About
…me
This is the verbal playground of Guido Beekman.
I’m fascinated by information flows. After spending considerable time working with visual information through photography and visual arts, my interests have shifted towards the “behind-the-scenes” mechanics of how information travels and transforms. This manifests in several areas:
- Code implementation and architecture
- Information presentation and structure
- Marketing and persuasion techniques
- Disinformation, manipulation and deceit analysis
I’m a self-confessed command line enthusiast—I dream in vim and consume Python methods and Linux commands for breakfast. Conveniently, command line output integrates seamlessly into structured articles.
Whenever feasible, I favour open source solutions over their closed source alternatives.
…this website
While I enjoy writing about technology and instructing others, these articles also serve as personal reference material (answering questions like “how did I achieve that particular result?”).
Tech stack in use
This website runs on a custom-built Flask-based micro-publishing platform. Previously hosted on Pelican—a solid platform in its own right—I found it somewhat limiting for websites extending beyond simple blogging. Flask makes creating something like this from scratch relatively straightforward when leveraging Blueprints and the application factory pattern for architecture.
Please note that as the platform powering this project remains under active development (and was initially designed for larger screens), mobile support for the current theme hasn’t been finalised. The site may function on mobile devices but will, for the time being, display optimally on larger screens.
The site also implements the brand new Tailwind CSS v4. Since this was released in January 2025, I am still getting used to this major update and will use this website to play around with its new features.
What I've been reading
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism A critical account of Facebook's internal culture and decision-making practices, written by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former director of public policy at Facebook.
Parroting sanity New York magazine has a wonderful profile of Emily Bender, a paragon of informed sanity in the nonsense about ChatGPT: You Are Not a Parrot – And a Chatbot Is not a Human.
Moral programming Maciej Cegłowski, one of the wisest observers of the industry, gives a terrific talk on The Moral Economy of Tech.