Last 24 hours

Making Films and Making Websites

 I recently listened to an episode of the Scriptnoes podcast interviewing Christopher Nolan, director of films such as The Dark Knight, Inception, and Oppenheimer.

Generally, it’s fascinating look at the creative process. More specifically, I couldn’t help but see the parallels between making websites and making films.

Coincidentally, I recently read a post from Baldur Bjarnason where he makes this observation:

Software is a creative industry with more in common with media production industries than housebuilding.

As such, a baseline intrinsically-motivated curiosity about the form is one of the most powerful assets you can have when doing your job.

You definitely hear Nolan time and again express his fascination and curiosity with the form of film making.

As someone fascinated with the form of making websites, I wanted to jot down what stuck out to me.

Screenplays Are Tools, Not Films

Here’s Nolan talking about the tension between what a film starts as (a script, i.e. words on paper) and what the film ends up as (a series of images on screen).

Everyone’s struggling against, “Okay, how do I make a film on the page?” I’m fascinated by that...I enjoy the screenplay format very much…but there are these endless conundrums. Do you portray the intentionality of the character? Do you portray a character opens a drawer looking for a corkscrew?

There’s a delicate balance the screenplay form must strike: what needs to be decided upon and communicated up front and what is left up to the interpretation of the people involved in making the film once the process starts?

The problem is you have to show the script to a lot of people who aren’t reading your screenplay as a movie. They’re reading it as a screenplay. They’re reading it for information about what character they’re playing or what costumes are going to be in the film or whatever that is. Over the years, it varied project to project, but you try to find a middle ground where you’re giving people the information they need, but you’re not violating what you consider your basic principles as a writer.

However, as much as you want the screenplay to be great and useful, moviegoers aren’t paying to read your screenplay. They’re paying to watch your film. Nolan notes how he always re-centers himself on this idea, regardless of what is written in the screenplay.

I always try to view the screenplay first and foremost as a movie that I’m watching. I’m seeing it as a series of images. I’m imagining watching it with an audience.

Interestingly, Nolan notes that the screenplay is a medium that inherently wants the editing process to be intertwined in its form. If you don’t leverage that, you’re not taking advantage of the screenplay as a tool.

[movies are] a medium that enjoys this great privilege of Shot A plus Shot B gives you Thought C...that’s what movies do. That’s what’s unique to the medium.

A script is words on paper. A film is an interpretive realization of those words as a series of images.

But it’s even more than that. Just think of what it takes for words on paper to become a film:

  • The interpretation of the meaning of those words by the actors who deliver them (through not only the words themselves, but body language and other non-verbal cues).
  • Sound, which includes music, sound effects, etc.
  • Visuals, which includes special effects, costume designers, makeup folks, etc.
  • Much, much more.

It may seem obvious, but a screenplay is not a film. It’s a tool in service of making a film.

Software Artifacts Are Tools, Not Websites

In other words, what you use to make a website is not the website itself.

The “Source of Truth”

When a movie is released in theaters, it would be silly to think of its screenplay as the “source of truth”. At that point, the finished film is the “source of truth”. Anything left in the screenplay is merely a reflection of previous intention.

So do people take the time to go back and retroactively update the screenplay to accurately reflect a finished film?

No, that would be silly. The finished film is what people pay to see and experience. It is the source of truth.

Similarly, in making websites, the only source of truth is the website people access and use. Everything else — from design system components to Figma mocks to Miro boards to research data et. al. — is merely a tool in service of the final form.

That’s not to say there’s no value in keeping things in sync. Does the on-set improvisation of an actor or director require backporting their improvisations to the screenplay? Does cutting a sequence in the editing process mean going back to the screenplay to make new edits? Only when viewed through the lens of the screenplay as a working tool in service of a group of people making a film.

Figma Mocks

The screenplay is an evolving document. A screenplay is not a film, but a tool that allows disparate groups of talented individuals to get what they need to do their job in service of making a film.

Nolan emphasizes this a few times, noting that the screenplay is not what moviegoers ultimately experience. They come to watch a film, not read a script.

