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I’ve driven around a lot of Texas this week. Democratic candidates have raised so much money this year, would it kill them to sprinkle a little advertising in rural America? It’s a small thing, but small things win or lose elections. 🇺🇸

A quick followup on my prior conversation with Theo. During that chat, I talked briefly about a trademark infringer that was also distributing nulled plugins. I said “Not illegal. Legal under the GPL. But they weren’t changing the names. They were selling their customers Pro Plugins with the licensing stuff nulled out.” I want to … Continue reading GPL Clarification →

Finished reading: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. This was brilliant. I may need to read it again… Sometimes my mind would wonder, thinking about about the future. 📚

Common Grounds Coffeehouse in Brownwood, Texas. ☕️

I’m at #UXBrighton today, where the theme is UX + AI.

I’ve never seen so many smart people willingly do the hype work for venture capitalists.

No mention of where the training data comes from. No mention of the energy usage.

Rained off and on through the night at Abilene State Park. Went for a short hike in the morning.

Meanwhile, it's amazing that both CNN and MSNBC have gotten serious about covering the reality of Trump 2.0 after being very unserious for the last year. It's as if after rejecting Joe Biden, months later they realized they rejected the wrong guy.

Unfortunately the only place you can read this Dan Conover piece is on Facebook about the failure of the NY Times and Washington Post to adequately defend democracy. He says something I had not seen elsewhere. "We're not talking about HuffPo or Salon here. We're talking about the last two 'unique nationals' standing in American print journalism. Instiututions with long and storied histories. Both took the same test at the same time, and both failed it." I'd add that all other journalism usually follows their lead, but that may be finally changing.

We now understand that the Republicans derive their power through division, setting groups against each other. We think the Democrats are the opposite, they are inclusive, everyone is welcome there. But that's not true. This NPR piece touches on it, gingerly, because it's the third rail in non-Republican politics. Because it's one of the divisions that's maintained by people who are mostly Democrats. If you want to know if you're part of the problem, measure your own feelings when you find out what it's about. And then listen, carefully to the words. It might be hard to hear because I think most people who do this don't think they do. The pragmatic reason to focus on this is that in future elections, assuming we have them, if we can make an effort to not do this, we could get a lot of Republican votes to switch. They might even become our most vocal supporters.

The monthly archive for October has been saved. By the end of this month we'll know a lot more than we know now.

As Twitter is (far too) slowly falling apart and more and more people are looking for alternatives, Bluesky is enjoying a surge in popularity at the moment. One neat little feature is that you can use your own domain as your handle on Bluesky. In a way, this is the perfect h...

European friends!🗓 I am going to Beyond Tellerand (@btconf@mastodon.social) Berlin next week 7-8 November and you should too!BTconf is the best independent web design, development, and inspiration conference in Europe.Everything from the speakers to the talks to the side events are a labor of love by @MarcThiele.com (@marcthiele@mastodon.social) and his crew, and it shows in the #btconf community he has gathered over the years.If you’re in #Berlin, or can hop on a train and join us, you should.🎟 Grab a ticket: https://btco.nf/tAnd while you’re there, consider joining us at #IndieWebCamp Berlin right afterwards on 9-10 November (complimentary camp tickets at the same link), for #barcamp style discussions sessions and an #indieweb Create Day, writing, styling, designing, coding, hacking on our personal sites for a better web for ourselves and everyone else.

Between Oklahoma City and Dallas there’s a surprisingly high number of Trump “2020” billboards. Expect these might stay up for another decade until they’ve faded away. 🇺🇸

Thursday session

I voted today at the early voting place in Saugerties, NY.

A few days I concluded that Trump doesn't think he's going to win. Now it seems he doesn't want to win.

If anyone’s already in town for tomorrow’s UX Brighton and fancies some traditional Irish music on this Oíche Shamhna, I’ll playing in a session in the Lord Nelson pub from 8pm.

My Halloween costume is: sexy banjo player.

When we vote we are governing, not expressing ourselves or protesting. It's the whole thing. It's the governing part that this year is especially consequential.

I like the approach here: logical properties and sensible default type and spacing.

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