![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/11/30/goodhumortruck.png)
I don't like
social networks as they're currently configured. The idea that it's some kind of conversation -- no it really doesn't resemble a conversation. I would like to try a social network that didn't have the concept of replying to a post. Give each other a little more distance. It still would be a graph, people following other people, but you wouldn't be able to insert something into someone else's flow, which is where all the indecency comes from imho. Or let replies be only visible to the person it's in reply to, so you don't end up getting speeches under your posts. And so that people with a lot of followers don't bother reading anything that's related to what they wrote, and thus no new ideas can enter the flow. We've been doing this, the way we do it, since the inception of Twitter in 2006. For some reason the design of that network is considered sacred. I was a math major who studied combinatorics, specifically graph theory -- and the Twitter way of organizing people and discourse is just one of many ways people could be arranged. Predictably, the weird structure of Twitter is turning into the structure of our society. If we want to change things the fastest way might be to do another look at what Twiiter does and see if we can't intentionally make something that works better for whatever we think we should be doing with it, other than staring at the evil people on the other side and saying how evil they are (or hopeless, or woke or whatever bullshit the influencers have made up). And with that I wish you a good evening and note that tomorrow is another day.
😄#
One more thing. I like watching Maddow nowadays. She seems unstuck. And she's talking straight to the Repubs, and not with resignation, with the idea that maybe finally enough is enough, and they might work with us to save what we can of this great country. Also like that Bernie Sanders is on the road campaigning in swing districts that are held by Repubs, to see if he can squeeze out a few defectors from the ranks of House Republicans. Very important, because the Repub margin there is only 3. Just have to flip 2. America has to start moving now, or it's going to take a long long time to come back from this. The sooner we all get that, and that
we are part of it, the better things will turn out, imho.
#
- If I were in charge of marketing for the Democrats: 1. I'd restart the online channel that Kamala Harris had that was shut down on Election Day. 2. I'd get out the message over and over about how things are going too fast, we need to slow it down, so we can consider what's happening. Who? The people. I know this will resonate with almost everyone in the US, no matter who they voted for. Stop I want to know how these changes will help or hurt me, my family, community. For Trump voters, it was fun to make my statement, but I'm afraid this is going too far. I think we can all relate to that. We aren't being represented here. #
- I asked Google Gemini to visualize what it feels like to be watching what's happening in the US from inside the US. This came close to capturing it, but it could have expressed the fear of it more clearly. Slow down, please, let us figure out what you're doing. #
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/02/17/busCareeningDownMountainRoad.png)
Bus careening down mountain road.
#
- A simple idea, a quid pro quo.#
- If we want Democrats to support the Constitution, we have to demonstrate that we will support them. #
- We are the government of the US, Congress represents us. #
- We have been too passive. #
- But then, they have to include us in governing. #
- No more shutting off the connection after the election.#
- Seems like a fair deal.#
- One of the not-good things about Mastodon is that you can't moderate comments under your own posts. #
- If someone says something abusive, it's there for everyone to see, forever.#
- I've come to value the feature in Facebook that gives the author full discretion over what comments remain, to head off bad vibes. #
- I think of a post I write as my house, and I want people who visit to feel respected.#
- A turd in the middle of the living room is not respectful. #
We're diving head first into a world run by AI bots, before we've even begun to understand how to use them.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/02/16/designatedSurvivor.png)
The idea of a
coup in the US is one we all presumably have a hard time thinking about. I sure do. It has never happened before. But it has happened now, and the group that is governing is doing it illegally, and is dismantling the country as quickly as they can, assuming someone will at some point try to stop them? Is that correct? What comes next?
#
Great quote from a
favorite show. "He put the dick in contradiction." This is a show that doesn't often indulge in that kind of humor. I imagine they must've had a great time with it in the writer's room. Or was it ad-lib'd? And wtf does it mean?
#
BTW, no one thought much about the threading structure we use on Bluesky. As far as I can tell it was copied from Twitter. It's not a very good structure. It encourages spam and abuse. You gotta wonder if the threading structure had evolved, or if there were more competition, different approaches to see what would happen, we might have avoided our meltdown with a better design.
#
The way to get even is to win. A lot of people don't get that, and it's almost always their downfall.
#
I’m not giving money to Democrats. I will give to campaigns that run hard-hitting ads telling the full truth about what Musk is doing now. I want to see the actual ads before I chip in, and will do so enthusiastically, but they can’t be anemic.
