2026-01-19 12:00:00
We’d gotten a good three inches of snow overnight. Four? Not sure. Either way, the thing in the main was I’d gotten a late start on shoveling. I’d slept terribly last night, and still had my head submerged in a large mug of coffee when She began lacing her boots. By the time I trudged outside some thirty minutes later, She and one of our upstairs neighbors had already cleared the sidewalks. They’d started shoveling out the little driveway behind our building, so I set to alongside them.
I was delighted to learn that it was light work. Literally. Last night we’d watched big fluffy snowflakes trace easy, unhurried paths through the air, and the overnight temperature never got cold enough for anything to ice over. And when you’re responsible for clearing not one but two city sidewalks — living on a street corner! never again, I swear — you’ll take the wintertime wins where you can.
I was finishing up the shoveling when I saw an older woman was talking to me, a wide smile on her face, a lovely black dog sitting next to her.
I’d been listening to an audiobook, so I popped out one of my headphones. “Sorry, could you say that again?”
“Doesn’t look like it was too much of a workout,” she said.
“Oh! No, I’m so glad it didn’t freeze over. This stuff’s pretty fluffy, and easy to clear.” I gestured at her dog, now stretched out lazily next to her. “How is it walking around?”
How was it walking around? I assumed that question would be the beginning of the end of it: she’d tell me it wasn’t too bad, I’d say that’s great to hear, and she and her dog would continue down the street. A quick little one-two patter between neighbors who’ve never met, and wouldn’t ever see each other again.
Instead, the woman introduced me to her gorgeous collie, and how the poor thing had a number of mobility issues. Some joint and ligament issues had led to a series of surgeries, and while the pup had healed well, it made walking a bit of a challenge. “But she’s doing so great today,” she said. “We did hydrotherapy, and I think that made such a difference.”
And then more stories came. I learned she’s been in our town since the eighties — first as a renter, then when she and her husband moved into the house she still lives in. We chatted about how much change she’s seen in our little city; I shared how much change I’ve seen in the decade we’ve been here. I learned her sweet old collie had a brother, who passed away a year ago. I learned she lost her husband a few years back. Her children had moved out ages ago; it was just her and her dog.
Then she said, “I’ve got friends in Minneapolis.”
I paused. “I do, too. A few.”
For the first time, we fell silent. Just for a moment. I thought about my friends in their city; I thought about what the warmer months will bring to mine. I thought about the observer training I did last week.
And then she said, “One of my friends is worried about leaving the house right now. But their neighbors have offered to shop for them.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “I’m so happy to hear that, right now.”
“Yes,” she said. “I was, too.”
Toward the end of our chat, she told me her name; she asked me for mine, and I gave it. I wished her well as we waved goodbye, and her dog got to its feet. They walked down the street, letting the collie set the pace; I went inside to get some salt for our sidewalks. The trees all along our street were blanketed in snow, as though their branches were long, tentative fingers clutching delicate clouds, holding them aloft for us all to see.
A note of thanks to Fatimah Asghar — both for the poem I stumbled across today, and for the line borrowed from it for this post’s title.
This has been “I find them on the street & shadow.” a post from Ethan’s journal.
2025-12-31 12:00:00
I’m trying to write some kind of post to close out 2025, and the words just won’t come. I should’ve started this post weeks ago. But every time I thought about sitting down to write, my brain kept glancing off the idea. Something about it felt entirely too big, too difficult. And now that I’ve finally, finally started typing, it still feels daunting: I am sitting in my living room, a slowly-cooling mug of coffee in my hands, as I stare at one of the sloppiest blog drafts I’ve started in a while.
I mean, how do you write about a year that’s felt so hard? On a personal level, I lost a very good job I loved; a couple months later, I buried a parent. And amid all of that, the national and global horrors raged. I have no idea how to make one of those things legible within a few hundred words, much less all of them.
Maybe that’s why I’m sitting here, cold coffee in hand, thinking about flowers and dead men.
I spent a good chunk of my final year of college studying elegiac poetry: poems of loss and mourning written for the dead.1 My thesis advisor and I spent hours talking about their structure, and how frequently flowers were used — frequently and differently used, I should say. As metaphors, flowers are versatile: they can represent metamorphosis and transformation, or act as a not-so-subtle callback to “the flower of youth”; they can even just, well, be beautiful things, letting the author drape a dead friend in splendor.
They can also be a boundary. In “Lycidas,” John Milton memorializes a dead friend by, at least in part, naming an array of flowers — primrose, jasmine, violets, hyacinth, and many, many more — before casting each of them, in turn, around his friend’s tomb.
