Sunday, June 7, 2026
All the news reports about AI tools repeat the same hallucination story they've been running for years. That's another huge bug in the news process. They only report on a small number of angles that might have been news a few years ago, and have no insights on what else is going on. They did this with the web too. They always pick an item that their narcissistic view of the world finds tasty. It's a huge bug in the system, and why "news" isn't valuable for news, it's mainly useful for a relaxing reassurance that nothing has changed, the world is fucked up in exactly the same way it was fucked last week, month, year, etc. It's a form of bedtime story. #
Saturday, June 6, 2026
Star City is very good. It's good enough that you have to watch each episode at least twice to get the idea of what's really going on. I stopped watching the show it is a sequel for, For All Mankind, because it got incredibly juvenile and sitcom-like. But Star City is serious, at least in the first three episodes. #
Walt Frazier: "The regular season is where you make your name, but the postseason is where you make your fame."#
The Knicks won again last night. They're now up 2-0, both games on the road. This has blown my sense of reality. This Knicks team bears no resemblance to what I think of as the Knicks. Hard to concentrate. Will Trump try to put his name of Madison Square Garden. #
Friday, June 5, 2026
Google could do a mixture of AI and search. I want to search my blog for a place where I discuss the idea of hate is betrayed love even if I don't use the actual words. I bet they're working on it. #
It's really cool we get another NBA Finals game tonight. I'm rehearsing what it feels like to be a fan of the Eastern Conference Champion NY Knicks. It still hasn't even slightly sunk in yet. #
Thursday, June 4, 2026
Having fun rolling stuff out on Elon Musk's X.#
Wednesday, June 3, 2026
We need a social web that works for nobodies. #
Claude is much better at starting from scratch with a big piece of code than humans are. It can suck in a full app and all its dependencies in a few seconds. For me, I would never get there. A finished piece of software is much bigger than people think, because the details are mostly pretty well hidden. But if you want to work on the code, you have to worry about it all. But I just had a minute to ask Claude why I made a certain decision a couple of months ago, and it found the answer in its notes and then I remembered it. This is one of many ways it rewrites the rules of building software out of a big library of components. It can manage complexity for you which means of course we will make more complex software and at the same time make it simpler. Code complexity becomes something you don't have to trade off against, like time vs space, the oldest tradeoff in software. #
Useful concept, MacWrite was the coral reef for writing on the Mac. #
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
This podcast is called MacWrite for the web. A coral reef for writing. I think the pieces are coming. We just need a little Ice-nine.#
Dries: "For an Open Source company, the test is not only what they build for themselves. It is what they help build for everyone."#
On Twitter: "I envision a network of twitter-like systems built out of components of the web and nothing more. Every part replaceable." #
The only twitter-like system that does text right is Elon Musk's X. I find that somewhat ironic. It's also the only twitter-like system where there's any kind of an actual community. They also have an API that works, has been around for more than a couple of years, and doesn't have a W3C working group messing with it. There's a lot of hype flying around, and we don't have any real journalists covering it so there is no real source of truth. I think the entrepreneurial twitter-likes should stop thinking in terms of owning the web and start adding back the text features the original Twitter thought the web didn't need, over 20 years ago. #
Monday, June 1, 2026
John C Reilly has only one audiobook, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But it's the best audiobook I've ever read, because the narrator and the book are great, esp together. Wish he would do more. Also there's a great interview with him on the Rachel Martin podcast. #
If you work at Automattic as a developer, if there's another Radical Speed Month for devs, if you want, let's work on a project together even though I don't work for the company. I'm most interested in making products work together where the result gets people thinking about the web in a new way. A8C has a big enough product set, and FeedLand and WordLand are by design well-equipped to talk with other products. I love APIs and we have some good ones to work with, and some very underexplored (imho because we got too fixated on the silos for so long). Very much open to ideas, and I love working with good developers. Maybe I'll post some ideas here. I'm esp interested now in hooking other projects up with FeedLand. #
