Hey, I’ve Been Thinking…

Tag: writing

  • Sunday Thoughts: We’re All Becoming Builders in the Decentralization Era

    I’m not a developer. Let me just get that out there. I’m a commerce guy who gets excited about technology, and what I’m seeing right now is blowing my mind.

    Six months ago, I couldn’t have imagined writing a line of code. Today? I’m playing around with Cursor, experimenting with no-code tools, and I’ve actually got an IDE running on my Mac. Am I building the next Facebook? No. But I’m creating small, useful software for my specific needs. And that’s the point – we’re entering an era where everyone can be a builder.

    The Great Unbundling

    Here’s what hit me this week: Everything is decentralizing, and it’s happening faster than most people realize.

    Rails World 2025 just wrapped up in Amsterdam (literally two days ago!), and while I wasn’t there, I’ve been catching up on all the buzz. Last year at Rails World 2024, DHH unveiled OMAKUB – basically Ubuntu Linux that you can set up with one command. But here’s what stuck with me: Linux runs on 96.3% of the top one million web servers. This free, open-source operating system that thousands of developers have worked on for 30+ years essentially is the internet.

    Then earlier this year, 37signals dropped Campfire – a chat tool like Slack that you buy once for $299 and host yourself. No monthly fees. Forever. DHH literally ran a conference chat from a computer in his closet to prove the point. In his blog post about it, he said it best: “SaaS has been ruling the world of web-based software for two decades now… But there’s also a lot of SaaS that does not need to be a service.”

    Why does this matter? Because we’ve been sleepwalking into a world where we rent everything and own nothing.

    The “Why Are We Doing This?” Moment

    Let’s be real for a second. Why are five companies basically running the American economy? Why does every business decision, every communication, every piece of data flow through the same handful of Silicon Valley giants?

    I’m not saying these companies are evil. They built incredible things. But we’ve reached a point where the concentration of power doesn’t make sense anymore. The tools to build alternatives exist. The hardware is powerful enough. The networks are fast enough.

    So why are we still paying monthly fees forever just to chat with our coworkers?

    Chamath Palihapitiya, the former Facebook exec turned venture capitalist, has been saying this for years. He famously called social media tools “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works” and predicted big tech companies will be “taxed to death” and face regulatory breakup. Back in May 2024 on the All-In Podcast (at the 53:00 mark), he predicted Bitcoin could hit $500,000 by October 2025 – we’re just a month away from his deadline, and while we’re not quite there yet, the momentum toward decentralization he was talking about is undeniable.

    The Commerce Revolution I’m Actually Excited About

    As someone in commerce, this shift is personal for me. For too long, online selling meant choosing between Amazon, Shopify, or maybe one or two other platforms. A handful of retailers have controlled how products reach consumers.

    But that’s changing. Fast.

    We’re seeing:

    • Creator commerce where individuals build direct relationships with customers
    • Video commerce that’s more like QVC meets TikTok than traditional e-commerce
    • Decentralized marketplaces where sellers actually own their customer relationships
    • Token-based systems that let communities govern themselves while still maintaining order

    The DeFi market is projected to grow from $20.48B in 2024 to $231.19B by 2030 – that’s a 53.7% annual growth rate. This isn’t chaos – it’s organized decentralization. We can have rules and systems without having overlords.

    The Hardware Finally Catches Up (And My Personal Connection)

    Ok, here’s where it gets personal for me. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and man, those were beautiful times for a computer nerd. From kindergarten through high school, I spent my days at my dad’s computer shop. Seven days a week, we were building PCs, servicing PCs, living and breathing PCs.

    I watched us go from DOS to Windows 3.1 (which was mind-blowing at the time), then to Windows 95, which felt like the future had arrived. We were constantly upgrading – swapping out sound cards (remember Sound Blaster?), video cards, adding memory. Going from a 256MB hard drive to 512MB felt like you’d just bought a mansion. Every component was a choice, an upgrade path, a possibility.

    Then laptops happened. And suddenly, you buy a MacBook, something breaks, you buy a new MacBook. Dell laptops? Same story. The whole beautiful ecosystem of modular computing just… died. It’s been insane, honestly.