…
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
Personally, I don’t think “Lycidas” is an especially good poem. But it does have some passages that have haunted me in the best way possible, and this little litany of flowers is one of them. Milton’s sorrow for his dead friend is really evident throughout — there’s maybe more raw, open emotion from Milton here than I’ve seen anywhere else in his writing. But at the same time, I love the idea that casting wreaths of flowers around a dead friend could be read as a protective measure from death. When you draw a boundary around something horrible, you can give it a shape; you can contain it.
I suppose that’s my path through this not-so-little post. This year was, in a word, relentless, sprawling, and tragic. And at the same time, some really beautiful flowers managed to grow; let’s you and I drape them around 2025’s shoulders.
The year began with planning a memorial service and mourning a lost job, but it also began with something I’m tremendously proud of: a redesign of my latest book, You Deserve a Tech Union, and its subsequent rerelease as a self-published title. I’ll be honest: I sometimes wish the arc for this book had been a little different since its release, but man am I delighted it’s still in the world, finding its way to people doing good work. And if you’ve read the book, or shared it with friends and coworkers, you’re part of the book’s quiet, ongoing success. So thank you, friend. Really.
I was hoping I’d get a few more years at 18F, but going back into independent practice has gone much better than I could’ve hoped. I’ve gotten a chance to work on meaningful, interesting projects with some tremendous clients, including the City of Boston. At the same time, I’m relearning how to talk about the work I do: I updated my portfolio for the first time in years, and wrote about how I approached the process. I’m also starting some new work in January that should keep me busy for the next few months, and I’m feeling incredibly grateful for that. (But hey: if you’d like to talk about working together, do get in touch!)
While I’m on the subject of meaningful work, I found no shortage of it volunteering over at Unbreaking. Back in June I wrote about why I joined the project, and why its work matters. Since then, there’s been a tremendous number of meaty design problems to think through, all while collaborating with some of the brightest, most hard-working people I’ve ever met. I know we won’t web design our way out of fascism. But I can’t tell you how good it feels to bring a few of my skills to support activism that matters.
Additionally, I’ve done some writing this year I’ve been incredibly proud of. A few of my favorite posts:
I remain dismayed by what’s currently happening in tech, and at the same time I’m incredibly inspired by the people fighting for a better vision of it; I want to write more about both of those things. On that front, I should note I’ve decided I want to write another book — a much longer one, if possible. But I’ll share more on that when I can.
That’s a lot of work-shaped stuff, I realize; there was plenty of good that happened that involved doing very little. As always, I got a tremendous amount of joy tinkering with this little website: adding better social media preview cards, or a linkblog. But I spent a considerable amount of time with my wife, with our two little cats, and with our dear friends. I went for long walks and runs in my city, and played plenty of video games. I read several books I’m still thinking about.
And whenever possible, I said hello to my favorite river.
I’ve always loved this time of year. But the hope and optimism I feel for what’s coming is tempered by the knowledge that there’s going to be a considerable amount of work next year, and more than a little hardship. Many didn’t make it out of this year; not everybody will make it out of the next one. But right here, in this moment, you and I are looking ahead together. So here’s to you and I, friend, and to pastures new.
I’m glad you’re here. Thank you, as always, for reading.
If your Cool Guy Detector suddenly exploded in a puff of white smoke, I sincerely apologize. ↩︎
This has been “Our frail thoughts.” a post from Ethan’s journal.
2025-11-21 12:00:00
I come from one of the poorest corners of a small, rural state. When I go back to visit, I book a night or two in this big hotel in my neck of the woods. The trips are heartwarming, and this last one was no exception: I got a chance to share a couple meals with old friends and family, surrounded by the hills and forests I still think of as home. This year has felt long and dark, and their faces and voices brightened it.
This hotel, though. Let me tell you about it. It’s new, first of all. Even if you’re driving through the area for the first time, you’ll be able to spot “new construction” as something that sticks out. What’s more, this huge hotel’s been dropped on top of a mountain that’s too tiny for it. This isn’t one of the hot tourist destinations, either; this mountain’s home to a humble little ski resort, one that’s always been overshadowed by more popular tourist destinations, all of them a short drive away. Now, I need to stress here that I’m no skier — I did a single season on my high school cross-country skiing team that we will not be discussing — but I do know this resort’s historically drawn most of its customers from nearby towns: they’re not pulling in the wealthy out-of-staters. And to look at this new, massive, shiny hotel, that’s who you’d think they’re attracting.
