The beautiful art that came with the season finale of Severance could have been drawn by ChatGPT, it's that good, in the way that machine art is good. There's a point of view reflected in its creations, looking into a soul that in no way exists. We're learning about it, but it's a moving target, evolving before our eyes, in huge steps.
People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
My server has been coughing up hairballs tonight. It coughed up a link to this piece from two years ago, when Twitter pulled the plug on their API. It knocked everything I had built on the Twitter API off the air. Every thing. Just like that. That's what tonight was like here. It was just some of my apps, suddenly, not working. Whew.
WordLand and Scripting News and a bunch of other sites/apps were off the air starting about 1AM Eastern, but mostly things seem to be working now, shortly after 6AM. It was a big scramble, I had to provision a new server on Digital Ocean.
WordLand and a bunch of other apps are down. The server that was hosting the apps went down, that happens sometimes, but it isn't coming back up when restarted. I am provisioning a new server, and hopefully when that's up I will be able to restore each of the apps. This is not an April Fools joke. :-)
ArtLung
• Joe Crawford
2 hours foggy
2 hours foggy and drizzly. Not good, but not really bad either. My hobby is weird.
Enjoyed this illustrated story by Jackie Lay about the life of Victoria Woodhull, who ran for president in 1872.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
ProPublica wanted to find more sources in the federal government. So it brought a truck.
[Nell Dhanesha at Nieman Journalism Lab]
This was fun to watch unfold in real time:
"The truck’s journey to that spot had begun a few days earlier, as an email with the subject line “guerilla marketing for sources” in the inbox of Ariana Tobin, editor of Pro...
Just great defense from the Longhorns. Love their midrange shooting too. I picked UConn vs. Texas for the women’s championship game, so could still happen. 🏀
I changed the domain for Radio Free America and the Bluesky channel. It's not a Canadian site. Maybe at some time we can have a version of the news flow from Canada. We may need it!
Monday session
Monday session
March 31st, 2025
The 2025 WebAIM Million report has been published. Some decreases in accessibility issues, but much still hasn't improved, sadly. https://webaim.org/projects/million/
Went for a ramble in the countryside and felt Persephone’s return.
Went for a ramble in the countryside and felt Persephone’s return.
Indieweb Secret Santa Gift For Sara
ArtLung
• Joe Crawford
“I’m expressing with my full capabilities”
This post is part of the IndieWeb Carnival for March, 2024 hosted by Pablo. The theme? “self-expression.” Preamble: Mom My mother encouraged me to express myself all the time. I believe she did this because her own expression was mostly suppressed by her parents. Mostly her mother. But parents are a system and both are...
ArtLung
• Joe Crawford
At WonderCon this weekend I inquired from a vendor about aVoltes V robot (a great deal at $1600. Not today), wearing my Voltes V t-shirt. Americans see my shirts (I think I have 6 different ones now) and think Voltron. But Pinoy men of the right age know who it is. The vendor inquired as to how I knew the bot. “I lived in Manila in 78/79.” He asked if I spoke Tagalog and I said “no” but mustered a “magandang gabi.” His partner gifted me with this “Ay Naku!” (My Goodness!) hanger to my badge. 40 years after living overseas I’m still learning how kind and wonderful Filipino culture and people are. Let’s Volt In.
When Apple bought NeXT, it wasn't long before we understood that it was the other way around.
Bluesky is today brimming with irreverance.
Great artists, before they die, should share their secrets, so the next generation can be even greater.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
China Miéville says we shouldn't blame science fiction for its bad readers
[Anthony Ha at TechCrunch]
China Miéville, who is one of the great contemporary science fiction and fantasy authors, is right on the money about Silicon Valley's tendency to create the Torment Nexus.
This is exactly why I think science fiction is so importan...
More ChatGPT fun
Yesterday I uploaded an image of a pizza pie, in a New York pizzeria, with a couple dressed in evening clothes with a NYC cop and off-duty sanitation worker lurking in the background.
Paolo Valdemarin writes from London, "Have you tried adding more images to a prompt? From my experiments it can easily keep 'in mind' five different images and mix them. You can get a bunch of people sitting in the same room, with a very detailed version of the room." He sent two examples which are somewhat embarrassing, but you'll probably enjoy them. :-)
First, he uploaded my profile picture from Facebook. And asked ChatGPT to add me to the picture and then to "sit him next to the couple, with both of them kissing him on the cheek, and as you can see ChatGPT complied!
Facebook profile picture.
Original pizzeria.
Dave inserted.
Kissing Dave.