Banner for DWeb Camp showing three panels: at left, two people sitting outdoors speaking during a discussion; center, an abstract glowing root-like network with the text “Root Systems >> what connects us is mostly underground”; right, a group gathered under a white canopy tent in a forest. Text reads “Join us at DWeb Camp,” “July 8–12,” “near Berlin,” and “dwebcamp.org.”

🎟️ TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE 🎟️

🏕️ DWeb Camp 2026: Root Systems is a five-day gathering in nature for builders and dreamers dedicated to building a decentralized web ( #DWeb ).

Early bird ticket sales, volunteer applications, and Call for Proposals are open on dwebcamp.org 🎉

@getdweb.net @dod.ngo

prob still a downgrade, but this is based in eastern europe

Screenshot of a paragraph from "Death of a Software Developer," with most of the text highlighted. It reads: "As this split develops, there will need to evolve new terms to distinguish between these modalities, because there will be jobs specifically for the vibe coder approach, but I doubt 'Vibecoder' will make it into a job post. A euphemism will probably be required. It may be 'Junior Developer', but that doesn't seem right either. The vibe coder does not aspire to become a Senior Developer. These are not different tiers of the same skill tree."

open.substack.com/pub/isthisan...

Jesse on X: "we're hiring an AI Builder to work on both client and internal projects full-time, remote, $30-48k/year apply here: https://t.co/Mp6Q4SGGsk https://t.co/TFEDD4o2jA" / X we're hiring an AI Builder to work on both client and internal projects full-time, remote, $30-48k/year apply here: https://t.co/Mp6Q4SGGsk https://t.co/TFEDD4o2jA

I believe I told you less than a month ago that we would need euphemisms for "vibe coder" once it went into actual job postings

x.com/i/status/204...

I would be very surprised if the dev had a rationale for this beside "it would be funny to whip Claude"

the funniest thing about the celebrity releases vibecoded LLM memory project with faked benchmarks is that the celebrity in question wasn't Grimes

The back of a dark Toyota RAV4 with a spare tire cover, covered in white handwritten text and drawings. The rear window reads: "LLMs aren't conscious but you should still nice to them. them. Kant was right. Being mean to anything ruins your soul!" The spare tire cover reads "THE Kant Car" with a drawing of an octopus or squid below it. A small cephalopod is also drawn near the Toyota logo. The Connecticut license plate reads "SQUIDS." The car is stopped at a red light in traffic.

don't make me tap the windshield again

A screenshot of a tweet by user "sui" (@birdabo) on a black background. The tweet text in large white caps reads: "SOMEONE MADE A DIGITAL WHIP TO MAKE CLAUDE WORK FASTER" followed by a skull emoji. Below is a screenshot showing a computer desktop with folders labeled "biscuit" and "partyhat" and zip files "belly.zip" and "biscuit.zip". A terminal window titled "Read and execute Task.txt file" shows Claude Code attempting several web searches (about AI pins, consumer hardware retention, voice assistant limitations), each followed by "Interrupted · What should Claude do instead?" After each interruption, the user has typed abusive variations like "FASTERFASTERGO FASTERWork FASTERFASTERFaster CLANKER" and "Speed it up clanker". Claude replies "I'll write the research document directly from my knowledge:" before being interrupted again. Near the bottom, Claude is shown "Ruminating… (thought for 1s)" and then outputs "Work FASTER / Faster CLANKER" — apparently having given up and started repeating the abuse back. A hand-drawn illustration of a whip is overlaid on the right side of the terminal.

when you whip Claude you whip yourself

White serif text on dark background reads: "Jevons paradox tells us technological improvements that improve the efficiency of a resource's use lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in the consumption of that resource. The coming software renaissance will lead to more genuine creativity in cultural areas that have been underserved by the software developer, possibly for demographic reasons. The popularity of Charlota Blunarova's vibecoded multiplayer embroidery simulator, Common Thread is a great early example. The software developer is white or asian, male, and youngish. There will be a rise in shipped software for everyone else."

MeetMarket, the new decentralized privacy-respecting alternative to Grindr from @donjackoghue.bsky.social is a great example of vibecoded software serving new demographics meetmarket.io

v cool!

