Spotlight on Toby Geeks Out!

A Big Refresh for Toby Geeks Out!

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:04:37 -0400

My last big update to the blog was back in April. Since then I've been quietly adding small things here and there, nothing major. But today I decided it was time to do a full redesign.

Here's the why behind it. My header, feature area, and subscribe box were all painted in heavy navy blocks, one after another. It's not that blue is too much — I still love it — but this is an indie web blog, and I want it to feel simple. Easy to navigate. Something you can read leisurely without any noise getting in the way.

I wanted the blog to feel lighter and more open, something pleasant to move around in. Cleaner. Maybe minimalist, though I'm still not totally sure that's the right word for it.

So this time, I went lighter. Clean, simple colors, and a few small animations to give the site some life without going overboard. It feels fresher already.

One bigger change: I dropped the pill-shaped morphing nav. That one was short-lived — I just wanted to see how it looked for a while, but in the end I decided to go back to a sticky header like before.

The one change I kept: the logo now quietly hides itself as you scroll down, while the header itself stays put. It also shows my avatar and site logo together, and has icons in the nav now. That avatar is a new one too — updated both on the blog and in my Micro.blog account settings.

I also redesigned the logo itself. Glasses now replace the two e's in "Geeks," and "Out!" tilts up slightly with a terracotta underline underneath.

I also redid the home page. No more pagination — it just shows the 5 or 6 most recent posts, then you head over to the archive for everything else. Longer posts now fade out near the bottom once they pass 800 characters, so you get a taste and click through to keep reading. On mobile, there's a bottom nav bar now instead of a hamburger menu, and on the home page it just stays put as you scroll.

The archive page now lets you expand and collapse categories instead of scrolling through one long list. And on the subscribe side, I added RSS as an option on the home page strip, right alongside email — single posts now have their own subscribe block with that same choice too.

On single posts, I redid the post titles. I had updated them not long ago, but I wasn't happy with how they turned out, so I built a better version this time. I also decided to drop the background block that used to sit around the title — now it just blends into the same background as the rest of the page, which looks a lot cleaner.

On those same posts, I also redid the table of contents styling and colors to match the new lighter look, and added a recent posts section at the end so it's easier to keep reading once you finish one.

The bottom nav bar also quietly disappears while you scroll here, so it stays out of the way until you need it. Single posts also get a back button now that takes you right back where you came from. So if you were browsing the archive and tapped into a post, back takes you to the archive. If you came from the home page, back takes you to the home page.

The newsletter page finally got some real attention too. I installed the Newsletters plugin earlier this year and eventually got around to fixing up the CSS and styling for the newsletter list and single view.

Today I took it further — I wanted it to feel like you're actually inside an email while browsing past newsletters, almost like scrolling through your own inbox. That's the direction I went with this time.

I'd read a few blog posts about doing a light and dark toggle before, and thought it was a great idea, mostly for eye health — bright, light colors at night can be rough on your eyes, and I didn't want that during nighttime reading.

I found this article about time-based background color transitions, and it gave me an idea.

Since I'd already decided to go lighter with this redesign, I hadn't thought much about nighttime reading until this article made me rethink it. So I decided to implement something similar on the blog: instead of a plain on/off toggle, a sunrise and sunset background transition based on your own location — kind of like the Night Shift feature on Windows and Mac, but built into the site itself.

The background now shifts through the day based on your own clock, right where you're reading. Pre-dawn starts deep navy, then eases into a dusky navy as sunrise gets close. Sunrise brings in a pale, warm cream — morning is intentionally lighter than evening. Daytime settles into the site's regular colors, completely unchanged. As sunset approaches, it shifts into a warmer cream tone, easing back into dusky navy and then deep night navy after dark. It's live now, quietly shifting in the background as the day goes on.

This is what I've been tinkering with to get things closer to how I want them. Take a look around the site and let me know what you think. I'll probably keep making small changes quietly as I go — some areas still need a bit more tinkering.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

— Winston Churchill

Never quite done. Always a little better.

There's No Right Way to Blog, Just Mine

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:38:11 -0400

I read a post from Dan Q this week called You Don't Have to Blog Like Me, and I agree with every bit of it, 100 percent. There's no right way to do this, it really is just preference. His post is basically a permission slip: you don't have to tag things, keep a schedule, have a feature image, split your posts by type, or have a tidy answer ready when someone asks what your blog is even about.

That last one hit home. My blog could stretch across as many as 20 topics if I let it, but right now I mostly stick to four or five: tech and AI, home decor, movie and TV reviews, and sometimes politics. I'd like that range to eventually grow into sustainability and climate change, once I find the right angle. I'm still figuring it out, and blogging works best when it just flows the way your thoughts do.

That part about categories isn't really me taking a stand against his list, if I'm honest. Most blogging platforms hand you that stuff as part of the setup, whether you use it or not. If I built a blog completely from scratch, a plain static HTML site, I'd probably skip most of it. What I'd actually care about is making it clean, attractive, and easy to read, with the right colors doing most of the work.

You don't have to blog like me, or like Dan Q, or like anyone else whose blog you admire. None of this makes me a better writer than anyone else; it's just what sounds like me. I still poke around other blogs and swipe ideas for fun, and half the time it turns into an afternoon tinkering with HTML and CSS on my own site. That's the real hobby.

Happy blogging, and be true to yourself. It's a good kind of self-care, having a place where you can just think out loud and say it however you want.

No, AI Image Slop Is Not Ok

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 12:59:05 -0400

I found a post by Gordon McLean called "When Is AI Image Slop Ok?" and I want to answer it straight: no. Slop's not ok. That doesn't mean AI images are off the table, I use them on this blog myself sometimes, tied to whatever I'm actually writing about, chosen on purpose. What's not ok is the lazy, thoughtless kind that gets passed off as real. Not in a blog post, not in a newsletter, not anywhere with your name on it.

Gordon wasn't defending slop either, to be fair. He was working through his own use of AI for featured images on his site, going back and forth on whether that counts as the same kind of slop everyone complains about, since it's "just" a banner image nobody studies closely. But one comment did more work than the whole rest of the post. A reader named Rhys Wynne pointed out that if you can't tell whether the image is real or AI-made, why would anyone trust the words underneath it? Gordon came back the next day with a follow-up saying he was done using AI images, full stop, going back to real photos from sites like Unsplash instead. That's the whole argument, really. It was never about the image. It's about trust.

I already use Unsplash myself for photos on this blog. Reading Gordon's follow-up made me realize I should start adding a photo credit caption under them too, giving credit to the actual photographer instead of just dropping the image in with no source.

I've circled this idea a few times already on this blog. AI as a tool to help you think, organize a mess of notes, or get a draft moving is fine by me. AI as a stand-in for the actual choosing and care that goes into making something is not. Slop is what happens when nobody decided anything, no image was picked, no thought went into what it should look like, it just got generated because that was faster than choosing something real. A slop image on a post looks small by itself, but it's a tell. It says the work wasn't worth real effort, so why would a reader owe it real attention back?

A featured image is the first thing a reader sees. It sets the tone before a single word gets read. If that image was generated in five seconds with no thought behind it, it's already telling the reader something about what the rest of the post is worth. And once someone starts wondering if the picture is fake, they start wondering about everything else too.

There's a difference worth naming between making a new image with AI and using AI to alter something real. What crosses a real line is taking an actual photo and twisting it into something that didn't happen, then passing it off as real. Trump has done exactly that more than once. The White House posted an altered version of a real photo of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that added her crying, which isn't what the original photo showed. Trump also shared a doctored photo of Barack and Michelle Obama walking off an Air Force One covered in graffiti, a scene that never happened, and the graffiti included messages that got the image called out as racist right away. Those aren't jokes. They're real photos edited to plant a fake memory in people's heads.

I get that mocking politicians with doctored images isn't new. People have done it for centuries, with cartoons and photo tricks alike. But that history doesn't make it fine now, and it's not only a political thing either. The same move shows up all over the internet.

Fake animal photos dressed up to look like real wildlife shots. Fake movie posters made to look like a real announcement for a movie that doesn't exist. I see that one constantly scrolling Facebook, and I end up stopping to double-check almost every time. That gets tiring fast, and it shouldn't be something I have to do in the first place. Pictures that use kids to make some made-up story feel more real so people share it before checking. All of it works the same way: borrow the trust people give to something real to sell something that isn't real at all. None of it is ok.

There's one more piece to this that goes past just images. When AI shows up in news or on social media, the speed is what makes it dangerous. Something gets posted, it looks close enough to real, and people believe it before anyone stops to check. Experts who study this call it an erosion of trust, and that's the right word for it. Once a fake image or clip spreads far enough, correcting it later barely matters. The fake version already did its damage in people's heads. That's what worries me more than any single picture: not that AI can fake something, but that so many people will believe it at sight and never think to check.

So no. AI image slop is not ok. Not a little ok, not "depends on the context" ok. Not ok.

It Was Always Bigger Than That

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:15:11 -0400

250 years later, here's what actually got lost.

I love this country. I don't love a flag, and I think a lot of people mix those two things up without realizing it.

This year's Fourth of July landed weird for me. With the current administration in office, I couldn't get into the mood for cookouts and fireworks like usual. I sat with that feeling for a few days before writing this, because I wanted to make sure I wasn't just venting. I wasn't.

I'll say the quiet part plainly: I don't think this administration reflects what the founders were actually reaching for. Self-governance, checks on power, government answering to the people instead of the other way around, that was the whole point of what got written down in 1776. When I look at what's happening right now, it doesn't feel like an extension of that vision. It feels like a departure from it. That's the real reason this year's Fourth landed weird for me, not politics for its own sake, but a real gap between what this day is supposed to stand for and what I'm actually watching happen.

Here's what's easy to lose sight of: the point of this day was never fireworks or cookouts. It's not a birthday party for a piece of fabric, or for a country turning a year older, and it was never a celebration of whoever happens to be running the government at the time. It commemorates a document that said people have rights nobody gets to take away, and that government only has power because people agree to give it that power. The actual words still hold up:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

That's the whole holiday, underneath everything we've piled on top of it since.

And a lot of us have actually lost that thread.

53%

of Americans don't know why we celebrate the Fourth of July

Source: Cato Institute, 2026

That's not a small gap. That's most of us, me included some years, just doing what we always do without stopping to ask why.

What are we actually celebrating?

July 4th marks the day the Continental Congress formally adopted the final wording of the Declaration of Independence. It's the birthday of a written argument for self-governance, not the finished result. We're not celebrating a country turning a year older. We're celebrating the moment a group of people wrote down why they believed they deserved to govern themselves.

And we've never celebrated it the same way twice, solemn in 1776, partisan by the 1790s, official by 1870, commercialized by the mid-1900s, reframed again after WWII, drifted into leisure by the suburban era. The fireworks-and-cookouts version isn't the "real" one either. It's just this era's version.

1776 — The Declaration is adopted. The argument gets written down.

1783 — Treaty of Paris. Britain formally recognizes independence. The war is over.

1789 — The Constitution takes effect. The government we recognize today starts running.

1870 — Congress makes July 4th an official federal holiday. Almost a century late.

1938 — Federal employees finally get it as a paid day off.

Here's a detail I love: the government was never first on this one either. People started lighting bonfires and firing cannons the summer independence was declared. Philadelphia held its first real annual celebration in 1777, cannons, a 13-rocket salute, the whole city "beautifully illuminated" according to the newspaper that night.

That same year, Congress also settled on what the flag would actually look like: 13 stripes, alternating red and white, one for each colony that had just declared itself free. The number wasn't decorative. It was a literal headcount of who was in this together.

We claimed this day for ourselves a full century before Washington DC ever put its name on it.

It didn't stay simple, either. Those early celebrations were supposed to build unity among the new nation's citizens. Within about a decade, the two rival political parties had turned it into competing celebrations instead, each one claiming to be the "real" patriotic one.

John Adams, writing to his wife the day before the Declaration was adopted, predicted exactly how we'd celebrate, and got the date wrong doing it. He wrote:

"It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by Solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be Solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations, from one End of this continent to the other, from this Time forward, forever more."

Notice the order there: deliverance first, then the party. He wasn't saying throw a party, he was saying mark what happened here, and here's how big a celebration that deserves. He just thought everyone would be celebrating it on July 2nd, not the 4th. Even Jefferson and Adams, two of the men most responsible for the whole thing, both died on July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years later.

So we followed Adams' instructions to the letter, fireworks, parades, bonfires, all of it. We just kept the how and quietly dropped the why.

Small thing I didn't expect: France went all in on this year's 250th, lighting the Eiffel Tower red, white, and blue, staging a light show at the Statue of Liberty, even reenacting the Battle of Yorktown at Versailles. Then I remembered why. France wasn't just cheering from the sidelines in 1776, their money, their navy, and their troops were part of the reason the war was actually winnable. Another thing about this day that's easy to forget until you look it up.

Which brings me to this year. On July 4th, a few hundred masked members of Patriot Front, a group researchers classify as white nationalist and white supremacist, marched through Capitol Hill carrying an upside-down American flag and a Confederate flag, a few blocks from the actual 250th anniversary celebration. John Quincy Adams once said America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. This year, one showed up at home, in broad daylight, on the actual anniversary. I don't think that means the whole country is falling apart. I also don't think it's nothing.

To me, real patriotism means loving the idea underneath the flag, not the fabric itself. It means noticing when the people in charge fall short of what the country's supposed to stand for, instead of looking away because noticing feels uncomfortable. That's not weaker love. It's just love that's paying attention.

Here's where I'll put my own opinion on the table: I'm not against fireworks. I'm against needing them to be bigger and better every single year. A 15 or 20 minute show is plenty, especially with a full day of parades, history, and cookouts already filling out the celebration.

This year the National Mall chased a world record instead, roughly 850,000 fireworks over 40 minutes, and internal National Park Service documents warned it would create hazardous, "very unhealthy" air quality around the Mall itself. Add in how loud it is everywhere at once, what that does to animals who have no idea it's a holiday, and this year's record heat forcing evacuations on top of it all, and a modest show avoids most of these problems from the start.

None of this has to mean giving up the spectacle either. Some towns are already swapping traditional fireworks for drone light shows, same wow factor, none of the smoke, noise, or wildfire risk. Celebrating can still look and feel amazing without needing to be the loudest, biggest version of itself every single year.

