I mentioned this in yesterday's podcast -- new problems popped up with websockets in WordLand. I worked through the whole tree of possibilities with ChatGPT and it came to the conclusion that the source was an out of date package, and it was confident if I replaced it with the one "everyone else" is using, the problems will go away. Now this is the moment when human judgement prevails. I'm going to experiment in a very small app first, to make sure I have the approach right, then I will cautiously make the change on my test WordLand server, and if it works there, then I will figure out how to install it on the main site. It couldn't break all that much because for some reason the WS code stopped working, completely, with no code changes anywhere. #

Well it looks like the new email app is working. I got some really nice lookin emails last night, hope you did too. Subscribe here. And there's a basis on which to build. I will now proceed to turn off the old email app that has been serving us so well since 2017 or thereabouts. Goodbye old friend. Hello new world! #

Cory Doctorow coined a lovely word -- enshitified. In that spirit, I'd love to see some elites destodgified.#

If Harvard could become more American and less elite, that could change things. Make a simple direct unmistakable contribution directly to the well-being of Americans. Be the source of reliable information to the people that's missing because the major corporations who own the media are playing it safe. Harvard is no longer in a position where playing it safe is an option. The Trumps will continue to cast doubt on the truth, but in a contest between Trump and Harvard, I bet a lot of people, even most, would trust Harvard first. #

New podcast: ChatGPT deserves our respect (at least).#

If you're getting this via email, things might look different. #

Lots of news reports about Trump's polls. But it isn't surprising that in the transition from a democracy to autocracy the people would become increasingly unhappy with the change, until we basically give up, and the polls from some pollsters are always this way, but the polls from others tell a different story. Fox News still runs polls the old way, as does the NYT and others. But that will change, as the lawyers have, and the Washington Post and NY Times have, in their editorial functions. And they just arrested a judge in Wisconsin. Makes you think maybe it doesn't matter if the polls say what they say, if there isn't something behind them. #

I heard that Hugh Forrest was fired at SXSW. Many people loved him based on the outpouring of grief, but I didn't. They had keynotes and panels about stuff I was working on at the time, in the 90s and 00s, blogging, RSS, podcasting, bringing blogs to politics. He wouldn't take my calls. I wanted to be on stage to talk about what I was working on, and to set the record straight on what we had created. Instead my competitors got top billing and I was not allowed in. It felt corrupt to me, as if someone was trading favors behind the scenes. My hope is now SXSW, or whatever replaces it, will be more open-minded about who they include in the show. I'm still working and still have a story to tell. #

Dan MacTough feels the same about AWS breaking Node devs.#

What if, before we transfer human awareness into computers, we discover proof of reincarnation. What then?#

If Bluesky really wanted to decentralize and do it quickly, they could build a layer out of RSS and OPML on top of what they have and not only would they be able interop with other Bluesky-like services but they could also interop with Mastodon and it could all be done in a matter of weeks.#

WordLand v0.5.6: You can customize the menu that pops up when you select text. and we now handle sites with large category lists, the previous limit was 100. #

I've got Crazy Fingers in my brain. Can't stop humming it. #

I'm rebuilding my nightly email-sending code from the bottom up. Something I never properly understood is that most mail clients don't include your CSS files, so people were seeing the writing and images with no style. What an embarassment. As often is the case in 2025, I have ChatGPT to guide me through getting this right. The secret is inline styles. And there's no simple way to do the conversion, except element by element. Seems like an OS could do this for us somewhere along the line. Now I have to think about how to test it without trying to just switch it over, trying to avoid breaking everyone at once. But the nightly email might start looking a lot better for some real soon, and for others, only slight almost no noticeable differences.#

We should demand that the new owner of Chrome must respect the open web as something it does not have the power to change. Google never got this and we're losing the archive function of the web because of this. Please read and pass on -- now -- we're in a unique position to fix this.#

One of the nice things about WordLand is that titles are optional. Some posts are too short to require a title. In a sense they are their own title. We know the benefits well, having used Twitter for a long time. There's no reason this simple idea shouldn't work in RSS feeds and blogging, in fact RSS doesn't require titles. And there's no requirement in WordPress either. So we support them, with gusto. I want this network to do what Twitter does, and everything Twitter doesn't do, that writers want. #writersweb #

