Poll: I will vote in person on November 3, earlier if I can. I will not rely on the USPS. Do you agree? Americans only please.#
BTW, I'd bet Trump and team have anticipated people going to their polling places to vote. They probably will have storm troopers at polling places in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Miami, Phoenix, Atlanta, etc. Snatch a few people off the streets, should do it.#
If you have a million followers only because @ev likes you, and you want my respect, you should delete your twitter account and start over. Twitter used to gift fake followers to journalists who wrote nice things about them. Open corruption. These accounts still are out there.#
Journalism has a simple question to answer. Are we just going to report on what Trump is doing or should we organize the opposition. They're coming for the election. The First Amendment is next. Succinctly, do you fight when you've lost, or when you still have a chance.#
A fair analysis of the reason Mozilla is adrift. Lots of extra agendas, often personal, no discipline, professional values, or much connection with users. The mean petty behavior has no place at a customer driven venture, which Mozilla never has been. Another takeaway is that the fire hose of money was wasted hiring more than a few employees to maintain Firefox. The rest of the windfall could have been invested in the S&P 500, held in reserve for the next Firefox, a product developed speculatively by entrepreneurial devs, after it achieves market acceptance. They would have billions in reserve by now. Could have changed the way we develop networks, with emphasis on user choice and no reliance on lock-in. But no one was ever empowered at Mozilla to do that, or no one had the vision or ability to lead.#I'm in a funny place with the new BingeWorthy. Started testing it with people who had rated a lot of programs in the previous version, and am getting good feedback. I'm getting ideas other than bug fixes and tweaks, and today I implemented one of them, which leads me to believe I should just make the new version public and start rolling out the new stuff here on the blog in public view. If you want to see what the new feature is, here's a video. Have a look. And if you think you could contribute to the testing, send me a message on Twitter. #
I got a late start today. Oy. #
At this point the US is pretty much dead. Might still be able to resurrect it. But there's going to have to be a very deep cleaning. And some people are going to jail.#No debates about the Democratic ticket. The choice is do you want to die. If you want to live vote Democratic. If you want to die vote Republican.#
The Democrats should be able to have a limited kind of rally. Flying in and out of airports, to outdoor gatherings, masks required, good distancing. Prior art: MLB, NBA.#
The Biden campaign should have had this ad ready for this moment. Perhaps they should outsource marketing to the Lincoln Project. On the other hand, I would have preferred for this one ad, that Trump be left out of it. Let the campaign stand on its own for a moment.#
Iâve finally arrived at the moment Tuesday feels exactly like Saturday, even though today is actually Wednesday.#
Some may have missed that the reference implementation of XML-RPC is now in JavaScript, both server and client. Browser and Node. New debugging tools. It's good technology with a strong base. Let's make sure people remember it's there. #
I've got my new iPhone SE. Transferring data from my iPhone XS/Max, after many tries because the old phone has four times the memory of the new phone. I had to delete a lot of stuff. But now it seems to be chugging along. It's quite a bit smaller than the original phone. First thing I want to do is take some pictures to see how well the camera works. Update: I gave up on the over-the-air update, and used an iTunes backup I took last night. Most of the data appears to have been preserved. All my music and photos are gone (but backed up on my Mac).#- Twitter made a change yesterday that I never thought to ask for, but should have. Now you can decide who can respond to your posts. #
- Your choices of who can reply:#
- And since you can mention no one, you can make it so that no one can respond to a post. This is a good feature because people can still comment on your tweet by RTing it, but they can't speak to everyone who reads it unless you let them. #
- It's the Twitter equivalent of what I say to people who want to comment on my blog posts. Start a blog, I advise, and say what you have to say and link to my post. Of course what they really wanted was to use my flow to (very often) zing me personally in some way. I consider that spam. Or hijacking. It gets so insidious so quickly that I haven't had comments here for any duration for many years. It starts off collegial, but quickly devolves into abuse as the trolls take over. And that's exactly what has happened on Twitter. Completely predictable.#
- People like to say Twitter is about conversation, but that isn't my experience. Very little illuminating conversation. Lots of stupid unfunny supposed jokes, and put-downs, and ads masquerading as opinion.#
- It's a good change:#
- People should feel more courageous in saying what they really believe, rather than avoiding opportunities for people to attack them. #
- You don't have to block or mute people who misuse the ability to respond. #
- People who say they can't comment are wrong, they can, they just have to create their own flow. #
- The author of the post they're commenting on always has the option to RT if it truly is constructive, which gives commenters the incentive to be civil. #
- Good move all around.#
- Politics, when it's done right, is pretty boring.#
- The person you want running the show should fairly quietly make things better.#
- You aren't going to have a beer with them.#
- You need to trust them enough to not blow up the world, and in our form of government to have the kind of personality that can compromise and work with others.#
- You want someone who's thoughtful and loves to understand how things and people work.#
- Mostly you want to feel things are being taken care of and get on with your own life. That imho is the most important freedom of all, freedom to focus, to be yourself, to have a life. #
JavaScript, which I love in the way a hostage loves his or her hostage-taker, fails the test of "Does the code look like what it does." It requires you to stand on your head with every finger in some random orifice to get simple stuff done if it involves any waiting. On the other hand if no waiting is involved, the code is perfectly understandable. If they invented JavaScript in the 70s, in the 80s we'd invent a language the fixes this colossal design error. With all respect to Brendan and his 10-day moon mission project. #Can we have a rebellion in journalism? Secede from Trump's reality, chart a new course for the rest of us. His course doesn't end well as we now know. Waiting for journalism to discover it has this power, they're inching toward it, but too slowly. #
Vision of a future that works better: Journalism is to Trump as the Mac was to mainframe computers.#
Elie Mystal: "People want to reopen schools because they need the child care, not because it makes sense to."#