#
The Dems don't do
positioning. The Repubs run circles around Dems. They are masters at positioning. It's not hard, you just have to decide to do it.
#
- Hypercard stacks were the equivalent of websites. #
- If it had been built around the Macintosh Toolkit, and had an API that fit in with Mac apps, there wouldn't be a web, we'd all be using Macs. Alas it was all on its own, didn't work with anything but itself. #
- A lot was lost because the Mac development model was far in advance of what existed on the web, and it was well-thought-out unlike the app model of the web, which is a hodgepodge of horribly designed modules that don't work well together. #
- I was a Mac developer at the time, so I know a lot about this moment of history. #
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/02/15/hypercardStackHome.png)
Screen shot of a Hypercard stack home page.
#
Podcast: Dems must campaign 365 days every year.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/02/14/mrBubble.png)
Anne Applebaum
writing in the Atlantic says that people in the US feel like we're living in an occupied country. I get it. That's what it feels like to be in a Silicon Valley company that has been acquired by another Silicon Valley company, a subject I
wrote about on Wednesday. I wish there was some way for us to communicate with each other about this, because I'm sure my description comes closer to the way Musk sees it, though they are very similar ideas. One of the defects of the social web is that we live in little bubbles and not much information is exchanged over bubble boundaries. So if anyone knows Applebaum, please send her a link to this post. Thanks.
#
- Musk will defund Medicare. #
- More than death panels. #
- Say goodbye to everyone who needs health care#
- Because almost no one can afford it without coverage.#
- That's what they mean when they say they'll cut $2 trill. #
- That's your health care.#
Here's a
two-minute demo of my new writing tool for Bluesky. This is quite a bit simpler than the last version, you log on directly to Bluesky, doesn't go through my server at all. This removes a whole layer of complexity for the user, and means a lot of people can use it without it having to scale up. Also made it simpler, more of a writing tool, closer to where I'd like this stuff to be when we have across-the-board textcasting support. Really focused on the flow for writers.
#
Here's the
thread that's created in the demo.
#
If the US were a company, what would its market capitalization be?
#
If you’re getting bummed about the news, remember tonight there’s another new episode of
Severance to kvell about.
#
Re-did the social media links at the bottom of each story page.
Screen shot. Used to be just RSS and Linkedin. I got rid of Linkedin because I never use it. Added Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads. Debated whether to remove Twitter, but it is still a way to follow my posts, the ones that go out through the linkblog. A lot of people still use Twitter. Had to include the latest version of Font-Awesome, but since my story pages don't otherwise use FA, I figured nothing could break. Haha. ;-)
#
New motto: Pissing in the wind for the good of mankind.
#
I wonder what Kurt Vonnegut would have thought of twitter-like systems?
#
A note to users of feedland.org and feedland.com. We'll be turning the servers off sometime before the end of March. I haven't chosen the actual date yet. In the meantime, Please
download a copy of your subscription list before the shutdown, it's incredibly easy. You can also
run your own FeedLand. I started a
thread on the support site if you have questions, remember the comment
guidelines. I've learned a lot from the experience of running FeedLand this way, looking forward to trying some other configurations.
😄#
If you depend on not considering the unthinkable in 2025 then you aren't really thinking.
#
If only political reporters had the same knowledge of their subject as sports reporters do.
#
- First, the New Republic is beginning to think like Musk and Trump. But they have to think a bit more and ask how does this all tie together? #
- Remember you have to consider events that would normally be unthinkable. And believe that Trump isn't actually president of the United States in any sense of what that meant in the past. He is sitting in the seat of the president. He has the powers of the president, but he does not represent the interests of the United States. #
- He's going to use the US Treasury and the power of the dollar as the reserve currency, to buy himself a few toys to play with, like Canada, Greenland, Gaza and Panama, to start. #
- To illustrate, here's the text of an imaginary conversation between Trump and Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada. #
- Trump: Hey Justin, how's it going?#
- Trudeau: You know, not so good.#
- Trump: I get it. Have you considered my offer?#
- Trudeau: Yes. Either we surrender and become the 51st state, or you won't honor Canadian deposits in the US Treasury. #
- Trump: That's right my friend.#
- Trudeau: I don't see how we have any choice.#
- Trump: I'm afraid that's correct. #
- Trudeau: Semi-sarcastic: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and Canada. #
- Trump: You can leave out the Canada part. #
- Trudeau: You can't blame me for trying.#
- Trump: Have a nice day. 😀#
- And then this scene from Goodfellas demonstrates what's next for the former independent country of Canada. #
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/04/24/cheshireCat.png)
I'm still fixing bugs in the
new Bluesky feature I wrote about yesterday. If the URL of an image has search args, I wasn't getting the type correct and Bluesky rejected it. I used a post about
Aaron Swartz's statue unveiled in San Francisco
yesterday to test the fix. I knew Aaron of course, he was part of the group developing
RSS in the early 00s. He went on to do other things, as did I, and I met up with him again in NYC in the early teens, and then a few months or a year or two (I don't have the exact date of the meetup) he commited
suicide. It was a real shock. Now, many years later -- a statue. And the
random snarky slogan my test script picked out was really
appropriate to the
event. It was a tragedy, because an older more confident Aaron would have made a big contribution. I often think about that.
