A video I’ve shared with friends recently is when Harry Mack ran into Ari, which was fun for me because they’re two of my favorite accounts to follow. Sorry I didn’t freestyle! I had to get back to do some work, which is why I got the monitor.
In other cool X/Twitter news, they launched an awesome feature today that lets you restrict replies not just to people you follow, but to people they follow as well. Nikita gave a hat tip to the conversation I had with Peter Levels / @levelsio.
Tonight was a lot of threads connecting for me. At Automattic’s Noho Space we hosted an event for Martin Scorsese’s new documentary about Pope Francis, called Aldeas. There was a point in my life when I wanted to become a priest, and I had been inspired by meeting a Franciscan seminary student. I took it very seriously and considered that as a path for my life, but some combination of jazz and girls made me realize that the priesthood was not my destiny.
The jazz led to building websites for Houston jazz musicians, which led to coding, which led to WordPress, which after a lot of twists and turns led to Automattic acquiring Tumblr. One of Tumblr’s greatest memes was Goncharov, directed by Martin Scorsese. The only reason Automattic, as a distributed company, has an office in NYC is because of the Tumblr acquisition. The office is filled with art from Tumblr artists so I had the very surreal experience of talking after Martin Scorsese, who at 83 is sharp as a tack and a gifted speaker, a few feet away from a Goncharov poster about how my Catholic upbringing led me down the path of starting WordPress, and how Pope Francis’ life inspired the WordPress Jubilee and reflection. Full circle.
The story of what Bending Spoons has built is very impressive, and I’m a customer of theirs through Evernote, WordPress uses Meetup a ton. I think Automattic’s Noho office used to belong to Meetup. They’ve built an incredible engineering and product culture that can terraform technology stacks into something much more efficient. I think their acquisitions of Vimeo and AOL are brilliant. This interview with Luca Ferrari on Invest Like The Best goes into their story and unique culture. I also always love a good Matrix reference. 🙂
I’m often on the other side, but it’s such a delight to be an interviewer, I really enjoy it and put a lot of work into coming up with questions and shaping a conversation I think will draw out something novel from the person. Besides the Distributed Podcast, I’ve had a chance at events to interview great minds such as Steve Jurvetson, Patrick Collison, Dries Buytaert, and now John Borthwick.
We discussed his early investments in Airbnb and Tumblr, what made the NYC tech scene so special back then, and how it has evolved since. We also touched on the recent mayoral race, where Betaworks fits into the city’s tech ecosystem, and delved into one of my favorite topics: the comparison between open-source and proprietary models in AI.
I just got off stage from the great dev/ai/nyc event with John Borthwick, we had a wide-ranging discussion that we’ll post online soon. We had hundreds of people in the room and hundreds on the waitlist… the energy in NYC is electric!
On November 5th at our Noho office the legendary John Borthwick (investor in Twitter, Tumblr, Buzzfeed, Digg, Venmo…) and I will have a conversation on the future of the Open Web and human-centered AI. Please join us!
I learned today from the Newspack newsletter that the Houston Press is now on WordPress. Newspack is a distribution or bundle of WordPress designed for journalism, and it is led by Kinsey Wilson, who began his career as a night-shift journalist covering cops for a newspaper in Chicago, went on to have top editorial and business positions at The New York Times, NPR, and USA TODAY, and ran WordPress.com for a few years, which gives him a very unique position to help craft WordPress for journalists and publishers.
The Houston Press is an alt-weekly that wrote the very first profile of me in the world, which I blogged about here. There’s a funny quote in there:
He recently considered taking a job with a San Francisco search-engine start-up, but ended up turning them down. “They have a ton of money…But it would be 50- or 60- or 70-hour weeks, a lot of work, and I wouldn’t have time” to do WordPress.
That “search-engine start-up” was Google! How the internet might have turned out differently if I had taken that job, as my Mom wanted me to (because they offered free food). I still think Google is one of the most interesting companies in the world, one of the few places I’d consider working if I weren’t running Automattic.
Back to linkrot, the original link to the profile in that article was http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2004-10-28/feature2.html, which this morning didn’t work, but thanks to the Houston Press being on Newspack/WordPress I was able to ping Kinsey and his colleague Jason Lee was able to fix it so it redirects to the new canonical URL for that content in minutes. A little corner of the internet tidied up! I love the Wayback Machine, but not needing it is even better.
Good Taste Is More Important Than Ever, by Nitin Nohria in The Atlantic.
The New Yorker is always good, but they’re having a bit of a victory lap as they celebrate their centennial. This article on the vaunted fact-checkers is such a delight, with so many in-jokes and back references it’s hard to keep track.
When I started WordPress, I wrote down five publications that I hoped someday we’d make software so good they’d adopt it. The New Yorker is one of them. If you enjoy words that make your brain tingle, make sure to also follow Automattic’s publications, Longreads and Atavist.