Yesterday I wrote a piece that summed up Twitter as an entrepreneurial project. "It would have been better if the founders had made less money, and opened the door for lots of competition right from the start. That's the philosophy of the web. Instead they captured the web, amputated all its good features, and locked it in the trunk and then cut off its air supply. That was inevitable given the path they went down. Yes they changed the world, and in turn are creating a lot of misery." If anyone writes the history of tech in Silicon Valley in the early part of the 21st century, I hope they focus on the damage done, not just the money made. Don't glorify the fortune, it's our freedom that's paid for it. And the amazing thing people will discover if they look closely is that the open technology cost very little to develop, so you don't need the backing of VCs to create open systems, you just have to be right at the right time and have the ability, focus and ambition to create enough base technology to bootstrap the idea.#

It's crazy to even think of moving Chrome from Google to OpenAI. The web needs to not be owned by anyone, esp not owned by the tech industry. What Google tried to do to the web is obscene. I love ChatGPT, but let's keep Chrome out of their owner's greedy little hands. Set it up so it stands alone.#

If you're a young person contemplating a career in tech, great! It's fun, and you can help people doing this. But please don't listen to the VCs and entrepreneurs who say it's all about changing the world. Instead think of it this way -- you're going to create tools for people who may change the world, in collaboration with lots of other people. No one person is that smart and experienced that they know what's best for the world. The stories you heard about great inventors probably aren't true. And the ones who actually changed the world, may not have changed it for the better. Look at what happened with Twitter as a cautionary tale. Imho it would have been better if the founders had made less money, and opened the door for lots of competition right from the start. That's the philosophy of the web. Instead they captured the web, amputated all its good features, and locked it in the trunk and then cut off its air supply. That was inevitable given the path they went down. Yes they changed the world, and in turn are creating a lot of misery. You don't want to do that, brilliant young tech person, right? Let's make the world better, one little evolutionary step at a time. More about this in yesterday's post. #

A video demo that shows how to set categories in WordLand, and I ramble through lots of philosophy and trivia. But the answer is right up front so you can skip all that michegas. ;-) #

Many good points in yesterday’s unusual Olbermann podcast, but the one that stuck with me is that at some point Republican incumbents will figure they don’t have a future in what Trump is trying to create and thus have everything to lose if he prevails. He thinks senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) may already be there.#

New docs: The role of Markdown in WordLand.#

Zeldman tries WordLand: "For bloggers who mostly write, it’s a clean, distraction-free interface with strong basic features that lets you offload CMS duties to WordPress."#

"Dave's not here."#

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."#

“You gotta do what you gotta do.”#

I got a US Mail notice to answer a Census form, so being a good American I did. It was a .gov address, and looked like a government form. The initial questions were standard census questions, then they started getting into personal things that I didn't like answering. Then they asked if I was born in the US. That's a really shitty question to ask now. I was glad to see that I could just click Next without answering any question, and they got worse, more invasive, esp considering who the president is, and who he brought with him, so I just closed the page and wrote this post. I would, if I had it to do over again, not answered any of their questions, or maybe stopped at the standard Census questions from years past. #

One reason I want to bring blogging and social media together is so I don't have to think about where I will post stuff. This is really important. I want my blog to be a complete record of everything I write publicly. The way our online writing world has been siloized, basically no one has that. We're going to try to fix that, and not with just my software, but by setting some new standards for interop, extensions to RSS, so that there's no exclusivity to making software for writers or publishers. That's what I mean when I say something is "on the web." If your system is not 100% replaceable, today, they you are not on the web and should not claim it. If you're thinking about freedom, btw -- this should be part of your big picture. So many smart people don't want to know how our networks work, and that makes you a victim. And it's not that hard to understand, no matter what people have led you to believe. #

I keep coming back to this -- ChatGPT is a vast library that comes with its own librarian. And the librarian has read and digested all of it, and can give you useful and usually exactly right summaries (despite what the critics say) in an instant. I've been using libraries my whole life, going back to when I was a child. I worked with card catalogs and non-virtual book collections. Archives of news on film. View ChatGPT on that timeline and you'll see its significance. You didn't write it, I didn't. Each of us may have contributed a little, and isn't that what we want? To help build the base of human knowledge? It gives our lives meaning. Sometimes I wonder how much value people place on themselves and so little on progress. I think we all want our lives to have meaning. Well here you go, it doesn't get more meaningful than this.#

