{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "brennan.day", "description": "Brennan Kenneth Brown is a Queer Métis writer and web developer exploring Indigenous identity, digital culture, and creativity. Personal essays on technology, craft, and human experience from Calgary, Alberta (Treaty 7).", "home_page_url": "https://brennan.day", "feed_url": "https://brennan.day/feed.json", "language": "en", "authors": [ { "name": "Brennan Kenneth Brown", "url": "https://brennanbrown.ca", "email": "mail@brennanbrown.ca", "avatar": "https://brennan.day/assets/images/brennan.jpg" } ], "items": [ { "id": "https://brennan.day/a-new-indieweb-publication-or-i-want-to-start-something-and-be-bad-at-it/", "url": "https://brennan.day/a-new-indieweb-publication-or-i-want-to-start-something-and-be-bad-at-it/", "title": "A New IndieWeb Publication? or: I Want to Start Something and Be Bad at It", "summary": "Inspired by Good Internet Magazine, I'm starting a new volunteer-run IndieWeb publication tentatively called Long Horizon. Exploring my readiness to launch a digital and physical magazine focused on creative non-fiction and lyric essays, and seeking collaborators who want to build something meaningful on the Internet together.", "content_html": "\nA freshly printed magazine has a scent different than a book. A book smells like paper that has been waiting patiently, yellowed and already committed. A magazine smells like a bet. Like ink still making up its mind.\n\n## Good Internet Magazine\n\nAs some of you may already know, the wonderful publication [Good Internet Magazine](https://www.goodinternetmagazine.com/), which has been running as both a digital and physical publication for the past year, is now on indefinite hiatus.\n\nI cannot overstate how inspiring and important I think the work of [Alexandra](https://xandra.cc/), the creator of Good Internet, has been. In addition to Good Internet, she is also one of the creators of [32-bit Cafe](https://32bit.cafe/), one of the only forums I frequent on a daily basis. She also created the collaborative webhosting project [Marigold Town](https://marigold.town/). Go listen to her podcast appearance on James' [Wonders of Webweaving](https://web-weaving.jamesg.blog/2) and support her.\n\nAlexandra wrote an excellent [post-mortem on the experience of running Good Internet](https://library.xandra.cc/starting-a-print-magazine/). As she explains: don't do it alone; plan to spend money you won't recoup; the shipping costs will eat you; your printer's schedule is not your schedule; your health will not hold; and above all else, \"establish what your values are early on and stick to them.\" She also notes, with disarming openness, that \"doing this alone is doable but a) you will miss every deadline you set and b) you will burn out.\" None of this is discouraging to me. To me, this is a map.\n\n## Where I Currently Stand\n\nI am in a fortuitous position. After the past couple weeks of getting the writing archive and community [fanfiction.lol](https://fanfiction.lol) online, the site already has over 200 registered members and just as many works uploaded. I've found myself already with a diligent mod team who wrangles tags and organizes things, letting me focus on the development work behind the scenes.\n\nI was happily surprised to see that, even with such activity, my underpowered homelab has been able to keep up with no problems at all—over 99.90% uptime and averaging 10% CPU usage. And I'm somebody who enjoys collecting computers, and I have far more powerful ones that I now know how to turn into homelabs with sites up and running just as easily. With RAM and storage shortages and absurd price increases, I recognize how this has become more and more of a privilege and starting projects like this is a way to use that privilege well.\n\nI'm also someone who's run an in-person [writing collective](https://writeclub.ca/about) for the past several years, and I did the layout and editing for the first [two](https://www.amazon.ca/Fringe-Collection-Filth-Dana%C3%AB-Webb/dp/B0CYQ1NRY9) [anthologies](https://www.amazon.ca/Fringe-Collection-Felix-Costa-Gomez/dp/B0F4PKFRZQ) independently published by the club, featuring dozens of emerging writers. I know what it is to hand someone their first physical copy. \n\nI would have loved to have gotten a degree in journalism in retrospect. But at least I have one in English. And a homelab. And nine of my own books independently published. And a few scars from the process.\n\nAll of this is to say that I'm in a position where I feel as though I have the editing, leadership, and technical skills required to start a publication myself—both digital and physical.\n\n## The Shape of Things\n\nNow, I am certainly not trying to be opportunistic here. The ideas I have in mind for such a publication don't directly overlap with Good Internet Magazine.