Trump really wanted to run against Bernie Sanders. Maybe all that michegas about Hunter Biden backfired on the troll. Maybe if he had let Biden drift away into oblivion he would have gotten his wish. The Streisand Effect in presidential politics. đ#
Here's a wicked idea. Let Trump put himself on Mt Rushmore. Hopefully to be announced before the election, hopefully with great fanfare. That would get all the Democrats to turn out, and quite a few Republicans, now they can clearly see where Trump is going.#
It doesnât matter to me personally who Biden picks, that said, the best choice imho is Gov Whitmer of Michigan. Mainly because I think she'd be a good president. Sheâs been tested in Michigan. I was impressed with this interview, in April, at the height of the tensions in Michigan re their lockdown. #
I need a backlit keyboard because I write at night and the room where I work is pretty dark. I like it that way. I have a Logitech keyboard which I like, but the keys are getting sticky, and it's blowing my concentration. I spend so much time at the keyboard. The keyboard should be transparent, I should never have to think about it while writing. As I look on Amazon there aren't many keyboards that are illuminated, at least from companies I've heard of, and the prices are suspiciously low. I would buy one from Apple if they had one. The model that I have now has been discontinued, it seems.#- From a thread on Facebook.#
- My two cents on Kamala Harris and baggage.#
- She has the worst kind of baggage. She's already tried to humiliate Biden, unfairly, in public. It didn't work. My experience in life is if you let something like that go, they do it again and again. The relationship is over. She took a calculated risk and it didn't work. That's the way business and politics work. You don't often get do-overs. #
- She can run for president again, maybe she'll win, but it would be a sign of weakness and ignorance, even naiveté for Biden to choose her. There are so many other possibilities. #
- He may just have to weather the nonsense from Harris supporters, and there are many and they are vocal, and pushy (not her, her supporters, some of whom I consider friends), and then we can tell the people who are trying to raise hell that they're playing with our lives and their own lives, and they should just let it rest. #
- That said, she's also from California, which won't get you a lot of votes in Iowa or Wisconsin.#
A day after buying the Pixel 4a, I drop my iPhone XS/Max, which is usually OK because it's in a case, but this time the display cracked. I can't be without a phone, and the 4a won't get here until the end of the month, so I bought a new iPhone SE. I'll be comparing the two low-end products from Google and Apple. Weird timing, eh. #
I wrote this as a comment on Instagram, worth repeating here: When I was young I was afraid of what women my age would look like when I got older. I wish I could have told myself back then that they only become more beautiful with age.#
Trump struggled to contain the virus as a PR thing, while the actual virus roamed freely through America.#
A friend writes: "A Pixel 4a? Wow! I thought you were a big iPhone fan!" To which I respond: "I'm not particularly wed to either iPhone or Android. I have pretty much always have had both. In the last couple of years I have not had an Android because they didn't make a phone that interested me, considering the price, but the 4a is a new product, it seems sweet and it's a nice price." Note I bought it on pre-order like everyone else. I never have liked the iPhone as a product, I think Apple blew it. I couldn't make my beautiful scripting system work on it. They wouldn't allow it. I'm just a user. I think it's kind of a bleh product, honestly. As is Android, btw. #
BingeWorthy 2 tease #1: A friend wants to watch something. They ask friends on Twitter or Facebook what to watch. You put together a short list of your favorites, the ones you can think of right now. There's got to be a better way, right?#
As I work my way through Schitt's Creek, the characters are so fascinating and Moira may be the most, since we already knew the actor as Delia Deetz from Beetlejuice. It's hard for me to see the connection between the two. In one episode in Season 2 Moira is frantically looking for nude pictures of herself taken when she was younger. For most of the show you think she wants to find them so she can take them down, but no. She wants to be sure they're there. She wants to still be, in some sense, the actress we knew as Delia Deetz (Moira plays a former actress, btw). Her advice to Stevie, a super cute young supporting character, is to make sure to take lots of pictures of herself now when she's young. No matter how you think you're not very beautiful, when you're older you will see all the beauty you can't see now. I'm about the same age as Catherine O'Hara, the actress, and I want to say I totally concur. I can't believe how beautiful I was when I was younger, but of course I didn't see it then. #Briefly discussed WordPress on Twitter last night with Don Park, long-time friend, ex-Automattician. I said I don't think they understand blogging there. Don says "members of WordPress community and employees of the company behind it use blogs all the time." I don't doubt it, yet I could never do what I do with Wordpress. Far too clumsy. Not fluid. Not designed for writers. Really weak product. #
We spend trillions on defense, but it doesnât protect us against Russia or the virus. Humbly suggest perhaps weâre spending all that money preparing for the wrong war.#
I heard yesterday on Clubhouse that people stopped reading my blog because of RSS. Interesting story. They subscribed in Google Reader. Stopped reading on the web. Then they shut down Google Reader. The people who were reading my blog and others before RSS, lost track of the feeds they were reading in Google Reader. There were other choices, but that doesn't change what happened. We are rebuilding slowly, because blogging is still a useful form of communication. My nightly email is the best way to get it, probably always was, even in the heyday of RSS. I have to admit reading this blog in RSS was never a great deal. I write one day at a time. I'd prefer if you read what was on the home page at midnight. That's how I write it. Since RSS is something I'm well-known for developing, I didn't want to say this too loudly. But RSS should have had a chance to grow, and it didn't. So it got stuck. Not really a surprise. #
If I were running an American news org, and I saw the CDC being silenced by the government, I'd boot up the equivalent of the CDC as part of my news org. I'd hire former CDC officials and tell them to say what they'd say if they were still at the CDC. Big budget. #savemylife#What Trump is doing now is worse than dropping an atomic bomb on the US. That's how it should be reported on the news. We need some scientists we trust to say that and to make that the news. Because it is the news.#
What can be gleaned from Thighland and Yo Semite. Trump has a reading comprehension level of a child.#
In hindsight it seems like this was an especially bad time for the UK to withdraw from the EU.#
- Schools are like nursing homes only worse. #
