Jared White

Jared White — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 07:56:20 -0700

I wasn’t prepared for the dreamscape which awaited me as I walked out along the bluff overlooking one of the reservoirs at Mt. Tabor. Springtime in #Portland is always next level y’all. 🤩
#SilentSunday

Jared White — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 09:53:59 -0700

Yesterday, a glorious moment walking along the north end of the #Portland riverfront, and signs that spring has well and truly arrived. 🙌
#SilentSunday

Jared White — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 08:04:47 -0800

Tryon Creek State Natural Area isn’t far from the hustle and bustle of #Portland, yet once you get there, you’ve entered a whole other world. 😌
#SilentSunday #Mosstodon

Jared White — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 08:20:06 -0800

IYKYK. I am never at a loss for uniquely intriguing vistas whenever I spend time walking around downtown #Portland. ☺️

Jared White — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:26:10 -0800

Wowee! An absolutely stunning spring day in #Portland. Wait, it’s still winter? Could have fooled me! 😆

Sharing the Love of the Love of Art

Jared White — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 09:04:40 -0800

Learning to embrace the rewarding messiness of making art while human.

For all of my life, I have loved art. All of the creative arts. When I was a young boy wandering the corridors of the local mall with my parents, I was briefly interviewed regarding the latest “G.I. Joe” action figures at which point I proudly informed the pollster I wasn’t “into” that sort of thing. I was an artist. 😆

There aren’t very many art forms I haven’t at least dabbled in. Even the ones you might not think of at first, like building a garden feature out of stone (at the direction of my mother who was the real green thumb) or live painting to a musical performance in a house of worship.

That’s not to say I personally love all creative arts equally. There are certain ones I gravitate to, same as any artist. For a long time, I thought music was my primary talent. But I’ve cycled through a plethora of others over the months and years and decades. To be honest, if there’s been any one constant, it’s writing. I fear I’ve never taken it as seriously as I should.

Oh, and let’s not forget: programming.

I’ve been writing computer code since I remember being a conscious human being. I learned how to program little graphical sprites and make them move around the screen of the family’s Commodore 128 when using our KoalaPad. Before that of course, I wrote the quintessential BASIC program:

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
20 GOTO 10

and giggled gleefully as the computer acted silly and printed out the same sentence over and over again until I made it stop.

But you know what? You know what I love just as much as art??

Perhaps growing up right as the Age of the Personal Computer dawned—and the Internet in short order—made it seem completely obvious to me I could, and should, share my love for art with others. Try as I might, I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been a total nerd reveling in my enjoyment of one art form or another in spaces both online and off, and there’s rarely been a moment of my teenage or adult life when I haven’t been discussing or debating or teaching or learning the minutiae of some kind of art along with others.

Perhaps nothing exemplifies my appreciation of love for art more than the first thing I did when I got on the World-Wide Web in 1994 and discovered you could, like, just write web pages. You could just write them?! ANYBODY CAN???!!

(Hey, did you know you can STILL JUST WRITE THEM? Open your favorite plain text editor of choice, write some paragraphs, wrap them in a few HTML tags, and tada! 🎉 You’ve just created a web page! Eat a bag o’ dicks, Mark Zuckerberg!)

Anyway, the first thing I did was figure out how to create a website for the Celtic music family band I was in at the time, Distant Oaks. And the second thing I did was create my own blog. Yes, friends, I do believe I may have had one of the very first blogs in Internet history, first called Jared White’s Internet Review and then just The Internet Review (and then iReview many years before Apple trotted that name out). It was great fun recently to pore over saved pages in the Internet Archive and revive The Internet Review as a retrotech-themed blog, where the first blog post is dated September 1996 (published when I was only 13 years old!).

Because, you see, I couldn’t simply “love the Internet” and then stop there. I had to share my love for the Internet with everyone else because that’s what you do when you’re a nerdy kid with a new network connection.

I’m still that nerdy kid at heart! And I’ve never stopped sharing!

I’ve never been “just a musician”, I’ve also taught music (to kids! when still a kid!) and written reviews of music and run fan clubs of musicians.
I’ve never been “just a 3D graphics artist”, I’ve hosted online art galleries where I show off the work of other 3D artists.
I’ve never been “just a writer”, I’ve helped lead writing worships and host writing groups and I am currently writing this very article as a participant in a totally awesome Portland writing group run by a dear friend.
I’ve never been “just a programmer”, I’ve run multiple programming blogs and forums and open source projects and chatrooms and have taught programming workshops and I work among other things as a consultant where I educate on the topic of coding as much as I write code personally.
And so on and so forth, etc., etc.

Yet somehow, this concept has become a target of, er, controversy? ☹️

So imagine my surprise when the “Age of AI” is suddenly upon us somehow for some reason, and I am told, repeatedly, by multiple parties on LinkedIn and elsewhere, that finally, finally, FINALLY the gatekeepers are gone, the stingy artists with their stuck-up ways no longer hold influence, and the people, the PEOPLE have been liberated at last. 😃 Now you can create music and 3D graphics art and writing and code and all sorts of things, and it’s all thanks to the miracle that is AI. ✨

????

?????? ??? ? ??? ???

???? ?

?? ??? ??

? ????? ?? ???

??? ???? ?

I don’t get it.

Thankfully I don’t have to, because it’s utter bollocks and I already debunked it in an issue of Cycles Hyped No More. That’s not what this essay is about!

What I’d much rather talk about is how vitally important it is that now, more than ever, we stand together in solidarity as artists. And I don’t mean than in a highfalutin way, I mean literally anyone who likes to self-identify as a creative person. We need to band together to strengthen and form communities where artists young and old are supported…whether they’re just getting started or they’ve been in the game for 50 years.

We must celebrate traditions and breaking from those traditions, and relish the truth that most great art comes from the inherent tension between the two.

We must advocate for safe spaces where slop is out and craft is in and people know they are welcome to participate as their authentic selves without the specter of extractive capitalist overlords dictating the terms of engagement.

Fighting the “Lone Wolf” syndrome

All right. I’ve been making all these grandiose statements about loving art and being joyful in community, but I have an uncomfortable truth to share with you: I haven’t always felt like how I’m now describing myself. 😭

At times I have suffered from a syndrome—not Imposter Syndrome, that’s an affliction I don’t usually suffer from (make of that what you will!)—which I call Lone Wolf syndrome. When I’m in the throes of Lone Wolf syndrome, I somehow think there’s nobody around to support me, or that apparently there’s nothing valuable I have to offer. “They” don’t “get me” and that must be why I’m not successful. I don’t know how to collaborate with anybody in a meaningful way. I must be destined just to make art in a vacuum, experienced by an audience of virtually no one as I sink into an ever-darkening void. 😵‍💫

Yeah yeah I know! That pity party better be over soon and enough with the stinkin’ thinkin’. But perhaps we all go through those sad times when the Lone Wolf has taken hold in our psyche and we can’t seem to shake the bastard.

Finding (or starting!) artistic communities where you feel like you can really fit in is hard sometimes. And maybe for you, right now, it’s been hard for much longer that you ever thought possible.

Time to give up, throw in the towel, call it a day! Stick a fork in it, you’re done! 🥩

Just kidding. 😂 Sometimes it helps to name your worst fears and embrace them for a split second before you realize they are silly and unhelpful.

The best way that I’ve found to fight Lone Wolf syndrome is to declare it is unacceptable for you to live in that state. Because it is unacceptable, you will of course need to make some changes in your life in order to get the results you deserve. But that’s a topic for another day…

I will share one potential remedy however, as it dovetails with the theme of this essay.

Instead of the “nobody loves my art, I’m all alone” pity party, the inverse question you can start to ask yourself is “how might I share the love of my art with others?” And don’t mean the love of your own art per se, I mean the love of the art form(s) you work in.

Maybe you can write more about the techniques you like to use.
Maybe you can make a video about your greatest creative inspirations.
Maybe you can join a fanclub dedicated to other artists who are in the same overall genre as you.
Maybe you can start a meetup group where people work on their art or the ideas for their art.
Maybe you can launch a review blog where you highlight other artists’ work.
Maybe you can work up the courage to reach out to that “famous” artist who makes you feel weak in the knees and see if they’re actually just a regular person who would love to offer you a collaborative opportunity or at the very least a word of wisdom.

And all of this is 2X, 3X, maybe even 10X as vitally import in the “Age of AI (Slop)” when real art and artists feel more devalued and unappreciated than ever. The best way to fight slop? It’s to love. The Beatles were right after all: all you (we) need is love, and love is all we need.

Love art. Love your art. Love their art. Love artists. Love the messy, difficult, fun, rewarding, challenging, frustrating, liberating process of making art while being human. 🧠

And at the risk of sounding totally hippie-dippie, your love of art, and your love of the love of art, can spark the change you wish to see in the world. 🌸✌️🥰

Photo credit: Lương Đạt Nguyễn on Pixabay

#creativity

Rachel Maddow Deepfaked on YouTube with Millions of Views of Slop Videos

Jared White — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:37:18 -0800

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

Jared White — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 08:51:34 -0800

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.

Going into 2025, I had a concern that the era of “prestige TV” was behind us. That we would increasingly find ourselves watching paint-by-numbers shows with smaller budgets and smaller ambitions. Stories which sound good on the surface but ultimately without a lot to say. Fluff.

That, I’m pleased to say, did not happen. In fact, I had such a good time with so many different shows, it was hard to limit myself to any particular theme or genre. So I simply made a list. Y’all have no doubt been bombarded with year-end lists, thus my commentary on each show will be kept to a minimum. Hopefully you’ll find some common ground with my thoughts, and perhaps find a nugget or two you didn’t know about!

While I do have 13 entires sorted, that isn’t to say I greatly prefer (4) over (9). All of these shows made a big impression on me for one reason or another. But I will say that the number one show is in first place by a pretty significant margin. It’s not that the other shows aren’t so good. It’s just that this show is one of the greatest seasons of television I’ve ever seen in my life. (I wonder if you can guess what it is?)

Alright, enough of my blethering. Let’s start with a couple honorable mentions before counting backwards from 13 to 1. (And stick around for the wrap-up where I share a grab-bag of real disappointments.)

Honorable Mention: Stranger Things S5 (Netflix)

I love Stranger Things. How could I not, being such a nerd about retro 80s synth music and action-adventure movies of that era? And yes, I’ve certainly been enjoying this final season. With the finale episode still to come, I have no doubt they will stick the landing. Yet I can’t help but feel this season is rather superfluous. Could they have come up with a tighter storyline for season 4 and ended the series there? Absolutely. I won’t say much of what happens this season is “filler” because it is all quite interesting and well done, but at some point, can we please stop traumatizing these poor kids & families and leave them in peace? 😅

Honorable Mention: The Handmaid’s Tale S6 (Hulu)

I had many complicated feelings watching this final season of an explosive TV show about a fascist far-right theocracy taking over the United States while living under a fascist far-right theocracy taking over the United States. And I was frustrated that, while this show was very good right up to the end, it ultimately didn’t feel like it had much to teach us about how we might deal better with our present moment. For the curious, I shared many of these thoughts in detail on the Fresh Fusion podcast.

With that down, let’s begin the list starting with number 13:

13) The Beast in Me (Limited Series, Netflix)

I won’t say too much about this here because I already reviewed it, but I definitely enjoyed the series. Though I wished it could have been a small notch higher in quality (mainly with regards to the plot), with the two lead actors being incredibly delicious playing their cat-and-mouse game, it’s one not to miss.

12) The Witcher S4 (Netflix)

Surprised to see this make the list? Me too! All signs pointed to this season of a rapidly-degrading show being quite terrible, and I suspect quite a few fans are boycotting The Witcher at this point. Yet I’m also willing to go out on a limb and say the more toxic corners of the fandom took things too far. I will admit I am not a connoisseur of the books nor the games, so I’m unable to compare the show to those media. All I can tell you, as a huge fan of the first season, this season really felt like it touched back on the fun and mayhem and good-natured camp of the early show. And was Liam Hemsworth a not-bad replacement for Henry Cavill? Surprisingly, yes! I quickly settled into the new vibe. And I would argue episode 5 is among the best of the whole series. I am definitely looking forward to the fifth and final season.

11) Dept Q S1 (Netflix)

On paper, we’ve seen this story a million times. Dodgy old codger working as a police detective is seemingly on his way out, but he’s given one more case (or in this case, many cold cases) to attempt to solve, and with his rag-tag bunch of misfits at his side, he saves the day and earns back the respect of his colleagues (in spite of his unorthodox approach and maddening personality). And yet…this show totally works as a fresh installment in the genre (especially the Scottish vs. English cultural jabs throughout). Glad to know a second season is in the works!

10) Death by Lighting (Limited Series, Netflix)

We all know how President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Did you know how President James Garfield was assassinated, and why? Me neither! This show managed to take an obscure corner of American history and transform it into riveting television, while also inspiring me to pull up Wikipedia and brush up on my presidential timeline. Michael Shannon crushed it as Garfield, and Nick Offerman as a larger-than-life Chester A. Arthur is a real treat.

