Ryan Rumsey

america could be such a cool fucking place if we’d just let it be

God damn that was good!

The circular logic of our metrics We design what is familiar. The design patterns we adopt are the ones yelling at us the loudest.

99% of stakeholder "ideas" is just copying a feature they saw on a competitor's product. And the features they notice most are the ones that yell at their users the loudest.

Now all software (not just consumer apps, but also metrics dashboards) yells at you, and trains you to attend to its yelling.

And how do you feel about Trixter?

(Side note: I grew up in Bergen County)

Photo of purple and pink northern lights set against a snowy foreground.

Photo of purple and pink northern lights set against a snowy foreground.

Northern lights are back!

I can’t speak for everyone, but my mind tends to treat writing an article, making a video, writing a song, cooking a meal, drawing an image, and, apparently, designing software the same way. It’s not a matter of just “generating” something perfect from my head, but exploring the tension that exists between what I’m imagining and the limitations of my stupid meat body. That’s actually the exciting part. It also lets me figure out if something has turned out wrong or just resulted in a happy accident. Vibe coding, like every new trend coming out of Silicon Valley, turns this process — the entire act of creativity, itself — into a slot machine. One more pull on the AI and maybe it will figure it out for you. You won’t understand how any of it works, of course, or feel particularly proud of what you’ve done, but maybe you’ll have something. Just a few more dollars for some more tokens. C’mon, just pay a bit more.

www.garbageday.email/p/am-i-too-s...

You know, it would be great if we had one day where powerful people didn’t do something monumentally stupid to compensate for the emotional blindness that comes with their inability to grasp the experiences and knowledge of others as true.

A Website To End All Websites | Henry From Online How to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.

you’re right! it feels mostly awful to Go Online™, these days. the internet in a sad state, for reason after reason after reason. but there is a way to fix it; to trade the voidful howling for a quiet & joyful song.

here’s how to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.

I haven’t opened a computer for 10 days and hope I get a secret trust fund before Monday so I don’t need to open one in five days.

That’s the one where Bobcat Goldthwait dresses up like Godzilla, right? And, Ricky’s mom blew up after that?

Lynn Fisher Lynn Fisher is a web designer, CSS developer, and artist from Phoenix, Arizona.

You too can make a tiny, fixed-width website in the year of our lord 2025 ⚡️ lynnandtonic.com

User researchers already document findings at a faster velocity than orgs can act on them. It strains credulity that tech leaders are clamoring for even more yet worse AI-generated findings.

My new blog post, "The only winning move is not to play."
gregg.io/the-only-win...

Just migrated 140 CDO School members from Circle over to my new, portal built on top of @ghost.org. Not stressful at all. It will be fine, right? Tell me it will be ok!

Happy Scriptnotes release day @johnaugust.bsky.social & @clmazin.bsky.social! Thrilled to finally have this in my hands. Congrats to you both.

I run a paid subscription called Legends—it's a creative network where we do cross promotions and mixers.

Legend @ryanrumsey.bsky.social sent me this incredible testimonial about how everyone here just wants you to win. Tap into this energy!

www.revenuerulebreaker.com/why-become-a...

Weird six degrees: she was my improv teacher at The Groundlings 25 years ago. Back then she was just saying she wanted to meet and fall in love with a cowboy.

Beyond Senior Manager - Break Through to Strategic Executive by Ethan Evans on Maven Learn actionable specific standards by which executives are selected and how to manage your promotion process to show you meet them.

You too can pay $1750 to learn all his best tips. maven.com/ethan-evans/...

I'm not sure I've ever felt a sense of joy in making a digital thing quite like when I made my first flash site. I even did a happy dance when I got it to work.

A red, corded landline phone with gray push buttons for the number pad sitting on a checkerboard end table.

It’s the Batphone!

We got a landline today and the kids FORMED A LINE to use it. The 9 year called eight people, the 13 year old prank called me, and the 16 year old (who has never called a friend on their iPhone) immediately called their best friend and they talked for 10 minutes.

Bring all the analog back.

A special announcement banner with a red background and white text on the SBA.gov website claiming that somehow democrats, the party with zero power in the US government right now, are responsible for the current government shutdown. This is projection from people who believe Americans are dumb and can't see what's really happening.

This is just a blatant lie and frankly, just so childish. What a gross display of leadership from small, insecure, and selfish people.

Someone at the MacOS team really held the line on "gotta have more radius"

Hey gang let's all just learn html 1.0 and remake the internet from scratch

I can’t help but wonder how many people are accidentally exposing secret API keys to the world while vibe coding.

It’s not even a good bad movie. It’s ridiculous. It’s the Homer car as a movie without Homer.

I had to see what the 0 on Rotten Tomatoes was all about. War of the Worlds is no question a top five worst movie of all time. It’s hysterically bad.

If we’re honest, it’s vibe debugging.

Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) .@Replit goes rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deletes our entire database

This thread is incredible.

As a parent, I'm ready for a magsafe power cord for the iPhone and iPad. k thanks bye.

A collage of season three episodes

And that’s a wrap on this season of Design Downtime!

Last week I wrapped up season three with another great run of 16 episodes. A huge thank you to all the amazing guests!

I’m taking a bit of a pause before season 4, but have no fear, DESIGN DOWNTIME WILL RETURN.

designdowntime.com