- A virus's success at infecting targets depends on a lot of factors, one of which is what it does to most of the people it infects. #
- If it quickly incapacitates or kills most of them, they can't easily pass on the infection, so the virus grows slowly. Ebola is like that. #
- If it kills none of them, and if they don't get symptoms, they just go on as normal, everyone gets infected and the virus dies quickly, running out of targets to infect. #
- The worst case is if the virus, when it infects people, has few symptoms at first, and a relatively long incubation, like Covid-19. #
- The more people the infected people come in contact with, and the more transmissible the virus, the faster it grows. Schools, like nursing homes are excellent distribution centers. Indoors, crowded, proper distancing is impossible. Even worse if they're not wearing masks, as in Georgia. #
In nursing homes most of the targets are old or sick or they wouldn't be in a nursing home. The workers come and go so they distribute the virus out of the home. Just like a school. In a school everyone goes in and out. And a lot of them don't get sick, so they are excellent distributors, unlike the sick and old people in nursing homes who don't move around much. #- It's basically math at that point. The more infected people there are in the population, moving around, doing stuff, the more people will become infected. Not just their parents and grandparents as they say on CNN. Everyone. #
- We've been so careful to keep kids from congregating, but that's over now. We might as well open the bars 24 hours a day, because compared to what the schools will do, people should be allowed one final bender before this wall of virus hits us. #
- People act as if it's only the people in schools and their immediate families that will be hurt by this. Wrong. Everyone will be hurt. Even going to the supermarket with the kind of density we'll be seeing will be chancy. #
They're pouring gasoline on the raging virus fire in Georgia. They don't get something simple. The virus is everywhere. You may think for some reason it isn't in that empty school building, but as soon as you fill it with people, it's there. It's the NYSE of virus transmission. It's the Atlanta airport of virus transmission. The kids and adults are walking into the fire, doused in gasoline. What do they think will happen?#
I think I've finally run out of things to do with the new BingeWorthy. I have a lot of writing and communicating, but programming? Other than moving the prototype to a real server, not much. #
I started a thread on Twitter yesterday, one more time practically begging news orgs to support what I call an EZ-Pass for News. Not much response, but a handful of people did give the usual response, the one The Atlantic and other pubs want to hear -- that they bought a subscription to show support for journalism. I don't think this helps journalism, it just gives them false hope that there is a future for viewing journalism as a cause rather than as a product.#- If journalism is to thrive, the paywalls have to go away. It's the wrong user experience. It forces a question at a time when it's virtually impossible that the user is going to buy your pitch. Much better to get the money incrementally, then when someone is spending too much per month, upsell them a subscription as a way of saving money. #
- The TV world is about to discover this. All of a sudden there are a dozen different Netflix-alikes. There isn't room for that many, yet more are coming. They're going to have to find a way of doing an EZ-Pass. #
- I don't want to repeat all I've written here before. It's really very simple. If I use a freeway here in the eastern US, I don't have to stop to pay a toll. I just drive through what used to be a toll plaza, and an electronic device reads the chip behind my rear-view mirror, and deducts the money from my account, which it replenishes from credit card as-needed. Not that there was ever a whole lot of pain associated with this, but it's nice that the transaction is smoother now.#
News needs that much more than freeways do. The world has changed, it isn't the 80s, the last time it made sense to buy news via subscription, and even then you could buy a single issue without entering into a long-term relationship with the pub. It's all been unbundled, and like it or not news orgs are competing on a somewhat level playing field. The Atlantic is doing well, I observed, at making me want to read their articles. But not enough to get me to subscribe. As I've said before, I don't even like subscribing to the pubs I subscribe to now, and I consider them essential, but I consider the deal they offer a ripoff, that some of that money should go to almost-equally deserving pubs. The Atlantic is good enough to serve as an example for why the paywall doesn't work for readers. And they were visionary enough and entrepreneurial enough to join up with Scroll. So in some part they buy into the paywall-less version of news. #
- The result from yesterday's poll matches what I thought it'd be.#
With our civilization on the cusp of collapse, insider culture, career building, getting ahead -- the puffery and backslapping, it's so wrong. It's time to be smart. Ruffle feathers if you have to. Mean well. Get it done. #Schools should not be open anywhere in the US. Any person with any math, science or medicine background knows this. Step back and think. Politics gets you to the wrong answer if it says to you that schools should open. Save lives. Be a good human.#
It doesn't surprise me that kids do well without school. I remember as a kid being really pissed off that so much of my youth was wasted sitting in rooms with my hands foldeed, with my mind anywhere but in school, learning nothing and being bored out of my mind. I thought of school as very lazy, unimaginative, typical of adults. It wasn't really until grad school that school started working for me. #
- They aren't correctly analyzing the opening school situation on CNN. A couple of points.#
- We understand very little about the virus. Can't be sure it doesn't affect young kids. It might just manifest itself in different not obvious ways, and it might not manifest immediately.#
- Opening schools is like opening a gas station in the middle of a wild fire. Adding more virus-infected people, regardless of their age, in an out of control virus fire is as stupid as it gets.#
- We have to think in terms of the big picture and not just short-term, and with humility. The president is an idiot, but that doesn't mean we have to be too.#
Heard Jim Clyburn on the BBC Newshour on WNYC this morning. He correctly said we're desperately trying to get rid of Mussolini right now. That really is the only thing. Anything that takes us off the path to getting rid of Trump decreases the odds that it'll happen.#- We need the biggest landslide win this time. It needs to include every possible voter of either party. A black man decided that. And he was right.#
- You always have to think about what you're trying to accomplish in the big picture before going into the weeds. Do I really care, right now, whether X is the VP choice. Not if you want to live in a relatively free America, one that responds to the challenges we face, instead of trying to paper them over with lies and bluster.#