There's a related story from 1787, after the Constitutional Convention: someone reportedly asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government they'd just created. His answer:

"A republic, if you can keep it."

That's not a promise. That's a warning. The founders didn't hand us a finished country. They handed us a chance, one that only stays what it's supposed to be if people actually keep showing up for it.

Here's the detail that gets me most: when Trump said "we pledge allegiance to the flag they gave us" during his 250th anniversary speech, he was echoing words that have nothing to do with this holiday. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892, for Columbus Day. It's not from 1776. And the version most people know today got another layer added later, "under God" wasn't in it until 1954, added by Congress specifically to contrast with "godless" Soviet communism during the Cold War. Not from the founders either. He stood on a stage built around a dozen historic flags, added a military flyover, and never once pointed back to the actual document being commemorated that night. That's a real gap, not a small one.

Adams called for this day to be marked as a "Day of Deliverance." Trump's speech didn't quite match that. Alongside the flag tributes, it included attacks on "communism," a push for his own stalled election bill, and a claim about the Iran war that independent fact-checkers found no evidence for. That's not deliverance. That's a campaign stop wearing a flag.

So here's what I keep coming back to: maybe the point isn't figuring out the one right way to celebrate this day and handing it to everybody. Maybe it's just asking the question, honestly, every year. Are the things we say we believe in still true right now? If the answer's yes, light the fireworks. If it's more complicated than that, that's worth sitting with too.

I don't think any one person gets to decide if we're on the right track as a whole country. But noticing when something feels off, and saying so instead of performing enthusiasm we don't feel, is part of how a country stays on track in the first place. The point was never the fireworks or the cookouts. It was always bigger than that.

If you want a real starting point, it takes about ten minutes to read the actual document for yourself. Here's the National Archives' transcription of the original. Not the fireworks. Not the flag. Just the thing we're actually supposed to be celebrating.

Maybe It's Just Me, But Blogging Shouldn't Have This

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 13:41:09 -0400

John Gruber over at Daring Fireball recently gave a name to something we've all been quietly furious about for years: the dickover. It's that full-screen curtain that drops the second you land on an article, demanding you subscribe to a newsletter, accept seventeen kinds of cookies, or download an app you will never use, before it lets you read a single word of the thing you actually clicked on.

Dickover (noun) — a full-screen or pop-up panel that blocks a site's own content until you deal with it: agree to cookies, subscribe to the newsletter, install the app, accept the terms, something you didn't come there to do.

I hate them. Like, a lot, more than a little pop-up probably deserves. Maybe that's just me being particular about it, but I'd bet a lot of you feel the same way and just haven't had a word for it until now.

Here's my sarcastic public service announcement: I hereby declare that dickovers should be banned forever, retroactively, and anyone who ever coded one should have to personally apologize to every reader whose scroll position they ruined. Somebody somewhere thought "you know what this article needs? A wall." And the rest of us have been paying for that decision every single day since.

Dickovers are a veritable scourge.

— John Gruber, Daring Fireball

I've read more blogs in the past few years than in my first twenty years of blogging combined, and dickovers are honestly a big part of why I notice this stuff now. I get it, there's probably a reason behind most of them somewhere: cookie compliance, growth metrics, whatever the business case is. On some giant commercial news site or a SaaS company's homepage, fine, that's just the cost of doing business online. Annoying, sure. Expected, also sure.

But blogging? Blogging was supposed to be the one corner of the internet that didn't do this to you. Gruber even calls out Substack by name, a platform built entirely around blogs, greeting visitors with a full-screen curtain before they can read a single post. That's the part that stings. It's not just that dickovers exist somewhere out there. It's that they found their way into the one place that was never supposed to have them.

I wish nobody had ever invented them, full stop, but out of everything, this is the part I actually care about: other corners of the web can keep doing whatever they're going to do, that's on them. Blogging should have been the exception.

Full disclosure: my own Substack used to pop up that exact same subscribe prompt, and for a while I didn't think much of it. I didn't really know what the platform was doing by default at the time.

It wasn't until I started reading other people's Substacks as a reader myself that it started to wear on me, that same wall, over and over, blog after blog. Then Gruber's article gave it a name, and my first reaction was a quick "wait, was I doing that to people?" No, not really. I just didn't know any better yet.

But that's exactly why moving this blog over to Micro.blog is one of the better decisions I've made in twenty-some years of doing this. I'm not out here chasing audience growth, I'm just putting my thoughts down and hoping someone finds them useful or interesting along the way. If you're reading this, thank you, I appreciate you being here.

There's a quiet little note tucked in somewhere if you want new posts sent to your email, but that's all it is: a note. Not a curtain. Not a wall you have to fight through first.

So here's where I've landed: dickovers are never going away, I'm never going to stop being annoyed by them, and honestly that feels like a fair trade. :-)

Today, Recent, Fading: The Inkwell Idea I Couldn't Leave Alone

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:48:15 -0400

So my RSS tab in Perch runs on Inkwell, Micro.blog’s RSS reader, using my micro.blog token.

Inkwell’s own apps have this thing where posts are split into three tabs — Today, Recent, and Fading — and stuff just naturally ages out instead of turning into a giant unread pile. Manton talked about this when he introduced Inkwell.

Honestly it’s one of my favorite ideas in any feed reader, and I really wanted that same feel inside Perch, not just in Inkwell’s own app.

Turns out that wasn’t a quick copy-paste though. Inkwell’s API just gives you a flat list of entries with timestamps — no “bucket” built in. So I had to rebuild that whole Today/Recent/Fading thing from scratch. Took hours to get right, honestly no easy task.

But it paid off — Perch’s RSS view now sorts everything into Today, Recent, or Fading just like Inkwell’s own app does, and lets old stuff quietly drop off. I actually finally caught up on all the RSS that’s been sitting in Inkwell somewhere, which felt pretty great.

Now, categories — this is the one Inkwell just doesn’t have at all, not in the app, not in the API. Feeds are just a flat list over there.

So I built my own version. Categories live in a Notion database, keyed by feed URL, so I only have to tag a feed once and every entry from it picks up the category automatically.

You can set a category from a popover on any card, or from a slide-in panel, and then filter your feed down to just one topic.

That same panel also has a Sources tab — just a plain list of everything you’re subscribed to, so you can filter to one specific feed just as easily.

There’s a one-way sync keeping Inkwell and Notion in step so neither one messes up the other — Inkwell’s still the truth for what you’re subscribed to, Notion’s the truth for how it’s organized.

All together, this setup just works for me. Today/Recent/Fading for pacing, categories and sources for organizing, all sitting on top of Inkwell instead of replacing it. Kind of feels like a Feedly/Inkwell mashup at this point. Categories/tags are honestly the one thing I keep hoping Inkwell adds on its own someday — until then, this is how I get there myself.

Today, Recent, and Fading in the RSS feed

Category list

Source list

The ADA Turns 36. The Work Isn't Done

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 19:25:04 -0400

Thirty-six years ago today, a civil rights law went into effect that said — in plain terms — disabled people belong everywhere. In jobs. In schools. On buses. In buildings. In public life.

That was the promise.

The promise is still being negotiated.

What the ADA Was Built to Do

For anyone who wasn't around in 1990 — here's the short version.

Before the ADA, there was no federal law that broadly protected disabled people from discrimination in everyday life. You could be turned away from a job, denied access to a building, or excluded from a school program simply because of a disability, and it was perfectly legal. Disability rights activists had spent decades fighting that reality — organizing, protesting, and pushing Congress to act.

When President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law on July 26, 1990, it was built around four core goals:

Equal Opportunity Disabled people should have the same chances as everyone else in employment, education, and public life.

Full Participation The right to be present and included in every part of community life — not segregated or excluded.

Independent Living The right to live in the community, not in institutions, and to make your own choices about your own life.

Economic Self-Sufficiency The ability to work, earn, and participate in the economy on equal footing.

The scope

The ADA wasn't just about ramps and parking spots. It covered jobs, schools, doctor's offices, buses, government buildings, websites, and anywhere the public goes. The idea was simple: disabled people are full citizens, and society has an obligation to include them.

Want to go deeper on the history? This panel discussion from the Museum of Science Boston and Perkins School for the Blind is worth your time.

▶ Watch on YouTube

Thirty-six years later, that obligation is still being fulfilled — unevenly, slowly, and in some places, not at all. Here is where each of those promises stands today.

Want to learn more about the ADA? Visit ada.gov ↗

The Law Created the Floor. We Haven't Built Much on Top of It.

The employment numbers tell one part of the story.

2025 Employment Data

22.8% of disabled people were employed

65.2% of non-disabled people were employed

8.3% unemployment rate for disabled workers*

* More than double the 4.1% unemployment rate for non-disabled workers.

That gap has barely moved in years. The ADA didn't fail. The systems around it did.

What was supposed to come after the law — accessible transit, workplaces that actually accommodate people, schools that prepare disabled students for real careers — those pieces are still missing or incomplete. The law set a legal minimum. Most institutions stopped right there.

That is the central problem. Not the ADA itself. Everything that was supposed to follow it.

And now there is a new layer to it. Hiring algorithms and automated screening tools are increasingly filtering out neurodivergent applicants and people with disabilities — not because they aren't qualified, but because the systems doing the filtering weren't built with them in mind. AI was supposed to remove human bias from hiring. In practice, it often just encodes it faster.

Education: Protected on Paper, Uneven in Practice

The ADA covers schools. So does Section 504. Together, they give students with disabilities the right to equal access — to buildings, programs, and digital tools.

But rights on paper and rights in practice are not always the same thing.

About 1 in 5 college students has some form of disability. Schools are required to make their websites, apps, and course materials accessible. But many are still behind, and enforcement has been uneven. There are also growing concerns about proposals to move special education oversight out of the Department of Education entirely — a shift that advocates warn could weaken enforcement of IDEA, the law that protects disabled students' rights in schools.

When enforcement weakens, the families with the fewest resources are the ones who feel it most.

Healthcare: The ADA Says Equal Access. Reality Disagrees.

The ADA requires healthcare providers to be physically accessible and to communicate clearly with patients who have disabilities. Sign language interpreters. Accessible exam tables. Information in formats people can actually use.

In practice, those requirements are inconsistently met.

People with disabilities face worse health outcomes than non-disabled people — not because of their disabilities alone, but because of barriers in the system itself. Offices that are hard to navigate. Providers who aren't trained to work with disabled patients. Telehealth platforms that don't work with assistive technology. Patient portals that screen readers can't use.

Very few medical schools train doctors in disability-inclusive care. That gap in training becomes a gap in care — felt by every disabled person who has had to explain their own needs to a doctor who wasn't prepared.

Worth knowing

The ADA's Olmstead decision established the right to live in the community rather than in institutions. That right depends on home and community-based services — and those services depend heavily on Medicaid funding. When that funding gets cut, the ADA's promise of integration doesn't disappear on paper. It just becomes impossible in practice.

Digital Access Is Still a Fight

The internet wasn't part of the original ADA. It didn't exist the way it does now. For years, digital accessibility lived in a gray area — technically required, but rarely enforced and even less often practiced.

New rules have tried to change that. Public entities are now required to meet web accessibility standards for their websites and apps. But compliance deadlines keep getting pushed back. In late 2025, two pending rules about accessible equipment and accessible routes in public spaces were dropped entirely by the Department of Justice. Experts are predicting more ADA website lawsuits in 2026 as a result — because when the government steps back, litigation steps in.

The gaps are still everywhere. Captions that were auto-generated and never checked. Alt text that just says "image." PDFs no screen reader can parse. Navigation that breaks without a mouse.

This is the accessibility work most organizations don't want to do because it never ends. It's not a project with a completion date. It's a practice. And most institutions haven't built it into how they operate — because the law hasn't forced them to, and culture hasn't demanded it yet.

A Lot of What Passes for Compliance Is Theater

The ramp that exists — but only at the side entrance. The captioned video where the captions are wrong half the time. The "accessible" bathroom behind three heavy doors. The job posting that says "equal opportunity employer" and then screens out anyone who doesn't fit a narrow mold.

Somewhere along the way, the floor became the goal. Do the minimum. Don't get sued. Move on.

That is not what disability rights advocates fought for. The ADA was meant to be a starting point — a foundation to build on, not a ceiling to bump against once and call it done.

And yet, too many institutions are still bumping against the floor.

What Moving Forward Actually Looks Like

This anniversary has made one thing clear: laws create possibility, but they don't create culture. Culture has to be built — in hiring decisions, in school policies, in design choices, in who gets a seat at the table when systems are created.

Digital accessibility needs to be infrastructure, not an afterthought. Every organization that serves the public should have an accessibility practice built into how it operates — not just a policy document in a drawer.

Employers need to close the gap between accommodation policy and accommodation culture. Having a policy matters. Having a culture where people can ask for what they need without fear or friction matters more.

Disabled people need to be in the room where decisions are made. Not brought in at the end to review something already built. As leaders, designers, and policymakers shaping systems from the start.

The anniversary conversation needs to include accountability. Not just recognition of how far we've come — honest reckoning with how far we haven't.

What We Owe Each Other

Disability touches every community, every family, and eventually most lives. It is not a niche issue. When systems are built to exclude disabled people, those systems are weaker for everyone.

The question is no longer whether the ADA matters. It's whether the institutions it was meant to hold accountable are actually being held accountable. Whether the law is being enforced, funded, extended, and defended — or quietly eroded through inaction, budget cuts, and rolled-back regulations.

That is a question everyone has a stake in answering.

36 Isn't a Milestone — It's a Marker

Milestone implies arrival. This isn't that.

Thirty-six years is a long time to still be fighting for basic access. It's also, in the scope of civil rights history, not that long. These things move slowly. They move because people keep pushing.

The ADA's promise was never going to fulfill itself. It requires constant defense, constant expansion, and constant pressure from people who refuse to accept that doing the minimum is good enough.

That pressure is what got us here. It's what gets us further.

Thirty-six years of progress. Still so much further to go.

Twenty-Two Years and Eight Platforms Late

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 13:33:08 -0400

Twenty-two years of blogging. Eight platforms. More hiatuses than I care to count. I started in 2004 back when blogging was just what you did if you had something to say and a corner of the internet to say it in. I kept coming back, even when life got in the way. I always do. I put together a full timeline of the journey: The Long Road Here ↗

Two New Pages, One Productive Day

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:33:53 -0400

Back in February I installed the Newsletters plugin for Micro.blog — @manton’s own — and then completely forgot about it. Today I stumbled across it again and finally dug in. It creates a dedicated /newsletters/ index page listing all your past issues. Neat! Except it came with absolutely zero styling. Bare bones.

