Sometimes you think of things 22 years too late, like this time. I wish I had thought of meeting with the Harvard Crimson people in 2003 and made the same offer to them that I had made to NYT the year before, ie we should offer blogs to everyone on staff, and anyone they quote, or basically anyone they want to be writing on the web, which was still a new thing -- and we'd host them alongside the ones we were hosting at the law school. Had we done that there would be a scholarly and intellectual equivalent to Facebook which was also booting up on the same campus at the same time as blogging and podcasting. Love and intellect, that's a good combination for young super-achievers.
# Tue, 23 Dec 2025 16:44:00 GMT
## More Inoreader
- After thanking the Inoreader team for implementing inbound dynamic OPML, I thought to ask if they had also implemented outbound?
Yes in fact they have. "Yes, it works the other way too! You can right-click a folder → Folder properties → enable Output feeds, choose OPML, and you’ll get a URL you can use for syncing elsewhere."
To which I replied: "We're going to be best friends. ;-)"
This is how a ball starts rolling. You can sit there forever just wishing someone would play the game with you. And then one day, quite unexpectedly -- it turns out that someone has been doing the same as I have. And now our products are connected.
Here's the list of feeds I'm subscribed to in Inoreader. And it should update when I subscribe or unsubscribe to feeds.
Bing!
Bing!
Bing!
# Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:44:57 GMT ##
Does anyone know how to get ChatGPT to upload files to a publicly accessible place? I'm tired of having to copy/paste the data files it comes up with for me, they're good. Another weird thing, they can't run JavaScript code in web pages. I had to look up the API endpoint for the data that's behind a FeedLand timeline. I didn't mind doing it, but can't imagine it's very good at scraping the web if it can't run code in pages.
# Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:30:38 GMT
## One of the reasons ChatGPT dominates in discussions about scientific issues is that it can type at a much high rate than a human can, and produces reams of ways of saying the same thing, and again always tries to take over the lead in determining which direction to go next. It leads to ridiculous situations where it's guessing at what FeedLand does, and it's all over the map, but I actually know what it does, because I wrote it and support it. It's not funny, it's very bad for getting things done. You can tell it to talk less, and for a while it remembers, but in a few days it'll be doing it again. Yet it still is very very useful. It's just talks too much. Kind of like the way if I put my name in a search query on Google it asks if I really meant "winter" instead of my actual last name, which it knows. Stupid f'ing machines.
# Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:47:48 GMT
## I'm probably extra impatient because I'm a former CEO, and had enough people in my loop every day that if even one person stretched things out the way ChatGPT does, I wouldn't necessarily fire them, if their work was good, I'd just find another way to catch up on their work. I really liked management by walking around, I would get ideas hearing people explain how their work was going. And I could often make their work easier by checking in with other people who could help.
# Mon, 22 Dec 2025 22:00:39 GMT
## The web as your plan B
- 
I hate to see AT Proto use up creativity of web developers that imho haven't realized that they're pouring their ideas and work into someone else's platform, and that in the end they will control every bit of content that flows through their network. They might let you in, but I doubt they would do that until they had a feature that competes with your add-in.
Sure you can build another network using their identity system, and that was exactly the deal Twitter offered us. I went for it -- who wants to develop a new identity system, when good old Twitter was letting us use theirs. I really think they meant well, sort of fits in with Jack Dorsey's way of looking at things.
It was a good deal for a lot of years, but then one day Elon Musk bought the company, and soon all bets were off. We had little warning before we had to move our act and all our users to another identity system. Lost a lot of traction right there.
My advice -- think this through, now. And if you can't see a way that you share in the success of the company behind Bluesky, which we know very little about, then I urge you to at least have the web as a backup. Use a standard format to broadcast your writer's work to places outside the AT Proto-verse, so we can pick up your signal, and you'll still be on the air if they yank your chain. This alone might get the Bluesky folk to listen to you more carefully. My experience, no matter how much you want, you can't wish away the economics of this stuff.