- It's Mussolini or a second chance for America. That's what's on the ballot in November. #
- Clubhouse is a new social network that seems to be gaining traction. I just got an invite a couple of days ago from Francine Hardaway. I had been aware of it before, but wasn't very interested, but I should have been.#
- These are just some first-day newbie impressions. #
- I'm @davew on Clubhouse.#
- First, what it is.#
- It's audio only. No text, no images, no video.#
- There are users. You can follow them, they can follow you. As far as I can tell it's very close to Twitter's model.#
- Any user can start a room. Other people can join the room. There's a stage. At least one person is on stage, the person who started the room by default is that person. Other people can be added by the founder, by dragging their icon onto the stage. #
- People on stage can speak without permission. People in the audience can raise their hand, and must be granted permission to speak. I imagine that if someone becomes abusive, or veers off-topic, they can be silenced by the moderator.#
- When you're a newbie you have a special icon so people can see that you're new. It's a little emoji party hat. I've been told people are nice to newbies, that's part of the developing culture.#
- The rooms have a Leave Quietly button at the bottom. I like that. It suggests you don't have to give a big speech before you leave. #
- What it's good at.#
- It may evolve into a celebrity performance platform as Instagram has.#
- It's a kind of podcast. I like it. I hope they support open feed formats, but I suspect this is a silo, not a publishing platform. Something to beware of. #
- I was also bummed to realize I couldn't incorporate this into my apps. Again, VC-backed means this probably won't change. #
- I tuned into a chat about cancel culture at first. Does it exist or doesn't it. Heh. As a meta-thing, it clearly does exist. You're talking about it right now. I didn't say this of course, though I was tempted to. I was pretty sure if I did I would get grief. #
- I saw a comment by longtime friend Michael Gartenberg. He has a good speaking voice. I love radio btw. It's my second favorite medium. I wanted to chime in, to expand on what he said, but I also saw he wasn't the founder of the channel, so I opted not to. He was talking about how these platforms might involve if rich individuals started them as pet projects. Thinking of Benioff and Time, or Omidyar and the Intercept, Bezos and the Washington Post. Also the cautionary tale of Thiel and Gawker. He basically bought Gawker with a lawsuit, then destroyed it. I wanted to add it could be even worse, there are a fair number of super-rich individuals who could buy Twitter. Its stock is cheap. How that would rock our world. #
- I had a one-to-one chat with Gartenberg, and it quickly started to feel private, even though it was public. It was liking riding in a chair lift with a friend while skiing. #
- I could see it being used for running commentary on a sports event. Hosting a roundtable discussion about a popular TV show, as they do on Salon and Slate. Anywhere a podcast might include more than one person. Election returns on November 3.#
- Also why not use it in place of Zoom. I don't need to see your face while you talk. :-)#
- I noted that Tiffany Haddish is already there. I followed her. There's a schedule of upcoming events. Think of it as a radio station or a venue like an arena or stadium. I'm sure that's what their business plan calls for. And also probably proprietary rights for all of it, i.e. no competition allowed unless you have good lawyers. #
- Back in the 90s my friend Sylvia had a series of Cybersalons, open discussions for random Silicon Valley people. It was funny how every discussion very quickly became How Do Artists Get Paid? It was the only issue that ever got discussed. At BloggerCon, a few years later, the question was How Do Bloggers Make Money? I'm guessing something similar will happen here. But what will the subject be. It'll have something to do with people getting paid, probably. #
- Thread#
- I started a thread where you can correct any mistakes I've made, or important insights you'd like to share. #
- Screen shots#
I watched an NBA bubble game this evening between the Houston Rockets and the Portland Trailblazers. I didn't realize how much I missed live sports. It's good but I think they should get rid of the fake things. Iâd like to hear what the sport is like with just the player sounds, no simulated fans. The screens with fans supposedly reacting to the play is pointless. I remember that high school and college basketball had charm, because the fans weren't so much a part of the action. Please put the player names on their uniforms. And.. When Melo scores the announcer has to say Carrrrrrrrrrmellllllllllllo Annnnnnnnthony. Please. Also Melo must wear a white headband. How else can I find him on the court?#We were inundated with rain from the hurricane with the funny name this afternoon and early evening. We were smack in the middle of the path. It was a pretty bad storm. Lights flickered a bit, the cable modem rebooted a few times, and the wind was freaky, but all's good now. #
I'm reading the book about the 1918 pandemic. And it's amazing how much the 2020 pandemic is a replay. The president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, did nothing about the outbreak. Cities were on their own. People said Oh it's just the flu. Then they got it and died. #
The founders obsessed on things the president could not do, but they didn't consider what we must require the president to do. He must defend the country against attacks. Trump is exploiting that loophole. Not defending the country against the virus. It's running wild. And without help from scientists the people don't understand it. If it were a fire burning in their neighborhood everyone would understand that it must be put out. No time to waste. But people can't feel that. Evolution didn't teach us to fear a virus at a primal level. So here we are. We have these great communication tools. What's next?#I like the way they talk about Trump on CNN. Everything he says is a lie and that's what they say. I think they should only run pictures of him that look like this. Only discorporate heads of Trump looking foolish and/or nauseated. #
Iâm watching Schittâs Creek. Itâs really funny. I was expecting it to be cringe-inducing, like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it's not. Starring Catherine O'Hara who was in Beetlejuice, one of the best movies ever made. And the geeky guy from Groundhog Day, the other best movie ever made. Schitt's Creek, like its name, is both profane and wholesome.#
