I make Web things in the Bay Area
We’re building wonderful things in our city in the clouds, but what’s real and what’s just vapor?
Follow me on Twitter at @semantric.
Luke
Thoughts following the death of Aaron Swartz
I didn’t know Aaron and I have no special knowledge of his life or death. We were only fellow travelers, but I admired him a great deal and still do. Like he surely was for many people, in many ways he was the sort of person I hoped I could be but could not. I [...]
The way we occupy now: San Francisco occupation of a vacant building requests “drive-by fooding” because cops won’t let food in
I fired up Twitter this morning and found out about something pretty insane happening a few blocks from my apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Occupy SF protesters have apparently taken over a vacant building owned by the Catholic diocese. The police blockading the occupation of 888 Turk Street aren’t allowing food past the barricades, so [...]
Twenty take-homes from SXSW 2012
Some stuff I either heard about or discovered at SXSW 2012: WebGL is the shit; people are going to be making Pixar-esque movies in the browser in five years They Rule is coming back with HTML5 and WebGL (doesn’t seem to have relaunched yet) Chatanooga has the fastest Internet in the Western hemisphere (FC TKTK) [...]
Super Sad True SXSW Story, Or, Ray Kurzweil is Wrong About Everything
I read Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story while I was flying back from South by Southwest. It’s probably the best novel I’ve read recently (although to be fair that just means I liked it better than Freedom). The book is about trying to rediscover love and humanity in a narcissistic, insolvent alter-present/future in [...]
Unimpressed Mother Jones meme
I love the work I do at Mother Jones but sometimes I think it’s hard for us to clear the bar set by our namesake, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. So I made this meme in the mode of Condescending Wonka:
An incomplete list of things wrong with the place we stayed in for SXSW
Squirrels in the attic No cold water in the kitchen “I wouldn’t recommend going out through the back porch; the mold has kind of taken over that area.” Hole in the floor in the shower Shower does not turn off “The chickens get one scoop of feed every morning …” Front door must be kicked [...]
The Precarious Marvelous
I’ve just (almost) survived another South by Southwest and, against my better judgement, I’m starting a blog. We’re building wonderful things in our city in the clouds, but it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s just vapor. Is our castle of wonders the beacon of things to come, or is it all just destined [...]