Somehow it's up to the Harris campaign to get the Trumps to have a normal American presidential campaign, not a prelude to a second attempted coup, which is what the Trumps are doing. I can see the op-ed they run in September saying that it's Harris's fault that the Trumps are fascist.
I reinstated my subscription because I need to actually read their words, not because they cover news, but because they are news. The news is that the fourth estate in the US is gone. They have lost their minds. They aren't even trying. Their op-eds don't reflect facts, such as Trump will never be a serious candidate in the sense that the NYT thinks a candidate should be serious. The Democrats still will. But there's no need as far as I'm concerned, for a legitimate candidate to respond to their taunts.
They completely lost many of us in their extended campaign to force Biden to step aside. I knew they wouldn't stop there, because abusers never stop when you give in to them. They are the tragedy of America now, even more than Trump. We must replace them. The real question is who's going to step up to help restore journalism to our country.
Thanks for listening.
PS: I am not pointing to their piece out of respect for people who have cancelled their subscriptions.
I lost my iPhone a few days ago. I think all the data is safe. First time I ever lost a phone. I ordered a new iPhone 15 Pro with 256GB, it will arrive on Monday hopefully.
In the meantime I've needed to use my Android phone to record voice memos. Google's product is called Recorder. It's just what I wanted.
It has a website, so you don't have to export your recording to get it where you need it to be, and it automatically does a transcript. There's an editor on the website, which again is exactly where I want it.
A 2-minute voice memo/podcast I recorded with the app.
BTW, I think the files are smaller?
Here's a screen shot.
# Fri, 26 Jul 2024 13:46:07 GMT ## Unix-like things -I sent a tweet to Eric Raymond today, lightly edited here, following up on a thread that started in 2001.
What Raymond said in 2001.
It's very true, my design goal for my whole 50+ year career has been to factor my code so well so it was as clean as Unix is, from top to bottom
The virtue of relentless factoring is you can build higher if each layer of the stack lets through the functionality that's needed, and no more. Ideally there should be one way of doing something. and it should work pretty well.
I realized that the web, RSS and podcasting are also a Unix-like things.
Because they can be made to do anything, but are simple, not a lot to understand.
But -- there's been this huge proliferation of languages and frameworks, and incredibly complex and underspecified formats.
Meanwhile core functions like storage combined with identity for end users, has not been implemented, because of course if the users had their own networked data independent of any platform vendor there would be no lockin. that's 2024 version of the cathedral, to follow your analogy.
Anyway, seeing you here made me think of this, I've wanted to say this to you for a long to you and now I have. ;-)
PS: The 2001 email from Eric Raymond.
# Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:30:40 GMT ##
Biden's speech might turn out to be a Gettysburg type speech. I hope it does.
# Thu, 25 Jul 2024 20:04:42 GMT
## We're at a huge fork in the road. One fork -- goodbye USA, the other way, we're stronger than ever. We're in a good spot imho because Trump's tank is empty. He's old, tired, fat, addled, fetid, rotten. You have to work really hard not to see that. If it works, Biden will have stabilized the country, and Harris will erect the guardrails that make sure no one follows in Trump's path, and the Supreme Court gets back into its proper place. They've been overthrowing our society, economy and political system. That all has to be reversed before it does too much damage, and prevented in the future. I want to know why the court can't be expanded, and if Harris will put that in her platform.
# Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:05:17 GMT
## I almost used enshitification in a post yesterday.
# Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:03:04 GMT
## It's weird that JD Vance goes out with the insults before most people have any idea who he is. Instead of childless cat ladies sticking to Kamala, it's sticking to him, which I'm pretty sure wasn't his intent.
# Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:02:45 GMT
## Pretty remarkable how abusive the bots on Twitter have become. Makes discourse there seem pretty silly. Might as well turn it into a one-way medium, for all practical purposes that's what it is.
# Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:16:05 GMT
## I want a Masto-clone that does not do replies. You can't insert anything under my idea, but you can if you like include my idea, as a link, in yours. This model works. I think by now we know the other way does not work. BTW I use the term Masto-clone interchangeably with Twitter-like. Let's spread the love around.
# Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:23:11 GMT
## Software-wise I realized recently that everything that takes me away from creating really nice writing and publishing tools is a waste. I have to get off track because there are huge holes in the web as a runtime platform. And every year it gets worse as new incompatible languages are added, new incompatible stacks built. As a result we have to re-do everything all the time, and never get a chance to create new user experience. The market fragments, which is exactly what the tech companies want. It keeps their products from becoming commodities. And like it or not, the politicians and corporations don't want us writing too much, they just want us working, donating to their campaigns, paying taxes, buying their crap, and not getting all agitated about things they don't care about.
# Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:18:35 GMT
## Optimisim
- 
I am optimistic that Trump is headed for the graveyard of history, shortly.
First time I've felt like this in a long time.
When (if) that happens, we can use Cory Doctorow's excellent concept enshitification to describe what he did to the American political system.
He also stress tested it, and we would be the greatest fools imaginable if we didn't add some seriously enforceable guardrails to prevent this kind of attack happening in the future.
Might work out well to have a lawyer in the White House.
# Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:12:17 GMT ## JD Crank goes to Mardi Gras -JD goes as a childless cat lady in the Cretins of Trumpland krewe.
How Harry McCracken discovered that ChatGPT is a deeply and broadly knowledgable, infinitely patient, always available, inexpensive, programming partner. I've been using it that way for a year, and it has enabled me to take on much more ambitious and complete projects. It could evolve into something much more powerful, but where it is now is already amazing. The criticisms for ChatGPT have mostly missed the point of what it's useful for.
# Tue, 23 Jul 2024 13:16:31 GMT
## Show notes for today's Scripting podcast.
# Tue, 23 Jul 2024 12:26:50 GMT
## I was able to follow kamalhq on twitter. This report says that Musk is rate-limiting followers on that account. Of course we warned what could happen if a Republican bought twitter, but I didn't honestly contemplate that a fascist would. These days our greatest fears aren't scary enough. People laugh that Musk paid too much for twitter, but if the US ends up as an autocracy, the oligarch that owns the entire news distribution system for the world will probably have the last laugh. BTW, if you want to know why we're so thrilled to have Harris as the candidate, even though we didn't want Joe to give in, it's because no informed and sane person wants to live in a new Trump term. We tried that if you recall. The hope you hear now is much greater than the hope we had when Obama was selling that (though hope was a good word for it). Today it's the hope that we won't be deported or worse.
# Tue, 23 Jul 2024 13:33:02 GMT
## All the reporters know the Repubs refused to fund border stuff so they could use it to tag the Dems in the election. So the first thing the Repubs do is tag VP Harris with the border. The reporter asks a Dem what they have to say about that. But the reporter knows what the Repubs did. So why do they even ask the freaking question? They just play the script the Repubs wrote for them. They are so savvy, but we heard all that too, so we know how corrupt they are. They don't care if we know.
# Tue, 23 Jul 2024 12:18:58 GMT
## I want future President Harris to stay happy no matter what the bastards do or say. We should have a crisis line for her to call to get some quick love. 1-800-LUV-KAMALA.
# Tue, 23 Jul 2024 13:01:17 GMT
## Podcast starts with linkblogging
- A 20-minute morning coffee notes rambler podcast, started with a narration of how we do linkblogging these days, mostly by hand, and how Bluesky is being hurt by not having a large-enough character limit. Another plea for textcasting, some standards for what we put on the wire over the social web.
Also talked about twitter-like systems, and idea borrowed from algol-like and lisp-like.
I talk about what made Unix so great.
Eric Raymond once told me that XML-RPC was very much like Unix, and I said oh yeah, and so is RSS and the rest. Huge compliment because the simplicity of Unix is what I strive for, put huge time into.
Journos once said Apple is dead, but that was ridiculous because they had built a product that was just starting to grow and they had planted the seeds of huge growth in the 80s when they focused on selling to education, which made sure that kids when they grew up would have good feelings about Apple, and it totally worked. When the reporters were calling them dead, they were actually just about to boom in a whole new way, on the web, which the Mac was perfect for, given the built in simple networking. And then boom again when Jobs came back. And again with the iPod and then again with the iPhone. See how reporters miss the big picture. We shouldn't give them so much power, they pretend they know, but they are usually pretty clueless.
This podcast is also a demo of how my mind works. I flit around all over the place but also have learned over the years that if I want to get anything done I have to focus on one thing for at least a few hours every day, and string those days together.
I want to document this stuff for the benefit of young programmers. I learned a lot from reading the code of Unix, I always want to pay that back, the message is to strive for simplicity, keep technical debt to a minimum, and factor, factor and factor again to reduce technical debt. Those are the hardest projects, I'm doing one of those right now, but in the end it's worth it, because with simplicity you get to build higher.
