I've been re-watching The Bear and am now totally thinking of my job as a chef. I started out that way 40+ years ago, and somewhere along the line I stopped thinking that way. If you can, watch S02 E07 to see what I mean. It's about service, the connection between the staff and the people who come to eat, and the medium is the food. It's the same idea. There's so much cynicism around tech, and I hate that. We've rarely seen it as a human thing both by the people who make the meals and the people who love great food. The world thinks of it as billionaires and influencers and lying fascist politicians. But it should be much more than that. #

Has it ever been suggested that journalists take an oath, similar to the one the President takes to: "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Could be voluntary. Sports reporters might take a different oath. #

Shownotes page for the first Trade Secrets podcast, on this day in 2004. I was in Seattle, Adam was coming from Belgium. Haven't written any notes about it yet. If others are interested in listening and commenting on these podcasts, this is when it was all coming together, let me know and perhaps we can start a thread on Mastodon. #

I used to think of Twitter as a coral reef, but its role as a world wide notification system is fading, and we haven't replaced it with anything. I wrote this in 2007 when the utility of Twitter was just becoming apparent.#

I was recruited to speak at a Ria Novosti conference in Moscow in June 2011, but decided not to go. This was back when we thought naively that Russia was a democracy, and working with Russian journalists, when American journalists wouldn't, seemed like a fair deal. Something about it didn't smell right though, so I stayed home. #

Something has changed in the twitterverse, it's grown new centers. For me, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Twitter is still here, but I use it a lot less than I used to. Each of them acts as if they are alone, except for ActivityPub but that's more complicated than it may seem. As often is the case, the tech industry is depending on confusion. This may be a strategic mistake. I could cite a few examples where this didn't work, when an open ecosystem whose benefits were by then obvious to users, completely erased the ecosystem that came before, often with remarkable speed. Each of them is playing for all of it, wanting to control their users, make it so they only post to one system. And some people do. I think it's better if we, as users, remain diversified.#

I find that a lot of my posts on my blog are just like the tweets I post on Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Twitter. I used to have an icon in my outliner that tweeted the text of the bar cursor headline. #

If ChatGPT had a simple, non-AI scrapbook, like the old Mac OS had, where you could just throw something over your shoulder so you can find it later with a text search, that would make it a lot more useful for retaining practices that work. It's a shame to work something out, come up with the answer that worked, and then to have to do it all over again 23 months later when you encounter the same problem.#

Could we agree that ChatGPT can ingest everything that's in Wikipedia? I particularly want the images. I'd like to ask for a picture of Chuck Berry, and get something nice and be able to put him in a scene with the Wordle Kitty. That seems pretty harmless. And the news industry could hardly object, they didn't invent Chuck Berry, or own the copyright of the picture of him in Wikipedia.#

I'm searching for some common ground between the twitter-like systems, a basis for interop, a common API even. We had that for the blogging layer of this onion, something called the MetaWeblog API. All the popular blogging software supported it. And that meant you could write once and publish to many places. And you could write the script that did that in an afternoon or two. We started out with simple systems and the best of intentions. There's no technical barrier. And we could do it in a few weeks at most if there was a will to do it#

BTW the Wikipedia page for the MetaWeblog positions it as a replacement for the Blogger API, but it's an extension of it. You could use MetaWeblog to publish to Blogger sites, but it also supported features that Blogger didn't have, that were in our blogging software, Manila.#

Show notes for a short podcast I recorded on this day in 2004, a response to Adam's podcast which I had just listened to. These were the good days, a new medium in its early stages of booting up, after years of trying to get it to go. In the next few weeks, it'll really start going. You can subscribe to the podcast feed here. #

I also added a link to the RSS feed in each shownotes page. In the HTML at the bottom, as a white on orange icon and in the page source as a <link> element. #

