Elan Ullendorff

@elan.place

1462 Followers 926 Following

Algorithmic escape artist | Rolling Stone called me one of the people "quietly keeping the spirit of the human, personal, creative internet alive" Teaching @UPenn, Product @MarshallProj | 📍Philly 💌 Subscribe: https://escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Screenshot of a website for Tiny Awards. It has a medieval aesthetic with arches displaying flowers, and a person pouring an urn into a well. Below the text reads "Nominate a Site for Tiny Awards 2026"
The students tremble-walk this curve like a tightrope, trying not to look down for fear that they will catch sight of the world they are setting aflame. Meanwhile, the university is erecting a 116,000-square-foot, six-story, energy-efficient building to further advancements in artificial intelligence. April was just declared AI Month.
Anti-viral with Hallie Bateman
Student looking at a zine called cyberpunk apocalypse with a grainy photo of shadowed people and recreating it as a website
“The media represents world that is more real than reality that we can experience. People lose the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. They also begin to engage with the fantasy without realizing what it really is. They seek happiness and fulfilment through the simulacra of reality, e.g. media and avoid the contact/interaction with the real world. (Note: This quote is fake and does not appear in Simulacra and Simulation. I tried to delete it, but the system doesn't allow that because this quote has "too many fans" lol.)” — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
Screenshot of New York Times story with a banner ad that reads "(1) View PDF" and has a download button
Two snowmen wearing boxing gloves face off in a snowy ring, one of their heads lies knocked off on the ground.
flyer for a course at penn called escape the algorithm. praise from past students: "this class was unlike any other one i've taken. it felt real and personal." "I'd enthusiastically recommend this course to anyone interested in platform design, media studies, or just figuring out how to move through the web more intentionally." "Escape the Algorithm taught me how to unsee the internet I thought I knew, and begin imagining what a more human, slower, stranger digital future could look like." "This class really reshaped how I think, create, and collaborate." "This course has been one of the most creatively liberating and intellectually stimulating experiences I've had at Penn."
The Internet Phone book lying on a page being colored on by a child
Instagram screenshot, post by 404mediaco: freelance developers and entire companies are making a business out of fixing shoddy vibe coded software
upside down picture of victoria from white lotus with her thumb up. caption reads "(sighs, chuckles)"
substack feed post 1: I don't care if you have 0 subscribers or 10,000. I want to read your work. Drop your Substack below. I will read as many as I can and subscribe to those that resonate. I will support the voices that need to be heard. And if a writer speaks to your soul, lift them up. Share their work. Pass it on. Your voice matters. Your words have power. Let's grow and rise together. post 2: Writers, let's grow together! Great newsletters deserve more eyes. Whether you have 0 or 100K subscribers, drop your Substack below and let people discover your work. See something interesting? Subscribe, share, or comment. Let's support each other! Drop your link & spread the word.
scrolling through a website with a lot of sticker-like objects. each object is labeled with a from and to. for example, a lindt chocolate box from dipti to zara models (the gc) the stickers are draggable and the website is absolutely full of them
three buttons in grammarly's interface: 1) review suggestions, 2) write with generative AI, 3) check for AI text & plagiarism
Zines spread on a table
8 postcards spread out on the table. one has an illustration of the chicago bean, one has a comic, and one reads "Hi, Elan. Did you expect to get one from more than 6,000km away when you typed 'write me a thoughtful postcard?'"
website screenshot that reads: A tiny Flappy Bird clone that lives in your favicon. Wonder why I made this? Don't overthink it. Also you probably can figure it out but this doesn't work on mobile. I also only tested it on chrome lol. favicon of the website is a tiny game of flappy bird
Compensation and Benefits This job is full-time, with a competitive salary and benefits including: 100% employer-paid medical, employer-subsidized vision and dental insurance; matching traditional and Roth 401k (immediate vesting). Voluntary benefits include: Health and Dependent Care FSA, commuter benefits, pet insurance, short and long-term disability insurance, employee and dependent life insurance, AFLAC accident, hospital indemnity, and critical illness coverage, legal benefits, personal excess liability insurance, and employee discount marketplace. We also observe 17 days of paid time off each year (in addition to office closure between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2), and provide 20 weeks of paid parental leave. Annual Salary Range: $95–$110k The Marshall Project has office space in New York, but this job can be filled remotely. This job is represented by the Marshall Project Guild.
Comment from Tom Pendergast: "How do you feel about homemade pepper jelly?"
It would allow us to create a new social media-like interface for journalism. Where we could reclaim the word ‘Fact’, and separate research and journalistic work from everyday opinions. Where short content links through to longer articles, where local news comes first, and where revenue is shared. We believe it’s a vision worth fighting for, and we’ve started bringing it to life under the name “niooze” (pronounced like ‘news’).
