craft

Keyword

craft

Small decisions, taste, constraints, and care: the human layer that keeps technical work from collapsing into generic output.

Entries: 2
Latest: May 30, 2026
Type: Keyword

Expertise Without Permission

culture-and-critiqueapplied-ailabor-and-classcraftautomationanti-extractionnonsensestart-here 9 min read

Expertise Without Permission

A working-class reflection on AI, expertise, and gatekeeping. The piece argues that expertise is real, but access to it has always been shaped by class, credentials, and permission. AI disrupts that arrangement by letting more people turn ideas into practice before institutions decide they are “qualified.” That democratizing potential is real, but complicated: the same tools that weaken old gates are mostly owned by corporations, turning liberation into subscription-based dependency. The essay defends craft while rejecting the fantasy that craft alone protects workers.

Rebuilding My Portfolio With AI, Static HTML, and Stubborn Taste

web-developmentapplied-aiProject: portfolio-rebuildweb-designai-workflowscraftlocal-first 10 min read

Rebuilding My Portfolio With AI, Static HTML, and Stubborn Taste

The original version of my portfolio was built in 2021 from downloaded themes, hand-edited HTML, layered CSS overrides, and an unreasonable number of animated GIFs. The visual identity still felt right, but the underlying structure had become difficult to maintain and extend. This rebuild became an experiment in preservation through reconstruction: using AI-assisted workflows, static publishing, structured content, local admin tooling, and a lot of small human judgments to modernize the system underneath the site without sanding off the parts that still felt personal.