Today's song: Fool on the Hill (sung by Annie Lennox). #

I did not watch the debate. I was watching the previews on CNN and MSNBC, and I could see where it was going. I went to sleep instead, as I did on Election Night in 2016. I didn't really understand what happened until I listened to today's Daily podcast, just now, which included excerpts. Trump is dominant. He really practiced dominance. He's got a knack for it. About halfway through the show I realized this is what happens when you debate a troll. You never get to finish a thought, he always has another nit to pick, an annoying way to say something. He disrespects your dead son. He makes it about him, 100 percent. There's no room for anyone else. He was awful on his town hall a couple of weeks ago. A bluff? Anyway, I never thought Biden should debate him, or it should have been with rules that made it impossible for Trump to talk over him. Trump owned the stage last night. Glad I didn't watch, from what I can tell it was a nightmare. Also it was an incitement. The reporters say he "targeted his base." Not really. He told his nascent militia to make a mess of the election, and he's setting up "the left" to get the blame. We gave him access to 100 million people so he could fuck us up the ass. #

Poll: Did you watch the debate?#

A Catskill creek full of runoff from last night's storm.#

I usually don't write about work as I'm doing it, but wtf, let's give it a try. Today I'm going to pick up the thread I last worked on July 9. LO2 becomes its own reader app. It was always weird that you had to go outside LO2 to read a published outline. It make the connection uneasy. Not obvious how you'd create an outline of your own. By having the published outline (aka instant outline) be viewed read-only in LO2, you're right there, in a tab, in the tool that creates these outlines.#

Here's a Hello World web app for ES6 modules. It uses a module that defines one function, secsSince. It then calls that from another module, and displays the result on the page. It's as simple as I could make it and it works. Not sure I want to use ES6 modules, but at least now I know how to do it, and you do too. All the other tutorials were missing some information you need to understand how modules work. The most confusing thing about modules is that you can only invoke modules from other modules. That means all the JavaScript code in your web app has to be in a module. Not sensible imho, but also not much of a burden. BTW you can run the code without downloading. #

Joe Biden will show up tonight for a normal presidential debate. Trump is coming to an incitement. He'll point to Biden and say he'll take away your guns. He supports same-sex marriage and abortion. He will give all your money to black people. Biden is the new Hillary. A puppet for the deep state. Your life is over if you allow them to steal this election. The them is everyone but White Christian MAGAs. Get ready to revolt. I'll stand by you if you stand by me, says Trump. #

Rudy lost his last marble. #

Poll: How many pushups can Trump do?#

Today's Daily podcast about the Trump tax returns had a fair amount of info, but overall was disappointing. Barbaro never came to grips with a key idea: Trump is not a rich guy evading taxes. He's broke. He's a loser. That's his usual state, even though he's had two huge windfalls of cash, first from his father and then from The Apprentice. Each time he's invested in marginal businesses and his management turned them into failures. Then he borrowed, failed to pay back his debt, went bankrupt. He's about to go bankrupt again with the $400 million that comes due in the term he's running for now. But we don't know who he owes the money to, but we can take a good guess. The big takeaway from the tax returns is Trump is a loser. It's a shame they don't have a whole podcast series about what's in the returns. We've spent so much time speculating about the truth of Trump, now we have a huge load of data. Podcasts are the best medium for revealing it. Sadly only the NYT has this story, so it's not getting a deep dive. #

Today's song: I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City. #

Braintrust query: Flow of ES6 modules.#

This is the best thing I've read today. It says when collapse happens you might not notice. We are post-collapse in the US, the author says. You know what, I believe it. "I used to judge those herds of gazelle when the lion eats one of them alive and everyone keeps going — but no, humans are just the same. That’s the real meaning of herd immunity. We’re fundamentally immune to giving a shit."#

Remember Romney's 47 percent speech to Republican donors. The nice Republican. They really think this way. Do they think you should live? Probably not. A waste of resources. You just want handouts. Repub dogma: 47 percent of the people are disposable. #

The House could still impeach Trump to halt the ratification of the new Supreme Court justice. And the Democrats, assuming they take power in January, can increase the size of the court to whatever they want. Of course the Repubs will scream bloody murder and the press will repeat that, with volume, because it's an exciting story. And we know the Dems can't stand that. Look what they did to Al Franken. Concerned they would be called hypocrites by the Repubs, itself an act of total hypocrisy, they destroyed his career which was going pretty well, you'd have to say. One of the most eloquent Democrats in a party that has trouble finishing sentences, much less whole thoughts. #

Sometimes I think my blog is one of those diaries in science fiction stories that chronicle the downfall of a civilization. First things looked a little bad, then very bad, then boom! 💥#

It drives me crazy that the press makes everything about Dems and Repubs. Yes the Dems will be disappointed if the country disintegrates into civil war and becomes a zombie zone full of covid, but don't you get that other people will be unhappy too?#

Debate question for Trump: Why do you want to be president?#

Trump's Taxes is not a horse race story. The questions it raises -- 1. Can a president so deeply in debt concentrate on his job, and 2. When making a decision can he focus on the needs of the country over his own needs?#

Tim Bray wrote how subscriptions don't work for news. All readers know this. Since people in news orgs must read other pubs, they must know it too. We need a meter on our browsers, a set of prefs we easily control, a max budget, a special offer to subscribe when it makes economic sense. Create an easy path to subscribing, not the brutal wall that interrupts you at exactly the wrong moment. We can bootstrap a rational system for news that grows. The web should be a fantastic way to get news, not the repetive junky stuff we get now, but news with real nutrient value. We're stuck and don't need to be. #

We're waiting for an alliance between the people and the press that stops making everything about one party vs the other, and starts looking at us as a country of 328 million people. Look for new voices that can help you get to what matters. #

I suggested a few years ago that one of the networks move one of their evening shows to Michigan or Ohio, just to shift the perspective a bit. It would work. Probably one of the most revolutionary things they could do, and it's so easy. #

You know there are people you don't like and people you actually despise. But if they have a good idea, the right thing to do is suck it up and say so. #

