FeedCity

Hi Austin! Reminder we’re resuming the IndieWeb Meetup. This coming Wednesday, Nov 6th, the day after the election, 7pm, Mozart’s Coffee.

Good guidelines from Bluesky about how they’re approaching misinformation in the final days of the presidential election. For Micro.blog, no politics will go into Discover until after the election, unless it’s non-partisan reminders to vote.

I was looking for old photos and diagrams of Robert Mueller airport and found this progression of satellite photos of Austin. Wild to watch time pass as the airport becomes the Mueller neighborhood.

Another photo from Oklahoma City a few days ago, the statues commemorating the land run of 1889. I learned a surprising amount of history from reading Boom Town. Still thinking about it.

Glad to see the return of the Day One podcast. I guess I had subscribed years ago and then they stopped doing the show, but today it popped back up in Overcast. On the new episode, Paul Mayne talks about how things have gone since the Automattic acquisition and what they might do with AI.

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. 🇺🇸

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. ☕️

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

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. 🇺🇸

Oklahoma City loves this team. Thunder are really good right now. Still excited for the Spurs this season, just a little overmatched tonight. 🏀

Spurs vs. Thunder. Wemby warming up from the 3-point line. 🏀

Trees and remains of the wall of the federal building, at the Oklahoma City bombing memorial.

Micro.blog t-shirts! Jim Mitchell realized I was never going to get around to making t-shirts, so with my blessing he’s done it: the unofficial official Micro.blog t-shirt. Just ordered one for myself. There’s a phone case too.

Here’s a silly thing I created for Halloween, a new domain name: micro.boo! 👻 It just collects posts that mention Halloween or use emoji, from Micro.blog and other sources connected to Micro.blog. Sort of a random Halloween-themed timeline. 🎃

The pandemic started to hit America in earnest just as we were wrapping up IndieWebCamp Austin 2020. If the event had been scheduled for even a couple weeks later, it would’ve been cancelled, as everything moved online to Zoom meetings. Years have passed since then. It now f...

Finished reading: Boom Town by Sam Anderson. Could not ask for a more perfect book to finish before driving up to Oklahoma City. Great mix of basketball and the history of the city going back to the founding. 📚

Turquoise Coffee Stop. Neat little coffee shop in the very small town of Chillicothe, with a sort of museum inside that reflects the memorabilia and politics of its owners.

Sunrise at Copper Breaks State Park.

Old and new energy capture in Texas.

My plan for not losing my mind as we head into election day:

1. Travel this week.
2. Watch basketball instead of the news.
3. Call voters on election day.

🇺🇸

On the road this week. Stopped for a quick lunch and coffee at 8th Street Coffee House in Wichita Falls.

Bluesky comes up in the latest ActivityPub newsletter update from Ghost:

Another cool thing that happened last week was that we enabled a bridge to BlueSky — an alternative decentralized social network which doesn’t use ActivityPub, but instead uses its own alternative protocol.

I was confused on my first reading of this. They’ve enabled Brid.gy, not built anything specific for Ghost. Also, I’m sorry this is so nitpicky, but no one in the fediverse seems to be able to spell Bluesky correctly.

On the latest episode of Core Int, we talk about updates we might see to MacBooks, the recent funding and growth of Bluesky, and what it means to be rich.

At first I wasn’t going to cancel my Washington Post subscription… but I did. There’s not really a better way to send a message to Jeff Bezos that this was a bad call so close to the election. It’s not like a small company where you can send an email and have your voice heard. 🇺🇸

I voted today. Triple-checked my ballot. Still nervous but feels good to have the end of the election in sight. This is one for the history books. 🇺🇸

Buzz Mill Coffee. ☕️

From an article and discussion with the Humane founders, Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, from Om Malik’s new site Crazy Stupid Tech:

“We had to stand up and accept the critique and feedback in front of our team, in front of the public, and just continue to push forward every single day,” Bongiorno said. “And it was really hard. Hard and painful. You’re right, it is really hard to get a second chance.”

I still think the Ai Pin was too ambitious for 1.0. I’d like to see a slimmed down version, no laser, just solve a couple small problems with voice.

Got a really nice response to our quick one-day sale, 25% off for a year if you upgrade to Micro.blog Premium or Micro.blog Family. I’m going to keep the sale for another 24 hours for folks in other time zones who missed it. 🏷️

Micro.blog will not endorse a candidate for president. But I will, because these are the kind of things I post on my blog. Kamala Harris, for the people. 🇺🇸

I don’t know what’s going on over at The Washington Post but the timing is terrible. We do not need any last-minute distractions. 📰