Hi there, I'm Sam. I build tools for making websites (CMSs, SDKs, APIs, SSDs).
I write docs that solve three major problems for SaaS companies:
I'm working on a project called Vowel. V1 is a developer-facing static site generator. V2 will be a consumer-facing decentralized social media app. (This website is made with Vowel.)
Our lives run on websites. From banking apps to recipe notes, we have entrusted the web with virtually everything we care about. In exchange for our trust, the creators of the internet made us a promise: if you want to, you can create your own website and put it on the internet.
I'm testing an #atproto publish from Vowel.
Today is the day I put my blog on the atmosphere, powered by Vowel.
Remembering my mom, Cindy Littlefair.
If that title sounds obvious, talk to the New York Times. The bastion of journalism just published an article about white organized criminals wreaking havoc in a white lobster-fishing community, which spends 1100 of its 1600 words discussing "thorny questions about Indigenous rights."
I'm putting a post-it note here for myself:
How the family unit tranformed from the economic engine of Europe to the venue for awkward holiday dinners.
How French vikings popularized misogyny in England.
What I've learned about film stocks after two years of shooting.
An exploration into the darker side of European greatness.
An anthropologist and an archaeologist revise human history.
How the Middle Ages came to an end and a new world began.
Last month, I traveled to Paris for work. While there, I gave notice at my job. After four years, it's time for a change. Like all changes, it felt poignant and emotional.
I just now learned that Canada had feudalism until 1940.
How climate and disease created the modern world.
Josh Comeau is an amazing educational writer, and each blog post he releases generates crazy buzz on Twitter. He's great and choosing sticky concepts and explaining them so they feel intuitive.
Delve into the man cave.
As the glaciers of the last ice age receded 12,000 years ago, a wave of illness swept the globe. The cause was the shift from a relatively healthy foraging lifestyle to a more dense and sendentary agricultural lifestyle.
After yoga this morning, I chatted with one of my classmates. In an Italian accent, she asked where I was from. "Canada," I said. I explained I'm living in Florence for two years.
The Lucy Letby story is revealing so much about society; firstly, the state of censorship in the UK.
Family time.
Two lawyers and a goat farmer.
Today I learned that the earliest recognizable form of capitalism — the medieval English wool market — was basically created by Cistercian monks. The monks founded their order around 1100 and grew at breakneck speed. In the 1130s, they founded 76 new monasteries. By the end of the 1200s, when the European economy went into widespread recession, there were 500 Cistercian monasteries across Europe, Britain, and Ireland. As Bruce Campbell writes, the Cistercians were exceptionally "centralized, hierarchical, and successful... with a system of administration and communication that transcended national and ecclesiastical boundaries."
We can coarsely divide the history of Western civilization into three periods: antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modernity. The boundary between antiquity and the Middle Ages is marked by the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the "dark ages." However, we can also mark it with a singular climate event: a "little ice age" in the 500s.
I've been quiet on the blog lately while I've been tearing through history books. I've now amassed a small backlog of book summaries to type up and publish.
A book that dares to ask: what if there was one weird explanation for colonialism?
What caused the Industrial Revolution? Cotton? Steam engines? Science?
Somewhere between house and home.
Where did we get the idea for hourly work?
Claire and I went to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands for the holidays. Lanzarote is a volcanic island, with a beautiful barren landscape.
Fiorentinos have fashion. Their outfits cut dramatic silhouettes against the powdery stone buildings.
Poor Things was the real Barbenheimer all along.
What does your name say about you?
A survey of war through history.
Joel Mokyr is one of the most important historians on the Industrial Revolution — the period when, through aggressive industrial expansion, Europe became the wealthiest (and, let's face it, probably most violent) region of the world.
This is such an incredible Nova Scotia ghost ship story, I really can't believe I had never heard it before.
Evermore tweeters are fleeing the sinking ship, so more and more often I hear the question "Are you using something instead of Twitter?" Each time, I answer with increasing fervor "Yes! RSS!"