As individual artisans involved in the process of making websites, it’s easy to lose sight of this fact. Often more care is poured into the deliverable of your specialized discipline, with blame for quality in the final product impersonalized — “It’s not my fault, my mocks were pixel perfect!”

Too often websites suffer from the situation where everyone is responsible for their own little part in making the website but nobody’s responsible for the experience of the person who has to use it.

Nolan: writing words on paper (screenplay) in service of making a series of images people experience (a film).

Me: designing visuals in Figma (mocks) in service of making interactive software people experience (a website).

Takeaways

  • There’s an art to the screenplay and its form, but that shouldn’t be lost on why it exists in the first place: to make a film. Same for the disciplines involved in making websites.
  • Too much care and craft can be sunk into the artifacts of our own craft while forgetting the whole they serve.
  • Artifacts made in service of the final form are not to be confused with the final form itself. People come to watch films, not read scripts. People come to use websites, not look at mocks.

Comment? Reply via: Email, Mastodon, or Twitter.


Jim Nielsen's Blog

19 Mar 2024 at 19:00

Scripting News: Monday, March 18, 2024

 

Monday, March 18, 2024

This is amazing. Some of my friends at Automattic quickly put together a toolkit for WordPress that allows it to host my blogroll. There are still some missing pieces and some CSS glitches. But this is exactly where I hoped we would be at this point.#

Read this on Threads. The thing that's great about this moment is that people are just beginning to get the possibility of not being locked into silos. They don't know how to parse my posts and screen shots, because I can do something they never thought they'd be permitted to do. Well we've got some visionary and lovable techies at Masto and Blueski who want you and I to be able to do that. And we've been building on that. And will continue to do so, Murphy-willing. #

Blogroll fix. The blogroll was grabbing the up and down-arrow and Return for keyboard navigation, one of my favorite blogroll features. Put the cursor where you want, and arrow through the list. Press Return to expand, and again to collapse. Then down-arrow and repeat. But sometimes you want to use these keys for other functions. So I changed it so you have to click the blogroll to set the focus. Its border turns blueish, and the keys work as described. Press the Tab key or click outside the blogroll to take the focus off the blogroll.#

I'm working with developers again, thank goodness. I once thought I could make server products or toolkits for people I called "poets" -- motivated writers. I have given up on that, at least for the time-being. I think a properly motivated intelligent writer could get developer-like results, I've seen it happen (Brent Simmons, Dan MacTough). They make really good developers because they understand the user perspective so well, it still lives inside them. The problem seems to be motivation, and a poet knowing that they need to be super-motivated and have the time, to get anything technical to work. If they knew what was required, my 2024 theory goes, and had studied for it, the way they studied for their degree, they could not only be successful, but they could contribute to the developer process. Analogously, we all have to learn a little cooking just to get through life, but only a few people are chefs. Julia Child, a hero of mine, believed she could teach anyone to be a good-enough cook. But I bet she was frustrated by human reality. 😄#

Now that I have ChatGPT around, my Lorem Ipsum text for testing can be slightly more interesting. #

Linkblogs work differently#

  • Linkblogs work differently in blogrolls. When I click a link it takes me to the site the blog linked to, not to the blog.#
  • So.. When you click the link in the screen shot below it takes you to a Metacritic review of the program#
  • Screen shot.#

Scripting News for email

19 Mar 2024 at 04:00

Displaying Webmentions Extension for Datenstrom Yellow

 Screenshot

A screenshot of webmentions being displayed using the webmention extension for Datenstrom Yellow

The other night I was helping my friend Mani setup webmentions on his website since he is building his website and I was hoping to build something while I was helping him. He got me thinking, "I should really do something on your website with webmentions!" I also said to myself, "I will do something about it!" As cheesy as that sounds, it was a good motivational moment to get something done.

I guess that was the night to start back something I had the skeleton started, well at least partially. Sometime last year I started the skeleton.

Well I did it!

