We may be at the point in the unraveling of America when our favorite diners shut down. For me it was the Odessa on Avenue A, across from Tompkins Square Park, in the East Village. I used to meet my mother and grandfather there in the 80s. My uncle lived nearby in the hippie days, the late 60s and 70s. When I lived in NYC in the last decade, the teens, I'd take an out-of-town visiting friend maybe once a year. It wasn't the best of the Old World diners, but it was the last original one. Veselka now is the goto place for that kind of food. The links to the old generation are disappearing, no surprise because the generation itself is gone. Not surprising that a place like Odessa can't survive just on takeout, when there are so many other great choices in the Village. #

This is why you take pictures of your food. A picture of a dinner at Odessa. I don't know what all of it is. The sausage is probably a kielbasa. And the dumplings are called pierogi, and come with fillings like sauerkraut, mushrooms, potatos and various meats. The pancake on top doesn't look familiar. I think that might be stuffed cabbage on the right at 2 o'clock. There's some kind of soup at the upper right. #

EV Grieve visited Odessa in February. Zomato has the menu. #

What made me think of disappearing diners is this post about The Blue Benn diner in Bennington, VT that's for sale for $595K. #

Poll: "Which site do you respect most for TV and movie reviews?" #

Can you imagine if the virus were a hurricane (it's doing a lot more damage) we would be debating whether or not it's over. That's because we haven't set up our radar yet. We know how to do it. But Trump won't spend the money. #

I wish Fauci would quit and set up his own streaming station where he does daily briefings. I'd chip in $1000. I bet he could raise as much money as he wanted. Never have we so totally needed a source to go direct.#

I want a system where voters have buddies, like sponsors in a 12-step program, who they commit to voting, and they engage on Election Day and make sure they do. They escort each other to vote. We should have drills. What an incredible demonstration that would be.#

BTW, I'm really crusing through Brockmire. It's depraved, fascinating, well written and acted. It has a couple of awkward moments, but Hank Azaria is a great actor. You totally get lost in the character. #

Today's song: Can't find my way home. #

Try to give people who have earned the benefit of the doubt, the benefit. Save outbursts of anger for when there's a real need to alert the other person to imminent danger. Try to not be offended. You want a more civil net? Be the change you wish to see in the world.#

On NPR this morning a question that has a simple answer, but no one can seem to find it. How did the flower children of the 60s become the Boomers of the 90s and 00s? Not a good question, because that isn't what happened. Hippies were a very small part of the Boomer generation. George W. Bush is a Boomer, but not a hippie, then or now. And sure, some hippies didn't drop out, but then a bunch of them did. My uncle, for example. He really did live the dream of the hippies. As I read the Lies book, I come to appreciate that there are people applying the scientific method to history, and not accepting the simple and wrong stories of heroes and villains, weak and strong, the savages and the civilized. BTW, some of the hippies became programmers. That's a whole other thread to pick up. That's why the freedoms of the net and the web persist to this day. A fair number of people believe in them, still, and follow the grain, instead of trying to build forts. #

One more thing, my disappointment with the EFF, as I discussed yesterday, is that they started off with the hippie ideal, the three founders were immersed in it, but as the EFF grew, they let billionaire monopolists set the agenda. I wanted them to tell the story of podcasting as it was created, by following the grain of the web, not by throwing huge money and installed base at the idea. Sometimes soft power is the way to get something done. They wouldn't even listen, that's how little respect they have for the individual. Why should they, the most I can contribute is a few thousand, Google can contribute millions. Imagine what Bernie Sanders would say. The EFF is a prime example, imho, of flower children losing their way. #

New version of LO2 this morning with a few minor fixes. As before if you spot problems, please report them here. #

Why doesn't Dr Fauci have a daily briefing carried by all the networks. Okay we know Trump wouldn't let him, and as long as he's employed by the US govt, Trump can probably stop him. But what if Fauci decided he would be more effective outside of government? Who would bankroll such a venture, as a public service? #savemylife #

Alexa loves the Grateful Dead too. #

There's a new trend in programming -- we must change our software so as not to, internally, invisibly to users, use terms like black or white, master or slave, etc. I'm editing some code now that has the concept of enabled and disabled. Can you imagine if we have to purge this from our tech vocabulary? The economics of such changes are mind-boggling. And the breakage. What if we used such a term in one of our standards? A frozen one? An ancient one? What then? #

