FeedCity

In Government Gangsters, Kash Patel identifies 60 individuals he alleges are part of a Deep State undermining the US government. Michael Atkinson: Former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. Lloyd Austin: Defense Secretary under President Joe Biden. Brian Auten...

[Joseph Cox at 404 Media] This is good to see: "The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced sweeping action against some of the most important companies in the location data industry on Tuesday, including those that power surveillance tools used by a wide s...

Today's song: Where is the love?

Paul Kafasis blogs about cutting back on news consumption for our mental health:

…in Donald Trump’s first term as America’s commander in chief, I was unnecessarily tuned in to each and every horrid aspect of his presidency. I don’t intend to repeat that mistake when we take this wretched ride for a second time.

🇺🇸

I frequently have trouble remembering the names of things I want to use in my writing. I've come to rely on ChatGPT for help when this happens. So I wrote to ChatGPT: "I'm trying to remember the name of the stone that has the key to understanding a language." To which it replied: "You're likely thinking of the Rosetta Stone. It was crucial in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs because it featured the same text written in three scripts: Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphic. The Greek text provided the key to understanding the other two scripts."

I was very happy to see this post on Bluesky this morning from a friend, Matthias Pfefferle, who works at Automattic on the connection between WordPress and ActivityPub. In his post he asks if there is a BDG for creating a PDS for Bluesky. A BDG is a Busy Developer's Guide...

While you can certainly have open APIs that require user authorization, it’s always a nice indication of just how open something is when there are public endpoints. Mastodon and Bluesky both get this.

Mastodon has a new “year in review” feature in the style of Spotify Wrapped (and every other service that has copied it). Mastodon’s version includes how many followers you’ve gained, what your most boosted post was, your most used hashtag, and a count of new posts in the la...

Listened to the new Wicked’s Defying Gravity this morning in the car. Everything about it — Cynthia, Ariana, the orchestra… This rendition is extraordinary. 🧹

We're looking for a Busy Developer's Guide to Bluesky's feed format.

BTW, another thing journalism is getting wrong, the FBI is not the squeaky clean organization they present it as.

President Biden pardoned his son. I have no problem with that, because his son was accused as a proxy for his father. If there is any legitimate use of presidential pardons, this is it. Perhaps relatives of the president should also be immune from prosecution. Does anyone really think Hunter Biden would have been tried for such petty crimes if he weren't Biden's son? The journalists, as always, have equated two very different things, and they should just be ignored. They're playing their own game, trying to self-pardon in a way, to avoid being a target for the incoming administration, which we're all scared of, and I guess that's the point, to make us scared.

This is a summary curation of prior posts of mine on why post, what to post, and how to post, as well as some bits I wrote on the #IndieWeb wiki. This post assumes you already have a blog — if you don’t have one and wonder why you should, that’s a different blog post.If you h...

After the election, I completely checked out of all news. No CNN or MSNBC. No online newspapers. No political podcasts. No SNL or late-night talk shows either. But the news about Hunter Biden’s pardon did break through: No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’...

Book and film covers! I’ve updated Micro.blog to show little thumbnails of book covers when you blog about a book using Micro.blog or our companion app Epilogue. I wanted something visually helpful but less in your face than link preview banners. There’s also special support for Letterboxd links.

I’ve never thought custom emoji were a good idea. People say they love them, but how often are they used? Micro.blog spends a silly amount of time just downloading all the custom emoji from Mastodon instances so they can be displayed correctly. Currently 1 million custom emoji from 4000 servers. 🤪

WordLand is the easy editor that writers using WordPress always deserved. I updated the docs this morning to include very basic getting started stuff, and it now includes a link to a form where you can apply to be a tester. At this time it's limited to people who know how to write a bug report, how to find and read the JavaScript console in a web browser, and take a screen shot that shows clearly what went wrong. This the hardest part of getting a product fit for general use, and I'm too old to try to wrangle workable bug reports from well-intentioned users who basically aren't scientists. This time I'm determined to do this the right way without excess wear and tear on me. 😄

Put the kettle on; it’s another epic data-driven screed from Alex. The footnotes on this would be a regular post on any other blog (and yes, even the footnotes have footnotes). This is a spot-on description of the difference between back-end development and front-end develo...