This Neil deGrasse Tyson segment on the evolution of the eye helped me understand something important about evolution. "We like to think of our eyes as state of the art, but 375 million years later, we still can't see things right in front of our noses, or discern fine details in near-darkness the way fish can. When we left the water why didn't nature just start over again and evolve us a new set of eyes that were optimal for seeing in the air? Nature doesn't work that way. Evolution reshapes existing structures over generations, adapting them with small changes. It can't just go back to the drawing board and start from scratch." #
It's been a week since we started a thread about discovery in blogs. We haven't discussed much, as far as I can see, that hasn't already been tried. One idea, one-click to subscribe to a blog's feed was something we did at UserLand in 2002. The problem wasn't technology, it wasn't hard, rather it was how to get enough of the blogging tools to support the same calls to form critical mass. It didn't happen. Here's my conclusion on the discussion so far. Two things are needed to upgrade the blogosphere. 1. A growing excited user base. 2. A (somewhat) dominant vendor who is committed to user choice, and therefore uses open clonable formats and protocols. #1 is a prerequisite for anything to happen imho. #2 is a lesson I learned when the clonability of UserLand's products was not reciprocated by our competitors. That's an important lesson and I don't think many others are aware of it. As with our tech, it's available to anyone who wants it. #A reminder. This is what Trump did to our judicial system. This schmuck is on the Supreme Court. It wasn't just a bad dream.#
I just ordered an iMac Pro. The only upgrade I got was doubling the memory to 64GB. I usually buy as little Apple memory as possible, but I was warned that installing memory on this machine is not so easy. So I paid the luxury tax. The whole thing is a luxury, my current iMac performs pretty well. I use it as a writing machine, blogging and software, and I guess it's mostly doing I/O, it's not compute-bound. But this is the last moment for me to buy a new Mac, this is the last O/S release that runs Frontier. There's no direct port planned as far as I know. And hopefully before this machine dies, there will be a Linux port, which is where I'd rather be spending my time. Or possibly my JavaScript codebase will be rich enough so I can port my dev tools to be independent of Frontier. Not my preferred path forward. I've been using a Mac since 1984, with a brief hiatus at the end of the 90s. The total with tax and AppleCare came to $6,497.66. It will be delivered between November 6 and 8. Just in time to either celebrate victory in the election or drown my sorrows in defeat. #- Just for fun, I reconstructed the Radio UserLand coffee mug icon in 2002.#
- The icon appeared on every Radio blog, and Manila site, and on the Scripting News home page. At the time that was a lot of support believe it or not. #
- If you click the icon it sends a message to the server running on port 5335 of the local machine, which was Radio UserLand, telling it to subscribe to the URL for Scripting News' RSS feed. The app would come to the front, confirm that you want to subscribe, and if so it would add the feed to the database. #
- It could have worked for any feed on any blog. It was our hope that it would catch on, but that wasn't the mood of the time. People wanted to blaze their own trail. And it probably should have moved to a centralized publicly owned resource, the commons (like DNS perhaps). But it wasn't meant to be, it didn't happen, and easy subscription became a feature-advantage of the silos over open blogging. #
If we were keeping a list of criteria for what makes a good future-safe archive, GitHub, now owned by Microsoft, would be far ahead of Amazon S3, because public repos are free of charge, therefore even if you were to stop paying the bill, only your private repos would disappear. It would be even better if there were a way to buy say 100 years of service in advance. And the fact that GIT is so good at synchronization (it's what it was built for originally) is a great feature for a FSA. You could insure your insurance. #I wish there was a Busy Developer's Guide to Jekyll. Maybe there is? I am an experienced web CMS developer. I have implemented lots of frameworks. I'd love to see a concise how-it-works doc, with good examples. For example, I'd love to see a repo containing a Jekyll website that I can poke around in to see how the pieces fit together. It's one thing to read about it, the fastest way to learn is to see it in action. I'd also love to see a quick spec for what a Jekyll theme is. #
IIRC there's no Twitter API call to get a list of responses to a tweet. #
One additional release. Here's a zip archive of the static bloggercon website. Who knows what gems lie within. Now it's preserved for perpetuity, hopefully. đź’Ą#
BloggerCon I participant list. I started with the original OPML file and converted it to a web page. There are duplicates and people who were there who aren't on this list. "It is what it is." #
I posted a note to the 2018 blogroll discussion about the work I did restoring the blogroll from 2003 from the first BloggerCon meetup. #
