many contra dance callers use The Caller’s Box , a phenomenal dance choreography database from Chris Page and Michael Dyck. For those of us who primarily call gender free dances, though, using it requires mental translation from gendered role terms to gender neutral ones. I’ve created a browser plugin, Caller’s Box Configurator , to fix this. Caller’s Box Configurator (Firefox) Caller’s Box…
TL;DR: Bridging your Bluesky account will allow me and others who use the Fediverse (including Mastodon ) to interact with you on Bluesky. If you don’t need to read a whole thing to persuade you, you can bridge your account right now by following @ap.brid.gy on Bluesky. Otherwise, read on. As I and others have been exploring our social media horizons beyond the legacy options of Twitter/X,…
You can now sign up to get my blog posts in your email inbox by subscribing with this form. Email Address Subscribe And as an initial test, to ensure that this mic is on ( tap tap skreeeEEEEEEE ), later today, I’ll send out this blog post to all subscribers. This email has now been sent! What? The content of this newsletter will be my blog posts, more or less as they are here. It’s another option…
Last year my 2015 (or possibly late 2014) iMac died after a decade of service. Around the same time I acquired a new Mac mini. Unlike the iMac, the Mac mini doesn’t have a built-in monitor. I needed to acquire a new one. Unfortunately even newer displays in my price range would be a quality-of-life step down from the iMac screen I was migrating away from. New 5K monitors are $800+ and better…
In December 2023 the Massachusetts State Legislature considered adopting the flawed IHRA definition of antisemitism. I wrote to members of my state government to implore them not to do so. I was reminded of it again last week when I heard that Harvard University, down the road from me, had adopted the IHRA definition . I was reminded again today when I heard reporting that the Trump administration…
I just got a fraudulent call from someone pretending to be my bank, so I thought I’d share this tidbit of security wisdom that I hope a lot of people already know, but just in case you don’t: Don’t share personal information with your bank if they called you first. If they ask you for any personal information, especially “to verify,” this is a very good sign that it is not actually your bank and…
Last year I decided it was time to replace my bed frame. My previous frame was some forgotten Ikea model that I’d inherited from a housemate nearly 10 years prior and it had been with me through two moves. It was all metal, very sturdy, and simple to assemble – four pieces that slotted into each other without screws, plus a mid-beam and wooden slats. But in recent years I’d become dissatisfied…
I’ve been working on a CD album insert for Emma as a design project. It has a lot of song lyrics and for compactness we’ve replaced line breaks in the lyrics with slashes: I thought it would be nice if the slashes played their role as more muted visual elements rather than looking like prime elements of the content, so I decided to color them all gray. This was a tedious thing to do manually…
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September 15, 2025: As of recently the Blacksky project seems to have successfully launched independent implementations of the core parts of the ATProto stack (a personal data store, a relay, and an app) that allow someone to interact with Bluesky users while not using Bluesky. Another effort, Northsky , is underway as well. At the moment, Bluesky still controls the overwhelming majority of the…
My blog is now generated by Eleventy 3.0, which was released last month. The upgrade process took me a few hours split over two evenings and I took a few notes. This probably isn’t an interesting write up for hardly anyone – but if you have any of the same 11ty concerns I do, you may find a solution in here. I started out by following the instructions in the excellent Upgrade Helper docs . When I…
It occurred to me recently that I don’t think there are any contra dances that feature a set and link figure. This is a figure from Scottish Country Dancing ¹ which follows this sequence (for the purpose of this description I assume dancers are in contra dance formation becket, on the side with their partner): Couples face the other couple across the set, taking convenient hands with their partner…
One micro-idea that occurs to me in our new era of fragmented social media is maybe we should bring back the primacy of URLs in place of social media handles. Instead of: Instagram: @harrislapiroff I’ll use instagram.com/harrislapiroff/ Bluesky: harris.social.coop.ap.brid.gy I’ll use bsky.app/profile/harris.social.coop.ap.brid.gy Mastodon: @harris@social.coop I’ll use social.coop/@harris The…
