How I Internet Now

I'm coming up on almost 30 years of being a citizen of the internet. The shape of the web has gone through some wild changes in that time. A lot has also stayed the same! I thought I'd take a moment to document how connected I am to the WWW in 2024. And apparently I'm not the only one taking stock of this. Chris Glass posted something similar recently, in response to another blogger he follows. A lot is changing online in 2024. I think many of us are rethinking our relationship to all of this.

Reading

Most of my reading online takes place in two places: Feedly and Instapaper. RSS is the heart of it. A few times a day, I run through the feeds, either reading posts and articles then and there or saving them to Instapaper to read later. It's a ton of personal websites, a bunch of current event mags like The Atlantic, Vox, New Republic, or The New Yorker, and also your general newspapers like the NYT, WSJ, Guardian, Washington Post, Le Monde. And then dozens of other blogs/sites focused on design, home and decor, tech, culture, art, etc.

I rarely watch videos online, but I do save some things to my Watch Later tab on YouTube. I mostly forget that exists.

Personal Website(s)

With the latest iteration of this site, I've made a significant change. I've separated my personal life from my professional. My design work can now be found on a separate domain: brianfeeney.design. I chose this for two reasons. First, I wanted a more direct link to my portfolio which could be 100% my work. And second, I wanted my personal site to better reflect my personality outside of the office. I'm the same person whether at work or home. But as for design and presentation, there is a distinction.

This website is intended to be a repository for all the things I make for fun. It's also where I post in lieu of social media sites. Having grown up in the era of personal websites — weblogs ... blogs — that's the internet I most cherished. It's the internet I'd love to see flourish again. RSS is the social media I most appreciate; it's the purest form of posting and sharing. Everything which came after may be more advanced, but it isn't better. It may be easier, but it's not quite as personal. At this URL, you'll find my writing, my photos, my music (when I eventually post some), my shared links and favorite media, etc. I love seeing what other people share on their own sites, and, in a way, having a personal website is a way to repay the favor, should anyone care to stop by.

BrianFeeney.design is my professional portfolio, my online resume. As such, it's designed to be a bit more buttoned up. That's to reflect the kind of work I do. At least, the work I've done so far and expect to continue to do. When you hire me, you're getting design that's human, colorful, empathetic, joyful.

Twitter

After the 2020 election, I was pretty much done interacting with posts on Twitter. I was still addicted to reading it, but I stopped tweeting, retweeting, liking things, etc. That was my way of weening myself off of it. I think it worked, because when Musk bought the thing in October of 2022, I was able to log out and walk away cleanly. As the site crumbled and curdled into its worst possible self, I missed it less and less. The night before Twitter became X (July 2023), I exported my 16 year old account and nuked it. @bfeeney was empty for about a month before a teen (or bot) named Brandon reactivated it. He's following 1 person and has not yet posted.

Mastodon

This is the better Twitter replacement. Or, to be more precise, the Fediverse is, running on ActivityPub. It feels the most natural, somehow. You can find me there at [email protected], an account I created while at the XOXO conference in Portland in 2018. In the months following the death of Twitter, most of the web-making folks in my circles moved to Mastodon; developers and designers, but mostly developers. It's stayed mostly an engineers space due to it's geeky internet-edness. That's a shame, but perhaps Threads joining the Fediverse will give it some life. I don't really post there, but I'd like to. Maybe one day I will start that up.

Bluesky

On Bluesky, I found most of the journalists, writers, lawyers, and shitposters I had once followed on Twitter. It seems poised to become the Global Town Square which Twitter aimed to be, if anything ever will. It's biggest drawback is that it's built on a different protocol than ActivityPub, and so I suspect it to devolve into another Social Media Company like all the rest. Maybe that's ok? I don't know. But I don't really feel like posting there. I'm just lurking. I'm feeney.bsky.social.

LinkedIn

I'm there and I'll connect with you if we're friends or have worked together. Not once have I enjoyed browsing that site's feed. Not once have I posted. It has a really weird culture. Business!

Pinterest

Still such a great site. I really love it. I kinda wish it was more social somehow, but perhaps if they did pivot that way I'd hate it. I like saving visual stuff that inspires me. Art, illustration, photography, furniture and architecture, graphic design, etc. My account is here.

Instagram

I peruse my account there maybe once a month via iOS Safari. I stopped posting in 2018. Nearly all but a few of my friends stopped posting there, as well. It was the best social media site for awhile. Now it feels abandoned to the Influencers.

