Sharing the Love of the Love of Art
Learning to embrace the rewarding messiness of making art while human.
Jared White
Expressively publishing on the open web since 1996.
Entranced by Portland, Oregon since 2017.
Hello and Welcome!
I’m Jared, an award-winning essayist, photographer, and podcaster who’s been commenting on and building for the web since Mosaic was a thing. (Yup, it’s true! 😆)
I like to travel around Portland 🌲 and the Pacific Northwest and write about mindful, ethical, indie-flavored creativity. 💖 In addition, I compose and produce retro-styled synth electronica. 🎹 🎶
This is my home base on the internet. I hope you enjoy browsing around! 📍
P.S. What am I doing now? That’s what the Now Page is for! ⏱
P.P.S. What’s my favorite (fill-in-the-blank)? Find out in About Me. 😃
Things I Do
It would seem I’m always but one step away from reaching for an endeavor to occupy my time with at any given moment. Besides what’s obviously available on this website…from Vibe Coded, a podcast about the perils of creative intellectual automation, to That HTML Blog, the fresh place to be to learn about developing “vanilla” web apps, there’s something for…well…somebody.
Welcome to the Jaredverse! 😌
Newest Posts
Rachel Maddow Deepfaked on YouTube with Millions of Views of Slop Videos
Update on Jan 7: the channel has been scrubbed from YouTube. I suppose they finally got around to evaluating all of the many reports submitted!
As of right now (Jan 6), there’s a deepfake AI clone of Rachel Maddow on YouTube called “Maddow’s Brief”. It’s apparently fooling lots of people, because overnight it’s grown from 20K subs (when I first found it) to 38K. Just one of the slop videos, posted less than 24 hours ago, already has a million views.
I reported two videos to Google last night. So far, nothing has yet been taken down. Many people in the comments are saying things like “Right on, Rachel Maddow! Telling it like it is! Screw Trump!”
This is all generated slop. It is clearly not actually Rachel Maddow, and even if what “she” is saying happens to be true when evaluated, it is still nonsensical. It is not grounded in any real truth claims by any verifiable human sources. It is a con job. It is spam.
Why is YouTube allowing this sort of thing to take place at all? From an ML standpoint, it should be relatively trivial to flag such deepfakes in an automated fashion and immediately escalate to human review—especially for a new channel like this (it only started on Jan 1, 2026!) sporting a deluge of videos in a brief period of time.
This is not some sort of “oh gosh, now what do we do?” problem. This is intentional. YouTube & Google have intentionally decided they don’t care about deepfakes and slop. Because if they really wanted to do something about it, you wouldn’t see this happening. Period.
Without a significant change to the policies of platforms like YouTube around this stuff, it is the beginning of the end of the Internet as we have known it. We cannot allow this madness to continue. #GenerativeAI is an existential threat to knowledge and truth.
Baker's Dozen: My Favorite TV Shows of 2025
I normally don’t care for long lists like this, but I enjoyed such a wide range of television this year, I simply couldn’t narrow it down.
A Year in Four Seasons: 2025 Was One Hell of a Ride
I went into this year wondering if I was about to make a terrible, terrible mistake. Did I? Well you’ll just have to keep reading.
Stay in the Loop
Look, I get it. You already subscribe to too many newsletters. So much to keep up with. But guess what? I only send out a newsletter once a week. And if you‘re feeling curious, peruse the Creator Class archive. You might find something that resonates with you! It’s a great way to stay current with what I’m publishing, and newsletter recipients always get some extra insight just for them. So what are you waiting for? Let’s roll!
Podcast
A lively show where we discuss the business, the art, the ethics of content creation on the open web & the fediverse. Hosted by Jared White.
Betting All My Chips on LinkedIn (wink lol)
New year, new grumpy cat (!!), new recording setup (hint: not using an Apple OS!), and so much more. Welcome to the soft-reboot of Fresh Fusion, and a state of the [fill in the blank] rundown: from social networking to desktops to music streamers along with some praise for a software ecosystem I never expected to be this jazzed about in 2026…Ruby. All that and a bag o' chips (different chips than the ones I'm using to bet with, obviously).
Photos
Latourell Falls, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge
#SilentSunday #OregonExplored
The most perfect timing ever for the light at Hidden Falls in Happy Valley 😍
#FallVibes #OregonExplored
Whoa! Peak fall color on an amazing #Portland walk 🙌
Videos
Rejuvenation After a Hard Year
It's become a tradition for me to spend time over the holidays on a trip up the Columbia River Gorge. No matter what the weather conditions may be (and I sure got lucky this time!), there's a stillness and a calm I feel whenever I'm here which is truly rejuvenating.
Midsummer Adventures at Mt. Hood
You can rarely go wrong visiting the tallest mountain in Oregon and a true jewel of the Cascades: Mt. Hood. This time, I visited in August 2023, taking the ski lifts up the slope from Timberline Lodge and then hiking back down while enjoying the epic views. Then I dropped by Trillium Lake for the first time. Wow! This location was definitely worth the hype. Gotta go back…
Popular Essays
Ice Cream, War Movies, Monochromatism, and Reclaiming My Identity
This year I want to make a bold statement with what I do and how I live—only this time not as a desperate attempt to appease a deity, but as a way of expressing the core values that make me Me.
The Three Vital Landmarks Along the Road to Success
There was a time not long ago when my life was in a major upheaval. Signs of online success were slim to none. I wasn’t sure if anyone out there would really care if I were suddenly Thanos-snapped out of existence. Yet the valuable lesson I came to learn during that dreadful time was how to become intrinsically motivated, the significance of value creation, and the trick of cultivating T-shaped skills.
The Web is the Opposite of Dead
It's taken a global pandemic for many of us to realize something profound about the web. It isn't just a technology which helps the world go around. Today, on a certain level, is IS the world.
What It’s Like to Live in Portlandia
This may sound like the craziest thing you’ve ever heard, but I watched a TV show called Portlandia and then I moved to Portland. No joke.
Getting Past the Pain of Starting Over
This is your chance. This is your time.
Is Social Justice in the Christian Gospel?
A critical examination of the Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel and what it means for America's culture war.
Why I Regret Not Taking a Sabbatical When I Was 25
I needed to take some time off work to think, to dream. Instead I listened to the advice of family and friends and charged into a new business opportunity. Was it successful? Was it an utter disaster? Read my story to find out.
The Calcification of Personality
Self-reflection may be good for the soul, but not when the issue is forced by a constant barrage of the opinions of others.
Parents: You're Not Going to Break Your Kids
When we have difficulties helping our children learn new skills or cope with the tumult of everyday life, it's tempting to want to blame ourselves. But we can choose to see the learning opportunity inherent in every emotional moment.
How to Get Your Life Out of a Crisis Narrative
Living daily as if everything around you is representative of constant warfare is a recipe for emotional and mental disaster. Trust me, I've been there.
Making the Mental Breakthrough that Depression is Rooted in Fear, Not Sadness
If you think as I did a couple years ago, you probably assume that people who struggle with depression must be sad a lot and just need to be cheered up or adopt a more positive attitude. Well, as I came to discover, that notion is dead wrong.
The Writing Legacy of Medieval Celts
Presenting two brilliant examples of the classic wit, spiritual depth, and surprisingly fresh language found in millennia-old Celtic verse
The Absurdity of Fatherhood
When you become a dad, it's much harder to stay stuck on self. Your kids won't let you.
