What things are better about working for a 21st century business than a 20th century one?
Pitch: a device that sits on your home network and loads random websites / does random searches to fuzz your profile and give you plausible deniability.
My must-have day one installs:
Alfred
iA Writer
Firefox
1Password
BBEdit
iTerm
VScode
Reeder
Yours?
Excited for when we can tell an AI algorithm "show me a ten-episode darkly satirical science fiction drama starring Charlie Chaplin and Katherine Hepburn" and it'll just go ahead and do it
Hustle culture isn’t just harmful, it’s so unbearably stupid.
Life lately has been a series of reminders to stand up for what I believe in, and that staying true to your values is the only way forward.
What they say about grief and the year of firsts is really true. It's really difficult. Ma's birthday is this weekend. Last year we took her to Monterey so she could stay by the water, and I'm so glad we did that. This year, I don't know what to do.
Another year, another missed opportunity to prank you ALL.
When we called our startup "Known", lots of people were worried about the SEO on our behalf. The SEO was fine! What I couldn't predict was the sheer number of cold calls trying to reach the 50 other companies in other industries that are also called Known.
Markdown is now a universal power user feature; like shorthand notation for the internet age. It's everywhere, and got there organically. I think that's pretty cool.
My favorite thing I did today: answered questions about web development for a class of ten year olds in France over Zoom. Super rewarding, and very thoughtful questions!
“This politician or media personality said or did this thing.
RT if you support so-and-so!”
… is becoming my least favorite format ever.
Selling a house is among my least favorite things I’ve ever done.
You are not a bad person for not being the person other people want you to be.
I’m not a covid expert, nor a geopolitics expert, nor an economist. I make websites. But I really want to live in a peaceful, fair, inclusive, democratic world that’s free of empire, sickness, and poverty. And I’d like to help.
There’s so much to be said for a culture of blameless introspection and documentation. Being able to write in a structured way is such a vital skill, regardless of your role.
The idea that having a better future is mostly about building personal wealth puts the onus on personal responsibility instead of a system that is pitted against entire communities. Everyone deserves to live a great life. And to live in a system that supports them.
I realized recently that I found a startup every ten years. A pretty slow cadence! Elgg was 2004; Known was 2014. I have a very different kind of project in mind for 2024, that is not a business but still builds on everything I’ve learned.
Every publisher should own their own platform and their own code (which could be open source and shared between publishers). If you're on someone's proprietary platform - wherever it's hosted - you're subject to their business model, not yours.
Downside: this is a really bad flight with really bad turbulence. Probably the worst I’ve been on as an adult.
Upside: it turns out I’m not anywhere near as afraid of flying as I used to be.
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