Today's song: Pump It Up.#

I'm working on a baseline theme for WordLand-authored sites. I want to show people how to get a good result with WordLand, even if they have plenty of experience with WordPress, but especially if they don't. I want people to look at a user's site and think "Hey I want one of those!" Not too fancy, just get out of the way and let the writer's writing stand out and look great. This is a replay of the work we did on Manila and then Radio. I hope we're able to start a designer community as vibrant and productive as the one we had a few years ago. #

Everyone has to communicate in plain language, directly to the people. The courts, universities, every institution that the president is defaming. Go direct, go around the media. Start communicating in the language we communicate in these days. Use the tools. The campaign never stops. Then we'll know what we have to do to protect the rule of law. And the Dems are starting to do that, some of them, thankfully. Best example so far -- AOC and Bernie. Elizabeth Warren. Chris Murphy, Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen. And lately some Repubs too. It's the same old thing the web does -- Sources Go Direct. #

I like that Powell is telling Trump he won't go. I wish Obama had had the guts to say that to McConnell when he wouldn't hold hearings on Garland. "Well if you won't take a vote, we'll take that as consent," says the President. "And you can quote me on that." In a televised event Obama himself would walk Garland over to his office at the Supreme Court and administer the oath and let him take his seat. I don't know about you but I would have felt great about America then. We're finished being such pussycats. #

Watching debates on CNN it’s amazing how many arguments would be settled by saying “It’s nice you feel that way, but that’s not what the Constitution says.”#

This piece echoes what I’ve been saying. Twitter was a fine start, in 2006, but today it’s clear a lot of its rules and limits were mistakes. 19 years later it’s ridiculous that Bluesky and Mastodon repeat those mistakes. I love the term he uses, the "shape" of Twitter. Each decision we make in developing our means of discourse shapes the discourse. And with the character limit and the inability to edit, and the incentives are all wrong (I can tap into your follower flow without your permision just by posting a reply) it makes almost all twitter-like discourse spam or abusive. I'm planning a different structure for discourse in the world shaped by WordLand. A reply will only be visible to the person who you're replying to. If they want others to see it, they can make it public. It's their choice. So you probably should be respectful if you're looking for a flow boost. You can turn off all discourse if you want, giving the ability to finish a thought. We've learned so much about this in the 19 years since Twitter started. It's time to break out of the limits. BTW, that's what my textcasting doc was all about. #

WordLand is starting to flow really nicely, and I'm doing more writing there. I have to do this if it's going to be as good a product as it possibly can. The Timeline seems really solid btw, thinking about next steps. Lots of fun products coming soon! #

Join a Parade Today. When people talk about What You Can Do on podcasts or on TV, they say lame things that don't work that well. One thing for sure is that when Bernie and Alexandria do a rally in your area, you can go and enjoy the energy. This is a good thing because it gives the TV cameras something to focus on. But here's what I think the best thing to do is. Don't start something, join something. Because two is way more powerful than one, and three is way more powerful than two. When people work together on something good, more people doing it is usually even better. #

I want to develop a WordPress theme by iterating as you would when developing an app. I outlined the flow on the wordLandSupport repo.#

WordLand 0.5.4. New feature, the Timeline. "I can imagine there will be a Timeline for news about WordLand, or a Timeline that contains Scripting News posts. A Timeline for all the people you work with, the people you play chess with. Basically it will be possible to have Timelines that correspond to anything that can be represented in RSS. It's possible to imagine a product where the Timeline is the main display and the editor is the one that pops up."#

Quick demo of the Timeline in v0.5.4.#

Looking for help from people who know how to create WordPress themes. The goal is to create a default theme that works well for WordLand-authored sites. It was suggested I try the Retrospect theme, and it does look quite nice when I switched over the daveverse site to use it. Is it possible to fork a WordPress theme? If so, here's a list of changes I'd like in a new theme. #