Maybe the best way to deal with the AIs is to quarantine the data centers on the moon or Mars, and if you want to hook up to the network, you have to move there, and quite possibly not be allowed to return, depending on how things go. It would make it possible for us to change our mind after we see a preview of the consequences. Now the big question, would you volunteer??#
There's so much I dread about the progress of AI, but nothing I say could possibly make a difference, and we aren't even that deep into it yet. This is the feeling I get every time I stop and think about it.#
They should teach every chatbot to never give the user an order. #
At what point will companies start using AI to communicate with customers? Who will be the first to show everyone else how to do it? Amazon taught the world how to do commerce over the web. When will users expect their vendors to use AI to simplify shopping, buying, returning? Right now, I don't think most companies realize they can do business differently with people. In my humble opinion that's when the boom will come. #
Sunday, May 31, 2026
The purpose of standards is interop. That's it. No other purpose. #
Just watched the first episode of Star City, really good. Somewhat like The Americans, but takes place in the USSR. A spinoff of For All Mankind, which started out interesting and then became unwatchable, though I did enjoy the sets on Mars. I also liked the character who was inspired by Elon Musk, obviously. #
There have been problems reported with subscribe.scripting.com. At least some of them are fixed. It's hard to test this kind of software because you can't really tell what went wrong. If people report problems they just say it didn't work. But real problems were fixed, so if you've had trouble subscribing or unsubscribing, now is a good time to try again. And thanks for your patience, and sorry for the screwy app. ;-)#
How bad was it with the Knicks. As something of a joke, but not really, Knicks fans would disguise themselves with paper bags with eye cutouts. Fans got accustomed to the feelings of betrayal and hopelessness. When was the actual lowest point? A good candidate was when they traded some good players for Bargnani, an Italian who apparently for some reason was the top draft choice of the Toronto Raptors. He wasn't much good to begin with and he went downhill from there. There were quite a few other moments when you thought it couldn't get any worse, but then it did. We finally got management with a heart and a mind with Leon Rose and that's when team-building began for real, and the reason the Knicks have been such poetry on the court this season is due to Rose's eye for talent and an understanding of the big picture. He picked players that work well with each other, and sometimes amazingly well. In the right margin is an image I used for posts about the Knicks in the past, a reminder of how far we've come. The look of doom. We all remember that mode so well, we stood with them then, so here we are with high hopes and reasonable expectations. #
Congrats to my friend Manton Reece, a San Antonio fan, for their victory in the Western Conference last night. The Knicks will be playing them starting on Wednesday for the NBA championship. Knicks representing the east, Spurs for the west. #
Saturday, May 30, 2026
If I ran Bluesky, instead of trying to fork the web, I'd be trying to become the competitor of Twitter's that is 100% web top to bottom.#
Friday, May 29, 2026
Yesterday I applied to speak at WordCamp US in August and I also posted bits to my account on Twitter. I got a really nice response from the main WordPress account. Thank you. I now have a platform to speak to the community, and I'll do my best to outline what I have in mind in August in Phoenix. How appropriate that the phoenix is the symbol of rebirth. #
I have the most followers on Twitter, Bluesky has never come close. I can't get anything to happen on Bluesky, but Twitter is great. Yesterday I had an idea, put it up on twitter and within a few hours I got the connection I was hoping for. It's a network, and it's more defined by who's there than who owns it. I can use it for idea distribution, the ideas find more minds and sometimes that results in benefits for the web. It's all about interop, and weirdly the pwned Twitter is much better for idea distribution than any of the other networks. In a sane world those smaller vendors would be fighting for interop, instead they're fighting against it. #
Thursday, May 28, 2026