Terry Heaton sent a note yesterday reminding me that the original BloggerCon was held in October 2003, in other words, exactly 15 years ago this month. We missed the actual days, which I can infer from my blog was October 4 and 5. Unfortunately the first archive.org snapshot of the BloggerCon home page was in 2004, when were getting ready for BloggerCon III at Stanford. I'm going to keep looking on my servers and backups for data about the first BloggerCon. I'm going to archive that as I started archiving the old userland.com websites last month. #
I switched away from the Knicks season opener to watch the ALCS playoffs for a few minutes. When I came back the Knicks had set a record for the most points in a 2nd quarter by any Knicks team. Yes the Hawks suck. But still.. Could this Knicks team be a winner? Failing that could they at least be fun? It's been so long, 2012 to be specific, since the Knicks were fun to be a fan of. Meanwhile over in Houston, the Rockets have the Curse of Carmelo. I feel sorry for the old man. I really do. He was the heart of the Knicks for so long. Hate to see him become a journeyman, the way he made Jeremy Lin leave home. I guess what goes around comes around applies. Funny coincidence, Lin, who now comes off the bench for the Hawks, played in last night's game at the Garden. He was a bit rusty at first, but the old magic is still there, you can see it. #
In Battlestar Galactica, the humans call the Cylons toasters, to remind them they are machines not people. But we know they’re actors, and the actors are actual people, pretending to be machines that look human. It creates an interesting conflict that they explore from every angle.#A study by Chartbeat showed that traffic from Facebook to news sites had dropped by nearly 40% since early 2017. #
I've been wanting to discuss the idea of male toxicity. What does it mean? And why only male toxicity? Why aren't women given the same awful label? It's like the use of the word dead to apply to things that were never alive. Seems like a misuse of the term, an impossibility. I saw one person say that Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina was a toxic male, without explaining how or why or what it means. We're just supposed to know? I don't.#- I engaged on Twitter with Gina Häußge who used the term in a tweet about a series of lovely old LEGO ads, one which showed a girl and her LEGO creation. As a tech creative person myself, I am so proud of that little girl for following her path to geekosity. The smile on her face tells the story. Whatever this is, it's mine. That's the geek ethos imho. 💥#
- I think we should stop applying a word like toxic to people. It's not far from calling people vermin. It's dehumanizing. A prerequisite for violence. Find another way to say what you're trying to say or refine it so it's closer to the truth.#
- Also, I don't think there's any way to measure the quantity of abuse one gender does to the other. It's all a soup -- we create each other. I inherited toxicity from both of my parents, and they from theirs, male and female, all the way back. We create each other.#
- We may not achieve some ideal we have for each other. A lot of our grievances come from that. I watch people online who are so good at finding fault in others, but never see the obvious opportunities they have to solve the problems themselves. If you regret other people aren't working together, the best approach is to start working with other people yourself. Take the advice you so want to give to others to your own heart, and then act on it. #
- This isn't new wisdom. Humans spend their whole lives figuring this out. It's why functional families are so nurturing, if we could only find one! Accept what we have and do your part to make the present and future better. That's about as good as it gets imho. #
Occam News Service reports that the Trump family sells protection and PR services to foreign governments like Saudi Arabia.#
I had to see a specialist doctor today. At 63 my doctors are all younger than me. This one was so bright, careful in explaining and listening, enthusiastic about good health, an evangelist. Just 31 years old. Made me feel so optimistic about the future.#
Here's a weird idea I proposed to one of my favorite political analysts. Why can't journalism raise issues? They don't have to let politicians drive this. Don't the voters have issues that need airing? What about the people who wrote the Constitution who expected Congress to act as a check on the Executive branch? Why do we have to sit on the sidelines and accept the crap they hand us. Now Elizabeth Warren is doing it. Jeez. You'd think they wrote off the intellect and seriousness of the electorate. Time to change the way we do things. Journalism could be where the change starts. Of course they would have to listen, for a new idea to penetrate. 💥#I want a new kind of news where there are no professionals. Only user-generated ideas. No blame discussed. No live debates. Only ideas for how to solve the obvious problems, and then we write the Occam’s version of the story.#
- I scattered $25 contributions all around the country for Senate races, so of course now I'm getting calls and spam from Dems wanting more. #
- If they're willing to call me, with a real human being (it seems) why not send an email written by a human being, asking if I have anything I want to contribute that might not be money?#
