Contentment with Markdown mtift Mon, 05/11/2026 - 15:33 If one tool can make the work look more exciting, why choose a different tool that makes the work look basic?Last week, Thariq Shihipar, who works on Claude Code at Anthropic, shared an article about HTML artifacts with some nice-looking examples. He shows what...

AI, Slot Machines, and Other Kinds of Happiness mtift Fri, 05/08/2026 - 08:54 A lot of AI products, when you strip away the hype, are happiness machines. Feed them your mood and they give you something back, such as a great playlist, a useful summary, an answer, a story, some pretty good code. We can debate the...

Caring about Software, Caring about People mtift Wed, 05/06/2026 - 08:36 What if caring about software is one way to care about people?The most thought-provoking talk I attended at Minnebar on Saturday was Paul Cantrell’s “What tech lessons should we learn from the ICE invasion?” I shared his opening slide on...

Before the Incident Report: How We Are Collaborative mtift Mon, 05/04/2026 - 15:03 (This article was originally published on Drupal.org.)At DrupalCon Chicago, the Driesnote included a visualization with “community” as one of the three pillars of Drupal, along with “platform” and “agencies.” That framing felt...

Living at Ease mtift Tue, 04/14/2026 - 08:31 At the end of my yoga classes, I say a lot of things. Be kind in your thoughts, speech, and actions. Take care of yourself and the people around you. May you find peace.And then I say something that sounds simple but isn’t: may you live at ease.Most people hear “live at...

Using AI Without Compromising Our Values Photo by Curt Rochon, DrupalCon Chicago 2026. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 mtift Mon, 04/06/2026 - 06:56 Do my values need to change at the speed of AI?I fully admit that I went into DrupalCon Chicago suspicious of AI. Not exactly “curious-suspicious.” It was more like...

The Quiet Room at DrupalCon mtift Sat, 03/28/2026 - 10:05 At DrupalCon Chicago this past week, Dries (the founder of Drupal) borrowed an idea from Fred Rogers. When Rogers received a lifetime achievement award at the Emmys, he stopped the show and asked everyone in the room to pause for ten seconds. Just ten seconds...

Noble Friends and Free Software Communities mtift Sat, 03/21/2026 - 08:24 In yoga and meditation communities, there’s a concept called kalyāna-mittatā, or noble friendship. The Buddha considered it so important that he called it the entirety of the path. Noble friends don’t just make you comfortable. They help you...

Finding Your Dharma or Living the Dharma? mtift Tue, 03/10/2026 - 07:52 The No Kings protest is coming up again. You may have heard about it, and perhaps you feel some pressure to attend. In the past, I organized groups to go, so people in my yoga classes and other parts of my life have asked whether I plan to go...

Finding the Right Meditation Without Getting Lost Along the Way mtift Wed, 02/25/2026 - 08:13 Someone told me recently that he had been going through a difficult period. He said he had probably heard my voice more than his wife’s because some days he listens to two or three episodes of my meditation podcast, Pretty...

If Not Now, Then When? mtift Mon, 02/16/2026 - 05:50 If we can’t be happy now, then when?Waiting for life to calm down sounds tempting. After the conflict ends. After the health scare passes. After the news improves. That day isn’t coming. Or if it does, it won’t stick around for long.At the beginning of the year,...

Walk for Peace Photo courtesy of Walk for Peace mtift Tue, 01/20/2026 - 05:43 As the Theravada Buddhist monk Thānissaro Bhikkhu observed recently, “ill will seems to be in fashion.” The world is watching in horror as people here in Minnesota are harassed and shot. Many people I’ve talked to are on edge. We are doing...