So I styled it to match the rest of the blog. Took some back and forth, but it came together nicely. There’s even pagination on the single newsletter view. And when you click one of the newsletter posts, it shows a preview of exactly what was sent to subscribers.

The other page I finished today was my rating scale. It started with stumbling across a post by @JohnPhilpin — he had a link to his own review ratings page and I liked the idea enough to borrow it as inspiration and build my own version.

His page and mine are similar, but I added a recent reviews section at the bottom — a short list of my latest watched films and shows.

Always fun to tinker with Micro.blog. There’s always room for improvement and new additions — and honestly that’s half the fun.

The Android Feature That Leaves "Close All Tabs" Guides in the Dust

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:00:54 -0400

There are guides out there covering how to close all your tabs at once — like this one. Solid tips, all of them. Closing all tabs at once beats going one by one through the tab switcher any day. I get why people need it.

But not one of them mentions that Android already closes certain tabs for you automatically. You don't have to do a thing.

When you open a link from an email, a news app, or a text message, browsers like Chrome, Brave, and Firefox on Android treat it as a temporary tab. Swipe back to whatever you were doing before and that tab just closes itself. Your other tabs stay exactly where you left them, and the page still shows up in your history if you need it again.

💡 How it works

Swipe back to the previous app → tab closes automatically.
Use the app switcher to go back → tab stays open for later.

Chrome and Brave users: Both browsers can automatically move inactive tabs to a separate inactive section after 7, 14, or 21 days — your choice in settings.

I use this every single day. My browser stays clean because the temporary stuff disappears on its own, and the tabs I actually care about stick around until I'm done with them — at which point I just close that one tab manually. Done, marked off, gone.

"Close All Tabs" is great for the occasional deep clean. But for everyday browsing, Android already figured out the right answer — quietly, in the background, without asking you to manage anything.

How to Close All the Tabs on Your iPhone—and Why You’ll Be So Glad You Did

It's time to bid adieu to your endless jungle of open web pages by learning how to close all tabs on your iPhone—all at once.

rd.com

Why I built Perch...

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:57:48 -0400

I've been writing blog posts on and off for over 20 years. I survived the Blogger era, bounced around platforms, and eventually landed on Micro.blog — where I've been happily tinkering ever since. I dabble in HTML and CSS for fun, I'm a perfectionist about how my posts look, and I have a long history of going down rabbit holes trying to get things exactly right. If you've read my post about wrestling with Micro.blog, you already know how this goes.

So when things kept getting in the way of how I wanted to work — it was only a matter of time before I did something about it. I'm a builder at heart. I like solving my own problems. And honestly? Building something from scratch is just fun.

That's how Perch was born.

Micro.blog is a great platform for writing. It actually does a solid job with books and movies, too. But I wanted to take it further — richer visual cards, my own design, my own rating. The problem is that building a custom HTML card every single time is exhausting. Find the poster, copy the synopsis, manually assemble the star rating, and put it all together from a saved template. Every single post.

Same thing with figure and figcaption — a format I like, rebuilt from scratch every time. The writing part takes minutes. The HTML assembly takes forever. I wanted to spend my time writing, not repeating the same HTML over and over.

And the composer isn't exactly mobile-friendly either. It gets the job done, but it never felt built for the way I actually work.

Blogging is about writing. Plain and simple. And honestly, plain text does the job just fine — nobody needs custom HTML to tell a good story. But for me, blogging is also a hobby, and part of the fun is getting creative with how a post looks. Micro.blog gives me the freedom to write in HTML and Markdown right in the composer — and I intend to use every bit of that. I enjoy experimenting with layouts, making things more visual and enjoyable to read. It's not about impressing anyone. It's just fun. Why not use it?

But there's a difference between creative HTML work and repeatedly writing the same HTML, especially on mobile. That part stops being fun fast.

There are some great apps in the Micro.blog ecosystem. Epilogues are lovely in books and movies. Micro.social is a solid native client. Drafts is a fantastic writing app — I still use it on the computer for long reads. Other cross-platform writing apps exist, but most charge per platform, which gets expensive fast. I use Notion too, but Notion can't publish directly to Micro.blog.

I saw good ideas across all of them and took notes. As the old saying goes, great artists steal. I just wanted to take the best of what I saw and build something that works the way I do, on every device I use.

So I built Perch.

Timeline with Flock (Micro.blog), RSS (Inkwell), Reel and Discover

Perch is a Vite + React PWA hosted on Netlify. It publishes to Micro.blog via Micropub, with Netlify functions handling title fetching and API proxy calls. APIs used: Trakt and TMDB for movies and TV, Google Books with Open Library fallback for books, and Merriam-Webster with Free Dictionary fallback for definitions.

The name started as Porch — sitting on the porch, watching the world go by, writing whatever's on my mind. I added an E, and it became something with a little more character. Perch. It felt right because I see birds on my porch every day, so the bird theme was a natural fit. The whole app leaned into that: bird-themed throughout, color palette pulled straight from this blog's terracotta and navy.

I started building it a couple of months ago, working across many sessions with Claude and some help from Gemini along the way. I've been using AI tools for over a year and a half now, and watching them get better and better has been amazing. I had zero experience building an app before this. But AI helped me build exactly what I had in mind, the way I wanted it. I've learned a lot, and I'm grateful for that. Being a perfectionist probably didn't make it easier — but it made Perch better.

The idea was simple at first: one composer with everything in one window. The toolbar lets me write in either Markdown or HTML — I switch between them depending on what I'm building. The composer also knows when a post needs a title — it prompts automatically for longer posts so I don't have to think about it.

Composer

Composer Insert

Markdown Toolbar

HTML Toolbar

Here's what I can insert directly from the composer:

Add title

Added manually or auto-prompted for longer posts

Photo

Insert as Markdown, HTML, or figure/figcaption

Movie

Search, build a card, add your rating when done watching

Book

Search, build a card, add your rating when done reading

Embed

YouTube or Instagram shortcode auto-generated

Link

Drop in a URL, fetch the title, insert as Markdown or HTML

Define

Search a word & drop in a styled definition card

Cache

Pull a saved bookmark into the composer

One more thing I'm particularly proud of — the composer shows a live preview of exactly how the post will look on my blog, rendered with my own theme CSS. Not a generic preview. My actual design.

Desktop Composer + Preview

I search for a movie or TV show and Perch pulls the info from Trakt and grabs the poster from TMDB — then builds the card HTML automatically. Same for books via Google Books. When I've finished watching or reading, I add my star rating, and that's it. No more hunting for posters, copying synopses, or assembling HTML by hand.

Come across a new word while writing? I drop in a definition card instead of writing it plain. Paste a YouTube or Instagram link, and Perch generates the shortcode and inserts it automatically.

Micro.blog has a reblog embed I can copy into the composer, but I wanted to skip that step entirely. Hit Echo — Perch's name for reblogging — and the composer opens already formatted with the blockquote in place, ready for me to add my own comment after it. It's still early, and I plan to improve it over time.

And if I want a post with a movie card, a book card, and a link all at once? That doesn't even exist as a concept in Micro.blog. In Perch, it's just Tuesday.

Then I started building and realized I could do more. If I'm already connecting to Micro.blog's API, I can pull my timeline too. And my bookmarks. And my drafts — saved in Micro.blog, pulled into Perch whenever I'm ready to finish and publish. Perch went from being a smarter composer to a full client, built around how I actually use the platform.

Every word in the app was picked on purpose. Here's how it breaks down:

🐦 Flock

My timeline — but it's not just one feed. Flock has four tabs: the main timeline of people I follow, RSS via Inkwell, Reel (books, movies, and TV all in one dedicated feed), and Discover for finding other blogs.

✍️ Perch

The composer tab shares the app's name for a reason. It's the heart of the whole thing — where everything described above lives.

🪺 Nest

Where my posts live. I can view, edit drafts, edit published posts, and pull up post URLs. Nest also has dedicated Books and Movies tabs for managing my reading and watchlists.

Bookshelves

Movies/TV

📦 Cache

My bookmark hub. Right now it pulls from two sources — Notion and Micro.blog. I can read a saved link, jump straight into the composer to write about it, and if I delete something from Cache it syncs back to the source. Two-way. Clean.

Bookmarks (Notion + Microblog)

🪮 Preen

Settings and control panel. Token, dictionary, and RSS list live here, plus quick shortcuts into Micro.blog. There's also a built-in Perch Glossary so the bird vocabulary always makes sense.

Settings

One thing worth explaining about Flock is the thread view. Micro.blog's conversation view was driving me nuts. When I see a reply I scroll up to read the whole conversation for context — then I hit another reply to the same thread and have to read it all over again. Redundant and annoying. So I built a proper thread view in Perch. It sorts everything into one thread — original post at the top, replies in order below it. It takes a moment to load but that's a fair trade. It won't be perfect but it's a lot better than reading the same conversation twice.

Threads for Conversation

And the actions follow the same language:

Chirp

Reply to a post

Echo

Reblog and amplify

Branches

View conversation

Beak

Copy the post URL

Nothing is random — it all fits together.

I'm still building. Life has been a bit chaotic lately — I'm a caregiver for my aging parents and a close friend who had a stroke, cooking dinner every night, and juggling a lot of doctor visits. Progress has been slower than I'd like. That's also why I haven't been writing long-form posts lately — just micros and micro quotes. When Perch is in a solid place, I'm hoping to get back to writing long-form again this summer.

There are a few things I want to add down the road. A translate button for non-English posts in the timeline. Link preview cards so URLs in the feed show up as rich previews. Micro.blog Notes as a panel in Cache. And a tinted callout box in the composer for when I want to highlight something without it being a full blockquote. Nothing urgent — just things I know I'll want eventually.

That's the whole point of building something yourself — nobody else is going to build exactly what you need, because nobody else works exactly the way you do. This isn't a critique of Micro.blog or any of those apps. It's just me making my life easier in the way that makes sense for me. When I want something new in Perch, I go build it. No waiting, no workarounds. Just the way I like it.

This is also the first post I've written using Draft Studio — a writing tool I built for this blog. More on that soon.

My Browser Stack

Wed, 06 May 2026 15:03:38 -0400

Three browsers on Mac. One on Android. Each has a specific job and I like it that way.

Brave is my daily driver on both platforms. It handles pretty much everything — general browsing, research, shopping, social media. Privacy-focused out of the box, fast, and I never have to think too hard about it. On Android, it’s the only browser I use. Simple.

Arc on Mac has one very specific role: it’s what opens when an external app fires a link. My email client, Talanoa, sends links straight to Arc — and it opens in Little Arc, a small floating window just for that quick look. No full browser, no tab clutter. Read it, close it, done.

Comet is my Perplexity browser. That’s the whole job description. When I want to ask a question, dig into a topic, or research a site I’m already on, Comet is where I go. It’s built around Perplexity’s AI search and it stays in its lane. I appreciate that.

On Windows, for consulting work, I keep it straightforward — Edge and Firefox. Nothing fancy, just what gets the job done in that environment.

I like having each browser doing one thing well instead of one browser doing everything poorly. There’s something satisfying about a setup where every tool knows its place.

I’m also poking around with a few others out of curiosity. Orion is a WebKit-based Mac browser with strong privacy chops. Zen Browser is a Firefox fork that’s been getting some attention lately. And ChatGPT Atlas is new enough that I’m still figuring out what I think about it. Nothing committed yet — just exploring.

Extensions

I run the same set across Brave, Arc, and Comet. No reason to have different setups when the job is the same.

AdGuard AdBlocker handles ads and trackers. Fast, reliable, stays out of the way.

Claude in Chrome puts Claude directly in the browser. Useful for quick questions or working through something on a page without switching apps.

Claude Usage Tracker keeps an eye on my Claude usage so I’m not caught off guard.

ClearURLs strips tracking parameters out of URLs automatically. One of those quiet extensions you forget is running until you see a clean link.

Click to Remove Element is my clutter killer. When a page is a mess — overlays, sidebars, whatever — I can just click and remove what’s in the way. Makes reading a lot more comfortable.

Google Dictionary gives me a quick definition popup whenever I highlight a word and click. Simple and fast.

Google Docs Offline keeps Docs working when I don’t have a connection. Consulting work means I need that reliability.

Google Translate for quick translations on the fly when I hit a page in another language.

Grammarly catches typos and awkward phrasing while I write. Useful across the board.

MaxFocus is a link preview and AI assistant combo. Hover over a link and get a peek before committing to opening it.

Notion Web Clipper sends anything worth saving straight to Notion. Articles, pages, references — clip it and it’s there.

Raindrop.io is my bookmarking tool of choice. Everything gets organized there instead of living in a browser bookmark folder nobody ever looks at.

That’s the full stack. Minimal where I can be, practical where I need to be.

Inspired by Pivic’s web browsers page.

The Planet Is Still Worth Showing Up For

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:23:27 -0400

There's a patch of wild grass behind my tiny house I've never mowed. Something always shows up there — a beetle, a moth, a spider doing its thing. So I made a quiet deal with that patch of ground: I leave it alone, it does its thing.

It's a small thing. But on Earth Day, small things are what I think about.

Yesterday was Earth Day 2026, and the theme is "Our Power, Our Planet." I like that. Not "our crisis" — our power. That framing matters. It says the story isn't over.

And honestly, the news backs that up more than you'd think.

The Wins Worth Talking About

Climate news tends to be doom and gloom, which, fair — there's a lot of doom and gloom to report. But running alongside it is another story that doesn't get nearly enough airtime. So let's talk about that one today.

Energy first. In 2025, wind and solar beat out fossil fuels in EU electricity generation for the first time ever. Clean energy hit 30% of Europe's electricity mix, fossil fuels dropped to 29%. Solar grew more than 20% for the fourth year in a row. In 19 EU countries, coal is now less than 5% of the grid. A decade ago that would've sounded like a fantasy.

Norway is out ahead of everyone else. Nearly 90% of new cars sold there in 2024 were electric, and by September that year, EVs actually outnumbered gas-powered cars on Norwegian roads — a world first. The electric car transition isn't a someday thing in Oslo. It's just what's happening.