Facebook

I deactivated my account there in maybe 2018? It was falling into the same hole Instagram had, which leads one to think its issues come from management at the top. Bad decisions somewhere by Zuck and his C Suite. At one point, I was really disgusted by Facebook's gross misuse of data, which is one reason I closed my account. These days it's clear that everyone everywhere is abusing your data, so holding it against Facebook feels like a fools brigade. I think a lot of my family is still there, which makes me think one day I might go back. My principles stand against it is feeling less effective now. So we'll see.

Tumblr

It's great. I barely use it at all. But it's great. Some people still use it like it was 2014, spinning up specialty blogs sharing art and memes and other highly directed subgenre/fandom stuff. I mostly read Tumblr blogs via RSS, though. I've kind of been using my account to post funny images I come across, stuff i want to share but don't feel like putting on my own website. You can follow that junk at briancfeeney.tumblr.com.

Slack

I'm also in six different Slack communities. My participation in those (non-work Slacks) is minimal, but far more active than any other social social media. The private nature of those is comforting, and I'm more free to be goofy or more myself. For awhile there, it seemed like Slacks were growing to replace all social networks for most of us, but that time came and went. I’m appreciative to be a member of the ones I’m in. There’s something nice about that. Human. 

Craft CMS Going Strong

Brandon Kelly, a founder of Craft CMS, posted this to Mastodon on Jan 1st of this year:

Mind-blowing stat to kick off 2024: @craftcms is now the 7th most popular CMS among the top 5K domains worldwide, according to Cloudflare's 2023 trends report.

And Greg Storey added his commentary:

It is a remarkable achievement for the products they create, their product strategy (the products they don't create), and their obvious commitment to the thousands of people who create these top five thousand websites with Craft. [...] Folks, this is the Internet I signed up for! This is exactly the type of business story I want to see, read, and hear more of in the years to come. It's a great reminder that the independent web is still alive and kicking, and poised for a strong comeback.

I really like Craft. It's the CMS I've used for this site since maybe 2012? I'm pretty sure Craft was still at Version 1, and it remains, at Version 4, a very reliable and flexible CMS. Admittedly, I sometimes wonder if I should migrate to something else, but reading that Craft is flourishing is enough to convince me to stay. It's easy enough to develop for, and the community around it is friendly and helpful. They've really earned their success.

The Sliding Scale of Giving a Fuck

Dan Mall reminded me of Cap Watkins' great post, The Sliding Scale of Giving a Fuck. I hadn't thought of it in awhile, though it did become a fundamental aspect of my design process. The gist is that you should take into consideration how strongly another person feels about their position in an argument or discussion when deciding a way forward. It's a very useful factor to consider for maintaining healthy relationships with your coworkers.

Like I said, I had forgotten about Watkin's post, but reflecting on it now, I see I've internalized it. In meetings, I prefer to stay quiet and to watch how others stake their claims. The manner in which they take positions is often as revealing as the position they're taking. Are they annoyed? Animated? Angry? Disinterested? Confused? Understanding the moods in the room gives me extra information for how to proceed with my proposals. If most people seem lost or unsure, I feel more comfortable presenting an idea confidently. It's an opportunity to provide structure and momentum when both are lacking. Yet, if someone else in the meeting is passionately arguing for something, I'm likely to provide my opinions softly. I'll share a differing perspective, but in this situation, I'd let it sit on the table and wait for someone else to pick it up. Otherwise, the passionate colleague can have their way.

A lot of this depends on having a trustworthy team. A team that shares goals at a higher level. If we all know we're working towards the same success metrics, it's easier to relax about individual decisions. I'm lucky to be on a team like that now. There's never any doubt we're all looking to make the best products we can.

If you're on a team that's constantly skidding out when disagreements arise, maybe see if The Sliding Scale of Giving A Fuck could help smooth things out.

News Orgs on the Fediverse

Ben Werdmuller:

Subsequent conversations have convinced me that I'm right about the assertions I made about the Fediverse for media organizations. There's a huge need, a huge opportunity, and the underlying technology is there.
...
What if we had a great experience that ties together both short-form discussion and re-sharing and long-form reading, in a way that better showcases both kinds of content and realizes that the way we consume both is different? What if it had a beautiful, commercial-level design? And what if it remained tied to the open social web at its core, and pushed the capabilities of the protocols forward as it released new features and discovered new user needs?

I'm on the same page. Media companies and newspapers everywhere could really benefit from a first-class fediverse client built for their exact needs. Posting to social media could be much more functional than sending out a small bit of text and an unfurled URL. I haven't done any exploration on this myself, but I sense in my gut that Ben's correct.