#
I subscribed to
Wired because of their famous coverage of the Musk Coup, so I also added its feed to my blogroll so I could
see what I bought, and was actually not surprised that they've been hit by the same disease all online publishing has, the need to bait the clicks, and of course not very much of it is hard-hitting.
#
BTW, being in my blogroll means that your posts have a chance of being included in my
Little Feed Reader on Bluesky.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2022/05/08/teslaModelY.png)
I still haven't decided what to do about my
Tesla Model Y, which still is a wonderful car, and I still love driving it
after 3+ years, which is amazing. But the other day it updated, and gave me a pause, if they let Musk hack their computers the way he's hacking ours, should I trust what it installs on the vehicle I drive every day that theoretically has the ability to take control of my car and drive it off the road? I wonder if the people at Tesla would like to reassure people who drive their cars that the updates are safe from hacking by one of his associates? How is security on the Tesla network?
#
It's our social web. “We started off with a network of writers, and ended up with business models of oligarchs. It's time to start building webs like we mean it and damn all the wannabe-billionaires.”
#
I have to
say, a judge ruling that Musk has to stop, and delete all the info he has stolen, has made me feel much better. I don't know why, but I'm actually laughing out loud. The tight knot in my stomach has relaxed.
#
When we get back control of the government, ie they're following the Constitution, the Democratic leader in the Senate should be as ruthless as
this bastard. Chuck Schumer is a nice guy and that sucks.
#
- My feed readers on Bluesky now use the metadata in the pages we link to to show a title, picture and description for each post that offers the metadata. #
- Like this page, the one you're reading right now at this moment. #
- And here's a screen shot of what it looks like over in Bluesky.#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/02/08/aNiceForkInTheRoad.png)
A fork in the road.
#
Behind the scenes in the US government I imagine it's like a Vonnegut novel, or an episode of
Pinky and the Brain.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/07/05/pinkyFacingLeft.png)
I've
cracked the code for adding OpenGraph data to Bluesky posts. The key was I
learned how to do the equivalent of a
View Source on a Bluesky post so I could see how others did it. I tried Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, none of them even understood the question of how to get Bluesky to add the data. I was amazed to learn that each developer has to do it for themselves, that this isn't something they built into their server. Anyway, I'm halfway there.
#
I wish Bluesky had just used the
Twitter API. That's how I would've done it. Continuity matters a lot. And think of all time wasted at re-doing something we had working a long time ago.
#
The AI world would have done much better with a president like Biden than we will with Trump. AI is a very potent tool for surveillance. Completely changes the game. And if it were just Trump and not Musk we'd have a chance, but Musk and Thiel fully understand the power, and probably already have all the code written, they just need the database records to scan and now they have all of them. Eventually we'll be talking about the "peaceful uses of AI" as we do about nuclear tech. But just saying that will get you punished.
#
Another thing to watch while you still can,
The Lives of Others, about life in East Germany during the Cold War.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/05/17/theBrain.png)
I saw a bit on CNN that was like the
Dean Scream, an extended clip of how awkward Chuck Schumer is at a rally. It was used to shame a Democrat who was doing a great job of explaining the danger, Sen Murphy of Connecticut. I switched to basketball in disgust, thinking these people, CNN, they are
not serious people. This problem isn't on the Dems, it's on all of us, and it always was. To pin it on the Dems is to say it's hopeless because right now they're just our representatives in Congress and some of our state governments. We have a big problem and we probably can't dig out of it, but if we have any hope at all, orgs like CNN have to stop being such idiots. Every so often I see a spark of brilliance over there, and then one of these things happens. What's more depressing, Trump or CNN? CNN by a lot. And the NYT and all the rest of the broken media. We are all in the same boat.