# Mon, 22 Jul 2024 12:46:22 GMT ## Show notes for 2004 pre-DNC podcast, part of the Podcast0 series. # Mon, 22 Jul 2024 14:12:50 GMT ## For the DNC in 2004, we had a site called Convention Bloggers. It was a river of news feed reader, clearly done with Frontier, of blogs run by people who were at the convention. # Mon, 22 Jul 2024 12:28:21 GMT ## I'm doing something new. Trying to initiate topics on the social web. We almost totally respond to external stuff, I wonder how different it would be if we engaged on a more individual level. I've been doing this for a while, but only now am able to explain it. # Mon, 22 Jul 2024 12:58:43 GMT ## Looking forward to the NYT deeply analyzing Trump‘s 78 year old mind and body and his Hannibal Lecter stories. # Mon, 22 Jul 2024 16:56:52 GMT ## I'm from Queens too -I grew up in the same part of Queens as Trump, about ten years after he did. His family was in Jamaica, mine in Flushing. Here's a map that shows you where the two houses are. 4.0 miles apart if you take Utopia Parkway. A great name for a street, but it's not a parkway and it's nice but definitely not a utopia.
People who aren't from huge cities like New York don't know that Trump what our losers look like. They probably have their own loser types. I think that's where 99% of the confusion is. They really don't believe he's so bad. Don't hold that against them, that's nowhere near as bad as knowing what he is and being okay with that.
He's a mean bully type. The name-calling is a big clue. Distracts from his weaknesses, which are very obvious. I don't believe in body shaming, because I care about other people's feelings. If I criticize his appearance it might reflect poorly on nice people who have his body type who may not be mean bully losers like Trump.
He's also a really good comedian if you don't think he wants to have the power to kill millions of people and control many more people. Last time he was our president just through incompetence, without trying, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the Covid disaster. He also wanted the army shoot protestors, that's the mean part of our former president. Luckily the people who worked for him told him to fuck off. They saved us from going into a very deep hole that would have been hard to escape from.
I watched the coverage of the aftermath of the assassination attempt, and listened to the Americans they interviewed, not the actors they put behind him on stage, to make him look like a badass I guess, these were just normal people who mostly like Trump, but seem pretty likeable themselves. The one thing you heard over and over was how If you don't like a candidate vote against them don't shoot them. That's American and it's not fascist at all. I don't think they know that he wants to make big changes in how our politics work. People think if he's bad they can just vote him out next time. He tells them this will be the last election if he wins, he actually says that, but somehow it doesn't seem to register.
Of course the journalists are distorting who Trump supporters are. Trump is deplorable if you take him at his word. Some of Trump's followers are deplorable too, like the ones who rioted at our Capitol and January 6 and the people who are lined up to work in his next administration if he wins. They are awful people who want to control all of us. They're already doing it via the Supreme Court. It's going to get a lot worse if we go the wrong way. We shouldn't accept that we're horribly divided. The powerful media people want us to be divided, I don't know why and I don't care, I just know they do, based on their actions.
Anyway I know we're at a high moment, we're excited, and I'm going to enjoy the feeling. We all seem to be pulling the same way, at least on "our side" but I hold out hope that being an American still means something, that we can be friends, and fellow countrymen, and work together. I think that's still our greatest challange and our greatest opportunity. Yeah I am woke, that means I care about all of us. I think most of us do no matter who you vote for.
# Mon, 22 Jul 2024 21:45:39 GMT ## Thank you billionaires -
BTW, there is a totally legit and legal way to deal with the issue people are grappling with, w/o any fancy new extra-legal ways of nominating a president that resolves it in a minute, if the Cabinet goes along with the idea that the current president isn't able to do the job, and if being re-elected is a legitimate part of doing the job.
Pretty sure most people don't get that being president is a job, not a role someone plays in a TV sitcom.
Great wealth is poison, that's what's playing out in the NYT-orchestrated overthrow of the American government. They're driving us into the arms of the Nazis. Who knows why, or even if there is a reason, other than their drive to find meaning in their great wealth. Their problem, and ours, is that it has no meaning, no human can use the money they've accumulated. These are not human-size fortunes, playing a game of make-believe, what if we really were as smart as we think our money says we are. Well you ain't that smart.
# Sun, 21 Jul 2024 12:50:22 GMT ## NYT just stop podcast -
A two-minute podcast where I dictate an op-ed the NYT should run in its own name, apologizing for trying to take over the US government, and promising to return to being a news organization.
I am so fed up with it. Today they ran an op-ed written by Aaron Sorkin giving advice to Democrats based on his experience writing scripts for a fictional White House television show in the late 90s and early 00s.
