Werd I/O

For many of us, myself included, it’s been .. a year. Rather than rehash all of that again, I thought I’d mark the end of the year by just listing some things I’ve loved. Here you go.

Books

Julia, by Sandra Newman

Not just a retelling but a complete recasting of 1984. It's helpful to consider this as a separate work: a response to 1984, in a way, rather than a layering on top or a direct sequel. It's a criticism, an extension, a modernization, and a deep appreciation for the ideas all in one - and I was hooked. There's so much I want to write about here, but I don't want to spoil it. The ending, in particular, is perfect.

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over, by Anne de Marcken

Breathtaking from start to finish. A zombie novel as carrier for something deeper, so true and so sad. I read it alone in the dark, and thought to myself, thank god, something is real.

‌Infinite Detail, by Tim Maughan

A book about what happens when the Internet goes away, yes, but there’s something much more than that: the exploration of humanity as content between advertising, the questions about what happens next post-revolution, the overlapping mysticism and open-source pragmatism, the breathing, beating characters, the class politics woven throughout.

‌Moonbound, by Robin Sloan

An adventure story that didn't quite sit in any of the categories I had for it in my head, and which frequently made me laugh out loud with its tiny details. It sits somewhere between science fiction, fantasy, satire, and a meditation on the role of stories, wrapped up in a whimsical, breezy narrative that was always a joy. I'd hoped it was leading to a more momentous ending than the one that eventually landed, but that's only because the constituent pieces were so satisfying to explore through.

TV

‌Only Murders in the Building

While cozy mysteries have been a mainstay of British TV for decades, American television has generally veered towards procedural stories that serve as propaganda pieces for law enforcement, complete with weak network television writing and story-of-the-week production values. There hasn’t been, as far as I’m aware, a really good cozy series since Murder, She Wrote — but Only Murders fits the bill. It’s as funny as anything Steve Martin and Martin Short have ever done, but also completely unthreatening: a lovely way to spend an evening.

‌Slow Horses

This ongoing tale of dysfunctional MI5 agents could have been rotten: for example, if it had intentionally glorified the security services of played into tired Cold War tropes. It doesn’t and it isn’t; frequently the worst offender in its seasons is the machinations of the government itself, and its characters are nothing like the spy tropes we’re used to. Most of all, it’s great fun, and pretty one of the best things to have come out of any streaming service.

‌Doctor Who

Look, obviously. I’m well-documented as a lifelong Whovian. But this year’s offerings were fresher than usual, if pitched down to a younger audience than the series had been aiming for recently. The two-parter finale was a ridiculous take on an almost 50-year-old story, but episodes like Boom (an anticapitalist tale about the arms trade), Dot and Bubble (which could have been one of the best Black Mirror episodes), and 73 Yards (a kind of time travel ghost story) were some of the best the show has ever delivered. It’s still the best TV show of all time, so there.

‌The Tourist

New to me this year, this had the right combination of tension and wry irony to keep me watching. I’ve been a fan of Jamie Dornan since The Fall, but Danielle Macdonald is an equal standout: some beautiful acting that makes a ridiculous premise seem real. The second season isn’t quite as good at the first, but only because some of the mystery has understandably been lost.

Articles and Blog Posts

‌We Need To Rewild The Internet, by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon

‌ Rewilding the internet is more than a metaphor. It’s a framework and plan. It gives us fresh eyes for the wicked problem of extraction and control, and new means and allies to fix it. It recognizes that ending internet monopolies isn’t just an intellectual problem. It’s an emotional one. It answers questions like: How do we keep going when the monopolies have more money and power? How do we act collectively when they suborn our community spaces, funding and networks? And how do we communicate to our allies what fixing it will look and feel like?

An important — and detailed — call to action about the future of the internet. In lots of ways it should set the tone for how we build on the internet in 2025.

‌On Being Human and “Creative”, by Heather Bryant

‌What generative AI creates is not any one person's creative expression. Generative AI is only possible because of the work that has been taken from others. It simply would not exist without the millions of data points that the models are based upon. Those data points were taken without permission, consent, compensation or even notification because the logistics of doing so would have made it logistically improbable and financially impossible.

