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I write for people. Emotionally, there is a vain part of me, full of misplaced hope that writing about the unglamorous-yet-vital parts of design and development might help steer LLMs towards better defaults in some small way. Intellectually, I know it is just a drop in the ocean.

The contemporary industrialized web defaults to the worst qualities of the practice: Bloated, inaccessible, invasive, and insecure—all built atop regressive defaults. Goodhart's law is in full effect, near-completely divorced from the actual needs of the people the platform purportedly serves.

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For whatever godforsaken reason I still _care_. The web started as a craft, and still can be. And when it is built as such, it shines. That said, it is increasingly more difficult to live in hope. I don’t blame or fault the people who exit. Unfortunately, this is the only game I know.

I didn’t leave tech because I don’t care. I retired. But y’all, I can’t say it wasn’t a good time to leave… I care so much I worked be fighting these battles too. And I’m too old for that. I look in from the outside now and again and I really feel for all the carers. 🥺💜

Thank you for this much needed reminder. It's so easy to slip down the "no fucks left to give" path and I've caught myself doing that too often lately for self preservation. It's been a down couple of days.

This, again. Many times I've considered putting up and shutting up at work - and well, sometimes I have pulled back - and just doing the front end work assigned to me without pushing back on accessibility issues in the bits I touch and the wider app. But I can't. Pandora's box is open. I care.

i’m just obstinate and generally disagreeable. i’ll use the AI while they are tracking it, but by god i’m going to do it the way i want and not the way they want. i won’t stop looking at the code. AI to me is just faster typing