Over/Under #58 with Brennan Kenneth
| 0 words
TAGS: interview, IndieWeb, chess, journaling
I was interviewed by Hyde on lazybea.rs for their Over/Under series. Covering Discord, journaling, chess, Letterboxd, strawberries, and more.
ARCHIVE
REVIEW: To be Un Poeta (2025, dir. Simón Mesa Soto)
| culture | 1,837 words
TAGS: film review, Cinema, Poetry, Character Analysis, Art, Ethics, Literature
A devastating character study of a washed-up Colombian poet who discovers a gifted teenage student, exploring the toxic dynamics of artistic mentorship, racial exploitation in the literary world, and the difference between dedication and...
Building the Good Web
| indieweb, community | 2,496 words
TAGS: personal essay, IndieWeb, Digital Culture, Social Commentary, community, philosophy
What does it actually mean to build a better web, and what do we owe each other in doing so? A response to the 32-bit Café thread about trust, onboarding, and the distance between knowing something is wrong and doing something about it.
Downgrading to macOS Catalina: A Sermon on Obsolescence
| technical-tutorials | 3,292 words
TAGS: Technical, Digital Culture, Technology, Social Commentary, Sustainability, Tutorial
A complete step-by-step tutorial for creating a bootable Catalina USB installer using mist-cli on modern macOS in order to downgrade an Early 2015 MacBook Pro from macOS Monterey to Catalina. Accidentally also a philosophical look at planned...
Trust and Faith in Our Web
| indieweb | 1,808 words
TAGS: personal essay, Digital Culture, IndieWeb, Social Commentary, philosophy
What is trust in an AI-saturated internet? And a related question, how do we reckon with the barriers to onboarding people to the IndieWeb? We must cultivate faith in our digital interactions and make independent web spaces more accessible.
Et Maintenant, Quelque Chose de Complètement Différent
| french | 766 words
TAGS: personal essay, Language Learning, philosophy, Mental Health, writing
Cet article de blogue est écrit en français. This blog post is written in French. Apprendre le français, le deuil et les limites de la vie -- un exercice en vulnérabilité linguistique.
Software Harm Reduction
| ai | 1,842 words
TAGS: Tech Criticism, Digital Culture, Open Source, AI Ethics, Software Ethics, Digital Sovereignty, Community
genAI code is now in Python, curl, and systemd. We face an ethical crisis. Slopware means we have two possible responses: absolutism or harm reduction. This moment demands the same principled stand that free software absolutists have taken for...
Constellation of Living Stars
| personal-favourites, writing-craft | 1,293 words
TAGS: personal essay, Creative Process, Writing, Philosophy, Community, Digital Culture
I've written 120 blog posts in the past 140 days, averaging 1,900 words per post. 250,000 words total on my blog currently. It's as good a time as any to review my work so far and speculate on the possibilities of my future.
Fermenting Boredom
| science | 2,209 words
TAGS: personal essay, Creative Process, Philosophy, Indigenous Writing, Neuroscience
Come be bored with me. Utterly bored. Within the default mode network, Heidegger's philosophy, Indigenous dream epistemologies, and personal experiences with hypnagogic states.
CHILDHOOD: Hypercapitalist Nostalgia & Unsupervised Internet Access
| personal-favourites, culture | 2,164 words
TAGS: personal essay, Cultural Criticism, Digital Culture, nostalgia, capitalism, childhood
My nostalgia is hypercapitalist. My nostalgia is the worst of the unregulated Internet. I cannot decouple my fondest memories from the corporations and the loss of innocence that produced them, and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that.
A More Perfect Morality: The Progressive Failure of Ethics
| politics | 8,904 words
TAGS: Philosophy, Personal Essay, Ethics, Social Justice, Human Rights, Activism, Cultural Criticism, Social Commentary
Liberal democracies selectively apply universal human rights, and there is a progressive failure to extend moral consideration to: Palestinians, Congolese, Rohingyans, Uyghurs, trans people, women, Black communities, Indigenous Peoples, the...
Building brennan.day Part Two: IndieWeb, New Features, and Three Months of Iterations
| indieweb, technical-tutorials | 2,355 words
TAGS: eleventy, IndieWeb, personal site, technical
What have I added to my site since I started in December? Quality-of-life improvements, new pages, interesting features, and of course, easter eggs! When you add a little each day, it really adds up.
How Do We Account for Evil?
| history, community | 2,895 words
TAGS: Philosophy, Personal Essay, Community
Drawing on Susan Neiman's philosophy of evil, the 'missing stair' problem, and Elinor Ostrom's principles for governing the commons, I try to explore the difference between withdrawal due to burnout versus accountability, and argue that ethical...
Write Weird Shit
| personal-favourites, writing-craft | 827 words
TAGS: personal essay, Creative Writing, Literature, freewriting
Dogfooding my freewriting; an experiment on why writers need to embrace the weird, unfiltered, and unconventional rather than fearing AI detection.
We As Men Must Do More, and We Must Do Better
| personal-favourites, politics | 2,356 words
TAGS: Feminism, politics, Personal Essay, Philosophy, Activism
An open letter to the men in my life and around the world, pleading that we recognize there is so much work for us to do. A recognition of my own shortcomings and failures. Steps we can take to try to liberate the future.
r/Calgary Deleted the Top Post of the Day Because I Wrote It Myself
| 1,036 words
TAGS: Digital Culture, Media Criticism, journalism, IndieWeb
I was permanently banned from r/Calgary for posting my own writing about local public library funding. What does this say about the state of local journalism?
Why is my local city and public library looking to pay $50/hr to an AI Artist Residency?
| ai | 1,481 words
TAGS: Digital Culture, Media Criticism, politics, art
The Calgary Public Library is offering $8,000 for an AI Artist Residency while Canadian artists face funding cuts and 16% grant acceptance rates. There are programs like this around the world. Why?
Build Awesome's Kickstarter is Cancelled
| indieweb | 830 words
TAGS: Eleventy, Static Site Generators, Open Source, Web Development, Community, Kickstarter
After only a couple days, Build Awesome's Kickstarter has been cancelled and rescheduled due to email delivery issues that ruined the project's momentum despite reaching their funding goal in a single day.
The Big Arch Distraction (while the World is Burning)
| personal-favourites, politics | 1,692 words
TAGS: cultural criticism, politics, media criticism, social commentary, personal essay
A CEO took a comically small bite of a burger. The internet erupted. Meanwhile, the US is bombing Iran, Trump is drafting executive orders to seize control of the midterms, and civil unrest is reaching a boiling point. We need to talk about what...
The End of Eleventy
| indieweb | 2,295 words
TAGS: Eleventy, Static Site Generators, Open Source, Web Development, Community
Build Awesome is a rebrand of 11ty/Eleventy, backed by a successful $40k Kickstarter. But this attempt to monetize static site generators repeats the same mistakes that killed Gatsby and Stackbit--and misunderstands who actually builds static sites.