Three immediate ideas. 1) Full control over what content is pushed out to the Fediverse and direct ownership of the conversation which takes place around it. 2) Reporters for a newsroom can post from accounts on that instance, essentially bringing their official social media presence into a verified and trustworthy location. 3) A more controlled environment for publishing breaking news or simple updates.

I'm particularly intrigued by the idea of reporters and editors having their own accounts on a newsroom's fediverse instance. You can't beat the kind of legitimacy that provides. It also greatly extends a paper's reportage, piggybacking off of the personalities they employ. Because of social media, tons of reporters have higher profiles these days. It only makes sense to offer them an official place to break and discuss news related to the coverage of their paper. Of course, plenty of reporters would still prefer to have social media accounts outside of their place of employment. I'm just imagining how fruitful this kind of collaborative opportunity could be.

Ideal Process versus Reality

Matej Latin provides good advice for young designers. Namely, that the ideal process learned from books is not true to life.

[T]he double diamond design process which has been often cited as the design process doesn't reflect reality. It's the perfect ideal that designers strive for but rarely achieve. Designers simply don't have that much control over the influencing factors so a design manager reading through a perfect, cookie-cutter case study, even if it uses the double diamond process, knows immediately that it's fake.

Frankly, I sometimes see advanced designers demanding excessive adherence to process from their reports. I suspect that comes from a lack of faith in their designers, and also anxiety from not knowing every detail of the project. Delegating work means trusting that your staff can handle the job. Overemphasizing a double diamond process (or the related documentation) for every single thing creates a classroom-like environment. It feels less than professional despite being by the book.

Duolingo and You, or Not

Dave Rupert made some smart comments on Duolingo.

Slowly you realize the truth about Duolingo; it's not a language learning platform, it's an engagement platform. And through that engagement you might pick up some language skills. Duolingo does little in explaining how rudimentary concepts like verbs or participles work and instead lets you piece it together solely from repetition and context clues. Repetition in learning is important but without ever addressing the fundamentals of a language Duolingo reveals it's prioritizing something else over language mechanics.

He's right in that Duolingo prioritizes repetition over language mechanics. I can't argue with that. Except to say that the repetition is what makes it work for me. I don't open Duolingo to learn the rules of a language (French, in my case). I use Duolingo as a reliable way to inject 10 to 20 minutes of French into my life everyday. And I reinforce that education with a twice-monthly one-on-one lesson with a private teacher.

If you're using Duolingo, I'd recommend ignoring every app mechanic but the streak. Keep the streak going, because it's the daily bit of language which keeps it alive in your brain. And don't expect to become fluent from the app, either. It won't do that for you (unless maybe you dedicate an hour or more a day?). For that reason, I think Rupert is right walk away, having read his explanation. If you don't have enough motivation to learn a language with other supportive practices, Duolingo is probably not going to provide much benefit to you in the long run.

I could replace Duolingo with daily reading in French. I have French books and I do read them, but I'm constantly going to the dictionary to look up words and conjugations. There are thousands of idioms and colloquialisms which need googling to understand. What makes Duolingo better, in my opinion, is that it keeps it simple. It grows the vocabulary slowly, repetitively, and the translations are always a click away, should you need it. And it's on my phone, which is with me all the time. I can do my daily 15min from anywhere at anytime.

So I'd agree with Dave that Duolingo is not the perfect way to learn a language on its own. If it's not working for you, let it drop. But for me, it's the exact kind of reinforcement which propels me forward into fluency. For anyone who truly does want to learn a language, my advice would be to take regular lessons or classes, but to support that with a daily Duolingo habit. Or maybe use Duolingo to find which language you truly want to learn. You might think it's Spanish, but maybe you find you really enjoy German? In any case. it's an excellent app. I've found it incredibly useful. Especially when my expectations for it are in line with what it provides.

The Gulf Between Design and Engineering

I couldn't agree more with Rune Madsen's article on the gulf between design and engineering in some organizations.

I believe the way most organizations produce digital products is fundamentally broken. The elephant in the room is a dated understanding of the role of both design and engineering, which in turn shapes how organizations hire, manage, and produce digital things. These companies invest billions of dollars building teams, processes, and tools on top of an immature discipline and an outdated waterfall model that ends up being detrimental to productivity, team happiness, and ultimately, the resulting experiences we bring to life.