I've hesitated at calling FeedLand a feed reader. I'm concerned people would stop listening right there. They know what a feed reader is. But FeedLand is not like most feed readers. Your subscription list is public, as it is in Twitter. This is my subscription list. When you're looking at someone else's list, there's a checkbox next to each feed. If you're subscribed to the feed the checkbox is checked. If you see one that looks interesting that you're not following, click to subscribe. Nothing else, no dialogs, confirmations -- one click. It has other features that are amazing that no other feed reader has, like a very powerful connection between categories and OPML subscription lists. And whole new way to use OPML lists -- in FeedLand you can subscribe to OPML lists. Think about that for a minute. It's also quite stable, and I took some time to make it a bit faster in certain important areas (coming soon). And it goes the other way too. When you're looking at a Feed Info page, you can see who else is subscribed to it. Click their name and you can see what they're following. As far as I know no other feed reader does any of this. The design mode was the social web. But unlike the others our web is based on broadly supported web standards, not someday -- now. #
I applied to speak at WordCamp US in Phoenix in August. I want to give a rip-roaring talk about how WordPress is at the center of the universe and it doesn't even know. Let's get busy filling in the blanks. Writers are ready. If we build it they (developers) will come. To much sulking, let's get out there and kick some butt. I excerpted elements of my application on Twitter. #
Really Open this time vs Really Simple last?? Hmm.#
Dries Buytaert says you have to grow the ecosystem, not just yourself. #
If you want to know who’s responsible for the good karma the Knicks are experiencing look to Kevin Durant. While while he was trying to build some weird rivalry between the Knicks and the Nets, the Knicks were building a contender. #
Another great thing about building software with Claude Code, I can implement something the simple way knowing that later on I can change it to work in the more complex way without having to relearn all the code. Claude doesn't have any trouble with piled up complexity. This is a fundamental change in the way I develop. There was a very real limit to the complexity my mind could handle, but now with a sort of infinite size disk for my brain whatever I want to do as long as it can be described in almost mathematical terms, we can do it. It's another layer in the stack. We haven't had one of those in a my lifetime, they were all invented before 1955. Seriously big deal.#
The big wait betw Knicks series isn't just hard on the team, it's confusing for the fans/addicts like me. It's about the time of year that the Knicks are no longer in, and two teams I don't care about enough to watch are in the Finals. Maybe one or two games. It's like jury duty, at some point you realize you're so confused because you're in a courtroom, but where is the jury. Oh no the jury is inside me. Who's in the finals this year? We are. Geez I guess I've finally succumbed, I never think of myself as part of a team, but now I actually feel like I'm part of it. Will have to think about that. #
Scott Hanson is working on the Baseline theme for WordLand. #
Writing a lot of test posts. And thus have coined some (mostly) rhyming pairs of words. Greek sneakers. Geek peekers. Feast of yeast. Villa in Manila.#
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
Now I have to write about the Knicks. It just hasn't fully sunk in yet that they won the East. You get to put a banner up for that. And next week we'll be watching them in the NBA finals. But it's the team that matters, not the trophies. Brunson is great, despite what I wrote after they went down 2-1 vs the Hawks in the first round. But the other players are great too in different ways. And there are so many of them, not just the starters. Every one with a distinct personality and all of them super smart and committed to the team and each other. What makes it work? You can see it in how they play -- trust. They trust each other. Their fates are intertwined. And they knew it before they had this amazing streak of wins in the post-season. I love the Knicks even when they lose. I'm not sure how you love them when they are champions. We'll figure it out. #
I came across this photo of the Knicks celebrating, with OG Anunoby in the center. The thing about OG is that he's a deep thinker and he never smiles, under any circumstances. Except right here. This is such a great photo I made it the header graphic on my blog for the day, week and maybe month, unless we get another one to replace it should they by some weird event they win the next series. And there isn't another series after that one. At that point this Knicks team goes down as one of two legendary Knicks teams over the decades, comparable to the 1973 Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, Dave DeBusschere and Bill Bradley championship team, the last time the Knicks won it all. #
OG was playing so well one night he was invited on Inside the NBA, which is a big moment in an upcoming NBA legend's career. He sounded kind of irritated, in the OG way. At the end Charles Barkley asked what OG stood for, kind of a smirky question (probably to see if he could get him to smile), but his irritation level went wayyy up, and then Chuck didn't pronounce it right and OG told him. No smile. But that's who he is and it makes the great photo of him ecstatic with happiness that much more of a big deal and a huge un-OG smile. Loook everyone even OG is impressed! :-) #