9) The Diplomat S3 (Netflix)

Yes, I watched a lot of Netflix this year (I really tamped down on my streaming subscriptions part-way through the year), but I promise I’ll get to some other networks shortly (plenty of Apple TV on the way). At any rate, the first season of The Diplomat exploded onto the scene in 2023, and it was followed up with an equally fantastic second season in 2024. Given the truly bonkers cliffhanger ending of that season, I wondered if this third season might go off the rails or continue to serve as truly excellent political thriller material (with a healthy dose of personal comedy on the side). I’m pleased to report this season did not disappoint. Bring on the next installment!

8) Paradise S1 (Hulu)

I’m a little surprised to see this show popping up on a lot of people’s year-end lists. I wasn’t completely blown away by it, but I did really enjoy it. It’s a slow burn in spots, and a handful of the plot points feels fanciful even within the fanciful sci-fi premise, but I think there’s enough meat here that future installments could really take the show to the next level. And who doesn’t love seeing James Marsden as a himbo all-American president dude with mush for brains but a heart of gold?

7) Your Friends & Neighbors S1 (Apple TV)

We’re roughly at the halfway point, and from here on every show I’ll be mentioning isn’t just really good, it’s outstanding. And this one is no exception. It’s funny that Jon Hamm went from appearing in Apple TV ads specifically because he wasn’t in any Apple TV shows, to finally making his network debut on The Morning Show, to starring as the lead in a show of his own. And what a show this is! Everything you think this show is about starting off, it then zigzags in another direction. The life themes it explores are clever, the action is comedic while also feeling like the stakes are high, the interpersonal relationships are always fascinating, and Jon Hamm has never been more Daddy in all of the best ways. While at the end of the day Hamm will always be Don Draper to my mind, I think Andrew “Coop” Cooper is shaping up to be his next great role.

6) Alien: Earth S1 (HBO Max)

I’m not gonna lie: I had absolutely no interest in watching this show. I wasn’t asking for more Alien material. I’m not even a big fan of that franchise. I did enjoy seeing the movie Alien: Romulus in theaters last year, but nothing about that made me clamor for another story set in that universe. And yet…because I heard so much buzz about this show right from the outset, I decided to give it a go. I’m so glad I did! It was fantastic, and honestly shocking in terms of the quality of the writing and the energy behind all of the many story beats and impressive world-building which I previously wrote about. Sydney Chandler’s portrayal of Wendy is one for the ages…this is now an iconic character within the franchise and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

5) The Studio S1 (Apple TV)

Seth Rogen is a god among men. Watch this. All the buzz was completely deserved and then some. I wrote about being hooked right from the very first episode and it didn’t merely continue that level of quality up to the last moment of the season, it kept ratcheting up the awesome over and over again. If you don’t have Apple TV, you need to subscribe just to watch this. It is that good.

4) The Morning Show S4 (Apple TV)

As one of the OG shows on Apple TV, I was somewhat surprised they were able to keep pushing the story forward this long. I wouldn’t have even been disappointed if this fourth installment was merely decent. I honestly did not expect it to be so-o-o good. But it was. It was brilliant, and in particular, episode 6 If Then stood out as transcendent television, sublime. The Morning Show has never let me down, having set a high bar for that official launch of Apple TV and keeping the pedal to the metal ever since.

3) House of Guinness S1 (Netflix)

As John Campea likes to say, all art is subjective. So it’s possible this show won’t land with you the way it has with me. Let’s just say if you poured my brain into a blender, fizzed it all up real good, and then poured a TV show out that I would absolutely adore, House of Guinness is that show. Imagine a group of half-drunk Irish punks laughing in Gaeilge taking a look at stodgy period English TV and then defacing it with spray paint and choice expletives all while the fiddles and drums furiously play, and that’s the manic energy of this show. It grabs you by the collar and the balls, spits in your eye, and tells you you’re gonna love it. And oh boy do I love it. A true highlight of the entire year for me!

2) Pluribus (Plur1bus?) S1 (Apple TV)

In any ordinary year, this would have been my Show of the Year. The only reason it’s not number one is because of the unusual nature of my number one (as you’ll soon see). That this show is my number two is in no way meant to detract from the ingenuity and inventiveness of Pluribus. Many people are coming into this show as fans of Vince Gilligan’s past shows such as Breaking Bad. I never watched that show nor the spinoffs thereof, so I’m not liking this show out of some sense of nostalgia or obligation. I’m liking it because it’s fucking brilliant. (Note: there does seem to be a bit of an Atlantic divide, with many Europeans getting hung up on all of the very American foibles of the lead character and finding her quite unlikable. I understand those issues, and yet I’m able to get past all that and firmly join Team Carol.) And while this show is certainly not intended as a direct commentary on the modern scourge of generative AI, I nevertheless can’t help but think a lot about the extractive and dehumanizing nature of Big Tech and what this show may teach us about individuality, creativity, community, and the possible future of the human race.

And now, without further ado, my number one show of 2025:

1) Star Wars: Andor S2 (Disney+)

C’mon. Could it have been anything else? No, it could not. Andor is a triumph, a pinnacle, a revelation and a revolution. Not only was this season every bit as remarkable as the first season, this exquisitely-crafted and superbly-executed show stands as one of the greatest sci-fi shows in television history and one of the great shows, period.

Andor is art, it is message, it is a warning, it is a comfort, and it is an example of how high-concept science-fiction can lead to a story which is far more than the sum of its parts. I struggle to come up with reasons why it might have been better or how it could have been improved. Perhaps the storyline of Bix Caleen was a bit disappointing this season…although even her ultimate fate was completely understandable and in a way its own “new hope” that satisfies. I am in awe of this TV show and expect Star Wars fans will be talking about it for years to come. And I agree with John Campea: this is the best Star Wars since the original trilogy. It just is. And for that, I tip my cap to Disney+ for making Star Wars: Andor possible.

OK, coming back down to earth, I’ll now share a few of my disappointments for the year. I don’t relish having to trash talk any show, but if a spade is a spade, I will call it.

In no particular order:

Foundation S3 (Apple TV)

I had high hopes for this season, and indeed, I wrote about the explosive appearance of famed character The Mule and really thought that the quality of the acting and storytelling would continue at that high bar throughout the whole season. Alas, that was not the case. By the final episode, I felt like the plot has completely disintegrated. I kept looking up “explainers” online to see if I missed anything which might help me feel better about it, but nothing improved my sour mood. To be honest, I hated the ending. I really did not care for it one bit (and if you’ve seen it, you can easily guess which big twist I got hung up on). Not only was I disappointed, I’m now no longer looking forward to season 4. I’m sure I’ll watch it anyway, but the showrunners will need to work overtime to win back my trust and indicate they know how to get the show back on track.

The Hunting Wives S1 (Netflix)

This show seems to have immediately built up a cult following, which leads me to wonder if we watched the same show. The premise is simple enough, if strange: imagine horny queer people getting it on within an oppressive conservative southern culture and what I can only describe as “gun porn”. Like OK, this could be rather awesome in a black comedy subversive way. And yet it just felt like trash. A low-quality, sleazy romance novel I have no reason to ever think about or relive ever again. (Pray for me that I don’t fall into temptation and watch the second season when it comes out…)

The White Lotus S3 (HBO Max)

I didn’t think this season of the show was bad. Unfortunately I didn’t think it was all that good either. When you have a premise like this where the setting and nearly all the cast completely changes from installment to installment, it’s always a question if the schtick is going to get real old, real fast, or if they can keep it feeling fun and inventive. While I won’t say The White Lotus has run out of steam, I do think this season failed to answer the question “why?” I’m not sure I care to watch another season, unless they can find a way to mix things up in a dramatic and interesting fashion.

Severance S2 (Apple TV)

I feel terrible putting the second season of this incredible show in my “disappointments” list. Because this is by no means a bad season of television! I thought Severance S2 was quite good. The problem is the first season was fucking genius, so following that up with something nice and decent is inevitably a disappointment. Look, were there certain episodes and certain moments which I would put up on a level on par with the first season? Absolutely. But taken as a whole, I did not vibe with the sequel to my favorite Apple TV show of all time. I hope they can find a way to kick it up a notch with the third season.

And there you go! My baker’s dozen favorite TV shows of 2025, some honorable mentions, and a few disappointments. All in all, I was very gratified with the available fare this year, and it’s making me excited for all the marvelous adventures which await in 2026.

#tvshows

A Year in Four Seasons: 2025 Was One Hell of a Ride

Jared White — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 08:07:08 -0800

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.

Never a dull moment. Count your blessings. I survived. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Follow your heart. That was a hell of a thing.

Many platitudes & clichés flood my mind as I consider what I’ve done, what I’ve been through, what I’ve accomplished, and what I’ve failed at in 2025. I won’t tell you this was the worst year since the pandemic, because that would be 2023 for personal family reasons I will fully reveal one day (but that day is not today). Yet I’d be lying if I said 2025 was a walk in the park…although, ironically, I did a lot of walking in a lot of parks! 😂

This year was fairly unique for me in that I truly went through all four seasons in an emotional and energetic sense. My winter looked nothing like my spring which looked nothing like my summer which looked a bit like my fall but also sort of not. And I must admit, I rather liked that temporal topology. I liked it so much I’m trying to consider how to take steps to ensure 2026 follows similar contours. If the life I’m living in August 2026 doesn’t look all that different than my life in February 2026, I will have failed. And failure is not an option. *dramatic closeup*

All right, so let’s put some skin on these bones and detail what my year looked like…at least to the extent such an objective can be manifested in one blog post.

Winter 2024–2025: I Can’t Take It Anymore

I started out the year mad as hell and not gonna take it any more. Such malaise certainly had its roots in prior months, and that was in part due to the shocking U.S. presidential election results, yes, but also the carryover of certain family issues from 2023 into 2024. While those issues got more-or-less “resolved” in late 2024, the lingering mental anguish certainly wasn’t going to dissipate in a day. I’d also spent a significant period of time in the last few months of 2024 fairly sick…one bout of respiratory illness after another which certainly wasn’t life-threatening but was definitely life-thwarting.

One realization I’d first had all the way back on July 3, 2024 was that I wasn’t happy where I lived. Oh I was happy to be in Portland, but not my specific abode. I tried some various changes: most notably, where my home office was located. It was an improvement, but ultimately it was a band-aid.

My growing malaise, coupled with increasing financial difficulties, all culminated in an epic drive out the Oregon coastal town of Lincoln City right after New Year’s in January. Something in me broke, or perhaps something in me was restored. In any event, it was the mental shift I needed to embark on a course of action which would completely change my life and define what this year would mean to me.

I knew what I needed to do. Mere days after the mind-melting occurrence of one Donald J. Trump becoming President of these United States…again…I submitted my 30 days’ notice to the landlord, and on February 28, 2025, I left; left the world of stationary housed people behind; left a predictable, “normal” life in search of a different kind of stability, an inner spiritual groundedness. In short, I became a nomad.

I haven’t quite finished writing my full travelogue, but you can read all of the various installments and other ancillary bits about my adventures here. (Accompanied by many photos & videos!)

Spring: The World I’m Passing Through

As the Bruce Hornsby song goes, I willingly and eagerly became “a vagabond and a drifter” and indeed it was “not so hard to be.”

I won’t cover my travels too much here because that’s what the travelogue link above is for. Instead, now that I’m on the other side of those adventures (spoiler alert!), I can form a few concluding thoughts about my experience.

One: I miss being a nomad desperately. I had a variety of fears going into the nomadic lifestyle for the first time, but one of them was this: that I would love it too much.

Yeah. 😄

I’m very grateful my eventual reentry into stationary housing was an excellent one (more on that below), and I don’t at all want to sound dismissive of that. But I will say: I would rather live on the road out of my car than live in a house I don’t like or in a location I can’t stand. My “allegiance” to house living is on pretty thin ice these days.

And in many ways, that’s a really good thing. As mentioned, my financial picture this year did not start out in the healthiest of places, and to be brutally honest, it’s now in the fucking shitter. But I often muse on how good it was I got to experience life without “a place to call home” because if at some point I’m “forced” back into the nomadic lifestyle rather than choosing it willingly, I already know what that’s like. And…it’s actually pretty fucking fantastic.

(I understand many people classified as “homeless” who are desperately poor and have no resources at all experience a way of life which is often not good at all. I was extremely fortunate to be able to continue working on the road through the magic of computing and Internet access. I recognize that being a “digital nomad” vs. being a nomad due to crushing poverty cannot be compared in good faith. My lived experience though is that where I once had the fear of “I could lose everything”—aka lots of material stuff in a house—I no longer have that fear. I learned it’s possible to be happy with relatively little…a lesson learned by many wise sages and great spiritual leaders throughout history.)