#
In January I started
an online diary where I list each of the apps I manage, as I work on them. When I work on one, I move it to the top. The notes are brief and to anyone but me might seem cryptic. But at least you can follow what I'm doing. No I don't plan to do an RSS feed for it. It's just a place to keep track of all the things I work on, for people who I work with, and most important, me.
#
A great
scene in Goodfellas where they explain what it's like to have Paulie the mob boss as a partner. In this scene Paulie is Musk. The restaurant owner is Trump. The United States is the restaurant.
#
BTW, I found that video using ChatGPT. I had tried explaining it to Google and it didn't understand. ChatGPT found it in an instant.
#
People might be curious to see the
list of feeds that make up the
Little Feed Reader account
on Bluesky. It's dynamic, I can add or remove feeds through a very simple
user interface designed for managing systems like this. It's like the user inteface of a product like WordPress, for designers and developers, producing results that are for users. There are now apps for the
NBA,
Devs and all
my feeds.
#
Big picture, the US is being turned into Russia.
#
California Senator Adam Schiff said, I think it was yesterday, that Trump and Musk are removing honest FBI investigators and DOJ attorneys so they can raid the treasury of the United States. It's obvious, but you don't hear it said very often. It's the money they want. All of it.
#
- if you're feeling stressed, hum a few bars of alice's restaurant.#
- i find it very calming and satisfying. #
- it's a nice place we can always go home to! #
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM#
- just remember --#
- you can get anything you want#
- at alice's restaurant!#
- Do 1000 profiles of federal workers being attacked by Musk.#
- Don't use real names. Have AI provide real-looking photos of fictitious people. Explain what they do. Don't focus on their lives. Make readers think of what life will be like without them.#
- We should have done this a long time ago, when Reagan said, arrogantly, the government is the problem. #
- That should have been rebutted, strongly and regularly.#
- We need to learn what they actually do, all of them, at least understand what we're going to live without.#
- I asked ChatGPT to try it out. "I want to tell a story about a typical person who works for the US government. It shouldn't be a glamorous job, but an important one. It should improve people's lives, health, happiness, fulfillment. Pick the role at random, as well as gender, age, race, geography. Write a 100 word job description, and provide a realistic looking profile picture. Nothing about their personal life, or actual name, but it's okay to talk about the required education and experience for the job."#
- Here's what it came back with: "An Environmental Health Officer (EHO) plays a crucial role in safeguarding public health by identifying and mitigating environmental hazards. Employed by federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), EHOs conduct inspections of facilities like restaurants, swimming pools, and nursing homes to ensure compliance with health regulations. They investigate complaints related to air and water quality, noise, and waste management, and implement measures to prevent disease outbreaks. A bachelor's degree in environmental health or a related field is typically required, with many positions preferring candidates with a master's degree. Professional certification, such as Registered Environmental Health Specialist (REHS), is often preferred. Strong analytical skills, attention to detail, and the ability to communicate effectively are essential for success in this role."#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/02/06/theThreeEhos.png)
Our three Environment Health Officers (not actual people).
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/08/16/blackLivesMatter.png)
Highly recommend
this week's Ezra Klein podcast. It made me wonder if any of the readers of my blog voted for Trump. I can't imagine too many did, unless they've been willing to overlook my strenuous support for any option that opposes him. However if any of you are still here, I'd like you to know that what's happening now is exactly what we thought
would happen. If you agree that this is unacceptable, maybe we can use that as common ground to work together to get our country back from the chaotic authoritarian mess that Elon Musk is turning it into. He makes Trump look like an absolute moderate. Certainly no one who voted for Trump with any kind of appreciation for the American system, where your vote and mine matter, can stand by and not object to what he's doing to our system of government. If not now, keep this in mind as Musk's chaos becomes more and more real.
#
And btw to
Mitch McConnell, fuck you. You had a chance, with one freaking vote, to avoid this. You are among a small number of people who could have stopped this. This should be the first line in your obituary. "He could have saved the United States, but chose not to do it."
