Twitter, in a now rescinded support article:

At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL.

If you were one of the people who thought Elon Musk's acquisition would be anything but an unmitigated disaster from the day news first broke in early 2022, I implore you to use this as an opportunity to pause and reflect. In my mind, no other outcome was ever remotely plausible. Musk was clearly addicted to Twitter the same way someone might be addicted to slot machines. And if a gambling addict were to buy their favorite casino, no one should expect it to go well.

There have been countless signs over the years that Musk's mystique as a genius playboy was every bit as artificial (and as we've now seen, brittle) as Donald Trump's facade as a serious businessman. The success of Tesla and SpaceX's management teams was clearly to cocoon Musk away from anything operationally important. He's just another rich kid who was able to buy his way into the upper echelons of power. That he funded meaningful enterprises was great, but he clearly never possessed the managerial or engineering skills needed to effectively run them.

If we've learned anything, it's that machismo and faux-intellectualism are even more effective at influencing society's elites than we otherwise might have feared. The only rational reaction to this and similar revelations is for us to put to bed, once and for all, the Great Man myth that wealth is fairly allocated according to a just, meritocratic process. Once you exclude the billionaires that were born into wealth and then further remove the one-hit wonders that lucked into it, scarcely anyone is left to admire and emulate. It's a shame, then, that the belief that the rich deserve to be rich is so vital to the American identity that its endurance is all but assured.

I typically don't pay attention to new static site generators. Having built one myself, I know firsthand that unless they hit critical mass, the ongoing maintenance costs to keep up with front-end tool churn became aren't worth the burden, and eventually whoever's making it will cut their losses and stop maintaining it—effectively saddling users with a site that'll just stop building in one year or five.

Capri was build with CMS integration in mind. Preview your content changes inside a static SPA without a running server.

Okay, now you have my attention.

I was surprised and delighted to learn that my friend Len had been invited to write an essay about Bob Chapek's ouster in the New York Times. The article serves as a great primer on some of the issues those of us who live near Disney World have been griping about for years. The whole thing is well worth reading.

His conclusion really stood out to me:

Mr. Iger is reportedly already scrutinizing the reservation system and is alarmed by the price increases his predecessor instituted. To further mend the relationship with our community, Mr. Iger should explain how Disney is going to use the revenue from upcharge programs to improve the guest experience.

If he wants to learn more, I sincerely suggest Mr. Iger try to plan, book and take a Disney World vacation on a middle-class budget, relying only on Disney's website and app. When he's overwhelmed by the cost and complexity, I know many fans who'd be happy to talk him through it. No charge.

In software we talk about the value in "dogfooding" an app, because it forces us to embody the persona of the user. If I, as a developer, experience any confusion, encounter any bugs, or feel any friction using the app, I can go to work and fix it. Immediately. No need to channel the feedback roundaboutly through focus group testing, customer support, or product management.

If you're the CEO of a theme park company, it may not seem like a huge sacrifice to dogfood your product by going to a theme park to experience it as the average guest would. But as soon as the company starts down the path of selling priority access for people who can pay more (fast lanes, VIP tours, backstage entrances), you'd surely have access to those luxuries yourself—you're the CEO, after all. It would take remarkable self-restraint not to indulge in those conveniences and instead wait in full-length lines—you know, like an average guest would.

I've seen this phenomenon impact countless software teams as well. If an app features multiple differentiated pricing tiers, the experience at the lower levels of access tend to accumulate more bugs, simply because nobody inside the company is compelled to dogfood them. When was the last time an Amazon engineer tried buying something without a Prime membership? Or a Netflix employee with a Basic subscription? Or an Apple engineer whose iCloud quota is capped at the 5GB free tier? It's no surprise that these experiences are terrible for customers, if they even work at all.

Apple's commitment to accessibility is nothing short of remarkable. They pull features all the time. They ship so many bugs that many of my friends wait months before updating their software. But nothing ever ships until every feature supports every accessibility modality.

It generates nearly zero direct revenue, but it surely makes up for it in good karma. And one reason I started taking accessibility seriously as a developer was having a blind friend show me how magical his iPhone 4 was back in 2011. It didn't just set a high standard for excellence, it expanded my understanding of what was even possible.