Two, and this is very much related: the ways in which American politics is so often unnecessarily cruel to poor people and vagabonds is despicable. (I suppose one could argue this is hardly unique throughout the history of civilization…or maybe it’s just a Tudor thing.) If I suddenly inherited massive wealth, I would put all of it into local library systems, community centers, public restrooms, volunteer wellness facilities, and other non-commercial “third places”. I am dumbfounded by how rank consumerism and unfettered capitalism has made it nearly impossible to live a dignified life outside of a heartless & relentless transactional system. Our culture is so spiritually ill, so poisoned with an addiction to the pursuit of money, we actually look down on the poor. Like there’s something “wrong” with them, rather than something tragically wrong with us.

Listen to me when I say: I have more respect for the beggar on the front steps of the library than I do the rich capitalist who backs inhumane policies which will lead to the closure of said library.

All of the strength I now have to join protest movements, write endlessly about the dangers of LLM proliferation, and fight back against online watering holes being overrun by fascists, has come from the inner strength I received from my travels. I believe everyone should travel at certain times in their lives. There is nothing which will open your eyes more. And I don’t mean “vacation travel” with a fancy jet and a fancy hotel and a fancy party you got invited to over the span of a few days. I mean more of an aimless, “nothing but what you can carry” sort of travel spanning a meaningful breadth of time. That, my friends, is an education worth more than all the gold in Trump’s ugly penthouse.

Summer: Rescued by a Friend

As much as I might paint the picture that, as a nomad, I was carefree and without any responsibilities, nothing could be further from the truth. I also am a father, and so on the regular I would have to return to the same general area of Oregon and spend time at a hotel with my kids. And I knew this was eventually unsustainable…as much as I might enjoy my ability to travel around and have adventures, my kids need the kind of stability which comes from knowing each of their divorced parents has got their shit together. As my teen emphatically put it: “Dad, you can do all that stuff after you retire!” (And so I shall, without a doubt!)

Thus as the spring progressed and I began to make plans for the summer, I started to take the idea of “settling down” seriously once more. I’d already downsized quite a bit so I could fit my remaining stuff into a modest storage unit, but as everyone knows even small apartments for rent in most urban centers on the coasts of the U.S. can cost a pretty penny.

A little ahead of schedule, I was thrown a lifeline: a dear, dear friend of mine had recently gotten engaged, and as a consequence of them and their fiance moving in together into the main floor of a gorgeous old Portland home, a cozy AirBnB-vibes basement apartment (of said home) was suddenly available to rent. Might I be interested?

Interested? Interested?! WHERE DO I SIGN ??? 🤯

OK sure, it was a slightly more introspective decision than that…but not by much. And so, on May 22, 2025, I received the keys to my sweet little castle. Again, I would have preferred this to have happened truly in the summer (as after only three months of glorious nomadism I was hardly ready to hang up my hat), but sometimes you don’t choose timing. Timing chooses you. And I knew this was absolutely the right next move for me.

All in all, this was a Good Summer. In spite of \*gestures wildly\* everything happening the world of technology & politics this year, I was deeply thankful to have landed in a place which felt so me—not just a house but a home. (And very much adjacent to a local community of creative Portlanders whose presence in my life I definitely will never take for granted.)

It was fun to rethink how I wanted to set up a house, what kind of decor and design to aim for and why. And it was exciting to experience a completely different style of living in Portland: previously I’d only lived near the city center in a very urban environment. Which was exactly what I needed at the time I was there! But now I was in more of a true residential neighborhood, albeit still close to public transit as well as many cute-as-all-get-out “streetcar corridors” which define the highly-desirable urban fabric of Portland’s east side.

If you love early 20th century bungalows and all things Arts & Crafts (as I do!), this whole region will make your heart explode. 😍

Fall: Descent to Turbulent Undercurrents

Despite my multiple attempts to course-correct my career as a software engineer throughout the summer of 2025 and find more stable financial footing, it had become clear that the hellish toxic stew of Trumpian politics & Big Tech’s death march into the Cult of AI was destined to thwart any meaningful progress. And so with the winding down of the year and the literal specter of increasing darkness in the outside world, I found myself once again fending off that double-headed monster of depression & fatigue.

I truly wish I could end my Year in Review on a positive note. And yes, it’s accurate to say a number of things are going pretty well. I had a lot of renewed success in open source the second half of the year, culminating in back-to-back releases of Ruby web framework Bridgetown 2.0 and 2.1. I feel like my photography this year took a significant leap forward in quality, and I look forward to pushing further into travel photography in 2026 (and of course, you have to travel in order to do travel photography heh heh 😏). I wrote a whole hell of a lot this year, juggling multiple publications & newsletters better than I ever have in the past.

While all of that creative output is personally rewarding, I can’t claim I benefited financially from it much at all. Which, again, isn’t the primary reason I publish…never has been. But as someone who would like to diversify and make a steady partial income from content creation, it’s frustrating.

Closing out the year as winter begins once more and a New Year daws, I wonder what the future holds for me. It’s not a feeling of dread, per se. Dread implies I can envision what evils might befall me. And that’s the thing: I really can’t. My mind’s a blank. I’ve never felt so uncertain about my career, even while wishing wholeheartedly that I could continue it (I’m very content being a professional freelance programmer, even though I don’t want that to be my only hustle). I’ve never had such a conflicting feeling about what might happen in technology & politics in 2026.

This isn’t a “predictions” post. I’ll save that for the next one. But I am predicting an overarching theme, and unfortunately it’s not a pleasant one: collapse. Or perhaps more accurately: apocalypse.

May you be reminded that an apocalypse doesn’t have to be fully doom and gloom. Good things can come out of apocalypses. The end of one age can precipitate the beginning of another. So the implosion of the MAGA movement, the bottom falling out of AI, and the record scratch moment for sales of hulking EVs…these events will be very discomforting for some but ultimately beneficial to all. OK, I’d better save the rest for my predictions list…

Winter 2025–2026: There and Back Again

And now it’s wintertime, one year after my consternation about where and how I was going to live. I need no longer worry about where and how I’m going to live. (Where and how I’m going to make an honest day’s living…still up for debate!)

I went into this year wondering if I was about to make a terrible, terrible mistake: throwing everything I still own into a single room-size storage unit, loading some must-haves into my crossover, and venturing forth into points unknown. Turns out, that was among the very best decisions I have ever made in my entire life. Then I wondered what would become of me if I did want to settle down again. And that decision was made by the universe on my behalf, via circumstances I never could have engineered on my own.

So in that regard, though this year brought with it many obstacles, 2025 also gave me a greatly renewed sense of—for lack of a better word—faith. I have a lot of faith in synchronicity, in friends, in amazing people I meet near and far, and perhaps most importantly in my self. And what more could you ask for as you celebrate the holidays with the family you love and the communities you care about. 🕎🎄

See you on the flip side…

#lifehacks

Dear Men, What is Preventing You from Looking Like…Aragorn?

Jared White — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 09:48:59 -0800

The first installment in my new series on the lifelong struggle with Performative Masculinity and the storied images of manhood in pop culture past and present.

Hey, so remember that brief window in time years ago when the term metrosexual was all the rage in news media as a way of describing straight men who express an interest in fashion and personal grooming the way some gay men do? As a humorous riff off of the word, I wrote in my diary in 2022 that I was Aragornsexual.

And although it’s a silly joke, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

(Note: credit for the painting above goes to Portland artist Dakota Randall — you will definitely want to view the full image here!)

When I was young, it was rare for me to see anyone on the silver screen who looked how I felt about myself.

I watched captains and kings, cowboys and explorers, men among gods and gods among men. I watched superheroes such as Batman (the original 1989 version of course) and hackers-turned-kung-fu-masters such as Neo. I watched new dads, cool dads, moron dads (I really don’t understand why every 90s comedy features a father figure who is a complete idiot. Is this what led to the backlash which produced the manosphere? 😂). I watched teen boys in school, which was always an interesting window into an alien planet because I was homeschooled and never went to public school. I can tell you this much: in every clichéd scene where the nerd was getting beat up by the jocks, I was the nerd.

As I was saying, it was a real challenge for me to find any role models I felt I could emulate convincingly. And then came The Lord of the Rings.

It Was the Hair (But, Like, More Than That)

But really, it was the hair. 😆

Most of my life I’ve worn my hair long. I hate how I feel when my hair is short. The longest I ever went with a traditionally short “guy” haircut was throughout the early days of my marriage. I won’t stand here and tell you that growing my hair back out was a prelude to our divorce; let’s just say it was a bellweather of many deeper issues.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Like the rest of America in 2001, I watched Fellowship of the Rings and I was spellbound. Truth be told, I wasn’t the world’s biggest fantasy buff—that would be my dad. He had a massive collection of Tolkein, yes, but also many of the later authors following in Tolkein’s footsteps. And he himself was an aspiring fantasy author. I wish I could point you to some of his published works, but, alas, he never published anything. (We’ll set aside that source of father-son conflict for another time…)

Regardless, in my teens and twenties I’d gotten hooked on YA fantasy like The Earthsea Cycle and The Chronicles of Prydain. Oddly enough, Tolkien wasn’t never a go-to author for me. I think I enjoyed the genre he spawned without ever falling too deep down that particular rabbit hole. I certainly understand and respect the level of reverence other people have for LOTR. To them, it is basically The Bible.

At any rate, seeing the way Peter Jackson and his incredible cast & crew brought the world of Middle Earth to life on screen, now that was truly something. Being a huge fan of the art style of Alan Lee, I was pleased to find his design sensibilities were a major source of inspiration for the look of the films.

But enough jibber-jabber about Middle Earth. I want to talk to you about Aragorn. Here was a man I could get behind.

As stated so well on Polygon:

“I think it relates to how he tends to embody a kind of perfect (to me) masculinity,” wrote Polygon contributor Chris Eddleman. “He is both rugged and gentle, humble and capable, affectionate but fierce in the face of adversity.”

“He has all the ‘traditional’ masculine attributes like strength, protectiveness, bravery but he’s not a bully,” said Kiki Intarasuwan across multiple tweets and DMs. “He’s also kind, compassionate, not afraid to show his emotions and he respects women’s choices. When I think of Aragorn, I think of the scene where he consoles Boromir as he dies and then kissing him on the forehead. That and the battle of Helm’s Deep were really turning points for him because he initially wasn’t ambitious and didn’t want to be king. But his compassion and vulnerability make him a good leader and he naturally stepped up in that role.”

Listen, I love me a good 80s or 90s action movie, but while I might enjoy Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones or even Arnold Schwarzenegger as, er, Ahnold in whatever he’s up to, I never emotionally resonated on a personal level with any of those dudes. I simply was unable to point to a gruff, stoic, sweat-slicked muscle man and say yep, I could be him! I’ll save the day, win the girl, and slyly wink at the camera as we ride off into the sunset. Fun? Yes. Inspirational? Not exactly.

Then along comes Aragorn, a wildly different character. I’d never seen anyone like him. Right from the start, he gets played almost in what you might say is a feminine way. There’s the way he moves through his environment in a “flowy” manner. He’s soft-spoken, almost a whisper at times. Even though he’s a hell of a fighter, he’s tender-hearted. You can tell he’s reluctant to hurt anyone, even though he’s prepared to die in service of protecting the vulnerable in his care.

And then there’s the look of Aragorn. The long hair. The tender eyes. The patchy facial hair. OK, let’s go there. This is an essay about Performative Masculinity after all. 😅

I’ve always had a difficult relationship with my facial hair.

I’ve perpetually struggled with growing a thick, full beard. There are parts of my face where hardly any hair grows at all. At the same time, I hate the way I look without any facial hair at all. I naturally have a very round “baby face” and am hardly what you might call square-jawed. Without the extra length I get from a beard—even if it’s a goatee—I don’t feel very “manly”.

So I’ve goofed around with a variety of subtle adjustments to where and how I grow my facial hair over the years, hoping to avoid tipping anyone off that I just can’t grow a very thick mustache or beard even if I wanted to.

And it certainly didn’t help that virtually all the traditional masculine heartthrobs of classic Hollywood were clean shaven. Did I look like Cary Grant? Or Gary Cooper? Or Jimmy Stewart? Obviously not! In fact, guess who often did show up with a goatee or even longer hair? The Bad Guy.

This is a trend that often shows up even in many modern(ish) movies. Think about it…when a dude suddenly shows up with shoulder-length hair and a goatee, is he the Good Guy, or the Bad Guy? I think you already know the answer.

(Not to beat this particular horse to death, but compare the Bad-Guy-Turned-Good look of Tony Stark aka Iron Man to Goody-Two-Shoes Steve Rogers aka Captain America. Who sports the oddly-trimmed goatee and the scragglier hair? Bingo.)

Then there’s Aragorn. He’s a bit of a mess. He looks like he tries to keep his facial hair well-trimmed but, y’know, he’s living the hard life as Strider on the road, so it’s sort of coming in patchy. He’s also more of a mature man by the time we meet him, so you’re starting to see some gray flecks appear. Gray! (As someone who is in their early 40s and has obviously graying hair, I continue to relate!)