Poll: Did you pay more taxes than Trump?#

There's some good news about Covid-19 that you don't see in the news -- eventually it will become less deadly. Most viruses in that family do, the virus mutates, and a strain that kills fewer victims comes to dominate, and that process repeats. The virus spreads out to find new victims and over time it weakens. The 1918 pandemic ended after two years, with no vaccine, but the virus didn't go away, it became seasonal. It still pops up, to this day, but it's nowhere near the problem it was in 1918. That will probably happen with Covid-19 too. #

I haven't been in Clubhouse in a couple of weeks. I've been lurking a bit the last few hours. People talk like they're in therapy, and they're the therapist. Or like they're in the United Nations and they're from a small country, afraid they're going to start a war. Everyone is very cautions, non-committal. #

I just gave $25 to Jaime Harrison because Lindsey Graham is a kook. I think he's crazy. I think he's unfit for office. #

Must-listen NYT podcast about climate-crisis migration in the US.#

I don’t understand why people say this Supreme Court nomination is the end of everything. The Repubs now have a 5-3 advantage. Is 6-3 so different? Our big immediate crisis is how we turn the corner on the Nov 3 election, coupled with the ongoing Covid catastrophe.#

It’s the bottom of the ninth. Other team is up. Two out. You have a one run lead. Bases loaded. The only runner that matters is the one on third. The guy on first is trying to get you to pick him off. Don’t fall for it.#

Today's song: Leaving Las Vegas.#

Last time I listened to Sheryl Crow was a great time of my life. I can tell because the way it makes me feel today. A Master of the Universe type feeling. This is mine. I made it, I own it, I can make it do what I want. It's the feeling in a young man's heart. #

BTW, here's something obvious but unthinkable. Trump is having all these rallies, larger and larger, knowing the deaths they cause won't be obvious until after the election. Now in a way it's much better not to live in a swing state.#

David Frum says he's "worried by a judge who'd accept a nomination under these circumstances." Me too. The nominee no doubt knows that the nominator expects the nominee to do his bidding. Every decision she makes will be viewed in that light.#

Imagine if AIDS had just appeared and everyone is still have unprotected sex with everyone else.#

Joe Biden: "When I'm elected..."#

Don't miss: An important new feature in BingeWorthy.#

Reporters forget past atrocities, so they can re-discover them, so it's (as far as they're concerned) news -- again. This makes their job approachable. Anything beyond this would require them to adapt, risk, improvise, grow. In software, ideas from users can be confusing, but also incredibly valuable. Users have nothing invested in the way you do things. They just know what they want. Knowing what users want is valuable, but news doesn't incorporate that, because they never listen to users, they only listen to each other, and often not even that.#

Poll: Why do Trump and the Repubs do what they do?#

It's true that in 2016 Trump said he wouldn't honor the vote if he lost, but there is a big difference between then and now. Now he's the president, and he lives in the White House and is commander in chief of the armed forces. There's a lot of time between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Time Trump can really fuck things up for us, beyond how fucked up they already are. Everyone thinks Trump is going to lose but refuse to leave. I think he has another plan. When I was playing a board game with my little brother when we were kids, if he didn't like how it was going, well you know what little brothers do. That's Trump. A snotty ass little brother if there ever was one. 😄#

I have a huge collection of MP3s and a new Android phone. Is there a music-playing Android app that can access files in Google Drive? I've been using that to transfer photos and movies from the phone to other devices and onto the web. I could easily do the same with music if I could play the MP3s from GD. #

My new BingeWorthy profile page. #

Trump should be impeached for what he said yesterday.#

I might subscribe to the New Yorker if they split the fee with a small publication they admire that they think everyone should read. I abhor the idea of just the big old stodgy names getting funded. I won't do it. #

We need a new doc like the Declaration of Independence, totally non-partisan, that we can declare our loyalty to. In today's language. We re-commit to re-form our government, so it can't be abused as Trump has. An oath to our reboot. #

The journalists want taxpayers to fund news. As a user, I want to fund it, just not the way they have it set up. They want a blank check, they'll have even less reason to listen to users and the product will continue to drift. More here.#

Idea for Lincoln Project ad. Take us through history, pictures of the great bloodless transitions in American history. Like this.#

According to Matt McDermott, Trump refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power is on page A15 of today's NYT print edition, not the front page. It'd be interesting to hear, from them, why. #

Biden's campaign had a slogan, Build Back Better, but it didn't stick. Campaigns need slogans. For example, with ThinkTank we had See What You Think. Of course Trump has many. MAGA. Mexico will pay for it. Fine people, on both sides. We'll have to see. Just a few. It's okay if a slogan translates into a concrete promise, but it doesn't have to. Obama had Yes We Can. That's pretty good, hard to refute and doesn't really commit to anything in particular. I liked FDR's Happy Days Are Here Again. That campaign happened long before I was born, but in a sense, I remember it. The same way I guess today's kids remember the Beatles. #

Why does the browser’s Back button not work in Facebook? When you hit the Back button you're taken to a random place. You have to remember to look for a link to the previous comment, or the post, and usually you forget. No other website works like this. And once you erroneously hit the Back button the Forward button doesn't work either. The place you were at is lost. This is pretty bad for software that's ten years old, and the bug persists even in the new version, suggesting it's a deep flaw in the design, or worse, it's intentional.#

Not wearing a mask in public is like wearing no pants and taking a crap where you stand. Freedom is great. #

I asked on Twitter: If you decide to leave Substack can you take your subscriber list with you, or do they own that? And the answer is yes, you can export your subscriber list as a CSV file. So I wonder why people would stay with Substack after they get a certain amount of income. They get 10% for doing something that doesn't cost very much. If they're making say $1000 a year off your mail list, why not take distribution in-house? That's a straight question. I want to understand how the business works. Thanks. #

Today's song: Free Man in Paris.#

My internet was down today. Oy! I was just warming up, had written a piece about Occam's News and a bit about the wonderful word naïveté, when boom -- I'm offline. I made two trips into town to try to connect, but eventually gave up,went for an excellent bike ride on the Ashokan Rail Trail, a local wonder. I learned that I should have a few printed books around, or at least one downloaded to my Kindle, and some videos that are downloaded on my iPad. Luckily I had a few episodes of Brockmire and they were lovely. The whole thing is so LOL good. Really you do LOL. Rare thing. I tried watching a bit of Killing Eve season 3, but it's garbage. Bad writing. The first season was so great because it was written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The acting and the sets, they carry through all the seasons, but sheez, no one tells stories like PWB. So instead I planned out my next few projects, something totally worth doing, instead of wrapping up an abbreviated version of the big one I had been attempting. Tomorrow is another day, knock wood, praise Muphy, IANAL, my mother loves me, and all other disclaimers. #