John Naughton wrote a thought-provoking piece yesterday in his Memex 1.1 newsletter entitled Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. (Note to the Substack devs, there should be permalinks on sub-sections of the web versions of newsletters, so I can point directly to the bit I'm talking about. Might as well put them in the email versions too.) Naughton says there was a point in human evolution when we decided we were above nature, and that's when things started to go wrong. It's why we think we can return to some kind of normal once the pandemic is over. But every time we try, we hit a wall resulting in more suffering and death. I've observed something similar. Our troubles with the environment started some time in the last 100 years when, through technology, we were able to make our presence felt on the ecosystem to the point where human activity could melt the polar icecaps. So in a destructive sense, we are above nature, but it's not a good survival strategy. In fact, we live infinitesmally short lifespans on an insignificant speck of dust in space, with delusions of grandeur, when the best we can achieve, which is pretty good, is friendship, love and to a small extent, self-awareness. We're going to get smart now, and learn to be the humble mortals that we are. Or we're going to cease to exist. In other words, it's time for the human race to grow up. #BTW, a note to Google's search engine. Sometimes I put phrases into my writing that I know don't exist anywhere else on the web, so I can search for them, and enjoy the feeling of being a validated innovator. Yesterday I used a fictional name, "Hello HooHaw." When I searched for it Google said "It looks like there aren't any great matches for your search." What!?? The hell you say. There's a perfect match, way more than great. Everyone's a critic. BTW, now there are two instances of the phrase on the web. I wonder if Google will still complain. #
When will it be too much for the American people to bear? We are after all a country that was founded in revolution. Did King George do anything even remotely comparable to what King Trump is doing to us? How long will we wait for someone else to fix it?#
Ken Smith has been indulging me, commenting on stuff, blog-style, using LO2, even though LO2 is not (at this time) a proper blogging tool. Yesterday he commented on my process for archiving content on Scripting News. Here's a screen shot of Ken's post. I don't yet have a proper way to point to it. I know a lot about this. Future-safe archives. An organization has to have a strong and lasting commitment to creating a record, because there are so many ways to lose it. My backup to GitHub is actually an offline archive. In case GitHub survives and the web does not. I try to keep the URLs working on scripting.com, if not other domains I've created. My focus is on scripting.com. Even so, I've broken a fair number of links over the years. a big source was in the switch to S3. A very rational thing to do, no regrets, but their server is case-sensitive, and the server I had been using previously was not. It's too bad something like that was not mentioned in the founding documents of the web. I try to fix broken links when I find them. But keeping even one site unbroken is an impossible job. You do the best you can.#BTW, I'm concerned that GitHub only archives projects that have a lot of followers. In my case I preserve stuff on GitHub without concern for followers, stuff I feel strongly should be archived. Maybe this is a service they can sell?#
I watched a little CNN yesterday. Starting to prefer it to MSNBC, esp Wolf Blitzer. But they say platitudes that are wrong. Example: "Thereâs no-one-size-fits-all approach to the virus." Sounds nice but the opposite is true. The only way out is if we all do the same at the same time until,the infection dies. First thing CNN should do is review their dogma, offline, and get it right. And then publish the results. #
Forcing schools to open in the midst of an uncontrolled pandemic is genocide. The virus is still growing. You have to think bigger picture. Opening schools is like pouring gasoline on a fire, when we want to be dousing it.#
I also listened to a bit of On The Media this morning. They said something that really irked me: The police is the only public institution that isn't properly overseen (I'm paraphrasing). But journalism is even less overseen. I think the op-ed page in the major papers should be run by non-journalists and should be all about the failings of journalism. They say it so many times in so many ways. Democracy dies in darkness. Journalism has always been dark. Never examined. Considered to be above reproach by mortals. And that's garbage. It's just resulted in an arrogance that's had enormous consequences. #
On July 12, I posted a plan for (not) re-opening schools. "It's out of the question. What may happen is they will try to open the schools in a few of the Republican states, and close them within a few days as the rate of infection goes even higher. Cause and effect. You do something stupid and a week later the infections go up, two weeks later the hospitalizations go up and two weeks after that, the death rate goes up." It goes on from there. #
A minimally competent US president would, because of the pandemic: 1. Have an approval rating in the 80s. 2. Could lead the whole world in peace..#
Every neighborhood has the crazy family. On our street the crazy family were the HooHaws (made up name). The mother of the family was the Big Crazy, her name was Hello (again, made up name). One day a few years ago I arrived to visit my mom, and she was in the street talking with Hello HooHaw, and it hit me, hard. We were the crazy family. In case the parallel isn't clear, the US is about as crazy as it gets on Planet Earth. But we were raised to believe it's the rest of the world that was off its rocker.#
The Freedom Cafe has the perfect policy for people who prefer not to wear masks. "We encourage employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom, but understand that some people may be allergic to certain soaps or may simply prefer not to wash their hands. It is not our place to tell them what to do." There's more. Must-read. #How bizarre that in 2020 the president is brokering a deal for Microsoft to buy TikTok? So many questions. What's his cut. Did Microsoft agree to limit criticism of Trump on the new TikTok. How does the US government control it vs China. How bizarre that the Great Firewall appears to be going up in the US? Will loyalty to Trump be part of the terms of service for a US-owned TikTok? I can't imagine China would object. #
Rebecca MacKinnon, who I trust, said: "Microsoftâs President Brad Smith once called the NSA an âadvanced persistent threat.â Microsoft is also in the Global Network Initiative, whose company members commit to push back against unlawful government demands. Theyâre not a pliant Trumptool."#
Here's an idea. To qualify for president you have to pass a basic test in statistics. It's not enough to pass a test for dementia. Also, you can't pay someone else to take the test for you. #
I just got confirmation from GitHub that my stuff is part of their Arctic Vault program. That's really cool. Thanks GitHub. đ„#
Baseball is headed for a catastrophe like the nursing homes in March and April. A preview of what will happen as the schools open. It can't end well. And while kids may not get immediately sick, who knows what the virus does a year or two after you first get infected? Or thirty or forty years. These are kids, they'll be around to find out. We should be thinking long term for them. And the teachers. What will protect them? #BTW, welcome to August!#
Every month I archive the OPML source for the previous month, including all the metadata, to a public GitHub repository, so you can see how the data flows. There are lots of conventions in the form of attributes on OPML
