TechCrunch on how Me.sh (née Clay) is now available on Android. Also, kudos to those other Clay folks for winning the Clay memetic namespace dominance.

Beeper has some fun new features where you can merge chats with the same person across multiple networks, polls, labels… Very exciting work happening on that product.

Thank you to everyone who expressed interest in shaping OmFest. We’re still working out some details, but we’ve got a Luma registration page for the event up. Please join on September 29, 2026, Om’s 60th birth anniversary, for an eclectic conference curated by his different communities to celebrate the many facets of Om. If you’re … Continue reading OmFest Registration →

I have so many tools for organization and management across Asana, Google Workspace, P2, and Linear, but they’re not really connected. I’m trying to get everything in one place so there’s no data duplication, a single source of truth, and everything is always linked and accessible. It feels good, like spring cleaning, to go through … Continue reading Super-organized →

Toni Schneider, Automattic’s founding CEO, board member, and now CEO of Bluesky, has a great conversation with Nilay Patel on The Verge’s Decoder podcast (YouTube, Pocket Casts). Automattic invested in Bluesky back in 2023, and I’m very excited to see what they figure out in open social protocols.

Inspired by Automatticians James Kemp and Dave Smith, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much of our discord in the design of WordPress stems from the differences of our two big tribes: Bloggers and Builders. Many of the OG developers of WordPress, including myself, tend more towards the blogging side. Writers, photographers, podcasters, journalists, … Continue reading Our Core Division →

I’m trying out this thing, it’s trained on my blog posts and public talks, that you can chat with as me on Telegram. Behold: AutoMattBot.

I don’t usually blog all my comments other places, but while drafting a completely different blog post I came across this great post, Michel Valdrighi: The Coder Whose Code Never Went Silent. I had to leave a comment, because Michel’s story is not well-known. Michel Valdrighi is the GOAT. His elegant code and impeccable aesthetic … Continue reading Michel the GOAT →

New artist I’m obsessed with: Gabriel Dawe. I love the colors and craft, very Mesh. If his site were on WordPress, we’d definitely commission some pieces. Hat tip: Jason Nichols.

I noticed my Model X was uploading ~2.6gb of something to Tesla when it parked and connected to WiFi. Hopefully turning all these settings off stops it; otherwise, I might need a new car. But are any good?

At Automattic, we don’t have customer service or support, we have Happiness Engineers. 🙂 There’s also a #ceo Slack channel where anyone can drop in and request a meeting, which my esteemed colleague Damianne President did, and this morning we had an interesting chat that set my mind racing about how we might engineer happiness … Continue reading Possible Futures of Happiness →

I was only able to catch the tail end, but Jose-Miguel Yamal, alongside Thomas Helton and Sam Knight, did an awesome tribute celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ryo Fukui’s Scenery at Echoes in Houston. Jose-Miguel is the pianist who played on my senior recital, and Ryo Fukui is the pianist I discovered from the visit … Continue reading Jose-Miguel x Ryo Fukui →

Inspired by Om I’ve been getting back into my DSLR photography. I learned a lot about how ISO settings work from this delightful physics YouTube channel MinutePhysics.

If you’re going to give me AI slop, at least make it fun! Give me iambic pentameter. Make it all rhyme. Have it be a song. I think we’re under-utilizing the artistic and creative capabilities of models by making them produce work that sort-of-but-not-really looks like human effort.

WordPress 7.0.2 went out today with two important security updates. One is a type of pre-authorization RCE we (fortunately!) have only seen a few times in WordPress’ 23-year history; the last, I believe, in the PHPMailer class five years ago. Major kudos to Adam Kues of Searchlight Cyber for finding the batch REST API RCE, … Continue reading Important Security Update →

Lights! Camera! Action! Todd Spangler at Variety writes: Automattic’s ‘Code for the People’ Documentary Is a Rallying Cry for Users to Fight for the Open Internet, from the NYC premiere last week. I’m looking forward to the San Francisco premiere of the documentary, and then tomorrow everyone can stream it for free on codeforthepeople.com! Appearances … Continue reading Code for the People →

