Rob Fahrni

Welcome Elon, you little bitch you. And twitter out…..

— Ron Perlman (@perlmutations) October 28, 2022

Day one of Musk running Twitter and the N-word is trending. Yeah, that's about how we all expected this to go.

— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) October 28, 2022

Elon Musk's fortune, which ultimately enabled his takeover of Twitter, has been padded by billions in subsidies and contracts paid for by American taxpayers.

Just in case anyone needed that reminder.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 28, 2022

Same here. I'm assuming people are leaving now that Musk has taken over. But who knows. https://t.co/rj7QfCoFNA

— Max Boot 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@MaxBoot) October 28, 2022

Well @elonmusk now owns this place so here’s a warm welcome to him and his fans
pic.twitter.com/eMpXNrdc46

— Jessica (Ka) L. Burbank, MPA (@JessicaLBurbank) October 28, 2022

Elon, buy musk.social from me and help out families throughout the country.

Be patient as you create your new Mastodon account. There are many different servers to choose from. If you have the means and feel adventurous start an instance all your own with some friends! I have one and I host it for $6US/month at Masto.host. They have amazing service, my site is always up, and upgraded to the latest versions of Mastodon so I don’t have to worry about a thing. They also scale up so you can have a small group, like I do, or you can have thousands of users.

Big or small it all works together to form a single community with different interests and viewpoints. It’s like the internet was intended to work! A bunch of different sites all talking to each other to form a collective. There is no central authority, like you have with Twitter.

Kolby is not happy Mom is leaving him home while she goes to the store.

I’m on my second cup. The first one disappeared while putting together this post.

Kolby, our puppers, decided he wanted to get up at 7AM. He doesn’t understand the concept of weekends. That’s ok, I still love him.

Platformer: “Elon Musk took over Twitter on Thursday like a military general who had assumed power by force, purging the company’s ruling regime and replacing it with the singular effect of his personality.”

Dear Advertiser,

The reason I bought twitter is because,,,The Delaware Chancery Court made me.

— Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) October 28, 2022

The Verge: “Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.”

The Elon era has begun. Will it be a total disaster or will he turn it around? One thing is for sure, the platform is poised to become more extreme and folks are fleeing. I plan on sticking around because I’m addicted but I also have my Mastodon instance and enjoy it. Read on for a link to a getting started with Mastodon post.

Per Axbom: “Let’s face it, Mastodon can be as confusing as it is rewarding. Especially if you are used to something else (like Twitter). The trick is always to minimise the frustrations and get on with the social benefits. And breathe. And find amusement in the chaos. Here are some tips to help y0u on your way.”

Here we are, a nice piece on getting started with Mastodon. I really do enjoy it. It’s a federation of little Twitters minus the advertising and each instance has the ability to define their own rules and controls which other instances it will allow pairing with. Basically if you have a garbage instance like Gab you can block them from participating with your network. There are a few out there, but most are excellent and provide great diversity in the community.

Apple Security Engineering: “To inaugurate our security research blog, we present the first in a series of technical posts that delves into important memory safety upgrades in XNU, the kernel at the core of iPhone, iPad, and Mac.”

If you’ve ever written any C or C++ code you know the power of the language as well as the pitfalls. This is a really nice post on Apple’s pursuit to harden the XNU kernel at the heart of their products. Great read.

Reuters: “Oct 26 (Reuters) - Skechers USA Inc (SKX.N) said on Wednesday its executives escorted Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, out of a Los Angeles corporate office, after the rapper and fashion designer ‘showed up unannounced and uninvited’.”

Our society has two sets of rules; one for the rich and one for the rest of us. Kanye definitely exercises his privilege every chance he gets.

The man is an antisemite and should be shunned by society. His behavior of late is stirring an already vile nest of hornets into a frenzy.

We cannot tolerate that behavior.

Ed Zitron: “As I’ve written before, I do not think much of Mark Zuckerberg as a CEO.”

I’m no fan of Facebook and I don’t feel bad for the folks who continue to serve this company. You know what you’re doing. If you have anything resembling a soul remaining, get out now.

Meta is a profoundly unethical and increasingly incompetent company, and it starts at the top, with Mark. https://t.co/2sGmrLKcw5

— Grady Booch (@Grady\_Booch) October 27, 2022

The Daily Beast: “Guillermo del Toro effusively loves all things ghoulish, grotesque, and squishy—not to mention that he has a particular fondness for dank subterranean locales and slimy tentacled beasts.”

I’ve been looking forward to the release of Cabinet of Curiosities for some time now. We haven’t started watching but we most certainly will be, soon I hope.

