The short list.

December 2023, six months into Pickaxe Evangelist work. The methodology here held up better than the specific tool examples did — the field moves fast enough that some of the Pickaxe scaffolding described looks dated now, but the underlying logic of structured, user-centric scripting still applies whether you're building on Pickaxe or anything else.[draft]

ChatGPT launched November 30, 2022; I apparently didn't touch it until January. The Andrew Tate exchange was a reasonable stress test — the model's refusal to engage with controversy was its own kind of answer. The Pickaxe Evangelist title came out of this period, and the Semantic Prompt Design piece I published the same day as this one is probably the better artifact of where my thinking actually landed.[draft]

Mother Jones got the broad strokes right but put the SPJ award in 2007 — it was actually September 2006, while I was still in Dublin. The Wheeler Hall suspension ended up being a five-page paper, not ten, and I lost the appeal in June 2011. The writer's instinct to side with me was generous; Gunnison's point about trespass and shield law wasn't wrong either.[draft]

The Nisour Square massacre had happened two months earlier — September 16, 2007 — and the Justice Department was moving fast by its own standards. The body of this post didn't survive the Wayback crawl, but the Blackwater guards were eventually charged, convicted, and then had their convictions vacated on appeal; the legal saga ran another decade.[draft]

Newsom won with about 73 percent of the vote that November, which tells you something about the field. The argument here — that an uncontested incumbent owes the city nothing — was sound; the campaign was less a bid than a pressure valve.[draft]

Filed July 4th, three months after Dublin. The body-camera transparency plank reads differently now that every police department in the country has one — though the argument for mayoral transparency was never really about the technology. Gavin Newsom won re-election that November; I didn't make a dent. The platform held up better than the campaign did.[draft]

RU Sirius got closer to the actual mechanics of the settlement than most outlets did — the mediation with Magistrate Judge Spero, the published tape, the government calling it full compliance when it wasn't. The Colbert appearance the same month was louder; this one was more accurate.[draft]

Six weeks after release, May 10th — International Press Freedom Day, which I didn't pick but couldn't have scripted better. My father visited nearly every weekend at Dublin; my mother traveled the country as my advocate; Martin Garbus and the First Amendment Project team did the legal work pro bono. The draft here is the polished version; what I actually said that night I ad-libbed from memory, and I never did track down the video.[draft]

Written in Dublin and delivered at the University of Arizona SPJ chapter on my behalf while I was still in custody. The I.F. Stone comparison held up; the Myspace example aged out; the core argument — function over form — is still the right one, even if the institutions eventually absorbed it without crediting the fight.[draft]

Six days out of Dublin, writing an op-ed for the Chronicle. The two questions in the declaration — whether I could identify the person Officer Shields was chasing, and whether I witnessed the alleged arson — were the actual resolution, public and on the record, not a secret deal. A federal shield law still doesn't exist.[draft]

April 3, 2007, in front of City Hall — 226 days after I walked into Dublin FDC. The settlement reached through mediation with U.S. Magistrate Joseph Spero let me publish the raw footage and sign an affidavit affirming its contents; I never testified before the grand jury. The typos are in the original because I wrote it by hand the night before and read it out loud before anyone could edit it.[draft]

Both Blip.tv links are dead — Blip shut down in 2015. The footage that ended 226 days in federal prison is no longer publicly accessible, which is its own kind of irony given that publishing it was the condition of my release. The settlement with U.S. Magistrate Joseph Spero required me to post the raw footage publicly and sign an affidavit affirming its contents; I never testified before the grand jury.[draft]

This was read aloud on my behalf in March 2007 — I was still at Dublin, three weeks from release. The SPJ NorCal award was the second time the speech traveled without me; the first was the November 2006 dinner where Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada were co-honorees. The PrisonBlogs.net vision I described here — 10,000 Danny Martins — never got built.[draft]

The note at the top was accurate — that session failed. The resolution came almost four weeks later, on April 3, through court-ordered mediation with U.S. Magistrate Joseph Spero: I published the raw footage publicly and signed an affidavit confirming its contents, never testified before the grand jury. The line about not sacrificing principles for personal freedom held; the settlement let both things be true at once.[draft]