How’d it get here? Well, we need to back up a decade or two to answer that. Because as it happens, some investor types decided to defraud the federal government.
They didn’t lead with that, of course. Through a visa program for affluent foreign investors, they had access to a tremendous amount of capital, which they then used to acquire local tourist spots and dramatically overdevelop them. As they did, they promised that all this investment would bring an influx of new businesses, which would mean more people moving to a state starved for both residents and revenue.
As you might have guessed, the money disappeared when these investors got arrested. One visible aftershock was the halted construction projects. In one town up north, there’s a crater the size of a literal city block, because all the new construction these investors promised — a slew of shops and offices, a new hotel — disappeared when they did. The investors are gone; the hole isn’t.
It also left some massive, sprawling properties in communities that never had enough foot traffic to properly support them. And here we are, back at this gigantic hotel. When we walk in, we see that the gift shop right off the lobby has been hastily boarded up. One wing of the hotel’s been blocked off to guests. At the check-in desk, the clerk has three registration forms lined up in front of her, one for each of the guests she knows will be checking in that evening. All because some rich, powerful men promised my chronically impoverished corner of the state that the things it had always and desperately needed — investment, jobs, and people — were, at long, long last, finally about to arrive.
“Artificial intelligence is here to stay. It’s not going anywhere.” I’ve heard some variation on that line many, many times since 2022; I heard it a few more times after defining “artificial intelligence” as a failed technology. Maybe you’ve heard it too.
Now, regardless of how you or I might feel about “AI,” I think we can both acknowledge just how impressively ahistorical that statement is. In the last two decades, I’ve seen so many things we knew were our future: Internet Explorer, Flash, Web 2.0, jQuery, mobile websites, NFTs1, and more. We were told each and every single one of them was immutable, fixed, and unchanging; each and every single one of them, in turn, faded. Some of them even disappeared altogether. I’ve been in this industry long enough to know that predicted futures have a pretty short lifespan.
And that’s the moment in which I’m writing: that vision of an “AI” future feels like it’s shaking. In fact, it might be close to shattering. There’s a growing body of reporting on the rampant speculation at the heart of the current boom, with some journalists gaming out what a market crash might look like. Investors are nervous; leaders of “AI” companies are even starting to sound warning bells, presumably to position themselves for government bailouts whenever the bubble finally bursts. In the face of all this instability, stating that “AI isn’t going anywhere” feels even more detached from reality: it’s divorced from how quickly trends shift in tech, and it’s ignoring the growing cracks in the industry’s foundation.
At the same time, I think that unwavering belief is what’s instructive about it.
I mean, look. I’ve been thinking about my future quite a bit. The last decade’s made my sense of the coming decades feel fractured, and the last year has only accelerated that feeling. Friends are aging; family members have passed on; so many things I was taught to rely upon — jobs, industries, institutions, milestones, even seasons — feel like they’re being upended in front of me. When you’re told to expect a certain broad arc to your life, it’s more than a little terrifying when that map’s redrawn as you’re looking at it.
That’s why I’ve come to realize that statements about the future aren’t predictions: they’re more like spells. When someone describes something to you as the future, they’re sharing a heartfelt belief that this something will be part of whatever comes next. “Artificial intelligence isn’t going anywhere” quite literally involves casting a technology forward into time. How could that be anything else but a kind of magic?
Now. By calling them magical, I’m not attempting to diminish or disparage these kinds of statements. Far from it: when we make these statements, we’re opening up a kind of possibility space. “What if the future looked like this?” By making space to ask questions, we’re making the future feel less fixed, and far less daunting. It gives us an anchor point in what comes next, one we can move toward with intention. On an individual level, incantations like these can be a helpful goal-setting exercise; performed at scale, they can be transformative.
And not necessarily in a good way. Take the “AI” industry: backed by their belief in their (again, failed) technology and a ghastly amount of capital, they’ve embedded their technology in products, organizations, and governments alike. They’ve begun physical buildouts of vast data centers that take a tremendous toll on disenfranchised communities, and are demanding older, even more dangerous forms of energy to support their expansion. They’ve created new classes of invisible workers to power their operations, all while selling automation technology that makes work even more precarious for everyone else. This is all to say that they’ve moved very, very, very quickly to realize their vision for the future in the last three years. Hell, it’s hard to imagine a future without these platforms, and the powerful people who sell them.