In the wake of the 2024 U.S. election, a bunch of my friends are abandoning other corporate social media options and flocking to Bluesky . I may as well put in a pitch for Mastodon as well. I won’t say it’s better than Bluesky. There’s things I really like about Bluesky’s approach. I find the AT Protocol intriguing. I genuinely hope it succeeds. I’ll only say that it is still a venture capital…
One thing I think is a best practice is receiving notifications on your phone for all credit and debit card transactions. Doing so allows you to see if someone billed you the wrong amount in-the-moment after a sale, and notice fraudulent transactions immediately . Noticing fraudulent transactions as soon as possible is of particular importance. Credit card fraud is common. Fraud liability…
In my travels in Morocco for the past week, I’ve mostly stuck to destinations that I can reach by train and the occasional short petit taxi (more on this name later) trip to get to a Medina or Riad . I’m not a driver (yet) and even if I were, I think I’d be fairly uncomfortable driving in Morocco. From landing in Casablanca, I travelled to Rabat and Fès – all three cities available on Morocco’s…
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about Web Components , a set of fairly recent web technologies seemingly poised to replace some of the role frameworks like React have filled for much of the past decade. As far as I can tell React and Web Components have overlap on solving this problem: Create fragments of web UIs that can be reused across a project or multiple projects. React also covers a couple…
I am trying, today, Rosh Hashanah, to think about the sweetness of the new year. All I can think of is the bombs being dropped far away, funded by my taxes, exploded in my name. It feels unfair that Israel should be able to take this from me. I don’t want my celebration of Jewish holidays to be predicated on what Israel is doing. I often say that my Judaism has nothing to do to Israel. My…
You can now view the source file for any blog post on my site by replacing the trailing slash with .txt in the URL. For example, the source file for this post is available here . You can also replace the trailing slash with the original file extension of the source. Most of my blog posts are composed in Markdown, so the extension will usually be .md , but my setup also supports the occasional .ojs…
Now that I’m taking more photos again, I’ve resurrected my Flickr account to share them! I considered a number of options for sharing my photos: I quickly decided to avoid the tech behemoths Meta and Google. ¹ That avoidance notwithstanding, my existing Instagram account wouldn’t work anyway since I do share the occasional photo there, but it’s not the right place for sharing or perusing large…
Over the spring and into the summer of this year, I took lots of photos with a Nikon D70. When I wrote about this in April I was trying to decide if I could take better photos with the D70 than I could with my smartphone, and if I was interested enough in photography to invest more deeply in it as a hobby. Over the course of the spring and summer, my skill with the camera improved somewhat and I…
Roughly six months after my first bout of covid , I got it again. As with the first time, it was from a known high-risk exposure. In this case someone was at a singing party with me and tested positive the following morning. They were masked, but I was not. We were sitting next to each other for large parts of the party. Windows were cracked open, but not wide. As far as I know, out of fifteen or…
For most of my CAD I use OpenSCAD , a coding-language–based modeling environment that appeals to my programmer/mathematician brain. But when it gets tedious figuring out how to express visual shapes in code, I turn to SolveSpace instead. ¹ I’m still fairly new to SolveSpace, and I like it quite a lot, but I haven’t been fully satisfied by the way tutorials explain the theoretical foundation of how…
Polymaker PolyWood is a 3D printing filament designed to be ultra-matte and mimic the appearance of wood filaments – plastics with wood particles mixed into the material – without the hassle of actual wood particles, which can cause nozzle clogging. It’s also the filament that, in my limited time printing, I have had the most frustrating time trying to dial in. It’s common when receiving a new…
On my summer tour with Kingfisher the organizers of one dance told me that their group would tolerate Larks/Robins for role terms, but preferred Ladies/Gents. After talking it over with some other callers and dancers and weighing the factors (What will feel best for me? What will be best for the dancers? What will be good for contra dance in general?) I opted to call Larks/Robins. A lot of callers…
