Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️
banner
brennanbrown.ca
Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️
@brennanbrown.ca
29/Métis/Queer
Calgary author. BA English (Hons.)
Founder of BerryHouse.ca & WriteClub.ca
Author of PRAIRIE BOYSPIRIT

I write about poetry, Indigenous lit, craft, tech criticism, & intersectionality

I follow back!

🔆 brennan.day | 📝 blog.brennanbrown.ca
Pinned
Hi 👋

I'm Brennan. I've been writing poetry for 15 years and blogging for a decade. 170+ articles and counting!

Here's what I write about:
📖 Poetry craft
🪶 Indigenous literature
♿ Representation in media
💻 Tech criticism
🌿 Analog practices & slow living
✍️ The actual work of building a writing life
Life is 99% mundane. But no corporation wants you to create freely. They want you scrolling, consuming, producing.

Daywriting is the practice of archiving your ordinary existence. For survival.

100 words about today.
I wrote a framework for 2026.

Start here: blog.brennanbrown.ca/how-can-we-u...
How Can We Use the Internet for Good?
A manifesto on what do we do when the world is on fire: Daywriting.
blog.brennanbrown.ca
January 4, 2026 at 6:39 PM
A Taylor Swift lyric gave me an existential crisis about all the art that never gets made.

How many would-be artists never picked up the brush because someone told them no too many times?

This is about you, yes, you. 2026 needs your weird, unmade thing.

🔗 blog.brennanbrown.ca/how-a-taylor...
How a Taylor Swift Lyric Gave Me an Existential Crisis
You must go all-in on the gamble of the harvest.
blog.brennanbrown.ca
January 3, 2026 at 4:34 AM
Top 16% of devs this year! Let's go! 🥳
January 2, 2026 at 6:10 AM
Yesterday I posted about why I'm not a full-stack dev.

Today, I'm sharing I've stopped using AI in my coding entirely.

I've lost convenience. I've gained the feeling that I'm actually learning. I'm creating something genuinely mine.

🔗 blog.brennanbrown.ca/why-im-no-lo...
Why I’m No Longer Using AI in Coding
On Consistent Ethics, Veganism, and the Love of Friction
blog.brennanbrown.ca
January 1, 2026 at 1:14 PM
While software devs are scrambling to master AI tools to stay relevant, I'm doing the opposite.

25% of Y Combinator startups now have codebases that are 95% AI-generated. Employment for junior devs dropped 20% between 2022 and 2025.

But there's an answer.

🔗 medium.com/@brennanbrow...
Why I’m NOT a Full-Stack Dev
Software developers are at a turning point. There’s one way out.
medium.com
December 31, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️
December 27, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Could you live entirely on public domain & open source culture? No Spotify. No Netflix. Just Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, etc.

Is there a rich cultural life entirely on the commons? Or is modern culture locked too tight behind copyright?

🔗 blog.brennanbrown.ca/living-off-o...
Living Off of ONLY Public Domain Work for 2026
Existing in a Copyright-free World
blog.brennanbrown.ca
December 29, 2025 at 7:05 PM
The internet promised connection.
Instead, it gave us surveillance.

We need to look at:
• why most platforms fail
• why “just use Discord” isn’t the answer
• and what building something better might actually look like

What can we do with what we have?

medium.com/@brennanbrow...
A Digital Third Space?
Notes on figuring out how we create community online.
medium.com
December 28, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Happy Boxing Day! We at Berry House have been working hard on our latest project: Introducing Calgary Groups, a new way to find your community! 🌱 Yvonne Berger (www.linkedin.com/in/yvonne-be...) my co-founder, has been working tirelessly curating and researching these groups.

calgarygroups.ca
Directory | Calgary Groups
A centralized, searchable directory to help Calgarians find grassroots organizations, clubs, activist groups, and community initiatives.
calgarygroups.ca
December 26, 2025 at 11:41 PM
Creation does not need to be productive. Art does not need to be good. Your ugly website and your clashing colours are not a moral failing.

The lie is that you have to be “good” before you’re allowed to begin.

And the practice is the resistance.

medium.com/@brennanbrow...
Do It Ugly
The Biggest Lie You’ve Been Told
medium.com
December 26, 2025 at 12:47 PM
After several days of sprinting silly dev work, I am so happy to announce my newest project, brennan.day

This is now my official home on the IndieWeb and where I'll be spending most of my time digitally.

source code: gitlab.com/brennankbrow...
Home
Journal entries, essays, poetry, and musings on craft, technology, and the human experience. A Queer Métis writer exploring the intersections of Indigenous identity, digital culture, and creativity.
brennan.day
December 21, 2025 at 12:50 PM
I fell down an IndieWeb rabbit hole and found a $20/year service that feels like the fun web again.

No VC bullshit. No algorithmic “perform for reach.” Just tools for having a corner of the internet that’s actually yours.

🔗 blog.brennanbrown.ca/omg-lol-is-t...
omg.lol is the Internet We Need Right Now
How a Single Service Is Rebuilding the Web
blog.brennanbrown.ca
December 13, 2025 at 2:45 PM
While users develop romantic attachments to AI, there's a man in a Nairobi slum typing every word. Paid $0.05 per message, juggling multiple fake identities, not knowing if he's training AI or impersonating it.

