Mastodon will experiment with donation banners:

The initial campaign will appear via a banner to people that use our Android and iOS apps, if they are signed-in to an account on one of our instances, and only if their account has existed for four weeks or more. The banner will be easy to dismiss, of course, and we will not continually prompt users to donate.

Patron supporters have declined over the last couple of years, so they’ve had to rely on larger donations. Makes sense to rebalance to lots of smaller donations.

Meanwhile, sticking to paid subscriptions for Micro.blog. It’s more stable.

I hate to add to the noise and news overload, but this article by Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic is a good summary of Trump’s crazy rants over the weekend, posting dozens of times in just one day:

Rage, paranoia, pettiness, and desolating selfishness: Trump appears consumed more and more by an online world that offers him the chance to live out the fantasy of the unilateral power and adulation that he craves.

He’s obviously unwell. Eventually he’ll be gone and we can start to pick up the pieces left by failed, vengeful administration. 🇺🇸

Losing my mind again debugging HTTP signatures. So easy to have flakiness between implementations.

Excellent discussion on the latest ATP about Cloudflare. Very much in line with my thoughts from earlier this month.

Once again I’m alternating between reading three different books and can’t seem to make progress in any of them. Going to prioritize finishing Isles of the Emberdark since I’m starting to see video reviews pop up online. 📚

Walking around and noticing all the crepe myrtles today.

Lies do the most damage when there’s also a tiny bit of something real in them. Like 5% truth, 95% bullshit. It gives those spreading misinformation something to hold on to justify their actions. Maybe fanaticism is when we can no longer see anything except the 5%.

Didn’t notice until today that Kagi has a translation service. Simple, works well. This’ll be my new default instead of Google.

Sad to hear about Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Got lost for a while reading about his later work and looking for the lyrics to his spoken word album Hiding in Plain View. Just some of it:

It’s like life is one big masquerade party with cute masks
to mask unshapen identities made by us
to make us feel safe in the face of uncertainty,
but when we hide ourselves to please
we place a piece of our souls on hold
and the safety of that space eventually becomes
a poisonous pit of unexpressed feelings
and untended quirks that never quite get worked out

Rest in peace.

I posted a quick video to YouTube showing recent improvements in Micro.blog for Mac with notes, including shared notes and the new versions dialog for restoring an old note.

Fidji Simo’s blog post on joining OpenAI reads like an updated mission statement. This was a very good hire. She will be in charge of applications.

The standard Micro.blog subscription is such a good value that I think Micro.blog Premium gets overlooked. Updated some of the docs today. In addition to email newsletters and bookmark features, Premium gets you 5 blogs, unlimited single-page websites, domain aliases, more. Consider upgrading! 🙂

Tweaked a few things with the new “Archive with months” Micro.blog plug-in. Pretty happy with it. Might still integrate search as an option later.

ChatGPT agent looks impressive. I’m noticing a pattern when these kind of new tools come out, where initially I’m not sure what to do with them. This example from Federico Viticci is great, though: I asked ChatGPT agent to process hundreds of issues of MacStories Weekly on ...

Went to see Eddington today. Holy shit. It’s intense, somehow both unsatisfying and brilliant. Went in knowing next to nothing and left still unsure that enough time has passed since 2020 to fully appreciate it. 🍿

Finished the first pass at a new Micro.blog plug-in with the boring name “Archive with months”, which groups blog posts by year and month. It also has a setting to include the first photo thumbnail in a post if there is one. You can see this on my archive page.

I saw a Waymo with a human driver on 183 today, presumably testing for a new route. First time I’ve seen them on a highway. They expanded farther north in Austin last week too.

Ava blogs about what the IndieWeb might need right now, including some thoughts on social media and Mastodon:

…I personally don’t consider Mastodon instances to be included in the Indieweb; adjacent, for sure, as you have more control over your data in a way and escape big socials and can POSSE. But in the end, it will always remain a Twitter clone that still embodies the worst of social media and is not a personal website.

There are a lot of good thoughts in this post. And some overlap with the goals of Micro.blog too.

Waitress at Zach Scott was fantastic. What a perfect setting for it. In anticipation today we picked up Tiny Pies too.

Know your bananas. 🍌

The default Micro.blog archive page has become unmanageable for blogs like mine with a 20-year history. Experimenting with an update that groups by month and only shows one year at a time. You can see it here on my blog. Thinking of making this an optional plug-in.

I’ve been fine-tuning publishing performance again. Shaving off a second here or there. Some things including full rebuilds should be better now. More to do!

Nick Heer asking the right question about Apple suing Jon Prosser:

This multitrillion-dollar company was financially injured by a few YouTube videos showing the redesign of its operating system?

This lawsuit is clearly a threat to future leakers. Apple shouldn’t throw its weight around like this.

AI researchers are still mostly on Twitter / X, unfortunately. This thread from OpenAI’s Keren Gu shows the interesting balance between biological safety and not preventing actual biologists and chemists from getting work done. Good to err on the side of not helping people make weapons.

Just discovered a wrinkle with our setting to disable fediverse posting. If you @-mention someone in a blog post, Micro.blog sends a copy to that person, so your post will leak out to fediverse servers anyway. Not sure what to do about this.

Excited for Portland fans. Not enough players get to spend their whole career with the same team, or at least retire with it. From @cheesemaker:

There are so many terrible things going on in the world but for this one moment I am mainlining the pure joy knowing that Damian Lillard is once again a Portland Trail Blazer. 🏀

Disappointed to hear about The Late Show cancellation. I’ve been watching it (and Jimmy Kimmel) way more than I did a couple years ago. Humor can be a good way to cope with the news sometimes. 📺

I drove by this spot on Parmer Lane yesterday and was amazed. This corner used to be a gas station and McDonalds! They tore it down and now it’s a field of grass and wildflowers.

Posted a new Micro.blog for Mac with tweaks around copying links and HTML. This follows yesterday’s major release improving notes sync, search, and versioning.

I love working on the Mac app. But unless there are any bugs, I’m going to focus mostly on the core platform and mobile for now.

It took me a minute to realize “and Other Stuff” as a company name was a play on Nostr’s name. Also kind of fits the spirit of Obvious Corp from early Twitter days. They have quite a few specific goals.