A wonderful piece from Heather Bryant that explores the humanity — the effort, the emotion, the lived experience, the community, the unique combination of things — behind real-world art that is created by people, and the theft of those things that generative AI represents.

‌Inside Medium’s decade-long journey to find its own identity, by Ryan Broderick

‌Replacing Williams was Tony Stubblebine, who may have seemed a little random to anyone scanning the headlines at the time. At that point he was running Coach.me, a personal life coaching platform, and heading up Better Humans, a Medium partner publication dedicated to personal development. But his roots in Twitter and, thus, in Medium, go all the way to, well, before the beginning. In the mid-2000s, he was the director of engineering at Odeo, the podcasting startup that would become the launching ground for Twitter.

Tony has turned Medium around, which has been lovely to see. I have emotional but not financial skin in this game: I enjoyed my time working at Medium eight years ago, I’ve known Tony for going on 20 years, and I’m similarly a fan of Ev. But I also just think the more places there are for considered voices to find their community, the better, and Medium has an important take on how to do it well. This piece was a good introduction to all of it.

‌Why we invented a new metric for measuring readership, by Alexandra Smith

We used to measure our journalism’s reach and impact with website views, visitors, and engaged time—the methods many of our funders insisted on. But even when we included stats about our social media engagement, newsletter subscribers, and member community, our audience data reports still didn’t accurately reflect the ways we were serving people with our journalism.

In this piece, Alexandra introduced a way of measuring reach and impact for journalism that took into account the fact that audiences don’t encounter it in one place — that the internet is, in fact, fractured, and journalism often takes different forms to meet its readers where they’re at. That’s light years ahead of how most newsrooms have been thinking. This piece has shaped the conversation since it was released. It’s also thought-provoking for indieweb stalwarts like me: for lots of reasons, I think the website shouldbe the center of the universe for journalism, and ultimately you measure what matters. This approach doesn’t downplay the website but does say: what matters is the connection you make with other humans, wherever it happens.

Software

Todoist

I’m late to this party, but what an actual joy to find a todo list utility that actually works the way my brain does. The hotkeys allow me to add a task to the list whenever I need to — often mid-conversation — and then let me order them by time so I can figure out what to do next. And it’s everywhere I need it to be. No notes or complaints.

‌Surf

Flipboard’s new “browser for the social web” is ace: an app that wouldn’t have been possible with proprietary social media. Users create playlists of sources — which is to say, people and publishers, irrespective of where they happen to be publishing. You can then peruse new content by people on those playlists and filter them by links, video, other media, and so on. Not only is the signal to noise ratio far higher, but it’s far less exhausting than other social media apps. It’s now the only social app I’ll allow on my phone.

HTML and CSS

They’re still pretty great, and getting better and better! Did you know CSS has nesting now? I’ve been enjoying using it.

The Fediverse

The single most important improvement to the web in decades. Hooray!

Hardware

‌Kobo Libra Colour

Honestly, this ebook reader has changed my life. The color screen (canonically a colour screen, but I’ve been in the States for long enough that I feel compelled to discard the “u”) doesn’t matter to me all that much, but it’s responsive, has really great clarity, is light enough to read one-handed, and, most importantly of all, allows a parent of a co-sleeping toddler to read in bed without waking up his child. That last one is a gamechanger. Also, it works with library books and isn’t Amazon-bound, which were both important to me.

‌CalDigit TS4

I’d never really needed a docking station until this year. This thing’s got a bunch of ports, a huge amount of throughput, memory card support, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, and sits on my desk in perfect silence. I flip between my work laptop and my personal computers really easily. It’s perfect. Now all I need to add is a USB-C KVM switch and I’ll be able to switch between personal and work machines with one button.

Other

‌Amtrak Metropolitan Lounges

These days I travel between Philadelphia and New York City very regularly. Amtrak’s generously rewards points system means that I quickly built up enough status to gain access to its station lounges. They’re not spectacularly fancy but do come with comfortable seating and free coffee, and for that alone they’ve been a big upgrade for my commutes. A shoutout also needs to go to the Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station, which improves the experience of spending time at Penn from being locked in the Backrooms to something you might actually choose to look forward to.

