It's even worse than it appears.
There's a CNN commercial where a white guy in a suit, probably an actor, is talking to the camera. He says (paraphrasing): "The NRA is not going away. Every American should have a gun." I wanted to ask if he felt that every Black man should have a gun, or just Whites. What about religion? Should Jews and Muslims have guns too? Should only rich people have guns, or should poor people have them too? If a Black man came to your all-White neighborhood would you like to see him with a gun? Would you call the cops if a Black man came into a convenience store with a gun? I suspect he was thinking, when he said every American should have a gun, of Americans like himself. #
  • I keep beating this drum, because it's important. #
  • This morning Thejesh posted a link to Buttondown's API. I like it -- it's really simple. But it could be even simpler! 😄#
  • First a summary of why this is important. I want to use my own editor to write a newsletter and publish it through a commercial newsletter service. I don't want to use their editor. Why? Because as a writer, I have the best editor for me. And I don't like being a copy-paste-bot. My writing has too many ways to get out to make it possible to do that for all of them. And I want someone to go first, to make it easy to publish without forcing me to be creative in their world, with their inadequate (for me) editor.#
  • So to further the discussion -- here's how I would do the API .#
    • The user, through the app's user interface, enters the URL of an RSS feed. That interaction is of course authenticated.#
    • When a new item appears in the feed, publish it.#
    • For extra credit, accept a simple unauthenticed ping message with the username, which tells your server to check the feed. That way your server doesn't have to check as often.#
  • Voila, super simple API.#

copyright 1994-2021 Dave Winer.

Last update: Friday August 27, 2021; 10:26 PM EDT.

You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)