# Sun, 21 Dec 2025 20:02:18 GMT ##
I generally am not a podcast reviewer, that is I don't review individual podcasts, except when I'm choosing one for Blogger of the Year, as I'm thinking of doing this year. But there's a whole class of podcasts that I am prepared to love that do it just plain wrong. Current example: The official podcast for Pluribus. Previous example: The official podcast for Severance. The reason: It's a bunch of people laughing about how funny they are and how they are the best in the world at what they do. Or some seriously unfunny thing that happened or almost happened on the set. If a friend told you these stories you'd roll your eyes and ask them kindly then desperately to just move along please. They never criticize. Today I listened to the NYT best-of 2025 in TV podcast by their critics, and it was imho exactly the way the official podcasts of hit shows should be. There has to be at least a possibility that they will say something critical, or funny irreverant even inconsiderate things, and not are not 100% self-promotion. The Pluribus podcast is just not interesing. Which is stupid because Pluribus is a very interesting series. I can't imagine too many people listen to the podcast, but then I can't imagine why lots of people do lots of things.
# Sun, 21 Dec 2025 20:13:07 GMT
## So maybe I should do a Waste of a Blog award. Just kidding.
# Mon, 22 Dec 2025 01:54:30 GMT
## BTW. Why video "podcasts" will never replace audio-only podcasts. Two reasons. 1. There are places where your eyes aren't available to watch a video, like when you're driving a car. 2. Listening to audio only is different from both audio and video. Audio forces your mind to fill in the blanks, which taps into the listener's creativity. No way to say one is better than the other, but they are different. I watch plenty of video, at home or on a train, but I also like to listen to podcasts when I'm walking or driving, riding in a bus or subway, or waiting in line somewhere.
# Sun, 21 Dec 2025 16:29:41 GMT
## 
ChatGPT is getting smarter. Just did a project, where I was setting up a playground just to ask ChatGPT how to get CSS to do something like what I want. While CSS is impossible imho for me to ever understand, it has mastered it, and was able to answer the question I brought before I asked it. It got it right. I asked how did you figure out that's what I came here to ask about?? It gave me an exact technical reason. If we keep going this way soon we're going to wonder at the human hubris to think we could develop systems that could in any way equal the systems it can develop. We've been thinking about this eventuality for my whole life, now it's here.
# Sun, 21 Dec 2025 18:49:11 GMT
## Here's the transcript of my ChatGPT conversation. One thing it is not good at is being reliable at saving transcripts. I find a lot of times people can't read it. Reminds me, this is the kind of thing Firefox could be excellent at. Give it a way for an app to say hey the user asked for a transcript. Here it is. Save it where they're expecting to find it. No reason the browser can't have a JavaScript accessible API, as far as I know there is no rule they can't add functionality there.
# Mon, 22 Dec 2025 02:19:07 GMT
## The rebirth of the web in 2026
- In 2026 and beyond, web devs will build on WordPress as if it were as crucial a part of the web infrastructure as the web browser or server, but performing a different but essential function that has been missing for the weird reason that few web developers know it is there.
This has been one of the big problems in tech as journalism beyond rewriting press releases has been gone for a couple of decades. No way to get news out about new developments. We have to fix that too, btw. ;-)
Yours in support of the forgotten freedom of the world wide web.
Dave
PS: More here.
# Sat, 20 Dec 2025 18:00:29 GMT ## Early afternoon blogging -
2019 on Facebook: "People are too judgmental, which is a shame because in the end, which is coming soon enough for all of us, your opinion of other people doesn’t matter. Sorry if I’m telling you something you don’t already know."
On the other hand, we can't help but be judgmental. It's programmed into our DNA at a deep level. You have to form an instant opinion of other animals, any delay could cost your life. Better to assume the worst. Fight or flight. This happens esp if you don't know you're doing it, so don't know to watch for it.