\n\nI'm not interested in technology for its own sake. The internet has always been, to me, a vehicle for great storytelling about the condition of being human. One of my biggest influences has been the now-defunct podcast [Reply All](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reply-all/id941907967), which has been described as a \"'podcast about the internet' that is actually an unfailingly original exploration of modern life and how to survive it.\" That's the bar. \n\nI'm interested in creative non-fiction and lyric essays. I'm interested in the confessional, the vulnerable. I'm interested in the new sincerity movement. In the stubborn insistence that earnestness is not naïve, that care is a form of courage, that the Internet is still a place where people tell each other the truth. I'm interested in stories that begin with a forum post or a strange subreddit, and end somewhere near the bone.\n\nI want writing beginning with a GIF and ending in grief. I want reported pieces that start with a server error and arrive at loneliness. I want personal essays from people who are making websites in their bedrooms and can't quite explain why it matters. The digital and the human should be indistinguishable from each other.\n\nThe IndieWeb is real to me because the people in it are real to me. And I think those people—including you—deserve a publication that treats that reality seriously.\n\n## The View Onward\n\nThe working name is **Long Horizon.** While the term originally came from investment culture, it has been co-opted by the generative AI techbros to describe complex tasks requiring a genAI agent to perform dozens or hundreds of sequential steps to reach an end goal. \n\nAnd I would love nothing more to reclaim the term for humanity. Tongue-in-cheek, at the very least. For the long horizon is ours and I have the optimism to see it as beautiful. I don't have to tell you there would be zero genAI anywhere in this project. I'm thinking past the refresh cycle. What's worth writing requires time to understand, and the things worth reading require time to absorb.\n\nLong Horizon would operate as a volunteer-run, not-for-profit publication. I would pay writers a stipend/honorarium for any work that gets accepted—not enough, but something. Ink. A subscription. The knowledge that their work appeared in print. I'm not going to pretend I can offer what a well-funded magazine can offer. But I can offer care, and I can offer the thing Alexandra's post-mortem keeps returning to: community. The thing that makes the labor feel like something other than labour.\n\n---\n\nI've been writing on [brennan.day](https://brennan.day) now for over half a year, posting near-daily. Lyric essays, technical write-ups, political rants, pop culture criticism, IndieWeb dispatches. What I've learned from that practice is that I *can* sustain this. I have more to say than I thought. There are readers who show up. And the essay can hold more than I ever expected. Grief, comedy, code, contradiction, the body, the archive, the screen.\n\nA publication would let me do that in collaboration. Which is the part I haven't yet tried. \n\nYou cannot do this alone. You need editors, designers, writers who are braver than you in the places you are timid. You need someone who knows InDesign, someone who knows how to make an email newsletter exciting, and someone who knows how to index a back issue.\n\nAnd that's what I'm looking for: Writers. Editors. Web developers. Graphic designers. Artists. Hypemen. People who have opinions about fonts. People who want to learn how to have opinions about things like fonts. If you are interested and you are wondering what you have to give, then you have something. I promise that.\n\nThere is nothing more exciting to me than starting something new and being bad at it. Than being a beginner once again. I would love nothing more than to sink a lot of time and money into this, even if it ends up going nowhere, even if it fails. At least then I can say I tried. \n\nIf any of this sounds interesting to you, please reach out. Comment below or reach out [by email](mailto:mail@brennanbrown.ca) or [anywhere I have an account](https://brennan.day/accounts/). I'm just using [Ghost](https://ghost.org/) (the web software that will power this) for the first time. I haven't even finalized the name. This is the very beginning, and the very beginning is my favourite place to be.", "date_published": "2026-06-13T20:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "IndieWeb", "publishing", "writing", "community", "collaboration", "creative non-fiction", "lyric essays" ], "author": { "name": "Brennan Kenneth Brown", "url": "https://brennanbrown.ca", "email": "mail@brennanbrown.ca" } }, { "id": "https://brennan.day/yes-buy-them-a-coffee-support-and-mutual-aid-on-the-indieweb/", "url": "https://brennan.day/yes-buy-them-a-coffee-support-and-mutual-aid-on-the-indieweb/", "title": "Yes, Buy