I built a extension displaying webmentions on my website. This is something I had started sometime last year and I finally got around to do it again. I actually had a repository for it on Github. Since I didn't touch it for so long, I had also noticed that Robert had make an issue on the repository asking if I had made the webmention extension working. Robert also uses Datenstrom Yellow He wrote this back in January.

I would like the IndieWeb, indieauth, webmentions, micropub, etc. to be more present in the Datenstrom community. I am hopeful that more people down the road will use Datenstrom and me more inclined to create more plugins for it..

The extension is made for the flat-file CMS (content management system) call Datenstrom Yellow or simply Datenstrom. This is the CMS of choise my personal website. For the longest time I had hard-coded (I'm phasing this out) the displaying of webmentions on my website since I wanted to have some implemention of displaying webmentions. Creating this extension may not be a big deal to others but I feel it's a big leap for me as I get more comfortable getting back into modifying the tools I use daily. I would like to help contribute more the the communities I participate in such as the Datenstrom Community. Creating this extension will help me give back and tippy toe back into the developmental world.

With that being said new to building extensions for a CMS. Having lingered this idea for some time, I took a look at the API. As I started to build this extension, Datenstrom provides good documentation overall. There are plenty examples to utiilize the API used to interact with the CMS. You would think that me using this CMS for so long I would be doing more with it? I guess I finally go the itch. I'm still learning the ins and outs of it as I get into the more advanced features.

The main files that make the extension work (GitHub Repo). So here is how it works!

  • extension.ini - tells Datenstrom what to do with the files and adds extension config paramenters to yellow-system.ini (config file for Datenstrom).
  • icon.css - A CSS file for Material Icons from Google Fonts.
  • webmention.css - A CSS file to style the webmention extension.
  • webmention.js- A javascript file to parse webmentions from webmention.io into HTML and it pulls the webmentions for the specific page you are on.
  • webmention.php - This tells Datenstrom how to interact with the API and how to activate the extension.

This extension is still a work in progress. There is so much to do still. Please bear with me as I make the code, especially the javascript, more readable and more optimized. I also know I repeat myself. It at least functions to get started. I'll be updating this code throughout the next few days and as needed down the road.

If you are interested in collaborating, I'd love to connect or simply create a pull request on the Github repository. Do you or someone use Datenstrom as the CMS of choice? I'd love to know!

To learn more about Datenstrom visit their website or the GitHub repository.

Also posted on IndieNews.

Pablo Morales

19 Mar 2024 at 03:11

Harberger Tax

It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked in a 2014 Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity) post has apparently since acquired a name and a more extended provenance. Waldman’s post, Tax price, not value, presents the idea as a LVT/Georgism-flavored solution to NIMBYism enabled by artificially […]
ribbonfarm

19 Mar 2024 at 02:54
#

All peanuts and peanut butter I can recall eating use the term “dry roasted” on the label. I’m assuming that is opposed to “oil roasted.” Has anyone had these and are they so horrible that every bag of peanuts and jar of peanut butter since has to specify that they are not oil roasted?

Chuck Grimmett

19 Mar 2024 at 01:39

Linkblogs work differently

Linkblogs work differently in blogrolls. When I click a link it takes me to the site the blog linked to, not to the blog.

So.. When you click the link in the screen shot below it takes you to a Metacritic review of the program

Screen shot.

Scripting News

19 Mar 2024 at 00:10

Creativity comes with the work

 
Liked The growing backlash against AI by tante (tante.cc)
Famous film critic Roger Ebert once said “The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before.” and the booing is people coming back to realizing this simple fact. You are not creative and then create something, you become creative by working on something, creativity is a byproduct of work. In this way “AI” is deeply dehumanizing: Making the spaces and opportunities for people to grow and be human smaller and smaller. Applying a straitjacket of past mediocrity to our minds and spirits.

Tracy Durnell

18 Mar 2024 at 23:39

Our lives, commodified

 
Quoted In Cringe Video, OpenAI CTO Says She Doesn’t Know Where Sora’s Training Data Came From by Maggie Harrison Dupré (Futurism)
Historically, when someone told you to be careful of what you post online, the reasoning was something akin to "you might regret that later" — and not "a multibillion-dollar AI company might turn a profit by vacuuming that Facebook video of you and your family, or a goofy YouTube video you made with your friends, into a generative AI model."