A few days ago I wrote: ChatGPT is to Google what Google was to library card catalogs. The great thing about Google when it was first out was that unlike previous search products, they searched everything, including our blogs, and that opened up knowledge to us that had been previously, for all of our history as a species, not accessible. And LLMs are similarly revolutionary. I'm doing much better, deeper work, with great results for my users, than I could have accomplished with the network defined by Google. #

A long time ago, based on my experience at Berkman in the 00s, I proposed the idea of a Developing Better Developers function at a university, as a pilot, to create a teaching hospital atmosphere around creating new communication systems out the web and (key point) not compromising the openness of the web. It would be as sacred as academic freedom is in the university, or the First Amendment of the Constitution. It seemed to me that a university is the perfect place to create something like this. If we had such a setup, anywhere, at this time -- we would be working in earnest on an open alternative to twitter, one that is truly billionaire-proof right now, as opposed to "would be nice to have sometime in the future."#

Harvard could use this moment to bring some really new ideas back into the university.#

Developers: This is the WordPress API. Compare it to AT Proto and ActivityPub. It's got a lot of advantages. It does the basics of social media. It scales, is mature, stable, and well-managed. A stronger, stable, more broad and better foundation imho to build on than the others.#

I keep beating the drum about Bluesky. Their story says they know they need to be replaceable. But until they deliver on replaceability, it's a 5-alarm fire because of what happened with Twitter. It should not have been possible to acquire Twitter's user base. In hindsight we know it could have been avoided. And it can be avoided by Bluesky, but my guess is the last thing they want is to be replaced. If they really meant it, we could make it happen in a few weeks, and then we could build some really incredible systems, starting in late May, early June. I really believe that. Next journalist that interviews them should ask about this. Thanks for listening.#

I've been working on an all-new feature for WordLand. Expect something in the next few days, Murphy-willing. #

If we had a better communication system we would not be so vulnerable. We might even be able to defend ourselves. So it's doubly ridiculous that journalism is leading us to Bluesky, when it is just more of the same with a better story. They're asking us to go deeper into the myth that the most toxic tech ever invented is actually good for us. The thing that feels good is the belief that it is good. In that we are just as deluded as the people who think Trump is a genius who understands business and thus will do a great job of running the world economy, a power no previous president had dared to exercise, not even sure they knew they had such power. The educational institutions that are being attacked by Trump now, should have played a role in creating effective communication systems, as should journalism. I got up on stage at a NYT event a few years back and begged them to compete with Twitter. One or two people in the audience of a few hundred were inspired by the idea, but the follow-up was nil. People are comfortable with the belief that the baby squirrels have our interests at heart. Look at the latest On the Media podcast. They're all selling us out, again, and again, and again. It's a loop they'll never get out of. I have friends scattered around the world in places of power. When are we going to work together to create the communication system we need. We're never going to get there by waiting for tech and journalism to get together on this. #

BTW, it's totally possible for me to say and know that Bluesky is leading us off the same cliff as Twitter did, and at the same time applaud their deepening support for RSS. I don't think they, or anyone else, realizes how much more this move gives us a chance of building a protected network of communication. Their vision could be achieved much more quickly by giving up their boil the ocean approach and start taking some simple, very doable steps that would empower outside developers to build a rich ecosystem around their product. The only downside would be that now they really would be replaceable. Anyway, they're partly there. Right now they support outbound RSS, and are improving it. That's the strategically easy half to do. The one that would really open them up is inbound RSS, the protocol that all the other twitter-like systems refuse to support. Want to blow the doors off now instead of some vague time in the future? Support outbound and inbound RSS. Let the trains come into the station and leave the station on a well established protocol. It could be done in a few weeks, really. Maybe the very intelligent and curious people who read this blog would like to take the time to understand what this means and the doors it would open? It's a way to change the subject from "good idea but hopeless" to "hey we can have freedom now."#

To really nail it down, supporting inbound and outbound RSS would justify them saying they are part of the "social web." Today's Bluesky has no business claiming to be part of the web, the system they're hyping is fully centralized. #

The difference between the 2008 crash and now is that we had a functioning government in 2008.#

When young people come out of university in a technical subject, they think they know more than people already doing the jobs. They quickly learn that in school they were doing "student projects" which are not the real thing. Ooops, maybe we didn't know as much as we thought.#