<outline> elements. This is the data that Old School uses to render the HTML you see on the web. At some point when the dust clears from my other projects, I'll hook up LO2 outlines to Old School in some fashion. They're already pretty close, kind of the way San Francisco and Marin County were almost connected before a bridge was added. #BTW there is an RSS version of the nightly email. Not sure how well it will display in most readers, it has CSS that depends on definitions they won't have. Probably could fix it up if anyone is actually reading this way. #
Our epitaph: We could imagine, then create, a world that we couldn't manage. That's what I think when I hear that Kushner didn't care if massive numbers of people in blue states died from the virus. That's a form of genocide. We couldn't protect ourselves from this. #
One of the founders of the wicked Federalist Society says Trump has gone too far, and is sort of calling for his impeachment and removal. The Repubs might want to, now, take a risk they might be punished for crossing Trump, and earn the loyalty of Americans who are not insane and want to live. If not loyalty, perhaps a bit of forgiveness. A tiny bit. A miniscule, infitesmal bit. Okay maybe they won't be tried for crimes against humanity along with Trump.#The new Nike ad is, I hear, a marvel in video editing. It is a very nice ad, but it's depraved. The last thing we need now is more sports. They're all going to get the virus. This ad will be looked back on in despair. That said, I enjoy watching the Mets games so far. Very relaxing. I could almost believe they won't all get sick and some of them will get very sick and some will probably die. We must learn to take the virus seriously. I'd like to see a marvel of a Nike ad that said that. #
Trump proposed to postpone the election. At first I was shocked. Then when I took a few deep breaths I realized, yes, of course, today's when the second quarter numbers for the economy came out. A bad quarter is when the economy only grows by 2 percent. This quarter the economy shrank by 33 percent. That's without precedent. We're in a depression now, unlike anything ever seen in the US. Even with all we know now about macroeconomics, there's no way out of this situation until we get the virus under control, and the government shows no interest in doing that. Trump is a distraction. The real story is the hole we're in. #A sci-fi terror comedy. A virus infects the human race. Everyone gets it but children donât get sick or die. Adults die very quickly. ~100%. Adults must avoid children at all costs. Hilarity ensues as the kids figure it out and start making demands. #
Herman Cain died of Covid. There was a report just yesterday, via a staffer, saying he was okay, just staying in the hospital for a few days to strengthen his lungs. I thought it was probably not true. A man that age, hospitalized that long, a good outcome was not likely. He was a CEO, not the brightest, but a salesman. It seems he must have gotten the virus at Trump's Tulsa rally. He's the first political personality to die, of his stature, that I know of, Republican or Democrat. We're probably still waiting for the Rock Hudson of Covid. The one that wakes most people up to realize holy shit this can come for me too.#
I usually give products in-development codenames of cities or states. Like Iowa, Fargo, Concord. Sometimes it ends up being the product name. But recently I've been choosing weirder names. For example, one version of an app was Frankenstein. Why? Because that's how it felt. Next one was called Turd Villa. I have no idea how that came into my head, but it makes me laugh, so I keep it. I love seeing the name in the title bar of my browser. Turd Villa. I'm sure there is no place with that name, anywhere in the universe. #Om says to write as you think. I totally agree, but I'd add this: Then edit. When I speak I use extra words as I plot my way through the idea, uncertain of which way I'll go at any step. After writing a first version from the speech in my head, I tighten it, remove unnecessary detours, and flourish, the equivalent of spoken umms. #
Remove phrases like "a lot of" and words like "very." They don't add anything. The writing is tighter without them. Unless somehow it's very important to communicate the very-ness of some idea. #
I've recently added a bunch of people to the nightly email subscription list. Plenty to catch up on, but nothing as important as this: Google and HTTP. The tech industry is trying to take control of the open standards of the web. They're doing it slowly, with a lot of PR, and also punishment for people and companies who don't comply. A perfect example of monopoly power used corruptly. Plenty of people noticed, but few want to cross Google. I don't care. I'll let them make my writing inaccessible, but I will never comply with their rules. The web is unique in that it's a platform with no platform vendor. They're guests, as we all are. Guests don't make the rules. There are other issues. Facebook has knocked the legs from under the blogosphere. Every time I've asked them to help, they've said no. So all progress has to flow through them and they never move. They don't support the most basic features of the web, linking, simple styles, titles, podcasting. The tech industry is as bad as it was when I started in the 70s. And of course it's much more powerful today. #What is it about the ethics of journalism that says reporters and columnists have to forget every bit of news that came before the atrocity they're reporting now? It's how news became Groundhog Day. We're always learning how Trump works for Russia. Over and over.#
The notorious Louis Gohmert has coronavirus. Yesterday I promised to post some good news here. I'm a man of my word. #
I was invited to buy Echo Frames, even though I don't wear prescription glasses, and there is no cell service where I live, I went ahead and ordered a pair. Yes I am a technology addict. #
If you asked what I thought about antitrust and the big tech companies, a subject to be explored today in Congress, I would tell you about the open web and how Google is trying to privatize it.#
The thing that makes fiction interesting is if they take you to a world with characters who feel real who you connect to. And their world, which might be very different from yours, feels real too. The whole thing hangs together. It makes sense what they do, and say, and some of it isn't exactly what you guessed. This is all a long-winded way to say is it gives good suspension of disbelief. That's why a show like Succession works so well. The people are mediocre and foolish. Their world is vastly different from the one we live in. The people are colorful and interesting, educated, but also frail, simple and kind of disgusting, and really stupid at times. But you keep coming back for more because you feel it. #
I donât care who Biden picks for VP as long as it isnât a Republican.#
Sports teams are a lot like nursing homes for concentrating and distributing the virus. This restart of everything is ridiculous. We're damaging ourselves in obvious ways that we're in denial about. A pandemic is nothing to fool around with. We need to start over with a new lockdown, only this time do it right. #Some of us walk around the world in white, male privileged bodies, yet we still, at our core, don't believe we deserve real friendship. #