#
I updated the
Developers account on Bluesky to follow Tim Bray, Simon Willison, Techdirt, Manton Reece and Cory Doctorow. I took my feeds off the list, and added other developer accounts I regularly read. I'm trying to bootstrap something here, to see what can be done, and feel it's important to take myself out of the list for now.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/08/26/cuckoo.png)
I possibly was a bit hasty in
declaring the coup over yesterday. I'm sure there will be new restraining orders from the courts telling Musk to stop, and so far Trump has been obeying those, so there's some hope when that happens he'll order Musk to stop, and then we'll find out who the boss is and how our new post-coup reality works. The shock of Trump's
plan for Gaza, announced yesterday may get even the most "loyal" Repubs in Congress to think again about what hell they hath wrought on they country they all grew up in. I have some faith that American values are installed in their personal operating systems, somewhere in there is the remnant of the ideals of the Constitution. So I might have missed the mark, I hope I did. Meanwhile I wonder if Musk's wonderboys have managed to penetrate the military, and if they're planning on giving them orders about how to restrain the anti-Musk protests that are starting to break out around the country. Oh mama we live in
interesting times.
#
The coup is over. This time, unlike the
last time it was tried, it worked. We're in the post-coup world now. He showed us exactly what he would do if he could and we somehow collectively acted as if he hadn't shown us. Sanewashing was just the tip of the iceberg, you can't blame it on the press, we didn't demand they get their shit together, we didn't try to change the subject so they'd have to tell the real story. We had a lot of tools available to us that we didn't use because we are lazy and selfish. BTW, if you want to follow the power, don't look at what governments do, look at what the other oligarchs do. Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2024/08/17/dewey.png)
Freaky warning. As easily as Musk can turn off government websites, he can turn off our sites. He could turn off all .com or .org sites. He'll probably do it just that way. Only one domain will work in the future, x.com. Goodbye Google, Amazon, your drug store. Bubye. Not sure if moving your DNS to Europe or Asia will make a difference. He's taking advantage of centralization, and will try to make it more centralized. Totally centralized. A journalist couldn't report this, because what proof do I have? It's because there's a pattern here. And it's pretty obvious the tools he's using.
#
I was just setting up an account for another Feed Reader experiment on Bluesky and found that they have a
Suggested User List that recommended the usual people who get in the way of telling the story that's really happening. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, really felt it. We went through this with Twitter, it created influencers based on how loyal they were to the people who run Twitter, people who overlooked the obvious flaws in the system. We're living with their influence to this day, they have a million followers, completely manufactored by fealty to the owners. I swear to god these systems have to be publicly owned. The idea of turning to tech insiders to run them has run its course, don't you think. Over on Facebook this morning I saw an old friend with a cute meme that says people should paste swastika stickers on Teslas. That's nice. The reason you can get away with that is that you're attacking innocent people. More of the same. Of course
publicly owned now means Musk Owned. See how things have changed, so quickly.
#
Jesse Stay who I have known from early blogging days proposes to build the billionaire-proof social network using the AT Protocol. I'm going to help if I can. I'm developing apps that run on AT Proto, so at least I should be able to test my apps with his service.
#
I would love to manage individual DNS domains using GitHub. I already have great tools for updating stuff over there. And everything on my current DNS system is manual and laborious.
#
What's happening in the US is like when a person who is a lifetime smoker gets cancer and stops smoking. You hope the cancer doesn't kill you, and swear to never smoke again if you're lucky enough to survive it.#
- We didn't appreciate how good we had it with our representative form of government. We could have stopped the erosion of our power at any time, when our reps would have more or less had to listen. Now, when we start trying to get their attention, which hasn't happened yet, it's going to be a competition between the rule of law, which is undermined, and the forces that would keep our would-be rulers in line if only our reps felt we were behind them, which they justifiably, do not. #
- The prognosis isn't good. But we should get our shit together asap because it's our only hope. #
- PS: Blaming other people is easy and powerless. Accepting your own responsibility and doing something to change it is powerful.#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2024/12/25/leftfacingsanta.png)
Anyone who says
competent white men should be in charge probably has never actually run anything. Women are better in general at seeing the big picture and managing accordingly. A man is more likely to hone in on one aspect of the problem and if they're good, do something brilliant, but misses out on pretty much everything else. I, as a man, have had to severely discipline myself to get anything done, because that's how I'm built. Given a chance I will always put my head down and focus on one thing until its done, then the next and the next and so on.
#
We need to change who reps us as much as we need to get the ones who current do rep us off their butts and actually do some representing.