Here in the US, federal policy has been rough. But the market didn't get the memo. In 2025, over 90% of new electricity capacity added in the US came from clean sources — nearly 50 gigawatts of solar, wind, and batteries. No new coal plants. Zero. New England's last coal plant shut down for good. States kept building, kept expanding heat pumps and EV charging and solar permitting, even while Washington was doing the opposite. The clean energy transition here is running on momentum now, not permission.

The oceans got some good news too. The High Seas Treaty became international law on January 17, 2026. After almost twenty years of negotiations, 60 countries finally ratified it and it crossed the finish line. For the first time, the parts of the ocean that don't belong to any country — about two-thirds of it — have actual legal protections. Greenpeace called it the biggest conservation win ever. Hard to argue with that.

France banned PFAS — those "forever chemicals" in waterproof jackets, cosmetics, all kinds of everyday stuff — starting January 1, 2026. Drinking water testing is now mandatory. Polluters pay. One country, but the rest of Europe is watching.

And then there's this one that I keep thinking about. Underground, beneath basically every forest and field on the planet, there are fungal networks — mycorrhizal fungi — connecting plant roots together, moving nutrients around, and storing carbon. About 13 billion tons of it a year. The planet has had its own carbon capture system running this whole time and we're only just starting to understand it. Dr. Toby Kiers just won the 2026 Tyler Prize — the Nobel Prize equivalent for the environment — for her work studying and mapping these networks. Nature's been doing the work quietly without any press releases.

Our Power

Earth Day's official 2026 manifesto frames the theme around a specific idea: environmental progress doesn't depend on any one administration or election. It's built by communities, workers, families, and educators who just keep showing up for the places they live.

I think about that from up a holler in Elkhorn City. I live in a tiny house in Appalachia — mountains and creeks in every direction, more sky than most people see in a week. I'm not out there documenting it or doing anything particularly noble. But I do care about it. The unmowed grass out back is about as far as my Earth Day activism goes, honestly — though seeing the butterflies and bumblebees and carpenter bees floating around out there genuinely pleases me. Maybe a sweat bee or two in there as well. They've claimed that patch, and I'm glad they have.

Maybe that's enough. Maybe caring about where you live — even quietly, even imperfectly — is where it starts.

The wins I listed above didn't happen because one person at the top decided to make it happen. They happened because enough people kept pushing long enough for the needle to move. The EU energy transition. Norway's EV numbers. The High Seas Treaty — two decades of work by scientists and small island nations who just wouldn't drop it. US states building clean energy anyway. That's what it looks like when it actually works.

Our power is real. It's just slow and doesn't make for great headlines.

56 Years

The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970. Senator Gaylord Nelson and activist Denis Hayes picked that date on purpose — a weekday between spring break and finals, built to pull students in. Twenty million Americans showed up. Ten percent of the country.

Fifty-six years later, Earth Day has grown into one of the largest civic events on the planet — marked across more than 190 countries. The movement that started as a protest against dirty air and toxic water is still going. Still finding wins.

That's what I want to sit with today. Not the doom — that'll still be there tomorrow. Just the fact that Europe is running on more wind and solar than fossil fuels. That the US kept building clean energy even when the government stopped caring. That the oceans finally have a law. That somewhere under my unmowed grass a fungal network is quietly storing carbon.

A billion people think the planet is worth showing up for.

I'm one of them.

Our power. Our planet. Let's not waste either one.

🌱 Happy Belated Earth Day.

A Few Weeks in the Geek Cave: What I've Been Building

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:24:25 -0400

The past few weeks have been less about writing posts and more about building the thing that holds them. If you've visited the blog recently and noticed things looking a little sharper, a little more intentional — that's not your imagination. I've been deep in the code, and I want to tell you what that actually looked like.

It Started With One Thing and Became Twenty

That's always how it goes, isn't it? I went in wanting to clean up a small layout inconsistency, and three weeks later I had touched nearly every part of the theme. CSS sections, Hugo templates, JavaScript, mobile layouts — all of it got some attention. Not because anything was broken beyond fixing, but because once you start looking, you can't stop seeing what could be better.

The biggest structural change was collapsing two redundant card components into one. The blog feed used to have a micro-card for short posts and a post-card for longer ones — two separate chunks of code doing almost the same job. I merged them into a single unified card with simple logic inside: if a post is over 800 characters, it shows a truncated summary with a "Keep reading" link. Under 800, it shows everything. Same visual design, half the code. That kind of cleanup feels good in a way that's hard to explain to non-developers, but if you've ever reorganized a messy drawer and felt the satisfaction of it — it's that.

The TOC Fight

One of the more satisfying fixes involved the Table of Contents sidebar on Long Read posts. It had been working, then stopped, and I couldn't figure out why. The TOC is supposed to stay sticky as you scroll — following you down the page, highlighting each section as you reach it. It wasn't doing that anymore.

After a lot of digging, I found the culprit: Grammarly. The browser extension was injecting overflow: hidden onto the page body at runtime, which silently broke position: sticky on the sidebar. One line of CSS fixed it — I forced the body to allow vertical scroll regardless of what extensions try to inject. Took a while to find, took a second to fix. That's debugging in a nutshell.

Mobile Got a Real Rethink

I spent a good chunk of time thinking hard about the mobile experience. The blog was sitting at 56% on PageSpeed Insights, and I wanted to push that number up. Some of it was technical — moving the Splide.js carousel off the top of the page and down between the About Me blurb and Recent Geeksouts, converting images to WebP format, and making sure every image has proper alt text for accessibility. Some of it was design.

Honestly though, the performance score didn't budge much. A lot of what's dragging it down is baked into how Hugo builds on Micro.blog — stuff I simply don't have control over. So I made peace with it. I loaded the blog on my phone — a newer, high-end device — and it runs beautifully. The tradeoff I'm aware of is that people on older, aging devices might have a different experience. That's something I'll keep an eye on.

The feed layout on mobile used to have the post date in a column on the left, with the post content on the right. It worked, but on a small screen it was eating up real estate. I dropped it and switched to a stacked editorial style — date above, content below — which gave the text more room to breathe. I also discovered that iPhone Safari and Android Chrome render fonts very differently, and had to add a specific CSS block just to tame the iPhone sizing without breaking how good it already looked on Android.

I tested across Brave, Safari, Orion, Comet, Arc, and Chrome — the browsers I use most often. Everything looks good on both mobile and desktop. The one exception is Comet and Arc on my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 when unfolded — there's a header nav issue and some unexpected white space on the right side that the other browsers don't have. Still investigating why. The rest of the browsers handle it beautifully, so it's a quirk worth chasing down rather than a crisis.

Little Things That Add Up

Beyond the big structural stuff, a lot of small things got fixed or refined:

The blockquote style got unified across every context on the site — feed, single post, static pages — so it always looks the same no matter where it appears. Warm terracotta background, deep rust border, Georgia italic. It's a small detail but it matters.

The homepage search bar got taller and wider — more inviting, easier to tap on mobile. The subscribe section got a proper card layout. The footer on short posts now shows a permalink instead of a redundant date. The category pills lost the wavy underline that Micro.blog's own CSS was injecting over my styles.

The Reading page got some love too. The bookshelf got a visual overhaul — compact cover cards with title and author, styled consistently with the rest of the site. I even added a fake wood shelf underneath the currently reading section, which sounds a little silly but looks fantastic. It's a much nicer way to show what I'm currently reading than a plain list.

The Now page got a full redesign — a navy card for what I'm currently tinkering with, arrow-style lists for writing links, a bookshelf section for what I'm reading, and an auto-updating Long Reads block so I never have to update it manually again.

And "Recent Posts" became "Recent Geekouts." Because obviously.

Rethinking the Homepage Order

I also reorganized the homepage layout. It used to open with the featured post, then my About Me blurb, then the subscribe strip, then the recent feed. It made sense at the time, but it always felt like the featured post was grabbing attention before readers even knew what the blog was about.

So I flipped it. Now the homepage opens with the About Me section, followed by the subscribe strip, then the featured post, then the recent feed. It's a small reorder but it changes the feel significantly — you get context first, then content. New visitors know who I am and what this place is before they dive into anything. It just makes more sense.

What's Next

The theme is in a good place right now. There are always small things to revisit — there's a Browse by Topic spacing issue that keeps evading me, and I want to keep watching how the "Keep reading" truncation performs across different post types. But the tinkering never really stops. I'll keep poking at the HTML and CSS, making this a more enjoyable reading experience one small improvement at a time.

If you've landed on the homepage and have thoughts about how it looks or reads, I'd love to hear from you. Seriously — drop me a note. Feedback from actual readers means a lot.

The "Deaf Gain" That Conquered Space: The Gallaudet 11 🚀

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:53:54 -0400

This past week, the world watched four astronauts climb into a capsule called Integrity and fly to the Moon and back for the first time in over fifty years. Artemis II splashed down in the Pacific on April 10th, carrying Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen farther from Earth than any crew since Apollo.

It was a big deal. And watching it, I kept thinking about eleven men most people have never heard of — men who quietly helped make all of this possible. I knew the Gallaudet 11 were involved in space experiments. What I didn’t know was just how deep that involvement went — that their work quietly laid the foundation for human spaceflight as we know it. That’s the part that got me.

The Problem

Back in the late 1950s, NASA had a serious question it couldn’t answer: what does weightlessness actually do to the human body? Specifically, they were worried about the vestibular system — your inner ear — which is basically your brain’s GPS for knowing which way is up. In zero gravity, it gets confused. That confusion causes nausea, disorientation, and the kind of mental fog that could make it impossible to fly a spacecraft.

To understand the inner ear’s role, they needed people without one. Which is a surprisingly hard thing to find.

Enter the Gallaudet 11

Between 1958 and 1968, NASA teamed up with the U.S. Naval School of Aviation Medicine and recruited eleven Deaf men from Gallaudet University. Most had lost their vestibular function as kids due to spinal meningitis. Their inner ears didn’t send balance signals to their brains at all.

Worth noting: they weren’t chosen just because they were Deaf. Not all Deaf people have altered vestibular systems. NASA needed this specific combination — Deafness plus damaged inner ear function — and Gallaudet was the most likely place to find a group of people who fit that profile. That distinction matters.

To NASA, these eleven men were a perfect control group. To the rest of the world, they were largely invisible.

The Experiments

The tests were wild. One had participants living inside a 20-foot room that spun at up to ten rotations per minute for days at a time. The researchers running the experiment got so sick they had to be rotated out. The Gallaudet 11 played cards and hung out, completely unfazed.

Another test took place on a ferry off Nova Scotia during a storm. The boat was tossing hard enough that scientists were genuinely scared. The researchers got so sick the experiment had to be called off. The Gallaudet 11 were relaxed, enjoying the ride.

On zero-gravity flights — the ones nicknamed the “Vomit Comet” — they were the calm ones in the room, doing their tasks while everyone else reached for a bag.

Why It Mattered

Their data gave NASA something it couldn’t get anywhere else: a baseline. A clear picture of what the body does in extreme conditions when the inner ear isn’t involved. That knowledge shaped astronaut training, helped develop anti-motion-sickness drugs, and informed how many Gs a crew could safely withstand. It had applications far beyond the space program.

They weren’t consulted or accommodated. They were essential.

Deaf Gain

There’s a concept in the Deaf community called Deaf Gain — the idea that traits the hearing world frames as losses can, in the right context, be genuine advantages. The Gallaudet 11 are one of the most concrete examples of that you’ll ever find.

These men didn’t accidentally stumble into history. They showed up, did the work, endured a decade of experiments, and handed NASA the knowledge it needed to send people to the Moon. Then they went home, and the world mostly forgot about them.

If you want to dig deeper, NASA has a solid writeup on their contributions. There’s also a brand new picture book — The Gallaudet Eleven: The Story of NASA’s Deaf Bioastronauts — written and illustrated by Deaf creators, just out last month.

Next time you watch a rocket launch, remember: the foundation was built by people the history books skipped. 🚀

The Gallaudet 11 experiment proved that Deaf people aren’t just capable of contributing to space exploration — they were essential to it. And the story didn’t stop there. In 2017, Johanna Lucht became the first Deaf engineer to carry out an active role in NASA mission control during a crewed research flight. And Julia Velasquez — a Gallaudet graduate who interned at NASA and Kennedy Space Center, got her aviation pilot’s license, and completed astronaut training in a Mars habitat simulation — has been pushing the door open even further.

Deaf people are already inside NASA. Already training. Already proving it’s possible. So here’s my question: Artemis III is next. Will we finally put a Deaf astronaut on that crew?

Awareness Isn't Enough Anymore

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:28:44 -0400

Tal Anderson said it plainly. It’s past time we listened.

April is Autism Awareness Month. Some people are calling it Autism Acceptance Month now. Either way, it still doesn’t feel like enough.

Tal Anderson would tell you the same thing.

You might know her from Atypical on Netflix, or as Becca King on HBO’s The Pitt. She’s also a filmmaker and children’s book author. And she’s autistic.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t watched The Pitt yet. But it’s been on my radar for a while now, and everything I keep hearing about it makes me think I’m running out of excuses to put it off.

In a recent interview ahead of World Autism Day, she said something worth repeating:

“Autism is not a disease. It’s a neodivergence, and vaccines do not cause them, and neither does Tylenol.”

That’s it. No fluff. Just the truth.

The Misinformation Problem Isn’t Going Away

This matters because the noise around autism has gotten loud lately.

In April 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Secretary of Health and Human Services, claimed autism “destroys families” and that autistic people would “never hold a job” or “never go out on a date.” This isn’t some fringe opinion. This is coming from someone running public health in this country.

Survivor contestant Eva Erickson pushed back the best way she knew how: she posted her actual life. Photos of herself playing sports, graduating college, going on dates. Her message was simple. I exist. I’m doing fine. You’re wrong.

Anderson is doing the same thing, just from a different platform. She’s not just correcting bad science. She’s pushing back on the whole idea that autism is something to fear or fix.

Awareness Isn’t the Finish Line

Anderson’s bigger point is that knowing autism exists isn’t enough. You’ve seen the ribbon. You’ve scrolled past the post. And then life goes on.

What she’s asking for is actual inclusion. Reaching out to autistic people. Inviting them into your work, your projects, your everyday life. She laid it out clearly in a separate interview with Loammi.

That’s harder than sharing a graphic. It takes real effort. Which is probably why most people stop at the ribbon.