I work at a company which is a nestled set of orgs within orgs. A sibling design department to mine has recently finalized their waterfall process with a very detailed document. It's really well done, and a big achievement for our Design Ops. I'm reading it, though, and realizing that it could not possibly work for my department without introducing bottlenecks from design and slowing down the rate with which we ship. That documentation clearly solves an org problem, albeit one out of my view — I suspect a political one concerned with executive reporting. That's fair. There are many acceptable reasons for leadership to prioritize what they choose. In a big org like the one I'm in, accountability can take precedence over product. Again, fair.

My team — as opposed to the others — operates as Madsen describes: integrated with engineering. Every week, we're shipping new features across multiple Publishing tools. And at various levels. Sometimes the feature is a new button in the UI for a new function. Sometimes the feature is a systems-wide capability which cuts multiple steps out of a newsroom workflow. The high speed with which we work depends on the tight partnership between design and engineering. Because of this, possible ship-sinking icebergs in the engineering phase can be avoided by steering design in the right direction from the very beginning. We move smoothly and quickly from concept to launch.

It's very worth reading Madsen's entire article. I started to clip quotes from it and couldn't stop. What I'm going to continue thinking about is the various reasons an org may choose to operate differently. What are the orthogonal complications which prevent a team from working this way? What other company priorities may be worth sacrificing this efficiency for? (via Brad Frost)

NYC Phil

Rob invited me out to the NYC Philharmoic on Saturday. We started the night with dinner at Jeju in the West Village, an excellent Korean place I'd return to. I had the gochu ramyun, Rob the donkatsu, and we split the fried chicken app. We had extra time, so we grabbed some scotch at the old Art Bar; place was still packed and going strong.

The performance was really nice. I don't have the words to appropriately describe the pieces, but I did learn plenty from Rob, not only about the music, but how orchestras and players work as an industry and career. 

The program:

• Mozart: K.505 aria
• Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major
• Mahler: Symphony No. 4

Beirut on AI

Michael Beirut with a great take on a benefit of AI:

"A majority of the world is boilerplate, and that's a good thing," Michael says. "Because all of us are motivated by two opposing kinds of needs. One is the need for predictability and comfort. And the other is the need for surprise and excitement. If you get that balance wrong and everything is just comfortable and predictable, you get bored. And that's not good. But on the other hand, the antidote to that isn't 100% unpredictability, surprise, and entertainment, because then you get too overstimulated and start to freak out. There's a certain reason why you wouldn't want every building on Fifth Avenue to look like the Guggenheim. It just would be too crazy in an unpleasant way. This architect was admiring some anonymous building somewhere in Manhattan, and they said, 'You know, what makes a city great is its ability to put up and maintain something like this, a perfectly good kind of background building that actually does its job well and isn't calling attention to itself.' But if you examine the details, you see that they're sound and built to last, and the tenants are satisfied. And then down the block and around the corner, there's something more special and showy that provides a great foil for that.”

So maybe ChatGPT, Midjourney, and all of those other new generative AI programs can be responsible for doing the boilerplate really well. Now, you've got time to do something a little more interesting. "Everyone dismisses boilerplate as crap that's not worth anyone's time," Bierut says. "You could argue boilerplate makes the world go round, whether it's in architecture, design, or writing. Boilerplate makes things that are special look and feel more appropriately special. Maybe that's an appropriate way to think about the promise of AI, but I don't know."

This tracks with how I've been thinking about AI with respect to design (or any creative profession). It's going to be a tool which helps with boring, rote elements of a process. It'll be able to recreate and fuse older iterations of a craft in order to more quickly produce what had come before. It's just not going to be reliably able to make something humanist and new. At some point, the boundaries of what AI can produce will be obvious, and human beings will bend culture back to what is more fully human.

You can't believe the tech bros about this. They're going to claim AI will be possible of anything — including self-awareness and then becoming our new god. Whatever AI creatures they do eventually create will look and act like them, because people are only able to create gods in their own image. In the case of AI, that god will also be white, male, and techno-centric.

Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing how art and society eventually push back on the upcoming AI-obsessed culture. It should be really human. Really tactile and emotional. Think about how Grunge reset the table on music as we turned into the 1990s. AI stuff will always look clean and rich. It'll have a pristine quality to it, even when prompted to not. Because it's expensive. And it's run by rich people. The pushback to it is going to be a good time. It's going to be the Guggenheims on a street full of forgettable buildings.

Advice from Gaiman

Posted by Jennifer Grand on BlueSky.

[E]xquisite advice from [Neil Gaiman]
“When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”