The Markup has a new service called Blacklight which rates websites based on how much spying they do on their readers. Scripting News does well, but they complain about one thing: the site interacts with "an ad-tech company" -- AWS. They've discovered that I load content from Amazon S3, which is true. That's where I store the HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images that make up the site. I'm a paying customer and if they do any spying with the log info, that would be imho unethical. This is a problem with services like Blacklight. They make assumptions that things are nefarious when they're innocent, and if they become popular they constrain the web. This goes against the most powerful thing about the web, it's the platform with no platform vendor. #

I love the word naïveté because I'm an old time computer user. I started with punch cards, then graduated to all upper case terminals with 40 character displays and thought they were incredible, until I got a Hazeltine terminal that had upper and lower case characters and 80 columns. I was in heaven. But now you can include words with all that fancy punctuation, and wow isn't that amazing. And naïveté is such a great word, you actually get two of them in one freaking word. It's only been 80 years but look at all the progress. #

Today's song: Rudy Wants To Buy Yez a Drink. #

Didn't have a lot on my blogging mind today. 💥#

Update on the Mouse Wars. I've inundated the car with peppermint and Bounce sheets. Parking it outside, not in the carport. I think the mice like the carport even without a car. I also bought a couple of Blink cameras for the house. I figured that I should put one of the cameras at ground level next to the car, and see if any mice show up in the dark of night. So far one rodent, not particularly interested in the car. Here's the video. I love using spying hardware in the War Against Mice. #

People who think they can predict the near-future, look at this video, and imagine it was a year ago, looking a year into the future. Explain why the Hudson Yards Mall in NYC is a ghost town. You'd never in a million years guess the true reason. It's so frustrating when smart people quote the pablum they hear on the cable news shows. Those are bedtime stories. The world is far more dangerous and far less predictable. Go back and watch the shows from a year ago to see how well they did.#

Succession gave us "fuck off" as a term of endearment.#

The best political ad of the season (so far). #

I'm into season 2 of Borgen on Netflix. It's really great. It's taken my mind off US politics. #

We're heading into a taxation without representation situation if the Repubs try to put another conservative on the court. The country isn't that conservative. The Electoral College gone wild. The Repubs got too good at tuning it up and it will lead to a revolution, with their political heads on spikes.#

The Navalny poisoning is a warning to American politicians. #

By now we should all know when the Repubs say anything it's meaningless. So... When Susan Collins says oh my this should be done by a new president, then she'll disagree when McC goes ahead, and she'll vote to confirm, saying how disappointed she is. BTW, politically, RBG dying is the best thing that happened to Collins. Now she can talk about the Court instead of Trump, the virus and the economy, and oh yeh her vote to acquit the Trumpolini. #

Can you imagine a bunch of rude skanky schmucks with with big guns showing up at the Michigan state capitol, and they're allowed to menace everyone, and no cops show up with tear gas, no vigilantes protect property. Now imagine if they were black instead of white.#

The Lincoln Project is in a bind. As Repubs, they want to own the Court for the indefinite future, and here's their chance. Now the work they're doing to elect Biden is against their own interests. It's time for them to decide whether they really think we're going authoritarian, i.e. if the Supreme Court still matters if DJT wins. This may be nothing more than an election issue, only of symbolic value, if Trump has no intention of listening to the Court in the future, assuming he wins stays in power. The Lincolns seemed damned either way.#

New header image, the Supreme Court last night, people gathered there to remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died yesterday.#

RBG dying is a gut punch almost as bad as election night 2016.#

Braintrust query: I am running the OPML Editor, which is a distribution of Frontier, on a Mac running MacOS 10.13.6. Works fine. I'm afraid to update this computer, because I don't know what Apple is going to do to it. I use Frontier to write my JavaScript code, and also to keep around as an archive for about 20 years of work, that's still unmatched elsewhere. I don't want to lose my ability to run Frontier. Anyway I had a thought. Why not run Frontier inside VMWare, using 10.13.6, and then I could run it on any Mac. I think this would work and I could stop worrying about Apple breaking my work environment. #

I'm davescript on TikTok.#

Questions re the format for the first debate.1. Trump and Biden in same place or different locations? 2. Live audience? 3. Moderator(s)?#

With all the bad news, we deserve puppies. 😄#

I love macadamia nuts.#

If Steve Jobs were alive, our living rooms would be very different.#

The wires are the problem, and Jobs fully understood this. I talked about this in yesterday's podcast. They had the Mac office, school, backpack, pocket, the living room should belong to Apple. Not with a dongly thing and "content." It should be the Apple experience at room scale. I want a full scale Apple/Pixar experience in my home. #

Gotta wonder if Trump and Barr are planning on disrupting the huge turnout for early voting in Virginia. Actually I don't wonder, I'm sure they will. These are all antifa's, some very fine people, but some very not fine people too. Send in the little green men. #

Woodward betrayed us. Every time I hear a new recording of Trump talking, in April, about how horrible the virus is, I want everyone to think how much different it would be if those recordings had come out in April, not September. #

I use Frontier to manage my source code, which no longer runs on the newest version of the Mac OS. I desperately want it to run on Linux so I can get out of this situation. In the meantime, I bought a new iPhone, and just updated it and got this awful dialog when I plugged it into my Mac. I clicked on Learn More hoping to find out which version of the OS it wants to install, but it doesn't say. I am running High Sierra, 10.13.8. I'm not going to update the Mac. I guess that means I'll be relying on the new Pixel 4a more and more, because I can't give up my ability to run Frontier on my desktop. Not a good situation, but as they say it is what it is. #

Chuck pointed me at Gigster, which I didn't know about, as a place I might hire a contractor to create a Linux version of Frontier. I'd like to see it run on Ubuntu, both in the graphic environment and headless. #

My grandparents were alive during the 1918 pandemic. I never thought to ask them about it. I wish I had.#