Over the weekend, Automattic/Beeper had the pleasure of hosting and sponsoring the Build the Future MCP Hackathon in New York City organized by Adam Anzuoni, alongside Anthropic, Stainless, WorkOS, Smithery, and MongoDB. As someone deeply passionate about open-source technology and the potential of AI, I was thrilled to not only support this event but also to speak at it and serve as one of the judges. For those unfamiliar, MCP stands for Model Context Protocol and enables AI models to interact with multiple tools in a more efficient and structured manner, allowing developers to create sophisticated agents that can handle complex tasks. And it’s only 8 months old! The energy in the room was electric—hackers collaborating, iterating, and demoing groundbreaking projects in just a few hours. (I would love to see the results of a longer overnight or all-weekend hackathon.)
For a wrap-up of the winners, check out this great X/Twitter thread by Alex Reibman. The first-place winner, Levels AI, orchestrates different AI/ML models to solve specific business requirements without needing heavy manual coding or specialized teams. Essentially, it’s models creating more models—a meta-approach to AI that could streamline operations for companies of all sizes. Yusuf Olokoba said the name was inspired by Pieter Levels, which is pretty cool. I wanted to note one team in particular: BeepResearch, which used our early access Beeper API and local MCP.
6/ BeepResearch (Bonus)
MCP server to chat with your messaging apps like iMessage, Whatsapp, FB, X, etc. over @beeper. And Ollama + gemma3 to query photos in natural language
Judging the entries was tough! People built so much cool stuff in a really short period of time. I always say technology is best when it brings people together, and this was a great example of that, and makes me very excited for Contributor Day at WordCamp US next week. (Which has such a stacked AI program as well.) Hopefully some people who enjoyed the office might consider getting 24/7 access.
I also just want to take a beat and say how amazing it is that I’m blogging this, on a United flight from Houston to San Francisco I’ve taken a million times, on a plane 36,000 feet in the air and technology is amazing. I can’t wait until United has Starlink!
To announce and celebrate the incredible engineering achievement of the Beeper team launching local bridges and their premium model we hosted a fun event in Automattic’s space in NYC. The app side of Automattic does some amazing work, and the applications themselves are pretty well known and reviewed, but many don’t know they’re part of Automattic, so it was a good opportunity to tell that side of our story a bit. Here’s the video from the event:
And if you’ve ever wanted to get better control over your instant messages, regardless of what network they may be on, definitely check out Beeper. I find it especially useful on desktop, like a Superhuman for messaging.
Speaking of Beeper, we’re going to do a fun event for the next-gen version that’s launching on July 16 in New York City in NoHo. I’ll be there along with Beeper CEO Kishan Bagaria and some of the best and brightest in New York’s tech and creative class. If you’re a Beeper early adopter (or would like to be) and want to attend, leave a comment! We’ve held back some invites for cool folks like readers of ma.tt. 🙂 It’s like getting on board with WordPress in 2004.
Forty-one is a nice birthday because it doesn’t feel like too much pressure. For forty I did a big eclipse thing that ended up amazing, this year I’m replicating what I did a few years ago and celebrating in New York, Houston, and San Francisco.
My birthday today has already been lovely. Saw the amazing Broadway show Maybe Happy Ending (powered by WordPress!) thanks to a suggestion from my colleague Susan Hobbs who’s a connoisseur of musicals. Then did some fun karaoke in K-town. I didn’t realize how much I missed New York! Tonight will celebrate with one of my favorite DJs, Lemurian, who flew up from Tulum. In the spirit of a blog post for my birthday, I’d like to share with you all a blog post I’ve been working on a while inspired by one of Lemurian’s mixes. In 2018 Max (aka Lemurian) played at someplace called Concept and opened with a very interesting track.
Now, the thing that caught my ear was the bassoon. A double-reed instrument that you don’t often hear in the front of things, much less house music. Here is the original track on Spotify:
Let me go, I need to wander I’ll go around, seeking To laugh, so as not to cry (repeat) I want to watch the sun rise, to see the rivers’ waters flow To hear the birds sing I want to be born, I want to live Let me go, I need to wander I’ll go around, seeking To laugh, so as not to cry If anyone asks after me, tell them I’ll only come back after I find myself I want to watch the sun rise, to see the rivers’ waters flow To hear the birds sing I want to be born, I want to live… (repeat)
Stunning poetry. Made all the better when you understand the context in which is was written.
One of the things I say to my friends is that in lieu of birthday gifts I just want them to publish, whether it’s words, photos, music, or anything. I leave you all with that. Each of us has an incredible story, a unique life experience that is yours and no one else’s. Find a way to express that creatively, and put that on the open web. It’s scary! Vulnerable. But you’ll find once you do that the rewards are better than you ever imagined. 2025 is going to be a weird year, let’s blog through it. Mazel tov!
Quincy Jones had such an impact on the culture that it’s impossible to summarize. His discography is amazing. I feel so lucky to have met him in 2012 when I was much earlier in my career, and he didn’t have any reason to give me time, but he treated everyone as if they were important. We talked a lot about his Count Basie and Frank Sinatra days. If you’re unfamiliar with him, the Quincy documentary on Netflix is a good start. His musical fingerprints are everywhere, including the super-catchy theme songs for Sanford and Sons and Austin Powers.