#
Imho it would be smart for Musk to stop shutting things down and just do his work, whatever it is. By creating constant shitstorms he's making it impossible for anyone to defend him, and you can be sure some would be if what he was doing wasn't so blatantly outrageous. We never voted for that mofo. And every American alive, whatever their preference, thinks their own vote should count. That's going to be a massive hurdle for them to get over.
#
A bit of advice for Dems in Congress. Go home and have town halls, and listen. And stop listening to the consultants and each other. Find out what the people want, and bring that back to DC. And let the press attend the town halls so they can report. Make our own
Tea Party.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/02/02/uncleSam.png)
Thanks to
Heather Cox Richardson,
Timothy Snyder,
David Frum for fantastic pieces posted in the middle of last night. We are having a fresh awakening in this country and in the end we may come to thank Musk and Trump for facilitating this. And I'm so glad that online media is making this possible too, in addition to all the nasty shit we're also responsible for. :-)
#
I'm 99.9% sure, as crazy as it sounds, when Musk is finished with his software project, you will have to use X for everything related to the government. To pay taxes, to receive health care, to renew your passport. And if you try to arrest him, he'll stop paying interest on the US debt, and that will be the end of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. He won't just control the US government, he will control the world economy.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/02/02/pipsbigger.png)
BTW, it turns out that Pip's, a restaurant in
Severance, my favorite show in a while, was hot at the
Phoenicia Diner, which is one of my favorite places to eat in the area. Funny thing I didn't recognize it until I saw an
article about it in a local magazine.
#
Saw a commercial on CNN this evening from
Ontario in response to the tariffs, respectful, talking direct to Americans about the bonds with the people of Canada. Why can’t the Dems do this, say how important the independence of the FBI is, to start. We’d love to pay for that. Get in the game Dems.
#
Even if Congress doesn't do anything to rein in Musk and Trump, the stock market will have something to say on Monday, one assumes. And this might be one time to hope for a market crash.
#
I rewrote the
oursocialweb.org home page. It needed to focus on linking. The term web is being thrown around too casually, without regard to what the web is, the same kind of dilution that's happening with podcasting. But the
social web idea is fairly new, and it's really important that we get this right.
#
I'm
working on a new version of my thread-writer for Bluesky.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/03/20/mrSmith.png)
Given what Musk is doing now, do you think the internet will still be here in a year? Will there be any tech companies that aren't wholly owned by Musk, Inc. Will owning things even mean anything? Or is this the beginning of the rule of the tech bros, world wide. I can't imagine what they're planning for us. In the meantime, me divesting my Tesla, which seemed so urgent just 24 hours ago, now seems like a powerless gesture. I heard it said that now feels like the moment in Covid when you realized everything was about to freeze, and you'd better head to the supermarket right now, and when you got there, you found you weren't among the first to see it this way. I was very reassured by the blog post that Krugman did. It's nice to hear a sane voice out there.
#
Another
month, starting a
new year in the archive on GitHub.
2024 is complete. We've been following this pattern long enough. I wish GitHub had existed in 1994, and I wish we understood how to use it sooner than we did. Onward!
#
I've been using
claude.ai for programming work lately, and it does one thing better than ChatGPT. It reads your code and tries to mimic your coding style. ChatGPT won't do that. It's really frustrating to have to edit their code before I can even try it out. I like it and am paying the $20 per month in addition to the money I'm paying ChatGPT.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2024/05/21/teslaModelY.png)
I've decided that trading in my
Model Y for
another EV is an acceptable solution. Let someone else ride around in this car that I love, but hate because it is a symbol of American terrorism and apartheid. This is compatible with my understanding that hate is love that was betrayed. I'm sure I won't love its replacement as much as I loved the Model Y, but I will feel better about driving it. And Tesla shareholders will, I hope, learn the lesson that products must be politically agnostic in order to work commercially. Or if you must take a stand, make it
against fascism. So many of our oligarchs have made the wrong bet here. We will never forget what Zuckerberg, Bezos, the CEOs of Apple, Microsoft, Open AI -- all these companies went the wrong way.