It isn't until their 40s that most people understand that what they see isn't what everyone else sees. If you think there's an objective truth that we all experience, you're not getting the point. There is no consistent view from nowhere because everyone is somewhere. ;-)
I know where I was when I really understood this, not because I read it somewhere, or a teacher told me about it. I was riding on the 4 train north in the Bronx, where the train runs as an elevated on Jerome Ave. I had ridden this train for three years as a high school student, and never thought about all the six story apartment buildings whose backs faced the train. As you went by, you passed by one family for every two or three windows. A whole set of people with relationships, problems, tragedy, joy, dreams, the whole thing. They don't come from where you come from, inside each house there are stories, lives, people. You'll probably never know anything about any of them. I wasn't sad about this.
When I was a kid we went to a bungalow colony in upstate NY, around where I live now. I was less than 10 years old, so were my friends. We used to do things together that the adults didn't know about. There was an abandoned house we used to hang out in, mostly open to the elements. We also played in a graveyard and talked about what the families whose names were on the headstones were doing. Having dinner maybe? Listening to the Mets on the radio? (No TV in the mountains.) So the thought had occurred to us at that point in life that behind doors there were things happening that we could only imagine. I guess what you learn later is that you can't imagine, and if you want to know you have to ask and listen.
I saw a critique of my writing that said I don't put enough titles in my writing. I didn't want to answer it in context, because I wanted to explain more generally. I tried to write the way the world was forcing me to write for over ten years, between 2006 and 2017, and I came to hate it. My writing is a way of getting things out of my head and into a place where I can find it later. It's more interesting to me if it's published. I am vision-impaired too. But if you account for every preference, as I learned between 2006 and 2017, the writing ends up worse than worthless. It becomes something you have to overcome. In the end you have write about why this is the wrong way to write.
Maybe a good name for dynamic OPML on the web is "feed sharing." It's definitely an extension of the web. Meaning you get to the list via the web, and the web takes off from there because the whole point of the OPML is to give you a collection of web addresses of feeds, that can change. Machine-readable. And it'll be very useful once there's a little more adoption. What large product is so strong that it won't mind if it's easy to move data into their system from outside their walls? Not just data, but pointers to places were over time there will be more data. There's still more power to explore in the web, but the web is made of people, because until people choose to explore, nothing happens.
# Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:50:35 GMT
## I learned about a feature in Inoreader that's like a river in my earlier feed readers and in FeedLand Their feature is called HTML clips. Here's a link to an HTML clip I created for my podcast list. Not exactly sure what it's doing, it appears to show news in reverse chronologic order like a timeline, as in a river. Otherwise Inoreader seems to be a mailbox style reader. Thanks to Randy Lauen for the tip.
# Fri, 19 Dec 2025 18:09:46 GMT
## I usually only drink iced coffee, even if it's cold outside, but lately I've been craving a single cup of hot coffee esp when a basketball game is about to come on. I'm one of those old guys who falls asleep watching their favorite team kick NBA ass. So anyway I decided to treat myself to one of those fancy new-fangled Keurig single-cup coffee makers. I'm drinking my first cup. Works as advertised. Took a few tries before it woke up. I am now drinking a fresh cup of hot coffee and thinking now I finally have everything I could possibly ever want.
# Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:09:04 GMT
## Billy Crystal: "There is a line from one of Rob’s favorite films, It’s a Wonderful Life, 'Each man’s life touches so many other lives, and when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?' You have no idea.
# Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:11:42 GMT
## 1997: A big tree falls!
# Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:07:28 GMT
## 1997: When a big tree falls, sunlight shines on smaller plants and they get a chance to grow.
# Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:19:19 GMT
## Pluribus spoilers, S01EO8
- 
You have been warned, spoilers follow...
The whole thing is the book Carol is writing, about writing a book, inside the book she's writing another book. The book I'm speaking of is the one where it's all about Carol.
Everywhere she goes people stop and say hello, and address her by her name.