‌The Guardian

The only news publication I let send notifications to my phone (aside from the one I work for). The Guardian’s breaking news journalism is reliably good, and it has specialized feeds to subscribe to particular topics — not just for high-level topics like Business, but for example, specific news for the Middle East conflict or the war in Ukraine. I also appreciate The Guardian’s responsible, reader-centric approach to funding: despite being paywall-free, readers account for over half of its budget.

‌Ms. Moni

We’re reluctantly on the YouTube train with our toddler. There are a bunch of performers who are trying very hard to find audiences in the wake of the success of the likes of Ms. Rachel (who is great) and Blippi (who is like nails on a chalkboard to me, although his stablemate Meekah is a lot better). By far my favorite of the genre is Monica Ferreira: an Australian teacher and professional musician who started recording YouTube videos after experiencing chronic pain. She edits, composes, and builds the graphics for her videos herself, with high production values and no junk content. It’s been a breath of fresh air, and honestly, a relief.

What about you?

What were your favorite things from 2024? Let me know what I missed.

As part of a coaching exercise, I’ve been trying to describe what I want my life to look like. The idea is that if I’m armed a better understanding of what I’m aiming for, I’ll be able to make more informed decisions that more intentionally lead me towards my goals for my life. So far, so simple. But in practice, I’ve found it impossibly difficult: a giant question that it feels impossible to even find the right scope and parameters for, let alone answer. What do I want my life to look like? How do I want to live?

If you stare at this question for long enough, you begin to feel like you’re being asked to define the meaning of life itself. Insane. You can’t. It’s the kind of question that is easy to be flippant about but otherwise feels impossible to approach. For now, I think we can say this: all of us create our own meaning and get to decide what’s important to us. In turn, that can inform the details and decisions of our day-to-day.

Living goals are a superset of work goals, which people often talk about. I’ve written many times that my professional goal is to work on projects that have the potential to help make the world more equal and informed. But why? How does that fit into my larger, human goals?

It’s hard to talk about what I think my life should look like without talking about the context — and the country — it sits in. That means talking about America, and the framing constraints it provides to everyone who lives in it.

And to be clear, for many people, America is constraining. The country is so steeped in an exploitative culture of work that there are is no statutory minimum number of vacation days and the national minimum wage is set below a level where anyone can reasonably live. The health insurance system is predatory, and your healthcare is typically connected to your employer, making it hard to change jobs or go out on your own. Unless you’re in a handful of cities, which themselves are expensive to live in, you need to own a car to get just about anywhere. Union membership is de minimus, leading to an imbalance towards corporations and the wealthy. Homeless people have very few avenues for help. The police all carry guns, and disproportionately use them on Black people. And on top of it all, the recent resurgence of rhetoric reminiscent of the 1930s, including stadiums of people carrying placards that read “mass deportations now,” is deeply troubling. I’ve started to wonder if Americans talk about freedom so much because most of them don’t have very much of it: to many people it’s the freedom to buy and say more or less what they want, but not the freedom to define the parameters of their lives or their work.

And at the same time, for the well-off and privileged, the experience of living in America can be freeing. The benefits at the slickest San Francisco tech companies I worked at were effectively equivalent to the minimum standards that every European gets by law, but there were far better parental leave policies for non-birthing parents and a culture of free food, drink, and other services in the office. My partner works for Google and their health insurance is almost as good as universal healthcare. There’s a sense of optimism and “you can do it”; there’s abundant capital and support for founders trying something new. If you’re in the in-crowd, there’s support.

I moved to the US from Edinburgh almost fourteen years ago. It as a no-brainer, but not because I wanted to live in America: my mother was terminally ill and I wanted to be close to her, and she’d moved to California a decade prior. The move completely blew up my life in ways that were sometimes very painful, but the core decision to be closer is not one I’ve ever regretted. While her life was thankfully extended by a double lung transplant that meant we got to have many more years with her, living with a transplant is hard: the remainder of her life was a medical rollercoaster that I’m glad I was there to help with.

But in the meantime, Brexit happened: Britain’s referendum to leave the European Union. I grew up in Britain but had lived there as part of the European Union. When its EU membership was revoked, I lost the legal right to live there. My relationship to the US transformed from it being a place that I was visiting temporarily to a place I was involuntarily stuck in.

