Not to praise but to bury
There isn't a term of art for the rare but not unheard of obituary written by someone who has themselves passed. When American monster Dick Cheney died last week his Times obit was written by Robert McFadden, who is still with us though he retired in 2024 after over six decades of reporting.
Zohran Mamdani was the right amount of online
Yesterday's off-year election dominated certain parts of the news cycle, no more so than Zohran Mamdani's decisive win in the New York mayor's race. The Mamdani campaign has been the rare ray of light in a year that's been dominated by a much broader continued slide into authoritarianism in the U.S. and Mamdani, at 34 years old, has shown what a truly online campaign that doesn't descend into the cynicism preferred by algorithmic mediated platforms.
Social media is a party and we can't party all the time
Aaron Ross Powell wrote a long, thoughtful post about social media and blogging. I thought his metaphor for social media as a party works really well for diagnosing why short-form media feels so bad for us and why the media ecosystem, which has become dominated by these party dynamics, feels so corroded.
We should all be Luddites
Luddites are having a bit of a moment. Brian Merchant's excellent Blood in the Machine is one of the more high-profile contemporary recountings of the struggle to wrest control from the narrative of technological inevitability and show how the story of technology can't be separated from the deployment capital against labor.
50 reasons to build a website
Chris Coyier has 50, out of approximately one (1) infinite number, great reasons to build a website. A bit cheeky, sometimes serious, just as the web should be.
Measured AI
Gina Trapani has a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be a technologist working in this era of AI hype.