August 27, 2025

s20e07: Still Mad As Hell; The World’s Best Worst Client; How Many Chances Do You Get?; Sunset Syndrome

0.0 Context Setting

It’s Wednesday, 27 August 2025 in Portland, Oregon and my favorite tv show right now is Alien: Earth, and my favorite little guy in it is Eye Alien. So cute!

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1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention

1.1 Still Mad As Hell

I am still mad about America By Design¹ and the National Design Studio². But first I will point you at americabydesign.fail, which is very funny (and also appropriately full of painful outrage) and contains this gem:

How should we pronounce the acronym for National Design Studio (NDS)? Is it nads?³

I had a chat with a journalist about it today, which means I had the chance to talk and think out loud. It would be better to say that I am not “still mad” but that instead I am at the very least “differently mad” or even “more mad”.

2.1.1 The World’s Best Worst Client

You know what makes filing taxes complicated? The tax code. You can be in charge of whatever design and whatever interface, but ultimately you’re interfacing to the tax code. That tax code is a political, bureaucratic beast. It is the result of not necessarily compromise but outright class warfare and decades of misguided neoliberalism.

(I will say again, if you want a simple tax code, you could just... decide to have one. This is important.)

I mention this because I pointed out that a designer can only do so much, that they act in the constraints of a business or economy or, you know, the material universe.

In this case, the designer (or Chief Design Officer) acts within the constraints of the policy of the tax code.

Like I said, a designer could make the process of filing taxes simpler, easier, faster by... just changing the tax code.

That would normally be hard to do. There are, like, laws? And case law? And rules and stuff about how you might go about changing, well, the entire tax code.

Or you could just go do it. You could not care about the consequences and just go do it.

Sure, courts might have a problem with that, but what can they really do?

In this way, the president might be seen as your best client. Want to throw something away? Sure! There’s no preciousness. All darlings can be killed.

But also your worst client. Unpredictable. Capricious. And, oh right: fascist. An alleged sex offender. Someone with apparently weird hands and apparently lifts in his shoes.

2.2 How Many Chances Do You Get?

Matthew Bernius wrote a piece in response to the takes/responses to the new U.S. Chief Design Officer⁴ -- the ones that point out the problems that a Chief Design Officer could well deal with.

Bernius’s point -- I think -- is that “well, yes, a CDO could do those things” but to also point out that there’s absolutely no indication that this administration’s CDO will do any of the things that need to be done from the point of view of public technology and service delivery.

This administration clearly and firmly believes that government should be smaller and crueler. That it should discriminate both in the negative and in the positive.

If this administration wanted to do the good things it would have done them, it’s more than demonstrated its capacity for spending political capital for doing whatever the fuck it wants, laws, courts, public opinion be damned.

You don’t get any more chances. This is a Chief Design Officer who is a force multiplier for this administration’s aims.

Anyway in the mean time the NYT put out a story on Gebbia’s appointment:

“Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia is Trump’s Chief Design Officer. Some Peers Are Skeptical”⁵

That’s me, mum! I’m one of the skeptical peers!

Although I would say it’s more accurate to say that I am incandescent with rage and also exhausted. I also got a good quote in:

“It looks a little bit like a stunt hire,” Mr. Hon said.

Someone pointed out that “stunt” is remarkably close in rhyming with a word that is very naughty in the U.S. and significantly less naughty but also still crass in the U.K.

Any connection between the two words is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Also the article points out that Cameron Moll, a former head of design at Facebook trotted out the usual “cool! designers at the table now! line and got absolutely ratioed for it on LinkedIn and ended up deleting his post. So that’s nice.

Yes, you absolutely want designers at the seat of the autocratic fascist government. Totally excited for you, well done!

2.3 Sunset Syndrome

So Typepad is closing down after 19 years⁶. After September 30th, it’s pretty much going to be turned off and everything will be “permanently deactivated”.

So what you’re supposed to do, if you were there at The Beginning of Blogging, is “please export your content before September 30, 2025.” at which you can find more information at a link.

I will insert a load-bearing just here.

Look, your service is shutting down. You know how to email everyone with an account.

Why not... kick off the async export process for everyone account? That way your sunset [sic] communication can be along these lines:

• We’re closing down. We’re sorry. Had a great time along the way.
• Thanks for entrusting us with everything you’ve written and made. It’s part of what made the internet what it is.
• What Do You Need To Do?
• Just sit tight. What you made is important, and we know it’s valuable to you. That’s why we’ve started an automatic export process so you will have a copy of everything. You’ll receive an email from us in $TIME with a link to download your archive.
• Again, thanks for your contribution to making a human internet.

I mean yeah that would require, like, engineering? I imagine it’s super complicated? I wouldn’t expect anything like this from... whatever corporate organism owns Typepad⁷. I mean the owners probably have no idea what Typepad is. So sure, the chances of this happening for Typepad are super minimal.

So let me make this as a suggestion! If you’re ever involved in a sunset, please advocate for making it as easy as possible to respect people’s stuff.

If you were going to let people export, do it for them anyway.

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3.0 Sponsored Content

It’s me. I’m the sponsored content. Sorry?

How People Work is my workshop for tech teams. You totally want your team to take it if you want to reduce risk in shipping the software you need to ship. Which you do. Admit it.

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OK, that’s it from me.

How are you doing? Apart from incandescent with rage, etc.

Best,

Dan

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