Let’s do a Micro.blog photo challenge in June. It’s been a while so we’ll keep it simple… I’ll come up with a list of daily prompts and post them later this month. Feel free to send me your own words if you’ve got any! For inspiration, here’s a collection of photos from last year.
People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
I blogged recently about experimenting with local LLMs inside the Micro.blog for Mac app. This is useful for post categorization and other things. It works, but it’s not as good as I’d like without requiring everyone to have an M4 with 48 GB of RAM. Might put it on the shelf for a bit.
Wednesday session
Wednesday session
Why is the new pope being elected at a Figma event?
Why is the new pope being elected at a Figma event?
Running For Re-election in the 2025 W3C Advisory Board (AB) Election
Foreword
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is holding its regular annual Advisory Board (AB) election this month.
I was elected two years ago after being elected to a
six month term
(See full AB members history).
This is my 2025 AB election nomination statement posted o...
New Bot Day! “Intergalactic Robot” hails from 1998, the Beastie Boys music video for their song “Intergalactic.” This giant robot transports the 3 MCs to Tokyo; then fights a squidhead kaiju and breakdances. “Trying to change the world, I will plot and scheme!”
There are all sorts of interesting quotes from Eddy Cue’s testimony today in the Google trial. From Mark Gurman’s reporting in Bloomberg:
“You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now as crazy as it sounds,” he said. “The only way you truly have true competition is when you have technology shifts. Technology shifts create these opportunities. AI is a new technology shift, and it’s creating new opportunities for new entrants.”
a few minutes with the 3D printer and I printed a replacement for the plastic part that broke off the waffle iron handle! Saved me $20 for the replacement part since I apparently voided the warranty by taking off the handle to see what was broken. 😅 This is why I have a 3D printer!
You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown - Christopher Butler
chrbutler.com/you-can-be-a-great-designer-and-be-completely-unknown
Great design isn’t defined by who knows your name, but by how well your work serves human needs. It’s measured in the problems solved, the frustrations eased, the moments of delight created, and the dignity preserved through thoughtful solutions. These metrics operate independently of fame or recognition.
Our obsession with visibility also creates a troubling dynamic: design that prioritizes being noticed over being useful. This leads to visual pollution, cognitive overload, and solutions that serve the designer’s portfolio more than the user’s needs.
Figure and ground • Buttondown
Man, this resonates:
At one end, you prioritise your own interests. Slap on the SPF and enjoy the cricket; ignore the emails; nip to Paris for the day. But egocentrism erodes social goods. It harms other people. So perhaps you reject it and skew the other way, anchoring your wellbeing to the trajectory of the world. But that undertow will easily drown you. The beneficence of caring only about others seems noble, but in truth few of us can endure that level of self-sacrifice. Total empathy harms you. And so most of us stumble in the fog between these extremes, recoiling from either end when the shame or the sadness becomes too much to bear. I plug away at my pleasant life with heartache for what’s happening to us. Perhaps you feel similarly, smiling but seconds from tears.
The history of album art || Matthew Ström, designer-leader
An enjoyable guided tour of album artwork starting at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Lifeguards were putting up the summer buoys today.
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
AI of dead Arizona road rage victim addresses killer in court
This is straight out of Black Mirror:
"Chris Pelkey was killed in a road rage shooting in Chandler, Arizona, in 2021.
Three-and-a-half years later, Pelkey appeared in an Arizona court to address his killer. Sort of.
[...] Pelkey’s appearance from beyond the grave was made possible by artificial intelligence in what could be the first use of AI to deliver a victim impact statement."
Let the record show that I'm adding a prompt injection to my stuff so that if anyone creates an AI version of me after my death it will have glowing eyes and tell everyone in a booming, otherworldly voice that they're going to hell.
[Link]
Really happy for Dan Moren to make his Jeopardy appearance today. Congrats! I’ve set it to record. ☕️
Last Friday I published my second Cybersecurity Friday post with three more key steps for cybersecurity. In summary:1. Different email address for each account, AKA email masking. Use or create a different email alias for each service you sign-up for.2. Different password for each account. This is a well known security technique against credential stuffing attacks.3. Use a password manager to autofill. Always using a password manager to autofill your login username (or email) and password can be a very effective method of reducing the chances of being phished.Full post with details: https://tantek.com/2025/122/b1/more-steps-indieweb-cybersecurity#CyberSecurity Friday #cyber #securityPreviously: https://tantek.com/2025/055/t1/three-steps-indieweb-cybersecurity
Untitled
📗 Want to read Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod ISBN: 9780593732540
AI doesn’t need to think. We do! - craigabbott.co.uk
A good overview of how large language models work:
The words flow together because they’ve been seen together many times. But that doesn’t mean they’re right. It just means they’re coherent.
Chris Aldrich
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• Chris Aldrich
This Ikea drain is clever, it means you can have a full depth drawer under the sink, but it gets clogged up so fast. There's a reason sinks don't have 90 degree turns in their drains. The U bend had some junk in it, but the straight part between the 90 degree turns was full of the most foul looking goo I've ever seen. At least it's clean now and draining fast again.
When I did the rewrite of the nightly mail app, I didn't convert the app that builds the nightly RSS feed of the mail page. Wasn't sure if anyone was using it. I heard from a reader who missed it, so I got it running, knock wood, Murphy-willing.