- Someday political parties will do more than advertise, they will gather the best ideas from the people and implement them. A different kind of transparency.#
- Right now I'd tell the Dems to talk about oversight. #
- Restoring power to Congress.#
- And that means voting out the Repubs.#
- I'd like to hear some promises from Dems that they plan to provide the missing oversight.#
Previous header image, Naomi Osaka, hero of this year's US Open. The new one is from Nighthawks, a painting by Edward Hopper. #
Why didn’t Elizabeth Warren hold on to the results of her study until Trump raised the issue again? Raising it herself just before the midterms seems like the most disadvantageous timing. Imagine if Trump re-stated his offer of $1 million, then she could release the study. Bonk. Wasted opportunity?#On Facebook, King Kaufman asks if the bike rider in this picture is doing the right thing. I responded: What the bike rider doing is correct. The only alternative would be to go in the left lane, and another driver is going to be pissed about that (he has to wait for the bike to get going and over to the right before he gets up to speed).#
This is the most puzzling and curiosity-provoking article I've read about #metoo. The men, who said they were innocent, were critical of another man who also claims innocence, for coming forward. "The collective sense is that Mr. Elliott should do what they’re doing: 'taking one for the team,' as one of them put it." Elliot said “Multiple people asked me at first if I was O.K. just taking a bullet for the movement. Because of their politics and, frankly, because of mine.”#
Braintrust query: Don Park wrote on Twitter -- "I feel that discovery layer is missing or lacking. blogrolls didn't scale. ring blogs just sucked. SEO is just survival-of-the-fittest money pit. Discovery layer is critical. Without it, even recent push to reshape blogs into shops is meaningless. even small towns have a Main Street for discovery. Blogrolls worked more like book recommendations. Hard to maintain too. Worked well with new technology. With other and over multiple topics, not so well. We need a more self-organizing and ad-hoc, emergent if you will." I'd like to do some thinking and experimenting in this area. It's a good time for me. Maybe others who have blogs want to do join in. Here's the thread. #I've known Don Park for a long time. Goes back to when I lived in the middle of the golf course at the end of Sharon Park Drive in Menlo Park. Don did the INIT for UserLand IAC Toolkit, which was the precursor for the Apple Event Manager and ultimately XML-RPC and SOAP. Don is thinking about blogs these days, and posted something interesting on Twitter yesterday about blogrolls. He says wtf happened. There is no good discovery mechanism for blogs. I agree. Don had some immediate ideas, so I offered to start a thread on it, so maybe we could come up with some experiments we could do to see if maybe we couldn't bootstrap something now. That's what the previous post, the braintrust query is about.#
#- PS: Here's the tweet. #
- PPS: Here's the text, so search engines can find it.#
- I used to speak freely on my blog in the early days, that was the thrill of it, and I still do speak more freely there, but it feels like very few people read what I write there. #
- But I'm scared to speak freely here (on Twitter). Not because of bots-as-trolls, rather not wanting to be attacked by "the left."#
- I find this interesting, because I vote totally lefty these days. I give to Democratic candidates. I promote them to the best of my ability.#
- But even so, my ideas would evoke a mob reaction from my allies. They have in the past,. It's a big punishment for speaking your mind. So I hold back.#
- We've invented something that looks like speech, but it's more of a way for mobs to organize. And the term mob, which I hate that the Repubs are using, so effectively, actually is the right word.#
- I wonder if there isn't some way to get through to our allies witout evoking their rage, that sometimes, maybe all the time, the rage works against our cause. #
- It would be better to hear what people think, rather than shouting them down and intimidating them into silence. #
- Remember even if you can't hear them, they can still vote. #
I wrote a series of tweets updating on the project I've been working on to use GitHub as the backend for a blogging system for non-geeks. #
I also gave $25 to Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, to help make sure she is re-elected. Have a look at this list of all the candidates for Senator in 2018, with links to their ActBlue donation pages. #
Our big sin, which we will keep paying for, is that we fought two wars without a draft and while lowering taxes not raising them. War must cause pain at home. One way or another you eventually have to feel it. #
If you asked my father what Dave's favorite music is, he would have told you what his favorite music is, and (importantly) he'd think he's answering the question. If you ask someone why Dave works so hard, he'll tell you what he aspires to. He might say Dave does it to get rich. That wouldn't tell you anything about Dave, but it likely tells you something about him. This is important to understanding disputes, and is why listening is so important. For example, the US thought North Vietnam was fighting because they were part of a global communist alliance to defeat the west. The Domino Theory. Because we were at war against that. The Vietnamese were actually fighting a war of independence, and were puzzled why the US, a former colony that fought for its independence, was fighting them. Moral of the story: Unless you ask, you probably don't know why someone is doing what they do. #