There was a lot I appreciated about living in Europe. While a lot of ink has been spilled about universal healthcare, few talk about how freeing it is to not be afraid of seeing a doctor because you know you’ll never get a bill. There’s frequent, inexpensive, integrated transit everywhere. Cities and towns are built as mixed-use communities, which means you can easily walk to all your local services and stores. There are very few guns. Far fewer people own cars because they don’t need to. The quality of life of an average person — which is not just a subjective opinion but has been measured again and again — is higher. As a British resident, I was entitled to thirty-six vacation days a year (seven weeks!) as a legal minimum.

It feels like life in America is subject to layers of permission. You can go buy food — if you have a car. You can go to the doctor — if you have adequate health insurance. You can live a reasonable life — if you don’t fall through the cracks. You can go to college — if you’re willing to take on many tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Until very recently, you even needed to hire a third-party service (or firm) to file your taxes.

To be honest, I’ve often seen my life in America as being reactive rather than proactive: I moved here in reaction to a health emergency and remain here because of a referendum that was out of my control. I’ve often felt that I don’t have autonomy, and building community has often been harder than I would have liked because of the individualistic nature of American society and the chaos of my own life.

In Europe, life is more free-range. If you need to buy food, you can walk to the store and pick some up. You can just go to the doctor. Higher education is much more affordable and grade school education is of a much higher standard. More benefits lead to more freedom, because those things are simply taken care of: you don’t have to worry about paying for them at the point of use. Although the tax burden is a little higher, you also end up paying less out of pocket in total.

Europe is also much, much safer — particularly if you’re a child. (These days I’m understandably very focused on keeping my child safe.) Between 2009 and 2018, Western Europe had fewer than ten school shootings; the United States had 288, representing 86% of the world’s total of shootings. It’s not just about the terrifying prevalence of guns: children are also three times more likely to die on the road in the US.

At the same time, I’ve come to realize that Europe is more restrictive in other ways. It’s unquestionably more racist and less diverse, for example, in part because it refuses to actually examine its culpability in racism and, in particular, the slave trade. (Ask a European about racism and they’re quite likely to reply, “we don’t have those problems here.” Yes, you do.) A healthy community, and a healthy society, must be intentionally inclusive and equitable. You can’t get there by sticking your head in the sand.

There’s also a comparative lack of funding and support for people who are trying to build something new, even if the comparatively higher level of public benefits means that bootstrapping is easier. It’s also worth calling out that since I left, those benefits have been eroded, often by conservative politicians who want to wipe public benefits in favor of so-called private efficiency. It’s nothing less than theft, but it’s an emerging reality that diminishes Europe’s attractiveness.

Traversing these two worlds has directly informed how I think about what living well means. Sometimes I’ve been too cynical about the possibilities here in the US; if I’m honest with myself, I sometimes railed against the constraints when I lived in Europe. I think I need to open my mind, regardless of my location.

I recently visited a friend who lives in a community intentionally built as a platform for environmental and social change. I’d visited plenty of intentional communities back when I lived in San Francisco, and I’d always found them superficial: places that were more oriented around performing communal living than practicing the practical reality of it.

In stark contrast, my friend’s community blew my mind open: it was the kind of place I would never have allowed myself to imagine existing in the US.

I’m going to withhold detail to safeguard their privacy, but every aspect of it felt concretely-anchored to real, genuine progress towards change while centering the joy of being a human in community. The single phrase that came to mind was that the residents were free-range: they were free to spend time with each other on a whim, as needed, without need for appointment or permission. They could simply walk to get the everyday resources they needed, including to plug into their community and commune as people. This was true for the adults, but most notably and importantly for me, it was true for the children, too. It was common there for parents to not know where their children were — but they knew they were safe.

My conceptual frame for the kinds of lifestyles that are possible in America has been permanently widened — and consequently, I have more hope that I can live a good life here. Most importantly, it gave me the vocabulary I needed in order to describe the kind of life I want to have.

So now I can say this: I want my life — and the lives of my family — to be free-range, in open community, emotionally safe, and creatively unconstrained.

Free-range

A lifestyle where physical, emotional, and logistical constraints are minimized, allowing for organic interactions and movement. Or to put it another way, a life where you need to ask permission as little as possible: an independent, creative way of being where you’re not tethered to unnecessary constraints.