Roadmap. Do not re-open schools. Run Trump out of town, asap. Temporary acting President Fauci announces a nationwide lockdown. All manufacturing directed to produce PPE, food, shelter for homeless Americans. Elections to be held on Nov 3, mail only.#

The problem with journalism exposed in the age of Trump is they don't do anything. You say oh they're not supposed to. Voice from nowhere, etc. But they rarely carry stories of people who do things. Mostly Trump. Occasionally #BLM or but just for a while. That's it. Why does it matter now? Because we've been needing to do things since November 2016. We figure it out when it's too late. It's a repeating pattern. Maybe we need national activism more than we need journalism? We need something different or else we're hosed. #

Little Outliner v1.8.16 is now its own reader app. There's a way to open outlines without logging in via Twitter. Also cleaned up and reorganized the Docs menu. #

If you have questions about LO2, this is the new place to post to, linked to from the Docs menu.#

Watching Biden give a speech via teleprompter and wondering why in 2020 we don't have a better way of doing this, so he can move his head where ever he likes and still have the text right in front of his eyes. He shouldn't have to turn his head to read.#

I discovered a new feature in GitHub. If you create a public repository with the same name as your account, the readme.md file in that repo is displayed on your GitHub home page. Of course it's Markdown. Might be interesting to integrate some of the status-editing features I'm working on into this. It supports basic web stuff, as you would expect from a techies site like GitHub. Okay this might be fun. 🎈#

I'm becoming a Deadhead. Today's song is China Cat Sunflower. #

Last night at the beginning of Maddow they had a tour of the Covid ward at a Houston hospital similar to the ones they did in NYC hospitals a couple of months ago. First we watched a woman die. She was infected at the funeral she held for her husband who also died of Covid. Then they interviewed a patient who explained she was being careful, yet caught the virus anyway. This is how it works when the density of infection goes up, you encounter more virus as you move around, and with more density the chance of you getting infected goes up. That's what they're dealing with in Houston. It was excellent, but they were all Democrats. It would be helpful if they interviewed a banker type, in trouble, in a ward, worrying about the horrible death looming in front of him. Let them see a Republican dealing with an unavoidable awful reality. Might scare them into wearing masks and thereby decrease the density of the virus and save my life. #

Podcast: I tell the story of a person who was cancelled.#

The next great Lincoln Project ad. Learn their names. Every time they had a choice between America and Trump, they chose Trump. #

San Quentin has exploded with Covid. "1,300 prisoners and 184 staff having tested positive for the coronavirus as of July 7."#

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.#

You know that big letter that was posted on Harper's yesterday that caused such a brouhaha. Here's the summary. Just because you're offended, doesn't mean you're right. #

NakedJen works in a place where people must wear a mask, so she gives out a lot of masks every day. She's going to make custom masks that have a message. That's the first part of this story. Second part, we both started a campaign called #savemylife, where we promote stories and ideas that save people's lives in this age where lives have all of a sudden become cheap, something our government is promoting (the cheapness, not the saving). So Jen has designed a mask that has the #savemylife message on it, which is kind of heavy, and to balance that she put a giddy little smiley on it, to make it more Jen-like. I said I want one, but maybe I want mine to have a picture of MLK instead of the smiley. And then I would probably change the tag to #blacklivesmatter. This is something that I, a white man, would wear with pride. But there's a problem. The purpose of my wearing a mask is to save your life, not mine, in case I'm infected and am shedding. I feel contradicitons like this have to be resolved. Or do they?#

Yesterday, I was at a store, did my shopping, but when I took the mask off in the car one of the straps broke. I went back to the store and asked if they had an extra. They gave me one, with a smile. No reason that mask shouldn't have had a message on it.#

Today's song: You win again. #

I'm reading Lies My Teacher Told Me. Chapter 2 is a real eye-opener. How the story of Columbus is told, how it's designed to serve a purpose, all from the perspective of Europeans. You might think, of course it is, this is the US, but a lot of the people who are taught that history are not descended primarily from Europeans. So it isn't their history. #

Trump is our enemy. I've been tweeting this the last few hours, attached to evidence. We're all in thrall with him, not just his base. We're in Jonestown. Covid is the Kool Aid. #