I don't like conferences that are all about the speakers, esp if I don't know who they are. When you put people on stage speaking, they have had so much time to prepare, they have slides for everything they thought of while they were preparing, and sometimes that was months. So it takes forever for them to get to the point. Or they don't do much prep, and they just play back the pitch they made to VCs or play the deck they used on their press tour.#- Or they're blowhard CEOs, so full of themselves they hardly know anyone else is there. I once heard Larry Ellison speak at a tech industry conference where he thought he was talking to an Oracle User Group! At least we got to hear what he says to them (it was mostly press, financial types and his competitors). #
- I stumbled across a different format in the 00s that we called an unconference, a name that has since been usurped by a different format. In our format, it's a discussion group with a leader at the front who interviews the room. It has to be someone who knows who's there, and has an idea for a story, and has a hardass attitude about people droning, repeating, and self-serving. With someone who knows what they're doing, it's something to behold. Everyone is on their toes, involved. And you can be called on, so you can't afford to lose track of what's going on in the room. #
- I find professors and reporters make good moderators. The more opinionated they are the better. #
- The Newsgeist conference I went to a couple of years ago actually carries on that tradition, in some of the sessions. I wonder why? Maybe it's because Jeff Jarvis is involved, and he was a big fan of the format back in the day.#
- What made me think of this is I've been getting email from Poptech, a conference in Maine in early November. It's totally about the speakers. Kind of TEDish (though it's not a copy, it's a contemorary). I didn't know any of the speakers. I'm pretty sure I don't know any of the attendees. Why spend $2000 for that? Not that I didn't consider it, I did. 🚀#
The political extremes get all the press, but most Americans are ready to compromise. Weary of the never-ending conflict. If you read one political story today, read this one. #
Any time someone is inviting me to be enraged online, I'm suspicious that I'm being manipulated. My standard practice is to unfollow the person who sent them to me. They may mean well, but they're being used. I don't need your rage, I have plenty of my own. 🚀#
Sept 17: "RSS was successful not because of the efforts of people on mail lists debating the merits of various formats."#
Interesting Twitter conversation with Davis Shaver re what's going on in the WordPress community. I don't have time to write about it now, but it sounds like what I experienced in the Frontier community leading up to my leaving in 2002. I will say this, that you can't forget that it's software you'd developing, and not the community. That's where the focus has to be. Otherwise you explode. No one person can be the focal point of a development community, and if it's a blogging community it's 100000 times worse! 💥#There’s this great line at the end of an episode of Law & Order. Jack McCoy says the person who was convicted got a tough sentence. The DA, an old man, says when he gets out he’ll be 35. “I’d take it,” he said. When a young cute person mocks others’ pain, I think of this story.#
I found a perfect use-case for CSS variables. Bootstrap hard-codes the size of <h4> elements at 17.5 pixels. In the editor I'm developing, the default size is 18px. I find it's the most readable size for editing. Anyway, when you put a small head in the text using <h4> the text is actually smaller than the surrounding text. Not good. Enter CSS variables. Declare --normal-font-size as 18px, override Bootstrap's idea of the size of <h4>, and use the same variable in defining the size of all the other text. That way the relationship is clear in the code, and if we ever want to change the size of normal text, it's easy to do. This is progress. Code just got more maintainable. đź‘Ť#I made a list of Democratic candidates for Senate in 2018 so I could donate to all. There are 34 total candidates. The normal 33 plus the special election for Al Franken's seat in Minnesota. So if you wanted to give $25 to each, it would cost $850.#
Google+ was unmotivated by any need for what it did. No one loved it. It was born only to slow Facebook growth. It’s like having a kid so it can beat up your neighbor’s kid. Products, to be any good, must be motivated, have a creative purpose.#
- I find people who are willing to trade off moral superiority against losing the election, still, given all that's happening, the most depressing thing about American politics. No one cares about your "point" -- we're trying to get back on course. #
- Thinking of an analogy. Suppose you're taking a car trip and your navigator decides to take you over a bridge that's washed out because it's shorter than the detour that isn't washed out. #