For example:

• You can walk or bike to essential services.
• Children can free play both at home and in the surrounding community without worry.
• You can spontaneously visit people, take trips, or go on adventures without the predominant need to extensively plan or make appointments.
• You have time and space to create and work on personal projects that aren’t scheduled and aren’t necessarily tethered to the need to make money.
• You have the safety to know that if you don’t have salaried work for a little while, you’ll still be protected, and you’ll still have healthcare.

Counter-examples of things that are emphatically not free-range:

• Scheduling my child so that their time outside of school is highly structured and they don’t have time or space to be creative on their own terms (or be bored, which I think is really important as a spark for creative thinking in its own right).
• Structuring and scheduling your own time so you don’t have optionality.
• Car-centric living.
• Gated communities and HOAs.
• An expectation that you should do what is popular or pre-ordained by the outside mainstream as “the right way to live”.

In open community

Living in an inclusive space where relationships are intentional, resources are shared, and collaboration is encouraged.

For example:

• Neighbors borrow tools, share meals, and trade skills to reduce waste and strengthen relationships.
• Open doors and welcoming spaces where it’s normal to drop by for a chat or lend a hand without the need for formality or pre-planning.
• A community that helps each other during collective challenges, from childcare to caregiving to problem-solving.
• There are adequate communal resources like parks, libraries, and community meeting spaces. (Even pubs, in the traditional English sense, where they’re a sort of communal living room.)
• There’s a sense that no matter how adverse the outside world is, you have allies who also see it for what it is and are here for you no matter what.
• You have the space and time to care for people — parents, children, other people in your community who need it.

Counter-examples:

• Isolated living, where neighbors barely know one another or engage in meaningful connection.
• “Rugged individualism,” where everyone is expected to fend for themselves as a virtue.
• A culture of competition rather than collaboration.
• Who children can play with is closely guarded. Sleepovers are not allowed.
• You don’t have the time and space to be a caregiver because you need to be at work all the time.

Emotionally safe

Living in an inclusive environment where vulnerability is met with care and understanding, and where people feel supported to be their authentic selves. Emotional intimacy and intellectual openness are highly valued.

For example:

• People are comfortable expressing their emotions, thoughts, and opinions without fear of judgment or ridicule. This is particularly important within partnerships and families, but it’s important across communities.
• A culture that embraces diversity, respects boundaries, and fosters a sense of belonging for everyone, regardless of background or identity. People feel comfortable and safe to be themselves.
• Disagreements are addressed constructively, with empathy and a focus on understanding rather than blame.
• The community is supportive of trying new things and of failure, and help pick you up and dust you off to try again.
• Physical safety: there’s no threat of violence.

Counter-examples:

• Demanding perfection and punishing failure.
• A culture where people feel they must suppress their feelings to “keep the peace.”
• A culture with an in-crowd and an out-crowd: for example, an environment where one religion is accepted and others are frowned upon, or where the “traditional” family is venerated. Xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and transphobia all fall into this category.
• A world where being different to an accepted mainstream is frowned upon, with aggressions that range from micro to macro. People might sneer about preferred pronouns, for example, or make “I identify as …” jokes. Or they might blacklist you.

Creatively unconstrained

Having the time, resources, and mental space to pursue creative interests and projects without undue outside pressure. At work, having the autonomy to make decisions and follow your expertise, instincts, and values with minimal interference.

For example:

• Days with enough unstructured time to dream, experiment, or follow your curiosity without interruption — and both the implicit permission to do so and the common understanding that it’s not a waste of time.
• Friends, family, and communities that celebrate creativity for its own sake, regardless of output or success.
• The respect and autonomy to create a strategy and execute on it at work.
• The ability to center your values and perspective in your work.
• Prioritizing wellness and balance so your mental energy isn’t consumed by stress or logistical chaos.
• Engaging in hobbies or projects without worrying about monetizing them. For example, painting for relaxation, writing purely for self-expression, or tinkering for joy.
• Dedicated physical space to work on your projects, either alone or in collaboration with others.

