Here’s a great introductory post written by Rob Arcand on his brand new blog: Why Bother? A Statement of Purpose. The background of this post is about working in academia and losing his PhD advisor to cancer last year. Rob’s mentor made his life’s work to produce “better citizens of reality” and even long maintained a personal website with resources for academics at every stage of their career.
As I continue forward through this difficult, rewarding PhD process, I am reminded of Jonathan’s web presence, and how much I want to develop a similar site of my own. Looking through the old photos and blog posts his site contains as part of the preservation process has shown me how powerful a personal website can be, both to oneself as a personal archive and to the larger community it can cultivate. I want to use this site, blog, and newsletter to better document the work I’m doing, and make a deliberate space to produce new work on my own terms. I look forward to doing that together, in public, with you.
Webmention is how I found this one so quickly. One of my older notes (from January 2024) is linked in this. Reading my older note now makes me cringe a bit. What a difference a couple years’ perspective makes.
My definition of “indie web” is still broad, and I want it to be inclusive. I see having a presence on the web as something bigger than a hobby—it’s your voice.
My favorite bit from Coyote:
If it’s not for someone whose every dollar is already being sucked up by survival, then it’s not for everyone. If it’s not for the hungry and the homeless then it’s not for everyone. If it’s not for the refugee and the runaway then it’s not for everyone. If it depends on having cash to spare on renting a custom domain name then it’s not for everyone. People in these demographics do use the internet, and they deserve better than to be ground up for a predatory machine, which is why we need more options that are easy and free and independent from venture capital and corporate giants.
Henry (from Online) published A website to destroy all websites, a transcription of a talk delivered at WebDevConf in Bristol in 2025. It will be familiar territory for anyone who has read or written a persuasive “joining the indie web” blog post in the last few years. I think you should still read it, particularly if you are feeling stuck or hung up on Making That Website in 2026. Read this, and go Make That Website.
I particularly liked this little bit here on design:
Don’t worry about design unless that’s the part that brings you joy. Make friends with designers and trade your work for theirs, or trade tips, trade advice. Get comfortable with being joyfully bad at something — from that soil of humility grows a million questions for those who have learned and are excited to share. Iterate until you’ve something you’re proud of, or iterate so much you’ve ruined it and have to go back to bald.
The counter-argument is always gatekeeping: requiring technical knowledge excludes people from design. But what actually excludes people is creating a professional track that leads to strategic irrelevance…We told designers they didn’t need technical knowledge. Then we eliminated their jobs when they couldn’t influence technical decisions. That’s not inclusion. That’s malpractice.
I’ve been curious about Penpot, the open source alternative to Sketch and Figma (products I’m currently using at work). This blog post is a snapshot from earlier this year, detailing how this particular company and product team is thinking about and approaching AI.
In all its artistic iterations across millennia, the nativity — the birth of Jesus in a humble manger — remains inherently political. It reveals not just the paradox of divine embodiment, but the radical truth of equality inherent in God choosing to enter the world in marginalized circumstances, thereby declaring the sacred dignity of all human beings and our moral obligations to one another.
In 2023 I became obsessed with videos of dads in cargo shorts waiting in parking lots during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. So when she came to town, I grabbed a camera and headed down to talk to them. I thought it’d be funny. It turned out to be something else entirely.
I don’t know why I thought we were an exception. Maybe because sometimes we were. Artforum, for many years, was about as leftist as an elite publication could get. We really did play a role in holding weapons manufacturers and the engineers of the opioid crisis to account. We really did give jobs and bylines to some singular and brilliant people. We really were a brainy refuge of weird glamour married to principle, and sometimes I wonder if mine is the last generation to grow up thinking of the art world as a place for ungovernable outsiders and talented eccentrics, which doesn’t hear the word ‘art’ and think immediately of commerce…
…Palestine is different. Even with broad public support, no major museum has taken up the genocide in Gaza. No large institution I know of has put on an exhibition about Palestinian artists or Palestinian lives. Instead, the opposite: in June 2025, the Whitney Museum “suspended” its 57-year-old Independent Study Program after some of its members dared to host a performance critical of Israel. The art world, with all its progressive scaffolding and humanist ornamentation, practically designed to celebrate and aestheticise every rebellion, couldn’t metabolise Palestine. It still can’t.
Writing HTML is often simpler and easier to remember than the markdown equivalent.
This rings true. I can never remember the syntaxt for an image and its alt text in markdown, and there’s often more I want to include anyway in HTML. HTML is also wonderfully nuanced: You can italicize things quickly in Markdown, but it will always use <em> (emphasis), when you might need <cite> for a title of a book or something, or <i> for idiomatic text.
My site is red and green (mostly forest green) today but the message in the footer is universal: “Peace on earth, good will to all.” Happy everything you celebrate.
Enjoy the holiday theme until Jan. 6 or whenever I decide to take it down.
It’s actually easier than I thought to switch music streaming services. I got an invite to try two free months of Qobuz just as my Apple Music subscription is up at the end of this week.
I only set up my account the other day and already managed to import 50 playlists (and more than 10,000 saved tracks) fairly quick through Soundiiz, a third party interface for moving music libraries. I went ahead and imported another 35 even older playlists (and over 800 tracks) from my old Spotify to Qobuz through Soundiiz.
Now a part of me almost wishes I started with a blank slate. Maybe I will need to spend some time pruning old playlists. Soundgardening, if you will.
This page logs mistakes we’ve made and lessons we’ve learned. We share this information so that others can benefit from our experience and evaluate us as an organization.
I hadn’t come across a page like this on any company or organization’s website before! Via gilest.org
Peak: The highest point or level; the maximum point, degree, or volume of anything. The peak of her political career.
Peek: to look or glance quickly or furtively, especially through a small opening or from a concealed location; a quick or furtive look or glance. Take a peek at their website for other ideas and inspiration.
Pique: to excite (interest, curiosity, etc.). To arouse an emotion or provoke to action. This should pique your interest.
Pooh case should be used sparingly. It should be used to Make A Point, but in a gentle, Pooh sort of way. It’s probably ok to use it at work, but not if you are referring to strategy documents and finance updates. Ideally, you should save Pooh case for occasions involving Woozles, Heffalumps, Busy Days, Expotitions and Enchanted Places - or the work equivalents thereof.