Ok so I don’t get how this works:

A judge in California has largely dismissed copyright claims brought by three artists against AI image generators Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DeviantArt… The three artists — Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz — immediately ran into problems as two of them — McKernan and Ortiz — did not register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office.

When the copyright office FAQs assure you:

Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

And given Midjourney specifically called out the names of other artists they wanted to be able to reproduce… does this not show intention to compete, which is what the recent Andy Warhol lawsuit lost over? Is this one of those you-have-to-be-a-lawyer for it to make sense things?

Tracy Durnell

18 Mar 2024 at 23:31
#
 This weekend I will be at the PKM Summit in my hometown of Utrecht. A two-day community-based event on everything regarding Personal Knowledge Management. Yes, it will a geeky and fun event on how to take notes. And actually do something with them. I look forward to two days in this safe and comfortable bubble of note-taking enthousiasts who also love to configure everything and anything under the sun when it comes to Obsidian. Or even Emacs perhaps? The timetable doesn’t say anything about Emacs-themed talks. And I am too much of a padawan to give a talk about this DIY kit for building Your Personal Text Editor myself. I still have to think about what I want to take out of it and plan accordingly. And I have to figure out how to combine this conference with the annual Mariokart Tournament on Friday evening at our corporate clubhouse!

Frank Meeuwsen

18 Mar 2024 at 21:30

The Week #194

 
  • 🎓 Leo graduated pre-school. While technically the main event was watching each kid walk up to the front of class and receive their diploma, the real main event felt like the thank you party immediately after. You see, Yumi has been preparing for a "thank you party" the past ~6 months...and it is finally over. The gifts were delivered and the videos / presentations we made played on the projector without issue.

    For most of the kids at Leo's school they're finished with the school for good. Lucky for Leo, he can still go through the end of the month when my wife and I are working, so he'll be able to meet his friends that will attend other elementary schools for a bit longer.

    After the ceremony itself we went to McDonalds with a couple of his friends and their family – I'm sure this will become one of those long-term memories.
  • 🎥 I watched two movies this week: Napoleon (on Apple TV+) and The Greatest Night in Pop (about the making of We are the world(Netflix)). I had heard a bit of hype about Napoleon, but it was just okay. On the other hand, The Greatest Night in Pop was a real fun watch. I'll sometimes listen to "We are the World" song when I need a pick me up and the world seems like it's going to shit. It was fascinating to see how quickly the entire song / thing came together. I'm starting to feel like good work demands tight time constraints to ensure focus....
  • 🌸 It was a beautiful 20 degrees out over the weekend. Spring is coming and I can't wait. I know in summer I can't wait for winter, but really I just want ~20 degree weather to come. t-shirt and perhaps a jacket.
  • 👓 With all the flowers and trees blooming, there's heaps of pollen floating in the air. We bought Leo a pair of glasses to protect his eyes and ease his allergies. When he's wearing his glasses and a flannel he looks like a clone of me.
  • 🤒 Between work being super busy with a buncha new responsibilities and my personal life packed with kids stuff...I've had minimal/no time for "fun" (though I did get some cafe time this week, which was nice). Either way, my body finally had enough and is forcing me to rest with a 39 degree fever. Thankfully that's the symptom. Here's to resting, also an important job.

Comment by email
James Van Dyne

18 Mar 2024 at 21:23
#

Finally got to see the last season of Happy Valley. It was as good as the reviews said it was.

Dave's famous linkblog

18 Mar 2024 at 21:03
#

The fine people at Neatnik keep coming with cool stuff. Next to the omg.lol universe, this summer we will see web1.land. I love the domainname. I love their explanation:

Web 1 Land is a place for people who remember and love the best parts of the web–or people who missed that era and want to experience it today. It’s a place where you can have fun writing HTML without the overhead of today’s “modern” content publishing ecosystems. A place where you can be yourself, do your thing, and make your web pages.