- Sometimes you have to give up one thing to get the thing you really need.#
- Manchin voted for Kavanaugh. His opponent will for sure vote with McConnell on everything. Manchin would not have been the deciding vote if it came down to that. #
- There's a real joy in giving up on perfection. Now you can get something done.#
- A longtime friend was taken down by #metoo. Lost everything. The screed against him, posted on Medium, when edited down to real, not imagined, accusations was that when he was drunk he felt the breasts of a woman who was also drunk, in public, at a party at a tech conference. #
- He admitted it, and apologized, even though because he is an alchoholic, he had no memory of it. I thought the accusation should have been made without a lot of the imagined offenses, very clearly. #
- He wasn't one of the famous targets of #metoo, he was just quietly deleted. #
- No, I don't think it was fair, but that isn't the point of my story.#
- I posted a note of love and support for my friend on Facebook, and almost immediately the threats of accusations against me came both publicly and privately. Nothing that amounted to anything, but it made it clear I'd better shut up, or else I'll be joining my friend in oblivion. #
- When I was terribly sick in 2002, he was one of three friends who stood by me. He came to visit regularly while I was recuperating. He always listens when I have something to say. He's a good friend. He also can be a total jerk. I've seen that too. He got drunk on a lot of bullshit, not just alcohol. #
- Since then the #metoo parade has passed him by. I'm sure very few people remember what happened to him. But he can't get back on his feet. He's in AA now. He's become a house husband, taking care of the kids while his wife works. I'm sure some people take pleasure in this, feel it's only fair that a man's life be destroyed this way, because so much terrible stuff has happened to women.#
- Finally I get to the point of the story..#
- Maybe you're right, in some moral way, maybe men do deserve this. But while my friend's life has been destroyed, he can still vote. His friends can vote. I won't vote Republican because of this, but I would like the Democrats to start worrying about this too, not seeing it as so one-sided, that all women are right and fair, always, and would never accuse a man of doing something he didn't actually do. Or wouldn't embellish it to make it more dramatic. Or use an accusation to get even for some other perceived offense. Or maybe for no reason at all. #
- Women are people, as humanly flawed as men. Give them a way to hurt other people, and they will use it. The idea that a woman would never make an accusation unless they knew it was true is incorrect. So we need to do better than simply "believe the woman."#
- BTW, there was abuse in my family when I was growing up. So I know how it ruins lives. I've written about it on my blog. There's a lot more I could write if I had the courage to do so. #
- Conclusion: Because there is unfairness in the #metoo movement, because it silences a legitimate point of view, it gives the Republicans something to campaign on that resonates. We have a problem. Much more than Kavanaugh.#
I have not heard from anyone with an idea of what Kavanaugh meant in his "what goes around comes around" line. What happened in the political system of the early 2000s that "we all know" about? Mystery. #
What if Trump's supporters are right about something. Did you ever consider that possibility? What if they were, and you adjusted your view of reality accordingly? Ever consider the possibility that *your* pundits are misleading you, not always theirs?#
Something in Kavanaugh's opening statement I never understood. He said: "As we all know, in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around." What is he talking about? Bush v Gore? The 9-11 attacks? The war in Iraq? The Swift Boat travesty?#
After Kavanaugh’s opening statement that should have been it, but the Dems didn’t think on their feet. They had their plan, why not let the FBI investigate. But they now had something much stronger. Kavanaugh had disqualified himself. The press missed this too. But it's weird the Dems missed this. How many of them are former prosecutors? At least Blumenthal, Harris and Klobuchar are. I can't believe they didn't notice his testimony had crossed a line. They should have questioned him on every word in that three paragraph flameout. On TV while everyone was watching, and all the Repubs could offer was the prosecutor from Arizona. #
There's conventional wisdom in the tech world that only standards made between big companies matter. In my experience, without exception, it's the exact opposite. Only the ones that grew "in the wild" (from the BigCo perspective) work as standards, as opposed to PR hype.#