I'm on a podcast roll these days. 17-minutes worth of rambling about how Apple should fix the TV problem, which btw is all those freaking wires. The tech has advanced so much, you could blow people away with elegance, ease of use, and power, and so what if it costs three times as much as the competition. We're accustomed to paying for the best. I should note that I have some $AAPL stock, purchased in 1997 and held since then so when Apple screws me in software at least I make up for it in my brokerage account. I'm so puzzled why I'm not using Clubhouse these days. And I'm totally maxed out on new services. OMG no more please. Also a story about hanging out with Don Pearson who did the sound for the Dead. #

An idea for a business. Home entertainment system makeovers. I have so many friends with obsolete entertainment systems. They work fine. You get used to them. It was exciting when you got it 10 years ago and you still feel that. But. Things have gotten so much better and so much cheaper. Now, for very little money, relative to the amount of time you use it, you can have something much nicer. You could make people really happy and make a good living doing it, I think, at least for a little while until word gets out you just have to buy a new screen and then work out from there. 💥#

I have a series 5 Apple watch, reading this review, can't see a reason to get the series 6. I use it mainly for timing my exercise, and to see what the temperature is outside and of course the time. I charge it every night, but it never gets less than 1/2 battery. I already have a pulse oximeter, and I take a reading once a day, and record it. #

I have a new iPhone SE, new Pixel 4a, and a new Subaru, which supports both kinds of phones. I love all three very much. I previously had a super high end iPhone, but I'm a middle class kind of guy, and the SE is much more my speed. And for the first time I've been able to use an Android phone for navigation and listening to podcasts and audio books. I took a drive to Albany on Tuesday, and was able to test it out. It all works, in an unsurprising manner, except Google Maps on the Android has one feature that the iPhone version desperately needs. The map re-orients so that the direction you're heading in is always up and to the right. On the iPhone it's kind of random. Hard to parse. And the layout is much better for a driver, who can't spend any time puzzling out what the computer trying to say. If you have a turn in 2 miles, there's a box that says Right Turn in 2 Miles. And it counts down as you get closer. Next time I'm driving I'll try to take a picture (obviously with the iPhone). #

We're fast evolving into the world of Idiocracy. In addition to Contagion, it's the one movie everyone should see. Also the Matrix. #

Here's what being called sir feels like to me. You see someone who you think you could be friends with because inside you're 19, and they call you sir, and you remember what it was like when you were them and you saw someone who looked like you look now.#

If we're going to get at-home testing, for real, hook it up to Kinsa, for a national Covid weather report. #

It's possible the easiest and quickest way to undo the Electoral College is for a bunch of people from blue states to relocate to low population red states. Elect Democratic legislatures and governors, and then ratify a constitutional amendment that eliminates the Electoral College. Then everyone can move where ever they like, since all votes will matter the same. Now with remote work being more acceptable, and the cost of living generally lower in the low population states, why not relocate? It's a relatively simple hack, and the red state people can't do it to blue states. Heh. #

Here's a list of states ranked by population. #

Yesterday I was out and about doing errands, and instead of wearing my usual blue Mets cap, I was wearing my red Wisconsin hat. It has a big W on the front, and on the back it says Badgers. I was getting some dirty looks, and at one place a woman commented that I shouldn't wear that hat because people might not understand. #

I found a printed listing of the C source code for the first outliner I wrote in 1978. I thought this was long gone, but there it was. #

Jon Udell was tweeting about podcasting, and I had a bunch of things I wanted to say, so I talked for 22 minutes in this podcast. I talk about the Daily podcast and Brian Lehrer, two formats that work. Why has the tech for listening to podcasts evolved so slowly? Who has the ability to innovate? Same with blogging. When was the last time there was a serious innovation?#

Trump always talks about how other countries don't pay us for the things we do for them, but they do, they really do. Hugely. The US has the world's reserve currency. We're the only country that can print money that can be spent anywhere. People all around the world use our currency to store value. Even with all the lunacy, our dollar is still the safest place to store value. It means we can always have more money. We don't even have to actually print it, they're just numbers in a spreadsheet somewhere. Trump, of course is doing everything he can to make everyone else not trust us. So if the trance breaks, and the dollar is no longer seen as the most trustworthy country, we would end up being one of the "other" countries, and we'll have to pay China to store our money, along with all the other schmucks. And they'll have the power we still have. It's one of those things that if you don't know about it, and most people don't, you can't understand how global economics works. And when they say "The American taxpayer paid for this," well it's not technically true. #

To give you an idea how this works, suppose you were playing Monopoly with some friends. You're a special player, you have all the money you want. Whenever and no limit to how much. No one else can. That's pretty cool, yes?#

For a strong dose of reality, I recommend this podcast.#

I'm working my way slowly through Borgen season 1. It's very good, and immersive. The format is basically The West Wing in Denmark. The prime minister is a woman with a family. Every episode, as in TWW, they tackle a big issue. It's in Europe, and it's a small country, not the mighty USA. It's very well done. It's slow going because they wrote it so that you need to read things in the show and read the sub-titles (the characters get information from reading headlines in newspapers that go by too quickly to read them). Sometimes they drop into English because the characters would speak English then. It's on Netflix now. There are already three seasons and a fourth is on the way. A side-note, the chief of staff of the PM is Pilou Asbæk, who played Euron Greyjoy in Game of Thrones.#

We are learning more about Trump even if it's coming at glacial speed from Woodward. Also his comment yesterday about climate change was revealing. The snotty look on his face when he said science is bullshit. You can tell he's never had to deal with a health emergency, or he wasn't paying attention when it happened. If he doesn't die of an instant heart attack or stroke, he's going to learn to respect science, at some point. #

The fundamental rule of discourse on the net is that you should treat each person as you would treat an actual human being, face to face. Too often people "speech" at you, that is give a speech, addressed to you. Giving speeches is cool, that's what Twitter is for, but then address your speech to everyone, not to an individual. #

I wish Fauci would do a daily podcast, or at least weekly.#

Up in the Catskills you can feel autumn blowing in. Low tonight in the low 40s. Brrr. #

Poll: Whether or not you approve of what Woodward did, in withholding the audio of Trump confession re Covid harm, suppose other reporters are withholding life-saving information. Do you approve?#

