Time to sip some coffee and write. It’s that quiet time of the morning I love. Let’s get to it.
This week has been a split in my various timelines; Mastodon, Twitter, and RSS Feeds between the war in Ukraine, Elon Musk bungling management of Twitter, and the mid term elections in the United States. It’s been quite a week.
“In extraordinary scenes, crowds of jubilant residents greeted Ukraine’s armed forces as they reached the centre of Kherson, as Russia’s retreat from the key strategic city appeared to have descended into chaos.”
Let’s go Ukraine! 🇺🇦
“Democrats outperformed history and expectations with a surprisingly strong midterm elections performance Tuesday, with the promised red wave nowhere to be found.”
This is a real relief. Democrats may lose the house but it looks like the Senate may remain in control of the Democrats and leaves me hopeful we can still save Democracy.
One more term for Biden should keep TFG away from running again.
”Everything went from bad to worse at Twitter on Thursday. Today let’s talk about a truly chaotic 24 hours at the company, and the mounting fears over what it means for the service that still serves as the heartbeat of the global news cycle.”
There are so many wonderful hot takes I could post so I’ll probably do another Elon/Twitter hot takes post.
What a complete mess. Either Twitter will go down in a great ball of flames or it will be the most masterful recovery in tech industry history.
Possible outcomes, ranked by likelihood (high to low)
— David Frum (@davidfrum) November 11, 2022
1) Twitter is sold for pennies on the dollar.
2) Bankers foreclose and Twitter goes bust.
3) Servers fail and Twitter goes dark.
4) Divine intervention saves Twitter.
5)Musk's plans somehow work.
“In a complete departure from my usual meanderings, I’m going to present an in-depth comparative review of eight iOS Mastodon/Fediverse apps.”
So, right, Mastodon. The growth on Mastodon has been huge since Musk took over Twitter.
I’m following folks like crazy! I’m up to 465 and I now have 307 folks following me. That is absolutely insane and I never thought I’d see if happen. It’s been so refreshing. The mood on Mastodon has been extremely hopeful and folks are getting along rather well. It’s fun to be there!
If you decide to join take your time finding an instance that’s right for you. There are so many to choose from.
If you’re adventurous consider starting your own! There are hosts out there who make it easy to maintain your instance. Just pay them a few bucks a month.
“My mind is not a sponge anymore. I still love learning, but it does not come as easily as it used to. Take programming languages, for instance. I’ve come to accept that after almost two decades of writing code, I am not really an expert in any single one.”
I have never been as bright as Mr. Suzuki but I worked really hard at my craft and got decent at Windows programming in C and C++. I’ve worked in other environments like C#/.Net, Linux, and finally landing at home on iOS with Objective-C and Swift.
I’m still capable of learning new stuff but I’ve always been extremely slow to do it. I eventually get there it just takes time.
I relate so much to ”my brain is no longer a sponge.” Mine is not. I used to keep a lot of stuff in my head as I was coding. It was easy for me to keep code flow and logic all stuffed in my brain as I was adding new features. Not anymore. It hasn’t been that way for a very long time. Now I have to refresh my findings often and when I step away from code I’ve written it can take a while to get back in the swing of things. Why do you think Stream development takes so long? 😁
I can still do the work it’s just not as easy, or quick, as before.
Becoming an Engineering Director has been really good for me. I get to build up wonderful people and client relationships. I still get to solve technical problems and make recommendations but I no longer have to code them. It’s been a wonderful challenge in ways I never imagined.
“Donald Trump ended his pre-midterm rally blitz in disgusting fashion, calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “an animal,” championing the death penalty, and giddily imagining the prison rape of the journalist who reported on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn [Roe v. Wade.”
This guy cannot get near any government office ever again. He’ll destroy democracy.
“One such monster maker is Mexican director, producer and author Guillermo Del Toro.”
This piece is about Cabinet of Curiosities. Kim and I just completed it. I really enjoyed it, each episode was around an hour in length, and ended without the possibility of each episode having a part two. It was refreshing and I hope we get another season of new stories. Yes, think Twilight Zone, or Stephen King’s Creep Show.
My favorite episodes were:
Episode 1: Lot 36 Episode 3: The Autopsy Episode 5: Pickman’s Model Episode 6: Dreams in the Witch House Episode 8: The Murmuring
Don’t get me wrong, they’re all good, but those stand out in my mind. Pickman’s Model and Dreams in the Witch House really stood out.
Check it out.
“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1.”
Who’d of thunk Mark Zuckerberg would handle massive layoffs so well. Yeah, it terrible to see 11,000 folks out of work but at least he didn’t do it by sending them an email signed by Twitter. He put his name to everything.
“But as a writer, I can’t use a system that doesn’t do inbound RSS. It’s the inverse of the silo problem.”
At first I didn’t understand what Dave was after. I thought he wanted RSS to be used to thread a conversation like Twitter.
Dave just wants to populate his Twitter, Mastodon, and other social sites with an RSS feed. That’s a nifty idea especially if he could work with some of the smaller players to agree to a standard way to connect it. Basically the sites need a way to point to the feed, read the feed, parse, and display it. Done and done.
I like it.
“big brain type system shaman often say type correctness main point type system, but grug note some big brain type system shaman not often ship code. grug suppose code never shipped is correct, in some sense, but not really what grug mean when say correct”
I love the Grug, whatever that is. If you’re a developer and need some levity this is the place to go.
Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022
We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.
Ya think?