Some people can tell what direction they're facing by sensing the earth's magnetic field.
If you take a guided tour through the bleached-white columns and ruins of Ancient Rome, your guide will be sure to tell you that the image of brilliant white Roman monuments is a modern invention. Today's neoclassical monuments are famous for their stark façades — just look at the White House itself. But this is an accident of history. Roman monuments were painted in brilliant colors, matching the colorful fashions and decorations of the Roman people. But those colors were lost with time, leaving behind blank stone.
In the Early Middle Ages, the word "bastard" didn't necessarily mean "illegitimate child." William the Conqueror — the Norman king who conquered England in 1066 — is also known as "William the Bastard," and, while his parents were not married, the epithet "bastard" likely referred rather to the fact that his mother was not of noble birth. Of course, this didn't ultimately matter, since he became a very successful and influential king.
This is a surprising twist in history: some believe that Robin Hood was based on a gay radical knight.
I've been reading a lot of history lately. I love how it describes our present. Case in point: for thousands of years, Brittons have imagined a mysterious, forested Britain in the recent past:
Max Haiven argues that revenge is the heart of capitalism.
Today I learned about Lollardy — a medieval English religious movement that had a huge influence on Protestantism. The movement was led by a preacher named John Wycliffe. Wycliffe was born around 1320. As a young priest, he lived through the Black Plague, which killed a third of the population of England in two years — including up to 40% of priests, who devotedly tended to the sick and dead.
In December of 1936, George Orwell travelled to Spain to fight against the fascists in the civil war. Orwell had just finished writing his first work of non-fiction, The Road to Wigan Pier, an investigation into working class living conditions in Northern England, in which he articulated his support for socialism and critique of capitalism:
To whom do we owe the pleasure?
When it rains in Paris.
Capitalism changed the world forever. This book explains how it happened.
Out for a walk.
The pandemic put travel on pause for years. And then, the advent of remote work put travel into overdrive. Airbnb has captured the windfall of sojourners, turning drafty studio apartments and struggling bed-and-breakfasts around the world into cash cows. Rental prices in Florence have skyrocketed since travel restarted. Claire and I fortunately found an apartment at a reasonable price, but only after looking at dozens of listings that would seem more normal in Paris or Toronto.
This beautiful 1978 BBC clip tells the story of Jerseyan hermit Alphonse Le Gastelois, with all of the deadpan twee of a Wes Anderson movie.
Before the popularization of writing system, oral (or "preliterate") societies maintained historical records that spanned millennia through storytelling.
Is humanity getting more peaceful?
A few weeks ago I messaged my mom about quotations. She left quotes unannotated in her writing, which I found a little jarring at times. What about italics? I suggested.
Parks Canada reported a die-off of horses on Sable Island last winter, bringing the population from around 600 to around 450. The mortality is no surprise nor crisis. Last year, the horse population was higher than ever — and it remains remarkably high even after the losses. However, the die-off will reignite an old debate: should the horses be on the island at all?
Last week, Wab Kinew won the provincial election to become premier of Manitoba and, in doing so, became the first-ever First Nations premier of a Canadian province.
If humans have been around for 200,000 years, why did we only create large civilizations in the last 5,000 years or so?
Stereotyping is the attribution of characteristics to a group of people at the expense of the individuals' identity. We inherit and invent countless assumptions about other groups — some more harmful and some less. But research shows that after an economic shock, harmful stereotyping increases. The researcher put forward two reasons for this:
Today I finished reading (read: skimming) The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan. The first few chapters of the book are genuinely fascinating. The rest of the book could have been condensed down to fifty pages or so. I feel like this was a great starting point to understand the dawn of modernity — the literal environment in which the Middle Ages ended and the Renaissance began. You can read my full review.