Curiosity The exciting thing about this course material is that there are infinite lenses through which to examine algorithms. Please do not turn in work targeted at my curiosities. Everyone can find some way to square the course material with their own interests. So I expect you to obsess. Go down rabbit holes, seek out things that excite you. If you want to do a slightly different assignment, make the case to me for how it will better your learning. You may want to learn a skill not covered in class. I encourage that, and am happy to serve as a resource.
Expressiveness I am a real-life human bringing my full messy self to this classroom. I ask that you bring your full self as well. You will never hear me accuse you of cheating with generative AI. However, you will likely hear me tell you that I want to see even more of you in your work (whether or not you used AI). Generative AI will have limited use in acting expressively. If you do find uses for it in your work, be open about it and share. It’s less important to me that your work is perfectly polished, or that it reaches some [non-existent] objective aesthetic ideal. I want to see work that an AI wouldn’t have known how to make. Or forget about AI: I want to see work that is so you that nobody else could have made it.
In light of all the chaos in the United States, I was thinking about archives, about how information is preserved when so many want to destroy it. I was thinking especially about queerness and how often regimes try to erase our history, our art, our lives. And so I started thinking about what I want to save. Not just of myself, but the digital artifacts I've collected over the years of our vibrant community. So I opened a web browser to search. I followed a link. I found the Zine Bakery's zine about web archiving. I followed more links. I found stickers from Molly White that say "I'm not hording I'm archiving". I followed her website to Maxwell Neely-Cohen's essay "Century-Scale Storage". I scrolled through his Bluesky. He mentioned an essay called "The Doc Web" by Elan Ullendorff. On his Bluesky account I found this link. This link and this story remind me of my early days on the internet, where looking for answers often led you someplace unexpected. Sometimes that place was personal or public or personally public in the ways only the internet can be. Sharing in these spaces, being visible, connects us even in times of disconnect. And for me, right now, in a tiny way it connects me to the long history of queerness that's come before. Anonymous, often scared people saying "I was here. No matter what they told you, I was here". Queer people will never be erased. Trans people will never be erased. We were here. We are here. You are living history that deserves to be saved.
Upon entering the page, I was immediately distracted by another link, a quiet alcove halfway down that read "poetry archive". I wanted to see the poetry archive. I clicked. "Unable to connect to remote host," Mosaic responded. I was peeved. The door was locked! I clicked a link at the bottom of the screen, where the name of the author of the page was listed: Paul Mende. After a minute of waiting (not unusual), Mende's picture appeared. He was smiling and young, with bushy brown hair and a large mustache. His page listed his research interests: "String Theory, Quantum Chromdynamics." Then came a section called Odds and Ends, under which were listed New Fiction and Readings, Benjamin's Home Page, and "local docs." What were the local docs? Who was Benjamin? Most Popular The 22 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now Culture The 22 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now By Matt Kamen The 25 Best Shows on Amazon Prime Right Now TV The 25 Best Shows on Amazon Prime Right Now By Matt Kamen Before finding out, I glanced at the rest of the document, and it was then that I began to experience the vertigo of Net travel. On the lower parts of the page were abstracts of Paul's scientific papers, some co-authored with Benjamin Grinstein. "High energy string collisions in a compact space," was one of the titles. This meant nothing to me, of course. But, having sought a respite in poetry, it was dizzying to have wandered into the company of a physicist. It was a type of voyeurism, yes, but it was less like peeking into a person's window and more like dropping in on a small seminar with a cloak of invisibility. One thing it was not like: it was not like being in a library. The whole experience gave an intense illusion, not of information, but of personality. I had been treating the ether as a kind of data repository, and I suddenly found myself in the confines of a scientist's study, complete with family pictures.
Tim Cook goes down the Severance elevator and walks down the white Severance halls and then watches a tv that announces Severance Season 2 on Apple TV
That’s the impact on me on the inputs process. Then comes the summation, the work and skill required to try to figure out how to properly summarize what happened in a room, what happened on the worksheets. When I see AI being suggested as a summarizing agent, I’m not only concerned about the accuracy of what is created through the use of automation, but moreso the absence or loss of what does not get done — what is inefficient and what is dull. I’m concerned because in the time-pressured world we live in, where efficiency is a constant measure of our professional capacity, there is every incentive to rid ourselves of this type of work if and where we can. Then comes the difference between what a machine can summarize of words and what it cannot even consider because of how something was said. We’ve all been in a meeting where the delivery of a remark was much more important than the words used to say it. That is something that I’ve learned how to translate into my reporting. I’m pretty confident this skill is hard to pull off in any automated way.
We need to examine the logic that guides the hands, picking certain algorithms rather than others, choosing particular representations of data, and translating ideas into code.