Frank Meeuwsen

18 Mar 2024 at 20:11
#

I skimmed through Don Lemon’s interview with Elon Musk. The segment on the new Tesla Roadster was entertaining. Other parts, sort of painful and awkward. You can tell Elon gets increasingly frustrated. Probably an impulsive and strategic mistake to scrap the deal, though.

Manton Reece

18 Mar 2024 at 19:59
#
 EFF: “Congress Should Give Up on Unconstitutional TikTok Bans.” This bit is particularly worrying to me:

[The bill] would also give the President the power to designate other applications under the control of a country considered adversarial to the U.S. to be a national security threat.

And the following seems obviously true. If they’re worried about our data being misused, why not ban the collection of such data altogether? Because such data collection profits those who really matter to the politicians.

The only solution to this pervasive ecosystem is prohibiting the collection of our data in the first place. Ultimately, foreign adversaries will still be able to obtain our data from social media companies unless those companies are forbidden from collecting, retaining, and selling it, full stop. And to be clear, under our current data privacy laws, there are many domestic adversaries engaged in manipulative and invasive data collection as well.

jabel

18 Mar 2024 at 19:26

First of the Season

 

Given that they were the standout delight of 2023, I planted wildflowers again for 2024. The frontrunner is still Nemophila menziesii (Baby Blue Eyes), opening its first flower on March 16th. (Last year’s arrived on March 29th.)

A delicate five-petaled flower with blue edges and a white center.

Most of what reseeded this year was Elegant Clarkia. It is out of control. Every patch that held five plants last spring now holds triple the amount of seedlings. The lupins were much-beloved by gophers, so no more of them for now. I sowed a lot of Purple Vetch (with seeds harvested from El Nido Meadow in 2023). They’re currently putting forth tiny tendrils around the agave bed. The local high school’s native plant sale yielded more Narrowleaf Milkweed for the butterflies, Sticky Monkeyflower for under the oaks, Island Snapdragon for the cursed bed out front that gets too much sun. We were liberal with the California Poppies, with varied success.

There’s so much greenery this year that the seedlings often can’t complete, but they’re made for this land. They’ll keep coming back.

Lucy Bellwood

18 Mar 2024 at 19:19

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

 

Yeongju, a former office employee in Seoul, is suffering from intense burnout: After a career-driven life in which she toiled through vacations and saw her husband in their corporate canteen more often than at home, she quits her job, files for divorce, and moves across the city for a fresh start. She doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life—but she loves to read, and uses her savings to open a bookshop in Hyunam-dong, a neighborhood she chooses because one of the characters in its name means “rest.”

But Yeongju quickly realizes that her new life still involves work. She is frequently drowning in book orders, accounting tasks, and inventory checks. When she’s not treading water, she’s hosting a monthly book club or running a popular interview series with authors. Sometimes she will “stew in regret” at all of her freshly assumed responsibilities, but she finds that she usually isn’t satisfied until she completes them…

Such moments underscore that Hwang’s characters don’t actually want to stop being industrious; they’re just trying to build up a more satisfying understanding of work for themselves, one that doesn’t bind their “whole identity and value” to a company. They discover, for one, the benefits of goals that are short-term, simple, and malleable. “Instead of agonising over what you should do, think about putting effort into whatever you’re doing,” Seungwoo, the programmer turned writer, tells Mincheol, the disenchanted high-schooler. Minjun “anchor[s] himself with coffee,” simply focusing on making the best cup he can. The point is not for them to clearly define what makes them happy but rather to recognize the moments in which they are. What the bookshop’s denizens come to see is that the problems with their former office environments—no matter how widespread—couldn’t always explain why they were miserable, or teach them how not to be. What they can do, as they reconsider how to spend their lives, is pay close attention to what they’re doing, and do it with care.