I keep seeing mention of "Podcast 2.0" in various places. That is unusually greedy, even for the tech industry. What next? Deprecating the way podcasting has worked for the last 20 years? How do we know the people doing this aren't shilling for Spotify, Google or Amazon? Please don't mess with something that works as well as podcasting. You want to do something better, great -- make your own name and get people to respect it. Stealing respect from podcasting tells me you have no honor or self-respect, and it should say the same to everyone else. Something else that tells you it's bad, they never bothered to send me an email. Welcome to the tech industry. #

Just watched a Harris rally in Charlotte NC. She's using what Trump said in the debate in her new campaign speech. Brilliant. Getting him on the record in that context is a gift. 60 million viewers. Up till then he only took interviews where he could bully his way past the interviewer. #

Braintrust query: I got an email from OpenAI saying I could access the new models, but I don't see the new models in the popup menu.#

I've been enjoying the recent blog posts by my longtime friend Jeff Jarvis. A couple of months ago, I was practically begging him to do this. He was pouring so much unfocused energy into making journalism play an appropriate role in our democracy. When Jeff started posting to his blog, it gave his friends something to point to. This writing had much more impact than a random tweet. Journalism crossed a line they should not have crossed. Now we fully expect them to try to do it again. We have to find a way for our ideas not to be scattered in the wind, so thorougly ignorable. And in doing so, I'm convinced we'd find a better way to organize the electorate online so it's more immune from unwise and unfair manipulation from the journalists. At the same time Dan Gillmor, who was also scattering his ideas about, has started a newsletter. Dan was a real blogging pioneer as was Jeff. We remember how this kind of thing boots up. We can set up any kind of distribution system we need. What matters is the collection of brilliance. Individuals are not so powerful unless they come from one of these. #

Another fantastic thinker and writer who is mostly scattering his ideas -- Dan Conover, who when he comes out with a piece, I stop everything and sit down and carefully read it and savor it, because not only is there sure to be new info and new ideas, the writing is sooo good. He's a former local reporter in South Carolina. I met him on a road tour I did a bunch of years ago. Where does he post this stuff? Facebook. I want it to be part of the concentrated web writers union. Maybe think of it as my karass, my version of The Atlantic, perhaps. Or my version of the op-ed page of the NY Times. I think there is definitely enough good stuff out there, unorganized, to easily rival them for originality, depth of thought, experience and great writing. Dan is on my list of such superheroes. #

And btw I also am wasting my ideas too, one in a hundred has any influence, and even then it's minscule, the ideas drift away unimplemented or unused. I keep writing, hoping I see a way to get into the global conversation, again. I remember what it's like. But I'm not done. We still have a big problem to solve in our political and communication system. Online software is where it's at. #

Someday an election will be like Game of Thrones or Succession. A campaign would be a season. There would be character development, arcs, twists, revelations, unforseen events, cameos, acts of god. Near the end of the season you have the election, with the following episodes the plotting, intrigue, and undermining of democracy, and at the end of the season the inauguration of a new president. Each year you have more michegas, until four years later you go through the election all over again. People would really study the candidates, and would have reasons they like one character over another. And maybe the patriarch doesn't die, and decides to run again. This is where we're heading, we might already be there. #

The most encouraging thing about last night's debate was that the moderators were journalists. When Trump repeated his most egregious lie about murdering babies being legal in certain states, moderator Muir confidently, almost derisively, said that there is no such thing. And when Trump said he didn't admit he lost the election, and then when challenged said in a snotty way he was being sarcastic, Muir plainly that wasn't true either. It was like the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. ABC News was the last place you'd expect real journalism to surface, maybe the NYT et al will follow their lead. #

I wouldn't have traded places with Harris for anything in the world, she did fantastic. The pressure on her was enormous. I don't think Trump said one thing that was true. And Harris made the point that the division is coming from that guy over there, and if we don't want it all we have to do is turn the freaking page. For once the power is with the people. The Repubs in the Senate wouldn't vote to convict, the Supreme Court just gave him immunity, but the American people, in a few weeks, can tell them all to fuck off. #

