Anne Lee Steele | [email protected]

(digital) anthropologist. community-led tech w/ @turingway @turinginst. back at school w/ @sfpc & @schoolofcommons, ex: fellow @okfn @internetsociety.

[Anne Lee Steele | [email protected] @aleesteele]

finally got a copy of @mindyseu's wonderful 'cyberfeminism index', and realising why i'm sad to & have hesitated so much in leaving twitter. for years, i've used this space for gathering: for notes, links, lists, quotes, for thinking out loud about all sorts of things.

[html energy ❇️ @htmlenergy]

This year (2026) HTML Day is on Saturday, August 8, 2026 ❇️

[Science for the People @sftpmag]

Batool Almarzouq offers a critique of the extractivist underpinnings of the open science movement, showing how the language of democratization can be mobilized in ways that reproduce colonial hierarchies and unequal relations of knowledge production: https://t.co/VztADbwOPW

[jess yin @itsjessyin]

discovering the coolest stuff by making a website that lets me doomscroll the MoMA, Met, and Art Institute of Chicago APIs

[connie @connie_surf]

looking to commission editorial illustrators (3D/graphic design) and a layout designer for @kernel_magazine!

DM or email [email protected] with your portfolio for more details ⚡️

[Newspeak House @nwspk]

Applications are now open:

https://t.co/VrKr5FNyvi

[Anne Lee Steele | [email protected] @aleesteele]

My piece with The HTML Review just came out, on a digital and physical walk I'm planning across my motherland... a very personal project, a few years in the making. Thank you to @maxnc & shelby for being wonderful, patient editors!

[maxwell neely-cohen @maxnc]

Issue Five of The HTML Review is here!
Get to your browser for 15 excellent new pieces of web-based literature and art

[Anne Lee Steele | [email protected] @aleesteele]

@tobyshorin excited to listen!

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

Charles Broskoski believes everything should be personal: your work, your tools, your taste, and perhaps most provocatively, the business you build.

I talked to @broskoski about knowing yourself, noticing patterns, casual research, and building a personal business in @AREdotNA.

Charles is an artist turned software engineer and co-founder/CEO of Arena: a platform for collecting, connecting, and self-directed learning. Arena is coming up on its 15th anniversary, and Charles hopes it can last another 15 and far beyond.

I discovered him through his essay and talk, "Here for the Wrong Reasons", and was struck by his philosophy that who we are is made up of the things we pay attention to, and specifically what we see in them.

We discuss that and more:

- Why creativity is decision-making and problem-solving
- Charles's case for "casual" research
- Why skateboarding is a model for being a beginner
- How information that inflects you becomes part of who you are
- Personal versus performative taste (and why it shouldn't be thought of as a competitive skill)
- Creating a typeface to replace Arial that looks (almost) exactly like Arial
- Why more creative people should start businesses
- Drawing inspiration from a 1,300 year old Japanese hot spring hotel
- "The reward is the work. That you get to hang out with your friends and make something cool."
- Why Arena wants to fade into the background

Timestamps:
0:00 - Opening Highlights
1:21 - Intro: Charles Broskoski
4:00 - Thanks to Notion
5:26 - Start: Creativity as Self-Knowledge and Problem-Solving
13:37 - Self-directed Learning and Casual Research
21:33 - Skateboarding, Being a Beginner, In Defense of Posers
33:26 - Contextual Patterns and Channels
45:54 - Nodal Points, Your Radar, and Careful Attention
1:04:57 - Subjectivity, Self-Knowledge, and Taste
1:15:09 - Performance: Here for Fame and Not Love
1:22:53 - Aspirational Attention
1:29:02 - Designing Generous Tools
1:42:44 - Space in a Product and Fading into the Background
1:50:01 - Why Creatives Should Be Entrepreneurial & Building an Independent Business Online
1:54:11 - Patience, Durability, and Antifragility
1:59:48 - Personal Businesses
2:10:27 - Grab Bag: Authenticity, Bohm Dialogue, Skateboarding, and Keeping Things Personal
2:28:28 - Thanks Again to Notion

@DialecticPod Ep. 40: Charles Broskoski - Everything is Personal - is out now, below and on all platforms.