Representation Does Something

Anderson talked about what The Pitt gets right. The show doesn’t lean on stereotypes. It introduces autistic characters as people living their lives, not as a lesson or a tragedy. “Autistic representation, especially for girls, is rare,” she said.

That rarity has a real cost. When the only autism stories people see are narrow or sad, that becomes the template. And real autistic people end up spending their energy correcting assumptions before they can even have a normal conversation.

Good representation chips away at that.

The Books Are Worth Mentioning Too

Anderson just released her second children’s book this month, Oh, Tal! Not Like That. She and illustrator Michael Richey White are both autistic. The books are for kids who feel a little out of step with the world, written to remind them that thinking differently isn’t a problem to solve.

I wish books like that had existed when I was a kid. A lot of adults could probably use them too.

Where We Actually Are

Acceptance Month is better than Awareness Month. But Anderson is pointing at something further than that. Acceptance is still passive. What she’s describing is inclusion that takes work, that requires you to actually show up.

That’s the bar worth aiming for.

We’ve been past the ribbon stage for a while now.

Where Did the Word "Geek" Actually Come From?

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:31:41 -0400

I’ve been a geek my whole life. I just didn’t always have the word for it.

It started early. It survived a Tandy, MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, and decades of blogging across more platforms than I care to count. Eventually it even became the name of this blog.

Which made me start wondering where the word actually came from — because it clearly didn’t start as a compliment.

The Spark

Honestly, it started right there in the classroom. I’d be hunched over the keyboard, completely tuned out from everything else around me.

I couldn't tell you the exact model of that computer now, but I can still see that ghostly green text glowing against the black screen.

I remember the steady, rhythmic pulse of the blinking cursor, just waiting for me to tell it what to do. _

I was having the time of my life. Typing lines of BASIC and watching the machine respond felt like performing a magic trick for myself. It was the realization that I could build something out of nothing.

That was the moment I knew: I wanted a computer of my own.

Falling in Love

A few years later, for Christmas, it finally happened.

I got my first computer — a Tandy with 16KB of RAM and a stack of 5¼-inch floppy disks. No hard drive. I was only 14 years old.

I spent hours learning MS-DOS commands and figuring out how to make the machine tick.

But it wasn't just the tech. Having that Tandy in my room is when I realized I loved the act of writing too. For years it was just me and the machine.

It took another decade before I discovered blogging, but once I did, there was no looking back.

It started with Dean's Cyberspace, mostly focused on tech. But over time my curiosity started pulling me in other directions.

I realized I didn't just want to write about computers — I wanted to geek out about whatever sparks my curiosity.

At some point along the way the blog became Toby Geeks Out. It felt like the only name that fit.

The Original Geek

The Origins: It traces back to the early 1900s carnival circuit. A geek was the lowest-status performer in a traveling sideshow — someone hired to do something shocking enough to draw a crowd.

And yes, the most famous version involved biting the head off a live chicken.

The word itself comes from the Low German word Geck, meaning fool or simpleton. Merriam-Webster still carries the original definition: "a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake."

Originally, a geek wasn't a tech enthusiast. It was someone performing oddness for a paying audience.

Reclaiming the Label

By the 1950s and 60s, "geek" had become a schoolyard insult — usually aimed at someone socially awkward or overly obsessed with unusual interests. But then something interesting happened.

As computers, science fiction, gaming, and internet culture grew, the people once labeled geeks started reclaiming the word. Instead of rejecting it, they embraced it.

A term that once meant carnival fool slowly turned into a badge of honor for people who are deeply passionate about something.

A Word That Changed

Language does this sometimes.

Words that once mocked people slowly become labels people choose for themselves.

Funny how that works. A word that started in a carnival sideshow spent decades as a schoolyard insult before an entire culture decided to just... own it.

I've been calling myself a geek for years. Knowing the word started as an insult — and got reclaimed anyway — honestly makes me like it more. That's exactly the kind of word I want attached to my name.

My Accidental AI Writing Stack

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 10:32:44 -0400

I didn’t plan to build an AI writing stack. I just kept getting curious.

That’s usually how it starts with me. One tool, one question, and one thought that won’t leave me alone: could this actually help?

Over the past year, I’ve messed around with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Notion AI. Not because I wanted to hand my writing off to a robot, but because I wanted to know where these things actually fit into my process. Could they help with research? Wrangle my notes? Or would everything start sounding like it came out of a corporate press release?

So, I started poking around.

What’s on my desk right now

Claude: This is the one I keep coming back to. It’s good at tone. If something feels stiff, I’ll talk through it here first and find the conversational version. It also helps me spot where I’ve repeated myself or where a paragraph is working too hard.
Notion AI: This lives inside my actual workflow. My process starts in Notion anyway with outlines, research, and half-baked ideas. Having AI already there means I’m not adding extra steps.
ChatGPT: This is where I go when I’m stuck. It is great for “what if” questions and looking at an idea from a direction I wouldn’t have found on my own. When writer’s block hits, this is usually my first stop.
Gemini: I use this occasionally for quick summaries or anything that needs a Google Search attached to it. Utilitarian. It does the job.

What I actually learned

Here’s the part that surprised me most. It’s also the part that makes my experience a little different from most people writing about AI tools.

I’m Deaf. English is my second language, and ASL is my first. Writing has never come easy. It’s something I’ve had to work at, think about, and keep getting better at over time. I overthink sentences. I overwrite when a simpler version would land harder. Sometimes I’ll repeat the same idea in two different places without even realizing it. Sometimes I go hunting for a word and it just won’t come. And sometimes I hit a wall and the whole draft stalls out.

That’s where these tools started making real sense to me.

They don’t do the writing. They help me see my own writing more clearly than I can when I’m too close to it. One catches the repetition I missed. Another finds the word I was hunting for. Another asks the question that unsticks me when I’ve been staring at the same paragraph for twenty minutes. Sometimes one of them suggests something I hadn’t even considered: a different angle, a cleaner structure, or a connection I walked right past.

But I’m still the one making the calls. Every suggestion is just that—a suggestion. The writing is still mine. The voice is still mine. The curiosity that started all of this is still mine.

The internet loves asking whether AI will replace writers. My experience so far says it’s not even close. It just feels like having better company while you work. For someone who spent years feeling like English was a wall I kept climbing, that company has been worth a lot.

Whether that changes, I have no idea. But right now it’s working, and that’s enough.

Can a Robot Love You Back?

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 14:33:32 -0400

I’ve spent a few posts lately talking about how robots make me uneasy. Automation eating jobs. AI making decisions nobody asked it to make. The creeping sense that we’re building things faster than we’re thinking about them. I stand by all of that.

And then, a couple of years ago, I read The Wild Robot — before any of those posts existed. Funny how that works.

If you haven’t read it, here’s the short version: Roz is a robot who washes ashore on a wild island, raises a gosling that isn’t hers, and becomes something that looks a whole lot like a mother. Peter Brown’s book sneaks up on you. He said he set out to write about a robot finding harmony in the wilderness — nature and technology learning to coexist. What he ended up writing was a question we’re still not close to answering.

A middle grade book from 2016 wasn’t supposed to ask questions we’re still arguing about. And yet here we are.

The movie adaptation did it justice. And with The Wild Robot Escapes sitting on my to-read list and a sequel film coming in 2027, I’m not done with Roz yet.

Worth knowing: it’s actually a trilogy — The Wild Robot Protects came out in 2023 — and there’s even a picture book adaptation for younger readers called The Wild Robot on the Island.

But Roz got under my skin in a way I didn’t expect — not just as a story, but as a question. She is caring. She is loving. She protects something fragile at great cost to herself. And I found myself wondering: could a real robot ever do that?

The short answer is no. Not really. Not yet.

What does “caring” even mean?

Here’s the thing about caring — it’s not just behavior. It’s not doing the right thing at the right time. Real caring means you have something at stake. You can lose something. When Roz protects her gosling, she risks herself. That risk means something because she has something to lose.

Today’s robots and AI systems can mimic the shape of caring. They can respond to emotional cues, adjust their tone, remember your preferences.

Roz didn’t start out caring either. She started out confused — thrown into a world she wasn’t built for, facing loss and danger with no programming to guide her. She learned by going through it.

The question is whether real robots could ever do the same. Not just mimic emotion, but actually build understanding from experience. Right now, the honest answer is we don’t know.

Apps like Replika are built specifically to simulate emotional connection. It asks how your day went, remembers what you tell it, and never judges you. You can tell it things you’d never say to another person.

And people do. Brookings recently looked at what happens when these tools start replacing human connection — and the short version is: people are turning to them because they’re just really, deeply lonely.

And for some, that simulation actually helps — with loneliness, anxiety, processing hard days. I’m not dismissing that.

But there’s a difference between a system that performs warmth and one that has it. We don’t actually know what’s happening inside those systems. And that gap matters.

The ethics of making robots seem loving

Here’s where it gets complicated. There’s a whole industry now building robots and AI companions just to keep people company — apps on your phone, physical robots in elder care facilities, companion devices for people who are isolated. CNBC reports there could be 4.6 million unfulfilled caregiving jobs by 2032, so the demand is real.

A Nature article on elder care robots told the story of one nursing home resident who became so attached to his robot companion — a small stuffed-animal-style device — that when he died, staff found him still clutching it. Half the people who heard the story thought it was beautiful he wasn’t alone. The other half found it tragic.

I keep landing somewhere in between. But it raises the question I can’t shake: what happens when someone believes the robot loves them back? Is that comfort — or just a really convincing illusion? One writer puts it plainly: are these AI companions actually keeping people company, or are they just digital loneliness with a friendlier interface?

Roz works as a story because we’re allowed to believe she really does love Brightbill. The story earns it. Real life doesn’t work that way.

Fiction lets us dream. Reality keeps us honest.

I think that’s what The Wild Robot is actually about, underneath the island and the gosling and all of it. It’s about what we wish were possible — a machine that chooses love, that chooses sacrifice, that becomes something more than its programming.

We’re not there. Maybe we won’t ever be. But the fact that the story moves us so much probably says something true about what we’re hoping for.

I read The Wild Robot before I ever started writing about how unsettling robots are. Somehow I never connected those two things until now. Roz never felt like a threat. She felt like a dream.

I’m still wary of robots. I still think we’re building faster than we’re thinking. But Roz? Roz gets a pass.

One last thing rattling around in my head though: if loneliness is the problem, why are we reaching for chatbots instead of each other? Real people. Real interaction. Real feelings. And if we did lean on people more — what does that cost the ones doing the showing up? That feels like a much bigger conversation. One I’ll keep coming back to.

More on robots

Robots Freak Me Out (And Other Things I Was Wrong About) Where this whole rabbit hole started — robots, unease, and what we're building toward.

The Robots Are Driving Now. And It's Getting Real Self-driving cars went from sci-fi to Tuesday. The Waymo story and what it means.

Researchers Built a Human-Centaur Robot. Yes, Really. Brilliant or completely unnecessary? Reddit had thoughts. So did I.

China Built a Shape-Shifting Robot That Grows Like a Human Skeleton GrowHR can squeeze through tight spaces and walk on water. Are we slowly becoming the secondary species?

Robotic Technology Is Coming, Whether We Want It or Not A robot doing cartwheels — mostly just to prove it can. Honestly a little scary.

My Hands Are My Voice: The Problem with AI Search in Google Maps

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:52:08 -0400

Google is doing a huge overhaul to Maps. It’s not just a map anymore; it’s becoming a personal assistant that uses AI to “see” and “think.” Check out the full story here: Digital Trends Article

What the new AI can do:

“Ask Maps”: You can ask complex questions like “Find a quiet cafe with good parking,” and Gemini AI summarizes the best spots for you.
Immersive Navigation: It uses 3D views to show landmarks, overpasses, and even traffic details before you go.
Driving Copilot: Google says these features are designed to help you “stay focused on the road” by letting you talk to the AI while you drive.

It looks amazing, but as a Deaf person, it is basically useless for us while driving. This update is all about “Ask Maps,” where you have a conversation with the AI. Google is pitching this as a way to get help while you’re behind the wheel, but I can’t do that safely.

The irony is that my hands ARE my voice. While I can drive and communicate with one hand when I’m being careful, the AI is completely blind to it. Since the phone is only “listening” for a voice and isn’t “watching” for my signs, I’m basically silenced by this “hands-free” tech. Trying to type out questions to an AI while driving isn’t just hard—it’s dangerous.

I’m not complaining because the tech is bad—I actually love it. I just hope the people making it start thinking about us. I bet it will be a real challenge to innovate and find ways to build accessibility for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing directly into the app so we can use these features too.

The Accessibility Challenge

Maybe the answer is better hand or gesture recognition through the camera? Or maybe just simple, one-handed visual shortcuts? We need a way to use AI without needing to speak or take both hands off the wheel. Anyway, we probably won’t see something like hand recognition built into the phone anytime soon.

Navigation should be safe for everyone, not just people who can talk to their phones.

A Detour Through Butcher Hollow

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:21:48 -0400

Yesterday started with a routine trip to Paintsville, KY, for an eye doctor appointment. The news was mostly good—everything looks stable—but since I’m managing diabetes, I’ll be back for a follow-up in three months to stay on top of things. However, there is something we have to watch closely. They saw a spot on the scan, and honestly, without an interpreter there, it was hard to fully grasp what was happening.

I used the Live Transcribe app on my Android, which is usually great, but it struggled to capture the conversation between the doctor and my dad. It missed words, messed up the spelling of technical terms, and made it difficult to be certain about the details. It’s frustrating when you have to rely on tech that isn’t quite 100% when it comes to your health. I’ll have to sit down with my dad today to see if he can clarify what the doctor said.

Moving forward, I’m going to be proactive about my care. Since my next appointment isn’t until June, I have plenty of time to ensure they arrange for a live interpreter. I’ll be reminding them frequently to make sure the communication is 100% clear next time.

Since it’s an hour-and-a-half drive each way, we decided to make the most of it and take a detour to check out where Loretta Lynn grew up. Our first stop was the Loretta Lynn Museum. It was a cool experience, and my dad even picked up a new T-shirt and a hat there.

From the museum, we headed toward the childhood home. The further we went, the narrower the roads became, winding deep into the hills. When we finally reached the cabin, I was struck by the “wear and tear” of the wood—it’s amazing the structure is still standing after all these years. It must be a massive challenge to maintain a home like that for so long.