But to paraphrase something Mandy Brown once said, there’s not going to be one future — there will be many. In fact, there’s another future being built right now.
Last fall, the workers at the New York Times Tech Guild walked off the job for a week and subsequently won their first union contract, one that improved pay, won them “just cause” protections, and more. For the last several months, workers at Microsoft have waged an effective and relentless pressure campaign against their employer, in order to force the tech giant to stop selling technology that facilitates the genocide in Gaza. Last week, the workers at Kickstarter United ended their record-breaking strike, having walked off the job for forty-two days to secure improved pay equity, a contractually guaranteed four-day work week, and job protections from “AI”. This week, the workers at Starbucks United, who began a strike just last week, established a blockade at one of the corporation’s distribution centers — all to bring management back to the table after months of stalled negotiations.
These are just four examples from the last year; there are many, many more. We’re surrounded by a tremendous amount of organizing right now, with workers banding together to build protections at work, to win improved pay and benefits, to advocate for human rights, to build power together. That organizing’s happening at a scale I find tremendously inspiring, and at a pace — last year; this year; last week; this week — that’s steadily increasing. This is a new future, one being built by quiet conversations with coworkers, by petitions circulated at work, by bargaining sessions, by chants and songs and protests and strikes.
That’s not to say this future is any more assured than the other one: this worker-led future needs significantly more people, including you and your coworkers. But that aside, I’m struck by the contrast between the two. One vision for the future mentions technology and technology alone, neatly eliding right over who might be impacted or harmed if that future should come to pass; the other future is centered around humans, their needs, and their hopes for something better.
Me, I’ve decided which future I want to live in. When I wrote my last book, I said the future of the tech industry is an organized, worker-led labor movement. That’s the quiet hope I’m casting into the months and years and decades that are stretching before me.
Maybe you agree with that future. If you do, well — let’s you and I start moving toward it.
lol ↩︎
This has been “The line and the stream.” a post from Ethan’s journal.
2025-10-07 12:00:00
I was keenly watching updates on the Anthropic copyright lawsuit, in part because every single book I’d ever written appeared in LibGen, the database of pirated books at the heart of the case. When news broke that there was a frankly astonishing settlement in the case, I figured I might be eligible to file a claim for the affected books. I wasn’t expecting a grand payout, mind; it was really about the principle of the thing.
However, when I went to the new site created for the settlement, I was surprised to see that only some of my books appeared when I searched for my name in the database of affected works. A number of much, much older books I’d coauthored were listed; none of the books I wrote myself appeared when I looked up my name.
I spent some time poking around the claims site’s labyrinthine FAQs section, it seems like a claim can only be filed if a book meets the following criteria:
You Deserve a Tech Union was first published in 2023, so it’s immediately ruled out. But my other two books meet the first criterion: Responsive Design was published in 2011, with a second edition released in 2014; Responsive Design: Patterns & Principles was published in 2015. So far, so good.
But since none of my books appear when I search the claims site’s database, I’m guessing the second criterion is where things fall down: namely, I don’t think my former publisher formally registered my books with the Copyright Office. It’s quite possible they never registered any of the books they published: when I search for my former publisher’s name on the claims site, I get zero results.
This is where I started to get frustrated.
I mean, here’s the thing: my books are copyrighted. They became copyrighted the minute they were published, and that applies to everyone who wrote a book for my former publisher. Heck, the Copyright Office itself says that registration is voluntary. The fact that copyrighted works aren’t eligible unless they’ve formally registered feels like a lawyerly dodge: a legal maneuver to help Anthropic reduce the size of its payout pool, and thereby keeping the company from getting rendered down into its component parts during bankruptcy proceedings.
The other thing that’s frustrating about this is that I have zero problem with my books getting pirated in the first place. I have every problem with my books being used to line the pocket of a few billionaires who don’t care about creators, copyright, or even basic consent. I have every problem with my books getting used to prop up a half-baked technology that is destroying the planet, ruining the internet, and supercharging wealth inequality, all while remaining — and I want to be exceedingly clear about this — a complete and utter failure.
This has been “A right to copy.” a post from Ethan’s journal.
2025-09-29 12:00:00
A little over a month ago, I wrapped a project with the City of Boston. It was, in a word, tremendous. I was brought in to help the city’s Digital Service team define a new design system, and I got to do it all alongside Christine Bath, a tremendously talented designer and researcher, and one of my former coworkers from 18F. The project wove together so many of the things I most enjoy about design systems work: interviewing stakeholders, building a map of the products (and teams) the design system would need to support, and some honest, old-fashioned design work. And all in the service of helping a city government better support its constituents. It was good work with great people, and I’m honored I got to do it.