Last night on MSNBC they just now started talking about how Puerto Rico was the canary in the coalmine. That should have been topic #1 as it was happening. Moderator, ask your pundit, geez if he'll leave Puerto Rico to die, do you think he'll care whether we live or die? And then wonder what if we get hit by a calamity that isn't local, that affects the whole world. Why do they leave the tough questions on the table until it's too late. The point of the canary is to pay attention when the canary dies. When you're about to die, it's too late. It's so repetitious, they say the same things over and over, for weeks and months. Yet all the important questions, the obvious ones, go unasked. #

Trump has a loyalty problem. #

Every election there's a new contributor that makes the process more tolerable for die-hards like me. Previously it was FiveThirtyEight, then there was the Daily podcast. And this time around, no doubt about it, it's the Lincoln Project.#

2016: Moral outrage alone won't work.#

Every so often you see an article that says men are responsible for all the problems of the world. I don't comment on them very often, I've learned that's a good way to get the online equivalent of a kick in the balls. People can believe what they want, but every man had a mother, I'm fond of saying, and if men are fucked up as a gender, well you made us the way we are, ladies, so there's that. And then there's this. 😄#

Meanwhile I'm doing some interesting work, and have a nice roadmap of projects each of which should take about a week. Summer is good in the mountains. Eating well, exercising, breathing clean air. #

One thing people don’t get is the rate of death in the US is about to increase, radically. There is no living with this, we have to fight it. That our government is okay with such a massive rate of death is a problem, but even worse is the people seem okay with it.#

Some of the silos being created today are thin. Not a whole lot of tech keeping the users locked in. However the fact that their content is immovable is what keeps them dependent on the platform.#

Now more than ever we need Checkbox News. I want to uncheck Trump and see what's left.#

RSS makes à la carte software possible. Substack is like prix fixe software. You must to use their editor to publish a newsletter. No substitutions. But what if you already have an editor you like? No soup for you!#

Overnight came news of a Spanish research project to find out if the virus has the potential of herd immunity. Apparently not. So we are stuck in this mode until when? Could a vaccine work if there's no possible herd immunity? Anyway, this is like one of those classic fables or myths about the people who were so divided, so hated each other, that they couldn't get together to fight a disease that they can't overcome until they can work together. It's like that famous O Henry story, which I won't spoil in case you haven't read it. #

I've been thinking of getting a new Twitter account. I'm pretty sure the one I've had since 2006 has a flag on it that says "Don't suggest it." Explained here. I think this stems back to the controversy about the Suggested Users List. They eventually did phase it out. And something was done to my account. My follower count, at one time one of the top ten accounts on Twitter, hasn't grown in many years. So maybe it's time to start over, and see if I can have more followers without whatever was done. Anyway, some of the names I've considered are taken: boomer, elgrande (a few friends call me that), uncledavey (one of my favorite titles), scripting, scriptingnews (not sure what this account is), savemylife. Or I could use one of the many names I already have. Then there's the question of how to transition? I think about it sometimes, but I never actually do it. 💥#

Of all the things to be angry about, and there are a lot, the one that gets me the most is that Trump has had Fauci muzzled for three months.#

Perfect. Take down all Confederate statues and ship them to Trump for his Garden of Heroes of White Supremacy and the Not See Party.#

A few days ago I said I figured out that the not-pleasant burnt smell in the air came from fireworks. That was incorrect. A neighbor is having work done on trees. I live in a forest, where trees are a big deal. They're always falling over, and then you need to cut them up and haul the wood away or chop it into firewood. When you cut trees with a chain saw the wood burns, and it doesn't stop burning when the cutting is done. And that adds a stink to the air, like a fire that was put out with water. That's what I was smelling. I know this because I had some trees cut last year, and the stinky smell stuck around for a week. It's the sad smell of a dying creature. On the other hand, when you wake up on a summer morning with dew on everything, and a nice warm feel to the air, with a bit of residual chill, the forest smells like life. It's a wonderful smell. #

Snopes and CNN say Trump did not say Desert Storm took place in Vietnam. I ran a link on my linkblog yesterday that said otherwise.#

Poll: If you could have a reincarnated Martin Luther King, Jr leading the Democratic Party today or Barack Obama, who would you chose?#

After Trump is gone we have to get rid of the cancel cult. It’s an ugly side effect of the power of online communication. When Trump uses it in his campaign it’s one of the very few things he’s right about.#

Suggestion: Choose to not be offended, at least once a day.#

Here's a list of the 37 Node.js packages I've made available through NPM. I was just planning a project and was sure I must have created a package for reading to and from a GitHub repo. There it is. Two entry-points, getFile and uploadFile. Voila. Not much in the way of docs. But there is an example app.#

