Not For Tourists: Attribution, Provenance and Harm Reduction Anytime a big new market pops up, people rush in to stake their claims and make their fortunes. Our culture loves creation myths, especially in technology. Fables about lone geniuses
Design Choices of Breath of the Wild The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the greatest games ever made, and one of the breakout hits of the Nintendo Switch platform, which is on
prince How Prince won the Super Bowl On this day in 2007, Prince won Super Bowl XLI with a soaring halftime performance that climaxed with the skies opening up to honor his guitar solo. It is not
Getting Comfortable with Robin Byrd It is almost impossibly difficult to explain Robin Byrd to anyone who was not an adult living in NYC toward the end of the last century, though everyone who recognizes
The War on Cars! I love any kind of advocacy for safer, more humane streets, so it was a real joy to get to guest on the wonderful The War on Cars podcast. Doug
Dule Rockerrr Duleshwar Tandi, better known these days as Rapper Dule Rocker, is one of the most successful and influential rappers to have ever come out of the Kalahandi district in Odisha,
The Death Cult Stages a Coup A while back, when I wrote out in plain words that we have a politically dominant death cult ruling America right now, I worried about the risks of saying my
Making Things, Fast These days, I'm a hobbyist web developer. That used to be a common thing people did; it was like having a crafting hobby, but with web pages. Over the last
Exploring Moynihan Station Over the weekend, we had the chance to explore the newly-opened Moynihan Station, the massive new expansion to Penn Station that's been in the works for decades. Though it ostensibly
Recommended: Ted Lasso Ted Lasso, the standout series of Apple's new Apple TV+ streaming service, rightfully earned a place on many people's lists of the most-recommended new shows of 2020. But what's best
Keeping Tabs on your Abstractions I was delighted to discover Omar Rizwan's TabFS, a brilliant hack that lets you see your browser tabs as folders and files on your computer, because it's incredibly clever on
Every Day is a Follow Friday In the early days of Twitter, there was a pleasingly low-tech tradition called "follow friday" (which people later denoted with the #FF hashtag), wherein people listed other accounts that they
A Personal Digital Reset About once a year, I do a little digital reset to help make my online life a little more pleasant. I’m not advocating that anybody do the same as
nyc Nineteen is When They Forgot The slogan, for people who weren’t in Manhattan that day, is “Never Forget”. The people who were not here, who were never here, call it “9/11”. But the
What Windows 95 Changed Twenty five years ago today, Microsoft released Windows 95. It was undoubtedly a technical leap forward, but its biggest, most lasting impacts are about how it changed popular culture's relationship
I’m Asking My Friends on the Left to Vote for Joe Biden With authoritarianism at our door, the policies that progressives are driving for will be dependent on whether the fundamental institutions of democracy are protected at all. I believe every vote
A Federal Blue Checkmark, and Not Learning Lessons People are wrong on the Internet every day; generally I don’t try to fuss about that too much. But when Sam Lessin, a former VP of Product Management at
Best Of The American Death Cult A significant percentage of conservative culture in America defines “freedom” as death. This is causing a lot more problems right now than even its usual horrible effects. Some explanation, for
Beyond the Frontier I almost can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of the work the Electronic Frontier Foundation was doing on behalf of all of us who care about
Prince & The Revolution: The COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund Livestream Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to watch the most definitive record of Prince and the Revolution at their commercial peak, on one of the biggest musical tours ever
When Every App Crashes Today, for about half an hour in the afternoon, pretty much every app that you might try on your iPhone would likely have crashed upon opening it. It's probably worth
Questlove's Prince Tribute There could be no more fitting remembrance of Prince than Questlove going deep into his catalog and spinning some of Prince's greatest works into a multi-hour DJ set. Unless Quest
My thinking on Covid-19 (Warning: this will be upsetting; you will not want to read this if you are already stressed.) [This piece was written in late February 2020, before there was widespread social
The People's Web Every day, millions of people rely on independent websites that are mostly created by regular people, weren't designed as mobile apps, connect deeply to culture, and aren't run by the
Best Of “Link In Bio” is a slow knife We don’t even notice it anymore — “link in bio”. It’s a pithy phrase, usually found on Instagram, which directs an audience to be aware that a pertinent web