Them a Coffee: Support and Mutual Aid on the IndieWeb", "summary": "Responding to criticism of 'buy me a coffee' links on blogs, I argue that asking for support isn't commodification—it's mutual aid! Exploring the economic pressures on creators, the history of mutual aid, and why the IndieWeb needs community support mechanisms to sustain independent art.", "content_html": "\nAnother day, another blog post responding to a blog post. For what else is the Internet for? I stumbled upon Hakkerman's article, [\"No, I Won't Buy You a Coffee\"](https://hakkerman.eu/blog/i-wont-buy-you-a-coffee/) and felt a strong urge to correct a fundamental misunderstanding. Because this topic isn't just about blogging or the IndieWeb, it's about figuring out how we can create a liberated future of independent art.\n\nI've already written an article about [how you can support indie creators](https://brennan.day/how-you-can-support-indie-creators-and-you-need-to/), and why you need to. I'll try not to be redundant here.\n\nTo start, Hakkerman says he's exhausted with the \"rampant capitalization [sic] and constant advertisements\" of the world. And I'm sure countless many would agree with this sentiment.\n\nBut let's take a step back and interrogate why people are asking for support in the first place.\n\nMaybe you've had a job that hollowed you out. Where you felt like limestone hollowed by water, grain by grain, over years. At the end of your shift, you sit down at your laptop. You open a tab. You start to write. A blog post about a television show you love, or a deep-dive on software, or an essay about the neighbourhood you grew up in. You post it for free as you always have. And somewhere at the bottom, almost apologetically, you put a link: *If this meant something to you, you can buy me a coffee?*\n\nThat's what we're talking about. That's what Hakkerman can't stand.\n\nHakkerman isn't wrong about capitalism's draining effects, but he is wrong about what that tip jar *is*.\n\n[According to recent data](https://usafacts.org/answers/are-wages-keeping-up-with-inflation/country/united-states/), wages have grown 0.24 percentage points slower than inflation over the past year. Even workers who got raises are making less than they were before. The median salary in the United States sits around $59,384 annually, a reasonable figure until it dissolves against rent, groceries, and a world getting more expensive every quarter. [The gap between what workers produce and what workers earn](https://prosperousamerica.org/americas-cost-of-living-crisis-is-a-wage-problem-not-a-price-problem/) has been widening since the 1970s, when policy choices favouring deregulation and the suppression of labour unions severed the link between economic growth and worker compensation. Corporate profits in the United States have more than doubled as a share of GDP since 2000. The money is there and is not going to workers.\n\nAnd those workers are exhausted. [Research suggests that nearly 85% of workers experienced burnout or exhaustion in 2025](https://wellhub.com/en-us/blog/wellness-and-benefits-programs/work-related-stress-in-the-united-states/), with almost half forced to take time off for mental health. The [World Health Organization defines burnout](https://high5test.com/employee-burnout-statistics/) as a syndrome of chronic workplace stress. Exhaustion, cynicism, a creeping sense of ineffectiveness. This is just the standard condition of working life.\n\nSo, when someone comes home from that job and opens their laptop to write, for free, for the love of it, for the flickering hope that their words will find someone, and they put a link at the bottom? The appropriate response isn't to see an advertisement. The appropriate response is to see a person.\n\nHakkerman argues that \"creatives should get compensation in the same way as everyone else\" but \"that doesnt [sic] mean that every instance of creativity should be a venue for profit,\" and that \"this is not the place to equalize it.\" I believe this is where our fundamental disagreement lies.\n\nI am a firm believer that most people urgently need to pick up a creative hobby, and that hobby should be completely separate from monetization and commodification. And I also agree that, yes, hobbies cost money (though the amount is certainly far less than what consumerist culture leads people to believe).\n\nBut when people are asking for someone to buy them a coffee, at the bottom of a blog that is available to read for free, this is not commodification. This isn't turning a hobby into extractive labour. No, this is a human asking another human for support even if that support isn't a requirement.