And because it’s fantasy, Aragorn can get away with wearing an outfit which naturally features lots of flowy elements; subtle artistic touches like broaches and necklaces and such. No button-down shirts, stiff trousers, or bowties in sight.

Be still my beating heart! 😍

Reluctance to Wield Power

Topping it all off, Aragon exhibits a quality we rarely see in action heroes. He’s rightly scared of his own foibles and inadequacies as he sees them. He’s afraid of who he might become if he were to embrace his perceived destiny as King of Gondor. He’s all too aware of the history of Men (and his own bloodline) and how easily they might become corrupted by the allure of power as offered by Sauron.

Hear what I’m not saying: I’m not saying that Aragorn is “insecure” in his abilities. He’s actually very confident that he knows how to fight, and he’s secure in his physical strength and prowess. In this respect, his character arc is quite different than many of the coming-of-age superhero stories we so often come across. Aragorn’s story isn’t the story of some snot-nosed kid who suddenly gets powers and then is either afraid of them or excited to have them but regardless gets to the point where they’re ready to give up—the bad guys are just too powerful, and the good guy isn’t good enough or powerful enough to beat them—and they need some sign to convince them they can win the day. No, Aragon’s story isn’t anything like that. He’s already a battle-hardened warrior by the time we first meet him!

Aragorn’s story isn’t “with great power comes great responsibility.” Rather, it’s “with great power comes great evil.” Aragorn isn’t afraid of losing. He’s afraid of who he’ll become when he’s winning.

And that’s what makes him such a fascinating character. It’s also what makes his character arc stand apart from a couple of other heroic and/or tragic figures in LOTR: Boromir and Faramir.

Faramir’s trauma is that he’ll never live up to the expectations placed on him and his brother by their father. Faramir is a much more reluctant warrior than Aragorn even, because you get the impression if it were up to him, he wouldn’t be a warrior at all. Boromir, on the other hand, is a bit of an obvious picture of performative masculinity, even “toxic masculinity”. Deep down, Boromir is insecure and is desperate to please his father by being the strong man, the big man, the powerful winning man. He’s going to swoop in and save the day by any means necessary—pesky scruples be damned. And yet…he’s really not a bad dude at heart. It’s just that his heart is not in the right place. That’s what makes him such a tragic figure: you know he could rise to the occasion, and yet…he doesn’t.

Faramir, meanwhile, is forced by terrible circumstance to become the leader his brother never could. While it’s true he’ll never be seen as a great warrior and an epic commander of men like Aragorn, nevertheless he’ll do his part. He’s a good man, trying to find an honorable path through evil days.

I’m sure entire books could be written about the similarities and differences between Aragon, Boromir, and Faramir: all three warriors, but all three starting and ending their tales in radically different places.

There are so many moments throughout the LOTR films that I just love about Aragorn, but my favorite moment and a pivotal scene in the plot is when Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, comes to present Andúril to Aragorn. If you’ll permit me, I’ll include a portion of the screenplay because it gives me chills, every single time:

ELROND: The man who can wield the power of this sword can summon to him an army more deadly than any that walks this earth. Put aside the Ranger. Become who you were born to be. Take the Dimholt Road. Ónen i-Estel Edain (I gave Hope to the Dúnedain)

ARAGORN: Ú-chebin estel anim. (I have kept no hope for myself.)

Chills.

In this moment, Elrond commissions Aragorn in his true purpose. He implores Aragorn to go on this dangerous mission with uncertain ends because it is the only hope left for victory. Aragorn can’t merely stay on the sidelines of history any longer (fighting yes, but fighting as a Ranger). Aragorn has to step into his own shoes. He has to start fighting as a King, leading an army no one else can lead—not only to win the world war against Sauron, but to save the life of the Elven maiden whom he loves.

I’m not crying, you’re crying! 😭

Gender Neutrality and Aged Wisdom

Viggo Mortensen’s career-defining, strangely gender-neutral portrayal of a compassionate, wise, and reluctant King of Men almost didn’t happen. Originally the production hired Irish actor Stuart Townsend to play the role of Aragorn. As compared to Mortensen, Townsend is certainly younger and more dashing. It’s easy to imagine him playing a devil-may-care, on-the-nose action hero with boyish charm and a woo-the-ladies attitude.

Accounts differ as to why Townsend was let go at the last minute, but it seems Peter Jackson and co. realized they needed an older actor to play Aragorn. And, well, the shake-up was quite rocky and uncertain:

Production on The Fellowship of the Ring was forced to start without its Aragorn as Peter Jackson scrambled to find a replacement for Townsend. Eventually, he paid a call to Viggo Mortensen, a then-little-known actor who had auditioned for the role during the casting process, and officially offered him the role. However, there was a catch: if Mortensen wanted the role, he needed to get on a plane and fly to New Zealand the next day. With such little time to think about the decision, Viggo Mortensen nearly turned Peter Jackson down. The actor was reportedly concerned about the little time to learn all the necessary skills and lines, as well as replacing Townsend, feeling awkward about taking the role from someone else.

While Mortensen had reservations about accepting the role, his son was far more certain. Henry Mortensen was a massive fan of the Lord of the Rings novels and enthusiastically informed his father of just how monumental the role of Aragorn truly was. With the endorsement of his son, Mortensen accepted Jackson’s offer and flew to New Zealand the next day.

Aww, isn’t that adorable? A principal reason we have the iconic and genre-expansive portrayal of Aragorn today is thanks to Viggo Mortensen listening to his son. True masculinity in action.

There’s just so much about the way Viggo Mortensen embodied this role. When you consider the sorts of tropes we regularly come across in popular media, there’s the picture of the hippie artistic type, flowers in their hair and peace and love, man in their heart. Or maybe you get the nerdy book type, solving problems using more brain than brawn and always rolling their eyes at the jocks surrounding them. And then there’s the he-man type, a big lug who blunders his way into doing the right thing after much bluff & brouhaha.

Mortensen seems to draw from an entirely different well. Perhaps he was inspired by the knights of old and their stories of chivalry. Perhaps he was inspired by religious figures. Perhaps he relied on his creative instincts which came from a childhood spent in many places & pursuits outside of the United States and its cultural rat race. However this came together, Viggo Mortensen gave us an Aragorn and a performance which is almost unparalleled before or since in the Western zeitgeist.

Remember the Dear Men, What Is Preventing You From Looking Like This? meme from a few years back? Forget all about those shirtless hairless male torsos with washboard abs. Here’s my contribution to that conversation:

Dreamy.

#gender

Jared White — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 08:39:21 -0800

Latourell Falls, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge
#SilentSunday #OregonExplored

Link: “The Beast in Me” Could Have Dazzled

Jared White — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 23:14:11 -0800

Two damaged, possibly damaging people on a collision course with each other. The first two episodes of the show, which dwell at length on Jarvis and Wiggs as they feel each other out and take turns manipulating each other in a series of extended intimate chats, are gripping TV. Matthew Rhys imbues his cartoonish villain character with a kind of twitchy impulsiveness that makes him feel one degree less predictable than he might initially appear.

Claire Danes, for her part, returns fitfully to the Homeland well. Her chin near-constantly aquiver, Wiggs is always on the verge of tears, a woman deep, deep in the midst of a nervous breakdown. But, in her scenes with Jarvis, she comes alive, activating the lethal attentiveness and brazen disregard for danger that made her the prize-winning journalist we’re told she was.

This year has been a real mixed bag for me in terms of both #tvshows and films. Some gems, some thuds, and a few real stinkers.

The Beast in Me thankfully was not a stinker, nor even a thud. Alas, I wish I could call it a gem. It was merely good, which as Phillip Maciak points out for The New Republic might lead one to believe is just another sign of an industry-wide fall from grace; the beginning of the end of prestige television and its Golden Age of Streaming.

I’m not sure we need to stoop to such dramatic prognostication. Can’t we simply enjoy the undeniably fantastic performances by the lead actors, appreciate the arc of the story for what it is, admire the craft of the filmmaking (it was well-lit and beautifully shot) and leave it at that?

I think so. And yet…I still can’t help but wish this show had been more. More thrilling. More clever. More surprising. More thought-provoking once the TV has been switched off.

At least it impressed me more than some other shows in this sort of genre I’ve seen over the past couple of years. It definitely rises above the usual pablum you must wade through on today’s streamers. And for that, I am grateful.

Become the Best, Self-Actualized Version of Your Trillionaire Self

Jared White — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 22:58:08 -0800

What happens to a man when he wakes up in the morning, listens to a meditation app, does a quick workout, takes a shower, and looks in the mirror…and also he’s a trillionaire?!

Way to go, my dude! Attaboy! You’re crushing it today! 💪

Seems completely ridiculous. 😂

My sense is that money, fame, power, success, art, family…none of it means a damn thing anymore. It’s like approaching the event horizon of a black hole. The forces of gravity will turn nature as you know it inside out. Nothing will make sense, because how could it; after all, if light cannot escape, how can your sanity?

Now it’s true nobody on earth is a trillionaire…yet. But it’s starting to feel like that day is coming soon. And to ~~whet your appetite~~ melt your brain, here are some crazy stats about crazy money:

“If you had saved $10,000 every day since the first pyramids were built in Ancient Egypt, you would still only have a fifth of the average fortune of the world’s five richest billionaires.” (Global Citizen)
“$1 trillion is roughly the same as the gross domestic product (GDP) of the Netherlands or Türkiye. It is enough money to buy up all the shares of ExxonMobil (XOM), McDonald’s (MCD), and Coca-Cola (KO)—and still have millions left over.” (Investopedia)
“Twelve people under the age of 30 made Forbes’ 2022 list of the World’s Billionaires, including four Stanford dropouts, two food delivery magnates and a cryptocurrency whiz. Together, this rarefied group is worth $25.8 billion.” (Forbes)
“In 2022, around 13.05 percent of all billionaires in the United States were female. In total, there were 735 billionaires in the United States in that year.” (Statista)
“The odds of becoming a millionaire for middle-aged, college-educated Black Americans is 6.4%. For White Americans, it’s 21.5%.” (Financial Samurai)

I can’t claim to know much about the world of high #finance, but I’ll come right out and say it: I agree with people who believe it should literally be illegal to become a billionaire (let alone a trillionaire!). For that to have happened, many immoral and unethical things had to have happened to get you to where you are. Is it your fault or the system at large? A bit of both perhaps. All I know is that a world in which the middle-class is disappearing while the mega-rich get richer at a staggering rate is a world primed for societal collapse.

But don’t worry, Mr. Trillionaire. Your meditation app says with a few deep breathes and a purposeful, calm demeanor, you are ready to face the day and tackles any challenges which many lie ahead. Attaboy!

Jared White — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 14:42:24 -0800

The most perfect timing ever for the light at Hidden Falls in Happy Valley 😍
#FallVibes #OregonExplored

Link: New Seattle Mayor to Starbucks: We Dump Your Ass

Jared White — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 22:50:25 -0800

Mayor-elect Katie Wilson received loud cheers on Thursday when she spoke at a Starbucks Workers United rally outside the recently closed Reserve Roastery on Capitol Hill.

“That is why I am proud to join them on their picket line and proud to say loud and clear, I am not buying Starbucks and you should not either,” Wilson said.

Wilson’s call for a Starbucks boycott was echoed by another labor advocate: New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who posted online Thursday, “While workers are on strike, I won’t be buying any Starbucks, and I’m asking you to join us.”

The astonishing upset in the Seattle mayoral race, leading to the dawn of the age of the PNW Wilsons (my Portland mayor’s name is Keith Wilson! 😂), is just another piece of truly excellent news coming off of our off-year national elections. Now all eyes are on the mid-terms, and I’m feeling better about our prospects as democracy-loving patriots than I have in a long time. 🇺🇸 #politics

Evil Beyond Belief

Jared White — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 19:23:09 -0800

Donald Trump feels alone!

Donald Trump is nuts!!!

Donald Trump is evil beyond belief! Mad!

Donald Trump. Lies after lies after lies!

Thus child rapist Jeffrey Epstein speaks to us from beyond the grave about the sitting President of the United States.

Spend a considerable amount of time contemplating what a diabolical and sinister thing it is that we are at a point in our #politics when not only has there been a cover-up at the highest levels of our federal government to hide these macabre testimonies, the stinking rot goes all the way to the very top.

This is Why You Need to Ruthlessly Schedule Your Blogging Habit

Jared White — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 09:33:32 -0800

As some of you may recall, I spent the first half of the year #writing and publishing on this blog (or one of my other blogs) every day. Every single day.

And then in July, I declared my “independence” from my daily blogging habit yet claimed I would continue to post very regularly and only give myself a day off here and there.

I completely failed. 🫠

For a while, I did keep a log of the days I didn’t publish. It didn’t go well. Even in July, I couldn’t stick to my “max four days off” plan.