When species go extinct, other species they keep in check will grow, possibly explode. If it were bats, for example, that might mean more Covid-19 type viruses. Human-killing viruses come from bats because they have more powerful immune systems. It's all balanced.#

On the west coast, every town has a few hot tub rental places. You pay a fee, about $10 or $20 an hour, and you get a private room with a hot tub. Soak for an hour. Come out a new person. Here's the list for Berkeley. In Palo Alto there's the grand Watercourse Way. And if you want the best, go to Esalen or Harbin. Of course you might want to wait until the fires are over. Nothing like this exists in the east. In all of New York City, the closest you could get was a communal Russian bath, that's like 100 years old. And no it's not the same thing. Once they legalize cannabis in NYC, they're going to need to open up some hot tub places for people to mellow out in.#

Speaking with Andrew Shell yesterday, in Madison. He's been working on a new version of rssCloud for Node to go with the XML-RPC for JavaScript package I wrote. We talked about lots of stuff, esp philosophy of maintaining networks of software. We both agree deprecation is a bad idea. I didn’t know that there have been riots in Madison. We talked about Kenosha in that context. We need better news folks, too much repetition and they're leaving out important information. Riots in Madison? That is for sure news for this lifetime Badger. #

A NYT reporter asked about early/mid 00's bloggers. There was a lot of response. I thought this was weird, a throwback to the thirst for recognition in the early blogosphere. The names offered were some of the famous ones, and I felt the same frustration I felt back in the day when the style sections of pubs like the NYT made those bloggers famous, and ignored the ones who weren't as young, but had deep experience in something other than blogging. The story always was here come the bloggers, look at how weird and stupid, in a Microserfs way, they are. If they looked a little deeper and more optimistically, they'd discover that their sources were going direct, and now they can do a different less superficial kind of journalism. That would have been powerful, instead we got the fearful story. Over and over. Blogging is and always will be sources go direct to me. I want to know what you know. And thanks for sharing. 💥#

WIth a little digging I found the participant list for BloggerCon I. #

I want to see one major publication's editorial page or opinion writer say how Woodward betrayed us, and how reporters must not do that. If you have information that can save lives, err on the side of disclosure. I was hoping that Ben Smith would do it in his weekly column, instead he went after The Intercept. Reporters do that, go after safe targets, believing perhaps they'll never work with someone from The Intercept, or need a quote from the owner. As far as I know not one op-ed writer has said what Woodward did was bad. #

BTW, I've written about The Intercept several times, including this important follow-up in 2013, that's actually still outstanding as far as I know. They were supposed to release all the Snowden docs, after reviewing them. #

Today's song: What's Going On.#

The number of dead, for purposes of the election, should be the projected number as of Election Day. And a question should be part of the discussion. Do you want to be one of the dead ones?#

I had a heated discussion yesterday with a dear friend who I greatly respect, about the Woodward thesis. Here's the question I asked, at the core of my case, and I'd ask it to Jay Rosen too, and to you dear reader, if you think what Woodward did was understandable and/or excusable. Why do you care about winning the election? What are you trying to prevent? Think about it. If you're listening and not arguing, you'll get it. #

I had to write a piece about this before I realized that Woodward is probably the best/worst example. Had it been a random reporter at the NYT, I think people would have looked at it differently. The Times brought us many terrible things like WMDs in Iraq and Hillary's Emails. Holding on to such an important bit of information about the president, and the snake oil he was selling about the disease, would be less excusable perhaps if it were a reporter no one heard of, instead of the most famous reporter in the world, possibly the most famous reporter ever. Who feels qualified to criticize The Great Woodward, the St Peter of the Church of the Savvy. #

Someone on the NYT op-ed page has to call Woodward out. But journalism always covers up the sins of journalism. Please let me know if you see journalism not doing this, I'll give them an award. It never happens. If only Rachel, Chris, Al, Joy, Wolf, Erin, Jake, Brian or Anderson looked at the Woodward case, and broadcast a message loud and clear, if any other reporter does this, we're going to crucify them. They do it regularly for Facebook. Someone has to do it for them. We pay too high a price for their inability to admit the most costly errors. They've all set a terrible precedent by remaining silent. #

Today's song: Pressure Drop. #

Toots Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals died last night at 77. #

We have normalized 1000 preventable deaths a day. Not just Trump and his followers, everyone.#

I went out to lunch yesterday. First restaurant meal since March. Lovely outdoor restaurant in Woodstock. I gather lots of other people were out for the first time too. But, maskless people were hugging all over the place. Hard to fathom. People my age, high risk people.#

Sylvia Paull, among the first people to comment on this blog starting in 1994, says: "Totally agree with you on Woodward. A journalist’s prime responsibility is to inform and by inference protect the public. Woodward had access to information that could have saved lives. Instead, his silence makes him as culpable of these hundreds of thousands of deaths as is the president and his gang. #

When I was a kid, still in elementary school, my parents bought a new car. A Pontiac Catalina, perhaps. One year I was given the job of rotating the tires, something you do to even-out the wear. I had to look deep into the trunk, and I could see way in the back, a cutout in the panel under the rear window that had a speaker, and a pair of wires disconnected from the speaker. At the time a rear speaker was a high-value luxury feature, esp for kids who sat in the back seat. I hooked the wires up and asked my father to come out and turn the car and the radio on. The speaker worked. My parents, buying the car, had not opted to pay for the rear speaker, but I guessed that it was cheaper for the manufacturer to put the speaker in every car, and only hook it up if you paid for it. Never forgot that, it still influences my software design to this day. #

In JavaScript you can initialize an array with [] or new Array (). I generally use the latter, because it's easier on my old eyes. It's hard to see the difference between {} and [], however it's very easy to see the difference between new Object () and new Array (). I consider ease for the programmer to be very very very important. I hardly ever use the word very, btw. :-)#

Journalism always covers up the sins of journalism.#

I'm going to start posting links to podcasts I listen to and think were worthwhile in the Links section of my blog and in the nightly email.#

