Sometimes cats do stupid things!#

I want to call your attention to this NY Times story about two sisters who were injured in the terrorist attack in Charlottesville last weekend. They were both moved by a "sea of white faces" chanting Black Lives Matter. The crazy events of the last week remind us that we have much more work to do to get over the awful history of race in the United States. And we've never had a greater opportunity to make progress. Yes, black lives matter. Yes. And so much more. That's just a beginning. #

A picture is worth a thousand tweets. #

In September of last year, Evan Osnos wrote a piece in the New Yorker that imagined what the beginning of a Trump presidency would look like. I wanted this to be the beginning of a thread in journalism, give us an idea of what we were getting into. But the focus remained on Trump's outrageousness and the Russian leaks about Hillary. We blew it. Now I'd like to see a new thread that imagines what the sequence of events might be from here-out assuming Trump stays in office and his militia grow in power and the violence escalates. #

Somewhere in America someone is devising plans for mass extermination. For once I hope the good people of this country get out in front of the progression. At every step we've not been willing to consider how it could get worse, and do what's needed to head it off. Then it gets worse and we do it again. Right now we have a Nazi president (I don't credit him with being a "sympathizer" as some do). We still have a political system that's capable of dealing with him, but the people who have the power refuse to use it. People already have died. We have to be ready to deal with the thugs and their violence, either way. The question is can we handle having the American government leading them? One more Supreme Court appointment and we'll have open carry everywhere and you'll have to be a white male non-Jewish property owner to vote. #

God is goofing on me. After I wrote the super-serious post above, I dropped my Apple Watch and broke the screen. I've only broken one mobile device screen in all the years I've been using them, and after that I developed a routine to keep it from happening. Can't wear it. Too broken. Not safe. But my wrist feels totally naked without it. #

For some crazy reason I'm tempted to go down to Washington Square Park tomorrow to observe the Nazis. I'm guessing most of them come from Staten Island and New Jersey, maybe some from out on the Island. Tomorrow also is the final Summer Streets bike ride from 7AM to 1PM starting at Park Ave and 72nd St, through 4th Ave and onto Lafayette St, to the Brooklyn Bridge. Nazis coming by car should be aware that there will be limited cross-town access. Anyway, Summer Streets riders end up pretty close to Washington Square Park which tomorrow is Nazi-Land in NYC.#

Doc is going on an Eclipse Safari in Wyoming. #

Andrew Sullivan says that Charlottesville is even worse than it might appear at first because it has shown that Trump can blow through another level of normalcy, and not pay a price in support from Repubs. Until this weekend, Nazis and the KKK were unimportant fringe groups. This is no longer true. This is the United States, our world leadership is based on our defeating the Nazis in World War II. #

Philip Bump, a friend from Ye Earlie Blogging Dayse did a bot that RTs everything Donald Trump sees in his Twitter timeline. No wonder the guy is so hyper (Trump, not Bump). This led me to a business model that Trump himself would appreciate. Let me buy ads aimed at a specific user. Let's load up Trump's timeline with messages of Trump-Love. We love you Dear Leader. We love you soooo much. And then tell him what we want him to do. ❤️#

Arnold Schwarzenegger knows about Nazis. Watch this.#

Another concept I'm becoming more formal about is grooming. I tend to move on to the next project without iterating over the loose-ends of the one I'm leaving. I still do it. Have to. Because projects are like pies. They aren't ready for eating until they've had a chance to cool off on the counter a while. While that's happening I like to still be "there" and ready to tune things up here and there, to make things work more smoothly. And when the time feels right, go back to the pies I left on the counter a month or two ago. 🍄#

I shifted my approach to development a few months back, with the turn to Old School, and decided to build where the users were going. Scripting News was still getting most of the flow, despite all my efforts to create new more compelling flows. #

Another shift happened a few years ago, when I decided it was okay to develop just for myself, with no intention of ever releasing the stuff I was working on. That led to a new style of product, and a happier developer. I was always doing it for myself, and fooling myself into believing it was for other people. I'm no less a narcissist than anyone else. Once you own that, you get a lot more powerful, I have found. 🚀#

Problem with the president is that he and the country he's supposed to lead have very different values. #