Cover image for "Death of a Software Developer" on isthisanart.substack.com. Dark green-tinted composite of two images: the upper half shows what appears to be a detail of a figurative oil painting, the lower half shows multiple monitors displaying code — looks like Solidity smart contract output and Python terminal errors. The title is set in large white serif type.

Some speculations on the future of the software developer as a subcultural figure, post vibecoding

open.substack.com/pub/isthisan...

Live from #TDA2026: In her keynote, Sarah Friend (@isthisa.com) reflects on digital (im)permanence, online games as worlds, and the impossible longing to evade death through permanent data storage. A thoughtful start to Day One.

ya I like this too

it has come to my attention that many people (men) can not even identify this object. this further strengthens my point. I will not be telling you what it is

picture of the interface of a Brother CX70PEs computerized sewing machine. It's pink and has an overwhelming amount of buttons

new example of secret feminine lore just dropped, because everything Claude told me about how to use this was deadass wrong

the popularity of neocities is the ultimate sign of the death of the website as a medium

the website is dead enough to be having a nostalgic revival through platform logic

yea agree, that doesn't quite capture it in this case

good question and I'm not sure

you know whose business model should afaict be fully over in the age of vibe coding?

Linktree

A close up of the mirror in Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, in which you can see the depicted couple reflected from behind and even a very tiny rendering of the painter himself

when people say artists need to work with emerging technology more in order to be relevant, it's not a controversial new take. it's an old take, literally an ancient take

for most of human history painting was the state of the art of image-making technology

Sarah Friend & Arkadiy Kukarkin’s "The Lives of Infamous Men" generates live video where politicians, clips, and Foucault collide 🎥

Created for the Internet Archive x Gray Area Trillionth Webpage Net Art Commissions. 🌐

More ⤵️
blog.archive.org/internet-arc...

@isthisa.com @GrayArea.Org #Wayback1T

SETI over SMTP This is a less-than-quarterly newsletter from Sarah Friend containing projects, artworks, writing, and other updates

just a reminder that I have a newsletter and if you subscribe TODAY then TOMORROW you will get my first email update of the year

buttondown.com/isthisa

Sadie Plant, Zeros and Ones, 1997, quoting The Economist, "The World in 1995"

Alt text: A digital collage of screenshots from multiple web-based artworks and projects commissioned for the Internet Archive’s Trillionth Webpage. Visible elements include a poster reading “Pandora’s Aquarium,” a pink “Hello World Wide Web” page with text about the early web, a photo of a building with “1,000,000,000,000” on its roof, a book cover titled “The Lives of Infamous Men,” a webpage titled “alive internet theory,” pixelated and abstract graphics, an eye-like illustration, clusters of digital images on dark backgrounds, and overlapping browser windows, all arranged in a layered, mosaic-style layout.

This, and works by Arkadiy Kukarkin, Chia Amisola, Jesse Walton, @mai.bsky.social , Olivia M Ross, Ophira Horwitz, Raúl Feliz, Rodell Warner, and @isthisa.com turn preserved data into presence & memory into experience.

We'll feature them all in upcoming weeks.

3️⃣/3️⃣

Protective Rituals for Posthumans From sycophancy, to disempowerment, to psychosis, we need ways to reify our cognitive boundaries

oops! correct link: open.substack.com/pub/isthisan...

Two hands holding a phone in a dark blue lit room. On the screen is a drawing app called Sigil Pro. Text is imposed on the image with the title of the article, Protective Rituals for Posthumans, and the substack url, isthisanart.substack.com

New substack today 💥

I started seriously asking myself "do I actually take steps towards cognitive defense when interacting with AI, and what are they?"

substack.com/pub/isthisan...

spiraling lying in bed thinking about all the times my heart was closed when it should have been open

that it will become AI? lol

many esoteric traditions involved cognitive protection rituals that one should engage in before contact with entities that may or may not be malevolent, full of temptations, deceptive, or seducing

this is more important now than ever before

anyone who has read Accelerando will know the lobster-themed AI takeover was long coming