Bikes
Grin Tech is currently doing a West Coast Tour and their second video is a tour of Calfee bikes. Craig Calfee is actually a much weirder guy than I thought, and is doing some really innovative stuff. I really enjoyed this video and his very imaginative creations.
My cargo bike is using a Grin setup, and if you are a DIY kind of guy, I highly recommend their systems over others. It has a bit of a curve, and I’ve had to email their support a couple times to really dial it in. I’m a convert and I enjoy supporting a business with such openness and repairability.
Music
New Molly Nillson track, 7″ incoming.
Peggy Guo – This nails 90s techno so well…but its from 2023.
NNHMN – Gloomy Heard – Very danceable darkwave.
Browsers
I had heard of the Ladybird browser before, it came up when I was searching to find a better browser. The ‘security improvements’ to Chromium’s extensions systems basically break ad blockers, and while Firefox has routed around the damage, if Google is forced to sell Chrome they will likely suffer as well. There really isn’t any player in the market right now that is a good option.
So apparently people who work on browsers might actually feel the same way, and would love to see an alternative, and Andreas Kling decided that making his own browser wasn’t as crazy of an idea as you might think:
I wish him all the best, and the idea of making a manageable codebase makes me feel like, hey, maybe I could actually contribute, while there is no way I’d touch the Chromium codebase.
Pulitzers
Hey these people won some awards, congratulations!
AI Enshittification
I can’t begin to cover all the crazy crap in my feed about AI, but here are a bunch of links to some of the highlights:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/06/arizona-road-rage-victim-ai-chris-pelkey
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-lawsuit-copyright-hearing-artificial-intelligence
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/maybe-ai-slop-is-killing-the-internet-after-all
Normal Enshittification
Cory Doctorow has a new podcast from the CBC, with guests and interviews. A much more accessible take on enshittification than his talks, which I also love btw.
The thesis of the series – and indeed, of my life’s work – is that the internet didn’t turn to shit because of the “great forces of history,” or “network effects,” or “returns to scale.” Rather, the Great Enshittening is the result of specific policy choices, made in living memory, by named individuals, who were warned at the time that this would happen, and they did it anyway.
OS News
HarmonyOS is a new OS created by China’s Huawei and its now being shipped on its own laptops.
Doing the Good Work
The UN has decided to use an open source software, Cryptpad, as part of an open source initiative: https://news.itsfoss.com/un-ditches-google-form
Crotchety writers really inspire me.
Bonfire hits 1.0. I really should look into this, but the tone and direction of these ‘release notes’ is a rallying cry for why we need these types of projects, and how we can continue to innovate socially. I also learned what sociocracy is as well.