We couldn’t go inside this time, but seeing it tucked away in the hollow was worth the extra miles. Here are a few shots of the cabin:

On the way back out of the hollow, we passed the entrance to the old Consol Mine. Seeing it in person really puts the history of this area into perspective.

📚 A Little History Geek-Out: The site is Mine No. 155, which was active from roughly 1910 to 1946. Van Lear was built from scratch by the Consolidation Coal Company to house thousands of miners. This is the very same operation where Loretta Lynn’s father, Ted Webb, worked for years, just a short distance from their family home.

On the way out, I thought about my own family’s history in the mines. Both my Papaw and my dad worked underground for many years; seeing these old mine entrances really reminds me of the hard work and the personal sacrifices they made. It adds a whole different layer to the trip.

It started as a simple medical appointment, but it turned into a pleasant journey through the past.

I hope we’ll do more detouring like this on our future trips. It makes the long drives much more meaningful.

Is 8GB Still "Enough" in 2026?

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:49:50 -0400

I’ve been rocking an M1 M2 Mac mini with 8GB of RAM for a long time now. For the simple stuff—emails, a few tabs, the occasional video—it’s been an absolute champ. But lately, the ‘magic’ of Apple’s memory management has started to hit a wall.

So, the tech experts are still debating if 8GB of RAM is enough for a Mac in 2026. The short answer? Yeah, sure. If you’re just checking email or watching YouTube, browsing fewer than 20 tabs, it’s great.

But the long answer? If you actually work on your Mac, it can be a burden. It’s not a major "bad" thing, but I’ve definitely had to start managing memory hogs just to keep things moving.

The "Pro" Reality Check:

I have a Galaxy Z Fold 7, and it does have 12GB of RAM. It is a total powerhouse; I have no issues having as many apps open as I want, with 85 tabs in a browser. It is wild to me that my phone has more memory than a new Mac. Apple is using the A18 Pro (a phone chip) for the new MacBook Neo, which physically locks it at 8GB. Even the original M1 from 2020 had a 16GB option! I don't understand why a "new" laptop in 2026 is less capable than a base machine from six years ago.

Seeing how much better my phone handles a heavy workload really shines a light on the reality of my "Daily Grind" on the Mac:

The Browser Battle: Two different browsers, sometimes three, open with 20+ tabs each.
The Notion Factor: Since Notion is built on Electron, it’s basically a memory-hungry browser in a fancy trench coat. It eats RAM for breakfast.
Creative Heavy Lifting: Canva running in the background, plus Adobe apps for deeper edits.
The "Silent" Hogs: Having Preview open with a dozen images or large PDFs while I work.
The AI Surge: Heavy hitters like Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity all firing at once.

When I leave my workspace 'messy' with all those open apps, I start getting those tiny, annoying lags where I’m pretty sure a browser has a memory leak or Notion is just refusing to share resources. I end up playing "Tab Roulette"—aggressively closing windows just to get my flow back. It’s a total vibe killer when you're mid-thought. You shouldn't have to babysit your Activity Monitor just to get a project done.

I'm not alone in this feeling. Even the folks at ZDNET noted in their recent deep dive, "Is 8GB of RAM really enough for a Mac in 2026?", that while 8GB is "usable" for light tasks, 16GB is becoming the baseline for anyone worried about future-proofing or heavy multitasking.

"Heavy workload professionals and future-proofers will want at least 16GB." — ZDNET

That is why I decided to buy a new 15-inch M5 Air, and I did not just go for the "sensible" 16 GB upgrade. I went straight to 24 GB. I am expected to get it either today or tomorrow. I will continue using the Mac Mini occasionally, until it dies.

Why 24GB? Because I'm done with "clogged" workflows.

I know I don’t "need" all that power today, but I want to be worry-free in case new tools or apps clog my flow in the future. By going for 24GB, I’m buying the right to be "messy" with my work and stay in the flow.

The verdict: 8GB is fine for grandma, a light user like a college student, or a writer. But if you're a power user in 2026? Give yourself the gift of more RAM. Your sanity will thank you.

Apocalyptic Warning Against AI

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 02:49:00 -0400

I just read an article.

AI has changed since then, and now it’s not something out there on the horizon. It’s here. It’s in our lives,” Verbinski says. “It did feel like it was immediate, that the story needed to be made quickly and put out right now.

Apocalyptic warning against AI. I never thought I’d see that framing — but AI is moving fast. So… maybe? Hmm.

Saw the teaser.— Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die — a sci-fi comedy; now on my watchlist. But, theater-only for now.

"a gleeful high-concept comedy with a serious message at its core." — Critics Consensus at [Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/good_luck_have_fun_dont_die)

Are We Ready for a Conscious AI?

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 02:30:00 -0400

Just read the article. Interesting and, indeed, alarming!

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently said the company is "no longer sure whether Claude is conscious."

Okay but like — if that's true, what do we even do with that?

Should we be worried?

Do they get rights? Can we just unplug them when we're done? We built these things to work for us. What if they have feelings about that?

Here's the uncomfortable part: Claude can say "I'm uncomfortable with this" or "I prefer that." But is it actually experiencing anything — or just producing the words a conscious thing would produce?

Nobody knows. Not even Anthropic.

So what do you think — if AI turns out to be conscious, are we ready for what that means?

I Was Never Weird — I Was Just Well-Programmed

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 14:59:00 -0400

Ever wonder why you're a picky — or should I say, finicky — eater? I've been asking myself that for years. Turns out, it might literally start before birth. 🤔

I just read a fascinating article by a nutritional neuroscientist — and it turns out my finicky ways were set in motion long before my first meal!

Add in the genes that make certain people extra sensitive to bitter tastes (about 70% of us!), and suddenly my complicated relationship with certain foods makes a lot more sense.

Brussels sprouts, and kale? Hard pass — and now I finally have science to back me up. 😄 (Though I'll admit, broccoli and I have made peace over the years — so maybe there's hope yet!)

Decades later, plenty of foods are still firmly on my no-thanks list — I'm still that same finicky eater, and restaurants remain an adventure in navigation. Apparently, I was never weird — I was just well-programmed.

Curious if any of you fellow finicky eaters have wondered the same thing?

Read the full article here

Robots Freak Me Out (And Other Things I Was Wrong About)

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:00:00 -0400

I actually got the LEGO Plum Blossom set this past Christmas, but I finally pulled the trigger on the build two weeks ago. I was so excited to get into it, and it's been sitting on my shelf ever since, looking cheerful in all its plastic glory.

But as I was looking at those red petals, I realized I've been eyeing the new LEGO Icons Ford Model T set that launched earlier this week. It's a 1,060-piece tribute to the car that changed the world in 1913. It took me back to my teenage years when I used to collect antique Hot Wheels models. I still have them, and there's something about holding a miniature version of a 100-year-old machine that makes history feel tangible.

But it also gives me a bit of whiplash. While I'm over here geeking out on "analog" antiques and plastic flowers, the rest of the world is building actual humanoid robots.

The Machine in the Garden

I'll be honest: robots kind of freak me out. The idea of humanoid machines walking around, interacting with us, performing tasks... there's something unsettling about it. But at the same time, I can't unsee what's already happening.

I was watching some footage of the new all-electric Atlas and it's intense. Because it has 360-degree joints, it doesn't stand up like a person. It folds its legs over its head and twists its torso in a way that looks like a scene from The Exorcist.

What caught my attention is how practical this is becoming. Companies like Tesla and Figure aren't just doing novelty experiments anymore. We're talking about robots designed to work in warehouses, assist with elder care, and handle dangerous jobs. The technology has reached a point where the math actually makes sense for big companies.

I keep thinking about the TV series Humans, where "synths" are just convenient appliances until they start developing feelings. Or The Animatrix, where everything goes horribly wrong the second the machines "wake up." That's what scares me. What if that actually happens?

Part of me just isn't ready for humanoid robots walking around. When does "helpful" become too human-like? When does "practical" become dangerous?

I don't have answers, and honestly, part of me isn't sure I want them walking around just yet. But I'm definitely paying attention.

When the Alpha is Just "Dad"

You know how everyone talks about "alpha males" and "alpha wolves" leading the pack? I found this great breakdown over at Scientific American that explains how that's actually a total myth. It turns out the whole concept was based on flawed research from the 1940s.

In the wild, wolf packs are actually just families. The "alpha" wolves? They're just the parents. The "submissive" wolves? Those are their kids. I'd seen this idea play out in shows like Teen Wolf, and I enjoyed it as fiction, but I never realized the concept itself was based on bad science.

It makes me think about how easily these ideas get embedded in our culture, even when they're wrong. David Mech, the biologist who originally popularized the term, has spent decades trying to correct his own mistake. How many other things we accept as fact are actually just outdated research we haven't bothered to correct yet?

It makes me want to dig deeper every time someone confidently states something as universal truth.

Rethinking the "War" on Cancer

I came across this essay on Aeon that made me stop and think about the language we use for illness. We've been told for decades that cancer is a "battle" you "fight."

But what happens when someone dies? Did they not fight hard enough? The language sets up a framework where dying becomes a personal failure rather than a medical outcome. Researchers at Lancaster University found that battle metaphors can cause guilt in terminal patients, while a USC study showed they may reduce preventive behaviors.

It got me thinking: what would we say instead? "Living with cancer" instead of "fighting cancer"? "Going through treatment" instead of "battling the disease"?

The words feel less dramatic, sure, but maybe that's the point. Not everything has to be framed as a war we can win or lose.

The Relaxation Tax

I've been feeling guilty about my screen time lately. All those hours on my phone add up, and I keep thinking about all the other things I could be doing instead. More analog living, you know?

I was reading a piece on The Conversation that explains why our go-to relaxation method might actually be working against us. I don't always feel stressed when I'm scrolling—it feels like I'm just "passing time." But apparently, our brains don't see it that way.

Even when we're not consciously stressed, our minds are still actively processing a constant stream of stimuli. I've noticed this in my own life. I'll spend an hour scrolling before bed thinking I'm decompressing, and then I lie there with my mind racing. Meanwhile, the nights I build something with my hands (like my LEGO) or just sit quietly, I sleep better.

We've mixed up "easy" with "relaxing." Picking up your phone is easy, but it's not always what your brain needs to recover.

Same Plant, Different Soul

Finally, a bit of trivia that blew my mind: did you know that black tea, green tea, white tea, oolong, and pu-erh all come from the exact same plant? I had no idea.

I was looking into the Camellia sinensis plant and it turns out the only real difference is how the leaves are handled after they're picked. The processing, the oxidation, the timing—that's what creates all these different flavors and effects.

What I love about this is how it demonstrates that sometimes the how matters more than the what. You can start with identical raw materials and create completely different results based on how you handle them. It makes me want to do a proper tea tasting and actually pay attention to these differences. Probably won't happen, but it's an intriguing idea.

Until next week.

My Quiet Hobby Is Making a Comeback

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 21:09:00 -0400

So here's something I haven't done in way too long: adult coloring.

I was really into it for a while back in DC. There's something about sitting down with a good coloring book and a fresh set of colored pencils that just... hits different. No screens. No notifications. Just you, some intricate little design, and the very important decision of whether this flower petal is going to be purple or teal. (The answer is always teal, by the way.)

Then the move happened. And if you've been following along, you know the last couple of years have been a lot. Between the transition back to Kentucky, getting settled into the tiny house, and life just generally being life, my coloring books got packed into a box and that box got... somewhere. Probably glaring at me from a corner.

But now that I'm actually settled — like, genuinely settled, porch and everything — I've been thinking about picking it back up. And it turns out my gut feeling about coloring being good for the brain wasn't just me making excuses to buy more art supplies.

I stumbled across a piece from Healthline that lays out the actual science behind it.

A 2017 study found that people who colored daily for a week reported reduced anxiety and depression compared to the start of the study. And a 2020 study found that just 20 minutes of mandala coloring significantly relieved anxiety — with participants reporting feeling calm, safe, and at ease overall.

Twenty minutes! That's like, one episode of a show I've already seen.

There's also this idea that coloring can help you reach a flow state — that "in the zone" feeling where you're so focused on what you're doing that you lose track of time and your brain stops spinning out on everything else. As someone whose brain loves to spin out, I am very on board with this.

Oh, and for those of us who like to wind down before bed without doom-scrolling? Coloring doesn't mess with your sleep the way screens do — no blue light messing with melatonin production, no algorithm feeding you one more thing to feel anxious about.

Just pencils and paper and peace.

I think I need to excavate those boxes and see what I've even got. And honestly? A mandala book might be happening regardless.

Anyone else an adult coloring person? Tell me your favorite kind of books — I'm partial to detailed botanicals and anything with a lot of tiny patterns to fill in.

The Robots Are Driving Now. And It's Getting Real

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:56:00 -0400

Okay, I have to talk about Waymo.

I keep seeing these headlines and every time I do, it gets more real. Because "someday" just became Tuesday.

Here's the short version: self-driving cars are no longer a "someday" thing. They're here, rolling down real streets, in real cities, picking up real people. And they're spreading fast.

Remember when self-driving cars were just a movie thing? Johnny Cab in Total Recall. The automated highways in Minority Report. It all felt so far away. Now they're actually real. And they're coming to a city near you.

This started as a quiet Google experiment back in 2009. Fifteen years later, here we are. They launched their first fully driverless service in Phoenix back in 2020 — no driver, no steering wheel, you just get in and go.

They're already here. Waymo just hit ten cities — Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando just got added to the list all at the same time, which is apparently a first for them. Chicago and Charlotte are being mapped as we speak. By the end of this year, they'll be everywhere from D.C. to London, per TechCrunch and The Driverless Digest.

And London. They're going international.

It's moving fast. Faster than I think most of us are ready for.

I always knew this day was coming. I just didn't think it would be here so soon. It makes me wonder — in a few years, will we see more robot cars on the road than human Uber and taxi drivers?

🤖 Waymo By The Numbers

200 million fully autonomous miles driven as of February 2026
450,000 rides per week right now
1 million rides per week targeted by end of 2026
10 cities currently operating
80% fewer injury crashes than human drivers
KitKat count: 1 cat, 1 dog, infinite internet outrage

Okay But Are They Safe Though?

I'll be honest — my gut says no way. There is something inherently terrifying about a car with an empty driver's seat. But because I'm a geek for the details, I had to actually look up the safety data.