Read the investigation: blog.brennanbrown.ca/are-nsfw-ai-...
Are NSFW AI Companions Actually Just Exploited Workers in Developing Countries?
Part 3 of a series on the AI Crisis
blog.brennanbrown.ca
December 11, 2025 at 8:52 PM
You don't have writer's block. You have zero drafts.

I spent years collecting notebooks, trying apps and systems.

Objects in motion stay in motion.

The secret? Write one ugly sentence. Then another.

Essay on why we optimize instead (and how to stop):

🔗 blog.brennanbrown.ca/the-inertia-...
THE INERTIA EFFECT: Stop Optimizing
Writers that write badly instead of plan extremely well are… better writers?
blog.brennanbrown.ca
December 11, 2025 at 6:33 AM
We're witnessing genocide in real time. In Gaza, Sudan, Congo. Blood visible from space.

Most of us do nothing. What we actually owe the living?

Not despair. Concrete actions we can take this week.

🔗 blog.brennanbrown.ca/witnessing-p...
Witnessing Palestine & the United States
Notes on Apocalypse and What We Owe the Living.
blog.brennanbrown.ca
December 9, 2025 at 11:50 PM
A potato rots from the inside when it can't breathe. A fig sours when something enters through the eye.

I wrote an essay weaving agriculture, Plath, Frost, men's mental health, pandemic grief, and privilege.

"When We Get Blackheart"
🔗 blog.brennanbrown.ca/when-we-get-...
When We Get Blackheart
An Essay on Potatoes, Figs, Men, and the Truth.
medium.com
December 9, 2025 at 5:02 AM
The best part of writing isn't publishing or readers or accolades. It's the practice itself. The showing up.

My essays usually reach twenty people. Maybe a hundred if I'm very lucky.

Your civic duty isn't to be successful. It's to pay attention. To notice. To make.

🔗 medium.com/@brennanbrow...
Your Civic Duty to Make Art
On the downfall of NaNoWriMo, democracy as creative practice, the bread we bake, and waking up.
medium.com
December 8, 2025 at 6:06 AM
I've been thinking about my grandfather, a news editor at the Winnipeg Free Press, and what journalism meant before the internet ate everything.

We've lost newsrooms and the printing press.

We can't go back. But we can choose to work with the same integrity.

🔗 medium.com/@brennanbrow...
10 Ways to Write Like the 90’s
Using the Methods of Journalists from the Past to Inspire Your Writing Today
medium.com
December 7, 2025 at 5:45 AM
What is a poet allowed to be?

I published an essay on why the backlash against Rupi Kaur says more about us than it does about her.

If #instapoetry was your thing, this is for you:
🔗 blog.brennanbrown.ca/in-defence-o...
In Defence of Rupi Kaur
The Necessary, Complicated Legacy of Canada’s Best-selling Poet
blog.brennanbrown.ca
December 6, 2025 at 4:38 AM
hot take: your name matters less than your message
i'm giving away 10 years of writing. take it, remix it, crop my name out. idc.

Are you clinging to authorship because capitalism taught you to? Or because the message matters?

LINK: medium.com/@brennanbrow...
Steal My Work
An Invitation to Theft, A Refusal of Authorship, and Why Your Name Matters Less Than Your Message
medium.com
December 5, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Everything being "free" on the Internet has trained us to scroll past everything.

The attention economy has taught us that, outside of streaming services, nothing is worth paying for.

Let's change that. Let's change how we use the Internet.

LINK: blog.brennanbrown.ca/move-to-a-be...
Move to a Better Internet in 2026.
Why You (yes, you) Should Join Medium, Tumblr, and NeoCities.
blog.brennanbrown.ca
December 3, 2025 at 7:35 PM
The world has ended three times.

You were there for each one. So was I. We just didn't know it.

September 26, 1983: 23 minutes
October 27, 1962: 4 hours
May 4, 1986: 15 minutes

You probably don't know them, but you're alive because of them.

LINK: blog.brennanbrown.ca/the-three-ti...
The Three Times the World Nearly Ended
Ordinary people chose to do the right thing and saved us all. We barely remember them.
medium.com
December 1, 2025 at 11:49 PM
24 articles. 106,975 presentations. 44,671 views. 5,579 reads. $580 in earnings.

One month. All longform. All demanding reader attention.

Quality engagement matters more than raw impressions.

Full breakdown: blog.brennanbrown.ca/i-wrote-24-l...

#Journalism #Writing #Media #ContentStrategy
I wrote 24 longform articles in one month, and I’ve made a livable wage doing so.
What I’ve learned getting out of my own way.
blog.brennanbrown.ca
November 30, 2025 at 2:33 PM
The internet is now 51% bots. AI detectors don't work. 90% of online content will be synthetic by 2026.

We're facing an authenticity crisis where you can't prove you're human and I can't prove comments on my work are real.

The bubble will pop, it has to.

blog.brennanbrown.ca/the-piss-ave...
The Piss Average Problem
The Age of AI is a Crisis of Faith
blog.brennanbrown.ca
November 29, 2025 at 5:01 PM
The internet is now 51% bots. AI detectors don't work. 90% of online content will be synthetic by 2026.

We're facing an authenticity crisis where you can't prove you're human and I can't prove = comments on my work are real.

The bubble will pop, it has to.

blog.brennanbrown.ca/the-piss-ave...
The Piss Average Problem
The Age of AI is a Crisis of Faith
blog.brennanbrown.ca
November 29, 2025 at 4:59 PM