In the early days of #metoo there wasn't much point in trying to say that there were men who were respectful of women. Men who see women as people, just like they are, and believe in the Golden Rule, and apply it. There was an angry hashtag for this, #notallmen, which translated as #wedontwanttohearit. Even so, I believe that most women get that men are people, just like they are. We know that there are all kinds of people of all genders, with issues that were created through their families or genes or other factors. There are differences in bodies and strength, but I have wanted to say that our bodies are the same size online. It was therefore refreshing to see this piece, that started as a Twitter thread, written by a woman, who says what imho needed to be said.#Zillow tries to show me houses I'd like, which I appreciate, but so far they haven't connected the dots. He's looking in a bunch of different geographies. What do they have in common? What other geographies should he be looking in? Find me a great house, within three hours of a big airport, etc. The algorithm can do it. It's advertising of the best kind, the kind I want. #
Some TV series are special, like dessert, like a rich layer cake with lots of sweet frosting and butter. You eat the slice slowly, savoring every bite, and even so it disappears too quickly. Better Call Saul is like that. Some episodes of Game of Thrones. The entirety of The Wire. And lately, Maniac on Netflix was savory in that sense. NakedJen is watching it now. Hope she loves it. I just saw a note from a friend on Twitter saying he had watched four episodes of Maniac and was giving up. I know the feeling. I went through that with Castle Rock. The first episodes were great but then I lost interest. I did manage to muddle through, because I wanted to know how it ended. Then there are shows that everyone loves that I can't even get started with. Peaky Blinders, for example. Or The Expanse. I cannot figure out wtf is going on in that one. I feel if I can just gain traction I'll love it. But I never have been able to.#Trump pretended he didn't know what the KKK is when David Duke endorsed him. He led cheers of "Lock her up" referring to Hillary Clinton. He praised Nazis who marched in Charlottesville and ran down a crowd, killing a woman. And so much more. This is a depraved narcissistic madman. A very dangerous person. So you're surprised he dissed Dr Ford? It was 100% predictable.#
I had a thought, I wonder if it's true, that most tech begins open, as a skunkworks project by a geek or two. If it catches on, inevitably someone tries to commercialize it. Often they are successful and the open version languishes. We should pay attention before it's commercialized, and understand the freedom that comes from its openness. This came up in a piece I wrote on Monday. Let's appreciate the Joni Mitchell view of things: there's something inherently good and sweet about the "one-man band by the quick lunch stand."#- I've become email friends with Dave Gandy, the founder of Font Awesome. I can't sing the praises of that product high enough. It's a life saver, if it didn't exist, I'd still be stealing graphics and they'd suck as icons. FA takes care of an important part of the UI of the web. #
- Second disclaimer, I juggle so many external technologies I don't have the bandwidth to dive into any of them too deeply, so when I think I uncover a problem, very often it's just a lack of info, a misunderstanding, or due to the fact that I exist in a perpetual state of developer fog.#
- OK with those disclaimers, here's the narrative:#
- I use Medium-Editor in some of my projects. It uses Font Awesome for parts of its UI. I also use Font Awesome in all my projects. I recently upgraded to version 5.2.0. #
- I notice that the tool bar in my Medium Editor instance has breakage. The big H for H2 and H4 are missing their H's which are Font Awesome objects. fa-header specifically. #
- Here's a screen shot showing what the toolbar looks like when it's working properly. #
- On investigation it appears it is missing in 5.2.0. But the fa-heading object looks very much like the original fa-header. Is it possible they changed its name?#
- I look to see what version of Font Awesome the Medium-Editor demo uses. It's 4.4.0. So I try including that version in my app and the H's come back.#
- So my conclusion is there is breakage between Medium-Editor and Font Awesome. I am downgrading this app to use the old version of FA. However, there was a reason I upgraded, so my software is in a weird state of disrepair as a result of this workaround.#
- If they did indeed change from fa-header to fa-heading, my request is DON'T DO THAT. The world has built on your icons. The aesthetics at this point do not matter. If you think the icons are misnamed, you are wrong. Please refer to the disclaimers at the top of this post. #
I’ve been developing a blogging system that uses Github as the backend. It’s end-user software, but also is extensible by developers. GIT is itself a distributed system. Shows promise re for-the-record writing.#
I don't see why an investigation is needed. Kavanaugh disqualified himself with these three paragraphs from his testimony on Thursday.#Re Democrats ruining Kavanaugh's life -- The legal system ruins lots of lives. Kavanaugh isn't special. I'm sure he's ruined a few lives himself. We should have more sympathy and grace for the Supreme Court. Putting a openly partisan hack on the court means no one will respect its decisions in the future. Not presidents, not the military, not you and I.#
I'm now about as good in JavaScript as I was in C or Frontier. I make the same number of mistakes in my code in JS as in the other environments, but in Frontier, I cruised through most of the fixes in a fraction of the time it takes in JS. Debugging was much faster, the data was right there in a browsable, live-editable structure. I couldn't make a statement about that before because I wasn't as proficient in JS. #