    Enter Framework. They’re making laptops where you can swap out ANY component. Screen breaks? Replace the screen. Need a faster processor? Swap it out. Want better graphics? Pop in a new module – takes 5 minutes. They announced earlier this year you can upgrade from an RX 7700S to an RTX 5070 in their Framework 16.

    And here’s the beautiful part: AMD’s latest chips are now legitimately competitive with Apple’s M-series. You can get MacBook-level performance in a machine you actually own and can repair. For someone who grew up in the era of “open it up and tinker,” this feels like coming home.

    Linus Tech Tips invested $225,000 of his own money in Framework because he believes in this vision so strongly. The Framework laptop got a 10/10 repairability score from iFixit. For the past decade, laptops have been expensive disposable items. That’s ending.

    The Money Thing We Need to Talk About

    The U.S. is now actively moving on cryptocurrency regulation and adoption. The GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025) was just signed into law in July 2025 – creating the first federal regulatory framework for stablecoins. This bipartisan legislation, which passed 68-30 in the Senate and 308-122 in the House, requires stablecoins to be backed 1:1 by US dollars or low-risk assets.

    Major banks like JPMorgan Chase and retailers like Amazon and Walmart are already planning to issue their own stablecoins. The Act positions the US to lead the global digital currency revolution while strengthening the dollar’s reserve currency status – stablecoins will actually drive demand for US Treasuries. Additionally, 19 US states have introduced Bitcoin reserve legislation as of late 2024.

    Whether you love or hate crypto, you can’t ignore what this represents: even governments are recognizing that centralized control of money might not be the only way forward.

    This isn’t about becoming a crypto bro. It’s about recognizing that the fundamental structures of our economy are becoming more distributed. And that’s probably healthy.

    What This Actually Means for Regular People

    Here’s why I’m writing this on a Sunday morning, coffee in hand, genuinely excited about the future:

    We’re becoming creators, not just consumers.

    When I fire up Cursor and start building something, I’m not trying to create the next unicorn startup. I’m solving my own problems. Creating tools for my specific needs. The stats are wild – 76% of developers are using or planning to use AI coding assistants, and they’re seeing 26% productivity increases.

    But here’s the real kicker – you don’t need to be a developer anymore. I’m living proof. Six months ago, code was gibberish to me. Now I’m building stuff. Not perfect stuff, not production-ready stuff necessarily, but MY stuff. Tools that solve MY problems.

    This is the real revolution: The barriers between “technical” and “non-technical” people are dissolving. My kids will grow up in a world where creating software is as normal as creating a PowerPoint presentation is today.

    The Framework for Everything

    What we’re seeing isn’t just about Linux or laptops or Bitcoin. It’s a fundamental shift in how we think about ownership, creation, and power:

    • Own, don’t rent – Whether it’s software (Campfire for $299 once), hardware (Framework laptops), or digital assets
    • Build for yourself – The tools are accessible enough that you can solve your own problems (I’m doing it with Cursor!)
    • Participate, don’t just consume – Whether it’s open source, DAOs, or creator economies
    • Modularity over monoliths – In hardware, software, and business models

    Where We Go From Here

    The beautiful thing about this movement is that it’s not theoretical. You can participate today:

    • Try Linux: With tools like OMAKUB, it’s genuinely easy now – one command and you’re running
    • Build something: Even if you’re not technical, tools like Cursor make it possible (trust me, if I can do it…)
    • Buy hardware that lasts: Framework laptops exist today – and they’re actually good
    • Support decentralized commerce: Buy directly from creators when possible
    • Question the subscription model: Do you really need to rent that software forever?

    The Bottom Line

    We’re living through a profound shift. The age of five companies controlling everything is ending. Not because of regulation or revolution, but because better alternatives are emerging.

    The centralized model made sense when coordination was hard and resources were scarce. But we’re past that now. We have the tools, the networks, and the knowledge to build differently.

    What excites me most isn’t the technology itself – it’s what it enables. When everyone can build, when commerce is truly peer-to-peer, when we own our tools instead of renting them, we get a more vibrant, creative, resilient economy.

    That’s not just cool. That’s transformative.

    And the best part? We’re just getting started. Rails World 2025 just showed us that the community pushing for this change is stronger than ever. The momentum is real. The future is decentralized.