Yeah the NYT has lost its way. I hope some people down there think they're way out on a limb and it's time to get back to what they do. They are not qualified or entitled to do what they are doing.
# Sun, 21 Jul 2024 02:06:10 GMT ## I trust that President Biden will do what's best for the country. # Sun, 21 Jul 2024 02:05:51 GMT ## Pete Buttigieg should be the Democrats' official blogger. Every day a new insight into what makes people do what they do and why the Dems have all the right ideas. He's a perfect spokesperson in that role. A daily Pete. He should do it. # Sat, 20 Jul 2024 13:07:49 GMT ## Like it or not, Twitter is still the social web of record. This is something we need to fix. It's going to take a long time, but it has to start. # Sat, 20 Jul 2024 13:01:29 GMT ## Isn't it surprising, with old age such an important topic, that we aren't learning more about it? I'm there now, myself -- immersed in it, can't escape it. I guess I didn't want to know about it until I had to. It's a real perspective-shift. # Sun, 21 Jul 2024 02:10:06 GMT ## Why ChatGPT is simply better -One great use for ChatGPT, simple recipes.
If you try looking for a recipe on Google they take forever to get to the point, and pop up all kinds of offers when all you wanted was a checklist of ingredients and steps.
For example, how to make hard-boiled eggs.
Try doing the same thing on Google to see what I mean.
# Sat, 20 Jul 2024 12:41:09 GMT ## Dreaming of the super-Democrat -Some coffee notes for a Saturday morning.
A 25-minute ramble with the themes of the Dreaming piece I wrote earlier today.
Spoiler alert: I reveal the ending of the movie Casablanca.
Respecting yourself means sticking to problems we can and need to solve, and work together.
We can't make anything to happen until we start listening to and working with each other.
There is no perfect super-Democrat. Our candidate is Joe Biden. Any real candidate is going to suck.
It's like We Make Shitty Software, all candidates suck. But we do a great job.
The Democratic song this year, and always, should be With a little help from my friends.
Read George Lakoff, a great linguist who figured out how American politics work.
Check out Elizabeth Spiers piece about how it's time to get over the West Wing ideal. Martin Sheen never was and never will be president.
And remember your vote is a chess move, not a love letter.
# Fri, 19 Jul 2024 20:10:20 GMT ##
An eye-opening segment on Brian Lehrer's show today. The first half is an interview with Hakeem Jeffries, you can skip that part, pretty standard stuff. It gets interesting at 17:50 when they take calls from listeners. A lot of different points of view from people of all ages, they're incredibly passionate, well thought-out, coherent. This is way better than the punditry you hear on news. The real crime here is that the insiders of the Democratic Party are taking control, after they were manipulated by the press. A total insider's route-around of the democratic process, it's just as bad imho as what the Repubs are planning around Election Day. The press did the same thing to NY governor Andrew Cuomo, who was elected by the people, and forced out without any legal process, and certainly not a vote. That experience argues in favor of when you're in doubt, do the thing the voters said to do. Anything else is very very questionable. Why are you taking control? Where are you authorized to do that? I think perhaps some of the Dems forget how huge an issue this was in the 2016 process.
# Fri, 19 Jul 2024 20:44:12 GMT
## Historically it's unjustifiable. The NYT et al are grievously wrong, and that should be reflected on their op-ed pages. We've been here before, this is as much a hack as Hillary's Emails. Maybe you can't see it now, but win or lose, people are going to look at this period when we all lost our minds.
# Fri, 19 Jul 2024 20:43:15 GMT
## I posted the above piece around the social web, I like the way it looks on Threads the best.
# Fri, 19 Jul 2024 13:09:45 GMT
## Matt says some interesting new stuff is coming from Automattic now that WordPress 6.6 is out. Something for writers? Perhaps something that moves WordPress into a space adjacent to twitter-like systems? They just added support for Threads to WordPress, so now you can crosspost from a blog to a thread. Haven't tried it yet. They also have a new identity system built around Gravatar, announced in early June. It'll be interesting to see what they come out with. I wonder if there is a developer ecosystem building on this, and if they have an evangelism program. I have my own vision of how these things should work.
# Fri, 19 Jul 2024 13:28:57 GMT
## Now that Elon Musk is giving so generously, dollars and flow, to the fascists, he's encouraging more of us to use Zuckerberg's twitter-like system, aka Threads. But Zuck isn't making it go down easy. There's a piece in Bloomberg (paywall) that says Trump is badass but isn't supporting either candidate. What could possibly go wrong?
# Fri, 19 Jul 2024 20:52:26 GMT
## Wordle Kitty partied hearty
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