Arnold Schwarzenegger on his love for America. I totally concur. The US welcomed my family in the 1940s. My parents were children, their parents were running for their lives. All of our love of country is being tested, but as it is, it is revealed. It takes on new meaning. We'll come back from this. There are a lot of reasons for the trouble we're in, some habitual, some technical. I've heard Americans say they wish they had left when they could, but there's a reason we didn't leave. This is our country. We can't abandon it in its time of need. We're the ones who stayed. We will make it work.#

The infinite scrolling feature on the Scripting News home page wasn't a good idea, because it made it difficult to reach the bottom of the page which has useful stuff on it. I just turned it off. I did a video demo of the feature so we can remember how it worked, and if needed I can turn it back on. And the More button remains, so you can use that to scroll back, one day at a time.#

Today's song: He's Gone by the Grateful Dead. No special reason. No one specific died. I just have this song rolling around in my head this morning. You know better but I know him.#

A tweetcast about how things in the US are kind of normal.#

I've been smelling burned ash everywhere, esp at night. Everywhere I go. I'm thinking this must be a symptom of the virus, so I'm afraid to ask if anyone else smells it. Then on my bike ride I saw a bunch of spent fireworks on the road. Yeah that's the smell. July 4. That should be over soon enough. #

Why more white people understand Black Lives Matter now. We're realizing that our lives don't matter, and now all of a sudden Black Lives Matter makes a different kind of sense. It's a bit too subtle for some people. But the virus and our society's response to it is making the lights come on, gradually at first, eventually for everyone.#

Dear Lincoln Project people -- how about forking off a new PAC to convince more Americans to wear a mask. Use your marketing smarts to crack this nut. And save my life.#

I like how they have a Get Involved button on their website. But when you click they don't say what being involved means, beyond giving them money and your email address and zip code, presumably so they can spam you. I'd love for a campaign to define involvement as solving a problem we have in America, right now.#

I like listening to audio books, but I have two peeves. 1. When a book provides numbers for comparison, repeat the numbers at least once. 2. Put the introductory material at the end. Authors go on and on, assuming you won't read it. Oops. #

Another peeve. I was watching a Dave Chappelle show on Netflix. He is really funny. Great comic. But he uses the N-word a lot. And get this -- he uses it to talk about white people. Like this: You my <N-word>. I've been told, not by Chappelle, that it's a term of endearment. To me, that's ridiculous -- it's a threat. Because if I use that term of endearment, a 10-ton weight comes down on my head. I don't like it. We're also told this is a word African-Americans use among themselves, and we wouldn't understand what it means. But many of the people in Chappelle's audience are white. We're his N-words. I'm watching it, and reminded every time I hear the world, and he says it a lot, that this is something I'm not allowed to like. The more I listen to him use the N-word, my inner voice, constantly yapping about nothing, repeats what he says, and I'm concerned that will eventually come out of my mouth, without thought because that actually happens in real life. It's a painful word, not just for African-Americans. I saw Jelani Cobb write on Twitter the other day about the possible capitalization of the word black when used to talk about people of African descent. "Does anyone feel strongly about upper-casing the B in black? I’m generally opposed to this because it turns race, a nonexistent category, into a proper noun." Maybe we should use words everyone can say, and try to stick to words that have meaning, and preferrably one obvious meaning, so we all can understand wtf you're talking about. 😄#

A kitten and a puppy are best friends in this Twitter video. #

A 25-minute podcast I did this morning. It was mostly about what's in the gaslighting post below. Expanded, and starting with an observation by Ken Smith, English prof at Indiana University, that students deserve to be shown how to use the power tools of our culture. Teachers should say that to them, out loud. I tried saying it loud and felt the power. Led to a story or two. The title of this podcast is Don't Cry For Me Argentina. Wish I had thought to play that song during the podcast. Next time. 💥#

Really interesting discussion going on globally on what objectivity means in journalism, esp in re #BLM. I spent many podcasts with Jay Rosen talking about his idea of the mythical View from Nowhere. You must disclose who you are, and disclaim that your writing comes from who you are. This came up in another discussion yesterday about integrity. "A [person] has integrity if he or she is what he or she appears to be. That's why integrity commands us to disclose conflicts, so that what we say, and who we appear to be, are in sync. Change the appearance if necessary." It's material if the editors of a publication are predominantly of one race. Until this year, however, as far as I know, the subject had never been raised. Times are changing. #