#
- TL;DR: The key to success is convincing developers to ignore the fact that you will eventually kill them.#
- Would-be platform vendors, open or not, in order to entice a developer to learn how it works:#
- Quick success. Hello World works in less than 30 minutes. Hopefully much less.#
- Easy to believe that the platform vendor won't want to kill me. This is a trick, because based on my experience, they always try to kill you, eventually. #
- Fun. If I can fill a need that I think users will want, without being resented too much by the platform vendor then I might take a jump knowing full well that the better the idea the quicker the vendor will kill me. For that reason it's better to do something they don't understand, or will see as irrelevant, ie a "third party opportunity." As soon as it appears to be "system software," that's when they started the project to eat your lunch. ;-)#
- The API works the way you think. This has been the highest hurdle for me to get over in most platforms I think about working with. I can't tell you how many times I've stared at the docs for a platform and have no idea how it relates to the product, which I know how to use. The concepts should mirror the functionality of the system it's the API for. Too much theory and I have to be very very motivated for other reasons to get through the fog. #
- It must be relatively easy for you to hang out in a corner where it's too hard for them to be worth the trouble.#
- Thing is if there is a platform vendor, they can kill you, no matter what they say. I once had a big platform vendor say they weren't trying to crush me. I could see on his face he realized he had just given up their plan, or how else would that term be in his head as applied to me. Never mind, I was already commited so what difference did it make. #
- The reason for all this is that as they grow, platform vendors hire employees to work on this stuff, and they resent independent developers. This surprised me when I first encountered it. I thought we were siblings, brothers and sisters. But they idealize our situation and only see the pain in theirs. So they will enjoy killing you. It will eventually happen. That's why it's generally much better if there is no platform vendor. #
- Here we are on an artichoke farm in coastal California, a place where migrant workers would normally be doing low-pay back-breaking work to pick the artichokes we could eat in our salads and antipasto. #
- Instead all we have are Trump's beautiful dancers! It is a beautiful scene, but hold your nose because the unharvested 'chokes are rotting and they don't smell very sweet!#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/01/31/chokingOnArtichokes.png)
Trump's California artichoke farms, beautiful, but not very productive.
#
Good oligarchs and bad oligarchs. We need to help the good ones have the guts to get on the air, with really good creative advertising, telling the people exactly what's being done to them now, without pulling any punches. They have to be warned and they aren't. You have to be paying a lot of attention to understand. And it's hard to know what to believe. We have to have a voice in this, now.
#
- Andrew Hickey wrote something I wholeheartedly agree with. "If you think the day job might literally kill you, and you have no kids, quit and try that mad idea. That might also kill you, but better to die trying something wonderful than be killed by a crappy job."#
- My response: "My life story since I was 22, and I'm 69 now. It's worked out okay, not perfect, I have regrets, but I would have far more if I hadn't bet on myself. My 22-year-old self was very right about a lot of things."#
- After cleaning out the White House of scummy career woke liberals and replacing them with beautiful dancers and then offering buyouts to the 2 million federal leeches, #
- President for Life Donald J Trump set his sights on journalism, beautifying the NY Times!#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/01/30/briefingRoom.png)
Newly beautified briefing room.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/01/30/trafficControl2.png)
Air traffic control is just lovely.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/01/30/nyt.png)
Oh my they are beauts, and loyal too!
#
There
should be ads on tv tonight saying they're coming for the abortion pill. Spell it out clearly so the voters can hear it as it happened. Otherwise they will rightly blame the Dems for not telling them what was going on. It's not too late Dems.
#
Molly White has an excellent
OPML subscription list. I want to make something with this, maybe a
Bluesky feed reader? I want to show people they can combine skills to make new media. We don't have to wait for big companies to do it for us. We can work together. That's how we rise to the challenges we share. We can flip this bad situation around, turning problems into opportunity. Big changes happen now. We can steer in the direction we want to go.
#
We're programmed to believe big companies make things the right way and individual people can't be trusted. We're going to have to break out of that rut, to stop trusting them so much. It's like the 2008 banking crisis, but this time they've taken over the government, not just the economy. The tech industry, believe it or not, started with assumption that it was the other way around. That people were the brilliance, and companies started wars to make money (we were the generation that stopped the Vietnam war, btw). I got into computers because I thought I could earn a living that way, but quickly discovered how inherently subversive they are. They weren't just for the nerds with the plastic pocket protectors, they were also for hippies. Some of us are still here and we want to create with you.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/01/29/shanker.png)
One more thing then I have to get back to work. There's a great moment in Woody Allen's
Sleeper where a time traveler was told that the world was destroyed when
Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear warhead. If you lived in NYC in the 70s and 80s you knew
Albert Shanker as a NY character like
Al Sharpton or
Curtis Sliwa. New York
had its own semi-celebrities,
people who
were famous
mostly in New York,
but not
as much
outside. So Albert Shanker with a nuclear weapon kind of fit his character as a bomb throwing type in city politics in an extreme way. A fitting and comic way for us to end it all. Proof that god has a sense of humor. It was an inside reference only NYers would get. Well in case you didn't know it, back in that time or a little later, Trump was one of those Albert Shanker types. And yes, now again he has all the nuclear weapons. And it still feels like he's only famous in a mediocre Queens real estate way. Isn't that weird?