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

Even if his supporters don't see it, Trump is a pathetic broken has-been. When he's gone we'll dance in good riddance. #

Today's song: Spanish Moon.#

Ed Kranepool was a Met when that really meant something. He started on the Mets in their inaugural year, 1962. They went from the worst team ever to World Champions in record time. They became the heroes of NYC in 1969. I was riding the subway back then to get from Flushing to the Bronx to go to school, and in the Bronx, when the Mets won, everyone was smiling. If you've ever been to NYC you know how unusual that is. And in the Bronx, which is of course where the always-hated Yankees were HQ'd. Ed Kranepool died Sunday. He was watching a Mets game when he had a heart attack. #

James Earl Jones: "I don't know if we ever learn from history."#

Famous heroic kitten breaks out of prison to rescue house pets in Ohio from being eaten by JD Vance.#

I made kittens the theme for the presidential campaign, it was my attempt to bring levity to it for readers of my blog. Then came "childless cat ladies" and now cats being eaten in Ohio. Either I was prescient, or the Trumps are copying me! Anyway, here's the Wordle Kitty $5 postage stamp, next in the series. She just broke out of prison to rescue the Ohio cats from JD Lance. My collaborator of course is ChatGPT.#

Could Kamala Harris look into the camera tomorrow night and say "To Fox News viewers, they've been feeding you a load crap. Just thought you should know. And I wouldn't trust the others so much either." #

The next in the series of podcasts from 2004. This one was done driving from Banff to Kelowna, on the way to Seattle.#

I found a bug in opml.visitAll in the OPML package I use in various software including Drummer and FeedLand. Had to fix it, even though there's a slight chance of breakage.#

Do you think you've ever had an online chat with an AI impersonating a human without you knowing? Have you had such an experience with someone you know? If no, when do you think you will have such a conversation? Would you mind if a friend used an AI to front for them, so they could do other things while they were "chatting" with you? Would you be liable for anything your avatar did or said?#

It's a fascinating moment, somewhat like when the Berlin Wall came down. When it happened, we were all in kind of a daze. That wall had been there my entire life. No one knew, for many years, what its disappearance would mean. Same with the wall betw the Democratic and Republican parties. It was still the same US when one or the other was in power, there were constants that didn't change. There was an agreement that politics ends at the border. But now, are there two parties? What became of the one we call Republican? #

Also, when the Berlin Wall came down there were no blogs or podcasts. We got what we were given by the news networks and NYT and WSJ. #

Journalism doesn't come back from the election of 2024, any more than the Republican Party does. #

I got a beautiful new Pixel 9 Pro yesterday. It was amazingly easy to move the data from the old phone to the new one. Just turn both on near each other, and click a couple of dialogs. Haven't used it for anything yet. Will report. #

I got a bit of pushback on what I wrote about The Newsroom yesterday. If you think it was great, you should watch it again. They got everything wrong, imho -- and the storytelling is as simple as Atlas Shrugged. If you loved it in 2012, okay -- but we've all been through hell since then. And we know how the news orgs The Newsroom was trying to model dealt with the challenge. They folded. They gave up. It's all bullshit. It's like watching the story of a great war, that we lost. I don't mean bloggers, I mean all of it. If democracy depends on journalism, then it's gone. It can't come back from what they're doing now. Think of the hair-splitting they did in The Newsroom, even the slightest appearance of impropriety. Now they invite politicians on when they know they're going to tell hugely damaging lies about very important things. They're doing the opposite of what journalism is supposed to do. They sure as hell don't care what we think of them. Go watch it again. It's a time capsule that will show you how much you've learned since those horribly naive days. Maybe I'll write more about this tomorrow. #