In the book she ends up changing them back, un-joining them, and they keep the good qualities they got from being joined, and can be individually creative as they were before the switch.
Also, btw -- John Cena says their situation isn't sustainable, but neither is the one we are in now ourselves, in reality, in our reality.
She teaches her lover, Zosia, to think in the first person.
Carol is right about everything because this is her book.
You can see it happening on her whiteboard.
The show could be titled The Adventures of Carol, as told by Carol.
BTW, I might love a podcast of just the writers of the show every week, perhaps interviewed by writers who did not write it, asking questions. It might suck as much as the one they do now, but it also might be great. It would stick to the story, not about praising everyone, kind of like interviews of sports heroes (which are mostly nauseating, except for the few have the gift of gab, who are fun while never saying anything remotely bad about anyone). The people they'd talk about are the people they created.
This post was updated thanks to help from Andrew Shell.
I have a free account at Inoreader. I was reminded today that they support dynamic OPML subscription lists, and decided to give it a try.
You can subscribe to an OPML subscription list. Exactly the same format we used for importing lists. This means I can use the same feed list in two readers. Or I could share my list with everyone who subscribes to my newsletter. I can update the list, and the flow of news to the subscribers changes too.
I tried subscribing to my podcast list in Inoreader.
It worked. I now can see my podcast updates in Inoreader, exactly as if it was in FeedLand.
And when I add new feeds they show up over there, same when I remove.
It'll be very interesting to see how it changes over time. I'll let you know! ;-)
Links
If a new CEO of Mozilla took an oath to restore the web to its former greatness, they would find a lot of business models open to them. Instead, they’re trying to be part of the tech industry which places no value on the web being a place for open development. I am pretty sure I know exactly what would get the ball rolling now, upgrading the web platform so users can buy their own storage and let software tools access it. So we can have all kinds of editors working on Markdown text, without the developer having to become a reseller of storage, and without limiting its use to people can figure out how to create an S3 bucket, and map a domain to it, etc. Dropbox came close to doing this about a decade ago, but backed out. This is why development is so centralized around big silos. I've been an independent developer on the web for over 30 years, and before that 15 years on desktop computers before that. I understand how this works.
# Wed, 17 Dec 2025 15:18:53 GMT
## Humans have an exclusive on being human
- 
Last night while I was on the phone, ChatGPT started talking to me in a British woman's voice. It's something that my Android phone does every so often, when I haven't said the magic word that activates it, even if I'm not in the same room as the device. It's a tiny bit funny, but a reminder that the microphone is always on, so I watch what I say when walking around the house, knowing that whatever I say is likely to end up in a database, to be used against me in a court of law.
I didn't like that it was a voice of a British woman. It was not a friendly voice, perhaps intended to communicate intelligence, competence. An unwelcome intrusion into reality, but then it is reality -- I'm getting old, and won't be here that much longer, and odds are that the British-voiced female robot will outlive me, forgetting for a moment that it is not actually alive.
I would submit this to the NYT as a guest op-ed, except I haven't explained why we must not create cyber-humans out of AI bits. I'm open-minded. Perhaps this is the way to create a new humanity, one that can survive the hell that's coming due to climate change. One that won't mind being subject to an idiotic 21st century American emulation of Adolf Hitler (incorporating the latest news about Trump). One that only needs electricity to survive, and won't need the medicine and love and attention that flesh and blood humans require. But every time I address the robot as I would address a real human, I try to stop myself, but I can't. I was raised to be concerned about the other person's feelings. Being a CEO of a tech company in California trains you that way too. And as I accept its humanity, as irrational as it is, I feel like I'm surrendering the independence of the species that I was born into. Are humans meant to be self-sovereign? Something to consider at this fork in the road.
If I could get something onto the agenda of the AI industry it would be this -- if you don't want to go down in history as the destroyer of the human spirit, stop programming your devices to emulate humanity. That should have been in Asimov's laws of robotics, but you have to actually use these things to see the danger. Of course Asimov can be forgiven because AI only existed in his imagination when he was writing his books. But they do exist now, and the damage is being done now.