If I were president of the United States given infinite power for just an hour, I'd establish by decree a new holiday, National Everyone Love Each Other Day. On that day it would be illegal to talk about polls, or bases, or divisiveness. People matter. That's it. The patron saint of National Everyone Love Each Other Day would be Rodney King. He was the man who, after being beaten by the police in LA in 1992, said this. "Can we all just get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?" It's a good question and for one day each year we could all ask it, of ourselves and each other. #

A question all tech companies should be prepared to answer and users should be asking. What's the plan for when your company goes away. What will become of what I created here? I am sure none of the companies we pour our lives into have any kind of plan here.#

Idea for TV series. Law and Order style crime drama where all the crimes are against humanity.#

Too many people are still looking out for #1.#

200K Americans died while Woodward sat on the tape. American lives. People like you. If you can rationalize their deaths then you're part of the problem, as is Woodward and Trump. A chain of depravity.#

In medicine, if they're testing a drug and discover for sure it saves lives without harmful side-effects, they're obligated to stop the test and give everyone the drug. No more control group. No more placebos. It's ethical. Sometimes the information you uncover makes a difference, and holding onto it has an unacceptable cost. Same in journalism. Same in everything.#

Andrew Weissmann, ex-DOJ lawyer explains Trump defense: "I am on tape committing a fraud that resulted in tens of thousands of people dying and risking the lives of many more. But I’m not to blame because you, Bob Woodward, could have stopped me."#

In June, I was interviewed by Walter Isaacson for his August podcast about podcasting. They only used a few bits from the recording to tell their story. Here's the full recording of my side of the interview. About 40 minutes. You can't hear the interviewer's questions, but it's not too difficult to figure it out. As always I'm very long-winded. 😄#

Pro tip: Before posting a reply, ask yourself if you're telling the other person to shut up, and if so take your own advice. #

Watching the coverage of the fires on the West Coast, I was reminded of this outstanding segment on The Newsroom on HBO. Aaron Sorkin writing at its best. #

BTW, when they say a billionaire like Jeff Bezos made $60 billion in 2020, that's paper profit. The gains will be lost when the market crashes, as it is sure to do. It's not like having the money in a savings account. We're in a big market bubble now, maybe the biggest ever.#

If you think only in terms of public opinion, you’re in a trance. You’re not a pundit on CNN. How do you know if you do it? Here's an extreme example. I say geez it would have been so easy for the reporter to save a few thouand American's lives. And you say, but I don't think his base would care. So perverse, even depraved. Yet I had that exact exchange repeatedly on Twitter last night. Think about how dehumanized you've become. These are people. Their families and friends were devastated by their deaths. They suffered terribly before they died. And they died! Geez Louise. Where is your humanity. And btw, no one, and I mean zero people give a shit about your punditry. You should factor that in as well. #

Poll: Was Woodward wrong to withhold the Trump tape about him lying about the virus?#

Tom Cruise wants the truth. Jack Nicholson says he can't handle it.#

A cynic might ask, and our country is full of cynicism, what difference would it have made if Woodward had disclosed what Trump said in March, in March. Well, it might have saved this woman's father's life. "His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life." We've got to start caring about each other. #

I bought two Biden/Harris lawn signs on Zazzle for about $50 including shipping. They let you share your cart, nice feature. Wish the price were a lot lower though. I want to see Biden signs everywhere.#

Woodward knew Trump was lying about the virus, on the record, in March. We're finding out in September. He's as bad as Trump.#

I'm wondering what's new in Glitch since I last took a look, back in April, over four days.#

I'm guessing the smoke is choking people who live in rural parts of Oregon, California and Washington, who say they have nothing in common with people who live in LA, SF, Portland and Seattle. Just want to point out they all breathe the same air. #

About mail-in ballots. 1. Why not count them as they come in? 2. When people say they take longer because they have to verify your signature, that's exactly what they do when you vote in person, at least everywhere I've lived (lots of places). By definition that process takes 24 hours. I'm guessing it takes longer to count mail-ins because they have fewer people doing the work?#

Re the trick Trump is openly planning to play on Election Night. Obviously the thing to do is not report returns for seven days after the election. We already have rules about calling an election before all the polls are closed. Well it takes longer now. BFD. #

Why doesn’t Biden announce a Covid task force and name the people and turn the mic over to them so that we can have scientific and straight regular update on what’s happening with the virus in the United States. No political interference.#

If you haven't listened to the 1619 podcast, I highly recommend it. It's not often that a podcast has such lasting value. Opened my eyes about my own country.#

I would prefer if there were no debates this time, but if there have to be debates: 1. It should be done virtually. I don't want Trump giving Biden the virus. 2. No interruptions. After your time is up, your mike is turned off. They should practice this so it works perfectly.#

BingeWorthy's hotlist requires a minimum number of ratings to be included in the list. Previously it was 5. I just changed it to 25. Soon it'll give you the ability to set the value for yourself, but the default for new users and people not signed in will be 25. #

You'd be amazed how many people have 10-year-old TVs. There's been so much progress. I was one of those people until last year, bought a big Sony for a few thou in 2010. Replaced it with a much better, much larger, higher def screen for 1/5th the price in 2019. Just looked at prices, makes my 2019 screen look like chopped liver. #

How does a person, much less a president, come to see fallen soldiers as losers or suckers. Then imagine what the president thinks of people who defend us against the virus. This is the opposite of leadership. He is the enemy.#

Things I use my outliner for -- writing my blog and publishing it, writing all my JS code, project management, list-making, decision-making, design. You see outlines in every product, but no one puts a lot of effort into developing them. Most programmers, it seems, aren't good at connecting the dots and seeing trends in our work and then factoring based on those observations. I use two outliners. One is based on Concord, in an Electron shell. Its feature set is an almost exact copy of Little Outliner, with a few extra features to support my blog-writing. And I use Frontier on my Mac for writing JS code, because I have a well-developed code management system that runs in Frontier. I also write little utilities that are quicker to write in Frontier than they would be in Node, but I have hopes of tackling that job and making Node a real scripting system. I no longer use the server apps we developed in Frontier. Most of them have been ported to Node. Many advantages to doing that, unfortunately none of those compare with Frontier for server programming. What Node has is a huge community that writes lots of packages that I can use. As far as I can tell I am the whole community in Frontier. Eventually that had to give, and it did. I found a good teacher to help me get started in JS in 2013 or so, and boom off to the races. #