I call the internet company to get wifi installed. I get a woman in Italian. Posso parlare inglese? I ask in fumbling Italian. Si she answers, indicating that yes I can speak English. Except, no, she doesn't understand any of it. We arrive at a shared understanding that I want wifi, and she gradually takes my address. Terrified that this is going to be a very long and arduous process with great risk of miscommunication, I ask again if I can speak to someone in English. Si. Due minuti. She disappears.
This is a bombshell story that isn't getting much uptake in the news: Facebook censored Canadian posts about the assassination of Bhai Hardeep Singh Nijjar due to pressure from India.
For many years, Atlantic News was just the place wear I bought sour gumballs after school. When I was ten, I bought my first magazine there. My best friend and I stole money from my dad's change jar to buy a copy of Mad magazine. I think the Bush–Gore election was on the cover. Dogged by guilt, I told my friend to hide the magazine at his house.
In the wake of Meta banning Canadian news organizations in retaliation against Canadian government policy, the Tyee makes the case for RSS — the ingenious proto-social network that fueled the rise of blogging in the '00s.
"Enslaving countries procured 801.58 million life years of free labour on which they were able to prosper."
A skilled introduction to a scary subject.
A report on the changing world at the end of the Middle Ages.
Feeling the movement of time when movement itself ceases.
At Aeon, Swedish history professor Lars Trägårdh describes a really interesting framework for understanding power structures, which you can plot on a triangle:
This article has a nice summary of how to navigate a disagreement with someone, using the acronym "HEAR":
A UN expert has voiced concerns about the rights of LGBTI people in the UK.
In my mom's latest blog, she describes her most extreme form of thrifting: taking things out of the gutter. While I personally struggle to imagine eating a head of lettuce I found in the street, I am grateful to have been raised by someone with such a strong sense of adventure, civic duty, and ingenuity. I'd like to think it rubbed off on me.
This is a great telling of the history of Jonovision, the show that thousands of Canadian millennials watched after school on public television while waiting for The Simpsons to come on. I was one of those kids, and I had special affection for Jonovision host Jonothan Torrens because he was the half-brother of a friend of mine. As the article explains, that's part of what made Jonovision cool: it felt approachable, like something your friend's friend might make.
The people of Vienna enjoy easy access to high-quality, affordable rental apartments. How did Austria figure it out?
Over on Substack, my mom has published a call for everyone to embrace litter collection as the new cool trend in active living.
Newlyweds in Paris.
In December, I wrote about how artificial intelligence is automation, not magic. A new report says that ChatGPT labelers — workers who train the AI — are paid $15/hour. ChatGPT is an amazing technology, and that's because of the laborers who have built it for a little more than minimum wage.
The CBC reports that the Manitoba Department of Justice has told incarcerated Indigenous women that they are no longer allowed to sell beadwork. In Canada, Indigenous women are twelve times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous women. In the prairies, they make up more than 50% of the female prison population. In 2018, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women published a study on Indigenous women in federal prisons, which called for more cultural programming in prison that considers Indigenous women's cultural and economic situations, to support their "ability to heal and rehabilitate." For many Indigenous women, access to their culture "is the only "way to ground themselves and stay connected physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.” Said one witness in the report, "We have to stop thinking about [Indigenous women in prison] as bundles of risk or as behaviours to manage" — which feels like a good characterization of the justice minister's rationale for eliminating the program: "it was causing concerns and security issues."
How does an octopus tell time?
A bike ride in the Scottish countryside.
One of the loneliest opinions I have is that Wes Anderson fell off after he stopped writing with Owen Wilson@bornferal on Twitter
Have you ever heard a cover and thought it was the original? And then heard the original and thought it was a cover? Like when I was a kid and I thought "Big Yellow Taxi" was by Counting Crows, because that was the version I heard on the radio all the time.
How does AI smile? In images generated by AI, the subjects have eery wide-mouthed, straight-teethed American-style selfie smiles. How does a USA-centric understanding of psychology affect our view of humanity? Lisa Feldman Barrett writes:
Why do some places have more people who live extremely long lives? Conventional wisdom says a slower pace of life, daily physical activity, plant-based diets, and tight communities will do it. That is to say, the lifestyle of places like Okinawa and Sardinia. A new study calls that into question.
