The links that found us in May, 2026
Things move in strange ways.
Sometimes an idea starts as a pothole.
Sometimes it becomes a link.
Sometimes someone puts that link on a website where people argue, upvote, comment, ignore, save, repost, translate, or send it to one more person.
That is enough.
HackerNoon turned it into software
HackerNoon published “We Treated Potholes Like Software Bugs and Accidentally Built a Civic Hacking Playbook” on May 20, 2026.
They framed the pothole action as engineering, debugging, civic hacking, and a repeatable playbook.
That is funny.
Because we did not start with a playbook.
We started with holes.
Then we painted them.
Then someone called it a system.
Maybe that is how systems begin.
Urbanism Now put it next to cities
Urbanism Now, issue #69, included the pothole action on May 17, 2026, under “Pothole ARTivism, Mapping Biometric Surveillance, and Colorado Codifies Bike Safety.”
They described citizens using spray paint to highlight neglected potholes, prompting repairs and inspiring similar artivism in Sofia, Bulgaria.
That felt right.
Not because it was big.
Because it was placed where it belongs.
Next to bikes.
Next to surveillance.
Next to streets.
Next to the question: what can people do where they live?
Hacker News noticed the holes
Hacker News picked up the pothole story under the title “Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does.”
People voted.
People commented.
People probably argued.
Good.
A pothole is also a user interface.
The city gives you an error.
You report it.
Nothing happens.
So you highlight the bug in production.
HN Buzzing carried it further
A Chinese Hacker News mirror, HN Buzzing, also listed the pothole story.
It showed the link after it crossed the 100-point mark.
That is a small thing.
But small things matter.
A painted pothole in Sofia ends up on a Chinese HN mirror.
Not because anyone planned that.
Because someone linked it.
Because someone else clicked.
Because the internet still has little side streets where things can travel without permission.
Reddit put it in the pothole pile
On Reddit, the story appeared in link-sharing threads.
No big introduction.
No manifesto.
Just the headline, the link, and the hole.
That is probably enough.
Reddit dropped it into a broken-car conversation
The better Reddit moment was not a post about us.
It was a conversation about potholes damaging cars.
Someone was talking about popped tires.
Someone else brought the article in.
That felt right.
Not in a marketing thread.
Not in an art thread.
In a broken-car conversation.
The hole was already there.
The link just pointed at it.
LinkedIn did the professional thing
On LinkedIn, Rozario Chivers shared “The holes we painted (and why we did it anyway).”
One post.
One link.
One professional network suddenly looking at a painted pothole and maybe thinking:
this is also work.
Not a campaign.
Not a grant proposal.
Not a strategy deck.
Work.
Remark.as opened the side doors
Remark.as created discussion pages for Image Not Found posts like “The stickers we made for the smartphone zombies” and “Paint the cameras dead.”
No big noise.
No fireworks.
Just open doors.
A page with no comments is still a place where comments can happen.
The fediverse carried the scraps
Mastodon and the fediverse picked up the links too.
There was the Hacker News bot, carrying the pothole story into another stream.
There was a toot from etc on toot.wales, sending it through a smaller, stranger, more human corner of the network.
And there was a post from bogo on hapyyr.com, letting it move again.
Small accounts.
Small boosts.
Small tunnels through the algorithmic wall.
This is how things move when they do not have a marketing budget.
Not as a campaign.
As spores.
Even the aggregators joined
A few aggregators and mirrors surfaced the links as well.
They are not love letters.
They are pipes.
But pipes matter.
Water moves through pipes.
So do ideas.
One last thing
A link is not just a link.
It is a small witness.
Someone saw the thing and decided it should be seen by someone else.
That is how a painted pothole becomes a conversation.
That is how a sticker leaves a table and enters a city.
That is how a camera stops being invisible.
Some people will say nothing will change.
Share it anyway.