Bubbles Weekly

Twenty-one rules for living among other people when every device encourages you to forget their sentience

If you return to Twitter/X after leaving it out of principle, do you really still have those principles?

I know, I know, we're all tired of everyone writing about AI. It's all the same things, same opinions, over and over again. But I still felt compelled to write…

Lubin Manufacturing Company in 1911 Introduction Lubin Vault Fire Fox Vault Fire MGM Vault Fire National Archives Vault Fire Universal Studios Fire Still…

Drawing on my decade of experience as a 7cups Listener and research on emotional sharing, I argue in defense of vent posting. Venting is a natural human need…

Guys this is crazy. On Monday, I dreamt that I searched up the healthiest food on google, and there it was.

A few days ago I was sitting in a café in Sofia, thinking about things that were normal when I was a kid, or even when my parents were, and that now take real…

Fremantle2026 August 19 (Wednesday), 8:52AM· websites · blogging · Little Websites Everywhere, by Michelle Barker, 18 August 2026: Building a website feels…

I’ve been on a bender lately of reading books about gender, specifically a lot on the experience of women in society, and it’s radicalising me in the best way…

I am fifty-two. All the clichés are true. Time changes everything. That’s hardly a revelation to anyone older than me, and those of a similar vintage are…

So there I was, standing in the paper goods aisle of the Piggly Wiggly at 8:45 on a Tuesday evening, having a full-blown crisis over two ply versus three ply.…

Notable brambles in my garden

) so finding good coffee can be a bit of a high bar for me. But Japan doesn't disappoint, and if you know where to look there are so many good coffee spots in…

It’s a great topic. AI. Easy to dismiss. Easy to praise. But it isn’t everything. Not everything needs to be in comparison with it. Not every thought shared…

In early February 2011 Egypt was in the middle of a political revolution. One morning, everyone's phones suddenly pinged with an alert. The Armed Forces asks…

A terrible email to receive, and likely the first of many.

This 404 report justly been getting considerable coverage.Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them…

In the late 80s, a manager at Microsoft named Paul Maritz sent an email to a colleague suggesting they “eat their own dogfood.” What he meant was that LAN…

To say that I didn't expect this to happen is an understatement. But hey, achievement unlocked!

Sticks tongue out at AI

Finding a better way to waste time.

Last week Twitch announced that it had automatically opted all of its user accounts into using all content for training Amazon's generative “AI” models. They…

I'm reclaiming the title of 'webmaster' as the multidisciplinary creator who designs, develops, writes, and advocates for their own corner of the web and will…

I’ve found my ideal format for shipping apps for personal & family use: PWAs, with an offline-first focus, rendering (mostly) entirely client-side. JavaScript…

Falling in love with this little camera app

Some silly ideas for what I'd like to be able to do easier

[2:50 AM on a Sunday is also a particularly scammy time for this to be sent.] This past Sunday, I received an email from “Do Not Reply” with the subject line…

Robert Kingett tooted that indieweb folk are saying RSS readers are flawed, I'm here to say that feeds are ESSENTIAL to the web, all of it, and if any web…

I caught wind of the news that MacStories is back posting on X, the “everything platform”, and that seems to have caused some backlash. I am not a reader of…

Forwarding unedited AI-generated content wastes everyone's time.

Hey y’all, I’m here today with a PSA that I find myself repeating multiple times a day, every single day. And I’m going to do it again. AI is wrong a lot. And…

For over a decade, I've been a proponent of writing detailed Git commit messages. I find it a valuable use of my time, and continue to double down on it, even…

The computer I use the most is my couch laptop. It's a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) running Debian 13 and sits on a little roller table thing that…

Responding to Eetu and Pagecord creator Olly's reactions to my article on accessible IndieWeb approaches, I examine the tension between platform convenience…

What I write is not 100% human-written anymore. I started using LLMs to help me write better and they do wonders.

I've been thinking about how resilient my site and posts are lately, so I found Naty S's post, Re: The Loss of Links Continues, where she writes about her…

What is it?An aggregator for non-commercial personal blogs! How does it work?Log in with your Mastodon account and you can upvote (no downvotes) blog entries.…

Like most people who studied English Literature in college, I've fantasized about writing a novel one day. Over time that goal has, let's say, slimmed…

James argues against the merits of distinguishing AI-generated writing from human writing.

Don’t let the absence of a flying car in your garage distract you: we are definitely now living in a version of the future out of J.G. Ballard or William…