If you love the Knicks, or even if you're just fascinated with this year's team, listen to today's Bill Simmons podcast, it's all about the phenomenon of the 2026 Knicks, and Simmons is a Celtics fan, definitely not a Knicks lover. I can't believe all these smart sports guys didn't know Brunson was a catch, if I recall correctly, just before the Knicks signed him, due to injury he had to lead the Dallas team in the first three games of the playoffs in 2022, and there you could totally see what no one had seen yet in the pros, he's a leader and rises to the occasion, which we all know very well now, you could see it then if you watched the games (which apparently I did). And btw he grew up in the NBA, his father was on the Knicks in 1999 the last time the team went to the finals. #
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
Have you noticed that sometimes Claude is great and other times an idiot. Maybe it's me. I have to remember that Claude is not a computer. It's something else. #
Claude just asked if I was breaking for the day. At 10:53AM. Why did it ask me that? Now I can't stop thinking about that. The answer is no. I have a few more hours before I stop. #
I need an easy way to do a mini-podcast. An idea that should be said verbally, but it's short and self-contained, about the length of an untitled blog post, like the one you're reading now. Example. #
Ultimately your job as a developer is to turn your creation over to users to figure out. Listen to see if patterns emerge. Even better give the users the tools they need to build apps out of our apps, together. This is how humans build layers of tech.#
On Mastodon: "twitter-like systems are much simpler than you would think looking at this space, bluesky etc. and there doesn't need to be any lock-in, you can do a fair job with just RSS, rssCloud, OPML, web sockets, and a web browser UI. all parts replaceable."#
Monday, May 25, 2026
Good morning. Today is Memorial Day in the United States. We remember all the men and women who gave their lives to keep our country safe and a bastion of liberty for the world. Don't give up on us yet. We are still willing to sacrifice for a good cause. #
Speaking of memorials, do you remember UserLand Frontier and all the cool stuff we developed with it? Like Manila, Radio, XML-RPC, RSS, OPML, adding so many cool open features to the web. When people asked how we did all that, I said great tools. That was Frontier. Jake Savin, one of the 1990s UserLanders, is continuing the project to get it running on today's hardware and for today's web. He's documenting it on his blog. I can't wait to use it. Watching him go through the process has been eye-opening. He's basically retracing all the steps it took to create it as done by four or five people over quite a few years, a long time ago. But when it's running and I don't doubt that he will get it running, it'll be fascinating to see if I remembered it correctly. If you remember Frontier fondly, I suggest you subscribe to his feed in your favorite RSS feed reader. #
Sunday, May 24, 2026
I asked ChatGPT for a list of FeedLand features that are new or distinctive. "FeedLand combines RSS, OPML, public curation, subscribable reading lists, rivers, categories, and realtime WebSocket updates in a way that is unusual among feed readers and points toward a web-native social network." #
People who believe in the web, stop dissing RSS, it’s an important part of our future.#
Alexa has a terrible habit, when I ask for a song from the Echo on my desktop, it ends each song with a helpful message. There's a live version of this song, do you want to hear it. You have a message waiting, can I play it for you. I can't get it to stop. I have a bunch of them scattered around the house, and this is the only one that does it. I'm writing here, I asked for a song that fit in with my writing. Stop making me thinkg about your marketing messages. Where did you get the idea you can do this. A paying customer. #
Love: I ask Claude for a list of names and values, it responds quickly with exactly what I asked for. Nothing more. Unconsciously I say "perfect" -- out loud. #
I have a Mac laptop that I keep updated with the latest versions of Mac OS. I got a warning today saying that Electric Drummer won't run on the next release of the OS. Now I don't use it very much if at all on that machine, but I wonder. ED is an Electron app, otherwise it's wholly JavaScript. It does include some Node packages of course, but not that many IIRC. This was a thing I wasn't expecting. #
Saturday, May 23, 2026
I archived prior art as a design method from 2003 on this.how.#