Reporters can't get it through their heads that someone might want to write publicly to help steer the conversation, not for self-aggrandizement. I know what that's like, I've been a columnist at a big pub. I've had the name of a big university on my business card. This is different. I want to see us survive the virus. I want to survive it myself. Otherwise I don't have any great personal aspirations. I think I can help. That's it. I don't honestly see how, in this moment of crisis in the US, anyone could be worried about getting ahead. Our concern has to be for keeping our system going. It's falling apart, right now, before our eyes. Any idea should be considered, no matter where it comes from. But the gates are really high right now. The keepers are struggling to hold on, and that's exactly what's wrong with discourse.#

BTW can you see now why I want HTML in bash? All those names in the list of apps the server is running should have scripts attached to them.#

I spent the day so far combining the Radio3 docs into one Howto page. Consider this a draft, I still have to do a couple more read-throughs. If you have any questions or comments, please post them here. #

David Rothkopf: "There was a time in our history when the people of this country would be saddened were the president of the United States to stumble into an open pit that was actually a wormhole that sent him hurtling for all eternity to the farthest, coldest, most hostile corner of the universe."#

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a video game that simulates a worldwide pandemic. You get to be Fauci, and have to deal with a mentally incapacitated president and Republican governors who just want to reopen. Your challenge is to make the US virus free, and win the Nobel Peace Prize.#

The best defense against Putin and Trump is to teach every student the basics of journalism. Not just how to detect fake news, but how to write a news story. If we do it now, we'll be glad we did in a few years.#

A podcast voicemail to Doc, who reminds me of Martin Sheen and Wilford Brimley. He has a piece today that he wants you to read. And I thought of a way to make that happen automatically. That's what this podcast is about. 26 minutes. Rambly. 🚀#

How many people died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, vs the number of people who have died so far in the US of Covid-19? The numbers will surprise you. (Answer: We're getting close to the death toll of Hiroshima.)#

Colin Nederkoorn reminds us that the NY Times, even though they've opted out of Apple News still has a full complement of RSS feeds. The feeds are perfect. A headline, a synopsis and a link to the paywall'd article. I still would like to see a way around the paywall for non-subscribers. #

Little-known feature on Scripting News. You can read a whole month's worth of posts on one page. For example, here's the page for June 2020. I think you can see how the URL is formed. #

It would be interesting to make a list of people whose lives, net-net, matter and don't matter, and to what extent, and how that changes over time. For example, American soldiers' lives in Afghanistan didn't matter much before the latest scandal, but now we know their lives matter even less than we thought.#

Today's song: The Good Thing by the Talking Heads. #

In October of last year, before impeachment, I proposed a permanent citizen's occupation of DC. 100K people constantly in protest in DC, rain or shine, 365 days a year, until Trump is gone. On a rotating basis. No one signs up for more than one day. Never more than 100K. Keep a constant presence there for the Democrats and Republicans to remember. To be in the way. To be loud and obnoxious. To help them remember who they work for. #

Not wearing a mask is like not wearing pants.#

Is anyone but John Oliver talking about the eviction crisis?#

I try to keep focused on the bigger picture, and let the small stuff be background noise.#

People who love outliners, esp MORE from 30 years ago on the Mac, we could have an outliner renaissance on the web, now. I have a great lab for development, and the core outliner in JavaScript is open source. I've always felt every app should have a nice outliner built-in. Let's have fun!#

Thanks to Gruber, there's renewed interest in Little Outliner. I'd love to have an excuse to work more on its evolution. I have a series of steps in mind, but not enough of a user base to do it with. Gruber would be an excellent user to help drive development. Note that I did a fair amount of work on it earlier this year, adding a feature that I use every day, to grab all my tweets from the previous day. It's turned Twitter into a blogging tool for me, believe it or not. Pretty cool. #

BTW I should add a feature to LO2 that makes it possible for me to send the URL of an OPML file in a link and have it open in LO2. Might help people get the idea of what an outliner is. Heh. After I finish with Radio3. This is what I mean by "sexier and speculative" ideas. 💥#