4th of July
10th of July
16th of July
19th of July
22th of July LAST ONE, DAMNIT!
28th of July THIS IS IT, I SWEAR!!
2nd of August
7th of August
10th of August
14th of August
18th of August
23rd of August
24th of August
25th of August
27th of August
28th of August
29th of August
31st of August
2nd of September

…and it only gets worse from there. 😭 (I totally gave up tracking this mid-October.)

Listen: I could give you a laundry list of excuses—many very valid!—why I completely fell off the wagon. But that’s just it: they are excuses. And when it comes to blogging, I’m done with excuses.

So I’ve decided I’m going to schedule my blogging habit. No more squishy “pick a day off” silliness, because obviously that didn’t work. Here’s what I’ll do instead:

EVERY BUSINESS DAY. Monday–Friday. Without fail.

By giving myself the weekend off, like normal people, I will get roughly 8 days off each month which is nice. But now it’s not my choice. I will (metaphorically) flog myself if I stray from this schedule. No room for error. None. 🙅🏻‍♂️

I watched “Wick is Pain” the other day (a fantastic documentary currently streaming on Netflix), and this is my new motto: Blogging is Pain.

💢 Bring it. 💢

Jared White — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 10:45:03 -0800

Whoa! Peak fall color on an amazing #Portland walk 🙌

#FallVibes #NikonZfc

Jared White — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 09:37:28 -0700

Oh, just a walk through the neighborhood when I intentionally brought my #NikonZfc with me and the afternoon light is exactly right. 🤩

#Portland #FallVibes

A Nomad’s Pacific Northwest Travelogue, Part V

Jared White — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 11:49:02 -0700

Living out my fantasy of sliding on sand dunes and becoming a beachcomber.

Where last we left our intrepid hero, he (I) had enjoyed a series of fabulous camping stays in the Cascades and high desert of Central Oregon, surrounded by Ponderosa pines, Juniper trees, rock formations, and a “grand canyon” carved by the Deschutes and Crooked rivers.

Now that I had arrived back in the more familiar territory of the Willamette Valley, my adventures just kept on…adventuring.

The time: early April 2025. The place: Silverton, OR. I’ve previously reported what a beautiful little town this is, and I decided I’d try looking around for a nice place to camp not too far away. It took some doing, but I came across a description of a place I could scarcely believe was real: Van Life Campgrounds. Apparently there are several locations throughout the western United States, and the one location in the northern section of Oregon is just outside the town of Molalla, right on the Molalla River and not far from Silverton.

Yes, I was traveling in a crossover vehicle which is not large and definitely not a van. But I didn’t see any reason why they’d disapprovingly kick me out due to my lack of vehicular purity, so I decided to book a night and give it a whirl. And oh am I glad I did. This is now one of my favorite places on Planet Earth. 😍

Woodsy gathering place near the parking “spots”

Sunset over the Molalla River

Waking up…to this view!

Looking right outside my car window

Immaculate vibes along the river

Even though it was a bit cold and a bit damp (this is April in the PNW after all), I had an incredible time here. When I’d arrived there were a couple of other #VanLife couples staying, so I got to hang out and get a tour of their rigs. I felt like I was inside one of the YouTube videos I’m always watching with envy. I didn’t have a “rig” to show off, but just being in their company and chatting about travel and life and stuff…it was fantastic.

Rest assured, this would not be the last time I stayed at VLC Molalla. (Spoiler alert?)

After moving on and heading back north to the Portland metro area for some work, the next evening I stayed for the first time at the KOA in Cascade Locks. It’s not a large campground, and the various sites are pretty close together, but it was still quite lovely and woodsy, and the location near the Columbia River is awesome. Would definitely recommend! (Be advised, there’s also a freight train line close by. It didn’t bother me sleeping in my vehicle, but YMMV!)

This KOA was a-OK

✨ Time jump to mid-April after spending time with work & family near the Portland area… ✨

Setting out on my next big adventure, this time I wanted to do something I’d never done before: go car camping along the Oregon Coast. For those of you not in the know, I think the entire coastline of Oregon is a national treasure. I tend to imagine when most people casually think of “Pacific Ocean, West Coast, United States”, they think of the epic swimming & surfing destinations of Southern California, lined with palm trees, babes in bikinis, skateboarding bros, and you know the rest. And hell, I might have agreed with them when I grew up and lived in Northern California not far from San Francisco…look there are plenty of gorgeous destinations on the coastline north and south of S.F., but I think SoCal (and perhaps up into Central California) is where most tourists go when they want to go to The Beach™ and spend lengthy amounts of time by The Ocean™.

Well I’m here to tell you this: when I first discovered the Oregon coast in earnest, my jaw fell down to the ground and subsequently rolled somewhere over there. Have you ever wondered what it’d be like if Fangorn Forest was situated right next to the largest body of water in the world? That’s Oregon. (And sure, we’ll include the northernmost tip of Northern California because Redwoods.)

And whoa, so many towns cute as all get out. Cannon Beach. Newport. Lincoln City. Florence. Even Astoria (which I happen to believe is a bit overrated, but still a worthy destination). And all points in between.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Instead of merely telling you what’s cool about it, I’ll show you!

Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park

That’s sure a mouthful! After bidding my children farewell having stayed for a time in Eugene, I packed up my gear and headed west towards Florence.

I’d been to Florence once before—even made a video about it—but a great deal of time had passed so I was eager to see if my enjoyment of the place had been a one-off or if I’d appreciate it just as much today. (Can you guess the final answer? 😂)

I figured my best bet as far as car camping is concerned would be to avail myself of some Oregon State Beach campgrounds (of which there are many all along the coastline), so I picked the one closest to Florence: the Jessie M. Honeyman Memo—well you know. I unfortunately got there way late (it was already dark), and I was lucky I even found my campsite as it was very challenging to navigate and some of the roads within the park were blocked off to ensure one-way traffic flows. So I merely assumed I’d picked a lovely spot and fell asleep.

The next morning, I could indeed confirm: it is a very lovely spot!

Gotta love a coastal forest

More about it a bit later. Once was up and about, I headed a few miles down Hwy 101, crossed the Siuslaw River, and bid Florence a hearty good morning!

Left: Oh yeah, I’m happy to be back
Right: The Siuslaw River Bridge

Overlooking the river from downtown Florence

Florence boasts a fun, quaint downtown to walk through full of shops and restaurants, as well as a marina on the river. I worked at a great coffee shop for a while, had lunch at Mo’s, then worked some more at the local library.

Anchor, baby

By afternoon, I needed a break and wanted to explore some more of the Jessie M. Honeym—yes all that. I had heard you could take a stroll along massive sand dunes (literally part of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, famed for its appeal to ATV enthusiasts), so I headed back to my campsite and proceeded to walk in a westerly direction. And what I saw took my breath away!

Cleawox Lake

Left: Strolling through the woods
Right: Sun? Sand? I'm dune with that!

On top of a real Oregon sand dune

Looking down the dune back towards the lake

I simply wasn’t prepared for the massive size of the dunes. I couldn’t even walk directly all the way to the ocean in a reasonable amount of time, because there were so many large dunes to traverse, so I remained content hanging out by the lake and enjoying the sunshine on an otherwise cold chilly day.

Back to the campgrounds, I appreciated the dreamy quality of light as the sunshine filtered through the trees, and had a very enjoyable evening indeed.

Dreamy indeed

Breakfast the next morning was equally pleasurable. Due to the shape of the campsite and the positioning of the trees, I felt like I had my own “private yard” in the forest, and I enjoyed my breakfast for as long as I could.

Café Woods

All good things must come to an end, so I reluctantly cleaned up my campsite, got my car in order, and began to drive north past Florence. Destination: Newport, starting with the South Beach State Park. (I’d come back here to camp, but as it was on the way to town, I stopped here first for some sightseeing.)

From here, you can get some dramatic views of the Yaquina Bay Bridge which crosses over the…yep, you guessed it, Yaquina Bay! You can also get some views of a bird sitting on a meme.

Eat ’em

Left: Yaquina Bay Bridge
Right: The south side is a real nice place to hang out

I had actually been to Newport somewhat recently (back in January 2025) when things weren’t too lively there during the off-season, so it was nice to see the town coming to life in the spring. And I got to meet Gino the giant photogenic crab!

Do not climb

I had lunch and worked for a while at the local library, then eventually wended my way back down to a campsite at South Beach.

The vibes here were completely different from the Jessie M. Perhaps not as dramatic, but certainly interesting. Whereas my previous stay felt like I was in my own private forest, here the foliage felt very “beachy” and it was open and sunny.

Good location for plein air

It was a groovy experience falling asleep to the gentle ocean breezes, and then to awaken anew to sunshine coming up over the eastern horizon.

Left: Do the dew
Right: Sun rising over the campground

I would worry a bit thinking about coming back here if the weather weren’t as favorable, or there were a great deal of “loud” RV contingents. It might not be so pleasant in those cases. But at least this go around, I had a wonderful time.

Making My Way Up the Coast

Ready for some nostalgic sightseeing. After leisurely enjoying the morning in Newport, I started to drive north along the coast again. Once again I want to reiterate just how jaw-droppingly gorgeous the coastline is in this region between Newport and Lincoln City. I sometimes find it tedious to traverse coastal roads because the windy single lanes and occasional weird traffic stops because of erosion or whatnot can make it feel slow, and there’s only so much welp, that’s an ocean vistas one can appreciate before the effect wears off.

Not so here! I could drive up and down the central Oregon coast all day. Even now as I write about it, I’m ready to go do it all over again!

As I approached Lincoln City, I again noticed Pelican Brewing right off the main highway which I’ve passed many times before, and this time I decided to stop there. It wasn’t yet noon, but I threw caution to the wind and ordered a brew flight. The setting was delightful, the beer exquisite, and I got to talking to a fellow traveler at the bar for a good while. I’m definitely to return here for a full meal!

A bar with a view

After a stop in Lincoln City to enjoy the beach views, nibble on a picnic lunch, get a bit of work at the library there, and buy a new handmade wallet at a hippie store, I continued on my way north to take a gander at Haystack Rock.

Nope, not that one (at Cannon Beach). Another one at Pacific City! Spoiler alert: there are multiple “haystack rocks” on the Oregon coast. I think the third one in Bannon looks more like a hay bale, but I digress.

One of the Haystack Rocks

Some more wending my way north and I finally arrived at my true destination for this particular adventure: Cape Lookout.

I had been here once before in 2020 and even filmed a vlog about it (same episode where I’d first visited Florence). And just as before, I was completely blown away by the quality of the light, the atmosphere, the sounds, the smells, just…everything.

I’m back, baby!

Left: A magical place
Right: Happy feet

And an artsy photo I posted on Pixelfed:

Looking out at Cape Lookout

Besides a particular town such as Cannon Beach, if there’s anywhere you make a beeline for along the north-central Oregon coastline, it should be Cape Lookout. The place feels like pure magic.

I spent a good deal of time scrambling over rocks and enjoying the ocean views, but as with all such things, it must come to an end.

Protesting in Portland, and a Sendoff

I once again arrived back in Portland, and the trend of enjoying beautiful sunny spring weather continued. I got to see a sailboat on the Willamette River…

So pretty!

…and enjoy the urban waterfalls at Keller Fountain Park.

It's a fun place to wade in the warmer months

I’d been a little out of the loop in terms of political news, thus I found myself stumbling across the tail end of a protest march through Portland. Compared to what I participated in recently as I write this (aka #NoKings in October), it wasn’t a super large crowd, but everyone seemed to be pretty pumped to be there, and I didn’t notice any hecklers or folks causing trouble.

I also miss when facts mattered

The highlight of the event for me was coming across this beauty:

Left: No more billionaires
Right: The Turd Reich

And with that amusing and extremely appropriate wordplay well in hand, I regret to inform you I must close out this Travel(b)logue installment. But never fear! I was soon destined to travel once again to the coast—this time in the beautiful Northern California region of Eureka and the Humboldt county redwoods. Come back soon…

#nomadlifestyle #oregonexplored

Link: America Has Spoken: 7 Million Demonstrators and Counting Say “No Kings”

Jared White — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 20:42:51 -0700

“They’re deploying troops into American cities like it’s a war zone. Peaceful protest is being wrongly criminalized,” said Naveed Shah, US Army veteran and Political Director, Common Defense. “They’re smearing veterans, teachers, and everyday Americans who dare to speak out—just so they can justify a ‘crackdown.’ As veterans who have deployed across the world, we’ve seen this playbook before. Authoritarians don’t want debate; they want obedience and nothing more from us. But veterans like myself and the 480,000 veterans representing Common Defense didn’t swear an oath to a king. We swore to the Constitution. And we’re standing up now to say loud and clear: there are no kings in America, and we will not be ruled by fear.”

I marched in #Portland today.

I’ve attended demonstrations before, but this was my first time I planned ahead, made a sign, held it high, and walked all around my city alongside thousands of my fellow patriots. The cosplay-fascist goons responsible for shutting down our government can keep posting ridiculous edgelord memes on social media, or blandly pretend this is all simply #politics as usual, but there is nothing normal about anything that has happened this year.