Sorry friends, I am doing test posts again. #

Another good day of programming. Still working on Instant Dave. Lots more functionality in the second iteration. One thing I must have is the ability to update. If an item on my blog updates, it must also update in the Instant Dave interface. I often edit after I post initially. Correct spelling, tighten up the wording. Add links. These should all flow through to the people who are reading my stuff in Instant Dave. #

A simple way to show solidarity. Wear a MLK button for America. #

Maddow asked a question tonight, wondering if what Trump said today helps the Nazis grow their movement. The answer is yes. The same way Al Qaeda and ISIS crave publicity for their atrocities, American terrorists use publicity to drive recruitment, to grow, so the next march and uprising is bigger. More campus invasions. A clash between the First and Second Amendments. Liberal college towns: Austin, Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor, Boulder, Cambridge, Portland, Raleigh. Every time POTUS does a press conference and whistles loudly saying he's behind the movement, expect more deplorables to step up. The people at the marches looked like people who last year at this time were going to Trump campaign rallies. #

When the journos talk about Trump "appealing to his base" they are being too generous. He is a narcissist. There is no base. Just people who like him and those who hate him. If you like him you're cool (like the Nazis and KKK). If you criticize him, he's being treated unfairly.#

People puzzle over Trump. Really? Two things to remember. 1. This is a replay of his refusing to disavow the support of the KKK during the election. 2. The president is a narcissist. There is no one else in his mind. His thoughts involve only himself. He likes the Nazis because they like him. That's all there is. If they were ever to criticize him he would flip on them in an instant.#

Here's the third in a series of new NPM packages I've produced in the last few months. This one is called githubpub. It's close to the ideal for the #indieweb storage system. You put your web content in GitHub repositories, and they are served directly from there from the public API, with a domain name associated with each site. It's not as easy as Dropbox, and requires a bunch of setup, probably not something for end users, but a bunch of the pieces are there and work. #

We are right now at peak peach. If you love a peach as I do now's the time.#

Poll: Do you have a relative who Trump reminds you of?#

Protestors in Durham NC topple confederate monument.#

Just a place where I can fart around testing out the new stuff.#

Venture capitalist Bijan Sabet says "people in the workplace should not face any form of discrimination for their own personal politics and preferences." I agree, strongly. But then he struggles with what it means when Peter Thiel, a board member of Facebook supports Trump. I felt that Facebook should fire Thiel as a board member because his views about free speech are in conflict with Facebook's mission. But I also objected strenuously when Brendan Eich was forced out at Mozilla because he gave money to an org that opposed gay marriage in California, before the Supreme Court ruled on it. I could see how Thiel's actions re Gawker presented a problem for Facebook, but I felt that Mozilla and the tech industry blew the Eich call.#

I've always loved the style of New Mexico homes. Here's a great example. I have Zillow send me listings like this one, think of it as real estate porn, so I can dream about the kind of life one would have in such a place. It was easier to dream when I was younger. Now I'm too wise. I know that the picture a house paints has little to do with the lives that are led inside it. Sometimes the most beautiful surroundings are home to the most miserable people. And there can be much happiness and love in humble even ugly surroundings. The beauty of a house is a symbol for us, a symbol of beauty inside the people living there. #

The best interview I heard about Charlotteville was with retired General Russel Honoré last night on MSNBC. He said a militia attacked the city. The combination of lots of high powered guns and protests overwhelmed the small-city police. Haven't been able to find it online. #

Game of Thrones took a turn to idiocy. In one moment the Mother of Dragons didn't want to finish Cersei off, now she's sold on Jon Snow's vision of the army of the dead attacking from the north. What changed her mind? We never saw it happen. Was it the note from the three-eyed Raven? Who knows. After last week's glorious battle scene, they shot their wad. Back to the story which consists mostly of reunions and weird pairings of characters doing really really really really stupid things.#

Occam's deduction. If he quacks like a duck, he's probably a duck.#

Two words cover the last week with Trump: 1. brinksmanship and 2. careening.#

I'm usually totally against SJWs attacking people on the net, but in the case of Nazis who crawled out of their holes to show their faces in Charlottesville, please, go right ahead. #

