the working notebook

Field notes.

Shorter than essays. Dated, timestamped, occasionally half-finished. A quick thought, a link worth saving, a block of code that took me too long to arrive at, a photograph that stuck. If the essays are the published record, these are the margins of it.

2026 · 04

April — 2026

17 Apr 08:42

Thought

On default-private

Every piece of software you use has a default. Not its best setting — its default. The gap between the two is where most surveillance lives, and closing that gap is a surprisingly cheap way to feel better about being online.

I keep a running list of apps where the default is against the user: Chrome, the iOS share sheet, almost every chat app with read receipts on. Worth the hour it takes to retune.