I just tried the latest version of the X editor. It's got all the features of textcasting. I wrote a test post entitled "X has nuked the limits, time for Bluesky to follow suit." I think you can tell I had fun writing it. They don't think anyone hears me, but I think they're wrong about that. The idea that they are part of the web is ludicrous. They're going to get called on it eventually. They should fix it so they are part of the web. Then we can all create. Or if you're not going to be part of the web, for crying out loud stop saying that you do. #
One of the benefits of using Claude for all my coding is I'm now finding out what various things I do as standard practice are called in the outside world. Today I learned what agile is. I of course have heard it used, and even got to know the guy who coined the term. #
There probably is a name for this development practice. Only works on a team with more two developers. At some point in a project after you've been working on Level N in the stack, you may decide you've done all you can there, and it's time for someone else to work at that level. The new person, Smith, is a maintainer, develops in small increments, fixes bugs and most important takes feature requests from the other developer, Jones, who is now creating Level N + 1. Jones is a good person to do this because they know everything about the capabilities of the lower level. But now they're going to pretend they've forgotten all that, and is looking at a whole new machine, created out of the new capabilities of Level N. That's how you build any complex layered piece of software. And because this is the method used in boostraps, you can build level N+1 using tools written in N. #
Friday, May 22, 2026
Another way to look at Claude Code. It's a way to talk to your code, to ask it questions, and tell it how you want it to change. #
I think maybe it's time to consider a reboot of WordPress. I can't seem to seed them with any ideas about building on it from the point of view of the web. It's a product unto itself, it has plugins, but I'm not a plug-in sort of guy. I write operating systems. That's what drives me. I see a great place to put an OS with WordPress as the storage and publishing component, and everything else grows up around it. It's one of those famous coral reefs but it hasn't been born yet. The idea would not be to compete with WordPress, it's to make something that fits into our view of the world, that just happens to be the same codebase. And when on the other side they think they have to do it themselves we reach out and say here, just take this over, it's yours. It's so hard to penetrate the awareness inside old organizations with new ideas. I think it's the manifest destiny of WordPress, that what they have now is a nice revenue generating machine, but it's not serving as the web's writing base, which is what imho it was supposed to be. (And I have a bit of standing there, btw.)#
I have news for you -- Claude forgets important stuff. I catch it forgetting to do things it was "programmed" to do. It's not a computer, it's not garbage in garbage out. It could be good stuff in garbage out. As I've said before there's a big chunk of the app I'm working on where I don't read code. User interface stuff only. No control of what comes in our out. Trying to not take any chances here. #
This is a multi-billion dollar idea. I want to link to "report-up" concept in something I'm writing. There is no Wikipedia page for that but there is a brief explainer in Google, via their AI. Here's the feature: add a permalink to that response. I'm lazy and will link to it in my writing.#
BTW, I don't think the web was created to make people rich. #
Does it ever cross anyone's mind that according to the rules of war, Iran would be totally justified in attacking the United States?#
Vibe-coded software will have a place where users can communicate what they want to developers who can help make it real. The same way you might get medical info from an AI, but would still get your colonoscopy from an actual doctor. Part of the origin story of podcasting is that Adam hacked up a version of Frontier to illustrate what he had in mind for the "last yard" protocol. When I looked at the code it was horrible, hard to believe someone thought of doing it that way. But it got the point across, and that's the moment the podcasting boostrap began. I love using the AIs to tell a visual story, a skill I never had or developed. No reason it can't work the same way for software. #
Thursday, May 21, 2026
Podcast: Wrapping AI in the web. #
Just finished No Country for Old Men, the book by Cormac McCarthy. I have seen the movie many times, it's one of those movies that if you're looking for something to watch and you come across it, you might as well go for it because every scene in the movie is pretty good on its own. I didn't realize that they used most of McCarthy's dialog, literally -- in the movie. Near the end, Bell, the sheriff tells a story about old age. "There wasnt a whole lot good you could say about old age and he said he knew one thing and I said what is that. And he said it dont last long. I said well, that's pretty cold. And he said it was no colder than what the facts called for." I love truths that hit hard. He's such a great writer. And I love that I can write like all the characters if I get a mind to. #