#
Podcast: The Repubs are trying to kill you.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2020/05/21/thinkUsa.png)
If our political system worked we’d have wonderful heart-grabbing ads on TV about all the people who have meaningful jobs thanks to DEI. It wouldn’t be hard to make the Repubs look like Scrooges. Get people riled up. Another ad, about the people Trump pardoned and what they’re doing now. Wait till one of them commits a major crime and run
Willie Horton style ads. Make it understood who these people actually are. Trump has to own each and every one of them. This really isn’t hard. But the Dems think campaigns end. They don’t end.
#
Another ad. Donald Trump on Mt Rushmore. Donald Trump on the $20 bill. The Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial renamed Trump. Kennedy airport in NYC renamed Trump International. In the future the US will have one founding father: Donald J. Trump.
#
I thought this excerpt from
Krugman's piece about his move back to blogging was right on. "For a while I tried to make up for the loss of the blog with threads on Twitter. But even before Elon Musk Nazified the site, tweet threads were an awkward, inferior substitute for blog posts." There's a need for a system that combines the full-featured writing of blogging and the timelines of twitter-like systems.
#
- Could what happened to Twitter, happen there?#
- To determine, ask yourself if you could continue to use it if it was acquired by a billionaire for their own personal political use?#
- What would you switch to?#
- Would you have to give up your history and followers?#
- And developers, what would you do if the billionaire acquirer dropped support for the api? How expensive and time consuming would it be to convert to a different protocol? Would you even bother?#
- We’ve learned a lot from the billionaire acquisition of twitter. The answer to these questions made a lot of us think we’d never want to do this again. But despite all the misleading hype, we very much are repeating the mistakes.#
- The current owners of Bluesky would be crazy if they closed off the opportunity to get rich. But they shouldn’t be misleading users and developers into believing that it’s safe to trust this as an open platform that couldn’t be acquired and have its utility consumed the way twitter's was.#
- This started as a thread on Bluesky of course. :-)#
- PS: Spoiler -- Bluesky is, as it is currently configured, not billionaire-proof. It's going to get acquired, it probably already has, based on what they're doing. Remember, pay attention to what they do, not what they say. It's just as true in tech as it is in politics, and these days, what's the difference anyway? #
- PPS: If you're thinking ahh but there's AT Protocol, our ace in the hole. Please. Twitter had an API too. It didn't make a difference. And AT Proto won't either unless there are proven systems that people are actually using that peer with Bluesky's servers, so those users can't be sold to the billionaire. We're nowhere near that. No one can say with any certainty that it's even possible. At this point the continued support of the API is entirely up to the owners of Bluesky. They could change it, break developers or completely drop it and the users and developers would have no recourse. #
- PPPS: Can you imagine the founders of Bluesky wouldn't take $20 million each for their share? #
Isn't it funny how the
two political
forces we thought we completely defeated in the 90s are coming back for their revenge.
#
Our best hope is that the factions within MAGA fight each other. We're assuming they have a way to keep everyone in line, but the more power they capture, the harder that's going to be.
#
![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2025/01/25/zelig.png)
It's been over 24 hours, and my
viral post from yesterday is still getting
lots of RTs and likes. An observation -- it's made my
Bluesky account virtually unusable. Anything else I publish there is swamped by the viral post. I'm also working on a new version of the software that turns Bluesky into a
feed reader. It will be able to manage multiple rivers, where the first version could only do one. The next reader will be all the posts from me on all the various services I post to that have outbound RSS feeds. After that, I have ideas for special feeds for specific publications. I want to help our friends in the blogging and news world, using the best communication tools available. I find now that people are much more open to ideas. This is good. But we should never be complacent. Learn from the competition. They were getting ready for this moment, we weren't.
#
- Hegseth's job is to stay out of the way while the Heritage Foundation separates the military into those who take loyalty seriously and those who are retiring.#
- For that job being an alcoholic is a plus. 😀#
- They're interviewing for who wants to be his replacement. #
- His job is to keep the seat warm.#