Link archive: December 7th, 2021

Inertia - CSS-Tricks

Here’s a thoughtful response from Chris to my post about Svelte, Astro, and React.

Advent of Bloggers 2021: Day 3 | James’ Coffee Blog

James is featuring a different blog every day of Christmas and he chose mine for day three. What a lovely project!

I love writing this series. For the last three days, one of the first things on my mind after waking up is “what blog am I going to feature today?” I have seen so many interesting websites in the last few years. If you ever feel like the web is all the same, I’d recommend checking out the IndieWeb or clicking through the websites I feature in this series. You’ll realise there is still a great deal of creative content on the web written by independent bloggers: you just have to know where to start looking.

Simon Collison | Stream on

Writing has been essential for focus, planning, catharsis, anger management, etc. Get it down, get it out. Writing is hard, but it’s also therapy: give order to a pile of thoughts to understand them better and move on.

I concur! Though it’s worth adding that it feels qualitatively different (and better!) to do this on your own site rather than contributing to someone else’s silo, like Twitter or Facebook.

Web tech is better. Developer norms are worse. | Go Make Things

The web historically moves in waves.

Libraries are created to push complex features in an easier way. Then the libraries themselves get complicated, often more so than the benefits they provide.

Eventually, (some of) the core features of those libraries make their way into the browser itself, but the libraries linger like water on the shore, slowly receding.

And before the sand has a chance to fully dry, a new set of libraries washes in to push the web even further.

morals in the machine | The Roof is on Phire

We are so excited by the idea of machines that can write, and create art, and compose music, with seemingly little regard for how many wells of creativity sit untapped because many of us spend the best hours of our days toiling away, and even more can barely fulfill basic needs for food, shelter, and water. I can’t help but wonder how rich our lives could be if we focused a little more on creating conditions that enable all humans to exercise their creativity as much as we would like robots to be able to.

The Case Against Crypto | Pervasive Media Studio

The underlying technology of cryptocurrency is based on a world without trust. Its most ardent proponents want to demolish institutions and abolish regulation, reducing the world to a numbers game which they believe they can win. If the wildest fantasies of cryptocurrency enthusiasts were to come true, if all the environmental and technical objections were to fall away, the result would be financial capitalism with all the brakes taken off.

The promotion of cryptocurrencies is at best irresponsible, an advertisement for an unregulated casino. At worst it is an environmental disaster, a predatory pyramid scheme, and a commitment to an ideology of greed and distrust. I believe the only ethical response is to reject it in all its forms.