Yesterday I posted the ChatGPT explainer for blogrolls, but realized later there was an important use of blogrolls it didn't mention. I kept a blogroll on my home page because those were the sites I wanted to check regularly to see what's new. So I was thinking about my own use of my blog, not just helping out sites I support or giving ideas to people who read my blog. Also they didn't provide an illustration of what a blogroll looks like. Here's a snapshot from August 2000, and sure enough, in the left margin, there's the blogroll. Here's a screen shot.#
A snapshot from May 2003. The template was redesigned, and there are changes to what's in the blogroll, but it's still there, in the same place. #
By August 2004, the blogroll is gone. I don't remember why I took it down, probably because I wasn't using it very much, because by then we had feeds, and Radio UserLand (a feed reader and blogging tool) and the blogroll was just a list, and didn't have any way of telling me in advance that a site had updated. #
All of a sudden my posts on Mastodon are getting liked and forwarded a lot more than on the other platforms. What changed? Hmm.#
- My #1 Beatles song these days is Day Tripper. #
- Most of my listening has been to John Lennon, and more reading. #
- A lot of his lyrics intentionally mean nothing. #
- My current infatuation is Gimme Some Truth from Imagine is pretty great because the lyrics are super clear, and quite forceful and beautiful. Of course we want the truth, some of us at least, and you can't tiptoe around that. Most people have arranged their lives so they avoid the truth at all costs. In the end the truth prevails for everyone no matter how hard you try.#
- Then I saw a quick interview with Ringo and Paul, current day, and Ringo is being kind of a bitch saying that Paul was a workaholic, and he's standing right there, but he isn't disagreeing in fact he's nodding his head, basically saying he likes to do things. #
- I always wish as a child of their breakup that they had found a way to work together, and for John and George to have their independence from Paul. He definitely took the brunt, but it looks to me like he was desperate to keep the Beatles from breaking up and that brought out his powerful control freak side.#
- Thing is to people my age, these were our uncles. But maybe there was nothing after The End? Maybe they really were done. We like to believe there was more, but maybe there wasn't. #
- And of course the people who were Beatles were just people, strangers to us really, we were just projecting our dreams on them. Until the Get Back show, which answered so many of our questions were answered and got us thinking and dreaming again. #
- Peter Jackson changed the world of 20s as much imho as the Beatles did in the 60s. He did a great thing. #
- There is no organized oversight of journalism. No one whose criticism they respect. And they don't criticize themselves. It's a monopoly, with no reason to change, and that's a formula for a festering mess. Their sense of entitlement is legendary. Such chutzpah. Until it shakes up, we're going to keep getting Trump-size debacles. #
- They could easily blame their employers for creating Trump. If it weren't for his reality show would his followers see him as anything other than a pathetic East Coast blowhard with a bad combover. Instead they blamed Facebook. Not that FB didn't profit enormously from Trump, but you just can't see the role journalism plays because they can't bite the hand that feeds them. But we can. I don't owe them anything, do you?#
- BTW it would be incredible to see an investigative report of how the But Her Emails meme was birthed? What does it say about cynicism about the press. Did any journalists hear it? Do any of them feel it?#
