While I don’t think it’s likely, if in the future, the only EV allowed to be sold in the United States is a Tesla, as Elon Musk has an office in the White House, that won’t be the most ridiculous thing to happen in Trump’s term. Not even close.
From the Verge: Volkswagen cancels ID.7 sedan for US.
Batch, a new favorite. I can’t believe I’ve been living within walking distance to this place for over a year and never tried it before this week. A misty, gray morning.
Seth Godin as usual has the perspective I need to hear, about prioritizing the important things instead of the urgent:
Waiting for trouble means that you’re going to spend your days dealing with trouble.
Over the weekend, I made a few pretty big, probably overdue changes. A couple will be visible, like Core Intuition.
This blog post about AI trying to “polish” Jenny Lawson’s email is so great. Just a snippet:
Y’all, if you get an email from me it will be signed with HUGS, LOVE, FIGHT THE PATRIARCHY, DOWN WITH POWDERED GRAVY or SORRY I SUCK SO MUCH. It will be filled with typos and rambling parentheticals and apologies for answering several months too late. This is how you know it’s me and not a robot.
I use AI a lot but I don’t want it rewriting my stuff. What works better for me is just asking AI if a particular phrase makes sense. I’ll do my own edits.
Today we have the final episode of Core Intuition. 16 years. 626 episodes. Thanks for listening and thanks @danielpunkass for recording the show with me!
Taking a short break from support email and questions to edit the latest Core Intuition. If you have ever listened to our podcast before and liked it, you will probably want to hear this one. (How’s that for hyping it up?)
Micro Social is looking really good! Upcoming app for Micro.blog from @gregmorris.
This post by Bear creator Herman Martinus is great. I probably could’ve written the same thing about Micro.blog but with a few twists. It’s always been about slow growth and lasting decades. Ben Werdmuller also has some good counterpoints about funding.
Really nice FAQ-style format for today’s Stratechery update on DeepSeek. Even if you don’t read the whole thing, you can tell something big is happening. I downloaded a medium-sized R1 model last week to test with Ollama on my Mac. Very impressed.
Good morning! This week I have two goals: respond to every email I received in January, and fix some bugs. There is low hanging fruit and a few more difficult problems to address.
I finally sorted through an old box of my dad’s stuff that I’ve had for over 25 years. I could never bring myself to open it after he died. I knew there would be some letters in it that were heartbreaking, but if I had also known there would be gems like this I would’ve looked sooner! Made me smile.
Brandon Sanderson brings so much joy to his writing class. I’ve been going through old boxes and papers (we’re moving again!) and found some sci-fi stories I wrote when I was a teenager. Younger me would’ve loved this.
SNL tonight with Timothée Chalamet. For so many years I looked forward to watching it live every weekend, a way to put the week in perspective and just laugh. I stopped watching it in November. Now ready to get back to it. 📺
I’m still reading Wind and Truth. Taking my time. I’m on page 1100 and it’s just starting to get really good. 🤪
After a few days of the freeze, actually turned into a nice late afternoon for a walk. Mueller Lake Park.
As expected, Pixelfed and Loops blew through their Kickstarter fundraising goal. I know from experience that running a campaign is actually a lot of work. When the dust settles, I hope they finish the new export format that was hinted at. We’ll do blog → Pixelfed import and back right away.
I hope one day, if I get through this with my sanity and health, we look back and find it odd that in the first week of Trump’s 2nd term, looking for someone to blame, all eyes turned to… Manton. The guy who has been fighting Trump for 8 years. The guy who has volunteered on campaigns against Trump. The guy who when Trump first won, broke down in tears. The guy who dedicated his life to building a safe platform. That’s the guy who must pay the price now.
Vincent Ritter has another post: Context.
Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me, in public and private. I’m not linking to the other posts, so it might seem like this is a one-sided fight with everyone on the other side, but I’ve seen many of the posts and greatly appreciate it.
Let me reiterate my support for the LGBTQ+ community. A couple days ago I also made a donation to the Trevor Project. It’s not my way to publicly talk about donations, but I got some good advice that people want to see this more openly. Where there’s more to do, we’ll do it.
Kimberly Hirsh shares LGBTQ+ organizations to donate to:
GLSEN is my go-to resource for LGBTQ+ issues in K-12 education.
The Trevor Project is a suicide prevention and crisis intervention program for LGBTQ+ young people.
🏳️🌈
Vincent Ritter: Silence. I wasn’t sure that Vincent would blog something, but I’m glad he did. Personal blogs can help us connect with people, walk a little bit in their shoes, even if we don’t always agree on everything.
I’ve now read Adam Newbold’s post Accountability and I will reply tomorrow. I still have him muted but I’ve caught up on most of his posts and boosts. Thanks for your patience. I’ve been doing this a long time, hopefully one more day won’t kill the platform that I’ve dedicated my career to.
Worked mostly behind the scenes today, a lot in email. I’m planning a couple new posts for tomorrow. If I post them now I’ll never get a break. 🙂 Also some private messages of support. There are people who think our mission here is valuable but they don’t want to get caught up in a public debate. ❤️
Congrats to Daniel Supernault on the Kickstarter! It’s great timing for Pixelfed and I expect it’s going to well exceed its goal.
In an attempt to turn lemons into lemonade, I’m reviewing our community guidelines to see what we can improve. We can do a better job of highlighting that Micro.blog can be a safe place for the LGBTQ+ community. What I said in the Kickstarter video in 2017 is still true: indie blogs, safe community.
In 30 years of working on apps and the web, I’ve never had a falling out like this with another developer. It’s depressing. There are lessons here in why social media brings out the worst in us, amplifying disagreements. Things I’ve written a lot about! But seeing it happen live is something else.
I’ve had to mute Adam Newbold. We’re a couple days in to Trump’s second term and we’re fighting amongst ourselves instead of working. In one day we went from friendly competition and shared values to an unrecoverable train wreck. I have so many things to improve in Micro.blog. Hope to make some progress on something positive today. A lot of people use both omg.lol and Micro.blog and I’m very sorry to them that this happened. ❤️
A few people seem confused about why I might prefer a conversation to continue in email. It’s a better place to find common ground. Also helps avoid saying anything disparaging about someone in public. We have enough threads on social media that escalated to hurtful comments. I stand by this.
Went down the rabbit hole of old links and started listening to this episode of Core Int about Steve Jobs. 12 years ago. Blog posts and podcasts are an amazing snapshot in time.
When I quit Twitter, I had about 10,000 tweets. Not many by today’s standards. In all of that time, I remember deleting… one tweet. It was at WWDC. I’d like to think I rarely delete posts because I still stand by almost everything I wrote. But also, there’s always room in a blog for a correction.