Why we all have to be working together on creating a modern easily distributed communication system that's truly decentralized. The key is to only implement features that have super-simple implementations, so it will be easy to product new versions quickly in all environments. Which means starting with formats and protocols that are already widely supported. #

This morning ChatGPT told me it knows more about me, and will learn better. Promises promises. I would like to begin with teaching it my coding conventions. Will make it much easier for me to work with it. Their idea of how JavaScript works is disorganized bordering on chaos. I find that human developers always find a reason not to listen to other people, and that has huge problems (like no interop), but machines should do better. It seems to have infinite patience. What I need is to share a bit of space with the bot, so I can keep it up to date on my worknotes. I'm pretty good at it these days. Why not let that be input into the system so I can say -- give me all the notes I have on my Bingeworthy project. Why should I have to copy/paste. This is a big problem in the web, products that pretend to be islands, when they're really all floating on the same sea, the internet. We were supposed to be able to network not only our attention, but also our work.#

Did you know there's a chain of beating hearts going from your heart all the way back to the first animal on earth with a heart.#

Two issues in Bluesky outbound RSS feeds. #

As long as the Chinese company BYD is making such interesting and inexpensive EVs, and Tesla is a shithole company, if I were in charge, I'd give BYD a negative tariff to encourage them to flood the US market with nice cheap EVs so we can get rid of the shitstain Tesla once and for all. I'd give them an even better price if they agreed to recycle Teslas as trade-ins so we don't have to feel ecologically irresponsible. And yes, dear MAGAs, I am woke. You all can go back to sleep now. Zzzz. #

If I were a sassy Democratic Party leader I'd cop to being woke. "Why yes I am woke. Aren't you?" The Repubs have never explained why it's bad to be awake. Dems have to learn how to engage to win. Another one -- "read, fire, aim" is how Trump leads, just look at the tariffs, and it's been a huge disaster for hard-working American wage-earners of all generations. The "all generations" part opens an interesting conversation, how it isn't just old people or young people, it's also people who are working today whose earnings are being stolen, and those of us who have been working for 50 years who were paying into a fund so we could benefit when we retire. That money is coming out of your paycheck with no intention of ever paying it back. That's the Republican-run America. Not so great.#

Today's song: Come on Eileen.#

There’s no reason RSS and social media have to be separate worlds. RSS is the easiest and fastest way to connect systems. When I see people endorse RSS over social sites I think we took a wrong turn somewhere because all these systems should be connected on the open web and RSS is the perfect way to do that.#

Rachel Maddow's show these days often begins with a hard-to-watch over-the-top endorsement of Bluesky. She shouldn't be doing that. It's a private company and someday she may criticize them as strongly as she did Facebook. I'd love to hear her explain exactly what's the difference between Bluesky and Facebook. A lot less than you might think. #

Hillary Clinton makes a very important point. "Republicans in Congress can put a stop to this at any time." By this, she means the crashing US economy. And even if you believe they'll "never do it" -- it's still the right thing to repeat this over and over -- people should know they could. This should be repeated until enough people get it, this is being done on purpose by the Repubs. This isn't about winning elections, it's about understanding who's doing this to you and how deliberate it is. #

A question on GitHub: Is OPML the native file format for Drummer? It's better to first use the product or read the docs or search on web or use an AI chatbot before getting humans involved. Anyway, the answer is yes, OPML is the native file format of Drummer. It's the reason we chose OPML as the format for RSS reading lists, so we could edit them in a distant ancestor of Drummer's whose native file format was also OPML. I tend not to change file formats gratuitously -- it's how you can use different tools to edit your own data. That's a big part of the plan with WordLand, because the internal file format for drafts is Markdown, you could put any editor alongside that can edit and save text in Markdown, without a glitch. The idea is to create a new platform, editors for WordPress, and have them all interop with each other perfectly from the start. Because WordLand is the first product in this niche, and Markdown is a very safe choice these days (understood to discourage lock-in), I think it's going to be a perfect basis for interop. Learning from past experience and doing it better each time. #

