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State of the Atmosphere (CONF 2026)
I should be cleaning the house right now but instead I'm writing about the ~Atmosphere~ again... It's been a full week since I first arrived in Vancouver, for Atmosphere Conference. I am back home now and still don't have a full grasp on my thoughts, but it was a pleasure to meet so many people enthusiastic about the growing AT Protocol ecosystem. People who have been building the web and related technologies for decades (some even longer than I've been alive,,, shout-out old-heads
Project Code Name
Why do corporate restructuring plans get code names the way operating systems do? And why are the names often so bizarre?
Jump on that fire horse?
I just watched an obscure youtube video lol, It's a brand new account with one single video posted yesterday (02/10/2026) titled "why and how to jump on a fire horse." The general vibe of the video? really strange, really good, just some baddie ranting and piecing together a string of coincidences occurring on February 17th. Chinese New Year (the year of the fire horse), the date falling on a Tuesday relating to the norse god Tyr, the god of war, law, and justice who sacrificed his hand to the w...
Prosser-Gate
A prominent Apple leaker gets nailed with a wild lawsuit suggesting not-so-journalistic reporting practices.
The New DVD Bargain Bin
A major studio is apparently treating YouTube as a place to drop some of its archive films that have lost their cinematic luster. My mind is admittedly blown.
This Is Definitely A Test
The history of color bars, the most common television test pattern out there, and what they actually do. (Also, Netflix has some weird test programming.)
The Calm Voice Of Chaos
This year’s Tedium awards start off with a shout-out to a prevalent voice that brought protest music back to the masses: The endlessly prolific Jesse Welles.
The Thrill Was Never There
A famous punk-music personality reveals he was in it for the money—a revelation that has upset fans. But to be fair, it was the algorithm that pushed him in that direction.
Sick Of Fake Meat
On meat analogues and the way that lucrative algorithm waves gradually burn us out on our interests. Call it an “interest analogue.”
I want to tell Google to eff off
I’m thinking of deleting my Google account. I’ve downloaded all my Gmail data. I know I have some services that use my old Gmail address. I need to think about how this might affect my interconnected system of Internet services that have dependencies on my Google account. Changing my email on services still using my Gmail is mostly trivial. I just have to remember/find out what all those services are. I can peruse through my Gmail archive that is mostly spam or unwanted email and see if there are any critical services I’d have to change my email address for. I figure going back about six months through my Gmail archive would suffice. Any entity that doesn’t contact me during a six month period likely doesn’t have any important tendrils attached, and I probably don’t want anything to do with them, either.
Experimenting with FreeBSD and comments on the future of Invidious
I’ve always admired the BSD family of operating systems even though I mostly use Linux. I currently run a Debian Linux server that hosts a bunch of alternative services like PrivateBin, Invidious, RedLib, etc. Most of these require the use of Docker and/or systemd. Docker doesn’t seem to be a hard requirement, though, because inside the Dockerfile there has got to be a Unixy way to setup and run the services. So I’m planning on spinning up a temporary FreeBSD VPS on Vultr and experimenting with getting those services running without Docker. If all goes well, I will convert my main Debian server to FreeBSD. One thing I would miss, however, is FirewallD. BSD’s PF (Packet Filter) firewall doesn’t have a command-line interface to interact with firewall policies. As far as I know everything goes into a /etc/pf.conf configuration file. I’d have to look into PF configuration options that are effectively the same as the ones I use with FirewallD.
Escaping the Rigged Internet - Human-Generated Content
Human-Generated Content 1
This issue, Nilay Patel talks to Google's Sundar Pichai on AI, chriswaves and Mike Masnick each explore the managed decline of the web, and Molly White and Mike McCue chat about building a new web inspired by the old one.
The Great YouTube Epic
To kick off this year’s year-end Tedium awards, we honor a video that may have done more good for creator culture than anything created before or since.
An Incomplete Picture
A recent scandal around a popular YouTuber’s nonprofit foundation has created a lot of drama, but what it’s missing are voices that understand the nonprofit sector.
Stealing Passages
Plagiarism is often seen as an insignificant problem in online culture, but an epic Hbomberguy video essay proves that regular folks do in fact care about content theft.
Enemies At The Gates
We’re at an era of internet creation where it’s becoming increasingly clear that gatekeepers, too often, just get in the way. We need to build tools and strategies that allow creators to succeed without them.
The Hamster Wheel Scales
A YouTube controversy around one of its largest channels reflects the complexity of maintaining editorial standards, or even integrity, when you’re producing with quantity in mind.
Robot Hand is the Future
What I learned about YouTube’s algorithm from creating an account that only watched videos related to Elliott Smith. I fought hard, but the algorithm won.
Let’s Talk About Stuff
Every once in a while we just need to randomly write about a bunch of different things that have nothing in common. Let’s open the grab bag, internet.
Culture In A Dangerous Time
Finding comfort in a scary cultural moment from the modern digital landscape. Thankfully, we still have the internet to saturate us in offbeat popular culture.
Meet Weird Paul
The musical journey of Weird Paul Petroskey, a guy who's been making albums and vlogs since the ’80s—and on the latter count, you should see his receipts.
Symbiotic Infringement
Pondering the shutdown of a YouTube user who uploaded lots of John Oliver videos over a multi-year period—and probably made John Oliver more popular.
Why “Zombie” Lingers
In the wake of Dolores O’Riordan’s passing, reflecting on why The Cranberries’ “Zombie” is one of the most-watched YouTube videos of all time.
The Great Platform Problem
In an era when every content platform wants to sell you the moon, going your own way is a valid option. For one thing, there’s no risk of “demonetization.”