\n\nI recognize we are all in different places financially, and many people cannot afford a recreational budget to spend being a patron of the IndieWeb, but that's not everyone.\n\n## On Mutual Aid\n\n[Dean Spade](https://www.deanspade.net/2020/12/18/interview-with-the-nation-about-mutual-aid/), legal activist and professor at Seattle University School of Law, defines mutual aid as \"collective coordination to meet each other's needs, usually from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them.\" [Spade distinguishes mutual aid sharply from charity](https://climateresilienceproject.org/strategies/mutual-aid/). Charity flows downward from those with power to those deemed \"deserving\", and on the terms of the giver. Mutual aid flows *between* instead, it is horizontal and rooted in a recognition that your survival and mine are bound together. When I support you, I am also building the kind of world I want to live in. \n\nThe term was coined by the [19th century anarchist Peter Kropotkin](https://climateresilienceproject.org/strategies/mutual-aid/) after he observed animals in the Siberian wilderness collaborating with one another rather than competing for survival. The practice is ancient and Indigenous. Resource sharing, reciprocity, and collective care are all ancestral technologies. \n\n[As early as the 1780s](https://www.radicalinprogress.org/spade-2020-summary-part-1), there are records of mutual aid traditions in Black communities in America, pooling resources to cover health costs, burials, support for widows and orphans, and the construction of Black alternatives to white exclusionary infrastructures. \n\nThis isn't capitalism sneaking in the back door of the IndieWeb. This is a person offering what they have (their words, their time, their knowledge, their care) and asking, without demanding, for something in return. Mutual aid doesn't ask you to prove you deserve it. It meets people where they are.\n\nAnd the IndieWeb does need to figure this out. If we support each other more, through the grassroots community mechanisms akin to mutual aid, then there is far more ethical longevity and sustainability to this great digital experiment. \n\nI'm sure I don't need to tell you that the ways people can make money often degrade the quality of their writing and site, whether that's intrusive advertising (such as AdSense), dishonest product reviews, or aggressive affiliate linking.\n\nIt's exactly because of this that people need ethical, non-exploitative ways to make money with their work. Platforms like [Ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com), which launched in 2011 as a simple way for fans to give creators small gifts without taking a cut on one-time tips, and [Buy Me a Coffee](https://www.buymeacoffee.com), both exist to solve this problem. \n\n## Personal Disclosure\n\nI also want to add that my own personal blog, [brennan.day](https://brennan.day), does not make anything beyond what the few wonderful people supporting me through [Ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com) and my [Toonie Club](https://brennan.day/toonie-club) provide. I don't run any advertisements, take sponsorships, or use affiliate links. And I never will. The only costs associated with my blog are the domain on Porkbun, which runs $10/year.\n\nThat said, I am one of those few very lucky writers that can say that I do make a living blogging online. I'm enrolled in [Medium's Partner Program](https://medium.com/partner-program), where I syndicate my blog posts on the platform and I'm paid based on views, reads, comments, etc. when I paywall my content. The wonderful thing is, though, that they allow me to have my writing on my own site with no paywall, so it really is a win-win. And it's important that you read this and go support another blogger instead of me, if you feel so inclined.\n\nThe entire point of creative endeavours like this is to escape the \"draining nature of capitalism,\" as Hakkerman states, and I completely agree. But support is needed for this, and that support is actually antithetical to capitalism.\n\n## The Public Broadcasting Service\n\nMaybe you're one of the many people that has, at some point, watched PBS on television.