Part of Trump's comments yesterday about children playing with their parents, more than the usual Trump creep factor. #

I can't figure out why people are so psyched about the eclipse. There was a very-near-total eclipse in Palo Alto in 1989 or thereabouts. I was there. It got dark. Then it got light. I looked at it in one of those special cards. Yeah there's the eclipse. What's next? I don't get fireworks either however. Maybe it's the same kind of thing. #

In the future, every segment on Face The Nation, Meet The Press, Rachel Maddow, will be available as a YouTube video within minutes of it airing. Their interviews should not be proprietary. We all have an interest in them. And they should circulate easily over the web. #

NYDN front page.#

How to oppose white supremacists safely and effectively.#

I believe a "fractional horsepower" Twitter has a place. Twitter itself is like a major news organization. FHPT is a blog.#

The question is what if anything is left after Trump is done.#

When Trump hosted Russians in the Oval Office everyone thought they planted listening devices. Now in August they're tearing it down. #

As the war situation gets worse, the thought of Trump supporters going crazy with their guns seems tame. The NRA needs to get them nukes.#

Think about offering Trump a few billion dollars to resign. Most presidents would be insulted, but I have a feeling Trump would be tempted.#

During the campaign Trump very openly said he might use nuclear weapons. That disqualified him to be the person who decides when to use them. Yet here we are. It was 100 percent predictable we'd be where we are now. And it's likely to get even worse. It's hard to see how we come back from this. #

2013: Men and multitasking.#

Wikipedia page on James Damore's memo. #

I'd like to see a discussion among programmers of all types about how we can work together to help people. I think our software is being used in some bad ways and more are being contemplated. But I strongly believe that they can be used as a force for good.#

I searched for an image of a "woman programmer action figure" on Google, and came up with nothing. There are images of "programmer action figure," but they're all men. #

There is a Grace Hopper action figure from LEGO.#

"Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box."#

myRoute53: Creates a JSON map of your Amazon Route53 names. #

New: How to create an AWS user with read/write access to an S3 bucket.#

Ever get a phrase stuck in your head and you find yourself saying it over and over silently, sometimes, and audibly others? Today, for me, that phrase is the name Millie Dresselhaus. There's a commercial on TV that imagines that everyone is saying her name all the time in weird ways and places. She's a real person. Unfortunately it turns out she died earlier this year. I am sorry.#

Sorry if items from today's blog appeared in your RSS readers multiple times. I was doing a brain transplant on my blogging software, and some outputs were hooked up to the wrong inputs. Long story. With any luck it should be fixed now. Still diggin! Praise Murphy! 🍐#

Just tried watching MSNBC and gave up. They can't handle news like the escalation that Trump took in possible nuclear war with North Korea. There really isn't anything else to talk about now. It doesn't matter what the president's approval rating is or whether Congress will flip in 2018. The president did something you can't do: openly, publicly, threatening to nuke North Korea. Now he has no good choices. Obviously if he launches nukes unprovoked, there's a good chance China or someone else will nuke us back. You think they'd just sit still for that? Or he has to back down. Great. Now what. There goes the nuclear deterrent, not just with North Korea but with Pakistan, India, all the other countries that have nukes but haven't announced. The current format of news, amped-up sensationalism about trivia, doesn't scale to this level. We need a new kind of news, right now. I will try Maddow later. #

On this day in 1974: Nixon resigned. #

Steve Garfield found a bit of ancient ThinkTank schwag, a button users could wear proudly at MacWorld Expo and other software shows. I'm going to say it was 1985, it was part of our Fanatic at Work ad campaign. Our users loved ThinkTank. We wanted to advertise about them more than the technical capabilities of the product. #

Om writes about Amazon's relationship with their vendors. it must be kind of tense. They know when you're doing well, and if they like your business they could launch a brand that competes, and give themselves a better deal of course. This is factored into development everywhere. There are lots of projects I won't do because it's a lot of work, but much easier for a BigCo, so when and if I prove the idea makes money, they'll just take it over. Even when you don't make money sometimes they take it over. The biggest hole in the market is a complete user data storage system that's as easy to authorize as Twitter or Facebook. Totally doable. For some reason no BigCo will do it. Opportunity has been there for a decade or more. #

