My grandmother trusted the evening news because she'd watched it earn that trust for decades. Nobody told her when the rules changed. Nobody told our parents either. A new essay on cognitive inheritance.
People are loving the printed & mailed version of my blog (the photo below is from a friend and subscriber).
If you're interested in slowing down with some essays on leadership, systems, and the open web you can subscribe here:
jesse.blog/mail
Three trips to Paris. One underground conference. A question I can't
shake about what we owe the open source commons we've built together.
New essay:
There's something that gets lost between a screen and your eye.
The weight of it. The sense that someone actually made something.
So I'm trying something different, if you go to jesse.blog/mail, you can subscribe and add your mailing address — and I'll send them to you. On paper. With a stamp.
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High tech makes big promises, but it can’t replace the human experience.
My trip through San Francisco’s transportation layers — from stalled Ubers to looping Waymos — reminded me what we lose when systems…
jesse.blog/stories/high-tech-low-to...
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Most teams don’t fail because of the big disruptions. They drift because of the subtle drag—those half-knot inefficiencies you barely notice until it’s too late. In 2026, efficient leadership…
jesse.blog/stories/team-leadership-...
Our very own @ma.tt joined the TBPN crew to close out #StateOfTheWord yesterday. They talked about WordPress 6.9, open source, @beeper, and how AI is changing the web. Did you miss it? Check it out now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBQh...
→ Consider transparency over elegance.
UX designers work hard to hide complexity—but sometimes showing the steps ("Rendering audio, Syncing frames, Final encoding...") builds more trust than a single mysterious bar.
Progress indicators aren't just UI. They're a promise. Make sure yours keeps it.
→ Tell me if I can walk away.
Can I close my laptop? Will this finish in the background? Don't make me guess.
The result? I assume it's broken. I contact support. That's the most expensive action I can take as a user.
We can do better:
→ Prove it's still working.
A spinning indicator. A pulse. Something. Silence at 97% feels like failure.
Here's the problem: percentages measure steps completed, not time remaining. If there are 100 backend steps and the first 97 take 3 minutes while the last 3 take an hour, that progress bar is technically accurate—and technically completely useless.
97% complete.
I've been staring at this screen for 27 minutes.
The first 97% took 3 minutes. The last 3%? Still waiting.
(Continued in thread)
#UXDesign #ProductDesign #UserExperience
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✍️ Just published: On The Sacred Act of Writing: Distraction Free – my reflections after a three-month sabbatical and how I’m building a daily writing ritual to protect focus and flow.
Ready to dive deeper into…
jesse.blog/essays/on-the-sacred-act...
"We wish for the courage to be brutally honest, forgetting to wish for the empathy to know when honesty becomes brutal."
jesse.blog/from-my-jour...
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We wish for the courage to be brutally honest, forgetting to wish for the empathy to know when honesty becomes brutal. - Jesse Friedman
I look down at the banana peel. It grew out of the earth, traveled across the globe, and was carried to this spot to adopt its new station as a natural element in an unnatural world.
jesse.blog/stories/bana...
Banana
Times Square has an unnatural resonance, one you cannot become attuned to. It hums from electrified currents pumped into sky-high advertisements. It buzzes from worker bees shuffling across cement pathways. It aches as black and yellow caravans ebb and flow through its arteries. But there…
It’s only a mistake if you make it twice
I used to encourage my teams and colleagues to 'Celebrate Failures.' Otherwise, we hide shared learnings from one another when we sweep mistakes under the rug in shame. The truth is, we all know this, we all fail from time to time. What's important is…
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A Note on Ego
Recently I have been more in tune with, and listening to the impact of Ego on our imagination. Our early childhood was Ego-less. We felt no shame running naked through our backyards, waving our arms, and singing songs. As children we also…
https://jesse.blog/stories/a-note-on-ego/
Bathroom title whose square pattern looks like a Github activity log that is slowly decreasing as time goes on.
Everywhere I look I'm reminded of my dwindling code commits in #Github.
#webdev #programming #memes
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
- Isaac Asimov
I just threw my hat in the ring to compete in Jamie Marsland's speed build competitions. 🤞
I need to improve my browser extension tools. Who has good color sampling, and spacing tools suggestions that I can use to quickly breakdown an existing site.
I highly doubt cavemen were taking 8-hour rests. And I know hundreds of years ago folks would get up and do things in the middle of the night and then go back to bed for a bit.
Personally, I never really sleep more than 6 hours a night unless I'm sick or especially exhausted.
I keep learning about "life rules" that are absolutely capitalist plays to pull money out of our wallets. The food pyramid, for example, was designed to promote higher margin, sugary foods to keep us buying.
So I'm curious, where did the 8-hours of sleep per night rule come from? Is it legit?
Anyone see any tools to help you find people to follow based on who you follow on twitter or other networks?