    These are my Sunday thoughts as a non-technical person watching the tech world transform. I’m curious – what changes are you seeing in your industry? How is decentralization showing up in your world?

    P.S. – If you’re like me and thought coding was impossible, seriously, try Cursor or another AI-assisted tool. You might surprise yourself with what you can build. I sure as hell did.

    Resources & Links

    Want to dive deeper? Here’s where I’ve been learning:

    The Linux/Open Source Revolution

    The ONCE Movement & Campfire

    Framework & Modular Hardware

    AI Democratizing Code

    Bitcoin & Decentralized Finance

    The Numbers Behind It All

    Note: Yeah, I went down quite the rabbit hole researching all this. But that’s what Sunday mornings are for, right?

  • Why I Built a Furniture Industry News Aggregator (Because 12 Browser Tabs Was Too Many)

    I’m sitting in our warehouse this Sunday morning, July 13th, surrounded by moving boxes. We just wrapped our team meeting, and I finally have time to share something I’ve been building in the evenings after the kids go to bed.

    If you work in home furnishings—whether you’re a buyer, designer, manufacturer, or retailer—you know the morning ritual. Open Furniture Today. Check Home Accents Today. Scan Architectural Digest. Pop over to Apartment Therapy. By the time your coffee’s lukewarm, you’ve got a dozen tabs open and you’re still not sure you caught everything important.

    Last month, I decided to come up with a solution. The result? FurniPulse—a simple tool that pulls 19+ furniture industry sources into one clean feed, updated every 20 minutes.

    screenshot of the homepage of furnipulse.com

    The Pulse of the Business

    In the furniture industry, any good company needs to know where the consumer mindset is and what’s happening in the competitive landscape. There’s SO much going on all the time—new collections dropping, trends shifting, competitors making moves, trade shows approaching.

    (Quick sidebar: you need to know what’s going on, but you also need your own vision. Like, I check what West Elm is doing, but I’m not trying to BE West Elm, you know? It’s more like… okay, they’re pushing curved sofas hard this season. Good to know. But maybe my customers are still loving their sectionals. You can’t just chase every trend—you’ll drive yourself crazy and lose what makes you unique.)

    If I’m being perfectly honest, there’s definitely some FOMO mixed in there too. You see a competitor mentioned in a trade pub and think “what are they up to?” Or a design blog features some trend you haven’t heard of and suddenly you’re wondering if you’re behind the curve.

    Every morning, I’d find myself with a dozen tabs open, trying to piece together the full picture. Trade news in one corner telling me about manufacturing changes. Consumer blogs in another showing me how those changes were being spun to the public. Industry announcements scattered across five different sites.

    This is just what we do. It’s part professional necessity, part curiosity, part not wanting to be the last one to know something important. But I kept thinking—there has to be a better way to stay connected to all this without the constant tab juggling.

    So I thought: why not create this for myself? One place where I could actually feel the rhythm of the industry without the morning scramble. A single feed that shows me both sides of the story—what manufacturers are saying and what consumers are reading.

    That’s how FurniPulse was born. Not from crisis or frustration. More from recognizing that this thing we all do—this mix of staying informed and maintaining our own direction—could be simpler.

    Building Without Being a Builder

    Here’s the part that still amazes me: I built this myself. Me. A furniture guy who couldn’t write a line of code six weeks ago.

    With all these AI coding tools dropping—Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT—I started wondering: could I actually build something to solve my own problem? Not hire someone. Not wait six months. Just… build it myself?

    So I did. Over the last few weeks, spending a couple hours each evening, I created FurniPulse. The process was surreal. I’m literally talking to these tools using Whisper AI, explaining what I want like I’m training a really smart intern. Share a screenshot here, describe a feature there, and somehow, working code appears.

    My wife would find me at 11 PM, muttering at my laptop about RSS feeds and Python scripts. “Are you becoming one of those tech guys?” she’d ask. Maybe I am.

    What FurniPulse Actually Does

    At its core, FurniPulse is simple:

    Every 20 minutes, it automatically:

    • Scans 19 trusted sources (and growing)
    • Collects fresh articles—currently tracking 239 articles
    • Organizes by relevance—Trade news for professionals, Consumer news for enthusiasts
    • Delivers instantly—accessible on any device at furnipulse.com

    Two viewing modes:

    • Trade Mode – Industry news, B2B updates, manufacturing insights, tariff announcements
    • Consumer Mode – Design trends, home decor, lifestyle content

    The magic is in seeing both perspectives side by side. You start to notice things.