In doing so, they bring a different meaning to the idea of “optimizing” one’s life. They may seek to be productive, but they don’t shy away from the conviction that taking life day by day—and measuring happiness without “stak[ing] everything on a single accomplishment”—can coexist with being willing to work, not necessarily toward an end goal but for the pleasure of the moment. My mother, for one, is always engaged with projects and deadlines that she has set for herself. Though she likes to think of herself as constantly “busy doing nothing,” like Minjun with his coffee, she has slowly built herself into a formidable bridge player and a prolific crochet artist. She, too, has accepted that the external pressure of success is unlikely to be satisfying, but that each game, completed scarf, or cup of coffee is a serious achievement in itself.

By the end of the story, Yeongju has committed to keeping the bookshop open and acknowledged it not just as her place of rest but as her dream, her job, and her source of joy all at once. She takes a leave of absence to go on a tour of independent bookshops, planning to study what makes them thrive and return to Hyunam-dong with new ideas. Minjun assumes responsibility for the bookshop in the meantime. In her farewell note to him, Yeongju writes:

I had thought of work as stairs. Stairs to climb to reach the top. Now, I see work as food. Food that you need every day. Food that makes a difference to my body, my heart, my mental health, and my soul. There is food you just shove down your throat, and food that you eat with care and sincerity. I want to be one who takes great care in eating simple food. Not for anyone, but for myself.

Her words acknowledge the fundamental difference between the pressure to succeed and the instinct to improve, the difference between being a “job seeker” and searching for meaningful work. And they suggest that, perhaps, the wisest thing to do is to get up every day and treat our minor routines like they matter; to approach the various pockets of our lives, whether they are spaces of work or play, with both flexibility and commitment.

Apoorva Tadepalli, from “What Comes After Workism?” in her book review of Hwang Bo-reum’s Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop (The Atlantic, March 18, 2024)

Live & Learn

18 Mar 2024 at 18:05
#
This is amazing. Some of my friends at Automattic quickly put together a toolkit for WordPress that allows it to host my blogroll. There are still some missing pieces and some CSS glitches. But this is exactly where I hoped we would be at this point.
Scripting News

18 Mar 2024 at 17:34
#

I’ve been thinking about this blog post I wrote 13 years ago more and more. A few years after I wrote it, I remember backpedaling a little, questioning my premise about free apps. But now with the EU’s DMA and CTF, it seems relevant again, and the closing line has proven correct many times over.

Manton Reece

18 Mar 2024 at 16:39

2024-03-18

 Just testing Microsoft Copilot by using the band All Time Low as the topic of discussion. So, I asked it to provide the following:

It must provide me this list in markdown:

  • Provide the name of the album
  • Provide the record label
  • Provide a description or background of the album

Not bad but still has a few issues.


1. **The Party Scene** (2005) - *Emerald Moon Records*
   Their debut studio album captures the youthful energy of the band's early days, with tracks like "Circles" and "Lullabies."

2. **So Wrong, It's Right** (2007) - *Hopeless Records*
   An underground success, this album features catchy pop-punk anthems like "Dear Maria, Count Me In" and "Six Feet Under the Stars."

3. **Nothing Personal** (2009) - *Hopeless Records*
   Reaching number four on the US Billboard 200, this album includes hits like "Weightless" and "Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don't)."

4. **Dirty Work** (2011) - *Interscope Records*
   Their major label debut, with tracks like "I Feel Like Dancin'" and "Time-Bomb."

5. **Don't Panic** (2012) - *Hopeless Records*
   Released after returning to Hopeless Records, this album features the single "The Reckless and the Brave."

6. **Future Hearts** (2015) - *Hopeless Records*
   Included the successful single "Something's Gotta Give" and showcased the band's evolving sound.

7. **Last Young Renegade** (2017) - *Fueled by Ramen*
   Featured the hit song "Good Times" and explored more mature themes.

8. **Wake Up, Sunshine** (2020) - *Fueled by Ramen*
   Their most recent studio album, with tracks like "Some Kind of Disaster" and "Monsters."