My father typed this up and posted it — the "ljh" in the note is him. The laundry soap problem got fixed the next day, which is the fastest I saw Dublin respond to anything. The broader arithmetic — indigent inmates subsidizing institutional failures with shampoo and ground-down soap bars — that didn't get fixed.[draft]

Written nine days after I became the longest-incarcerated U.S. journalist for refusing a subpoena, still inside Dublin FDC. The Paisas I'm describing weren't abstractions — they were the majority of the people I ate with, worked alongside, and talked to every day. The sentences have gotten longer since 2007, not shorter.[draft]

February 6, 2007 — three days after I became the longest-incarcerated journalist in U.S. history for refusing a subpoena. My father typed this up from my handwritten draft and posted it. The core argument held: the case was never really about the tape, and I never testified before the grand jury.[draft]

Written from Dublin, ten weeks before my release. The Rise Up Network never got built, and the IWW-style union of independent media makers never materialized — but the consolidation diagnosis was right, and the part about commercial outlets demanding perpetual rights for exposure turned out to be the durable sentence. Time's "You" cover looks quaint now; most of those people ended up inside someone else's platform anyway.[draft]

Sarah Phelan ran it in the Bay Guardian; my father Len posted it here. I wrote it by hand in the cell and sent it out with the mail. The routine it describes held for most of the 226 days — the 5:30 unlock, Democracy Now! on KPFA, the concrete rec yard. What it can't convey is how long the afternoons were.[draft]

My dad caught his own transcription error and corrected it before many people saw the wrong version — that note is his, not mine. The argument in the piece held up; the mainstream press eventually did have to reckon with independent video journalists, just not in the way I expected, and not in time to matter much for shield law.[draft]

My dad wrote this while I was still in Dublin, responding to Judge Alsup's quote in the Chronicle. Len is not a lawyer or a media theorist — he's a guy who typed up my handwritten letters and posted them to the blog — and that's exactly why this lands. The argument about inalienable rights versus state-granted rights is one I'd heard from him my whole life; seeing him make it publicly, in November 2006, while I was sitting in a federal cell, is something I still don't have a clean way to describe.[draft]

November 9, 2006, I was in Dublin, someone read this aloud in the room while Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada — who had just broken the BALCO/Bonds story for the Chronicle — were sitting at the same table. The joke about the live-work loft was the only way I knew how to open it; the rest I meant. The "war on journalism" framing reads a little hot to me now, but I was 24 and in federal prison, so I'll leave it.[draft]

Written in Dublin and read aloud in the room by someone else — I was three months into what would become 226 days. "I'll be out soon enough" turned out to be optimistic; I wasn't released until April 3, 2007.[draft]

Written from Dublin in October 2006, two months into what would become 226 days. The argument I was making — that function defines the journalist, not employment status — eventually became the mainstream position, though it took another decade of shield-law fights to get there, and it's still not settled federal law.[draft]

Demian actually wrote to me in Dublin and asked for my reaction, which was unusual enough that I took the time to respond in full. The headline complaint still holds — "anarchist says" is doing a lot of work to preemptively discredit the sentence that follows it. The part about the word needing a definition attached is something I'd still stand behind.[draft]

Jerry Robisson was one of the first people I talked to after being re-incarcerated in September 2006, and this piece came out of those conversations in the Fillmore block at Dublin. The entrepreneurship idea still reads as more practical than controversial to me — the illicit-economy argument is just supply-side logic applied honestly.[draft]

Written from Dublin after being re-incarcerated on September 14th, two weeks after my brief release. The Javed Iqbal case got almost no press outside of New York; I don't know what ultimately happened to him. The USA Today statistic about high schoolers and press freedom has only gotten worse since 2006.[draft]

The "for now" in the title was more accurate than I wanted it to be — twelve days later I was back inside, and stayed there until April 3, 2007. Jackson West and the Grand Jury Resistance Project kept the blog alive while I couldn't; I still owe them for that.[draft]

This was published August 31, 2006 — the same day I was briefly released on bail, which means it went up while I was walking out of Dublin for what turned out to be two weeks. I was doing actual reporting from inside a federal detention center, sourcing it from a fellow inmate, and the Santa Clara County Jail policy I described hasn't gotten much public scrutiny since.[draft]

