yoooooo —

over the last couple of months, i've been burning brain cells exploring the intersection of creative work and politics — what does it mean to be an engaged citizen who creates work in a world filled with corruption, violence, and deceit?

i'm still untangling my own thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes, dreams, and nightmares around creativity and politics, and will likely be sharing more in the weeks to come.

but one thing i keep coming back to: sometimes the most powerful creative act isn't making something beautiful — it's making something accessible. taking information that's buried, obscured, or deliberately hard to parse, and building a door so regular folks can walk through it.

which brings me to a project i came across last week.

riley walz, a software engineer and artist, built a gmail-style interface for browsing epstein's emails — over 1.4 million files archived, searchable just like your inbox. it even has "jemini," a gemini clone that lets you interact with the files directly. waaaaaay more usable than the raw DOJ dumps.

this is creativity in service of transparency.

with all the fear mongering, manipulation, and hype that define media today, i think there's something valuable in going straight to the source when you can. not to "do your own research" in the conspiracy theorist sense, but to sit with primary documents and form your own questions and conclusions before letting someone else frame them for you.

check it out — and let me know what sort of weird shit you run into.

from the garden

• just dropped a few new notes in the garden. one has some raw thoughts on consistency. the other is me convincing myself that thinking in public is a good thing. and the last one has some initial observations about creative cross-pollination.