9. **Tell Me I'm Alive** (2023) - *Fueled by Ramen*
   Their latest release continues with Fueled by Ramen, offering fresh music for fans.
Pablo Morales

18 Mar 2024 at 16:23
#
Read this on Threads. The thing that's great about this moment is that people are just beginning to get the possibility of not being locked into silos. They don't know how to parse my posts and screen shots, because I can do something they never thought they'd be permitted to do. Well we've got some visionary and lovable techies at Masto and Blueski who want you and I to be able to do that. And we've been building on that. And will continue to do so, Murphy-willing.
Scripting News

18 Mar 2024 at 15:20
#
Blogroll fix. The blogroll was grabbing the up and down-arrow and Return for keyboard navigation, one of my favorite blogroll features. Put the cursor where you want, and arrow through the list. Press Return to expand, and again to collapse. Then down-arrow and repeat. But sometimes you want to use these keys for other functions. So I changed it so you have to click the blogroll to set the focus. Its border turns blueish, and the keys work as described. Press the Tab key or click outside the blogroll to take the focus off the blogroll.
Scripting News

18 Mar 2024 at 14:31
#
 I'm working with developers again, thank goodness.

I once thought I could make server products or toolkits for people I called "poets" -- motivated writers. I have given up on that, at least for the time-being. I think a properly motivated intelligent writer could get developer-like results, I've seen it happen (Brent Simmons, Dan MacTough). They make really good developers because they understand the user perspective so well, it still lives inside them. The problem seems to be motivation, and a poet knowing that they need to be super-motivated and have the time, to get anything technical to work. If they knew what was required, my 2024 theory goes, and had studied for it, the way they studied for their degree, they could not only be successful, but they could contribute to the developer process. Analogously, we all have to learn a little cooking just to get through life, but only a few people are chefs. Julia Child, a hero of mine, believed she could teach anyone to be a good-enough cook. But I bet she was frustrated by human reality. 😄
Scripting News

18 Mar 2024 at 14:19

my first hate comment

 

This morning I woke up to my first ever hate comment in response to my latest post in the history of this blog. I am sharing a screenshot because I don’t wish to publish the comment:

screenshot of comment:" Your story isn't unique or even special. You're experiencing the same symptoms as humans hundreds of thousands of years ago, it's called the human condition. Suck it up buttercup and stop acting like life is as hard as you make it."

This blog is more than 10 years old, so it is quite something that I haven’t gotten more hate comments before, since I tend to write about controversial topics. My writing is not that popular and it is pretty niche, most of the time most people don’t actually care about what I write. I think people tend to get trolls and hate comments when they reach a popularity threshold. I found myself wondering if this means I’ve finally made it on the blogging scene. I kid.

I guess I can understand why people simply turn off comments, or don’t bother to build it. But I love comments – I may not have the psychological space to respond to them in a timely manner, but I love them in general. In this day and age where people are used to instant messaging and status-based social networks, it takes a lot of effort to come to this website and type into a traditional online form.

Which is why I am also mind boggled that this person took the effort to leave this comment. They seem to be unable to tolerate the way I write about my life. No one is asking them to read my writing? I am not sure what is the sort of reaction they are trying to provoke? Shame? I had a ton of that while growing up. That I will read this comment and decide to finally pull up my socks? Wow thanks I’m finally cured.

I have never claimed that my story is unique or special, but the point of having a blog is to write my truth. When I was younger I really believed everybody felt like me, only to find out most people have never even once contemplated what it means to end their own life. There is inherent suffering in being human, but people will endure incredible suffering just to stay alive, because they want to be alive. To them, being alive is a gift.

Yet I struggle every single day. If this makes me a buttercup so be it. I’ve admitted multiple times on this blog that I am a very fragile person. It is precisely this fragility that makes it difficult to endure life, because I feel so sensitive to everything.

I’ve also endured this sort of comments from people supposedly close to me for my entire life. Do people really believe this sort of rebuke will make people like me have more will to live and survive? This comment is proving my sentiments right: that this world is hostile and relentlessly judgmental. If I was at a different place this could be a trigger for me to contemplate disappearing off the face of this earth. I mean, why bother to survive when people say and think such mean things about me?

Does this person feel better after saying this to a so-called buttercup? That a person is already admittedly weak and vulnerable, and that the next best thing to do to this person is to punch her down?

