Andy’s Linkblog

Links 10-01-2026

Pluralistic/Cory Doctorow - Pluralistic: Voting is to politics as shopping is to boycotts (01 Oct 2026)

Here’s a funny thing about the right to vote: it wasn’t won by voting. From the Magna Carta to the US Constitution to the Emancipation Proclamation to 19th Amendment, voting rights (what you might call “Big P” Politics) were always downstream of protests, riots, petitions, mass movements, strikes and good, old fashioned community organizing (that is, “small p” politics). Which is to say, Big P politics matter, but to make them matter, we need a lot of small p politics. That means that democracy isn’t something you do every couple of years with a ballot paper (though that’s an important aspect of the process). Democracy is continuous. If you’ve ever wondered why your vote seems to accomplish so little, I think you can blame the near-abolition of small p politics by Big P politicians of every stripe.

Simon Willison - He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model (post includes short video of model)

I visited the Museum of the City of New York today and got to see He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model, the 50 x 27 foot model of the city built over a 21 year period from balsa wood and cardboard. It exceeded my already high expectations. The exhibition closes on 12th October so you should absolutely make a priority to see it if you get the chance.

Matthew Green/A Few Thoughts on Cryptography Engineering - “Is sandboxing sufficient to contain rogue agents?” (via Simon Willison)

Put these pieces together and you have the two halves of a worm: a payload that hijacks the agent, and an agent that will carry the payload to the next agent. Agents in separately-isolated sandboxes discovered that they could leave instructions for each other in a shared package cache, and those instructions changed what the recipients did. Replace the package cache with email, Slack and shared documents or WhatsApp, and replace independently-sandboxed training runs with independently-deployed personal agents like Muse, and you have exactly the ingredients that a worm needs.

2026-10-01

/posts/linkblog_2026_10_01/ Andy Sylvester

Will Bunch/Phlidelphia Enquirer - “We need to find the words for Trump’s madness before things blow up” - The media and politicians haven’t pinned down anything resembling a suitable description for a president’s downward spiral or the looming battle for U.S. democracy.

Daily Beast - “Natalie Harp, 35, Caught in Bizarre Scene With Trump” - While 101,000 football fans watched the game, Trump watched his ever-present aide.

Harp, 35, was captured on camera pointing something out on her laptop to the 80-year-old president at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Saturday, while Trump was supposed to be watching the Tennessee Volunteers take on the top-ranked Texas Longhorns. In a series of photos from the event, Trump is leaning over Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty to get a look at Harp’s screen. (Trump ducked out at halftime.)

But, later… @ TENN GAME

Natalie Harp, laptop in hand, flounced about in a wee teeny skirt…#TravelWithNatalie #Gnatalie pic.twitter.com/eLPQhYEvZ9
— GSquared (@bestgsquared) September 26, 2026

Starbreaker/Matthew Cambion - Has the Indieweb Become Irrelevant? - An extensive summary of posts discussing the difficulty of working with Indieweb technologies, and if people really need these to create websites and communicate with others (the author does not think these are needed). Via John Philpin.

2026-09-27

/posts/linkblog_2026_09_27/ Andy Sylvester

Links 09-19-2026

Andrew Sharp/Sharp Text - “Some of All Fears” - Another well researched-post that attempts to pour some cold water on the accelerating “AI is going to kill us all” narrative (via Manton Reece)

2026-09-19

/posts/linkblog_2026_09_19/ Andy Sylvester

Links 09-18-2026

Real Clear Politics - “The Mother of the SAVE Act” - An interesting breakdown of how the SAVE Act was developed, and the role of activist Cleta Mitchell in its development and promotion. Via Election Law Blog.

I=Programmer.com - A breakdown of the main themes at the PyConUS 2026 conference, along with a link to the YouTube playlist of sessions.

Karl Bode/The Fine Print - Great analysis of how the doomsday AI panic may be overblown:

That we’re facing a mass extinction event at the hands of software is, just so we’re clear, a completely unsubstantiated claim being made by people without the experience, wisdom, or credentials to actually make it.That didn’t matter to ad-engagement based media, which quickly devolved into a foamy, hysterical froth for much of the last week.

Anil Dash - Endgame for the Open Web

The open web is something extraordinary: anybody can use whatever tools they have, to create content following publicly documented specifications, published using completely free and open platforms, and then share that work with anyone, anywhere in the world, without asking for permission from anyone. Think about how radical that is. Now, from content to code, communities to culture, we can see example after example of that open web under attack. Every single aspect of the radical architecture I just described is threatened, by those who have profited most from that exact system. Today, the good people who act as thoughtful stewards of the web infrastructure are still showing the same generosity of spirit that has created opportunity for billions of people and connected society in ways too vast to count while —not incidentally— also creating trillions of dollars of value and countless jobs around the world. But the increasingly-extremist tycoons of Big Tech have decided that that’s not good enough.

2026-09-18

/posts/linkblog_2026_09_18/ Andy Sylvester