I've never written a review on Amazon even though I shop there regularly. I was about to write a negative review for a product they can't seem to support, that I depend on, but got this message. Weird. I bought the product from the page I wanted to review it on. How else would they determine if I actually purchased the product? They don't say. They do offer to tell me a joke if I rate products I've bought. I've heard the company isn't doing that well now that Bezos has stepped aside. Hopefully this is just a bad set of coincidences. #

I'm watching the HBO series The Newsroom from 2012, it's an Aaron Sorkin show. It's fairly insipid, but for some reason I keep watching. They have a multi-episode controversy as they go crazy trying to source a rumor they've heard that the US bombed a town in the Middle East with sarin gas, and killed a lot of people. In other words they committed a war crime. Turns out they were set up by multiple people, and they went through all kinds of angst over who should resign and who should be fired, and how they would ever regain the trust of the viewers. It is a Sorkin thing so it is by definition overdone, but in the context of today's NYT and CNN and all the other schlock "news" that reports Trump's ever-more-egrious lies not only without fact checking, but knowing for sure the lies are coming. That this has happened to American "journalism" is worse than a war crime. It's what everyone told us is an essential part of an authoritarian state, we expect everything in the news to be lies. We have now gotten there. It's good to acknowledge that, imho and stop asking why it is, rather think about what you can do about it. #

Aaron Sorkin is like Ayn Rand. Reviewing his stories after you've grown up makes you wonder why you liked it in the first place. 😄 #

I don't understand using an email to send a code to verify the email address, that you then have to enter into a dialog. Why not just send a URL that the user can click on? What's the design rationale for making the user do the extra steps in remembering the number, switching back to your app, and entering the number by hand, when it could all be done with a single click?#

The blogroll on scripting.com is a real breakthrough. It's actually a feed reader, but don't tell anyone. Actually go ahead and tell them. 😄#

At the beginning of the Trade Secrets podcast on Sept 22, 2004, is when I would say podcasting got its name. Adam and I were the leaders of the community. It had been discussed briefly on the mail list. We all recognized that what we were doing needed a name. There was a consensus, it was a small community by then, very collegial. Dave Slusher had already used the term in his podcast (according to James Cridland), so I said in the Trade Secrets show, let's just go ahead and use it. I did mention Ben Hammersley. So he's not out of the story, but he's not the person who gave podcasting its name. September 2004 was the moment when podcasting became something. It's rare in things like this that you can point to a moment, but we can here, and the record should make that very clear. You could say Hammersley was the first to publish the term in a piece he wrote, but he played no role in the bootstrap. I'd say that by the end of 2004 it was on its way, I basically stepped back and enjoyed the medium along with everyone else. Adam started a company. I would have liked to have started a company then, but it wasn't meant to be. That all happened 20 years ago. #

I started a new this.how doc on how podcasting got its name, so I could include new information. It links back to the piece I wrote in 2013. #

I have done this before, when a blog post I wrote became something I wanted to add to over time. Two examples -- Rules for standards-makers and Trolls. #

Today, in 2024, AI cannot create art. But a human being can use AI to create art. It's a medium, like paint and canvas except it's not static. It gets new skills all the time. It gives me the ability to create in a way I've never been able to before. I can't wait to see what it can do in a few months or years. #

Here's the show notes page for the podcast from Sept 1, 2004.#

And the show notes for the podcast from Sept 2, 2004. Fans of Adam Curry's podcasting will like this one. It's about this time that the collaboration starts becoming a community. Next episode is on Sept 5.#

September 2004 was the month when podcasting became a real community thing. Twenty years ago. I did eight podcasts that month. The mail list, which Adam started, was going strong. This is the month where podcasting got its name, thanks to some brilliant creativity from Dannie Gregoire. Until then we were calling them "audio blog posts" or some variant thereof. You can see it in this Google Trends graph. I started a special feed to echo my programs from 2004, I even got it registered in Apple's podcast database. There will be two podcasts in the feed today because I missed the one from yesterday. Still diggin!#

WordPress and GitHub fit into similar niches, but one is for writers and the other for developers. #