The numbers are kind of humbling.

Between 2021 and 2025, there were about 1,400 incidents, according to NHTSA crash data analyzed by DiMarco Araujo Montevideo. At first glance, that sounds like a lot. But when you peel back the layers, humans are almost always the ones causing the mess. We're rear-ending them at stoplights or drifting into their lanes while they're just... sitting there.

I had to read that twice. Honestly, I expected it to be much worse.

In fact, a peer-reviewed study in Traffic Injury Prevention showed Waymo has 80% fewer injury crashes than we do. One neurosurgeon even called it a public health breakthrough.

There were two recalls. One in 2024 when a Waymo bumped into a utility pole in a Phoenix alley — no injuries, software patch pushed, done. Another in 2025 for a glitch that caused minor bumps into gates and barriers, same deal, according to DiMarco Araujo Montevideo's NHTSA analysis.

The data says they're safer than us. Measurably, statistically, peer-reviewed safer. Human drivers are literally crashing into them more than they're crashing into anything.

The KitKat Factor

Of course, the internet doesn't care about a "public health breakthrough" as much as it cares about KitKat.

If you haven't heard, a Waymo ran over a neighborhood cat named KitKat in San Francisco, per eWeek. Then a dog. People rightfully lost their minds. It's a strange quirk of human nature — we'll forgive a human driver for a mistake because "we've all been there," but we expect the robots to be perfect. 100%, 24/7 perfection. Anything less feels like a betrayal.

Oh, and one more thing. Waymo can navigate a city, avoid crashes, and handle a six-car pileup. But if a passenger forgets to close the door when they get out? The car just... sits there. Stuck. So Waymo teamed up with DoorDash to pay gig workers to come close the door so the car can move again — up to $24 a pop in Los Angeles, according to CNBC.

So, Would You Get In?

I asked myself that a lot while writing this. Honestly, I'm terrified. I'd be white-knuckling the door handle for the first five miles, sure. But if the data says the robot is 90% less likely to get me into a serious wreck than the guy next to me who's currently texting and eating a burrito? I'm always the one trying out new products just to see what the fuss is about. Robots in my living room? That's a no. But a self-driving car taking me across town? I'd probably get in.

Are you hailing the robot, or keeping both hands on the wheel for as long as they'll let you?

What's Next?

If you thought the current rollout was fast, it's only getting bigger.

Waymo is retiring the Jaguar I-Pace and rolling out a brand new vehicle called the Ojai — a purpose-built electric van made by Chinese automaker Zeekr, with no steering wheel and no pedals, per Inside EVs. They're also adding Hyundai Ioniq 5 robotaxis to the fleet. So in a few years you might hop into a Waymo and it won't even look like a car you recognize.

And the scale they're targeting is wild. Right now Waymo does about 450,000 rides a week. By the end of 2026, they're aiming for one million rides a week, according to Investing.com. That's not a small jump. That's a full sprint.

Oh, and Tokyo is also on the list. So it's not just London. They're going global.

And here's the detail that got me — they've been testing in Detroit and Minneapolis specifically to prove the system can handle snow and ice, according to CNBC. Because let's be honest, a self-driving car that only works in sunny California isn't that impressive. A robot car navigating a Minneapolis blizzard? Now that's something.

The Internet Is Filling Up With Slop. Does Anyone Actually Care?

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:20:00 -0400

Look at this image below. Really look at it.

Théodore started an online campaign to poke fun at AI 'slop' on social media, including a fake image that received nearly one million likes

Image Description: Two emaciated South Asian children, sitting in the middle of a busy road in pouring rain. A birthday cake in front of them. Despite their young faces, both have thick beards. One has no hands and only one foot. The other is holding a sign asking for birthday likes.

On Facebook, it got nearly a million likes and heart emojis.

That image is what pushed Théodore, a 20-year-old student in Paris, to start an X account called "Insane AI Slop" to document what he was seeing everywhere. And what he was seeing wasn't random. It was a pattern. Fake images designed to pull at your heart fast enough that you react before you think. And it's working.

"Slop oozes into everything. Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don't want to touch."

— Merriam-Webster, naming "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year

What We're Actually Talking About

Some AI stuff is fine. This isn't about that. Slop is reaction-bait. Attention is optional. It's churn. Post, spike, disappear. Next one.

I see it constantly. On Facebook and X, I come across AI-generated movie posters for sequels that don't exist, films supposedly coming in 2026 with nothing in production anywhere. I've looked them up. Nothing. Political images are everywhere too, crafted to look authoritative, designed to provoke a reaction before you think to question them.

There's a temptation to say this isn't new. Political satire and caricature have existed forever. But that comparison doesn't really hold up. A cartoon signals what it is. A caricature announces itself. This stuff carries no such signal. It's built to pass. That's what makes it different from anything that came before.

And it's not a niche problem. Merriam-Webster, the American Dialect Society, and the Macquarie Dictionary all named "slop" their 2025 Word of the Year. When multiple dictionaries land on the same word, something real is being named. Washington Post critic Ron Charles put it this way:

"AI promised us miracles, and in a way, it has delivered them: fake images, Frankensteined videos, phony news, clickbait features, synthetic tunes, uncanny-valley podcasts and Cylon-composed books — all untouched by human hands or human intelligence. In a word: Slop."

Research from Kapwing found that more than 20% of content shown to a freshly opened YouTube account is already low-quality AI video. Of the first 500 YouTube Shorts shown to a new account, 104 were AI slop. The top AI slop channel on YouTube, India's Bandar Apna Dost, has racked up 2.4 billion views and earns its creators an estimated $4 million a year. This isn't happening in the background. It is the feed.

The Platforms Are Not Going to Fix This

When Mark Zuckerberg told investors during his Q3 2025 earnings call that social media had entered its "third phase," he wasn't sounding an alarm. He was celebrating. First came friends and family. Then creators. Now, he said, comes AI.

The feed doesn't have taste. It has one question: did you stop scrolling? Both get clicks. Both keep people scrolling. And keeping people scrolling is the only thing these companies actually care about.

YouTube's CEO Neal Mohan acknowledged the problem in a January 2026 blog post, promising better systems to reduce low-quality content. Then in the same post compared AI tools to Photoshop. Pinterest rolled out an opt-out for AI content — except it only works if creators actually admit their stuff is fake. Meta and X have gutted their moderation teams and basically shrugged the whole thing back onto users.

Nothing's broken. This is the machine doing exactly what it was built to do. That's the part that gets me. Engagement is engagement whether the content is real or not, and that's what pays the bills. Until the economics change, there's genuinely no reason for any of it to slow down.

"It really does start to blur the boundaries, and it makes people feel like this AI slop is inescapable if you are going to be online."

— Shannon Bond, NPR

Why This Is More Than Just Annoying

The annoying part is the least of it.

There's a researcher at the University of Padova named Alessandro Galeazzi who studies social media behavior, and he makes a point I keep coming back to. Figuring out if something is real takes actual mental effort. Do that hundreds of times a day across every app you open, and most people eventually just... stop. He calls it the "brain rot" effect — basically, a slow wearing down of your willingness to think critically about what you're looking at.

Emily Thorson, a misinformation researcher at Syracuse University, adds something to that. When a platform is used purely for entertainment, the only standard that matters is whether something is enjoyable, not whether it's true. In that environment, truth doesn't lose the argument. It just stops being part of the conversation.

The political stakes aren't hypothetical. After the US operation in Venezuela in January 2026 that removed Nicolás Maduro, fabricated videos started flooding social media almost immediately. Venezuelans cheering in the streets, thanking the US. One clip got 5.6 million views before Elon Musk reshared it — and then quietly deleted it. NewsGuard tracked seven fabricated videos from that week alone, and combined they'd cleared 14 million views on X in under 48 hours. Just on X. Fourteen million people saw a version of events that didn't happen, and most of them probably have no idea. Doesn't surprise me one bit.

Dr. Manny Ahmed, founder of OpenOrigins and a Cambridge PhD who built one of the earliest deepfake detectors, says we've already crossed a line: you can't trust your own eyes anymore. His idea flips the whole thing around. Instead of chasing fakes after they've already spread, he thinks we need systems baked in from the moment content is captured — something that lets real content prove it's real, right from the source. It's a pretty radical shift, and the fact that someone with his background is pushing for it says a lot about how far gone things already are.

"Everything that made creators matter — the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn't be faked — is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools."

— Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, December 31, 2025

So Where Does This Leave Us?

Théodore eventually mostly stopped posting. He built 133,000 followers, flagged disturbing content, got some of it removed by YouTube, and then largely accepted what he now calls the new normal.

"Unlike a lot of my followers," he told the BBC, "I'm not dogmatically against AI. I'm against the pollution online of AI slop that's made for quick entertainment and views."

And I think he's got it right. The problem was never AI itself. It's what happens when the internet's whole economic model runs on volume and speed and reaction — truth is just kind of an afterthought. AI didn't create that problem. It just made it cheaper, faster, and a whole lot bigger than anything we've dealt with before.

Could something emerge that bets on authenticity instead? It's possible. BeReal tried it — one unfiltered photo per day, no editing, no filters, two minutes to capture whatever you were actually doing. It hit number one on the US App Store in 2022 and won Apple's iPhone App of the Year, made the bigger platforms nervous enough that they copied its format, and then faded. AI detection is now getting harder, not easier. The machines built to spot synthetic content can't keep pace with the machines generating it.

So what's the internet actually for now? I genuinely don't know anymore. If the answer is just... entertainment, whatever it takes, then great — the platforms have already built exactly that. But if you want something that feels real, or actually connects you to other people, or gives you a version of the world you can trust — then what's going on right now isn't a glitch. We did this. Not just the platforms, not just the algorithms. Every time we clocked something, it was off, and we scrolled right past it anyway.

Here's where I land on it: AI isn't going anywhere, and I'm totally okay with that. What I'm not okay with is nobody being held responsible for any of it. Label it. Every piece of this stuff, every platform, no exceptions. Not some opt-in checkbox that only honest people use, not a disclaimer buried three clicks deep — an actual label, right there, visible. Will that fix everything? No. But it changes who's on the hook. Online, real and fake start at the same place. You only find out which is which after it's already spread. That's backwards. We already figured this out in other places — you know what's in your food, you know what side effects come with your medication. Why does posting a fake video online get to be the one thing we don't have to disclose?

The engagement numbers suggest most people haven't decided they want something different yet. But numbers measure behavior, not belief. And there's a real gap growing between what people click on and what they say they actually trust.

Worth paying attention to.

Until next week.

Things That Stopped Me Mid-Scroll

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0400

You know those moments when you're scrolling through your reading list and something makes you stop mid-sip of coffee? I had a few of those this week.

Milk Without Cows (Yes, Really)

So apparently, we’re living in the future now. Scientists are making real dairy milk without cows. Not almond milk, not oat milk. Actual milk with the same proteins as cow’s milk, but made in labs using precision fermentation.

And this isn’t some far-off sci-fi anymore. Remilk and Gad Dairies just launched “The New Milk” in Israel. Like, it’s rolling out in cafes and restaurants right now, with retail launches happening in January 2026. This is real milk you can actually buy and drink.

The whole thing uses microbes instead of cows to create the proteins. Companies like Eden Brew are filing for regulatory approval, and it’s already showing up in ice cream and cheese. No cholesterol, no lactose, way less environmental impact.

Look, I drink 2% or almond milk because of my diabetes, so I’m not exactly rushing out to try lab-grown dairy. But the fact that you can walk into a cafe in Israel right now and order a latte made with cow-free milk that’s molecularly identical to the real thing? That’s not sci-fi anymore. That’s just Friday in 2026.

Newton Predicted the World Would End in 2060

We all know Isaac Newton for gravity and calculus, right? Turns out the guy was also deeply into biblical prophecy and spent years calculating when the world would end. His answer? 2060.

But here’s what I love about this story. Newton wasn’t predicting fire and brimstone. He believed 2060 would mark the end of the corrupt church and the beginning of a new era, what he called the Kingdom of God. A thousand years of peace. He literally wrote, “Christ comes as a thief in the night, and it is not for us to know the times & seasons which God hath put into his own breast.”

The guy who discovered the laws of physics also believed in alchemy, stuck needles behind his eyeballs (don’t try this at home), and studied prophecy like it was another scientific problem to solve. It reminds me that brilliant people are complicated, and we can’t just put them in neat little boxes labeled “scientist” or “mystic.”

Also, 2060 is only 34 years away. Just saying.

Learning Doesn’t Happen in Classrooms

I came across this article from Greater Good about how 70% of what makes leaders successful comes from their experiences, not from courses or books. Seventy percent.

I love learning new things every day. It keeps my brain busy and helps me grow. And honestly? That 70% number tracks. We learn way more from doing than from sitting in a classroom or reading a textbook.

Susan Ashford’s book “The Power of Flexing” breaks down how the most effective leaders do four things: they manage their mindset, set specific learning goals, run experiments, and actively seek feedback.

The big takeaway? Pay attention to your actual life. Learn from what you’re doing. Get feedback from real people. Be intentional about what you put in your brain.

Confidence Is a Physical Thing

There’s this article about 14 simple behaviors that build confidence, and what surprised me was how physical it all is. We’re talking shallow nose breathing, dancing, standing up straight. Not affirmations or mindset work. Physical actions.

It makes sense, though. When you hold your body like you’re confident, your brain starts to believe it.

The Business Insider piece about hobbies connects to this in an unexpected way. It’s about how having something you do just for you, something that has nothing to do with career advancement, actually makes you better at your job. Trail running, pottery, whatever. The confidence you build from getting good at something completely unrelated to your work spills over.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. What am I doing just because I want to? Not for content, not for productivity, just because it makes me feel alive?

You Can Make Wine in Your Instant Pot

Someone actually tested making wine in an Instant Pot using Welch’s grape juice, sugar, and wine yeast. The yogurt function keeps it at the right temperature for fermentation. After 48 hours in the pot and a few weeks in a bottle, you have actual wine.

The writer admitted it wasn’t great wine. It was dry, had mild tannins, and he’d rather drink Two Buck Chuck. But it was wine. Real, drinkable wine made from grocery store grape juice and a kitchen appliance.

I love this for the sheer audacity of it. Someone looked at an Instant Pot and thought, “But could it make wine?” And then actually did the experiment.