Honestly. I am not upset or even offended. I am just disturbed. I am fragile in many ways, but I am numb to these things because well, “training” from many years of enduring this sort of shit from worse sources because it fucking hurts to hear something like this from people I actually care about.

I am disturbed because who knows what else is being said to other people who are in an emotionally vulnerable state right now? This is unfortunately the world we live in. Though this person is not representative of the many kind and thoughtful people I interact with, it is also true that there are a ton of such people around, and bullying is still a thing.

I feel sympathy mostly, because I cannot imagine the process of becoming a person who genuinely thinks this is a worthwhile thing to do.

To the other buttercups like me: for what it is worth I think it is perfectly fine to be a buttercup. There is no rulebook in this world that says we have to toughen up and be thick like hide. This is the sort of insidious narrative that is causing so much unnecessary suffering in this world, because we are all afraid to be our true selves openly in this world. So we suppress and repress, and we knowingly and unknowingly hurt each other like this. In my opinion, it is better to be a weak buttercup that is mindful of the presence of the other buttercups in this world. That to me, is strength.


related posts
Winnie Lim

18 Mar 2024 at 11:54
#

Justice Breyer, Off the Bench, Sounds an Alarm Over the Supreme Court’s Direction.

Dave's famous linkblog

18 Mar 2024 at 11:40



Refresh complete

ReloadX
Home
(296) All feeds

Last 24 hours
Download OPML
*
A Very Good Blog by Keenan
A Working Library
Alastair Johnston
Andy Sylvester's Web
Anna Havron
annie mueller
*
Annie Mueller
*
Apple Annie's Weblog
Artcasting test feed
*
Articles – Dan Q
*
Austin Kleon
*
Baty.net posts
bgfay
*
Bix Dot Blog
*
Brandon Writes
*
Chris Coyier
Chris Lovie-Tyler
*
Chris McLeod's blog
*
Chuck Grimmett
CJ Chilvers
CJ Eller
*
Colin Devroe
*
Colin Walker – Daily Feed
Colin Walker – Live Feed
Content on Kwon.nyc
*
Core Intuition
*
Dave's famous linkblog
daverupert.com
Dino's Journal 📖
dispatches
E L S U A ~ A blog by Luis Suarez
Excursions
*
Flashing Palely in the Margins
Floating Flinders
For You
*
Frank Meeuwsen
*
frittiert.es
*
Hello! on Alan Ralph
*
HeyDingus
*
Human Stuff from Lisa Olivera
inessential.com
*
Interconnected
Into the Book
*
jabel
*
Jake LaCaze
*
James Van Dyne
*
Jan-Lukas Else
*
Jim Nielsen's Blog
Jo's Blog
*
Kev Quirk
*
lili's musings
*
Live & Learn
*
Lucy Bellwood
*
Maggie Appleton
*
Manton Reece
*
Manu's Feed
maya.land
Meadow 🌱
Minutes to Midnight RSS feed
Nicky's Blog
*
Notes – Dan Q
*
On my Om
*
One Man & His Blog
Own Your Web
*
Pablo Morales
Pablo Morales
Paul's Dev Notes
*
QC RSS
rebeccatoh.co
reverie v. reality
*
Rhoneisms
*
ribbonfarm
Robin Rendle
Robin Rendle
*
Sara Joy
*
Scripting News
*
Scripting News for email
Sentiers – Blog
*
Simon Collison | Articles & Stream
*
strandlines
the dream machine
The Gorman Limit
The Homebound Symphony
*
The Marginalian
*
thejaymo
theunderground.blog
tomcritchlow.com
*
Tracy Durnell
*
Winnie Lim
wiwi blog
*
yours, tiramisu
Žan Černe's Blog

About Reader


Reader is a public/private RSS & Atom feed reader.


The page is publicly available but all admin and post actions are gated behind login checks. Anyone is welcome to come and have a look at what feeds are listed — the posts visible will be everything within the last week and be unaffected by my read/unread status.


Reader currently updates every six hours.


Close

Search




x
Colin Walker Colin Walker colin@colinwalker.blog