If the most common metaphor for algorithms is following a recipe, then the goal shouldn’t be to stop making food, but to become so attuned to the shape of cooking that we can make substitutions and eventually, our own recipes. If we’re bold enough to question the maps we've been given, we may discover a world richer, stranger, and more alive than anything an algorithm could drop at our feet.
Screenshot of a website with the text: Came up with the idea after getting tired of making boring weekly research presentations. Built the app in 1.5 days, and whipped up this landing page in 40 min
CycleMarks by Jon-Kyle Mohr The only circling back you should be doing this year. This fun new spin on bookmarking rounds up links for you to revisit over time! Homes + Studios by Isabel Münter and Rachael Yaeger This must be the place... I got plenty of time to explore this archive of artists’ homes and studios around the world, and it is where I want to be. howdidyoufind.me by Elan Ullendorff Nothing to track here — just stories about the site that give you a little more to chew on than cookies usually do. A real treat to read through!
It is 1:11 AM. I am in bed, anxious about work resuming in the morning after a week off for xmas. I type "penpal" as a search word on Bluesky. Your post is one of the results, and has a link. Curiosity won.
screenshot with a modal that reads: "I'm here because the plans my dad and I had didn't happen because he fell ill with shingles. He adopted me just a few months ago and I knew him before he adopted me, I haven't seen him in about sixteen years now. I miss him so much. I may be able to see him next year. If your dad is there with you please give him a hug since I never have been able to hug my dad."
tweet from the new york post: "the shocking toll of getting just 6 hours of sleep per night revealed in horrifying images." three different image of the same hunched over balding long hair rendering with poor posture wearing a purple tank top and purple striped shorts
screenshot of a website with a modal expanded that reads: “A wonderful penpal sent me the link written on a postcard”
facebook post: "so I no longer need to deliberately keep the shape of the body. After half a month, I changed from 190 pounds to 140 pounds! (Check the comment section)" Then two photos of a white AI woman with curly red hair, noticeably skinnier in the second photo. then two comments from two different people. the first reads "no comments yet!?" and the second reads "Where is this from? [redacted] sadly passed away several years ago."
product listing for 55 gallons of organic madagascar vanilla bean paste — $5,744.00
Gift Interfaces Spencer Chang, Elan Ullendorff Date Section 1: January 15, 2025 to March 26, 2025 Section 2: January 15, 2025 to March 26, 2025 (10 classes) Time Section 1: Wednesdays, 1pm-3pm ET Section 2: Wednesdays, 7:30pm-9:30pm ET
a person with long hair standing in front of a projector screen with a website open that reads: can creation become synonymous with liberation? a bunch of cute icons surround it
Escape prompt Strategies for redirecting attention WETHINKALONE Find an email in your archives that conforms to one of the following themes: • An Email With I Love You In It • An Email About The Body • An Email That Gives Advice Tell me what you found! Reply, comment, or forward an email to hi@elan.place: I may feature it in a future post.
Axiom 5: A doc is a distinct, shareable object A doc teaches you how to get into competitive Pokemon. A doc helps you determine whether you are lesbian. A doc exhaustively screenshots and analyzes food in the 2019 TV series Ming Dynasty. A doc walks you through the steps to rip a CD. A doc is a list of galleries representing only white artists. A doc is a room you need to escape. A doc is a recipe book shared between friends. A doc is a log of dose trips. A doc is the salaries of TV writers. A doc tracks the points awarded on every season of Drag Race. A doc chronicles the activities of an internet account called "Dad." A doc indexes the lore of Starset albums. A doc is a syllabus for decentering whiteness in design history. A doc asks what we should do before January. A doc is a love letter to a friendship. A doc is a toolkit for getting through the pandemic. A doc is a map. A doc is a playlist of experimental films and videos. A doc offers ideas for how to teach ceramics making virt
tweet from elon musk: Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks! My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.
person inside of a personal sauna
Tweet by The Washington Post: The same Texas billionaire who treated Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to lavish vacations paid private boarding school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, a boy the justice has said he raised as a son, according to a new report which said Thomas did not disclose the payments. https://wapo.st/44ueMV1
screenshot of spam text message about bitcoin that includes an invitation to join “bitcoin of america” and also the text “that, if you like,' said the silence. At last the Dodo said,”
a poster for a class called escape the algorithm on a black grid containing sticky notes and screenshots of websites and videos with multiplayer mouse overlays. Escape the Algorithm | IPD 5900 Elan Kiderman Ullendorff Mondays 1:45–4:45 How do the business models and algorithmic logic of apps like TikTok, Instagram, Wikipedia, and Google Maps dictate what we do and don’t see online? In this design course, we'll curate collections, circulate PR campaigns, create web experiences, and craft tools that wrestle back agency from platforms and allow us to see the internet and the world in new and exciting ways.