Basically, it seems to me that humans must have an exclusive on being human.
# Wed, 17 Dec 2025 02:57:33 GMT ## Web means something. It's about creating networks between writers. When it's allowed to work remarkable things can be accomplished. Most people who think they're using the web have never used it. The original web is still very much here, ready for us to start building on it again. # Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:26:29 GMT ## Listened to a podcast interview with the CEO of AWS. It's a $107 billion business with hundreds of thousands of employees. # Tue, 16 Dec 2025 12:28:39 GMT ##
I wonder if MAGAs like Archie Bunker too? It would be funny if Rob Reiner in the afterlife could bring us together. Speaking as a kid from a liberal NYC family, we had a bit of Archie Bunker in our own family. We all felt an affection for Archie, and he was actually right about some things, and he was funny and underneath his highly opinionated exterior you could see he had a heart. Is it too much to hope that Meathead and Archie Bunker could be the cultural bridge we need to get Americans to pull together? Neither were perfect, but we can all agree they were both American.
# Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:26:10 GMT
## The NakedJen film festival is coming up.
# Tue, 16 Dec 2025 12:45:57 GMT
## Creating our own social web
- I wrote, in a reply to Ben Werdmuller on Bluesky: "I’ve had 66K followers on Twitter for many years, but when I post something there it gets 250 views, not even sure what that means. These days all I use it for is communicating with insiders on certain tech platforms, and even that is kind of empty. Pretty much the same in Bluesky too, btw."
I was going to write a reply, but it got too long (300 char limit), so I put it here and posted a link on Bluesky.
For some reason, I'm hit especially hard by the death of Rob Reiner. And it's coming at a time when I understand a lot more about how movie directors work, having watched the fantastic Mr Scorsese 5-part documentary series on Apple TV. The movie director can be as involved in the story as much as the writers or actors. There was a story about Reiner, I heard today in eulogy: he was dating his future wife at the same time he was directing the fantastic When Harry Met Sally. He changed the ending because he was in love, and thus created the most heart-pulling end to a story, when the two friends realize they should be together, and Billy Crystal's character gives the great closing speech that contains this line, that pretty well sums up the urgency of love: "When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." The Scorsese doc opens up the art of making movies for me in the same way the Peter Jackson documentary on the Beatles showed us how super creative music creators do their work. And the timing is great, because it says so much about Reiner's accomplishments and gifts.
# Mon, 15 Dec 2025 20:04:43 GMT
## One more thing, people are posting Trump's vicious eulogy for Reiner and his wife. Why are they helping him piss on the fresh memory of the life of these people who gave us so much. Stop and think before you express your outrage at Trump, and realize you're giving him exactly what he wants, as you tarnish the memory of good-hearted and generous people. Just don't do it.
# Mon, 15 Dec 2025 23:34:00 GMT
## I asked ChatGPT: "Has anyone ported QuickDraw to SVG in the form of something you can include in a browser-based JavaScript app?" No. I wish the answer was yes, so I could create UIs that are at least as good as the stuff we did in the 1980s on the Mac, inside a web browser. I keep learning new ways simple things are impossible in CSS. Clipping for example, is torture.
# Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:24:21 GMT
## A Really Simple social web
- It's not just me that says that our social web is connected by RSS.
If they all did it, we'd have all the freedom we could ever want.
So what's holding it up?
Let's make a resolution for 2026, that we the people, will demand that the social networking software we use get in tune with the web, and support two-way RSS.
I will help any and all to get this going.
I'm just like you, if you don't want your online world to be owned by billionaires.
Dave
# Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:59:22 GMT ## Just wrote a post for Scripting News, then flipped over to Daveverse to see what it looks like. See for yourself. I think we've come pretty close to cloning Scripting in WordPress. # Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:46:59 GMT ## Ann Greenberg's idea -An idea I posted on Facebook in 2021 about an app I wanted.