Counter-examples:

• A lifestyle so busy with work or obligations that there’s no mental or physical bandwidth for creativity.
• Feeling like every creative effort must result in a product or service that generates income, or where they are dismissed as unproductive unless they have a tangible outcome.
• Avoiding creative work due to self-criticism or the societal pressure to succeed.
• Being micro-managed or edited, at work or in life.
• Being forced to work on things that are in opposition to your values.

Okay, but why these pillars in particular?

Really it’s a framing device: each one speaks to a need for time, space, relationships of care and trust, and self-direction. They pick and choose the best bits of living in my various contexts — living in Europe and America, being a startup founder, a parent, a carer — and tie them together into principles for a life that feels nurturing.

• Free-range ties to autonomy and the joy of unstructured living.
• In open community reflects a human need for connection and mutual support, without restrictions based on identity.
• Emotionally safe speaks to belonging and trust.
• Creatively unconstrained emphasizes self-expression and personal growth.

The theme of inclusivity sits across many of these. It’s important to me because of my need for community and for emotional safety: I want my friends and families to be included, regardless of their backgrounds and identities, and I want to feel safe myself, as a person with a complicated personal context and a non-standard identity.

It’s also worth calling out what’s not here: wealth, or power, or influence. Those aren’t important to me unless they’re a way to get to these pillars.

My values are simply that everyone should be able to live this sort of life, regardless of who they are or where in the world they live. Everyone deserves autonomy, connection, support, safety, and the freedom to be themselves and express themselves openly. It’s not just that I want this for me, although clearly I do: I want to work towards this being an open, shared set of living principles that are available to all.

I’ve thought a lot about helping the world get there — remember, I want to work on projects with the potential to make the world more informed and equal. But the path to helping me get there is a little different. It involves carefully choosing the projects I work on, the team cultures I take part in, how I make money, how I present myself to the world, and the people and communities I associate with.

This framework will evolve with time and feedback, shaped by new experiences and perspectives. But for now, it offers a compass — one that points toward a life that feels authentic, nurturing, and achievable.

Let’s go.

I’ve never done a holiday gift guide in any of my spaces before, but this year I was inspired by Kottke and a few other bloggers to create my own. As I write this, it’s literally December 13th; you’ve probably bought most of your gifts already. Still, these are out there, and everything I’ve listed should ship in time for December 25th (again, at the time of writing).

This is stuff I love that your loved ones might love too. (Say that three times fast.)

1. Let’s start here: if your loved ones are as worried about the upcoming year as I am, it may help to support real journalism that will genuinely speak truth to power. Consider ProPublica, The 19th, The Markup, Grist, Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting in addition to names you probably already think of like your local NPR station. And then consider which non-profits might support vital services that could be under attack over the next four years, like reproductive health, equitable criminal justice, and medical services for vulnerable populations.

2. I started making personalized calendars for my mother when my parents moved back to California and I was still in the UK as a way of sharing photos of things she’d missed. It became a holiday tradition. We unfortunately said goodbye to her three years ago, but I still make the calendars, which these days feature my son, and recipients seem to really love them. Over the years, I’ve found that Shutterfly gives me the best results.

3. A colleague turned me on to Sugimoto Tea this year and I’m a convert. I’m particularly a fan of the sencha and the hojicha, but I tried a few varieties and they’re all great. Sugimoto sells fresh, farm-direct loose leaf tea, grown in Japan, at reasonable prices. I have a few cups a day at least.

4. Julia by Sandra Newman was one of the best books I read this year: a novel that doesn’t just add a new dimension to George Orwell’s classic 1984 but reframes it entirely, deepening it in the process. That doesn’t sound like a possible task, but here this novel is, making it look effortless.

5. Curious Reading Club sends hand-picked non-fiction to your door every month and then backs it up with intimate Zoom calls with authors and experts. It’s all beautifully chosen and you get pristine hardback editions. In truth, I haven’t always made it to the calls, but I’ve loved the selections. This month’s was Kyle Chayka’s Filterworld, about the effect of algorithms on culture.

6. Is your loved one more of an audiobook person? You can’t go wrong with a Libro.fm subscription. The service works as well as other audiobook services you can think of, but proceeds support local bookstores. With my subscription, I choose to support Harriett’s Bookshop, named after Harriett Tubman, which celebrates women authors, artists, and activists. Honestly, I’ve stopped listening to podcasts and burn through my monthly audiobook credits instead. It’s great.