We should all keep our own feeds and control what's in them.#

I just got something working. Let's see if it really worked. Haha. Of course it won't. (It didn't work the first time, but it worked the second.) #

If you only tolerate people who agree with you then you are intolerant. #

Inspired by Bijan Sabet, here's the home screen on my iPhone. It's not as meaningful as it might be because I don't put any time into grooming my choices. Some of my most-used apps are on the second, third and fourth screens. They all have their place which I remember, and why should my phone be any more organized than anything else in my life? 🍓 #

Are there any good future-of-journalism conferences coming up in the US?#

In the New Republic, Jeet Heer quotes Robert Bear, a supposed expert on aging in men: "When was the last time you saw a 70-year-old man change for the better?" This is a bit of miserably prejudiced nonsense, as crazy as any thought as anyone has ever been fired for. What he really means: He doesn't think Trump will change (I don't either, but I have been surprised) so he slammed a whole class of innocent people, many of who do change after 70. Turns out people over 70 change more than people between 30 and 70. How about that. Now let's not fire Bear or Heer (both men, btw), as Google did with their politically incorrect male employee, but please work on your prejudice. #

Good morning free speech fans! 🌎#

The old formula for TV news doesn't work anymore. #

Twitter is not a team sport. It's a place for individuals to wail about how the world mistreats them.#

This will be hard to unsee.#

I've been modularizing my Node work using NPM packages. Murphy-willing I'm going to be writing each of them up, in turn, here on Scripting News. You'll recognize the functionality as the kind of stuff you need to build DaveLand on the Internets in Node. The first one up is a really good OPML-to-and-from-JavaScript package. Naturally this stuff will mostly be of interest to developers and people who might want to become one.#

The way you know podcasting isn't dominated by anyone is at the end of every podcast. There is no single place to go to hear a podcast. (This is in response to a Bloomberg piece that said among other things that Apple dominates podcasting and Spotify is going to challenge them, which I say is nuts.)#

I did a voice memo for Rex about Apple and podcast "dominance."#

I know this is unfashionable for someone with my values and friendships, but maybe the people who blame the press for the mess have a point.#

Watched a bit of Al Sharpton today. He said Trump is of NYC in 80s and 90s. As of course was Sharpton. Sure he knows a lot about Trump.#

I think people want to forget that the US has stage 4 cancer. It's spreading to our bones. Whether we come back is in question#

If you can write a stinging editorial putting down a class of people, balance it with an example of someone in that class being good.#

If a million people say someone is wrong, my instinct is to find what's right.#

If you fight for free speech only for people who agree with you then you are not for free speech.#

Remind me to tell you the tale of goatfuck.js.#

If you're reading RSS and Atom feeds in Node apps, you need feedparser, written by my friend Dan MacTough. I've been using his code in my own River5 for years. It's solid and dependable. As a gesture of gratitude I published example code yesterday that helps you get started with feedparser. #

"You can fake caring but you can't fake showing up." Not sure said this, but it's an important idea. #

Timothy Snyder: "Our president is a minor Russian oligarch with major Russian debts."#

I post too much Twitter stuff to my blog. I know it. #

Good morning beer drinkers! 🍺 #

Summer Streets is tomorrow. Park Ave is open to bike riders from 72nd down to the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a treat to experience the city largely without cars on three Saturdays in August. #

Einstein and his therapist. #

Probably Russian secret police wanted Secret Service out of Trump Tower.#

The next episode of Game of Thrones has leaked. Here's a poll that asks if you would watch it tonight or wait until Sunday. #

Thinking about General Kelly today. Assumption -- he's an honorable person. He's also now inside at the White House. There isn't anything that's secret from the Chief of Staff. So how long before the complete picture of the criminality of this White House is revealed to him? Hard to believe it hasn't already happened. So if he's honorable, he has to come clean, make a statement to the special prosecutor and ask for instructions. If not that, is there a backroom deal? Can't imagine there is. Who would want to make one if they didn't have to. Priebus was a clown, in way over his head. Kelly has had a chance to watch it from the Cabinet and he chose to go in. Puzzling.#