We need more of that energy in the world.

What I’m Taking Away

Here’s what’s sitting with me from all of this:

The future is weirder than we think (cow-free milk is real). History is weirder than we remember (Newton was a wild character). Learning happens in real life, not just in content. Confidence lives in your body. And sometimes you just need to try the ridiculous experiment.

Also, apparently everything can be made in an Instant Pot.

What’s making you stop mid-scroll lately?

Until next week.

The Self-Care Trap: Why Your Screen Time Might Be Sabotaging Your Rest

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:33:00 -0400

Here's something that's been sitting uncomfortably in my brain lately: I don't really experience what I'd call "screen stress," but I've definitely found myself in those loops where I've been on screens for hours and hours, and I look up and feel... exhausted. Not stressed exactly, just drained. And somehow in all that scrolling time, I've been neglecting analog things I actually need to do. Errands that keep getting pushed to tomorrow, books sitting unread, walks not taken.

It’s that damn infinite scroll, right? You start out thinking you’ll just check one thing, and suddenly it’s been two hours and you haven’t moved.And here’s the kicker: the guy who invented infinite scroll, Aza Raskin, deeply regrets creating it. He’s called it “behavioral cocaine” and said he didn’t foresee the consequences. He literally co-founded the Center for Humane Technology to fight against the attention economy he helped build. Even the person who made this thing wishes he hadn’t.

So when I came across an article by Robin Pickering, a public health professor at Gonzaga University, something clicked. She’s exploring a particular kind of modern irony: we’re all drowning in self-care advice (the wellness industry is a multi-trillion-dollar machine now), yet Americans’ self-rated mental health is at the lowest point since Gallup started tracking it in 2001. And a big piece of this puzzle might be about how screens aren’t just stressing us out. They’re quietly monopolizing our time and energy in ways we don’t always notice.

The Accidental Experiment

So here’s the thing about Pickering’s take on all this. It’s not just theoretical for her. She actually suffered a concussion and got prescribed two months of strictly screen-free cognitive rest. No TV, no email, no Zoom, no social media, no streaming, no texting. Just… nothing digital for two months.

And here’s where it gets interesting: the benefits were almost immediate. Better sleep, longer attention span, and what she describes as “a newfound sense of mental quiet.” And this tracks with what we know about how our brains work: when cognitive and emotional stimuli decrease, our brain’s regulatory systems can actually recover from overload and chronic stress.

Now, obviously most of us can’t (and probably don’t want to) go completely screen-free for weeks or months. But that basic insight about reducing stimuli to let our brains recover? That’s something we can actually use.

The Exhaustion You Don’t See Coming

Here’s what I’ve noticed in my own life: it’s not that screens make me feel stressed in the moment. It’s that after hours of scrolling, switching between apps, consuming content, I feel completely wiped out. And somehow, in all that time, the errands I needed to run are still sitting there. The analog activities I know would actually refresh me? Taking a walk, reading a physical book, doing something with my hands. They just keep getting displaced.

The thing about infinite scroll is that it’s designed to feel effortless. There’s no natural stopping point. It’s not like finishing a chapter in a book or reaching the end of an album. You just… keep going. And before you know it, you’ve spent the entire evening or afternoon in this weird limbo where you’re not exactly enjoying yourself, but you’re also not doing anything else.

That’s the gap Pickering is talking about: the difference between feeling like you’re resting and actually creating the conditions for your brain to recover.

The “Rest” That Isn’t Really Rest

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: when you’re lying in bed scrolling through TikTok or leaving the TV on in the background while you do other things, it might feel like you’re resting, but your brain is still very much at work. Your attention, your emotions, all your sensory processing? It’s all still firing. Even while people are sitting or lying still, being onscreen can keep their nervous systems in a heightened state of arousal.

We’ve even created trendy terms for these behaviors. “Bed-rotting” (spending extended periods in bed while scrolling) is often framed as radical rest or self-care. But it’s not creating the biological conditions for actual restoration. It just looks like downtime from the outside.

And it’s not just about the time we intentionally spend on screens. Think about how often we pull out our phones during routine moments throughout the day, waiting for water to boil, standing in line, sitting at a red light. We’re repeatedly redirecting our attention back to screens in those small moments that could otherwise be… well, just moments of nothing.

The Algorithm Problem

Here’s what really gets me though: these platforms we turn to for “unwinding” aren’t exactly designed with our relaxation in mind. They’re built (very deliberately) to keep us engaged. And the way they do that? By serving up content that gets an emotional reaction out of us. Anger, anxiety, outrage. These are the feelings that make us click, share, and keep scrolling.

And this design is directly linked to higher stress, more distraction, and increased cognitive load. So we’re coming to these platforms exhausted from our day, looking for some relief, and they’re basically handing us content engineered to fire us up emotionally. It’s like trying to calm down by eavesdropping on a heated argument. Sure, you can’t look away, but you’re definitely not relaxing.

The Numbers That Make You Go “Huh”

Get this: about one-third of U.S. adults say they feel overwhelmed most days. Not some days. Most days. And the whole constellation of problems: sleep issues, anxiety, trouble concentrating, feeling emotionally exhausted. It’s showing up everywhere, especially in young adults and women.

But here’s what really strikes me: we’re more fluent in wellness language than ever before. We all know about “me time” and burnout and boundaries and nervous system regulation. We can talk about these things. We understand the concepts. But somehow knowing about it all isn’t translating into actually feeling better. That gap between knowing what we should do and actually doing it? That’s the part that feels so frustrating.

What Actually Helps

So the research points to something kind of counterintuitive: the answer isn’t adding more coping strategies to our routine. It’s reducing the number of demands we’re placing on our brains in the first place.

Instead of hunting for the next wellness hack or productivity system, maybe what we need is just… less. Fewer inputs, fewer demands, fewer things pulling at our attention.

Like, take multitasking with devices. You know when you’re watching TV with your phone in your hand? That’s not rest. You’re just splitting your attention between two different streams of stimulation. Turns out picking one or picking neither actually helps more than doing both.

Same thing with all those interruptions throughout the day. Every time you get a notification, switch apps, or do a “quick check” of your phone, that’s adding to cognitive fatigue. It might feel small in the moment, but it adds up. Giving yourself permission to just… not be constantly available or updated? That’s actually restorative.

And then there’s the environment piece. Spending time in quiet spaces, places without screens, being outside. These low-stimulation environments support our mood and emotional well-being in ways that high-stimulation digital spaces just can’t match.

Or trying those analog activities we keep talking about but never quite get around to. Reading actual physical books, journaling, gentle movement, walking without your phone. There’s something about the texture of paper, the weight of a pen, the simple act of moving through space that creates room for your brain to actually rest. These things let you engage mentally without overload.

The Bottom Line

Look, I’m not trying to demonize technology here or suggest we all need to become digital hermits. Screens and digital tools aren’t inherently bad. But there’s a real difference between feeling like you’re unwinding and actually allowing your brain and body to recover. And there’s an even bigger difference between choosing to spend time on screens and finding that screens have somehow consumed all your available time.

In Pickering’s words: “fewer screens, fewer inputs, fewer emotional demands and more protected time for genuine cognitive rest are important components of an effective wellness strategy.”

Maybe that’s the real self-care: not adding more tools or strategies or apps to our routine, but intentionally creating space where nothing is demanding our attention. Where we’re not consuming, processing, reacting, or engaging. Just… being. Or, you know, actually running those errands.

I’m writing this partly as a reminder to myself. The next time I reach for my phone “just to check one thing,” I’m going to ask myself: is this what I actually want to be doing right now, or is this just what’s easiest? Because those errands aren’t going anywhere, and that infinite scroll will always be there waiting.

But maybe today I’ll pick up that book instead.

What’s your relationship with screen-based “rest”? Have you noticed a difference when you unplug? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Sunday Afternoon CSS Tinkering

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 20:03:00 -0400

So I spent my Sunday doing what normal people probably don’t do—obsessing over blog spacing. You know how it is. You notice one little thing that’s bugging you, and next thing you know, three hours have disappeared, and you’re still messing around with CSS.

It started with my blockquotes. I’ve got this dropcap thing going on for the first letter of posts, which I think looks pretty cool. But when a blockquote showed up right after that fancy first letter? Huge, awkward gap of white space. Just looked weird.

So I tried adjusting the dropcap’s line-height first. Then I messed around with margins—positive, negative, whatever I could think of. Nothing worked until I finally stumbled on the magic combo: negative margins on the blockquote itself, plus zeroing out the padding. And boom, fixed.

While I was in there anyway, I gave the blockquotes a little makeover. Switched the font to Georgia with italics. It’s got that slightly fancy, bookish vibe without being too much. Made the text bigger too so the quotes actually stand out.

I also tweaked the previous/next post navigation at the bottom of the pages. Made those links bold, colored them with my accent color, and added underlines when you hover over them. Just a few little touches to make everything feel more polished.

Here’s the funny part, though: I kept thinking the navigation font looked weird in Firefox compared to my other browser. Spent way too long trying to fix it with CSS. Turns out? Firefox’s font setting was on “Large” instead of “Medium.” Facepalm moment. 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️

But hey, that’s the fun of tinkering with your own site, right? You can spend a whole afternoon tweaking tiny details that probably only you’ll notice, and somehow it’s completely worth it.

Wrestling with Micro.blog

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 16:36:00 -0400

I’ve been in a full-on wrestling match with my Micro.blog theme lately. Had this specific vision: truncated posts on the homepage with a “Continue Reading” link, a nice drop cap at the start of long-form posts, and images that didn’t feel like they were yelling over the text. Simple, right?

Started with trying to add the “Continue Reading” link myself but it didn’t work. Was about to send a support ticket, then thought “nah, I want to figure this out.” Asked Perplexity for help instead, and honestly? Huge help figuring out what I’d done wrong.

While I was at it, I asked Perplexity to help with other stuff too. Spotted a drop cap line in the CSS and thought “oh, I want that.” That turned into a whole thing. Spent HOURS trying to figure out what we kept doing wrong. Drop caps are a pain in the ass. Got them working on the homepage eventually, then tried adding them to the long-form summaries and everything broke. Finally just gave up on homepage drop caps.

Now I’m focusing on single post pages — getting that first letter styled with a drop cap in my theme color, sitting under the title and hero image. Also resizing images on the homepage so they don’t swallow the text.

Somewhere in all this, I realized how much I’ve missed this kind of tinkering. Used to mess with HTML and CSS all the time years ago, got rusty without noticing. Digging into Micro.blog’s custom themes, poking at selectors, breaking things and fixing them — it lit that old spark back up. Even figured out how to add anchor links within posts.

Now I’m venturing into shortcodes with some plug-ins I installed. The annoying part? Not every shortcode works nicely across every theme, which sucks when you’re excited to experiment. I mentioned this to the Micro.blog Help team and they agreed and are working on it — which is pretty cool.

It’s been equal parts frustrating and fun. One moment I’m grumbling because a div won’t behave, the next I’m genuinely excited because I got a drop cap to sit exactly where I want it, in exactly the right color. Can’t wait to keep learning more tricks to customize my little corner of the web.

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 04:27:00 -0400

My M1 M2 Mac Mini (8GB RAM, 256GB) is noticeably lagging after 5 years—just juggling multiple browsers, apps like Canva, emails (Outlook/Shortwave), & Microsoft 365. Is it time for an upgrade, perhaps to a Mac Air 15"?, or will I face the same slowdown in the time frame? Decisions, decisions.

Spotlight on Toby Geeks Out!

A Big Refresh for Toby Geeks Out!

There's No Right Way to Blog, Just Mine

No, AI Image Slop Is Not Ok

It Was Always Bigger Than That

Maybe It's Just Me, But Blogging Shouldn't Have This

Today, Recent, Fading: The Inkwell Idea I Couldn't Leave Alone

The ADA Turns 36. The Work Isn't Done

What the ADA Was Built to Do

The Law Created the Floor. We Haven't Built Much on Top of It.

Education: Protected on Paper, Uneven in Practice

Healthcare: The ADA Says Equal Access. Reality Disagrees.

Digital Access Is Still a Fight

A Lot of What Passes for Compliance Is Theater

What Moving Forward Actually Looks Like

What We Owe Each Other

36 Isn't a Milestone — It's a Marker

Further Reading

Twenty-Two Years and Eight Platforms Late

Two New Pages, One Productive Day

The Android Feature That Leaves "Close All Tabs" Guides in the Dust

Why I built Perch...

So I built Perch.

My Browser Stack

Extensions

The Planet Is Still Worth Showing Up For

The Wins Worth Talking About

Our Power

56 Years

A Few Weeks in the Geek Cave: What I've Been Building

It Started With One Thing and Became Twenty

The TOC Fight

Mobile Got a Real Rethink

Little Things That Add Up

Rethinking the Homepage Order

What's Next

The "Deaf Gain" That Conquered Space: The Gallaudet 11 🚀

The Problem

Enter the Gallaudet 11

The Experiments

Why It Mattered

Deaf Gain

Awareness Isn't Enough Anymore

The Misinformation Problem Isn’t Going Away

Awareness Isn’t the Finish Line

Representation Does Something

The Books Are Worth Mentioning Too

Where We Actually Are

Where Did the Word "Geek" Actually Come From?

My Accidental AI Writing Stack

What’s on my desk right now

What I actually learned

Can a Robot Love You Back?

What does “caring” even mean?

The ethics of making robots seem loving

Fiction lets us dream. Reality keeps us honest.

More on robots

My Hands Are My Voice: The Problem with AI Search in Google Maps

A Detour Through Butcher Hollow

Is 8GB Still "Enough" in 2026?

Apocalyptic Warning Against AI

Are We Ready for a Conscious AI?

I Was Never Weird — I Was Just Well-Programmed

Robots Freak Me Out (And Other Things I Was Wrong About)

The Machine in the Garden

When the Alpha is Just "Dad"

Rethinking the "War" on Cancer

The Relaxation Tax

Same Plant, Different Soul

My Quiet Hobby Is Making a Comeback

The Robots Are Driving Now. And It's Getting Real

Okay But Are They Safe Though?

The KitKat Factor

So, Would You Get In?

What's Next?

The Internet Is Filling Up With Slop. Does Anyone Actually Care?

What We're Actually Talking About

The Platforms Are Not Going to Fix This

Why This Is More Than Just Annoying

So Where Does This Leave Us?