shower thought (deep sorting my paper file cabinet): this is irl info architecture

not the shutdown countdown clock now counting up 😔

SOMEONE COOKED ON THE CALIFORNIA BENEFITS APPLICATION

Proof of life: attending @sfcivictech.bsky.social’s CityCampSF unconference! My first dip back in post-RIF, and branching out from my beloved-but-far-from-home DC/fed network. Much-needed counter programming from anguish + overdue flowers for public service work in diff fonts :’)

miss u everyday

a Reichstag fire, but one of them every week

In this attention economy, do u know how often i think about “no one trying to sell me something” as the highest form of peace Then i get mad that its to privilege in so many ways (YouTube atrocious 45s ads and atrocious premium prices, im looking at u)

It was the best of times, it was the end of times

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

There was only one true star of media day in Baku – the paddock cat!

114: The most common design tool within your organization is Excel, followed by Powerpoint, because that is where decisions are made and distributed. Your super cool research report in Confluence, or neat prototype in Figma, is not nearly as accessible to PMs used to emailing files back and forth.

104: The quality of design work is always going to be a function of its environment. Because the environment in most places is bad, your biggest impacts will come from improving the environment rather than your individual process.

96: In theory, most decisions are reversible. In practice, few are reversed - because we no longer remember why we made those decisions. Maintain decision provenance so if your research invalidates underlying assumptions, the decision can be changed.

91: Behavior change is at the core of any impact of your work. What are people going to do differently as a result of the feature? What can they do with this information that they couldn't before? If the only change is "they will use it" then you probably shouldn't build the feature.

47: the most important design tool is the big stick we use to stir shit up

38: If you only have empathy for users, you will constantly be at odds with your colleagues. Empathy for the people who build and maintain the product is necessary for the product to function.

UX fact #23: If you say "we don't need accessibility because we don't have any disabled users" I will come to office and hit you with a stick.

UX fact number five: The exact same techniques that can be applied to a product to make it a better product, can be applied to your process to make it better at creating better products. Above the mid-senior level, this is what the work is about.

Don't let your new "saved posts" tab stay empty when you can fill it with a thousand UX facts

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Being alive right now is like a constant game of mad libs. Everything is just words and concepts thrown together in new, stupid ways and I'm tired of it

Bright side of today: it’s been a good day of tennis at the US Open.

"Now, together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world. And it will be done by survivors – and for survivors. No one else is involved. ...Because history is watching – and so are the women who will come after us." Epstein survivor

i cannot overstate how extraordinary it is for federal civil servants to do this

A DAY TO REMEMBER Isack Hadjar secured his maiden podium. He held off Russell well in the opening stages to maintain position, then delivered a faultless drive from there on. It’ll be a dream come true for the young Frenchman, I’m sure. #formula1 #f1 #f1news #f1content #DutchGP #VCARB #IsackHadjar

La reproduction interdite, by René Magritte, 1937, 📸 via @BleacherReport

> Tim Wu coined the term ‘tyranny of convenience’ to describe the tendency for ease-of-use to prevail over other concerns such as privacy and accountability: ‘Created to free us, [convenience] can become a constraint on what we are willing to do, and thus in a subtle way it can enslave us’ Real.

Bless the actual patriots who built this clapback America by Design Fail website: "How did you think people would react when you fired the government’s most talented designers and engineers from 18f and the United States Digital Service and then tried to roll out this shit?"

re: americabydesign.gov So, instead of just doing nothing, aka letting the existing, staffed, cost-efficient, scaled, structured, tested, proven, award-winning, design-forward work of @alt18f.bsky.social, @altusds.altgov.info, Direct File, etc, continue, we get… this edgy, inaccessible mess. k.

"Website design is my passion." americabydesign.gov

The fact that americabydesign.gov and its companion site ndstudio.gov, both one-page sites, have zero heading tags but at least ten javascript files and a dozen accessibility issues each... We're entering the "Powered by Squarespace Dot Gov" era.

“Improving our nation through better design” is certainly important work: we know this, because it’s exactly what we were doing when DOGE eliminated 18F entirely.

I walk on this earth with the linguistic values imbued in a young ESL me by schoolhouse rock and the can-i-haz-a-cheezburger interweb. No grammarly will ever get in between that

Learning feels good bro how do folk get it so wrong

I read this article 5 days ago. I started The Gilded Age about 4. Today, I’m on season 3.

Here are 9 ways to spot an AI-generated viral video, according to Prof. Hany Farid and other experts. “If the image feels like clickbait, it is clickbait,” Farid said to @mashable.com https://mashable.com/article/how-to-know-if-viral-video-is-ai?test_uuid=003aGE6xTMbhuvdzpnH5X4Q&test_variant=a

Something go observe over time: the uno reverse card of forcibly displacing federal techies -> leading to the inadvertent socialization of civic tech principles where they go

Navigating state/local benefits portals and I am BEGGING me to let myself just be a user right now, but…. The Voices, they whisper they’re impressed with status indicators and plain language explainers and yearn to add tooltips to vague instructions… like, girl, just press ‘next’. smh

Good design is invisible ex. 4728283994: Informative auto-replies to inquiry inboxes 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Went up to Redwood Regional Park for the first day of service. On the way there, I met two other transit hikers who were celebrating the launch of redwoods service. ✅ Locally manufactured bus ✅ Local baseball team ad ✅ Local, world famous redwoods The East Bay at its best today ♥️

Chris Cuomo posting a deepfake of AOC the same week that Jim Acosta “interviews” a deepfake of a school shooting victim are both harbingers of how traditional media power players will help usher in the worst of the AI slop era

I just love love LOVE having to emergency toggle my elderly parents’ settings and tell my friends/cousins w online kids bc Meta wants to keep being edgy monopolizers. How could this EVER GO WRONG

Clearly took in the subtle pro-ferry content from @allafarce.bsky.social over the years (w/ @nkkrms.bsky.social on a great SF day)

Have You Considered Scrum Daily Standups For The Team Of Voices In Your Head?

The world is on fire but today I harvested a tiny little tomato from my garden for the first time

Born to be a renaissance craftsman, forced to be on LinkedIn

im sooooooo tempted

In about the space of two basketball courts on Mission St, Kapwa Gardens became a hotspot for community gathering n service. As future senior housing, it’ll keep doing just that :’) @ SF / Bay Area pals: join KG’s last hurrah, a *free* food fest market on 7/26!! www.kapwagardens.com/events/yumya...

This is a recession indicator