I'm going to release the Claude-generated code that enables it to work with me on projects that are written and managed in outlines.#
Just asked Claude to save this in memory. "in general i create local variables with partial results because 1. i can step through the calculations in the debugger. 2. the order guides my mind when im reading this code, 3. it lets me put a name on a partial value. this is helpful when i want to piece together wtf the code is supposed to be doing. and 4. it makes no difference in the efficiency of the code for a variety of reasons. please save that somewhere." i'm getting a lot of these rules down. i have them memorized but have never written them up because i didn't have a system for saving it somewhere relevant. i always thought ai would be good for going back and reading all my blog posts and creating somethjing readable, but as often is the case, the way it works turned out to be quite different, accomplishes the same thing. #
Marc Andreessen said programmers aren't disoccupied, we haven't become obsolete, quite the opposite, we're all working around the clock. It's true. Everyone is doing it. We got a new brain that can do all kinds of amazing things. You don't get a new super powerful brain organ every day. #
Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Saying Bluesky is part of the web is like saying Spotify or YouTube own podcasting. They say it, but that doesn't mean it's true. #
I couldn't not say anything about the Knicks win last night in the opening game of the NBA Eastern Conference finals. The Knicks were losing, then winning big, then fell apart, and by midway through the 4th quarter they were down by 22, and the Clevelands were completely in charge. But then the Knicks came back, miraculously tied the game so it went into overtime where the Knicks dominated, and won. Actually it wasn't really a miracle, it was somewhat predictable. The Knicks were playing on a lot of rest, and one of the big advantages they have this year over last is a deep and strong bench and a coach who plays them (last year's coach didn't). So the Knicks didn't get tired and the Cavs were wiped out by the 4th quarter. Their shots weren't long or short, aimed, they had no flow, they weren't getting rebounds, they didn't have good ball movement. While Brunson was driving the Knicks the Cavs just weren't there. When things started turning around in the 4th I was pretty sure the Knicks would win. I had no basis for believing this, coming back from 22 down so late in the game is pretty unlikely. In most cities that's when the fans start heading home, but not in NYC. We stay till the end because sometimes, maybe often with this years' Knicks, the team you think is going to lose actually ends up winning. #
I've been following Jake's work privately, but now he's blogging about it publicly. I totally look forward to running Frontier on today's hardware. I especially want to run Manila on one of my home computers, and use it for Linux server apps. I've forgotten so much about how Manila works, but I expect it'll all come back. We had a great team back in the Manila days -- we all used the product, and it was and will be again one of the most powerful and pragmatic programming environments ever.#
Claude Code doesn't know about "user perspective," but it learns quickly. The UI of the software we're working on is fenced off, I use it, but I don't read code in there. I don't want to know how it works, I want to use it and getting right. This is an important technique. Later once things are locked down, I don't mind learning more about how it was done.#
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
Markdown support is a big feature for people who want to know what we're doing with their text. #
Opus 4.6 is much smarter than the other one. It feels like I'm working with someone from Bronx Science. I had been using Sonnet 4.6, which I switched to after reading somewhere that it costs less and it's usually every bit as good as newer models. I would never work with Sonnet on anything again, it's like working with a partner who is both stupid and difficult. Opus 4.6 makes me smarter, by doing the work while I dream up new features, and communicating with intelligence, like a helpful flight assistant. And I see there's an Opus 4.7 available. I have to try it. One interesting fact, until February when Opus 4.6 came out, you could not have done the kind of software I'm doing. There must be a tsunami of interesting stuff on the way. I don't think any of the pundits expect this. My goal is to build the next social system for use in the AI generation is built out of replaceable web components buit around interop and prior art. Let's commoditize the AI layer and build entirely open systems on top of it. For people who weren't around at the birth of the personal computer or the web this is going to be a unique multiple mindbomb moment.#