Lindsey Graham makes a good point. Once a judge has committed perjury, it doesn't make sense to send him back into the courtroom. #
Collins, Flake and Murkowski should become Democrats. Take the suspense out of Election Day.#
I remember listening to a NYT podcast a few weeks ago where they said Kavanaugh's confirmation was locked in. "Not sports fans," I said to myself. "Nor do they remember the 2016 election."#
I listened to today's Daily podcast. Very good. Not listening to victims of abuse is an American tradition. As I've said in two recent pieces, abuse is the context of our civilization. It's everywhere. In homes and schools, offices, Congress, and you can be sure this isn't the first time a Supreme Court nominee has been a rapist (assuming he did it, which I do). We all have to learn how to listen. But getting some to listen is a start. #
One of the things that makes GitHub a good candidate for an object database for a CMS is that it can store all kinds of data, including code. In fact, it's original design is for storing code, all the other data types were extra. #
It would be interesting if an actor who looked something like Kavanaugh, recorded a 5-minute play where he said the exact word-for-word same things Kavanaugh said in his opening statement but substituted Dems with Repubs, Clintons with Kochs, left with right, and go ahead and make him black. Make videos of Republican focus groups watching it. #
I just saw my friend Anna Masera interviewing Richard Stallman on Twitter. She asked the right question. I wonder if he knows that he has to sell people on his vision. But it's amazing to see all those young minds show up where ever he does.#- I had a similar experience when I went to Startup School in Palo Alto a few years ago. They had all these rich successful entrepreneurs on stage saying how they did it, but during the breaks I was always surrounded by young folk who wanted to know about open technology. #
- We should have a better pitch for the kids, not all-or-nothing like Stallman, and not total rape-and-pillage like the VCs, rather here's how you can help make things better, improve chances for freedom. Because that's how imho you solve the conundrum Anna pointed out. Who goes first, business or education? Well the answer is when you have something open, use it and understand the value in it and protect it. #
- So many people who are involved in podcasting for example don't understand how the fact that it's open means they have opportunities. Later when Amazon or Apple or Google take control, they'll wonder how to make it open. That won't work, but keep it open? That can work. #
- See also, from 2011: Why I stand up for Stallman. #
Danica Roem: "If you’re being nominated for a nonpartisan position as a neutral arbiter on the Supreme Court, attacking the left, Democrats, the Clintons and the media in your opening statement while noting there will be reprisal for years to come is, well, disqualifying."#
- I had written the piece I published yesterday in many forms over many years, but yesterday's was the first I published. Here's another way to look at the same set of facts, from a piece I wrote earlier this month. #
Our online discussions always seem to miss the 900-pound gorilla in the middle of the room. The environment we were raised in was full of abuse of all kinds, lots of it impossible to get away from, because the abuse was at home. In those situations there was no escape. #- Even if there wasn't any abuse in the house you grew up in, that you were aware of, your classmates were dealing with it, your best friends, the people you chose as lovers. Or your parents did, or their parents. It's all a fog, because we're totally not allowed to talk about it. That might the worst part, you're forced to keep the secret for the people who are hurting you. #
- This was the argument I had with my parents as I was growing up, why can't we talk about this, find a solution. I learned later through therapy and inference the horror show my parents grew up in. I've talked about it with my closest friends, and they've told me the stories of their families. Once, just once, my mother volunteered what happened between her and her parents, but after that, no more. She'd never talk about it. She didn't do anything wrong, she was a child, she carried that burden for them through her whole life.#
- It really is the environment. And when we start talking about it that way who knows what happens, maybe it gets better, or maybe we find we can't live with each other. Or something else, totally unpredictable. #
I was happy to see this thread on Twitter. And this post from Ashley Judd. We're in this together, people of all genders. #
I wonder when the world is going to be fed up with us. Half of the US population feels like they've been screwed, and the funny thing is it's both halfs. And meanwhile we're the ones who are screwing everyone else. First we get them all going on Let's Work Together to Solve Climate Change, then we pull out of the group that we formed to do it. We make peace with Iran, bring everyone else along, and then we pull out. Meanwhile our currency makes us rich, everyone has to do all their international business using dollars. But we elect representatives who threaten to deliberately crash the dollar. Why? Who the fuck knows. I doubt if they know. How would you sleep at night if you were an Asian banker knowing that you had to trust this crazy country. We complain a lot, but have no idea what we do to others. That goes 1 million times over for the richest Americans. But even those struggling to get by, this is all being done in our name. If we wanted to stop it we could, we just need the will. #