Americans have had it, and today will go down in U.S. history as one of the largest single-day demonstrations ever; spanning the entire country in all 50 states and in over 2,700 towns. And mark my words, this isn’t the end. This is only the beginning.

RESIST! ✊

Link: Don’t Make Me Question Why I Follow That Account! 😅

Jared White — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 19:32:12 -0700

We believe that these kinds of user-generated, curated collections [starter packs] could help people to find their tribe more quickly when they join the Fediverse. At the same time, envisioning a similar feature that prioritises user consent, and works across a constellation of independent servers, is no small feat.

It’s cool that Mastodon is intentionally working on technical design concepts for “starter packs” and seeking user feedback. I have a very specific opinion about this, so I emailed the following to their feedback address. I wonder if you’ve suffered the same issue I have in dealing with starter packs on Bluesky! 😅

I’m very excited that you’re exploring the idea of Starter Packs. I’m cautiously optimistic this will be a good feature, but one aspect of it I’m concerned about is the mental load of later (months/years?) trying to remember: “why am I following this account??”

Normally I know why every account I follow, I follow…because I chose to follow them! I might not remember the rationale I had at the time I followed them, but at least I know that it was of my own accord.

With starter packs added, that contract is broken. Now every single account I follow, I will have to ask myself: did I want to follow this person, or was it from some random starter pack (which one? by whom??)?

I think there would need to be a record and a description shown on their profile or something. aka “You followed this account because you added XYZ Starter Pack [and also JKL Starter Pack, etc.]”. Then at least I could see at a glance if it were really my idea or someone else’s.

Having had a negative experience of this phenomenon on Bluesky (time goes by, and then I’m like, what are all these accounts and why did I follow them??), I would love #Fediverse packs to keep the user in control and informed at all times.

Ruby Central is Not Behaving in Good Faith, and I’ve Got Receipts

Jared White — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 09:43:21 -0700

The drama never ends, but I am here to take a stand and do something about it.

Two disclaimers before I continue: (a) I normally post on programming-related topics elsewhere and not on my personal blog, but because this is such a personal issue for me and not about the technical aspects, I’ve decided to post here. (b) I am the lead maintainer of the Bridgetown Ruby web framework, but any views expressed here are my own and I don’t claim to represent Bridgetown as a whole in writing this.

9/23/2025 2:33PM PT Update: There’s new information out from Josef Šimánek, a 10+ year contributor & maintainer for RubyGems and the RubyGems.org service, and it’s also really damning. There’s also this update from Joel Drapper about the Ruby Central and Ruby Together merger (Ruby Together was originally the org managing all things RubyGems/Bundler).

9/24/2025 3:57PM PT Update: Both Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and Ruby on Rails founder David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) have weighted in on an open letter called Plan Vert to request Rails core & the Ruby community cut ties with DHH due to his “racist and transphobic views” according to the letter. (Full disclosure, I added myself as a signatory.) Tobi retweeted (xcancel link) a post regarding the open letter by a far-right agitator called The Lunduke Journal who regularly attacks “antifa” OSS, and Tobi said:

It’s such a terrible mental tax on builders that divisive clowns just ride in and spew these bullshit terms that they clearly don’t understand themselves in bad faith.

Ignore & keep building

And in a reply to a comment by Berend de Boer: “Insane, I feel so sorry for you”, DHH replied:

No reason to feel sorry. Nothing is actually happening. This is the same handful of hysteric individuals who perform these same rites and rituals they do every year. It’s rather sad to watch.

DHH also retweeted another post by The Lunduke Journal with regard to Cloudflare sponsoring DHH’s Linux distro Omarchy and said (xcancel link):

The “Nazi” label is how these people justify their all their antisocial behaviors and violent fantasies. We need to route around these nut jobs and build more open source that isn’t trapped in such tiresome ideological tar pits.

These are the people “in charge” of Ruby Central and Rails. 😕

9/24/2025 9:38PM PT Update: DHH is now accusing his critics and people who might accuse him and others of acting like “nazis” as essentially being violent politically-motivated murder sympathizers (re: Charlie Kirk) and that “you’re not wrong to be worried when political assassinations are justified and exalted in reference to the “nazi” threat”. He says “The last loonies on tech’s woke island are getting desperate.”

You know, I’m starting to think this is a sore spot with him. Keep up the pressure.

9/25/2025 12:00PM PT Update: The pressure campaign is working, on multiple fronts. André Arko, one of the principal developers of Bundler going back 15 years and the founder of Ruby Together (which later merged with Ruby Central), wrote a poignant and pointed article about his history with the project, and that he has registered “Bundler” as a trademark which he will not license to Ruby Central but will to a new organization accountable to the Ruby community at large.

Meanwhile, the Plan Vert open letter continues to gain momentum, even while a horde of DHH sycophants flood the zone both in terms of defacing PRs as well as a massive influx to a popular Ruby Discord server. Most notably, Eugen Rochko, creator of Mastodon which has become the most popular open source Rails-based application as measured by GitHub stars, has signed the letter. The symbolic importance of this cannot be overstated, and lends real weight to the movement to hold DHH and Rails Core accountable.

10/6/2025 10:00AM PT Update: Oh hey, there’s a new gem server in town, so buckle up folks! 😄 Looks like gem.coop is really the start of something.

Now, time to spill some tea, because I am done being constantly gaslit by Ruby Central.

Before I link to the latest incredible reporting by Joel Drapper on what has been going down throughout September 2025, I will offer my own timeline of events which transpired earlier this year.

May 28, 2025: Ruby Central announces that “David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the creator of Ruby on Rails, will join us for a special fireside chat” at the upcoming RailsConf in July. As many in the Ruby and web technology scene are aware, DHH has become an extremely polarizing figure over the last few years, publicly aligning himself with far-right authoritarian figures in America like Donald Trump and Elon Musk and recently Tommy Robinson in the UK, and espousing views which are hateful towards immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, black people, “fat” people, “woke” people, “crazy” people who want to “unperson” Andrew Tate, “DEI zealots”, couples who don’t want kids, therapists, and the list goes on and on. Naturally, a number of Ruby community members who were planning to attend RailsConf were upset to hear that seemingly at the last minute (6 weeks prior), DHH would be platformed—and ironically at the very conference he was asked not to keynote in 2022 seemingly as a result of Basecamp’s politically-charged implosion which led to a third of the entire company resigning in protest. It should also be noted these events in 2022 provided the impetus for DHH to launch the Rails Foundation (more on that in a moment) which began to put on its own series of annual Rails conferences called Rails World as a clear rebuke to Ruby Central. This is not my speculation: DHH has written about this on numerous occasions (remember, any time you hear DHH use the term “nonsense”, he means people holding him accountable for his abhorrent views).
May 30: A mere two days after the announcement of DHH’s firesite chat at RailsConf, DHH posts the following on X regarding an r/rails discussion on Reddit where people are voicing their displeasure at the RailsConf platforming news:

@dhh: While the rest of the tech world has mostly moved on from the nonsense of the early 2020s, there are still a few ardent ideologues fighting the last war on Reddit, believing that ridiculous accusations like “nazi” and “fascist” still carry any weight 🙄

I make an effort to bookmark this, because…
June 10: Ruby Central hosts a Zoom meeting with Executive Director Shan Cureton, Marketing Director Rhiannon Payne (who since left Ruby Central on September 1, more on that in a moment), some of the engineers who work on RubyGems, Bundler, etc., as well as folks involved in RailsConf programming, to address concerns from the community. I attend this Zoom meeting. I don’t feel at liberty to share who I recall also attended, but you would definitely recognize their name from recent criticism of Ruby Central. At the start of the meeting, Ruby Central asked permission from everyone to record the call. At the time, I took this to mean they wanted to be able to publish it later for folks who were unable to attend.

Much of the concern expressed in the meeting around DHH returning to RailsConf centered around why this announcement was made so close to the date of the conference, if sponsors were putting pressure on RC to permit his appearance, how they would protect the community from more hateful rhetoric, what steps RC is taking to create safe spaces for minority groups, etc. Here is a key exchange: in a conversation regarding DHH’s behavior outside of the conference, someone from Ruby Central (I forget who exactly) said they’d keep an eye on anything DHH might say regarding his return that’s a form of “weaponization” against his perceived political opponents—aka using his RailsConf appearance as a justification for his behavior. At this point, I shared the link to what DHH had already posted two weeks prior which is referenced above (aka “ardent ideologues”). Shan Cureton specifically replied that she wasn’t aware of that post and they would have to look into it. Again, this is key information: Shan Cureton and Ruby Central, as of June 10, knew DHH was already weaponizing his return to RailsConf to attack his enemies, because I was the one who shared this information with them. The Zoom meeting concluded in a reasonably cordial fashion, but it was obvious this would need to be the first in a series of difficult conversations to come.
A few weeks later: I regret I’m unable to find this exchange now in my archives, but I had been holding off on commenting on what went down during the Zoom meeting because I wanted to wait for Ruby Central to release the video recording, and I finally contacted someone at RC about the video recording, at which time I received a reply back that they would not release the recording due to privacy concerns…but they were working on addressing the community’s feedback in a FAQ they would post on the RailsConf website. This is the FAQ they released. I want to point out that nowhere in this FAQ do they actually address the community uproar around DHH’s return, instead framing all of the answers they provide in the abstract without mentioning any one person.
July 8: DHH has his fireside chat with Elise Shaffer at RailsConf as planned. As far as I’m aware, no punitive action was ever taken against DHH, nor any mention of his weaponization of his return which I had reported.
September 1: I receive “The Ruby Central README” marketing email which includes the following:

Ruby Central’s leadership will be in Amsterdam this week for Rails World, and we’d love to see you there! Executive Director Shan Cureton and Director of Open Source Marty Haught will both be attending.

Again, I am beside myself that Ruby Central is blithely heading off to DHH’s pet conference—especially with DHH’s public views as toxic as ever on a regular basis (as you’ll soon see), so on September 4 (at the start of Rails World) I send the following email to contact@rubycentral.org:

“Ruby Central’s leadership will be in Amsterdam this week for Rails World, and we’d love to see you there! Executive Director Shan Cureton and Director of Open Source Marty Haught will both be attending.”

Meanwhile, DHH is posting this on X:

“First-world problems” shouldn’t be seen as an insult, but a celebration! Hurraaaay, I have ascended from the daily toils and tribulations of a life in the third world, so my worries may now include slow laundry machines and air conditioning, not starvation or failed states 🎉

I regret to say I am unable to support an organization which seems unable to publicly disavow a man who has demonstrated numerous times to be a racist, homophobe, transphobe, fatphobe, ableist white nationalist who is now apparently cheering on death via starvation in third world countries.

Disassociating with Nazis should be the bare minimum of ethical behavior by anyone in a civilized world. I’m sad I can no longer in good conscience support Ruby Central.

Regards,

Jared White

P.S. I am lead maintainer of the Ruby-based Bridgetown web framework. I have been outspoken on this topic and will continue to speak out. I’ve tried to keep a low profile with regard to speaking about Ruby Central specifically, but given the non-published Zoom conference prior to RailsConf which resulted in a nothing-burger Q&A response which didn’t even mention DHH by name in any way and now this…I am flabbergasted and dumbfounded.

A week later, I had not received any response to this email, so I replied again with the following:

I’m disappointed I never received a response back to my message, and furthermore, the exact thing I warned you about in the Zoom conference I attended prior to RailsConf—that DHH would weaponize his inclusion at RailsConf by attacking and silencing his political opponents and gaslighting the public that all is well in the community—is continuing to happen! (see the attached from his HEY World blog*)

Your silence is now complicity! Can you explain how it’s possible to uphold ethical policies which protect the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized people, people in “third world” countries, the disabled, and others who are frequent targets of DHH’s wrath on his public HEY World blog, all while doing nothing to disassociate from him and his abhorrent views and instead sanctioning (!!) the Rails World conferences and the Rails foundation?

Jared

* This was what I had attached, a screenshot of DHH’s blog post reflecting on Rails World 2025 as stated here:

Thanks again to all The Rails Foundation members who believed in the vision for a new institution back in 2022. It looks like a no-brainer to join such a venture now, given the success of Rails World and everything else, but it actually took guts to sign on back then.

I approached quite a few companies at that time who could see the value, but couldn’t find the courage to support our work, as our industry was still held hostage to a band of bad ideas and terrible ideologies.

All that nonsense is thankfully now long gone in the Rails world. We’re enjoying a period of peak unity, excitement, progress, and determination to continue to push for end-to-end problem solving, open source, and freedom.

Think about it. DHH fully admits that it was hard to gain public support back in 2022 for a new Rails Foundation due to his reputation at the time and companies’ hesitancy to associate with him. But now, everything’s all good! “All that nonsense” (AGAIN linking back to the news he wouldn’t be at RailsConf 2022) is “thankfully now long gone in the Rails world.” Aaaarrgghh.