\n\nThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network. [Founded in 1970](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/education/public-broadcasting-service-airs-its-first-program) following the passage of the [Public Broadcasting Act of 1967](https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/station-histories/public-broadcasting-act), which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law with the promise that this new network would \"belong to all the people,\" PBS was conceived as a space on the airwaves for what its founders called [an \"urgent need\"](https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/the-core-concepts-of-american-public-broadcasting-turn-50): programming that addressed educational, social, and cultural demands that commercial television couldn't (or wouldn't) meet. It was built to be a civic forum, with news, public affairs, arts, and children's programming. All for the people who couldn't afford cable or didn't have access to anything else. \n\n[Federal funding flowed through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48545), a private nonprofit that distributed money to over 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder going to PBS and National Public Radio. The CPB received approximately $535 million annually, a small slice of the federal budget to sustain a public media infrastructure that reached into rural communities, reservation lands, and urban neighbourhoods alike.\n\nThe Trump administration changed that. In May of 2025, [Trump signed an executive order aiming to eliminate federal subsidies to PBS and NPR](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-executive-order-directing-federal-funding-cuts-to-pbs-and-npr), alleging political bias. His executive order immediately cut millions in Education Department funding for PBS children's programming, [forcing the system to lay off a third of PBS Kids staff](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/judge-blocks-trumps-executive-order-to-end-federal-funding-for-pbs-and-npr). By July 2025, [Congress voted to rescind $1.1 billion in CPB funding](https://www.npr.org/2025/07/18/nx-s1-5469912/npr-congress-rescission-funding-trump)—the full amount allocated through the next two fiscal years—as part of a $9 billion package of cuts. By August 2025, [the CPB announced it was beginning an orderly wind-down of its operations](https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/media/trump-cpb-corporation-public-media-shuts-down). Most of its staff were told they would lose their jobs on September 30th.\n\nWhat happens when a public commons is stripped of its public funding? You probably know the answer already. PBS has asked this of viewers for fifty years, in those pledge-drive weeks when the regular programming pauses and someone stands in front of a camera and reminds you that PBS exists due to:\n\n> Support by viewers like you. Thank you!\n\nThat's what the IndieWeb needs, now more than ever.\n\n---\n\nThe next time you read something on a personal site that matters to you, and you see a small link at the bottom, I want you to consider: what kind of internet are you building with your dollar? What kind of world?\n\nBuy them a coffee. Or don't. If you can't, if you won't, that's fine. The writing is still there either way. That's the point. But if you *can*, and you're holding back because you've decided that asking is undignified, that wanting is capitulation, that the presence of a tip jar makes the whole thing somehow compromised? Then you're mixing up the revolution and the enemy.\n", "date_published": "2026-06-11T20:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "IndieWeb", "community", "economics", "mutual aid", "support", "capitalism", "writing" ], "author": { "name": "Brennan Kenneth Brown", "url": "https://brennanbrown.ca", "email": "mail@brennanbrown.ca" } }, { "id": "https://brennan.day/why-make-your-website-accessible-anyways/", "url": "https://brennan.day/why-make-your-website-accessible-anyways/", "title": "Why Make Your Website Accessible, Anyways?", "summary": "Web accessibility isn't compliance theatre or checking off a list. It's about designing for everyone. Exploring the curb cut effect, why disability is more common than we think, and practical steps to make your website usable by as many people as possible.", "content_html": "\nI've done a lot of tinkering and attempts at optimization on [https://Brennan.day](https://brennan.day), and one of the foundational principles of the project was to be accessible from the start—making an accommodating website was not going to be an afterthought.\n\nBut what does that mean, exactly? I think it's good to actually write a blog post explaining that. An *accessible starting point*, if you will. [Web accessibility](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Core/Accessibility/What_is_accessibility) (sometimes shortened to a11y[^1]) is \"the practice of making your websites usable by as many people as possible.\" There is a wide range to consider here: visual impairments, hearing impairments, mobility impairments, cognitive impairments, and more.\n\n[^1]: a11y, as in a(ccessibilit)y, as there are 11 letters between the starting A and finishing letter Y. Similar to how i18n is short for internationalization, which is worth its own blog post another time!\n\nI'll start off, though, with some of the most important things that I think beginner web developers don't hear enough.