Why work on Radio3 now? I've had it on my list for a long time. It's long overdue for an overhaul. I wrote it when I was new to JavaScript and didn't really understand the rules, it's a weird language and the browser is a very weird runtime environment. But I always seem to find something sexier and more speculative to work on. Programmers notoriously hate to clean up their messes. I'm no different. Then I had a Come to Jesus moment. I use Radio3 all day every day. I use it on my iPad and iPhone as well as my desktop. It does a lot of my Twitter posts, it's the Links tab on scripting.com, and the links section of the nightly email. It's an important piece of software. Staring me right in the face. Improving it could make everything better. And making it easier to work on the code means I could add improvements in the future. #

Future possible use for Manhattan. A huge museum for how a centralized economy and cultural system worked before all that was blown apart by the net and a virus.#

I'm starting to work on the UI of Radio3 now that the server issues seem settled. Logging my work here. Will get more formal later. #

We're going to start on the road out of racism in the US when intelligent, loving, courageous, driven and visionary people of all races decide to listen to each other and find things we can do that benefit everyone regardless of race, now -- immediately, not some time in the future. Not symbolic things, but stuff to save my life. #

Jason Calacanis writes: "Imagine if every day Trump and Pence did a data-lead briefing like NY Gov Cuomo did." Of course that the US government should be doing that. The Democrats could do it too, no imagination. Or a startup could. Hire a former head of the CDC, and do the hourlong briefing Cuomo did, a weather report for the virus, and make recommendations for business and people. Huge piece of blue sky here. JC is a risk-taking angel investor with experience in journalism. He would be a good person to do this. I wish someone would. We need it.#

A fantastic instance of save my life journalism. #

For the next few days Radio3 will be unreliable if the past couple of days are any indication. I'm retooling the server, and grappling with some mysterious problems. BTW, the reason I asked about a Hello World app for WordPress is that if there's an easy way to get WordPress support working again in Radio3, (the WP API changed some time back and broke Radio3 in this regard), I will. But I don't have time to do a deep-dive into the WordPress API at this time. #

In the meantime, I think I found what was screwing up my new server. nodeStorage has a feature, that by default is enabled, where it checks with the GitHub repository every 15 minutes and downloads changes. It doesn't restart the app, so you don't see the effect of changes until you restart. The apps are running in the new version of PagePark that has Forever integrated. The way it knows which JavaScript file to run is via the main attribute in package.json. Here's how this goes wrong. At some point, the app checks with GitHub, sees that its version of package.json is different from the on the repo, and downloads it, replacing the one I customized. Ooops. That version does not have a main attribute. So next time I launch PagePark, which I am doing a lot of these days as I debug it and add features, the nodeStorage-based apps don't run. Vexing little bug. The feature should probably default to off. Thing is, when you implement a clever feature like this you want it to default true. Then, years later it bites you in the ass. That my friends is the way programming works, when it doesn't work. 💥 #

In hindsight, it would have been smart if instead of starting the Space Force, the US had started the Health Force. #

Biden, who has suffered tragic loss in his life, and survived, may be the perfect president for 2021 and beyond as we deal with the wreckage of the two pandemics, Covid and Trump.#

This may be the last I write about Trump. Suppose Trump were a brilliant political strategist. On hearing of how awful the virus was, in January, he would have thought to himself, "I just won re-election." How could that be you ask? Simple. He waits a bit until it's obvious to the press that it's an emergency then he gives a big Oval Office speech announcing the emergency and what we're going to do. It's exaclty what the CDC says to do. "This is going to hurt," Trump reads off the teleprompter, "but we'll get through it together." Then guess where his approval rating would be? 95%. Because that's how it works. We rally behind the leader in a time of crisis, even a douchebag like Trump. Who is more dumb than a sack of nails. I'm sure one of his advisors saw this as a political gift. All Trump had to do was listen. #

Braintrust query: I'm looking for a good Node package for posting to WordPress and updating posts. Really simple stuff. A basic Hello World app in JavaScript. Any pointers much appreciated.#

My bet is that none of NBA, MLB, NFL or NHL have a season of any kind this year. The shit is about to hit the fan, not a second wave, but a second order wave.#

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting at the White House where they decided to try to nuke the Affordable Care Act once again. I just like to know where the depravity comes from, and were there any Russian commissars in the room giving the orders?#

Waiting for MSNBC's Steve Kornacki nightly "weather report" on Covid outbreaks around the country. Crosspost to YouTube, Twitter, where ever people watch videos. Both a public service and a competitive coup. Free advice from your friendly media hacker. Dave#