    The Patterns You Can’t Unsee

    Once I had both trade and consumer feeds in one place, the matrix revealed itself:

    The 48-Hour Rule: Trade news hits consumer blogs 48-72 hours later, like clockwork. Tariff announced Monday? By Wednesday, Apartment Therapy has “5 Ways to Style Your Space Before Prices Rise!”

    The PR Playbook: Product launches follow a script—leaked photo, official announcement, influencer “surprise” post, consumer blog round-up. Every. Single. Time. Now I can practically predict which stories will blow up.

    Market Momentum: Vegas Market prep started ramping up exactly 6 weeks out across every publication. The cascade is so predictable, you could set your calendar by it.

    The Translation Gap: What manufacturers call “supply chain optimization” becomes “Why Your Favorite Sofa Might Cost More” in consumer media. Watching how industry jargon gets translated for consumers is a masterclass in communication.

    The Technical Journey (For Fellow Non-Techies)

    I spent three nights googling “how to parse RSS feeds” before realizing I was massively overthinking it. The fourth night, I had a working prototype.

    The tools I used:

    • Cursor on my Mac (it’s like VS Code but understands plain English)
    • Claude/ChatGPT for problem-solving
    • Whisper AI for voice-to-text (because typing is slow when you’re excited)
    • Python for the backend (which I learned as I went)
    • Some hosting service I still don’t fully understand but it works

    I almost gave up when I realized I’d have to manually categorize 47 different publications. Some use “furnishings,” others “furniture,” and don’t get me started on whether “décor” needs an accent. Then I remembered: done is better than perfect.

    The biggest surprise? It’s ridiculously cheap to run. Like, less than my monthly coffee budget cheap.

    What This Means for Our Industry

    We’re at an inflection point. When a furniture guy can build software by talking to AI at 11 PM, what else becomes possible?

    Think about all the inefficiencies in our industry:

    • Inventory management spreadsheets that haven’t changed since 2003
    • Quote processes that still involve three emails and a PDF
    • Showroom experiences that ignore everything we know about digital retail

    If I can solve my news problem in a few weeks of evenings, what could you build to solve yours?

    The Reality Check

    FurniPulse isn’t perfect. My wife thinks the name is terrible (she’s probably right). I still manually check Dwell because their RSS feed is broken. Sometimes the categorization is wonky—apparently “ottoman” can mean furniture OR the empire, depending on context.

    But every morning when I open one tab instead of twelve, when I catch trends before they hit mainstream, when I save 30 minutes that I can spend on actual business—it’s worth it.

    What’s Next

    Right now, my goal is simple: get feedback. Is this useful beyond my own morning routine? What sources am I missing? How could it be better?

    I’m not thinking about monetization. Maybe sponsors down the line, but that’s a careful road. For now, it costs almost nothing to run, and if it helps others in our industry stay informed, that’s enough.

    Once we get through this warehouse move and into fall, I want to create more tools like this. Share what works. Build in public. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the gap between “I wish someone would build…” and “I built…” is smaller than ever.

    Try It Yourself

    FurniPulse is live at furnipulse.com. It’s free, it’s basic, but it works.

    If you’re drowning in furniture industry news every morning, give it a try. And if you know of publications I’m missing, please let me know. Currently tracking 19 sources, but our industry is vast and I’m always looking to improve.

    More importantly, if you’ve got your own itch to scratch—that spreadsheet that drives you crazy, that process that wastes hours, that information gap that costs money—maybe it’s time to build your own solution.

    All of us are techies now, whether we admit it or not.

    Drop me a line at adam@woven.com. I’d love to hear what you think, what you’d build, or just commiserate about the state of RSS feeds in 2024.

    Time to get back to these moving boxes. But first, one more coffee and a quick check of FurniPulse. Old habits die hard—they just get more efficient.

    —Adem

    P.S. – Still looking for someone who can fix Dwell’s RSS feed. Coffee and eternal gratitude await.