/reader

 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.

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.

• XML-RPC, in particular, is very much in the Unix spirit. It's deliberately minimalist but nevertheless quite powerful, offering a way for the vast majority of RPC applications that can get by on passing around boolean/integer/float/string datatypes to do their thing in a way that is lightweight and easy to to understand and monitor. This simple type ontology acts as a valuable check on interface complexity.

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.

 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.

Also talked about twitter-like systems, and idea borrowed from algol-like and lisp-like.

What made Unix so great, and how Eric Raymond XML-RPC was very much like Unix, and I said oh yeah, and so is RSS and the rest.

They 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 when the kids grew up they'd have good feelings about Apple computers, 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.

This podcast is also an illustration 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. Those are the hardest projects, I'm doing one of those right now, but in the end it's worth it, because you end up with a new product, sometimes.

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.

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.

 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.

 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.

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.