tech companies using society as a staging server

“We’re in what we call the reality-based community — people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.”

“And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

The future is plain text files — it's just not evenly distributed

you’re right! it feels mostly awful to Go Online™, these days. the internet in a sad state, for reason after reason after reason. but there is a way to fix it; to trade the voidful howling for a quiet & joyful song. here’s how to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.

Happy New Year! As of January 1, 2026, all ACM publications and related artifacts in the ACM Digital Library are now open access, making computing research more accessible, discoverable, and reusable worldwide. Explore ACM’s open access journey: 👉 www.acm.org/publications... #OpenAccess #ACM

Last chance to download! LL Agip77 is free for download until Jan. 1 at Lineto.com LL Agip77 is the third font in a series of design exer­cises play­fully reflect­ing on the DNA of Lineto’s neo-grotesk super­fam­ily, LL Unica77.

MONTOR03.BMF

An essential development over the past decade-plus is that the ignorant went from feeling chastened when their ignorance was revealed to banding together and deciding that, actually, they were right. They might disagree at times, but they agreed that ignorance itself was an indicator of trust.

The Internet Is a Net Negative | Discussion

COPIER.BMF

Digital transformation fails when you buy software built for millions to serve dozens. The economics have inverted. You can now build tiny, highly specific tools that fit seamlessly into existing workflows—if you know how to think about product development differently. vaughntan.org/boringtinyto...

“if it was true, it would’ve been weaponized already!”

a diagram.page kind of day

⚡ We built a node-collision playground, benchmarked the algorithms, and wrote a deep-dive about it: xyflow.com/blog/node-co... Ready-to-use examples for React Flow & Svelte Flow !

using regedit.exe taught me everything i need to know about getting software to work

Months after the dismantling of DOGE, and shedding hundreds of thousands of federal workers, the Trump administration is looking to Big Tech for some expert help to “solve the federal government's mos https://sherwood.news/tech/trump-administration-recruiting-a-us-tech-force-for-two-year-stints-in/

design is the business of abstraction

New kettle allows heating to specific temperatures. This ADT cartoon comes to mind

design is the business of abstraction

Hans Hemmert (2007)

Hans Hemmert (2007)

Re: all the Calibri hoopla: of course some typefaces exist to enhance accessibility, just as there are typefaces that serve explicitly nationalistic and propagandistic purposes. One of my first-ever articles was about the design of Qatar’s national typeface :)

idk whatever. something like this.

design leadership has become almost as bad as hr

This playbook introduces a pattern language for early-stage scientific field building, highlighting the levers that help promising ideas move from latency to growth www.renaissancephilanthropy.org/playbooks/sc...

design leadership has become almost as bad as hr

taste is the ability to discern craving from desire

taste is the ability to discern craving from desire

"are you enjoying duo mobile" does a hamburger enjoy being made of quarks. does a fish enjoy linear time. does the mountain enjoy the first taste of a cup of hot chocolate when you get back to the ski lodge. your question means nothing to me. i couldn't enjoy duo mobile even if i tried

Wrote about interpassivity last week, and want to flag that @robhorning.bsky.social writes on the link b/w interpassivity & gen AI in essay no. 2 in “Vectoral Agents” (I had not seen the other texts until now). Great essay! networkcultures.org/blog/publica...

great question!

great question!

designers should be less like babies and more like fighter pilots

I think one of the most helpful ways to think about AI systems comes from Jasmina Tacheva and Srividya Ramasubramanian's article, "AI Empire: Unraveling the interlocking systems of oppression in generative AI’s global order" and this figure. Open article is at: journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

designers should be less like babies and more like fighter pilots

control and flexibility are correlated by comfort

thoughtfeel

The advent of AI might just be the latest stage of a biological process that has produced ever more complex, mutually interdependent entities over evolutionary time. Thank you @nature.com for publishing my perspective on this: bit.ly/3JUC3uc

admin & eve

What if color harmonies were a continuum? Not fixed rules, and you could glide through them just by interpolating?

the doubtening is here

building anew without repair of the old is not an act of creation, but a pattern of destruction

Our campaign looked like the city we’re fighting for: bold, joyful, and rooted in the streets. From bodegas to yellow cabs, we drew from the art forms created by working-class New Yorkers.

What stands out to me about this report is the clear lack of support, mentorship and leadership from design managers.. seems like something worthy of it's own deep-dive

i think that people who use headphones in public places like trains are selfish. keeping all your cool music and podcasts to yourself is genuinely sociopathic and deranged behavior. play it on your phone's speaker and let everyone enjoy it, or don't play it at all