He passed away last week, on November 3rd. As a tribute, here are ten albums he was involved in from the jazz side that have been big parts of my life. I’ll link to Spotify, but find them wherever you can:
Sinatra at the Sands, Quincy arranges and directs the Count Basie band. This live album is great to listen to, you also get Frank doing stand-up comedy.
The First Amendment is the basis of our democracy. It is inconvenient and important. It’s also short, so I’m going to quote the First Amendment in its entirety:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This means that, with rare exceptions, the government cannot tell you not to say something.
Freedom of Speech is not Freedom of Reach
The First Amendment says I should be able to state facts and my opinions about WP Engine. However, the New York Times is not required or compelled to publish them in their newspaper and distribute them to their subscribers.
WP Engine is free to publish whatever GPL code they want to the world. WordPress.org should not be compelled to distribute it or provide it free hosting.
Quiet For A While
After this post, I will refrain from personally commenting on the WP Engine case until a judge rules on the injunction. I will continue to exercise my First Amendment rights to promote others’ speech. However, I hope others speak up on our battle with WP Engine, and I will boost their speech wherever I can.
When we had some calm seas while I was on the Drumfire, with my schedule unusually clear and Starlink humming, I found myself writing Python with Claude to export and analyze all of my Swarm check-in activity. I have 14,021 check-ins. So now on my about page it lists the ~70 countries I’ve been to and the top 200 cities I’ve spent time in. But it made me think a lot about what my favorite cities are, so here are my top ten current faves, in no particular order:
Paris
Tokyo
Sydney
Florence
New York
San Francisco
Stockholm
Singapore
London
Houston
Any of these I would be happy to live in. Honorable mentions but didn’t make the cut: Austin, Jackson, Seattle, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Montreal, Vienna, Reykjavik.
In my life I like to experience things high/low, to stay grounded. So while I’ve been taken on culinary adventures with the best chefs in the world like René Redzepi or Kyle Connaughton, sometimes I find myself on a United flight, as I am today, ordering the chicken.
When you move between two extremes it’s not the big things that bother you, for example I’m sure this chicken wasn’t raised on scraps from Michelin star restaurants, as I was once told in New York, but the little things, like “Why is this butter as hard as a rock?”
Butter, one of the most magical of ingredients, should spread. Yet it is served in so many places at a temperature that makes you feel more like you’re carving Play-doh. So I will now give you one of my favorite travel hacks: On United they nuke the main entree too hot to eat when it arrives, but this is now to your advantage because you can open the small butter tin and put it on the scorched entree and let thermodynamics turn it from rock-hard butter-ice to supple, delicious butter.
The process takes a minute or two, just enough time to eat your salad (be careful opening the pressurized balsamic dressing!) and allow the bread to cool a bit and be palatable.
On occasion I have left the butter in the heat too long, and it liquifies, but then I just use it as a pour or dip my bread into it, imagining myself at Peter Luger’s dipping my steak into the collected deliciousness at the bottom of the dish. If you’re serving at home, softening the butter and warming plates is an easy way to elevate your game.
You can’t sing. I can’t sing. But we both should sing, from the depths of our bellies because it’s good for your soul. We don’t sing enough in modern society! Hence, my love of karaoke.
Live band karaoke is the best, which I’ve done everywhere from the basement of Hill Country BBQ in New York to someplace random in Davao after a WordCamp, but when you don’t have a four piece band there are electronic substitutes.
The first hack to do karaoke anywhere, which I’m surprised more people don’t know, is just search YouTube for [the song you’re looking for] + karaoke. You get something like this Fly Me To The Moon. Every modern TV has YouTube and you’ll be singing along with the TV in no time. I went down a long rabbit hole of wireless mics, auto-tuners, speakers, etc, and I have emerged back concluding that a USB-C wireless speaker microphone gives a lot of the benefits without as much hassle.
The next level up, and worth the subscription, is that the Karafun apps are actually pretty good. You can even run it on MacOS with an HDMI cable to the TV and they have a QR code and queuing system. Pretty slick, pretty fun, Sweet Caroline.
Illuminate has crossed the funding threshold it needed to actually kick off the project of bringing the Bay Lights back to San Francisco, as Heather Knight writes for the New York Times. The upgraded lights will be visible not just from San Francisco but also in Oakland, Treasure Island, Berkeley… all across the Bay. It’s felt like the lights have been the lumen-physical embodiment of San Francisco’s struggles: sparkling and inspiring at the start, then facing troubles, a trough of darkness, and now hope for something better sparked and on the horizon.
I’d love to get as many citizens and addresses in San Francisco as donors, however small, to round out the last bit of the funding, so that as many people as possible can feel the ownership and pride of making the city better. Back in January when I promoted this last it was on a terrible platform, it’s now been re-done by the GiveWP team to be totally native WordPress and a slick donation experience, easy to do on mobile and with Apple Pay. (Major kudos to Devin Walker there!) Please share the link to your friends, especially ones that see the bridge from their home, for $10 it’s the cheapest pro-social dopamine boost you can have every time you look at the bridge.