When smart phones are really smart they will text you when something bad is about to happen.#

The great thing about open source software is that if you want a feature and it's hard to explain you can just do it. #

Had a thought that this year instead of picking a blogger of the year, I might do something different. Like write a survey of the State of the Blog. I should have been doing that all along, really. As blogs got chopped up and turned into corners of huge multi-billion dollar tech empires. So much so that there's almost nothing left. But it's not nothing. So taking an annual inventory probably isn't a bad idea. #

There may be enough people who agree the net should have lasting structures free of tech business models that the problem could be solved. #

Welcome to the new month of August 2017! 🚀 #

I never pass on links to autoplay pages. I don't care how great the story is.#

The trailer for Sharknado 5 looks pretty great. #

There's more talk about SoundCloud failing, or changing radically. Which raises again the basic question behind creative work on the Internet -- when are we going to start building structures designed for longevity. With an economic model other than founders-get-rich. We should be thinking about a creative environment that builds on its achievements, and creates a usable archive. #

Good morning sports fans!! ⚾️#

Many of us have been waiting for a Republican in Congress to take responsibility. The wait is over. "Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, 'Someone should do something!' without seeming to realize that that someone is us," wrote Jeff Flake, Republican senator from Arizona.#

I went for a bike ride and when I came back Scaramooch was gone.#

What was it that did Scaramooch in? #

New software. If you're a daily reader of this blog you should get Instant Dave and leave it running on your Mac desktop. You get instant notification when anything is posted to the blog. I want to evolve this. It might be instrumental in a reboot of blogging in the age of Facebook. But first we need users. Help the bootstrap get started. Be part of the second blogging revolution! #

Why Al Gore doesn't use the words "climate change."#

We need a whole other thread of journalism not focused on the drip-drip, but rather projecting a few months ahead based on history.#

There was a time not long ago when I didn't know the name of the White House chief of staff.#

I record my podcasts using the free Voice Memo app on my iPhone. It has the advantage of being with me almost all the time. It's kind of like the best camera is the one you have with you when you want to take a picture. #

What Jeff Jarvis says is true. Competing threads on Twitter, we can do so much better with blogs. #

Crowd-sourcing a vital question.#

Today is my friend Doc's 70th birthday. I knew the guy when he was very young relative to what he is today which is unspeakably old. I remember when my grandfather was 70 and I thought holy shit that guy is old. Of course I've gotten older too as Doc has aged. But I try not to think about that. Instead I think of how old Doc has gotten. A real shame. ☔️ #

I like to enter emoji short codes for things that I think there should be emoji for but I have no idea if there actually is one. For example I'm pretty sure there is no emoji for :shrug:#

A Wayne's World version of a White House comms director. Or maybe it was Animal House?#

Re the problem I had programming Forever: I figured it out. #

The first Mac release of Instant Dave is out. Put it in your dock and leave it open and you get the latest news from my linkblog and posts from Scripting News, in an instant, as you would imagine from its name. v0.4.4. #

And there's a bug. We're not expanding glossary entries. There will be many bugs. And lots of features to add. This is just the beginning. #

Hey here's a free clue -- what you're seeing on TV is a TV show.#

I really think Twitter's future is as an AWS-like module. Add storage to their API, and run our apps in the cloud. We all need what they have. For some reason Amazon hasn't built it. #

Here's a screen shot of my next product. It's half blog and half software.#

I've been reading archives of Scripting News from the early-mid 00's to get an idea of how I was using the format that now I'm once again using. Tripped over this post where I say podcast is a good name for what we're doing. It's actually a good piece and should be part of the record of the evolution of podcasting. #

I recorded a voice memo for my friend Rex about the state of the software I'm working on. It's the kind of thing I'll want to listen to in a while, so I uploaded it and you can listen too if you like. #

Here are the three new tools in my dock. It just turned out this way with the first and the third being related. Really weird! 🐮#

Twitter owns Broadway. They put up a hotel and hot spot, but not enough people can cram in. Why not let some other spots open?#

If only a few people do something, assume that it's hard. #

What if Russia started buying $TWTR stock? #

Were you part of the Berkman Thursday group in 2003-04?#