This auspicious 250th Independence Day, I find myself thinking of what Om wrote in iAMerican when he became a US citizen in 2013. On a globe, America is a landmass, a country. In an immigrant’s heart it is a belief that future is almost always better. It may not be perfect and it is certainly … Continue reading USA 250 →

There has been a lot of excitement about the OmFest idea. If you’d like to attend or contribute, please fill out this form as soon as possible so we can gauge the type of venue we need. It’s truly a testament to how Om lived life to see the outpouring of remembrances in comments on … Continue reading Om Links →

Yesterday, my best friend and brother from another mother, Om Malik, passed away. They say that blood is thicker than water, and what we had was way thicker than blood. — Bob Weir Om’s request was for a small family prayer ceremony. In mourning, that will be all there is. In celebration and tribute, I … Continue reading All Roads Lead to Om →

A throwback from 2007: a local Bay Area a cappella group called The Richter Scales made a Webby Award-winning viral video about how that bubble felt. Hat tip: Toni.

In honor of Father’s Day, I wanted to add to the two quotes from my Dad’s obituary, “Seven days without chicken made one weak.” and “If you fail at raising your children, nothing else mattered.” with another saying he had. Ain’t no hill for a stepper. If you’d like to learn more about this, check … Continue reading Hill For A Stepper →

PowerPoint makes us stupid. — Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander Classic 2010 NYT We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.

A typography savant on staff had spent a month designing link underlines (literally just lines) that were more visually pleasing than Chrome or Safari’s defaults. On Tuesdays, engineers stayed late at the office, fixing design imperfections over dinner. One of them began a 2,500-word post about Medium’s CSS code with a quote attributed to Lil Wayne: “I … Continue reading Best Trash →

I’m sorry I couldn’t be there in person, but I was so excited to watch the Midjourney Medical launch from afar. This is a really big deal. David Holz, one of the most underrated pioneers in AI, has taken money from making cat pictures to build a full-body ultrasound scanner that can give you incredible … Continue reading Midjourney Medical →

It looks like Ubiquiti is coming for Sonos with its PoE Audio Port, a $199 device that closely resembles the $499 Sonos Port, and $599 PowerAmp. Sonos is going up-market with the Amp Multi. Sonos has had a rough patch, but I’m pretty ride or die for them, and some of my favorite people are … Continue reading Audio Wars →

Sometimes you have to just start with beauty. Listen to Jon Batiste’s Beethoven Blues, then relish this interview, where he plays and talks about it. I can’t wait for Black Mozart, which is already starting to trickle on Spotify. Forget all that Ferrari stuff, what Jony Ive did with his LoveFrom Sailing Lantern is divine. … Continue reading Assorted Links →

Cześć wszystkim, Kraków… I made the call not to fly to Poland for WordCamp Europe. I’m very sorry for the last-minute notice; I was really hoping to make it. I’m okay, but I want to stay close to loved ones going through difficult times. Seeing the pictures from Contributor Day warms my heart. Bardzo za … Continue reading WCEU →

Spelling bees have gotten a lot more intense. How many of these do you know? torrone, enthymeme, iguape, Denebola, fais-dodo, cywyddau, pohutukawa, monadnock, émeute, nannofossil, tongkang, Natchitoches, flaith, semele, rusell, sawder, campernelle, Nicol, Zamenis, Tharparkar, tlachtli, madoqua, retiarius, balintawak, tessaraconter, taurokathapsia, rapakivi, uayeb, paroemia, melengket, teraglin, homelyn, chikungunya, bromocriptine (cashaw) Check out the first 90 … Continue reading Bee Champion →

I think I heard this parable somewhere in the 14 hours of Alan Watts lectures someone recommended to me in 2017, but here’s a beautiful 2-minute version I’d love to share for everyone going through something. I really appreciate the love and support I received after the WP23 post, and I do want to tell … Continue reading Maybe →

Sonny Rollins, the Saxophone Colossus, has passed. He is probably my favorite saxophonist, and while the aforementioned album is one of the five I would take to a deserted island, he has so many other good ones like The Cutting Edge which also has bagpipes, or Sonny Side Up with Sonny Stitt and Dizzy Gillespie. … Continue reading RIP Sonny Rollins →