2025 recap: laid off after 10 years at Automattic, survived 6 months of job hunting, started fresh at EdReports, explored Philly's tech scene, built personal projects, and baked my way through the year.
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
I wanted to practice building with AI without making yet-another-chatbot, so I made a Korean learning tool to explain the grammar constructs in a given sentence. I used Next.js and the AI SDK, with some Copilot guidance. Check out the writeup for my process:
ryelle.codes/2025/08/buil...
This article contains somehow both the funniest and most well-informed protester quotes I've ever seen. I laughed and I learned.
But congestion pricing polled terribly.
The “popularists” who run Democratic party strategy said we shouldn’t do it. Because the polls were bad.
But public opinion can change, and politicians can and should lead it.
Vote for politicians who will lead public opinion, not follow it.
if a prototype isn't accessible, then it is likely not something that can be tested by people with disabilities.
and if that's the case, any UX decisions made based on such a prototype will be biased away from inclusive design / UX decisions.
Let's play a game with `document.querySelectorAll`
617 div elements.
84 elements with aria-label.
All 84 are divs.
No button/role=button elements.
12 anchor/role=link elements.
5 role=link elements.
All 5 are divs.
5 elements with tabindex.
All 5 are divs.
7 elements with href.
5 are divs.
I tried out Figma Sites—fun to design in, what Figma excels at—but the site it generates is definitely not ready for real use. Basic issues with keyboard access, no way to control motion, and overall kind of janky output.
ryelle.codes/2025/05/a-qu...
well, i did stop once i realized that it wouldn't be a good idea to do that kind of focused work, but the research part was fun 😅
Me: [runs errands, writes job application, and also 5 simple but interconnected pull requests] whew, I'm tired today, I should do something brainless tonight
Also me: What if I set up a new server for my personal site?
🤦🏼
Doesn't feel ideal that the two big cultural trends of 2025 are "Knowledge is for suckers" and "Empathy is bad actually."
New CSS-flavored blog post: How and when text wraps changes in different languages, which can make visually balancing headings tricky. Here I describe two cases, Korean and Japanese, and some neat CSS to help.
You absolutely owe it to yourself to read @miriam.codes’s post on “artificial intelligence”, eugenics, and the tech industry’s push to ally itself to an explicitly fascist project.
As DOGE began infiltrating government agencies and targeting federal staff for termination, I started interviewing tech workers on the front lines. With the mass layoffs unfolding today, and with their permission, I'm sharing their stories.
This is what it's been like to endure Musk's campaign.
My game Stimulation Clicker is out now, enjoy :)
> neal.fun/stimulation-...
Happy new year! My 2024 year in photos, featuring gardening, sewing, pets, baking, and conferences.
ryelle.codes/2024/12/2024...
Sometimes sewing is just repeating "right sides together" over and over again
A screenshot of the WordPress page editor, with a modal open over the editor area. The modal content is also editable as blocks.
today's random bit of block-building work - a modal block using the interactivity API, along with an editor UI, to replace a hardcoded modal on the w.org/download page.
(if anyone wants to see, it's for this issue, I'll probably have code up next week github.com/WordPress/wp...)
A digital painting of an orange Shiba Inu dog sitting inside a house in the forest, in front of a large glass door. The dog is nose to nose with a red fox sitting outside the glass. The two animals have a very similar appearance.
A new friend who looks like me
Today on Volts: 20 years ago, @thestranger.com.web.brid.gy published a piece in the wake of GW Bush's 2004 reelection: "The Urban Archipelago." I talk with then-editor @dansavage.bsky.social about the politics of cities in a time of reactionary backlash. www.volts.wtf/p/dan-savage...
A screenshot of the WordPress Photo Directory, with a new theme matching the style and layout of the rest of the redesigned site. It has a 4 columns of images, a black header, a search box, and new filters which can be combined to find photos by category, color, and orientation.
what I've been working on lately: the WordPress Photo Directory, which is the last of the directories to get the new block theme treatment. here's a sneak peak 😁
Lemon, a brindled mid-sized dog laying on the couch with my arm reaching from behind the camera to scratch her neck. Lemon's mouth is open and expression playful.
Obligatory first post of… i'm not totally sure how i'll use this account, but here I am 🎉
To start off on the right foot, here's an excited Lemon enjoying some pets.