I just wrapped up a weeklong summer contra dance calling tour with Kingfisher ( Jeff Kaufman and Cecilia Vacanti ). This was my first time on tour! We played six dances in six days with an extra day for travel at the start and an extra two days at the end, for a total of nine days on the road. We performed at these dances: June 27: Country Dancers of Rochester in Rochester NY June 28: Pittsburgh…
If you would like to just use the iOS Shortcut click here . I’m an Apple Music user and I’m reasonably happy with it as a service. I understand they pay artists at least a little more than streaming juggernaut Spotify ¹ and, as someone deeply embedded in Apple’s ecosystem ² , it’s good for me that it’s well integrated into the devices I use. One particularly annoying thing about being an Apple…
Here’s a small collection of quick designs I’ve made since I wrote my previous 3D printing blog post “ Solving Niche Problems Quickly With 3D Printing .” An IKEA Skådis Sticky Note Holder I designed this sticky note holder for my office pegboard. I made the pegs to be printed separately, both because I want to develop a modular system for creating pegboards accessories ¹ , and because it allows me…
In response to my most recent post about calling dances in Nantucket , Maia wrote to me: Harris, I have the world’s stupidest bone to pick with you. Re the dance cards on your website: I don’t think “Duple Neutral” actually means anything? Okay, I should explain myself. First some background: When contra dance choreography is written out, one typically notes the formation of the dance in a brief…
Photo by Tom Stoddart This week I called the Nantucket’s First Community Contra Dance . It was an unusual gig. The organizer is starting a contra dance community from scratch on the island. There were a small handful of experienced dancers she knew, but aside from them, the crowd was entirely new. It’s common for an evening dance to have a short (15–30 minute) workshop to teach beginners the…
Photo by Julia Wise For the second year in a row Jeff invited me to call contra dances with his band Kingfisher on his porch for Somerville Porchfest , for dancers in the street. I wrote a bit last year about some of the interesting challenges in calling at this particular event and they were the same this year: We wanted to prioritize music, so made limited time for teaching and walkthroughs.…
I’ve since taken more photos with the D70 which can be seen here . I used to do photography somewhat seriously. I was an amateur, but a reasonably devoted one. In high school I took photos with a Pentax K1000 that my father passed down to me. I shot in color film and dropped rolls to be developed at Elephant Pharmacy ( RIP ) on my way home from school. I shot in black and white and developed them…
The most recent 3D printing project I wrote about was a months-long process of design and iteration, but one skill I’m particularly interested in honing with my 3D printer is solving niche problems quickly. 3D printing is particularly good for this because it’s relatively quick, doesn’t require time and energy to buy materials (assuming you have a stockpile of filament) or components ¹ , and is…
Irish whistles ¹ each play a limited set of pitches and therefore come in a particular key: you can have a D whistle, a G whistle, etc. If you’re a whistler, you might have a number of whistles that you switch between. Over the past several months I’ve been working on a design for a portable 3D printed whistle stand, to hold all these many whistles, as a Christmas gift ² for my partner who plays…
One way I’ve found to counteract the anesthetic quality of a months-long day-in-day-out massacre – the sense of inevitability and resignation of the state of the world and the gradual acclimation to an ever increasing death toll – is to revisit what I thought it would look like at the beginning. On October 9th, 2023, as the Israeli war machine was revving to life, I wrote the following on Mastodon…
This week I had a couple IKEA Skådis pegboards delivered ¹ . Each of them arrived with the corners mildly scuffed. The other board was slightly less bad, but still had a visible scuff in one corner. I thought about trying to exchange them, but the damage was so minor. Also, I figured that there was a decent chance this is just the level of quality one gets from IKEA QA/shipping and I’d be likely…
For years now, one of my pet favorites in contra dancing has been the “wowee,” a figure that involves rolling away with your neighbor across the set and immediately releasing the connection to catch your partner for a swing. It’s got good energy, flow, and when you successfully catch your partner on time coming out of the rollaway, it feels great . A couple of my favorite dances with the figure…