Open Source Is Indefensible
Codeberg's members voted to stop hosting mostly AI-generated projects. The freedom worth defending is not the freedom to be taken from, it is the freedom to refuse.
Do Flamingos Know They're Pink
Articles about how technology works, who it serves, the systems around it, and what it all costs. Digital sovereignty, open source governance, and internet rights.
Latest posts
Fork It or Walk Away
"Fork it" too often just means there's the door. But exit isn't the only tool we have.
An Afternoon of Tedium as an Exit Tax
TOTP is an open standard for 2FA, but the app I chose over a decade ago locked me in anyway. Getting out took a whole afternoon of tedium.
I Cannot Be Trusted to Send Email
I left Gmail after 21 years, but instead of going for another mail provider, I decided to self-host (what I can).
I Get No Ideas Inside the Machine
At Cables of Resistance, I ran a workshop asking if we can build hardware without capitalism. I was grieving what AI is doing to open source. Technologists need to see there's no innocent ground under the machine. It was always someone's land.
Laying the First Stones
A VPS, a reverse proxy, a password manager, and a DNS zone full of forgotten history. The autonomous stack begins to take shape.
On The Enshittification of Audre Lorde: "The Master's Tools" in Tech Discourse
Somewhere between Audre Lorde's 1979 speech and contemporary tech discourse, the "master's tools" became a meme. This essay traces what was lost in the translation.
Three Servers and a Tunnel
Credentials first, then email, then everything else. Before a single service can move, the migration has to be ordered by dependency, and the infrastructure to hold it has to exist first.
For the Love of the Linux Desktop
Twenty-five years of Linux on the desktop, long enough that the muscle memory outlasts the code. A love letter to the thing I look at and touch every day, and how it got that way.
The Inventory I Should Have Done Years Ago
Every self-hosting guide starts with software. This one starts a step earlier: the unglamorous inventory of what you actually depend on, done after one too many price hikes dressed up as upgrades.
Why I'm Doing the Autonomous Stack Series
Technology is a proxy for power, and power belongs to whoever controls the infrastructure. This series asks how much of my own I can take back, and what it costs to try.
Oiling the Doors at FOSDEM
No tickets, no badges, no lanyards: just a Brussels campus handed over to thousands of FOSS enthusiasts for a weekend. Notes from three years at the largest volunteer-run event in open source.
Welcome to Do Flamingos Know They're Pink
The blog has a new home on self-hosted infrastructure and a new name. Flamingos aren't born pink, they become pink from what they eat, which is the kind of question this place keeps circling.
Building a Digital Sovereignty Castle in the Sky
European leaders keep summoning digital sovereignty into being with summits and tech champions. A speculative proposal for the thing they keep skipping: an institution that funds open hardware through public bonds.
The UK's Online Safety Act: A Lesson in Technosolutionism
The UK spent two years and billions making the internet less safe. The Online Safety Act as a case study in why you cannot regulate complex social problems away with surveillance and algorithmic band-aids.