But the project’s done now. As a result, I’m thinking about what’s next; and that means I’ve updated my portfolio.
I’ll be honest: I struggle with portfolio updates. I mean, I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve done, and of the people I’ve gotten to do it with. But the exercise of pulling together a portfolio involves more than a few things I find difficult. That includes, but is not limited to:
But hey, who cares about feelings and anxieties! Capitalism sure doesn’t! I still had to, y’know, update my portfolio. So I designed a little process to help me get out my head, and start getting pixels on a screen.
— well, I say “process.” I started by looking around at a few friends’ and colleagues’ portfolios, and spending time identifying what I liked about how they showcased their work. Just a few examples:
And honestly, after a week or so of idle field research, it was so freeing to see the sheer diversity of approaches. It really did help identify a portfolio structure that felt right to me: a single page, one that’s using a curated set of projects to (hopefully!) highlight the kind of work I like doing.
From there, I started thinking a bit more about what else I’d like to include on the page. Some things felt easy: I’ve kept the brief section outlining how I typically structure my client engagements; it’s a useful conversation starter and, as a colleague once told me, it’s helpful to let others know how they can hire you. Other things felt more difficult. Ultimately, I figured I’d lean into my [checks notes] varied skillset, and highlight it at the top of the page, along with some common themes from my design practice.
Right now, I’m happy with where things landed. But hey, look. As much as anything else on this little site, this post you’re reading is a marker. A moment. Over time my portfolio’s going to change, shift, stretch, and warp, to the point where it won’t resemble anything I’ve written up above. I’ll do different work; I’ll talk about my work differently; maybe I’ll even reconcile myself to the profound unease I feel when I’m asked to describe myself as a specific kind of digital designer in 2025-friendly terms. But for now — right now — I’ve got a new portfolio, and I’m feeling pretty proud of it.
This is all to say: I’m currently available for hire. While I typically work on a contract basis for my clients, I’m open to full-time roles if the opportunity’s right.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
This has been “A carried leaf.” a post from Ethan’s journal.
2025-09-25 12:00:00
After writing about design under fascism and framing “artificial intelligence” as a failure, I realized my tiny little brain could use a breather.
So I thought I’d tell you about some well-made things I’ve enjoyed lately.
I’d been using a fairly popular code editor for a few years now. And I’d describe it as “basically fine”: it did what I needed, had some extensions I liked, and was, well, basically fine. But in the last year or so, it had started incorporating more “artificial intelligence” (“AI”) features. I could disable them, so whatever. But it also seemed that over time, more and more of the application’s release notes were getting dedicated to the latest “AI” developments. And there were a few times where the features I’d disabled were mysteriously reenabled after I installed an update.
Anyway, this is all to say that I recently switched to Nova, and it’s been a downright delight. I’ve been using Panic products throughout my career — Transmit hive rise up — and Nova’s just as polished as the rest of their work. Like, I opened the color picker the first week and sighed happily. This is a totally normal reaction to software, and I am invited to many glamorous parties.
Anyway, I like it a lot.
If you subscribe to my newsletter, you might’ve noticed it now looks a little different. The old service I’d been using had started to go all-in on “AI” features, none of which I was using. And if I’m honest, their new strategy was making me worried whether my writing — or more worryingly, my subscriber list — was getting shlorped up for training data.
(Okay, between this and my switch to Nova, I’m…seeing a trend emerge here.)
Anyway, I made the switch to Buttondown, and I couldn’t be happier. Migration was a breeze, and the few times I’ve had questions I’ve been so impressed by the support I’ve gotten. And the product works a danged treat; I can really tell it’s made with care.
It’s early days yet, but I can’t tell you how happy I am to have my stream up and running. It’s primarily an archive, a place where I can store links to the things I find interesting. I mention all this because in the few months since the stream’s launched, I haven’t really revisited most of the links after posting them.
The one exception so far? Rob Weychert’s new website.
I mean, my goodness, look at it: it’s just a beautiful, beautiful thing. Rob’s archived a staggering amount of personal data here: concerts he’s attended, books he’s read, movies he’s watched, and more. All of it wrapped up in an artful, thoughtfully-executed package.
My little redesign’s only been online for a few months, and Rob’s site is already giving me ideas for my next one.
Those are a few well-made things I’ve been enjoying lately. What about you?
This has been “Some well-made things.” a post from Ethan’s journal.