Anyway, I finally got a reply back from Shan Cureton, which I will include in a moment.
September 1: Also around this same time, Rhiannon Payne stepped down as Marketing Director of Ruby Central, and only now having read her post, I’m struck by her phrasing here: “My decision to step down as Ruby Central’s Marketing Director was a challenging one to make and came with a lot of inner conflict for me. Ultimately, a lot of it came down to incompatibility with my bandwidth and the org’s needs as it prepares for significant growth, as well as strategic changes as Ruby Central reinvents itself and looks ahead to what’s next.” I’m curious: what significant growth is Ruby Central preparing for? What strategic changes this month of September 2025? Reinventing itself? Why? And for whom? 🤔
September 16: I finally hear back from Ruby Central Executive Director Shan Cureton. It largely sounds like a PR script to me, but I will include it anyway:

Hi Jared,

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns with us. We value hearing different perspectives from across the Ruby community, and your voice has been heard. Ruby Central is a small organization with a small staff, and while we’re not always able to respond quickly or engage in every social conversation, we do take feedback seriously and reflect on it as part of our ongoing work.

Ruby Central’s mission and work are rooted in supporting the Ruby community, sustaining open source, and creating inclusive, welcoming spaces. We strive to show up in ways that reinforce our values in everything that we do. While we can’t always respond in the moment to everything that happens in external channels, we remain committed to fostering unity, equity, and respect within the ecosystem.

We know that perspectives within the community may differ on how we prioritize and balance these responsibilities. Our hope is that, over time, the work we do will demonstrate where we stand and may help shift how you view Ruby Central’s role in the community.

Please know that our door is always open to thoughtful discussion around these topics. Thank you again for your email and for all the ways you’ve contributed to the Ruby community.

Best Regards,

Shan

And here is my final reply back:

Thanks Shan for the reply back. I am eagerly awaiting something, anything, that seems to push back on the false narrative that all of the “nonsense” DHH is constantly talking about is long in the past and everyone’s totally on board his weird political train and it’s all cool bro. There is no “creating inclusive, welcoming spaces” in the Ruby on Rails community as long as that man is at the top of the food chain.

I will continue to monitor the situation.

All the best,
Jared
September 19: and now you are all caught up to where the latest Ruby Central drama unfolds, and this is now where I will link to this incredible article by Ruby programmer Joel Drapper that goes in-depth into the latest debacle based in part on his private conversations (Drapper I’ll note worked at Shopify, aka Ruby Central’s principal corporate sponsor, from 2017 and 2022). I’m glad he did this work so I don’t need to keep writing out this already lengthy timeline. 😅

I will conclude with some brief thoughts, because while I have a lot more to say about Ruby Central in particular and the state of the Ruby programming language ecosystem in general, I will save most of that for future work I do in community building.

I watched the nearly 10 minute video put out this morning by Shan Cureton of Ruby Central, on the pretense that they realized it is the holiday of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and thus not a good time to host a previously-scheduled community Zoom meeting. (Stay tuned for some future rescheduled date, apparently.) I am amazed that in this 10 minutes, none of my concerns were addressed. None. Good job everybody! 😂

I am done. I am done with this drama.

I believe the time to mourn what we could have had is now over and it is time—to quote DHH himself—to “route around the nonsense” by building a new Ruby ecosystem from the ground up, grassroots, that clearly and unequivocally does not associate with fascists and is centered around organizations & communities who are accountable to the people and to the principles of good-faith, transparent, and democratic open source governance. We as Rubyists deserve better. And I will dedicate every ounce of joy I still feel at programming in Ruby, a language I have loved for nearly 20 years now, towards helping to build this new ecosystem—an ecosystem that is not dependent on Ruby Central, Rails Foundation, and their bedfellows in complicity.

–Jared White
September 23, 2025

P.S. This exchange on Mastodon between previous Ruby Central Director Adarsh Pandit and Mike Perham of Sidekiq is also extremely illuminating. I’ll mention I am on good personal terms with Adarsh and offer my sincere appreciation for everything he accomplished while at Ruby Central.

Jared White — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 08:55:48 -0700

I didn’t want to post this back when the fire was raging (no need to be sensationalist), but back when the Flat Fire first began in central Oregon on August 21, I was boondocking and saw it pretty close up. I had to adjust my plans so I would be a safe distance away across the Deschutes river valley. 😲

I’m glad Sisters and other major towns were saved! #OregonExplored #SilentSunday

Link: Lower the Temperature? I Think We’re Approaching Absolute Zero.

Jared White — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 22:14:43 -0700

“SAG-AFTRA condemns the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! Our society depends on freedom of expression. Suppression of free speech and retaliation for speaking out on significant issues of public concern run counter to the fundamental rights we all rely on. Democracy thrives when diverse points of view are expressed. The decision to suspend airing Jimmy Kimmel Live! is the type of suppression and retaliation that endangers everyone’s freedoms. SAG-AFTRA stands with all media artists and defends their right to express their diverse points of view, and everyone’s right to hear them.”

I can’t explain why exactly, but Kimmel getting completely frozen out of mainstream media simply because that Weaselheaded Fucknugget and his drooling ass-kissing hounds don’t care for the fellow has shaken me to my very foundation. If Kimmel isn’t safe, nobody is. We must assume every major American corporation* is now completely willing to bow down and kiss the ring, ensuring this fascist hellscape will continue unabated.

* Surely not Apple tho—ugh. 😵‍💫

Link: Sabrina Carpenter is the Post-Feminist Icon We Need

Jared White — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 23:01:59 -0700

After she made a grand entrance by emerging from a manhole in the stage, the princess of lyrical sexual innuendos sang and danced onstage alongside a cast of backup dancers that seemingly included drag performers, mirroring the song’s music video that featured Colman Domingo in drag.

Before heading into a second round of the chorus, the performers pulled out picket signs with messages such as “protect trans rights,” “Dolls dolls dolls,” “In trans we trust” and “If you hate you’ll never get laid.”

I am fascinated by the new album Man’s Best Friend by Sabrina Carpenter, and I have so many thoughts.

Back when she really blew up in pop culture (at least to my knowledge) with the release of her massive hit Espresso, my casual impression was she’s got real talent (I really do dig that song!) but it’s kind of weird that she’s going for the blonde bombshell sex symbol callback to Marilyn Monroe or whatever. Is that still a thing?!

And comment threads like this on Reddit echo those sorts of questions. This year in particular, I have been dismayed by the sudden lurch into a sort of “white (supremacist) cis #gender beauty” aesthetic most epitomized by Sydney Sweeney’s “Got Great Jeans” brouhaha. It could have been the case that Carpenter’s vibe dips a toe into those same nauseating waters.

But nothing could be further from the truth!

As the link above indicates, Carpenter is going out of her way to support drag queens and trans people in an era when both groups are under alarming and vicious attack. Bravo! And you know you’re in good company when Pedro Pascal comes out in support of you!

But more than that, Man’s Best Friend is itself chock full of subtle digs at toxic masculinity, wrapped up in a very clever package which I think is Carpenter’s superpower: humorous sexiness. The song Tears in particular is sheer brilliance. It’s a fun catchy song, but if you pay attention to the lyrics, it absolutely kicks incel culture in the balls:

I get wet at the thought of you
Being a responsible guy
Treating me like you’re supposed to do
Tears run down my thighs

A little respect for women can get you very, very far
Remembering how to use your phone gets me oh so, oh so, oh so hot
Considering I have feelings, I’m like, “Why are my clothes still on?”
Offering to do anything, I’m like, “Oh my God”

🤣🤣🤣

Best. Song. Of. The. Year. 👏👏👏

I think there’s something special about this secret sauce which is that Sabrina Carpenter looks, sounds, and acts like the polar opposite of a “woke feminist scold” …yet draws some real lines in the cultural sand. Treat LGBTQ+ people well. Respect women. Don’t be a dumbass, or guess what? You’re never getting laid!

P.S. Have you seen her totally unhinged music video yet? (Colman Domingo in drag!)

Link: Strange Bedfellows

Jared White — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 23:38:00 -0700

Flanked by Silicon Valley’s most powerful executives in the White House last week, Melania Trump hailed artificial intelligence as potentially “the greatest engine of progress in the history of the United States of America.”

Less than a mile from the first lady, in a hotel ballroom packed with MAGA faithful, top Republican Josh Hawley had a different message.

AI “threatens the common man’s liberty” and could even undermine the Republic itself, the senior US senator from Missouri said.

It is fascinating just how different the #politics of the various corners of American society which are taking a stand against the unchecked power of Big Tech are. People from the far left and the far right, who normally wouldn’t agree on virtually anything, suddenly find themselves in uncomfortable alignment when speaking out against the current and future horrors of #generativeAI and the concentration of power in Silicon Valley. I can’t say I’m too keen on this development—finding myself nodding at any sentence uttered by Josh Hawley makes my stomach churn—but the ways in which both die-hard Trumpists and mushy moderate Democratic corporatists have both given Big Tech/Big AI undeserved leeway to peddle these Torment Nexus freakshows means we need to cheer a dash of common sense wherever we may find it.

“Splitsville” Could & Should Have Been Much Better

Jared White — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 22:22:24 -0700

Most disappointing film of the year for me so far; Splitsville is a project which looks absolutely incredible on paper. The “bones” of the story are certainly compelling. And what’s not to love about seeing Dakota Johnson AND Adria Arjona on screen at the same time?! In a madcap screwball comedy about the confusing complexities of modern love, hard breakups, and “open relationships” no less!

Unfortunately, while the execution of the filmmaking is generally quite good (direction, acting, wild antics, laugh-out-loud moments), the story suffers greatly from a sense of self-indulgence (they could have easily trimmed 15-20 minutes off of this…it weirdly felt much longer than Materialists even though it was actually shorter than the latter—a far superior film I might add). But not just that, I found the “sexual politics” of the plot to be shockingly regressive. In an era when I am very sensitive to the rolling back of progressive ideas around relationships, identity, sexuality, and family structures, it is disheartening to watch a film that—again on paper appears pretty bold and envelope-pushing—falls back on oh-so-familiar tropes which are so outdated I felt emotionally manipulated.

So many beats came across as “we don’t understand what makes any of those progressive millennial hippies tick but it seems funny so we’ll riff on that” sort of humor, which ends up making the whole thing feel…ignorant. Without giving too much away, one of the lead characters at one point is temporarily dating someone of the same gender. And at first, I’m impressed to see bisexuality depicted on screen where it’s not immediately the butt of jokes. And yet! That moment is gone nearly as quickly as it began and nobody ever addresses it or references it ever again. Ever. Not even the slightest comment of like “oh, I never realized you were bi” or even “hey, I thought you’d decided that wasn’t for you, but sure OK I’m cool with it.” Nothing.

And that sort of clueless treatment of potentially complex and even contentious topics is rife throughout the whole movie. It’s always how do we get to the next really dumb, completely over-the-top joke (but very cleverly timed and executed so it provides the illusion of being clever). Again, this feels to me like one of those #movies that at its core is culturally conservative and regressive yet wraps itself in a cloak of modern edginess. Which is truly a shame because we need more retro-inspired screwball comedies in cinema that can good-naturedly poke fun at how silly we humans are even in a culture of earnest enlightenment.

I know next to nothing about the filmmakers behind Splitsville, but if they were to ask me how they could have made this better (not that they would ever have reason to!), I would have suggested they spend more time observing real relationships in open marriages, real polyamory, queer relationships, BDSM relationships (learn a thing or two about informed consent ya dorks!), and just basically anything other than he-hawing over who has a bigger dick and which girl is pining for which man now. 🙄

Jared White — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 09:26:09 -0700

On a walk the other day through Errol Heights Park. I had no idea that #Portland features a swamp! 😲
#SilentSunday

Jared White — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 21:55:33 -0700

Exactly two weeks ago, I wrote here on the blog that I was feeling strangely optimistic. 😃

Then last week happened to me…nothing majorly frustrating, merely “death by a thousand papercuts.” I tried to get extra rest on Labor Day (September 1 in the U.S.) and slow-danced into this week hopeful I could turn things around.

And it’s been a slog out of depression every damn day. 🥺

Again, no one major catastrophe. Just feeling like I’m grinding my gears at every turn…both at work and otherwise. I hate weeks like that!

But I went on an extra-cozy scooter ride this evening, enjoying the Portland waterfront and watching people going in and out of bars and strip clubs and donut shops and art galleries and a myriad of quirky interesting places, and that cheered me up tremendously. Being outdoors and seeing humans having a good time IRL almost never fails to set my mood aright.

Better yet, I’ll be attending a dear friend’s wedding this weekend, which I’m sure will be a highlight of summer’s endgame for me. Hopefully this weekend marks the turning point when I can fully get back on solid mental ground again. ☺️

Link: The Look of “Alien: Earth” is Fantastically Stellar

Jared White — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 21:35:20 -0700

Emmy-winning creator Noah Hawley carved out a bold new nightmare that exists in parallel rather than a continuation of the film franchise. For production designer Andy Nicholson, it meant diving headfirst into the archives to craft fresh, striking motifs that didn’t just nod to the past but expanded the iconic universe. The goal? To make it feel unmistakably Alien with a few surprises lurking in the shadows – all this while shooting in Thailand.