[UN OICT @UN_OICT]

The United Nations Open Source Portal is now live!

A new hub for collaboration across the UN system, connecting projects, people and open source solutions to strengthen digital innovation and cooperation.

Explore the portal: https://t.co/DHxGvFvbCz

[Anne Lee Steele | [email protected] @aleesteele]

For my fellowship with the @softwaresaved this year, I’ll be seeding connections between the worlds of creative computation and academic computing.

Please fill out this short form – and share it with others who might be interested too:
https://t.co/Z9VUhXJxNJ

[David Rumsey @DavidRumseyMaps]

Qiu Zhijie’s all-seeing maps are transformative experiences that unsettle viewers’ sense of self and world. Unlike his earlier Mapping series, this group of 26 works integrates traditional Chinese brush-and-ink techniques, asking how calligraphy and painting can depict contemporary realities—dense cities, industrial zones, and shifting landscapes—while retaining their spontaneous vitality. Qiu seeks a form of “cartographic calligraphy” that blends realism with expressive freedom and reconciles the organic variability of nature with the geometric structures of modern life. Rooted in Chinese artistic tradition yet open to global diversity, his approach echoes Confucian ideas of relational harmony: through “family likenesses,” different cultures coexist without being flattened into a universal sameness. Qiu’s bird’s-eye views challenge Enlightenment cartography by redistributing knowledge and blurring boundaries between private and collective worlds. Acting as a mythmaker, he enlarges overlooked details into expansive narratives, transforming fragments of history into imaginative cosmologies. Drawing on the spirit of shan shui landscape painting—where cultural meaning outweighs strict topography—his maps question the neutrality of observation and recall the political dimensions of imperial mapping. Ultimately, Qiu’s cartography reimagines history, culture, and global relationships through poetic, critical vision. (Derived from "Viewed Through the Eye of A Bird: On Qiu Zhijie's Cartography" by Chang Tsong-Zung, translated by Don J. Cohn) https://t.co/1AqGQXtGy7

[Avery Trufelman @trufelman]

I can tell you why. It's a really fashion story. I made a podcast about it
https://t.co/NmuW7uOIuh

[Anne Lee Steele | [email protected] @aleesteele]

As a part of #OpenDataDay organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation, I'll be running another internet infrastructure tour... this time, with an open data twist!

📅 Sunday, 8 March
⏰ 10:30 - 12:30 PM
​📍London, UK

I have capacity for ~25: https://t.co/69HUO8b0qJ

[Art Encyclopedia @artenpedia]

Cueva de las Manos, Argentina

[tldraw @tldraw]

we are hiring creative product engineers in London, visit tldraw dot dev slash careers

[Tao Leigh Goffe, PhD | 道 🐲🌋 @taoleighgoffe]

Deadline is OCTOBER 20th! Scroll through the images for full details, including how to apply.

NYC preference but open to anywhere in the 🌌🪐

[Anne Lee Steele | [email protected] @aleesteele]

- Chantelle Lue-Elton (@schoolofcommons)
- Mark Rohtmaa-Jackson (@lungaschool)

We just had our check-in call, and I'm so excited for this conversation. During what feels like a broader crisis of imagination, learning from minds like these feels more important than ever.

[Anne Lee Steele | [email protected] @aleesteele]

As a part of this year's @antiuniversity festival, I'm so excited to be facilitating the online panel:

"Lessons from Artist-Run Schools: on Art, Attention, Ecology and Technology"

📅 Thursday, 16 October
⏰ 9:00 EST / 14:00 BST / 15:00 CEST

Sign ups: https://t.co/pbJqZNxSIJ

[Anne Lee Steele | [email protected] @aleesteele]

These panelists will discuss their relationships to legacy institutions, tactics for sustaining alternative education, visions for the future, and more.

- @BenjaminGaulon (@noschoolnevers)
- Rachel Uwa (@SchoolOfMaaa)
- Peter Schmidt (Strother School of Radical Attention)