In hindsight Medium chose the wrong business model. They could have done what Automattic has done with WordPress. It's a private company so I don't know how much it's growing or how profitable it is, but from outside it's obviously growing and profitable. Basically, charge writers for the service, or lots of services. Little extras you can add to your site. Use it as a hook to sell domain names (huge recurring business). And open source the Medium editor, when it came out it was a breakthrough in usability, and offer it to Google to bundle with Chrome, upgrade the whole web while you're at it. With billions of windfall from the success of Twitter, why argue over nickels and dimes. That's what I always wondered about the thinking behind Medium. Ev had the ability to change the course of the industry, and make the same kind of money Google and Microsoft make. And yes, I did urge him to do all this at the time, publicly (didn't have access to him privately, if you can believe that). #

Dear NY Times, before we get rid of the penny, let’s open up your op-ed page to include criticism of the NYT. You can handle a little pushback, you need it desperately.#

The networks should put Trump on time delay and when he says you can legally murder babies in some states, that should be treated as if he said fuck or shit. Put up a screen that explains why he was cut off, then go to commercial, esp during the debate on Sep 10. #

Paul Graham wrote a very useful piece about "Founder Mode." As a founder myself, I think I can tell you why founders have a central role to play as the company grows. They're the only ones who know how the company was built, and what works and what doesn't and how to keep it consistent for customers and partners, and the founder, if the company grew, is tuned into to what makes the company work, and will see opportunities that even well-intentioned managers miss. I remember when a company I was a developer for, early in my career, switched out the founder and replaced him with a professional CEO. The founder had problems managing, and could have used help imho, but -- the founder understood what the company was about, and the professional claimed to be a "market of one" and therefore didn't have an opinion about what products the company should make. That would be delegated to people he hired. Almost as if the people running a company were just modules and servers, and if you needed to grow you just bought new modules. In this case. I can write this because I don't have to get approval from anyone else. I'm sure in a company of today someone would take offense at something I wrote here. That my friends is another reason why companies have a hard time scaling. 😄#

Another rule for whoever runs a tech company, they must themselves be a fanatical user of the company's product. They must love it the way a founder loves it. They must think the users are the smartest people in the world because they love the best product in the world. As a founder, I could not visualize the day I left the company for the last time. In hindsight I felt that was the one factor most responsible for the success of the company. #

Graham uses Steve Jobs as an example. He knew what was and wasn't an Apple product. A hired CEO would have to have that explained to him. Sculley, who Graham cites, is a perfectly nice person in my experience, had no idea how to deal with Windows. Very different from a consumer product like fizzy water. Who but Steve Jobs would have thought that an iPod was a proper product for a company that made PCs. I think he himself wanted it, and that's what made something an Apple product. It's probably why post-Jobs Apple is pretty much stuck selling only the products Jobs created for them. He told Cook to innovate on his own vision and timetable, probably knowing full-well that nobody would be able to do it. 😄#

And for some companies, the founder of a company they acquire might make the best CEO when the founder of the original company isn't available. Again Apple is a great example. Steve Jobs ultimately replaced Gil Amelio, after Apple bought NeXT.#

August is archived. Let's start September.#

Why does JD Vance have so many opinions about women? #

It's worth reflecting that the press took its best shot at Kamala Harris, and it was a big puff of smoke, she just cruised right through it.#

Thread: Blogs and the social web will merge. #

Feature I really need: A way to search all of my conversations with ChatGPT. It's the one feature I'm most missing, and the most surprising. I'm sure there's a huge amount of utility locked up in that. #