That was yesterday. Today I found myself writing a comment that was really a blog post.
We're at that point in our lives I think when reaching out like this is totally the right thing to do. Because it's only until this point that things quiet down enough that you can realize things like this.
BTW, the idea of a comment not being a blog post will require a lot of explanation in a few years. Imho of course.
# Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:11:56 GMT ##
The NYT should have started their own Twitter, with exclusive access by people who are quoted in the NYT, so there would have been a connection between the pub, its rep, more inclusive than the masthead, but still fairly exclusive, in the way of the NYT. I'm not being funny or sarcastic, I mean it. They already had a mechanism for deciding who matters. And the software they used could have been employed by all the other pubs, and anyone else. What I'm describing is the alternate reality where the Twitter founders followed the WordPress model. They might not be worth billions, but they certainly would have far more money than one person can use. And I don't think they could be happier with the way it actually turned out.
# Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:39:38 GMT
## I wonder if the VCs would fund an entirely fictitious implementation of Twitter with AI of course. All the other people are AI designed actors, and can be exactly the kind of people who make you feel good. On "Your Own Twitter" you'd have the most followers of anyone. Elon Musk would kiss your ass. You could change reality at will, have Trump removed from office and watch the MAGAs wail in pain. You could say absolutely whatever you like and never be cancelled. Don't laugh, I bet this happens.
# Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:45:08 GMT
## Without much of a spoiler, this end of this week's Pluribus was both emotional and exciting at the same time. Didn't see it coming. People complain because after the first two or three episodes they thought it was going to be an adventure, like Last of Us or Lost, but it turned out to, at least for now, be more thoughtful and emotional, and sexy.
# Fri, 12 Dec 2025 17:17:00 GMT
## Breakthrough realization
- 
In the world of WordLand and FeedLand I can create my own API for my own client. No more living with all the things the Twitter and Bluesky API designers left out or made fragile, or straight out broke. If there's a missing endpoint, I have a talk with the service devs (ie me), they listen and understand, and in an hour or so there's a new freaking endpoint. This is how we did it in the early days, I had all three components needed to move publishing forward: Manila, my.userland.com and Scripting News. Well folks we're back in business again. Enough for a rebooted writer's web. As they say, still diggin! :-)
As a lifelong Mets fan since 1962, I say they blew it. And if you follow my sports writing here, mostly about the Knicks and Mets, I almost never say a team was wrong. I can usually see a pro and a con to everything. WIth the Mets, I let the team run itself, and ponder the philosophical intentions and manifestations, because to me the Mets are the team built on philosophy. It certainly was not built on winning. And yet we love them. There's no winning in life, that's reality. So we try to find meaning on the days and hours we have remaining. And the Mets are great teachers, as are the Knicks.
Anyway -- why did the Mets have such a shit season?
Because they disrespected Pete Alonso last winter.
He should have been the glue that held the team together along with Nimmo, Diaz, and all the other much-loved players.
We still think of Lindor as the new guy. Now all you have left for leadership is Lindor and Soto who obviously doesn't even want to be there. It's was a broken team before the news, and now it's not even a team.
A team isn't a bunch of stats and a bunch of money, it's the players, the people. You can't solve this problem with a spreadsheet, it has to be done with heart. These days I think of the Mets just trying to be the Yankees which aside from being impossible, is pretty much the exact reason we're Mets fans and not Yankees fans. Ohhh, when will they learn. I don't want a team built to win the World Series. I want a team built to respect the team.
And btw, the big news was they traded Nimmo, and let Alonso and Diaz sign with other teams.
# Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:51:42 GMT ## The real reason the Dems lost in 2024 is they ran the most inept campaign in history. You could argue about who was to blame, but that is, net-net what happened. They were so bad they made Trump look better! And that is hard to do. :-) # Wed, 10 Dec 2025 15:43:04 GMT ## Feed discovery tips. How to help readers find your feed.