A search for WordPress on this blog tells an interesting story.#

I wonder when ChatGPT or Claude.ai will compete with Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia is great but it has always had a weakness in that it can be manipulated to tell a story from a very limited point of view. For example the RSS page has a long section explaining the benefits of Atom. What I like about the AI versions of the basic history of things is that it isn't so easily manipulated. I talked about this with Claude, and asked it to write up a proposal for ClaudeWiki, a Wikipedia workalike, not too expensive to run, make it part of a user's $20 per month subscription. I think it would be useful, if only as a demo how Wikipedia itself might improve its service. #

If I were designing a social network, I would implement replies differently. When you reply to a post, only the person who wrote the post sees it. If they want they can RT it. The way it works now on all twitter-like systems means most of the replies are basically spam, people using your post as a way to reach people who follow you. #

BTW, when you post something on Bluesky it's just a tweet. These things don't need different names on each platform. #

I like people who stand up and speak the truth. This is one of the silver linings of this crisis. There's no real advantage at this point in trying to play it safe, to not be noticed. So I like what Chris Murphy, Senator from Connecticut has been saying. #

I used to tell friends you can't go wrong buying the S&P 500. The president is rated by now the stock market does, and so over the long haul you can expect steady growth from the S&P 500, and it keeps things really simple. Well, have to say -- that's no longer good advice. Maybe real estate? Outside the United States? I don't know. It depends on what the people of this country do, and if our representatives are listening. #

MAGA's goal, it turns out, was the Great Depression. #

I finally looked at my nest egg and was shocked to see the new number. Even worse that the dollars in the account will buy even less as the US dollar loses its value as the flight to safety currency. It's not a big surprise as the US behaves like a drunk Dunning-Kruger deluded schoolyard bully. What is amazing, if you think about it, is that we aren't having an emergency impeachment and trial to get him out of there. That could actually restore a bit of confidence of the outside world, showing that the power in the US is more with the people than it has been for a long time. Maybe our would-be overlords are scared too at what their idea has unleashed. Even if Trump weren't so inept, eventually whoever you choose as the monarch, they're going to behave like this. Inevitable. We could have a revolution right now, fix this, and set the country on the right course. We could do it. I believe we could.#

And btw it could be worse. 💥#

I now have a Canadian partner on the radiofreeameri.ca project, a founder of Tucows, who I've known for decades, Ross Rader. We've done work together in the past, it's great to be doing it again. #

On the path we're on, no doubt Bluesky will come under the same kind of regulation law firms and universities are. And the shame of it is we could be using this time to spread out, distribute.#

How Bluesky hooks up via RSS into a powerful news system. #

Bluesky is centralized, version 2. I wasn't satisfied with the blog post I wrote in March. I felt it was poorly organized and hard to understand, so I edited it, to get it down to its essential elements, and at the end explain why it's so important to get this right. Basically, by trying to be the universe, Bluesky is cutting off easy connections that can be made with other networks, make the system work better for communication, and at least deliver some of the freedom we all want. They've been very successful, and deserve to profit from that, but recognize it plays a larger role today than just as a business, so let's spread it out so it's harder to shut it down. This is a real concern, not just a nice-to-have thing. #

ChatGPT colorized the photo of my grandfather on his tribute site. #

Just tried an experiment, I asked ChatGPT to review ActivityPub re Rules for Standards-makers. I totally concurred with its conclusions. In any case, it illustrates how ChatGPT can be helpful in designing new formats and protocols, making them more supportable and more useful for interop, which according to Rule 1, is the only reason we make standards.#

One thing led to another, we discussed lots of facets to the RFSM document. At some point it started rewriting what I had, and used two terms that don't belong in standards-making: dogfood and deprecate. Nothing ever is deprecated. That's arrogance on the part of developers. Imagine if someone in charge of NYC decided to deprecate the arrangement of the streets. Also, if your protocol achieved any adoption at all, there are far more developers than there are originators of the format. If I decided, for example, that the "webmaster" element in RSS was deprecated, do you think anyone would care? Of course not, nor should they. It's a powerless thing. I feel you should introduce features carefully because you will have to live with them forever. Also I thought there was a section in RFSM about breakage. That was Rule #1 at UserLand. We didn't always live up to it. About dogfood: I don't eat dog food, I'm a human. 2. It says we think of our users as pets, that's not rational or productive. However I do very strongly believe you have to use what you create, because you won't understand what users say unless you are one yourself. #

We're doing some research into the origins of my family in Germany, learning a lot. #