A weekend in a cottage with a fireplace.
My friend Steve wrote a beautiful remembrance of his thirty-year friendship with the great David Crosby. I'll be thinking about Steve getting the "Crosby/Nash earfuck" every time I hear Crosby harmonizing from now on.
I got a message from Carl, a friend from the climbing gym, asking if I have any advice about photography composition.
I've been thinking a lot about coincidence.
I've seen a few Rosa Bonheur paintings in art galleries. The animals in her paintings have a sublime humanity that captivates you as a viewer. It's easy to stare for a long time, wondering about these animals' inner lives. This is a really nice analysis of a Rosa Bonheur painting — what makes it exceptional technically and emotionally.
I interviewed Gift Egwuenu about Developer Advocacy and the importance of empathy in technology, and the video was just released. Gift is a really nice person and a developer advocate at Cloudflare.
I'm looking through photos from last year and appreciating that we had a lot of great times. It was a time of reuniting with friends after a long isolation.
Yesterday I discovered Shantell Sans, which is a beautiful and very robust handwritten font. Shantell Martin, the creator, designed it to be legible for people with dyslexia.
I take some pictures around Glasgow Southside.
Scattered Minds is one of the most influential books on the topic of ADD/ADHD. Canadian physician Gabor Maté wrote the book after receiving his own diagnosis for ADD. (Maté uses the shorter abbreviation, "ADD", so I'll do the same here.)
Claire, Leilani, and I spent a day in Glencoe.
Folks out on a cold Paris morning.
Folks out on a cold Paris morning.
At my office book club, we finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. On the whole, I found this book disappointing. I respect Malcolm Gladwell as a storyteller, but as a philosopher his ideas are deeply misguided.
My first point-and-shoot 35mm camera.
A cold and foggy day in Glasgow.
What is an essay anymore?
Best in Show is one of my favorite movies, and this oral history just helps me appreciate why. In short, there are actually very few jokes in the movie. And the jokes that are there aren't the funniest moments. The funniest moments are completely deadpan — because the real joke is life itself.
Inflation is corporate profiteering.
Enrollment at Nova Scotia schools is rising for the first time in half a century. Maybe the tide is turning on Nova Scotian outmigration.
How to do crime good, according to OpenAI.
I recorded a SvelteKit 1.0 tutorial.
Around the world, swear words tend to sound like swear words.
At the Govan Graving Docks, something grows from the ruins.
A new art app paints a picture of a bleak future.
I went outside and took portraits of strangers.
On Tuesday I was Googling "flexbox cheat sheet" for the thousandth time. On Thursday I read Josh Comeau's excellent flexbox explainer. I might not need to use the cheat sheet as often anymore.
My good friends Will and Peter just released their latest album, and it's great. Check it out on Spotify.
Turkeys terrorize Massachusetts town.
More photos from a morning walk in Paris.
Watching shadows in Paris.
Yesterday I went out for coffee and finished Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. Butler wrote an oddly optimistic-yet-harrowing dystopian novel, which describes an America in decline — riddled with crime, corruption, drought, famine, and slavery. Butler tells the story of a teenage girl who watches an already-broken society fall further into chaos. The main character, Lauren, figures out how to survive in the new world while also creating a philosophy that articulates why to survive, a collection of original scripture called Earthseed.
Twitter has a governance problem.
A perfect way to see Scotland in the fall.
Last month, my brothers Allister and Jesse came to visit me in Scotland.
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Last month, I tried street photography for the first time. I like taking candid photos of people in the street.
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Expanding divs are classic but tricky.
Glasgow is under construction: a city of changing priorities. Always signaling the times.
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A lobster in a car in Edinburgh.
What for?
Hi there, I'm Sam. I build tools for making websites (CMSs, SDKs, APIs, SSDs).
Random thoughts and links.
Longer articles.
What I'm reading.