headed to ICANN in Seville tomorrow so I got a DIY stamper for ole fashioned business cards, this is so fun!

after wiring up blog.val.town yesterday, made a remixable blog template on @val.town that integrates with @standard.site!

I feel scolded

integrated the @val.town blog with @standard.site :) our blog doesn't have a build step, so I vibe coded (in "slow mode" 😉) our own atproto publishing pipeline: val.town/x/valdottown/blog/branch/main/code/atproto/README.md

@pfrazee.com has Bluesky considered using domainconnect.org to make it easier to set up @handle.tld usernames? I'm sure someone else has thought of this, but I wrote up a quick explanation and example template: atproto-domainconnect.val.run

alright, I'm doing it - trying to make "abottom" happen 1. it's shorter than "at the bottom" 2. people will get it, because "atop" let's get this thing in the dictionary

If you could make your own gTLD (.com, .meow, .org) what would it be?

Austrian .at sales versus Anguillan .ai sales is the leading indicator in the Bluesky versus Twitter rivalry

vibe coding without understanding what's going on feels like I'm a child whose parent took over my school project I don't feel good when I'm done, and I sure won't be able to answer any questions in show 'n' tell tomorrow

Slow Mode blog.val.town/slow-mode

TIL peta[dot]org was registered by a troll in 1995 for a "People Eating Tasty Animals" site, which unsurprisingly went to court and eventually PETA got it back *but* in the meantime they fought fire with fire and bought ringlingbrothers[dot]com to criticize circus animal cruelty

excited about this! more good writing on the internet should make its way to print (especially if Sarah and Alex are the ones printing!)

Unique identifiers dotcom.press/archive/unique-identifiers

doodling for a blog post on @val.town as "the Salt Fat Acid Heat of vibe coding" (as in: don't turn your brain off, learn to cook/code!)

How on earth did I not know about html <small> It's just the sort of pointless detail I love Kicking myself for not fulling reading @patrickweaver.net's "A Blog Post With Every HTML Element" a few years ago

This Friday, I'm excited to share details on an upcoming title we're working on at Buddy Bindery & Press, plus how you can help us make it great. Stay tuned for more.

I'm reading Jane Jacobs for the first time, and I'm interested but tbh it's a bit of a slog. Part of the problem is just that the neighborhood examples are over half a century old, so maybe I need a condensed, updated version

Hadn’t noticed until just now that Wired uses wrd.cm for link shortening - first Cameroon ccTLD I can remember seeing in the wild! Added to the wiki dotcom.press/tld-wiki?tld=cm @katie-drummond.bsky.social is that new?

would recommend spelunking @archive.org for cozy old domain uses

April pete.garden/april-2026

I get the sense texting (and writing elsewhere) in all lowercase is strongly considered a gen z thing these days, but I learned in @gretchenmcculloch.com's Because Internet that it was a Unix hacker thing (great book, btw)

ICANN's 2026 gTLD application window opens today -- big year for domains! Wrote a bit about the round a few weeks ago dotcom.press/archive/domainia

fun new game I play with myself at random: when a phrase pops into my head that I think would be a good name for a podcast, I look it up, and it almost always already exists (today “Funny Business” came to mind which I imagined as a behind-the-scenes show about the work life of a comedian)

long overdue: rss feed for the book dotcom.press/archive/rss.xml

I moved my manuscript from Obsidian to Scrivener (keeping my research notes in Obsidian), and so far so good They hooked me a while back with clever h1 wordplay ("See the forrest *or* the trees") and I finally bit

just published an essay on the @val.town blog: *Code is inert. Val Town makes it ert* blog.val.town/code-is-inert inspired by this sentence in @ftrain.bsky.social's "What is Code" essay 11 years ago > Code is inert. How do you make it ert?

asked chat "can you pitch planet money a story?" and it pitched me six stories lol but I really meant, like, does @planetmoney.bsky.social *accept* pitches (because boy do I have a good one!)

new blurb who dis dotcom.press a book's website is a nice place to riff on things you'll eventually print on the physical book (title, backcover/flap blurb, bio, etc.)

improved my TLD wiki and wrote about the 2026 round: dotcom.press/archive/domainia huge thanks to @case.bike for collecting the data behind the wiki!

I'm considering switching to `text-align: justify` with `hyphens: auto`... are there any gotchas? I don't like hyphens breaking up anchor links, but other than that? I'm leaning toward the visual balance being worth the looser text tradeoff

experimenting with a video walkthrough of the (new) val town changelog, out yesterday www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtqa...

just switched from mac native dictation to aquavoice.com and it's so, so much better

means a lot coming from Sam! :)

dot org is not not for profit dotcom.press/archive/dot-org in which: - .org domains were supposed to be for nonprofits - but pretty soon anyone could register one - in 2019 ICANN removed 10% price increase cap - then PIR sold .org to private equity - ICANN said LGTM - California AG said not so fast

good no kings turnout in Cincinnati!

@allemann.org's domainnamewire.com has been an exceedingly useful resource for my domain book research hats off to Andrew on *21 years* of domain reporting! amazing consistency - well worth a follow if you're domain-curious

dot meow: the next queer corner of the Internet (like selling Subarus to lesbians) dotcom.press/archive/dot-meow write-up on @dotmeow.org's cool TLD bid! in memory of my childhood cat "one-eyed jack" (who was two-eyed when these pictures were taken)

the doodling culture has to be one of the biggest draws to working at @val.town (hiring a product engineer if anyone is looking! val.town/careers)

dusted off the door buzzer val for the party today

I think I've become way too into colons. I ctrl-f'd 15 in the ~1,500 word blog post I just published

another to add to the pete.garden/the-nature-of-the-job collection: seangoedecke.com/will-my-job-still-exist

did a double take reading this and seeing dotcom.press/history-of-domains in there :)

just listened to this and had an idea for a book I hope someone writes titled *Deprecated* with a subtitle something like *the software engineering identity crisis*

adding npm package names to my mental list of things that sneakily have secondary markets - domain names - 1-800 phone numbers - instagram/twitter/et al handles - license plates - ...

Ever wonder what happens to a cable when it’s no longer cabling? Wonder no more! This story has been a joy to write, and I hope I’ve done everyone in it justice. I hope the story of the people of infrastructure cleanses your timeline a little. (And I promise it’s not about sharks.)

notes on @aliahanna.bsky.social's *Take It From Me* petemillspaugh.com/take-it-from-me useful read for nonfiction authors -- I'd recommend it!

in 2015 google put up a backwards homepage on com.google with a CSS transform they still use the .google brand tld for some things, like registry.google

Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :) The great Julius Csotonyi spent 5 months painting over 60 illustrations for the site, no ai used > neal.fun/size-of-life/

TIL that "top posting" in email replies (now the norm) is considered bad email etiquette

more doodling and writing on the job blog.val.town/talk-of-the-town-feb-2026