Humor and putdowns in politics are great if you know how to do it and if the time is right. Trump was the only comedian on stage at the debates. And his act was fresh. The people who loved him loved that the other people hated him. It really was simple. Like a sports team or a favorite comic. Anyway, the Harris folk are good at putdowns and comedy, and the time is right. Trump's act is done, people are tired of the same old bullshit (which is exactly what Kamala said last night in the big interview). That's the cushion they're floating on. If they had called Trump weird in 2016 it wouldn't have worked, and probably not in 2020 for different reasons (he wasn't a joke at that moment, a huge number of Americans were sick and dying, and the economy was in ruin and there was no end in sight, not a good time to be joking around). But now Trump is a joke. So it feels right. Another perspective you should get is James Carville, who was on the Daily Blast podcast on Tuesday. Real eye-openers re how campaigns really work and why it's working for Team Harris now. And btw, why she's doing great now and not so good in 2019, two things. 1. Obviously she's grown. The last four years she's been VP of the United States. That's got to be some kind of education for someone as brilliant as she is. 2. In 2019 she was on stage with 20 other people, and only got tiny slivers of time. Look at what you find appealing about her now (assuming you do). It's the pauses and looks as much as anything, the facial expression. Anyway, she's really good at what she's doing now, at all levels, and Donald Trump is washed up. That's why it still feels good because of course he still could win. #

I was thinking about Wisconsin news orgs and remembered we called the two Madison papers the Crap Times and the Wisconsin State Urinal. I don't know why that's so funny. Everyone does it. We used to call our own company Living Videosex, and the company that bought us out was Cementech or Sementech. Still makes me laugh. And there are company names that are funny without changing them like Microsoft. Sorry.#

What if Trump had been killed in the assassination attempt. What would have happened next? Biden was still the Democratic candidate. #

It has come to my attention that "It's even worse than it appears" might not be the right overlay for Kamala Harris, whose picture is the current banner art for Scripting News. Of course she's still even better than she appears. I really mean that, and if you read this blog regularly you know. But what would a random person think? Hmm. Maybe that it's strange, this is a picture of the would-be president, and it's a good one. I wonder if there are many levels of irony going on at this moment, the visitor might think. No matter how much I love the Democratic team this year, this is not a campaign site. I don't take ads. This is just a blog. You might have to peer below the surface to figure out what's going on. Even the guy who writes this freaking thing can't see all the angles. For now neither the image or motto are changing. There hasn't always been a motto there you know.#

I use my blog in the earliest part of the day to warm up and procrastinate. #

In elections we get to say who we are, ie who comes closest to who we are. It's all made of imagery. Bernie Sanders is someone you either love or don't. He reminds me of people in my own family, who I would never want to be president of anything. But this ad, the best ever imho, says wait a minute, please reconsider. A campaign is a series of messages from candidate to electorate: "Is this who we are?" The great ads tap our optimism, imho. The Sanders ad says we're nice happy people who have jobs and help each other.#

Today Automattic announced that they're converting Tumblr, which they acquired in 2019, to run on WordPress as its foundation. This could get a simple colorful user-friendly interface for WordPress, something it's needed for a long time. WordPress does everything in its UI, Tumblr has its UI better organized for writers and more casual users. If they can move in this direction, it seems that WordPress could be large part of the emerging social web. #

An idea for the Harris campaign. Let me buy some swag and have it sent to 10 of my best friends, esp ones who live in swing states. Plus you get the names and contact info for people at least one of your supporters thought would be a potential Harris voter. I'd send something less presumptuous like When We Fight We Win stickers. Another related idea, let me buy a whole set of promotional materials, kind of like the gift baskets they sell at Zabar's. #

Note to the Harris campaign: This Google search should return a complete list of your ads. Or a pointer to a site with a complete list of your ads. I want to make sure everyone who follows me sees every one of them! Let us help you help us.#

Very insightful Greg Sargent interview with James Carville. Two take-aways for Democrats. 1. Avoid NPR politics. 2. Appeal to college-educated white men. Most of them vote Republican, but with Walz on the ticket, they have a special ambassador, he represents that straight-talking country folk are part of the Democratic coalition. It's still true that white voters are the majority. Get a small number to vote Democratic could be enough to win the election. It never is about policy. It's about whether you are like them. That's what it means to avoid NPR politics. And btw, imho -- getting the press to like you might not be good. I wonder if the Dems would ever have the courage to sever itself from the journos. Imagine Harris saying "If the press says we're bad you know that means we're good." She could say that in her big interview. 😀#