7. Daily-use kitchen gadgets that are also great: the Zojiruchi Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker, the 8-cup Bodum French press, the one-cup Aeropress coffee maker, the Thermapen ONE digital thermometer. And, okay, this was an extravagance, but this year I bought Peugeot pepper and salt mills, and it’s hard to describe how much better they are than any other mill I’ve ever used. Peugeot made mills before they made carsand their expertise really shows.

8. The Tuneshine is a fun addition to my bookshelf. It connects to your wifi and your music services, and displays the album cover of whatever you’re listening to as you stream. It’s quite lovely.

9. Creative Action Network’s See America posters are lovely. Each one is by a different independent artist, and proceeds help support Earthjustice. I have framed posters for Yosemite, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Cape Cod National Seashore hanging in my entryway. Creative Action Network has a few other poster campaigns; I particularly like What Makes America Great (hint: it’s immigration) and Recovering the Classics.

10. Some of our favorite tableware is by Heath Ceramics. Pass the Plate sells them secondhand at a more affordable price.

11. Another book! Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan was published a few years ago but was new to me this year. It’s about what happens when the Internet goes away, and also something much more than that: the exploration of humanity as content between advertising, the questions about what happens next post-revolution, the overlapping mysticism and open-source pragmatism, the breathing, beating characters, the class politics woven throughout. I loved every glowing, gripping word. It may have been written pre-pandemic, but it’s got a lot to say about our current moment.

12. Uncle Goose alphabet blocks are the best blocks. Like, absurdly nice. These are luxury children’s blocks. Our little one loves them. We love them. Love all round.

13. Speaking of absurdly nice kids’ toys, our little one was gifted this Montessori Wooden Switch Boardand he’s obsessed with it. Turning on each light is a challenge: different switches, dials, a key, and a wire connector. The only trick is to go back and turn all the lights off again once he’s done with it.

14. We have an Ooni pizza oven and love it a lot. Ours is a gas-fired Koda 12, but friends have mentioned that they love their various models. Making your own pizza this way is a lot of fun, and we usually turn it into a family activity: everyone gets to choose their own toppings. (The thermometer accessory is a must.)

15. If I could wave a magic wand, I’d bring back the Electric Company Magazine my parents subscribed me to (shipping it all the way to the UK!). Failing that, Highlights is pretty cool; we’ve been getting Helloand will upgrade to High Five. Similarly, I was delighted to see that the publishers of Cricket are still going, and publish a range of magazines for different ages.

16. The Kobo Libra Colour has been a game-changer for me: I can read books in bed once our little one goes to sleep. Book lights were all taken as toys; I am tethered to the bedroom for a good portion of every night. So this was a liberating device. The screen is beautiful, the refresh rate is just right, and it’s pleasant to hold in my hand. It also gets frequent active updates and supports borrowing ebooks from the library.

17. Maybe consider giving your loved ones a 1Password family plan and Mozilla VPN? Privacy and security are good things to have.

18. Haymarket Books publishes radical books on a series of progressive topics. It’s a great company. And it has a book club! Subscribers receive every new book published during the duration of the club, and there are both ebook and print options. Take a look at the author list and you’ll get a good sense of what’s in store.

19. My office is full of Yoko OK prints, and you might find that your loved ones appreciate these lively works of art too (also: don’t overlook the zines). Many of them have a San Francisco theme.

20. Despite what you may have heard, it’s still a good idea to mask up in public places. If your loved ones struggle with wearing masks comfortably, the FLO Mask is likely to help: it’s by far the most comfortable mask I’ve ever used. I have the Pro. This is a particularly great gift if you have a loved one who is immunocompromised, or if you care about immunocompromised people anywhere.

21. AirPods Pro were always pretty great — there’s very little that compares — but the clinical-grade hearing aid capability is a big deal. Hearing aids cost thousands and getting them tuned is a pain. Something that approaches that utility that can be tuned on an app and costs an order of magnitude less is a game-changer. Just don’t drop the case on the ground.

What else am I missing? Do you have recommendations? I’d love to read them.

