2025-09-22 05:35:07
“As I remember London” should be a wake-up call for everyone in the Ruby and Rails communities. This is not a man who wants to keep going. This is a man who romanticizes a past that was predominantly good for white men. This is a man who has spent years railing against diversity, equity and inclusion and who spreads anti-trans rhetoric. This is a man who is deeply afraid of immigration changing countries’ cultures and “national identities”, despite this kind of change being a constant for the whole of human history. This is a man who is a white nationalist. And he is in sole control of Rails, this framework we all love.
Just can’t catch a break from fascism.
I’ve been wanting to rewrite my blog1 and while I had been considering running rails new and using it as a chance to learn Rails 8, maybe I should save the Rails for my day job and try something different for these parts.
Any suggestions? What are the kids using these days, HTMX?
The last time I did a ground-up rewrite was 2017, so hey, eight years is a pretty good run! ↩
2025-09-18 09:11:40
The solution isn’t to ask nicely for these companies to do better. We tried that. The solution isn’t to hope users will abandon these platforms en masse. That won’t happen as long as the network effects keep people trapped.
The solution is regulation. Real regulation. Not the performative theater we’ve seen in congressional hearings, but actual laws with actual consequences.
[…]
Turn off the internet. Or fix it. Those are the only choices we have left. The time for hoping these companies will self-regulate is over. The time for treating algorithmic manipulation as an inevitable part of modern life is over. We know what these systems do. We know who they hurt. The only question left is whether we’re going to do something about it.
2025-09-13 20:30:35
We know these platforms are bad for us, so why are they still so widely used? They tell a compelling story: that all of your frantic tapping and swiping makes you a key part of a political revolution, or a fearless investigator, or a righteous protestor – that when you’re online, you’re someone important, doing important things during an important time.
But this, for the most part, is an illusion. In reality, you’re toiling anonymously in an attention factory, while billionaire overseers mock your efforts and celebrate their growing net worths.
After troubling national events, there’s often a public conversation about the appropriate way to respond. Here’s one option to consider: Quit using these social platforms. Find other ways to keep up with the news, or spread ideas, or be entertained. Be a responsible grown-up who does useful things; someone who serves real people in the real world.
2025-09-10 06:49:01
The programming language is called "cursed". It's cursed in its lexical structure, it's cursed in how it was built, it's cursed that this is possible, it's cursed in how cheap this was, and it's cursed through how many times I've sworn at Claude.
Absolutely dying at this.
2025-09-01 21:21:00
I’ve been listening to a lot of Donald Lawrence and the Tri-City Singers lately. Big, powerful gospel choir music feels pretty dang good right now.1
This gospel choir-fueled version of the U2 hit is something else.
I actually got to be part of a gospel choir in college, and it was one of the best experiences I had at the U. ↩
2025-08-31 20:44:24
Behind every seemingly effortless success lies a landscape of invisible battles: endless meetings, self-doubts, and moments of near-total collapse.
What truly separates people isn’t some magical talent, but an almost irrational commitment to pushing through pain that would break most people.
Everything around you—every convenience you enjoy, every space you inhabit, every service you use—was one person’s refusal to accept the world as it was.
The world progresses from a collection of irrational dedication.
Related: glory means nothing without sacrifice. Personally, I’m sometimes quick to want the glory without the sacrifice, which results in a fairly hallow glory.