The reason I asked yesterday if NYT reporters sign NDAs (with the NYT, not sources), then when a reporter leaves the NYT they can write a book about WTF happened at the NYT, and it would be an instant best seller imho. #

Do NYT reporters sign NDAs with their employer, the NYT?#

I know it doesn't matter why the NYT are so fucked up about covering the election, but I can't stop thinking about it anyway. Then, Greg Sargent's podcast gave me an idea. The oppressor in a fascist state doesn't need you to love them, so long as you don't love anyone else. The NYT isn't trying to make us love Trump, that's impossible. But they are trying to make us not fall in love with Harris. I doubt they foresaw that possibility. But our feelings about Harris are very much love. The NYT is our only master, they must think. There's no room for us to love someone else, because we might listen to them. In a sense they respond like a first born child on the arrival of their little sister or brother. I don't know. As I said it doesn't matter why. That's their problem. Our problem is to get them out of the way.#

I don't want to give Trump any ideas, but he's complaining that Harris is forcing him to run as an incumbent, so he might as well take credit for all the things Biden did. #

The NYT et al aren't even doing a fair job of covering the election as a horserace, because they're making sure it's a virtual tie, so even if our team has overwhelming power, speed and depth, and gets on base in every at bat and plays by the rules, our odds are no better than the other team. #

I know a kitten who'd like to be EIC of the NYT.#

The problem with the state-by-state abortion laws that Trump says he favors: 1. The women in states that ban abortion who will die as a result of the bans, and many more who will be severely injured, and all will have their freedoms severely restricted. 2. He's lying. When Congress passes a national abortion ban he'll sign it and boast about it, of course.#

If you're interested in languages and compiler compilers and how to bootstrap a scripting environment, then you'll enjoy the progress I've made in the project to get UserTalk running in today's environments. I welcome comments from experienced or curious language devs. #

Walt Mossberg: "Journalists have one core job: to tell the truth, especially when it’s clear. The staff of the NY Times has done it in the past, even at great risk. Why don’t they do it now?"#

My response: "We have no visibility into the inner workings of the NYT. We can't vote them out of office. We can't even rebut them. They rarely carry opposing opinions." #

Braintrust: I want to get a UserTalk parser running in C. #

My linkblog now reliably works on Twitter and Threads, in addition to Mastodon, Bluesky, RSS and WordPress. I find it really empowering to be able to publish to all those places at once. #

Trump is not the incumbent, but it might feel that way because the coup that started on Jan 6 is ongoing. It won't be over until there is a peaceful transfer of power from Biden to Harris and Trump is out of the picture.#

No more shaming people for being who they are.#

I just realized something else -- there isn't a female America and a male America. What made me realize it is how natural the idea of President Kamala feels. Men and women are different, just like blacks and whites are different (it couldn't be otherwise) but we are all Americans, and further, taken together we all are America. All of this sprung from that Obama quote in his 2004 convention speech (which I was lucky to be present for, that was the year they welcomed bloggers). It's the one country that's the Union of all of us and we are United. #

I'm trying to teach ChatGPT how to do sidebar art. So far, it's not a great student. But I have hope. My instructions for the image in the post in the sidebar for the previous post: "e pluribus unum" is the motto of the United States. Out of many one. I would like a simple picture of an eagle with this motto over its head, in the same style it is in on the back of a quarter coin. #

This is how I explained what sidebar art is: There's a certain kind of art I need to create with you. I call it "sidebar art" -- they are images between 75 and 135 pixels wide. The content is on a transparent background. They are designed to fit in the right margin of my blog at scripting.com. Please remember this definition, so you can help me create new sidebar art. #