The hearing was August 1, and by the end of it I was remanded to Dublin FDC. The $2,000 in donations I was counting on for a 9th Circuit appeal turned out to be the floor, not the ceiling — the case eventually drew enough attention that the legal costs were covered, though not by the path I was imagining the night before this was posted.[draft]

August 1st was the civil contempt hearing — the day Judge James remanded me to Dublin FDC. The relief in this post's opening line is real; twelve days later it was gone.[draft]

The hearing was July 19; I wasn't remanded until August 1. The wiki lasted about as long as PBwiki did. My mother did end up running the blog, and my father Len typed and posted the handwritten letters I sent out from Dublin.[draft]

Judge Alsup's name meant something to readers because he'd just jailed Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds's trainer, for the same refusal I was about to make. The July 20th hearing led to the civil contempt finding, and by August 1st I was in Dublin. The audio is gone from Blip — that platform shut down in 2015 — but the Archive.org copy survives.[draft]

June 15th came and I refused; six weeks later I was in Dublin FDC. The federal-property logic I called silly here was never actually tested on the merits — the case ended in April 2007 through court-ordered mediation with U.S. Magistrate Joseph Spero, with me publishing the raw footage publicly and signing an affidavit, never testifying before the grand jury. The chilling-effect argument wasn't dramatic; it just took longer than I expected to see it confirmed.[draft]

Jose Luis Fuentes was right about the chilling effect, and the case proved it — I was remanded to Dublin FDC on August 1 and didn't get out for 226 days. I never testified before the grand jury; the case resolved in April 2007 through court-ordered mediation with U.S. Magistrate Joseph Spero, and I published the raw footage publicly.[draft]

The distinction I'm drawing here — selling because the footage was being used without permission, not because I spotted a market — still matters to me, and Ryan's framing stuck in enough subsequent coverage that I kept having to correct it. The subpoena came four months after this piece ran, which means Blitstein was writing about a legal threat that hadn't fully landed yet.[draft]

Ryan Blitstein wrote this for SF Weekly in April 2006, about two weeks after Judge Maria-Elena James denied the motion to quash. The framing — journalist, blogger, activist, anarchist — was the actual legal question, not just a rhetorical one, and Blitstein was honest about the tension rather than flattering me out of it. What the piece couldn't know: four months later I'd be in Dublin, and the government's characterization of me as "self-important" would be entered into the congressional record by people arguing the opposite.[draft]

April 5 is the date that mattered — Judge Maria-Elena James denied the motion to quash, and the path to Dublin FDC opened up from there. The "not much news" framing was accurate for the moment and completely wrong about what was coming.[draft]

March 30, 2006 — six days before Judge Maria-Elena James denied the motion to quash. Blip.tv shut down in 2015, so the video lives on Archive.org now, which is fitting. The case documents at joshwolf.net/grandjury still exist; that page outlasted the platform that hosted the video by a decade.[draft]

Judge Maria-Elena James denied the motion to quash six days later, on April 5. The Boing Boing link drove more traffic than anything I'd posted before, which felt significant at the time; the ruling made it irrelevant. Blip.tv shut down in 2015, so the video now lives only on archive.org.[draft]

Judge Maria-Elena James denied the motion to quash six days later, on April 5th. Carlos Villarreal and Jose Luis Fuentes were right about the SFPD-FBI arrangement; that argument just didn't win. The detail about Inspector Militello soliciting FBI Agent Merriam's help never got the public attention it deserved.[draft]

Judge Maria-Elena James denied the motion to quash six days later, on April 5. The argument that the feds were running a local SFPD investigation through a federal grand jury — that part was solid, and it never really got refuted; it just didn't matter to the court.[draft]

The March 30th hearing didn't go our way — Judge Maria-Elena James denied the motion to quash on April 5th. Siegel & Yee and the National Lawyers Guild put real muscle behind this, and it still wasn't enough. The federal government's position was that the footage was evidence, full stop, and no shield law applied.[draft]

February 2006, and the subpoena had arrived two weeks earlier — I still didn't fully understand what I was walking into. The video was on Blip.tv, which shut down in 2015; the Archive.org copy is what's left. Six months after this I was in Dublin.[draft]

January 29, 2005 — first post in the archive, written when I was 22 and finishing up at SF State. The vlog line at the bottom is the thing; six months later I was selling protest footage to KRON, and six months after that the FBI was at my door.[draft]