One thing I love about having an iPhone and a banking app is that I no longer have to drive to a bank to deposit a paper check. Progress.#

Everywhere you go people will tell you we don't like your type here. In my old neighborhood in Queens, they said it about Jews, when we moved in. Many years later, same neighborhood, it was Chinese and Koreans. In Ulster County it applies to people from NYC. It's bullshit.#

BTW, when the Chinese and Koreans moved in, the food got a lot better. Funny story. A few years ago my mother and I went out to eat at a popular Chinese dumpling place near Main St. The waiter asked if we were tourists. I said, no -- we're natives. 💥 #

Social media is a moral parade. All we've done is give voice to stupid.#

If you're anti-anti-fascist does that make you fascist?#

In 2012, Obama liked to say the Repubs drove our economy into a ditch, and the Dems would have to pull it out and dust everything off. This time, if Biden were to tell the honest total truth, the Repubs drove us off the cliff and not just the economy. #

Now is the moment when no incumbent Republican can fool themselves into believing that Trump isn't doing massive harm to America. They can lie, but every one of them without exception understands. #

Cuomo says the NYC subway is visibly cleaner. Is it? #

I haven’t had any interaction on my Facebook posts in the last week. No comments, no likes, nada. It’s like it just ended. The people are gone, or Facebook algorithm isn’t showing anyone my posts. Meanwhile it’s rock and roll on twitter and on my blog. Later: Well it turns out, I have been posting mostly-private messages on Facebook since May 23. Not sure how it happened but only a few people were seeing them. I just posted something public and it's as if the lights turned back on. Now I'm going back through the last months' posts and changing the privacy setting on them. Whew. #

Driving on the Masspike yesterday, going west, listening to the audiobook of the People's History, when a phone call comes in. Looks like spam so I don't answer. Then the car's audio, coming from my fully updated iPhone XS Max, via CarPlay switches over to the Podcast app, and plays an episode of The Daily podcast, an episode I didn't want listen to, and there's nothing I can do until I can stop the car and reactivate the Audible app, about 15 miles of driving. To be very clear, it should have resumed the book, which was interrupted, not start a podcast. This is the kind of software lunacy that never gets fixed. Next year they'll revamp the OS of the car, or the phone, or switch the processor, or get rid of iTunes or Cookie Dough or whatever, and more stuff will break, and the process will continue next year and the year after, and it will not have been worth it. At some point some adult will run Apple, someone who can't be bluffed on software, will tell the engineers to shut up and eat your vegetables, you can watch TV when you finish your homework. It's an analogy. You can figure it out. 🚀#

I had to drive today on the New York State Thruway, south of Albany. It was a long enough drive that I had to stop to use the facilities. I dreaded going into the rest stop. Happy to report that everyone, without exception, was wearing a mask. I had another thought, watching a woman walk her dog in the special area set aside for that. I thought geez if the dog can pee outside.#

I started reading People's History of America. It was just what I was looking for. After this, I want to read the equivalent book about the Jews in Europe. I have very little idea what that was about other than it was rough and didn't end well. ;-) #

Trillions will be spent by the US government in coming months to keep the country from crumbling. Do we use the money for big change, or do we settle for symbolic victories with most of the money going to the 1%. PS: IMHO the protests are a good sign.#

Braintrust query: I'm trying to catch the error in a Forever-managed app that caused it to restart. The error shows up when the app is run on its own. I want the same info when Forever is running it.#

Yesterday I linked to a Joni Mitchell song, Twisted -- not knowing it was a cover for a song written by Annie Ross. A reader, Richie B, sent me a link, and I like this version even better. Very sweet, jazzy. 💥#

I asked a friend who’s Jewish, as am I, how he’d feel if a statue of Hitler was in the middle of his town. He said it’s different. It’s not. Imagine, after surviving the war, getting your freedom, the people you lived with, who controlled the town you live in, celebrated your enslavers. #

The people who flirt with KKK tactics, use the intimidation of Jim Crow, we can’t cleanse their minds, but we can force them back into the shadows. Blacks are every bit as American as any of us. Stop worrying about the feelings of the evil people, start caring for their victims.#

My friend Enoch Choi, a brave doctor who risks his life to save people all over the world, reminds us that racist terms like Kung Flu, coming from the filthy mouth of our president, give permission to evil people among us to target Asian Americans. Unacceptable.#

