Welcome to my corner of the web.

Hi, I’m Matt Stine (he/they) 👨‍💻, and I’m currently working as a Senior Principal Software Architect at a rather large bank 🏦. You can find out more by reading my CV.

These days I reside in Olive Branch, Mississippi, with my wife Jillian Cantor 👩‍🏫 and our dog Jasper 🐶. If you don’t recognize Olive Branch, I’m just a stone’s throw (approximately two miles/3.23 kilometers) from Memphis, Tennessee. It’s certainly interesting to be able to take a short hike up the road, straddle the state line, and not know which foot has fewer basic human rights!

So why am I here? Well, my four wonderful kiddos are still in this neck of the woods for a few more years at least. As soon as the last of them enrolls in university, I’m pretty sure we’re getting out of Dodge.

This site used to be all about “repping my personal brand.” I’ve since realized that I don’t want to dehumanize myself by reducing myself to a brand. So many of the things we do without thinking are ingrained in us by an all-pervasive capitalist society (society - not economic system - there’s a difference), and over the past few months I’ve started to challenge those thought and behavior patterns.

Going forward, I want this site to be more like what I remember my websites being in the late 1990s. They were conversations with whomever happened upon my doorstep. They weren’t about tracking visits (beyond those silly mileage counters) or capturing leads. I’ll be writing hhere, including traditional blog posts, as well as longer knowledge-base style essays about various topics of interest to me. I’ll also capture some of the things that I’m learning in public, and maybe highlight a personal passion project or two.

I hope you enjoy your visit and find something that strikes your fancy. If you’d like to chat about anything you see, you’ll find all of my contact details in the site footer. Cheers!

Corporate Social Media

For the sake of this discussion, we’ll call these “the big four:”

  • X (the dumpster fire formerly known as Twitter)
  • Facebook
  • Instagram UPDATE: (2023-11-02): I have softened my stance toward Instagram because I value the distinctive community I’m using it to participate in there enough to sacrifice my social media “purity,” as if there is such thing.
  • LinkedIn

If you’ve been looking for me there and can’t find me and wonder if I’ve mysteriously disappeared, it’s because I have. Everything’s fine, I’m just done contributing to the bottom lines of these platforms via my free contribution of personal data and content creation. I believe these platforms have done more net harm than good, and the longer they exist, the greater that gap will become. UPDATE (2023-11-02): I still believe this, even in light of my above Instagram disclaimer. In this case it’s about the people I’d otherwise miss. While I’ve made certain social media choices for my own mental health and ethical reasons, I do not claim to have the moral high ground or the ability to judge anyone’s alternate position in this matter.