| Homepage | https://www.blazestar.net/ |
| GitHub | https://github.com/periodic/ |
I feel like I'm weird for not liking #tailwindcss. It makes it easy to co-locate styles with elements in the HTML, but then you end up with a lot of duplication. So what do you do next? You start making groups of Tailwind classes to reuse. Congrats, you just reinvented CSS classes.
Tailwind feels like a solution that's mostly loved by people who just don't like and/or understand CSS. It doesn't seem to solve anything new.
I'll write up longer thoughts soon.
I was reading the latest issue of @molly0xfff's Citation Needed and I realized that I just can't handle the crypto scene like I used to. I used to reflect on what it meant about humanity and our economy and where we were going. Well, now we are here and it's just depressing.
I wrote up some longer-form thoughts here:
https://www.blazestar.net/blog/2026-05-11-done-with-crypto/
Shout out to Molly's many years of excellent work! One of the Internet greats.
I've found the crypto world fascinating since it's inception. The hype, the riches, the lies, the scams! It was a fascinating case study on what people could convince themselves of and what markets could be if we ignored the last few centuries of wisdom. It was ridiculous and I couldn't believe it kept going. I didn't realize it was just a preview of what was to come.
When did the American tech industry flip to thinking the default mode of starting companies is through venture-backed startups? It feels like everything is get-rich-quick. How did scaling become everything?
https://www.anildash.com/2025/08/20/moving_money_ain%E2%80%99t_building_a_business/
Small tech companies are born everyday, but we do ourselves a disservice by distorting the narrative. There are more options than just start-ups and big tech. It's so hard to see that front the inside.
Things are heating up. Millions of people are taking to the streets against Trump's rising authoritarianism. Communities around the US are organizing to defend against ICE raids, to protest Israeli genocide, for mutual aid, and for other forms of fighting fascism. Signal can help people safely organize in all of
I decided to get a blog started as part of contributing to the internet instead of just consuming.
As I was setting it up I realized that using an LLM hadn't even crossed my mind, despite so many around me telling me it's the future. There's something about building and learning where AI just gets in the way.
I'm looking into hosting my own #mastodon instance to embrace #federation and shift my identity into a domain I control and continue my #selfhost journey.
Any experiences to share?
Major drawbacks?
Recommendations for software to run?
Any you want to try but haven't?
Promising up-and-comers?
Issues to watch out for?
I was inspired when I saw that @blainsmith is using SNAC.
I just spent 15 minutes trying to figure out why a service on my home-server wasn't accessible on my public IP. I was double-checking all the firewall rules, busted out my rusty nmap skills.
Then I remembered I also have to update my router to actually forward the port to the home-server so that it can forward the connection to the correct container on the server.
It's times like this I consider enabling UPnP.
Wow, a massive wealth of information on arbitration as a practice used to evade legal accountability. I can only imagine how much research went into this.
https://arbitrationinformation.org/
Arbitration has been one of those things that is terrible but I have little choice in. There aren't practical alternatives. It's like using Facebook, Amazon or Uber.
I've fantasized about striking these clauses from contracts, but rarely am I in a position to negotiate.
Introduction # Mandatory arbitration is a controversial practice in which a business requires employees or consumers to agree to arbitrate legal disputes with the business rather than going to court. Although seemingly voluntary in that the employee or consumer can choose whether or not to sign the arbitration agreement, in practice signing the agreement is required if the individual wants to get the job or to obtain the cellphone, credit card, or other consumer product the business is selling. Mandatory arbitration agreements are legally enforceable and effectively bar employees or consumers from going to court, instead diverting legal claims into an arbitration procedure that is established by the agreement drafted by the company and required as a condition of employment or of doing business with it. 1
or that...
Micah Lee