\n\n## Designing for Disability Means Designing for Everyone\n\nAnytime you develop with accessibility in mind, or improve a product for someone with a disability, you're actually improving it for everyone. This is called the [curb cut effect](https://levelaccess.com/uncategorized/the-curb-cut-effect-how-digital-accessibility-elevates-ux-for-everyone/). \n\nIn the 1970s, disability activists in Berkeley, California, pushed for small ramps to be cut into sidewalk corners so that wheelchair users could move through their communities without being stopped every block by a four-inch drop. The ramps got built. And then? It turned out the curb cut helped everyone: Parents with hefty strollers. Delivery workers hauling hand trucks. Skateboarders. Tourists dragging rolling luggage through unfamiliar cities. A solution designed for a specific need became universal.\n\nThe same thing happens in digital design:\n\n* Closed captions were created for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, and they're wonderful for anyone watching video on a crowded commute, in a noisy café, or late at night beside a sleeping partner.\n* High-contrast text, originally designed to help people with low vision, makes your website more readable in bright sunlight.\n* Voice controls, built for people with motor impairments, became the hands-free layer underneath Siri and smart speakers. Text-to-speech turned out to be useful for driving, for cooking, for holding a baby while you need both hands and still want to hear what's next. \n\nThe reason we audit our websites for how much contrast there is between text and background, or add ARIA landmarks, or ensure there's full keyboard navigation access, isn't to satisfy a checklist and be done with it. It isn't compliance theatre. It's about making it more readable for someone on a cracked phone screen, for someone borrowing a laptop without a mouse, for someone who just got their pupils dilated at the optometrist and is trying to read something waiting for the blur to clear.\n\nThis is about understanding how to make your words and work better understood by everyone, not just the able-bodied population. This is about meeting people where they are, no matter what. \n\nReally, this is about connecting to humanity. \n\nIf you want to better understand disability and people with disabilities, I would recommend subscribing to Chris Ulmer's channel, [Special Books for Special Kids](https://www.youtube.com/SpecialBooksbySpecialKids). In addition to being one of the greatest YouTube channels around, SBSK is dedicated to \"creating a more inclusive world\" by interviewing people with disabilities from around the world \"of all ages and diagnoses\".\n\n## Disability Is More Normal Than You Think\n\nIf you wear glasses, you have impaired vision. That's a disability, and that's okay! The reason we rarely think of it that way is because the support infrastructure is widespread and robust. There's an optometrist in every city and frames at every drugstore for nine dollars.\n\nThink about the accommodations that *haven't* been normalized yet. In web design, that's screens that can't be navigated without a mouse, or forms with no label text. The video with no captions. The button that's a styled `
` with no keyboard event, invisible to screen readers.\n\nThese are day-to-day encounters on the web for millions of people. Low-grade friction that compounds over every session, every tab, every attempt to participate in digital life.\n\n[According to the WHO](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health), an estimated 1.3 billion people, roughly 1 in 6 of us, experience significant disability. In the United States, the CDC puts the figure at around 26% of adults. This is a growing number driven by aging populations and the rise of noncommunicable disease. \n\nThese are your readers, your users, the people who found your site from a search or a shared link and arrived hoping to read something you made.\n\nDisability is also not always permanent, either. A broken arm means weeks without reliable fine motor control. Migraines with light sensitivity can make light, small text unbearable. Similarly, burnout and grief and exhaustion from long work shifts all can make dense, unstructured text become difficult to parse. Anybody, and most everyone, will eventually move through the world with reduced capacity in some domain.\n\n## My Own Website\n\nI want to stress I'm certainly not an a11y expert, or someone with a major impairment myself (you can look at my [disability](https://brennan.day/disability) page to get a better understanding of that). I am just someone who wants to create a more inclusive Internet for everyone. With that in mind, here's a look at what [brennan.day](https://brennan.day) actually does:\n\nI use semantic HTML5 elements (`
`, `
`, `