@blag What a joy it was to spend so much time face-to-face with the mug behind the mag! I’m feeling one step deeper into the sign painting world.

@Luke Just this: https://mstdn.party/@stewf/114654180356795471

On the topic of ditching Google. My previous post on Fastmail covers email and files, but hadn’t found a good alternative to Docs. This looks promising!
https://sunbeam.city/@autonomic/114664575745538189

I feel helpless with all these immigration raids, arrests, and kidnappings happening. This subject is very dear to my heart since @nazhamid and I had to navigate the convoluted system, but fortunately, we had the means to have representation every step of the way.

Today I donated to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, just one of many reputable organizations that are fighting for justice.

https://www.immdef.org

I hope #inaturalist are going to release a statement about the how, where, what and why of this google accelerator partnership. The opening sentence starting with "These organizations, which will use generative AI" is enough to get me worried. I love this service, so hope it doesn't turn into AI slop. I see how useful the data is for mining and modelling around species behaviourial tracking and proliferation, but 'generative'? https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-org/generative-ai-accelerator-cohort-2025/

Please boost.

Another of the institutions threatened by fascists via their funding.

The California Digital Newspaper Collection is an invaluable resource of actual scans of newspapers going back > 100 yrs.

"Currently, the CDNC faces a $300,000 deficit with only weeks left in the fiscal year which ends on June 30, 2025. Without urgent support, access to this collection could be significantly reduced for researchers around the world."

https://www.givecampus.com/schools/UniversityofCaliforniaRiverside/help-preserve-the-california-digital-newspaper-collection #Archives #Journalism #History

Ok, here’s a Fastmail refer link. If you sign up, I don’t get much out of it ($10), but you get 10% off your first year: https://join.fastmail.com/8743c180

@morningtype I've only used the mail feature so far, accessed via IMAP in Apple’s Mail app. After nearly a year, I notice no difference from my other domain email hosted on Gmail. Just works!

1. I look forward to ridding myself of all Google products. It takes effort but worth it. There are good alternatives. (Using @fastmail for all my personal domains now.)

2. When services send you this BS about the value of AI, make sure you write back and tell them exactly how much AI means to you.

Solving the traffic problem, advertisement 1927
.
#PublicTransportation #Advertisement #Trolleys #Retro #Vintage #PublicTransport #UrbanPlanning

@glennf @laureola Also, we maybe wouldn’t resort to a third-party option if Apple simply had a “sort by file size” or if the “Review Your Photos & Videos” feature wasn’t mysteriously missing from her Settings.

@glennf Thank you so much for writing this! PowerPhotos is saving @laureola and my bacon by finding duplicates and large files so we can free up iCloud space.

What I learnt about making websites by reading two thousand web pages: https://alexwlchan.net/2025/learning-how-to-make-websites/?ref=mastodon

When I built my web archive by hand, I saw how other people make websites. I wrote about what I learnt – writing thoughtful HTML, new-to-me features of CSS, and some quirks and relics of the web. 🔖

With @laureola at FontShop Berlin in May 2010, one year after our first date. (Photo by Michael Pieracci.)

And then there’s this:

“Long-time residents, who have seen high-rolling days before say that the energy coursing through San Francisco right now around artificial intelligence has the whiff of exactly one of those upswing moments.”

Maybe, but a crash follows that’s worse than the dot com crash, because AI feels like it’s overvalued more than any of the tech booms.

Monocle on the LoveFrom merger with OpenAI, and mostly about Jony Ive’s bet on #SanFrancisco: https://monocle.com/business/can-jony-ive-save-san-francisco-interview/

I like how Ive talks about investing in the city. And I dig LoveFrom’s pro bono identity and typeface (congrats @verbosus!) for William Stout Books (another local icon saved by big tech: Eames Institute & Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia – now a Trumper).

But so much of this article is about investment in places of exclusivity and wealth.

Follow up: https://alexwlchan.net/2025/personal-archive-of-the-web/?ref=ff_slack

Another great web building post by @alex: https://alexwlchan.net/2025/bookmarks-static-site/

Using static websites for tiny archives: https://alexwlchan.net/2024/static-websites/?utm_source=mastodon

I wrote about how making small, hand-written HTML pages has taken over as the way I organise my local files. I get more metadata and filtering options than I do with the Finder, and the ongoing maintenance cost is essentially zero.

I’m using it for personal stuff, but this feels like a powerful tool for digital preservation more broadly.

HTML FTW 💪

This is incredibly scary. And the way this project began is incredibly gross:

“a collection of unethical practices to pressure the most vulnerable populations in signing up for Worldcoin, and have their eyeball scanned in exchange for money they desperately needed.”
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/sam-altman-wants-your-eyeball/27468/1