March 2025: AI-assisted creativity and the race to claim the future
In this issue we grab the future by its shiny metal cranium and hold on for dear life while we look for the control panel.
Latest
Using Perplexity.ai's Spaces as a life raft in an age of AI slop
It's well-known at this point how poor traditional search engines have gotten. That was before Large Language Model (LLM)-generated slop flooded the field. Which means it's weird to see me talking about a good use case for LLMs if you've only seen and
February 2025: fox populi, foxes in space, and more
A collection of scattered adventures over the last month. Saw a few sparklies from the Quadrantids meteor shower. Got to see the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope fly over a few times. I also saw several bright space objects fly over. They weren't listed in my
January 2025 newsletter: it's got links! And it's early!
This will be a short links-only newsletter to close out the year.
December 2024 newsletter: taking back the web
1. Trying Vivaldi 2. Subscriber goodies update 3. The Login Wall 4. Music Commissions Open 5. Links Hello! Welcome to another exciting installment of my little monthly newsletter. Links are coming back into fashion. User agency is ascendant. The hot new social network is committed to credible exit. There is
Hurricanes and Halloween
Nobody cares about decentralization until they do
A recurring line in discussion of federated, decentralized social media is that no one cares about it. They just want their Twitter without the Nazis. Which is okay. But how it looks on the backend matters. When the illusion of a unified user experience breaks, how accessible the escape pod
New thing: supporter world map
Wonder
Free and affordable music production resources
There is a best Digital Audio Workstation
TV on the internet before YouTube
Blog
The case against Threads
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." - Maya Angelou It's the same case made against Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and every other profit-focused social media silo. And every time, the case is right. I'm going to call it Facebook,
Blog
How I draft stories
Blog
The Ensigns of Command (Star Trek TNG s3e2) - silly text in the Treaty of Armens [with transcript!]
Blog
Falsehoods programmers believe about community management
Blog
Learn to code. Or don't.
Blog
Beyond Mastodon and Bluesky - Toward a Protocol-Agnostic Federation
You’ve heard of stuff like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Make an account on one, and it only works there. You can’t send a DM to your friend on Twitter from Facebook Messenger. You can’t browse your friend’s Instagram feed from Twitter. Each one is closed off