Today is WWDC day, and announcements from Apple. My longtime friend Scott Love says Apple should focus on the user experience. I say it's even more basic. What matters to me is how broken everything is. Every day it seems my flow is stopped because I have to find a way around something someone broke that broke something else. Stop deprecating, stop changing, let’s spend a decade fixing breakage.#

I love fresh cherries. 🍒#

Idea for the WHO: sell individual memberships.#

BTW, I never made software for iOS. I remember clearly when I decided not to. The day they announced the iPhone. I was expecting it to run Mac software. I had a great scripting environment for the Mac. I thought this is it, the perfect platform for me. Then I heard it was going to be nothing like the perfect platform for me. Now, 14 years later, give or take, the big story in tech is that it's an awful platform for developers. Y'all should just read Scripting News. Save a lot of time. 💥#

Reboot journalism: Let the experts speak for themselves. Goodbye view from nowhere. #

Big story: The whole thing, politics, business, health care, journalism, a self-perpetuating mess that’s collapsing.#

If you want to feel good, watch a Dave Chappelle concert, or Stop Making Sense. They both totally rock, in different ways. #

The only reason we’re not in a declared war with Russia is the treason that put Trump in office. What Russia did certainly was an act of war.#

This. This is how you do political advertising. You are watching history here folks. Pay attention. #

A bug in journalism is that it tries to put people in boxes. Your ideas only have value if you have credentials to back them up. This method makes reporters easily replaced by algorithms, and keeps us from hearing the most interesting even eclectic idea stimulating ideas. Of course no one in journalism will hear this because heh I lack the proper credentials. #

Season 3 of Westworld sucked.#

Observation: The US, not just Trump, wants to be distracted from the terror of the virus. Fact: We're so crazy we actually create events to help it spread faster. Action required: Pay more attention to the WHO and less to the antics of the US government.#

The WHO had something to say that we all must hear, but they didn't get much coverage. We were all too busy focusing on Trump's shenanigans, as always. There should be a daily briefing with Dr Fauci, broadcast on all channels, treated as news, I don't care if he has to quit the government to do it. The WHO message is this -- the virus is spinning up to a new level, and it's going to cost us hugely to get it to quiet back down. This has to be said clearly and repeatedly with authority. In America the only one who can do that is Fauci. Without Trump, obviously. Maybe Wolf Blitzer, who clearly has a rapport with Fauci should take a leave from CNN to be his partner in this. #

Before yesterday's rally in Tulsa, TikTok Teens and K-pop fans organized to spam the registration page. So they had 800K signups, with room for only 19K fans. Only 4 million live in Oklahoma. So the numbers were fishy. Even so the Trump campaign hyped them. They seem to have believed them. They must've wanted to. Ethan Zuckerman says it was activism, it was, and it's surprising how well it worked. #

I can't get this song out of my head. "What's so strange when you know that you're a wizard at three? I knew that this was meant to be."#

You don't learn the most from your parents until they leave you.#

There ought to be an amendment. As soon as an incumbent president tries to fire a US Attorney investigating him, he leaves office, and is automatically indicted for obstruction of justice. No bail. It's an admission of guilt, like taking the fifth.#

I went to grade school in Queens, not far from where Trump grew up. There were bullies in sixth grade who were more sophisticated and mature than our president. #

On GitHub, Sergey Ponomarev explains why he thinks JSON Feed was a bad idea. I wrote similar pieces in 2019 and 2017.#

The episode on Reconstruction of Radio Open Source is a must-listen, esp the interview with Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. I got goosebumps listening to her, and at the end I was fistbumping YES out loud on my bike ride. We are close to breaking through. The pandemic presents a huge opportunity for change that must not be wasted. Working together is required. I say something she didn't, white people will never know what it's like to be black, but we can work together, we must, we will. #

I started to record a voicemail to Om about his recent piece about Dropbox (it's short, you should read it before listening) but I kept going on, so I decided to make it a podcast. 13 minutes. #

Today was the last Cuomo briefing, and the end of the Cuomo podcast. Thanks to Richard Bluestein for doing the audio. Learned a lot from it, and also got to listen to some good leadership. I wonder who's going to fill the void. I hope the Democrats see there's a vacuum, maybe they could get Dr Fauci to do something like what the Governor was doing. Or a former head of the CDC? We need a trusted source of advice and scientific info to keep going. Not just in New York, but around the country, and elsewhere. #