Buying from some of these links may result in a small affiliate fee that helps pay for my web hosting. Hey, we all live under capitalism. Also, it’s really just the book links.

The open social web puts control back in your hands. Unlike big social media platforms, it’s not run by a single company — it’s made up of independent, connected communities where you decide how and with whom you interact. It respects your privacy, avoids intrusive ads, and gives you the freedom to truly own your online experience. It’s like the internet used to be: open, personal, and community-focused.

How to get started

There are two main emergent social networks on the open social web:

The Fediverse is a co-operative of small communities that all interoperate as one large, cohesive social network. Each community has its own interface, moderation policy, and rules, but anyone on one community can seamlessly follow and share with anyone on any of the other communities. It’s more decentralized, which means that the user experience is a little different to what you’re probably used to.

The most common Fediverse platform is Mastodon (although Threads is also rapidly joining the network) and the easiest place to get started is by joining mastodon.social.

Bluesky is a social network built on an open social web protocol but largely controlled by one company, Bluesky Social. It’s less decentralized than the Fediverse, but some find it easier to use.

It is very reminiscent of early Twitter, with some added innovations designed to help people build up a network of interesting people to follow quickly, build their own bespoke social media algorithms, and block people they don’t want to interact with. The result is a very vibrant, contiguous community that’s growing very quickly.

The easiest place to get started is by signing up on the Bluesky website.

For writers, artists, journalists, and publishers

In a world where platforms like X have devalued outgoing links and often skewed their algorithms towards particular points of view, the open social web is a breath of fresh air. Links are celebrated, not suppressed, which means journalists can promote their work. open social web platforms default to just showing you the posts and reshares by people you subscribe to in reverse-chronological order, rather than skewing your feed.

Because no single company owns the open social web, it’s not subject to the whims of an owner. There’s no single platform that can be sold to Elon Musk or rapidly pivot in order to try and increase its total market capitalization. It simply exists to allow people to follow and share with each other.

This has attracted some of the most engaged people on the internet. Users on the open social web are more likely to share your work, read it deeply, and donate to support you.

For developers and researchers

Because the open social web has no owner and isn’t proprietary, you don’t need to ask for anyone’s permission to build on top of it. You can build any kind of social tool on top of its open protocols, and nobody can stop you, or charge you for the privilege. This also means that journalists and researchers can examine social networking data to their heart’s content, for example to study trends and dynamics between communities.

Anyone can build an app. There are already dozens of mobile apps for each open social web platform, for example, as well as tools like Sill that allow you to gain insights from the network in new ways.

For startups and entrepreneurs

A long-standing issue with building new social apps and services is the cold start problem: until people join in large numbers, there’s nobody to talk to.

If you build a social app on the open social web, you can connect directly with the existing network. There will instantly be millions upon millions of people for your users to connect with — and, in turn, those people can more easily learn about your app or service. The open social web improves the experience of your early users and reduces the friction to acquiring new ones, while giving you full freedom to innovate and build new features.

For nonprofits and activists

Open social web users are engaged and typically care about social causes. They’re more willing to donate than on platforms like X, and there’s no algorithmic bias to suppress links or prevent your message from reaching its audience.

For everyone

On the open social web, you aren’t locked into any platform. If the application you’re using doesn’t work out for whatever reason, you can just use another one. For example, Bluesky’s mission talks about enforcing the possibility of a “credible exit”: if they ever turn user-hostile or make bad decisions, users should always have the ability to take their profiles, conversations, and content somewhere else, with very little friction, at no cost, and without losing followers. Account migration is also a feature of Mastodon and inherent to the Fediverse.

This means that there’s very little cost to investing in a network. Unlike Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, where some people lost over a decade’s worth of posts and social connections, on the open social web you own it all, and it can come with you if you ever choose to leave.

It’s free to get started

The open social web offers an exciting opportunity to reclaim control over our online interactions.

Whether you’re a writer seeking an engaged audience, a developer building the next big innovation, or an entrepreneur overcoming the cold start problem, the open social web provides the tools and community to make it happen. By embracing these decentralized networks, we can shape an internet that works for everyone — one that prioritizes privacy, creativity, and authentic connections.

The time to join the open social web is now. Dive in, explore, and help build the future of the internet. No-one can stop you.