I wonder sometimes if people read their own Twitter replies and think how theyâd feel if someone talked to them that way. If you must reply, try a little humility, as in âimho.â Better to RT with a comment so everyone can feel your attitude.#
On this day in 2016 -- Don't feed the Trump. By now most people have figured out Trump's schtick, but back then it was new and to many, entertaining. #
I'm going to try to find some good news to put here tomorrow. #
Living in the country, part 3071. Some animal, apparently, has made a nest in the air conditioning system of my car. This includes a fair amount of animal urine. So when I drove into town today, about 1/2 hour in each direction, I was inundated in the smell. Ugh. #
I'm reading John Barry's book about the 1918 pandemic. I'm up to the part where they're deciding in Philadelphia whether to hold the war bonds parade. Seems like where we're at now with MLB. At least then the US was at war, not sure what the excuse is today. Basically we're the most spoiled country, not serious, can't think, reason, don't listen, take pride in pissing other people off (the Fox watchers) and couldn't save our own lives if all it took was wearing a mask and staying home for a few months, all of us at the same time.#We need an online service, like a Gofundme or Kickstarter, that makes it easy to set up a PAC. There should be thousands of PACs. #
BTW, The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis, completely predicted the government's handling of the pandemic. I read it a couple of summers ago, but never imagined we'd see the chaos so soon.#Premise: We are not limited by what the president will or won't do. Suppose we felt that the one thing we need more than anything is to have Fauci on national TV every night to tell us what's new with Covid. If we really wanted that, could we make it happen?#
I listened to the first episode of the Joe Trippi podcast yesterday. I met Joe when he was running the Dean campaign in 2004. First campaign to make use of blogging, opened up politics to the people. He made an important point in the podcast, that politics is additive. Of course we want to have Republicans speak at this year's DNC in support of Joe Biden. This is one of the benefits of having Biden as the candidate. We need to re-form the political system in the US, the opposition are the people who don't follow the Constitution. Republicans who believe in the rule of law are our friends, our fellow Americans. #
This video of a Chicago car-jacking raises a couple of questions. 1. How did the bike riders rent the Divvy bikes without giving up their identities, or did they hijack the bikes too? 2. What if the victim had locked his doors, would they have been able to get in the car? Also he had the power to move, why didn't he? Would you have? What if it meant injuring or killing the car-jackers? How would the web have responded if he had done that? Would you have? If the roles were changed, would you feel differently? If the driver was black, and the hijackers cops, for example.#MLB should shut down, as should the NBA and NFL. Of all the leagues, the NBA has the most realistic approach to keeping the virus out of the game, but even that approach won't work. The disease is highly communicable. The tests are imperfect enough that the virus can get into the bubble, as it did with the Florida Marlins. The NFL, the craziest of the leagues, even wants to allow fans to attend their games. Major commercial sporting events are over until the virus is done. Same with schools, office buildings, mass transit, airlines, the White House.#
Wouldn't it be great if DHS and president put the same energy into into helping the American people defeat the virus as they do to try to start a second Civil War? It also ironically might help him get re-elected.#
I love reading local real estate ads and imagining who would live in such a place, who did live there, what kind of life I would live if I lived there. Here are two local properties. One has four cottages. You could start your own art colony for a mere $825K. This listing gave NakedJen all kinds of ideas. One cottage for dog lovers, one for beets, one for the Deadheads and one for a year-round NakedJen Film Festival. Another listing, $650K, is land only, 6 acres, but it's pretty amazing land. It gives you an idea why artists like to relocate to the mountains on the west side of the Hudson Valley. Definitely a site to dream about. #I'm having a debate with myself. Should we encourage or discourage people wearing swastika masks? On one hand, it's a disgusting symbol of race hate. They tried to destroy my people, forced my family to emigrate to the US (not a bad thing btw). We fought WWII against the swastika people. We won. On the other hand, swastika masks probably do as a good job as any other mask, so if that's what they want to wear, maybe we should say okay that's fine, wear your swastika. We may think they're miscreants, desperate for attention, trolls of the first order, but at least they're not spreading the virus. Maybe we should even give them swastika masks??#
If the future is an uncontrolled virus, and/or a raging climate crisis, will there be isolated self-sufficient communities on mountain tops, like Winterfell, that allow no ingress or egress? Will it be like Battlestar Galactica, with no networking to keep the electronic viruses out? What will be the ideal vacation? Will we envy people with large families, or no families? We already know that porn will be people talking without masks in public places. #
Every evening I wonder how I will come up with new stuff for the blog the next day. I wonder if this is it, this is the end, I'm fresh out of ideas. But then morning comes, and a big glass of iced coffee, and lots of ideas ready to write. It seems I'm working on tomorrow's posts three or four days in advance, without even being aware of it. #
- I just finished season 6 of Orange is the New Black. It was good, even great at times, until the last couple of episodes when they apparently ran out of story. Then they did the thing so many shows do. They had each of the characters give long speeches about how they feel about things that you already know about. These are very good actors, and they do what they're told, so it's totally ridiculous. They make up for the ridiculousness by playing seriously dramatic music that makes no sense given the total mediocrity of the story and script. Then they copy techniques of famous movies and great TV series, overlaid on bullshit. I got to the point where I dragged the cursor to the right to fast forward. #
- The final episode does have one surprise in the last set of scenes that's worth stopping for and savoring. But otherwise why can't they just cut down a 13-show season to 11 so they can avoid the mess.#
- I will watch the last season, just to get it off my to-do list.#
- Also the new version of BingeWorthy is coming along nicely. I solved the main problem, anyone can submit programs, without a need for approval. I came up with a away of avoiding spam.#
If you've been asleep your whole life, the last thing you want to do is wake up. I think there's a lot of that in our world right now. #
