What does getting it right the first time cost us?
Building in public has helped my practice grow by letting actual use inform the next decision. What do we lose when professionalism means nobody can see us revise?
Essays & build notes
Writing
What I’m making, what I’m noticing, and the questions that follow me home.
Latest writing
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The gift I spent a career avoiding
Being fired can lead somewhere better without making the harm a gift. Reflecting on the human cost of work, where corporate responsibility stops, and what studying public health is teaching me to question.
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What I’m building with Groundtruth 911
Groundtruth 911 has a public home. How the work took shape, why human judgment is central to Validation Workbench, and what I want to build next.
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What If We Used the Power We Already Have?
Power is not only institutional. It can be electricity, money, time, skills, safety, access, attention, care, or love. Edward Berlinski’s solar charging project is a reminder to notice the power we already have and ask where it could be useful.
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I Had Never Done This Before. But I've Totally Done This Before.
JPACT was my first time addressing a regional committee as an independent resident. It was not my first time learning a complicated system, translating it under pressure, or performing confidence. I got my three minutes. What happened after taught me more.
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I Stopped Treating My Phone Like a Finished Product
I connected a Fairphone to my computer with Android’s official developer tools and rebuilt it around the way I actually live. You do not need to become a programmer to stop accepting someone else’s defaults as the natural order of your phone.
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When Remembrance Becomes Robotic
I did not post on September 11 because I could not find the humanity in repeating a polished remembrance while people around us are experiencing preventable suffering every day. Remembrance should make us more human, not simply more practiced.
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I made myself a tiny brand publisher
I built a small offline brand publisher because the tools I was using were all almost right, but none matched my exact workflow. Now the repetitive brand decisions are handled locally and consistently, so I can spend more time on the actual work.
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Why shouldn’t we reinvent the wheel?
We are taught not to reinvent the wheel because rebuilding is seen as wasteful. But if the system was designed for a world that no longer exists, taking it apart may be the most responsible thing we can do.
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Why do we only celebrate the underdog after they win?
We celebrate people for thinking differently once they succeed. I’m building in public because the uncertain middle matters too. The wrong turns, revisions, quiet stretches, and all.
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Big Tech, what are we actually disrupting?
Big Tech has spent years celebrating disruption, but too often the result is more change for the people doing the work, not better work.
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The work between the standards
Why I’m building a vendor-neutral NG9-1-1 GIS community and why I’m starting by giving away a tool
Correspondence
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