First episode of Borgen is very good, as advertised. I tried the English dubbing, but couldn't understand what they were saying and the English subtitles don't match the dubbing, so I reverted to the Danish audio with English subs. #

I would have defended Julian Assange if he hadn't helped Russia and Trump hijack the 2016 election. After that, he can rot in jail for the rest of his life as far as I'm concerned.#

When criticizing a product, it's a good idea to hedge your criticism so you don't look like a complete fool when it turns out you were wrong. A simple "it seems to me" or "apparently" would make you look a bit more humble and less like a jerk. It happens to us all, so be careful. 😄#

People rave about Borgen, a 3-season Danish series. I've never been able to find it streaming. Just stumbled across it on Netflix. #

What will you do if Trump is re-elected?#

BTW, re the pandemic, everyone who thinks Trump has done badly up till now, it's about to get much worse. He's found his Bill Barr for managing the pandemic. His name is Scott Atlas. Suggest reading this article. #

The day after Election Day in 2016, I went for a walk around midtown Manhattan. It looked just like it did the day before. Nothing changed about the city. But I felt like people looked at each other differently. Did this person vote for Trump? Do they think I voted for Trump? I wanted to wear a button that said "I voted for HRC." Or better, I'm on the other side. I came up with the MLK button. I bought a thousand of them, and gave them away. I still wear it some days when I'm out in public. It was a more general Black Lives Matter. It said people are sacred and differences should be celebrated. And we're scared, so let's be there for each other. Today almost four years later, I suspect if you walk around Manhattan things are visibly different, and it's at least indirectly because Trump has been president for four years. Four more years? Hard to imagine how transformed this country will be then.#

Has anyone tried using polling to find out where the Covid-19 hot spots are? The kind of polling that asks who people voted for? Like this.#

I wish Bloomberg was keeping his promise. #

People ask what if Trump refuses to leave. Let's see if we can figure it out. He watches TV all day. I assume he’ll continue to do that. I suppose we‘ll have to sign loyalty oaths to him. Penalties very harsh for not doing so. What else? I bet his health continues to deteriorate, which means perhaps Melania will be running the country, or the Trump kids. There won't be any checks and balances, I guess. #

Braintrust query: Less expensive Biden lawn signs. #

The press repeats their blaming Facebook for the terrible state of our political system. In such damning terms. I wish they'd find a way to take their share of that responsibility. On The Media is the worst. #

I know I'm an outlier, but I thought the Kaufman movie was not interesting, entertaining, thoughtful, funny, colorful, artistic, whatever. I've read the explainers, but please, any story that needs that much explaning isn't much of a story imho. #

SF Chron review: "It goes on for 134 minutes without ever giving viewers a reason to keep watching. Few Netflix customers will make it all the way to the end, and even fewer will be glad they did."#

Today’s song: Mama Tried.#

A demo app to view BingeWorthy's RSS feed. #

Trump can hardly complain about anonymous sources when he destroys the careers of people who tell the truth about him under oath. Can't have it both ways. Schmuck.#

I applied for an absentee ballot in New York State. It seems to me they could allow me to download and print a PDF of the ballot, instead of mailing it to me via USPS. The first half of the process could be electronic. At least they didn't require you to send them a printed request to send you a ballot. They didn't ask for an email address. That's a shame, because that could be used to debug problems with the system, or provide confirmation when they receive the ballot. Also note they don't ask for your mailing address. This is good. However, they display the person's physical address in the form, once you provide information that isn't that hard to guess. Not a good idea. #

No matter what this Thanksgiving is going to be a shitshow because in the US the virus is not contained. Christmas and New Years are lost as well. Instead, hunger and homelessness. Let’s hope we have the good sense to fix the problem on Nov 3.#

I'm sure almost everything I do would make Trump think I'm a sucker. To his question, I like to help others. That's what's in it for me. I don't envy anyone who lives only for himself. As you get older, and there's not much life remaining. When you already have enough material wealth, there really can only be satisfaction in helping other, mostly younger, people get more out of their lives. Trump is 74 years old and you can see his health is slipping. Not much time left. He already has more money than he can possibly spend in 1000 lifetimes. There's no point in making more. He's not making anyone's life better, quite the opposite. There's still a little time left for him to find his way. Or at least get out of the way.#

Trump thinks soldiers are suckers, what about cops?#

How much money do you need to feel secure? It's a trick question.#

I'm almost done with the FX series Devs. Slow start, but it picks up toward the end. Now that I'm in the second to last episode I can't wait to find out what happens next. #

This week's Trippi podcast is fascinating. Guest is Republican strategist and Lincoln Project founder Stuart Stevens. Great to hear the A-B comparison now they're both on the same side, with Biden. Trippi is a fantastic interviewer, I always wonder why he doesn't run for office himself. 🚀#

People forget when they say that DJ Trump will declare victory on election night that he doesn't get to say that, it's the network statisticians who call elections. They know when enough votes have been counted, and I don't think too many people will believe Trump if none of them agree.#

BTW, when I was a kid growing up in NYC I had a lot of close calls with NYPD. I never worried about them killing me. It never occurred to me. They were mostly pranks. That's the kind of kid I was and who I hung out with. But we did have a couple of student strikes. We also had a run-in with the teachers union. They totally beat the crap out of us, politically. We were stupid. When they said they wanted to help, we believed them. #

Thinking about what it would take to turn JavaScript into a simple-enough scripting language. I wouldn't change anything but the syntax for functions that require callbacks. I think that's the only thing that keeps it from being for system scripting, for simple one-off scripts that automate things you do a lot by hand. #

A longtime friend uses Mailchimp to send a periodic newsletter. They have a feature that allows the author to re-send the mail to people who haven't opened it. Here's the writeup. They don't say how they know it wasn't opened. I was under the impression that mail apps prevent this kind of invasive behavior. People used to use one-pixel images with search params, but I think the email apps now copy the image and replace it in the HTML, to prevent the sender from knowing. So I told my friend I don't think it's possible. Pretty sure that's right, but I guess it depends on the app you use for email. I use GMail. I think these days enough people use GMail to make the Mailchimp feature useless. BTW, I did open the first email, and it treated me as if I hadn't. More evidence that the feature doesn't really work. If you have insight, please comment. #