Once Trump was acquitted in impeachment that meant the Constitution was no longer in force in re this president at least.#
- Here's a picture of Pete Alonso in the bottom of the 8th in today's Mets game. Note the fake fans behind the backstop. Cute, but why not make it a green screen so they can play with video effects. #
- Unless the "fans" are there to help the pitcher feel comfortable?#
- I have an app called Server Monitor that does something simple but important. It pings each of the apps I have running once a minute to see if they're still alive. If not, SM sends me an email. I bet everyone who writes server apps has this kind of utility. #
- I'd like something like this for my friends. A ping goes out to each, if someone doesn't respond, I get an email. #
- In the age of The Trump Plague, I worry about my friends. I figure it's just a matter of time...#
As a Mets fan I don't hate the Yankees because they're our rivals (they aren't). I hate them because they're the Yankees.#
You know the saying "locks are for honest people" -- I think this is also true of the Constitution. If enough people decide that they don't respect the rules, then the rules don't hold.#
If they built a wall between Russia and the US, it would go through Donald Trump.#
Twitter subscriptions. Fine with me. I bought $25K of Twitter stock a few years ago. I don't mind putting money behind my use of Twitter. What would I pay for? No character limit. Titles, simple styling, links. Basic blogging features. It can carry multi-megabyte images and videos as payloads. A blog post is no big deal. Add a More link. People still don't click links in Twitter. That's why threads are so popular. That's why image posts are popular. Pave the cowpath and let's go unlimited-length. #Krugman gets in the middle of a long-term conversation I've been having with Paolo. America has to look up to Italy. We have huge advantages, but have terrible leadership, that's why we're failing to deal with the virus. Italy is back online, America is still crashing.#
During the Vietnam war, protestors had a slogan, Bring The War Home. Except for war casualties, the country didn't feel any pain from the war. That was optimized in subsequent wars, in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan. No draft. Tax cuts. What's new, what's so shocking to Americans, is that the same chaos we brought to other countries is now coming home. Karma is a bitch. We deserve this. Now let's hope we can overcome it. We're like the people who work at Facebook today. We know we're doing shitty stuff, but not all of us are bad. Too bad. We all pay the price for our acquiescence. #
Earlier, Jillian York on Twitter said she is tired of having her ideas stolen. Rebecca MacKinnon says that's the way it is. I agreed, having had many ideas used, which is okay but sometimes against itself. Example: the unconference. Our conception of it, the original, was usurped by a format that we were opposing. This shit happens. I hit a particularly ugly form of this later, when I was trying to find a reference to Bring The War Home, as a Vietnam War protest slogan. It's been usurped by the White Power movement. Oy. See how ideas flip. Some ideas stick, others get absorbed, and others are perverted. #
Do you wear a mask with a slogan or image? If so, what do you wear? Include a picture if you can. ;-) What's the best mask you've seen? Maybe the national mask should have an American flag on one side and #BLM on the other. Redefine unity as including all Americans. And let's win this together. Love America. All of America.#
American exceptionalism was our preexisting condition. Very well-put. We were accustomed to bringing chaos to foreign lands, but the combination of Covid and Trump brought the war home. We thought we were immune. Above it all. Exceptional. Why else would we have the chutzpah to elect a gross and obvious incompetent as president. We're lucky it was just Covid-19 and not Eboloa, we'd all be dead by now if that happened during Trump. #Good morning sports fans! The so-called baseball season starts today with a game in DC between the Nationals and the Yankees. Dr Fauci throws out the first pitch. #
I love the look on Randy Rainbow's face when the subject turns to Ivanka. He finds some redeeming qualities in the other women in TrumpWorld, but definitely not Ivanka. #
Good progress on the new BingeWorthy. The big difference in this version is that you can submit programs, no need to go through me. How it works. Find the page for the show on Metacritic. Choose the Submit a program command from the Main menu. Enter the URL of the page. The server reads the file on Metacritic, extracts the Facebook and Twitter metadata from the page, using the title in our database. I just want to be sure it's a real program, keep out the spam. I have some ideas for new UI's. But the main goal, as before, is to learn about worthwhile streaming programs. #
Trump is such a fool. Trying to invent a domestic enemy, but we already have one, killing 1000 of us every day. And itâs his job to fight the virus. Instead he attacks moms and blames Black people.#On Maddow last night, a virologist interviewed. The biggest mistake the US made is not going into total lockdown. We should still do it. Travel should be stopped until the rest of the country catches up with NY metro area. We will get re-infected if they don't.#
12/28/05: "One way to do something, no matter how flawed that way is, is better than two, no matter how much better the second way is."#
One of the best lines in any movie ever. "You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company." #
Before there was AOC the politician there was AOC the West Village restaurant. I used to live a block away, so I'd go there all the time. A good place to meet for breakfast. I wonder if they're still open with the pandemic.#
Many writers never get to the point.#
- A situation that comes up a lot in my JavaScript code: #
- As you type it you think geez there's got to be a better way, and in the new version of JavaScript, there is. #
- Since usually the only thing you're going to do is pass it off to a subroutine to save it in a file or database, you could do it this way:#
- saveShow ({id, title, network});#
- In the old more cumbersome notation you probably wouldn't do this, but now I find I do, esp if there is only one property to initialize. #
- I guess the bottom line is I don't mind two ways to do something if the new way is a simplified version of the old way. #
Americans are wearing masks and wondering when Trump will show up for work, or resign and get out of the way.#
We now know what happens if Trump screws with the election. He's going to have to answer to the moms.#
Portland could send a handful of plain clothes cops to DC to arrest the temporary acting secretary of Homeland Security. Grab him off the street, into an unmarked car with DC plates, fly him back to Portland, lock him up, and put him on trial for kidnapping. He's a nice looking guy, he'd probably look great in orange. đ„#Ken Smith nails it. Depressed people think too linearly. Trump shot his wad, for nothing -- motivated his opposition, which was already pretty motivated. Did he see the protests just a few weeks ago. #