I almost didn’t bother with this show. I’m not a huge fan of the Alien franchise. I saw the first two movies back in the day because they’re classics, and sure, I appreciate them for their role in cinematic history. (Not to mention some great memeable quotes!)

Then I watched Alien: Romulus when it came out because it was getting so much buzz that it was a return to form and made with love for the franchise classics (as well as the game Alien: Isolation of which my brother is a total fan). I did enjoy it, but I’d never go out of my way to watch it again or think about it much at all really.

Yet again, however, they reeled me back in! Because Alien: Earth was getting so many positive reviews, I decided I’d give it a try…and oh wow am I glad I did!

This show is terrific.

I’m not sure I’d put it up on a pedestal reserved for the likes of such prestige #scifi #tvshows as Severance, or Star Wars: Andor, or Loki, but it is definitely tickling my fancy and I’m eagerly awaiting the next episode. Not only is the story compelling and the acting quite excellent, but the production design is absolutely kick-ass. Andy Nicholson and the rest of the crew who worked on this need to win awards, no question. It looks phenomenal, and thus has quickly catapulted this installment of the Alien franchise right up to the top of that list for me.

Jared White — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 07:26:24 -0700

Smoky Skies Over Mount Jefferson in the Morning While Boondocking in Central Oregon
#SilentSunday #OregonExplored

Jared White — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 08:08:56 -0700

Sunrise among the ponderosa pines. Ain’t nuthin’ like it. 🤩
Sisters, OR #OregonExplored #NomadLifestyle #NikonZfc

Link: “The Mule” is a Villain for the Ages

Jared White — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 22:01:51 -0700

The Apple TV+ version of Foundation, Season 3, has finally revealed the Mule, as played by Pilou Asbæk.

“He’s probably one of the best-written villains if you ask me,” Asbæk tells Inverse. “He’s right up there next to Voldemort.” But, with Season 3, specifically, Episode 7, Foundation is twisting the Asimovian origin of the Mule. Or is it?

I never read the Foundation books by Issac Asimov, but ahead of season 3 of the Apple TV+ show I’d been hearing all the chatter about bringing one of the book series’ big bads to life: The Mule.

I’ll admit I was rather nervous; something I’ve loved throughout my watch of Foundation is that many of the “bad guys” are complex and nuanced, and you don’t necessarily appreciate everything the “good guys” are up to either. There’s a lot of gray area. Now suddenly I’m expected to believe some heinous madman will come waltzing into the picture, bending everyone’s minds to his evil will while unraveling psychohistory in the process? Sounded all a bit silly…infantile even.

I needn’t have worried.

Pilou Asbæk is crushing it in this role. He’s a scenery-chewing bad dude who doesn’t steal the show due to eloquent monologues or brooding underhanded villainy like we often see in these sorts of roles. Rather, he overtly perpetrates despicable violence—at times truly grotesque—as he gleefully guffaws at the supposed frivolity of it all. He’s quite clever and completely unhinged, and I can’t recall seeing a character quite like this since that most excellent villain of Jessica Jones season 1, the Purple Man (Zebediah Killgrave, played to perfection by David Tennant).

Season 3 of Foundation thus far is every bit as good as the first two, which results in this continuing to be one of the greatest #scifi #tvshows of all time in my estimation. Season 2 catapulted Foundation to my top show of 2023 and I wrote at the time:

I was riveted every moment—and I can’t wait to rewatch this show again and again. Might we dare to hope that season 3 will be as good as the first two? I do! Bring it on.

And so they are.

Jared White — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 17:41:57 -0700

Current mood: strangely optimistic!

I know if you turn on the news, you can point to a wide variety of individual scenarios which seem to indicate that we are all completely and totally fucked.

And yet…I feel like we’re right at that point in the movie when the tide seems to be turning; that elusive tipping point where the good folk seem to be winning.

From slop-infested Big Tech shenanigans to the gross project of converting America into a fascist oligarchy, the people are rising up. Our freedoms and our values aren’t going to be eradicated without a fight. And I’m feeling good about where we’re at in that fight.

I won’t go all Pollyanna on you and say it’s time to relax and stop worrying. Far from it! But I’m far more pumped today about the future than I was six months ago. 💪 We got this. ✊

Link: What a Reality TV Queer Dating Show Reminded Me About Healing from Life with a Narcissist

Jared White — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 22:35:15 -0700

Post Reunion of Ultimatum Queer Love with Tiff Der (YouTube)
“I never had my side of the story during the reunion. After consistent allegations post reunion, I am now here to stand up for myself and plenty of other survivors.“

This might just be one of the least relevant links I’ve ever posted…that is, least relevant to subjects I normally talk about. Reality TV dating shows? On-camera relationship drama? 😂

And yet…I got completely sucked into a show on Netflix called The Ultimatum: Queer Love at the impassioned behest of my teenager. I missed the beginnings of Season 1 but picked it up a few episodes in and finished watching that season with my kid. The basic premise of The Ultimatum is that one person in a relationship wants to get married and perhaps start a #family, and the other person has been dragging their feet. So the person who desires marriage gives an “ultimatum”—aka if you’re not willing to marry me, I’m ready to leave the relationship. The twist of the show is that everyone spends a few weeks “dating” someone else on the show who is not their original partner, living with them in a “trial marriage”. Then everyone swaps back to their original partner and lives in another trial marriage. Then the moment of truth arrives: will the original couple get engaged after everything that has happened? Or will they break up for good?!

Yeah, it’s weird and goofy. But that’s reality #TVshows for ya!

But here’s where it gets…troubling.

Trigger warning: this discussion is about narcissistic behavior, DV, and emotional abuse. Please tread with care.

So I was enjoying the show and getting pretty invested in the people, certainly unusual for me as an intentional avoider of reality TV. We were enjoying our time together watching it…and then we got to the final episode which was a reunion of all the people who had been part of the experience, shot almost a year later. It’s a “where are they now?” checkin.

One of the couples, Tiff & Mildred, had had a very tumultuous time on the show, both with each other and also with the other trial partners. But at the conclusion of the experience,

🚨 Spoiler Alert! 🚨

Tiff & Mildred had gotten engaged. Yay! We were all happy for the couple.

BUT…

The reunion came, and when it was Tiff’s turn to start sharing what had happened in that year since the experience, they barely got the chance to blurt out a few sentences about how their dog had to go to the hospital before Mildred just started laying into them. And I mean absolutely hurling accusations Tiff’s way. It got extremely heated, and not in the sort of passive-aggressive reality TV drama sort of way I’m used to seeing. This was something else. This was fire hot. There was talk of infidelity, abuse, Tiff calling the police on Mildred, financial chicanery, and just a lot.

It got so bad Tiff literally stood up and walked off the set in tears. They had a kind of meltdown outside, and it was truly concerning. The producers attempted to help them at least get back inside the building, perhaps not back on the set, but Tiff ended up just getting into a car and driving off. That was the last we saw of them on that final reunion episode.

I was agog and aghast.

This felt really, really bad. I couldn’t understand how the producers of the show allowed that explosive fight to happen in the first place. I don’t think it should have aired. These are real people’s lives we’re talking about. It’s not just another bout of entertainment.

I was so genuinely concerned for Tiff’s wellbeing, I started searching the web for any followup on what had happened and if they were OK. Thankfully they are, and in the video linked to above Tiff shares their side of the story before and after the reunion. Now I will admit I haven’t sought out any of Mildred’s statements or rebuttals. Because, honestly, I’m not here to take sides as some sort of armchair critic.

I’m simply here to say: I understand EVERYTHING Tiff is saying about that situation. Having once been in a long-term relationship with a narcissist, it really caught me off-guard to see just how similar the personality traits and backstory were in this situation. I have been a victim of DARVO on numerous occasions. I know exactly what it’s like to be repeatedly gaslit. I can point to the place in my body where I feel it, it’s has been so palpable for me. Thankfully I’ve gone through a tremendous amount of healing, yet I can still physically place within my torso where everything tightens into knots recalling how I was victimized by narcissistic abuse.

Again, I don’t know these people and I’m not going out of my way to “pick sides” on a reality TV dating show. All I’m saying is I wasn’t prepared for this show to bring this all up for me again! I’m speaking out because I’m glad Tiff was able to speak out. I don’t like how the production handled the reunion or Tiff’s story. At all. But a lot of people have seen their video here on YouTube after the fact, and I’m glad they got the opportunity to speak their truth.

There will come a time—in the somewhat distant future to be quite honest with you because I want to protect my children’s privacy—when I will feel at liberty to speak my truth. For now, I’m just thankful I have had a lot of opportunity this year to continue to heal and to realize, like Tiff says, that I am enough. I am a good person. And I deserve to be with someone who always seeks the good in me and is forgiving of my flaws. And I hope to extend that very same grace to a future partner as well.

Jared White — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 07:52:07 -0700

a tranquil respite underneath the fir trees
#SilentSunday

We Are Not The Same

Jared White — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 22:30:38 -0700

Recently on LinkedIn (🙄), an AI-pilled tech bro accused me of being a hypocrite because the decades I’ve worked as a web developer had been, supposedly, hurting the environment and taking jobs away from other industries.

So I took a look at all the clients I’ve had over the last ~15 years. And here’s my estimation:

Some projects were what you might call “brochureware”. Websites with public information about the company or non-profit and ways to contact them. Perhaps I took jobs away from Kinkos or the Yellow Pages? I really have no idea. Nobody ever complained to me about it.
Some projects were what you’d call e-commerce. In this case, it’s all upside, because instead of craftspeople and small businesses having to take phone calls or read emails and process credit cards manually, it could be handled quickly and painlessly right on the website. Huge win for everyone.
Some projects took manual business processes and codified them into custom software. Same people involved before and after, it was just a helluva lot faster & easier to accomplish key tasks. Lots less paper or emails required. Again, big win.
Some projects have been community-based: people engaging in conversation and sharing content, files, etc. This is work/play that was literally impossible before the Internet, before computers and networks and data.
Still other projects have been educational: publications and archives which provide culturally or socially-relevant information to help people or enlighten them on a subject. Perhaps these cases served as a substitute for a paper-based book or a magazine? I’m sorry if my work caused a drop in someone’s printing-press business!

That’s it really. The vast majority of the work I’ve done…I never set out to build software to replace taxi drivers, eliminate office workers, devalue artists, and obscure expertise. Perhaps there was general societal fallout I didn’t think much about in the switch from paper to digital. On the other hand, I can guarantee you quite a lot of human-produced knowledge, #creativity, and collaboration ensued which literally wouldn’t have been possible before the Internet age.

If you still want to call me a hypocrite, go for it. All I know is my conscience is clear. I have turned down multiple projects and opportunities over the years because I didn’t feel comfortable about the ethics of the work. Right now, I am literally losing out on opportunities because of my clear no-genAI stance. But that’s fine. I feel more at peace about my career than I ever have before—even if it’s damn hard to make an honest day’s living.

So away with your smug whataboutism! 😛 All it does is reveal the boggy mire beneath your own feet.

D for DimMAGA

Jared White — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 22:02:09 -0700

“There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into [Signal groups], and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?

“Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

“I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now [U.S. President, Donald J. Trump]. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.”

—V

(with slight modifications) 😏

Maybe They Were Right

Jared White — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 19:50:06 -0700

We should have placed more trust in our ancestors for whom history was unkind…until now, when perhaps it’s time for a second look.

We should have trusted those who feared the advent of what became “conventional” produce & factory farming techniques. The path back to organic produce and sustainable agriculture was long and difficult, and in fact remains a constant challenge.
We should have trusted those who were apprehensive of automobile manufacturers causing mayhem in our streets—killing children, polluting the atmosphere, and destroying human-scale town centers. Decades of poor urban design is now having to be reversed in a frantic effort to combat a housing crisis and catastrophic climate change.
We should have trusted those who were concerned that the rise of television and 24/7 access to video footage of all sorts could give rise to extremist propaganda and the intellectual enslavement of millions.
We should have trusted those who claimed there was little daylight between the aspirations of religious extremists living in “foreign lands” and the growing ranks of conservative zealots found right here in our domestic fabric.
We should have trusted those who refused to use new computer platforms & services sold by hypergrowth megacorps for fear that soon all of our data and day-to-day activities would be beholden to a vanishingly tiny number of companies and their government cronies.
We should have trusted those who warned us about the dangers of social media conglomerates forming digital borders around public discourse and the sharing of news. We could have taken steps decades ago to kneecap these monopolies. Now the very future of democracy is at risk.

And now, we must trust those who are sounding the alarm over the myriad of dangers which generative agentic AI poses to our collective mental health, creativity, politics, and workers’ rights.

Because history is repeating itself right in front of our very eyes. Are we going to let it?