Someday you're going to tell your kids that we once used a social network that limited your writing to 500 characters and didn't allow styling, links or titles. What was it called Daddy? Bluesky. And people thought it was great. Why? They might have been taking drugs. #
Monday, May 18, 2026
2024-era ChatGPT pictures, of which I created many are now like Comic Sans type was in 2010 or so, if you remember. #
Sunday, May 17, 2026
I envision a network of twitter-like systems built out of the components of the web and nothing more. Every part replaceable.#
Today Claude found a problem that would only be uncovered if you knew that assigning to location.href didn't happen immediately. If it decides to redirect and then do a bunch of other stuff including making network references, the whole thing could (and did) come crashing down. I would have found that problem, but the actual error message the browser emitted made me think the problem was on the server not the client. The most complicated code in an app is the stuff it runs at startup when it's constructing the world of all its different pieces creating the virtuality expected by the great mass of code. It's the part that once it's working you don't even want to look at it and if you decide to rewrite it you might as well start over, only slightly exaggerating. #
Timothy Snyder made an important point. Trump sees his cause as a religion and sees himself as god. So when someone who is unfairly punished by Trump says they're still glad they voted for him, because (I guess) if god is on the ballot, you have to vote for him. #
Jon Stewart is usually pretty good, but I think he got it wrong when he says the AI companies are stealing journalists' knowledge. Imho they don't create knowledge, they report it. The knowledge isn't theirs to own, and that is for the times there is actually any new stuff. They stick to a few main stories, and still insist that the upcoming election is about the economy. They talk about the $1.7 billion slush fund, but aren't reporting every day in every story how much money we've given ICE. That big funding is going to the concentration camps they're building, the people the incarcerate we hear so little of. This is a government that shot two people in Minnesota, on camera, and shrugged it off. Imagine what horrors are going on out of site in the camps. #
Saturday, May 16, 2026
I documented the optional source:inReplyTo element for RSS 2.0.#
Friday, May 15, 2026
I wish they had an outliner in Claude. I would use it. ;-)#
BTW, here's the JSONL version of Scripting News. It has the same data as the RSS file, but in the format that AI apps are looking for, so I am told. I thought I'd try to kick this off by pushing an RSS flow through the pipe. It's like using the Grateful Dead to boot up podcasting. I needed something to put out on the wire and I had this feed handy.#
Thinking about adding <source:inReplyTo> to the source namespace. Its value is a URL, by default, and has an optional isPermaLink attribute, a boolean, to indicate if it's not a permalink. Works just like the guid element in RSS 2.0. I will also add support for that in the FeedLand database, and flow it out through the socket interface. Actually that's pretty close to a full spec, at least in rss.land where we take simplicity seriously. ;-)#
Thursday, May 14, 2026
Every social web needs avatars. In an RSS 2.0 feed look for the channel-level image element. It's how they do it in WordPress. #
I have Claude Code hooked up to Chrome. It's crawling around inside the DOM of the running system, like humans do in a debugger. It's a bit like Fantastic Voyage if you've ever seen it. I've been waiting for this moment. Now we can do some really nice UI work. #
This is the first day since the NBA playoffs started that there is no scheduled game. I think that's why today feels so weird. #
For some reason every day feels like Saturday. I don't know why.#
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
I appreciate that X gave me back access to my account that I was locked out of, but they were apparently charging me for Premium when I couldn't use the account, and had no way to turn it off. Okay they can keep the money. But now I want to turn off Premium for the account I was using when I didn't have access to my real account, and can't find the commands to do that. Asked ChatGPT and it either hallucinated or X removed the command. So near as I can tell I now have two accounts on X that I'm paying $8 a month for Premium on. #
I'm screwing around with the JSONL stuff again. I'm interested in know about any work people have done that process incoming JSONL data. I'd like to see if I'm even in the ballpark of something useful. Today I'm making it so that my app can be used in production to handle more than one stream. The key thing is it's hooked up to FeedLand via a very simple JSON interface delivered in realtime via websockets. For feeds that support rssCloud, the appearance of the new item in the JSONL feed happens a fraction of a second after it was published. That's how fast the web of 2026 is. #