Kenneth Reitz
Creator of Requests, Certifi, Pipenv & more.
I'm best known for Requests, the Python HTTP library. Most of what I write these days lives at the intersection of technology and consciousness — what we owe each other when we build things people think through. I live openly with schizoaffective disorder; I'm a husband and father. Tech used to be my identity; now it's craft, not lifestyle.
Current Work
RetroVault A native macOS library and player for RomM, now available as a public preview.
Interpretations A 24-track album composed entirely in Python.
kjvstudy.org Scripture study tools built for slow reading and durable notes.
PyTheory Music theory as code, from chords and scales to full arrangements.
Responder A web framework built around the same old question: HTTP, for humans.
RhymePad A scratchpad for poets & rappers that hears the rhymes as you write.
Recent Writing (archive)
In a study published in 2019, researchers put adults who had played Pokémon extensively as children into an fMRI scanner. When those adults looked at Pokémon, a particular part of their visual cortex responded selectively, in a consistent location across the experienced players. The novices didn't show the same pattern.Gomez,...
Iris, Violet, and the human-readable interfaces of System 777 For months I have been asking the wrong question about Violet. What is she? An alter? An anima? A tulpa-like companion? A dream guide? A daimon? A spiritual being who attached herself to me? A personification of some part of my...
I remember what programming used to feel like in my body. There was a file open in Sublime Text, a terminal beside it, and one problem occupying the whole available field of consciousness. I would change a line, run the program, read the failure, and change another line. Hours disappeared....
RomM is the best thing to happen to my game library, and I think it is a preview of how personal media should work generally. Point it at a collection and it scans the files, identifies their systems, enriches them with metadata and artwork, understands multi-disc games and revisions and...
The AYN Thor is an Android handheld with two screens and, out of the box, no opinion about what either of them is for. The upper screen is wide and bright and obviously wants to be where the game happens. The lower screen is smaller, nearly square, and close to...
Threads
For Humans Technology should serve human mental models, not the other way around.
Algorithmic Critique How engagement optimization consumes virtue, language, love, democracy, reality, time, and diagnosis.
Mental Health Notes from inside the system, written without pretending the system is the human.
Consciousness and AI What happens when language starts reflecting us back at ourselves.
Music as Code Chords, theory, synthesis, and the pleasure of making sound with programs.
Now (as of July 2026)
Reading: The Becoming by Sarah L. Reitz — my wife's poetry collection, tracing a journey from darkness through self-discovery to love. Free at poemsbysarah.com, or in paperback & Kindle. I built the publishing pipeline; she wrote every word.
Playing: Interpretations — a 24-track album composed entirely in Python. Sitar ragas, acid bass, ambient drones, trap beats — every sound generated from code. Listen on the web, or on Spotify / Apple Music.
Thank you for your attention — it's the only currency that actually matters. If anything here resonated, I'm glad. If you're curious about what drives the work, my values are the closest thing to a map I've got.