Mar 2, 2021

From the desk of Darius Kazemi

Goodbye Feel Train

Dear Reader,

This letter was supposed to come in early 2020, but then 2020 happened. So here we are, in not-so-early 2021, and I'm sad to say that Feel Train is no more, and in fact formally shut down at the tail end of 2019.

What happened?

There are a bunch of reasons this happened. Probably the biggest one was that business was extremely good for us until the 2016 US election, at which point organizations suddenly didn't want to spend as much money on creative internet stuff, and foundations took their money that would normally go to creative coding and funneled it to anti-disinformation initiatives instead. I can hardly blame them.

What of this website?

I plan to keep this domain running for a long time. None of the links will rot if I can help it. This includes the thing I am most proud of: our shared legal documents for people starting worker-owned cooperatives for software development. I know these resources have helped other cooperatives in the United States get started, and for that, I'm super grateful.

You can still see our projects portfolio.

Where are they now?

Courtney became an EMT in the fall of 2019 and has been working throughout the pandemic. He can be found on Instagram and on Mastodon. I'm about to start a new job doing software development at an international not-for-profit. I can be found on Mastodon and on Twitter. We were therapeutic foster parents during the pandemic, something I highly recommend.

Be well, reader, and take care.