Hmm according to this Verge article the feature is not disabled in GMail by default. I checked my settings in GMail, and I have it enabled, so the puzzle gets more weird. #

Something interesting is happening. I left Silicon Valley in 2003. Now that Silicon Valley is dispersing geographically, I seem to becoming part of it again. Weird. #

When Tom Seaver pitched in Flushing, the Mets players lived in our neighborhood. And we went to lots of games at Shea, when we were kids. Seaver was our hometown hero, an idol. #

Stop and watch this CNN story about evictions in Houston. They call it the "downward spiral of the COVID economy." We are going to pay for this. The sooner we start the easier it's going to be on everyone, esp the poor families, but really everyone. We're on a downward spiral. The stories are going to get worse. #

1948: Dewey Defeats Truman.#

Oy the White House thinks they're running a campaign. They're supposed to be running a country.#

Had a great chat on Clubhouse last night. One takeaway, I understand why there's no connection to the web at this time, I would probably do it that way too. Feel the pain of the missing feature, and then take a careful first step after gaining experience. I've learned over the years that you can't take features away from users, without a lot of pain. So you have to add features carefully. That said, I'd love to post a followup to that chat, in writing, but there's no way to do it. Creating a connection between my Clubhouse world and my blog world would be interesting. For that they'll need an API. 🚀#

Status report on BingeWorthy -- we have something to work with. Look at all the people who rated Game of Thrones.#

This election should be a blowout. Americans are dying, the economy is a wreck, the country is careening and this time the casualties are at home. In a sane society, Trump would be in jail, Pence would be president and Biden would be preparing to take office in January. There should be a permanent people's campaign, all day every day, every year, whether or not there's an election. Clearly waiting for the politicians and journalists to do this isn't working. And the current tech networks are mired, trying to serve everyone. Politics has moved online. So far it's been chaotic. But we could envision something that's orderly and productive and still preserve the energy. The idealistic vision of the early web wasn't entirely wrong, imho. :-)#

The Lincoln Project is really fucking with DJ Trump.#

I have a feeling that this election would be a blowout if we had good marketing instead of business as usual. Joe Biden will save your life. Now I don't imagine Biden himself would want to say that. That's why god invented PACs. 🚀 #

Here's something funny. The new version of Facebook looks so much like the new version of Twitter that I have a hard time telling them apart. The evolutionary message is clear. There really should be one way to do this, and the systems should interop perfectly. An analogy. The West Wing played fine on NBC, then it went to Netflix, and now it's going to some other place. Same software runs everywhere. I want to send my blog posts everywhere and have the fidelity be maintained. How would they ever agree on a standard? HTML is pretty good. I know both Zuck and Jack know how that works. 😄#

Did you ever have a productive cough and while that was happening you had to sneeze? Luckily I had a napkin nearby. #

Today's song: Won't Get Fooled Again. Lyrics.#

Had to do a lot of driving today, so I listened to a bunch of podcasts including two from political consultants. Joe Trippi interviewed former California governor Jerry Brown and the Lincoln Project podcast talked about polling and how evenly divided the bases of the political parties are. Brown talked about how hard it was going to be for Biden to govern. They would need to be creative to find a way around the deadlock. Then I wondered why? Aren't they missing something? Isn't Covid-19 offering the chance to bring us together? Ronald Reagan once asked his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev if aliens attacked, would he pause the Cold War and work with Reagan to fight them? Gorbachev said hell yes he would. Isn't Covid exactly that kind of opportunity? Why isn't the Lincoln Project running ads that informs voters that if we had a merely competent president, one who got out of the way of the government, we would be doing a lot better. Not only would far fewer people get sick and die, but we could go out to dinner and a movie. We could take a vacation. We could have a party. We could have Thanksgiving dinner with our family and celebrate Christmas together this year. We could hug our family and friends. All that's standing in the way is our working together. I've felt all along that the virus is making us smarter, and part of that is getting us to work together because that's smart. Would one of the PACs be willing to try that message? Show pictures of people all over the world, everywhere but the US, enjoying their lives, and ask would you like this for America? All you have to do is work with each other. That's really all it would take. There's only one candidate offering that. #

If you like Succession, here's a great interview with Cherry Jones. She played the Nan Pierce, owner of PGM (which is really the NYT), who Logan Roy (in real life, Rupert Murdoch) wanted to buy. It's a really good interview and of course it's about Succession so it's even better. #

OK, so -- I think it's time for TV to pick up the cue from Twitter and follow all the advice they've been dumping on Facebook. When someone says something like this, I don't care if he's president, you have to cut him off. Otherwise you're responsible for what happens.#

Believe it or not I've only used Zoom once, in read only mode. I was attending the virtual funeral for a longtime friend's mother. I don't know how I've been so lucky. I really do not like the idea of Zoom. #

I was invited to a panel discussion on Clubhouse recently. I was to be one of the celebs, and there would be an audience. This is something I have not liked ever since we did the four BloggerCons. The concept of an audience just makes people go out into the hallway, and if you want people to be excited and engaged, and share their best ideas, there should no audience at all. I think Clubhouse might be good for that. But the discussion leader, who is like a reporter or a teacher, has to know most of the people in the room, to know who to call on. And the "Raise Hand" feature needs to be disabled for this. And people have to understand when their mike turns off and someone else starts speaking. It also wouldn't be bad if the moderator could give a little haptic nudge via the phone to the person they were about to call on, saying "wake up you're about to be called on." Don't want to catch anyone napping. #

States should have to buy insurance against mass shootings, to fund health care for victims or damages to families of those killed. That would give them incentive to control factors that cause mass shootings.#

Good morning and welcome to September 2020. The August OPML has been archived for those who are interested in such things. #

Isn't it funny how no one is running an ad that says basically if you're stuck at home and ever hope to get out vote for Biden/Harris. I think we all know with Trump after a year or two if we're still alive, we'll volunteer to get the virus if we can just go to a party or go out to dinner and a movie. #

In the tabs vs spaces debate, I am firmly in the "neither" camp. Too low level a question. My editor understands code structure. I don't indent with tabs or spaces, I indent with structure. #