Scott Polhemus

Civic tech guy and Spider-Man nerd living in Massachusetts. Blog: https://polhem.us Pics: @img.polhem.us

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Longform Stories

Book Review: "Star Wars: Reign of the Empire - The Mask of Fear"

Yes, that title is a mouthful (I’ll just call it "The Mask of Fear" from here on out). Yes, this is a tertiary piece of media in one of the biggest franchises in entertainment history that assumes a c…

Jan 18·23 min read·4586 words

I Believe There’s a Hero in All of Us

There’s a scene in Spider-Man 2 (2004) where Peter Parker has, for the time being, given up the superhero gig. He’s been walking on air from that weight being lifted off his shoulders, but he soon lea…

Feb 15·12 min read·2376 words

Bluesky’s AT Protocol is the real “everything app”

The blatantly fascist owners of certain established-but-declining social networks like to wax poetic about a world where everything you do online might take place within their own restrictive ecosyste…

Jan 29·13 min read·2563 words

Grieving with Peter Parker

Have you ever shed tears over a comic book? I'm not ashamed to admit that I have. For me it was Zeb Wells’ beautifully written issue 11 of Avenging Spider-Man with art by Steve Dillon and Frank Martin…

Sep 7·12 min read·2356 words

Managing technical debt in product-led engineering teams

Tech debt is the boogeyman of every fast-paced software team. It's the malicious and secretive force lurking in the corners of your legacy codebase waiting to spring bugs and performance issues onto p…

May 15·11 min read·2120 words

Building a custom blog website for free using Next.js, WordPress.com, and GitHub Pages

I recently decided to start writing more, so naturally one of my first steps in procrastinating from actually doing so was to figure out how to set up a custom website for my blog in 2024. While I cou…

May 1·34 min read·6602 words