WordPress takes a lot of heat. Some of that heat has been thrown by me. It can be frustrating to run a WordPress-powered site, to develop products for it, to ship code within it, and to deal with all of the personalities in its community. But there is no denying that it is that very community, the openness of its core, the pluggable nature of its design, and the distributed ecosystem around it is what makes it powerful.
WordPress is capable for the same reasons it can break from time-to-time.
But! There are ways to limit its breaking! And NerdPress excels at it.
Tina Collier, one of my colleagues at NerdPress, wrote about why WordPress sites can break and acknowledges that the stack of dependencies (PHP, WordPress, plugins, themes, custom code) can get out of alignment:
No one in this scenario is being malicious or careless — developers really would prefer their products not cause issues! — but this is how an open ecosystem with thousands of contributors behaves, and it’s why an update on your site can behave differently than it did for someone else.
One of the greatest challenges in shipping Hubbub, a NerdPress product, is the myriad of environments it can find itself running within across such a wide variety of dependencies. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Spurs win a hard-fought game 3 in Minneapolis. Refs seem largely okay with ignoring many fouls, so who knows what’s going to happen. Almost thought that overturned out of bounds with 2 minutes left was going to sink the game… Whew. Everyone played really well. 🏀
A post from Scripting News, automatically mirrored to a WordPress site, and that flowed via ActivityPub to Mastodon, via a relatively new feature in WordPress. Almost by accident Mastodon supports long text, styling and links -- even though their editor doesn't generate it, if it comes from the outside it will respect the styling. #
Below is a post on Mastodon coming from WordPress. Masto's limits aren't enforced, and that's good. #
The Knicks continue to astound. Last night, they went up 3-0 against the Sixers in Philadelphia. Game 4 is tomorrow at 3:30PM Eastern. #
Last night's game was a fantastic contrast with the way the Knicks played in the post-season last year. They had the same starting lineup then, but a different coach, one who rarely put in the bench players unless he had to because of injury. As a result our starters were always playing exhausted, and it got worse as they got deeper into the post-season, until finally in the conference finals against Indiana they had no more gas and were eliminated. This year's Knicks with a deep bench of fantastic players, who the new coach rotates in, makes all the difference. Why? Because the players on the court for the Knicks aren't particularly tired, and if they are, they can get a rest,. #
So in the first period the Sixers came out with fury, and they won the first quarter, because both teams were fresh, and maybe the Knicks were onto their problem, and didn't fight too hard to win the first knowing they'd have the big advantage in the second, third and fourth, where the Sixers players legs would be getting wobbly and they were thinking too much about the shots they were taking. #
Also worth noting we have a grudge against the Philadelphia team, esp their overwhelmed and dirty-playing big man, Embiid. #
The Knicks have a fantastic core team, veterans in their prime, and have been with each other for some since college. They have added to the team incredibly well. Every player coming off the bench has a special power, and it all works. #
What's the limit? Unlike many fans I'm not in the expectations business. I'm happy to see how well they're playing now, and am prepared for whatever lessons come our way in the rest of the playoffs. #
Just spent a couple of days working with FeedLand in Claude Code. I want to do some work on features, but first, we're looking at performance issues. There had been a longtime problem with categories that didn't have many feeds that were viewed through the news pages. Examples, the podcasts category, or the NYT category. #
You can test it yourself. I was using the categories in news page on feedland.org for the test.#
When I checked, on feedland.org all my categories on the news page displayed slowly except for All, which we had put an optimization in for in October 2025. So I worked with Claude on this yesterday, did a set of tests, and realized that the optimization we did last year, made categories with very few feeds much slower. So we put in an exception, installed the new software on feedland.org and I'm happy to report that all my tabs are fast now.#
Now all the tabs are fast enough. I'd always like them to be faster, but all load in less than 2 seconds, most in less than 1. #
The new version is not installed on feedland.com or feedland.social yet. #
grabbed takeout and brought it to the park for picnic dinner on a gorgeous 78 degree evening (unusual to be so warm here in early May but so it goes) — I love a redbud and this one is especially graceful — some talented gardeners at the city to prune a nice specimen tree like this (sent in an email to commend them)
Win of the week: after several months of work, I posted my final* digital aura series post, on the Cult of Self! It’s about how art helps us build our identity. I would love it if you read it 💜
Looking forward to: setting up the new trail cam we got to replace the one that was water damaged last fall
Stuff I did:
13.75 hours consulting
put together a reading list of the most useful books and articles I read while working on the digital aura series
I was wondering why upgrading our insulation last fall hasn’t seemed to make a dent in our electric bill this year 😐
took pictures of some framed art I’m tired of and sent it to my friend with a new house to offer as long-term loans
did a lil closet purge after skimming an organization book (although it was 10 at night so somewhat ill-advised 😂)
cleared weeds, shoveled and spread 3 load of mulch
candled the lower two-thirds of the pine — will need to get out the tall ladder (and probably deploy the husband) to get the rest
cat has been not wanting to eat his food and we think (now that the whole flat is gone) that it was a bad batch, sorry bud 🥺
an anti-union group keeps mailing me bullshit even though I haven’t worked for the city for years — their latest postcard offended me so much I looked up an email address and sent in a request to be taken off their mailing list — I restrained myself and did not inform them that they are scum
Indian takeout from a new place (because the pizza I wanted is closed on Mondays🤦♀️) — Tandoori shrimp + pakora + naan + ginger beer + they threw in kheer — for having Tandoori in the name their Tandoori was pretty not good
boxed mac and cheese with sauteed leeks, roasted red bell peppers, and frozen peas
seven layer dip + tortilla chips
salmon and leek quiche + ras el hanout carrots
got the pizza I wanted Monday 😄🍕
Reading:
Read AI GF: POV by Sarah Chekfa (short story) and Never a Bride by Megan Frampton
Continued reading Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
Skimmed through Stop Buying Bins by Bonnie Borromeo Tomlinson
DNF’d The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting by Anne Trubek, A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith, Merry Christmas Cowboy by Maisey Yates, and Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell
always love California poppies — liked those yellow-orange ombre ones!look at this cutie dwarf spruce — much happier since I lifted it off the ground and got it some light! meant to dig up that thimbleberry but somehow something else always seemed more urgent… 😅
Chris shared a Depression-era Post Office with cool detailing
Went through my Cool Artists collection to make sure all the links worked and clear out some artists that aren’t my vibe anymore, and in the process saw a lot of pretty art:
The shore pine is growing copious candles, it appears I did not murderate it by candling late last year… some, especially towards the bottom of the tree, are noticeably short but that’s to be expected — the goal is to limit the tree’s vigor and contain its size.
I think its vigor is doing fineback-budding, which is good! probably not quite so many in one spot though 🤔