The founder of the web, writing about his new startup that intends to re-decentralize the web, posts his announcement, a web page with a bit of text on it, in a VC-backed silo, to prove what? That he has a sense of humor? Is it really too hard for him to put up a page on a website? #
My father was an alcoholic. He was a mean personal alcoholic. I think he learned it from his father. My mother was my father's enabler. She also was a victim of sexual abuse as a child. Her father was her abuser. She learned to be the enabler from her mother, who she hated. Her mother knew what her father was doing and was okay with it. As my mother knew what my father was doing. #- My mother had a life, became a teacher and a school psychologist and ultimately a professor. I saw my mom in Dr Ford, the mother I wish had. My mother never told her story. She couldn't talk about it. Only once, in the middle of the night, she called me, and told me a tiny bit of the story. It was like a confession. Before and after she refused to talk about it. I hope she talked about it with her therapist, but I don't know if she did. I have reasons to think she didn't. #
- I learned what happened by going to therapy myself, for eight years, in my forties. My personality formed as the inverse of my parents. They were the mold, I was the product. You could infer their abuse from my issues. I learned a lot about myself. I learned that it wasn't my fault that my childhood home wasn't like Ozzie and Harriet or Leave it to Beaver. My mom often implied that it was my fault. Kids are amazing at absorbing the judgment of adults.#
- I mention this as we start to discuss abuse more openly in our society. What I've wanted to say, I've ached to say, is that it's not an extraordinary event, it's the context within which we exist. We talk about abuse as if it was exceptional, but it's so much more. It's like talking about the game of chess by talking about chess pieces. Or a soup by looking at the peas, tomatoes, carrots. There's a gestalt. And that is still unmentionable. The abuse forms us. It gives us our issues. It creates problems that we have to overcome, or not. We each are assigned roles to play as children, it's hard to break out of the part you're given. To really get started healing, we have to pop up a level and look at our environment. #
- When I watched Kavanaugh this is what I saw. A person failing to maintain the pretense that he has had a wonderful life, when his life has been a horror show. He drinks to avoid looking. He is so much my father, I feel I know him, and while I loathed my father for most of my life, I eventually saw his struggle, one he never overcame, a child who was never accepted by his parents. It's no wonder he couldn't cope with being a father. Same with my mother. Again Dr Ford provided a perfect screen for me. She did what my mother never could do. My mother never got within 100 million miles of what Dr Ford did. She couldn't even talk about herself to her children, maybe not even to her therapist. She never made peace with her father and mother. And as a result never made peace with herself. She longed for love, for acceptance, for peace, she never attained it. #
- I think we're on the cusp of a huge revolution in humanity. Living in a soup of abuse and having to pretend everything is perfect, that's the world we're coming from. It's the only world we've known. At least I learned to tell myself the truth. That's progress. Now maybe we can get to a place where it's common to tell each other our truth. Then evolution can take off in a huge way. #
I think this is the most hopeful moment in America since the election of 2016 and the initial revelations of #metoo. #- We're getting close to talking about the real stuff, as a society. We haven't gotten there yet, but the testimony of both Dr Ford and Judge Kavanaugh represent truths never spoken so publicly before. Not even on Oprah. And it happened in the United States Senate, on TV, for everyone to see, everywhere. #
- So far we've only been talking about incidents, but abuse is more than that, it's the context for our civilization. It's what we never talk about, publicly, and very rarely privately. But there it was, through both of them, not just Ford. They both spoke their truth. Ford was more direct, but Kavanaugh was just as revealing.#
- What he showed us is a last-ditch effort of a horror show he was trying to present as the pinnacle. He shouldn't worry about teaching at Harvard, coaching basketball or serving on the Supreme Court, he should worry about how he's going to tell the truth, not so much to us, but to himself. #
Like everyone else I've been bingeing on the Kavanaugh show, not on Netflix, but it should be. It's been an incredible story. If you need to catch up, I highly recommend today's Daily podcast. I was so exhausted last night I didn't watch any of the MSNBC shows. #