WillowTree: “VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 27, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – Today, TELUS Corporation (T-TSX; NYSE-TU) and TELUS International (NYSE and TSX: TIXT), a leading digital customer experience innovator that designs, builds and delivers next-generation solutions, including AI and content moderation, for global and disruptive brands, are pleased to announce a definitive agreement to acquire WillowTree”

Let’s go!

Kim’s latest October flag.

A wee bit wicked.

Flynn is crashed.

Too bad I need to wake him up. Dad needs more coffee! ☕️

This morning I started putting together the notes from this week prior to writing the intro. I had so much content there’s no way I could share it all.

We have Ukraine, the continued effort by the GOP to destroy our nation, and the continued domination of the news by Elon Musk.

I got my COVID bivalent vaccine earlier in the week. I felt crummy the day after but have been fine since.

Next week I’ll be onsite at WillowTree meeting with my all remote group. Wish me luck. Last time we had this event I got COVID. I told my boss if that happened again I was never attending another one. He was OK with that. 😄

Enjoy your coffee and the links. ☕️

Wired: “A CUP OF coffee in the morning is not just about the caffeine (though that’s certainly important). It’s the ritual that starts the day. There’s the sound of beans grinding, the toasted smell of brewing coffee—even waiting for your brew to finish is a part of the fun. It’s a way to let yourself know that it’s time to start creeping toward wakefulness, like the sun peeking over the horizon in an old-timey Folgers commercial—all fuzzy and warm and full of promise.”

The first link had to be about coffee, right? I had to do it first! Charlottesville own Grit is mentioned. It’s my favorite local shop.

Meson Stars: “A toaster-sized instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover is ‘reliably’ converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars at about the same rate as a small tree on Earth, a new study has revealed.”

YAY SCIENCE! 🥳

I will warn you, this whole terraforming idea can go really sideways.

Six Colors: “I get it. The iPad Pro isn’t ready for a complete hardware redesign, nor did Apple want to redesign the Magic Keyboard this year. But the result is that the leading iPad is missing innovations that the cheap iPad offers. It’s weird.”

I didn’t pay attention to the Apple announcement this week, but I can see how this would be extremely confusing.

What do you mean the low end model is better than the Pro model?

Puck.news: “Where we last left the Twitter saga, our reluctant hero Elon Musk had essentially made the difficult decision that he’d be better off forking over another $20 billion of his own cash rather than continue to fight Twitter in court and still end up paying a fine in the billions of dollars—perhaps double-digit billions—and have only a bunch of lawsuits to show for it.”

This guy. I’ll say it again, for being such a genius this was a dumb move.

Then again, he may make fools of us all. We can only hope. 🤔

I don’t doubt that Twitter might be a bit overstaffed, but this seems more like an intentional act of destroying the company. https://t.co/rJvsdihDnc

— Jeff 🇺🇦 (@Darchmare) October 21, 2022

Engadget: “On one hand, Musk has told prospective investors that he plans to axe 75 percent of the Twitter’s 7,500-member staff upon completion of the deal, a move that would likely cripple the site’s operations and kneecap its ability to moderate content and ensure users' security.”

Yeah! Let’s buy a company for $54.20 a share — it’s not worth nearly that much — and promptly run it in the ground.

Where is everybody going next? I’m still recommending Mastodon or Micro.blog.

Chris Coyier: “If you publish stuff on the web, you’re outputting HTML at URLs for people to read. And it’s good form to provide an RSS feed as well maybe JSON if you’re hip. That’s 2-3 formats for your content out of the gate, which is effort, but hey, that’s the job as a publisher: get your content out to as many people as possible. If syndicating into another format is where people are, it’s likely worth doing.”

Of course I’m biased but having an RSS or JSON Feed is important to the syndication of your weblog or web site.

Also, dear podcasters large and small, please add an RSS option to the list of places folks can get your podcast and make sure folks know it. Thank you.

Reuters: “Oct 17 (Reuters) - Parlement Technologies, the parent company of social media app Parler, said on Monday that it will be acquired by rapper Kanye West, who legally changed his name to simply Ye last year.”

Not to be outdone by his good buddy Elon Musk, Kanye West has been conned into purchasing white supremacist and conspiracist stronghold, Parler.

How long until it disappears?

Vice: “But either way, 5.7 million is a lot, and one of the elements managing it is an operating system that fell into obscurity a quarter-century ago: IBM’s OS/2.”

This is extremely cool. I know there are a lot of OS/2 fans in the world, lord knows I ran into a lot of them during my time at Visio. They’re rabid! 😄

I need to know more about this now and it’s nice to see a reliable system continue to do what it was intended to do.

If it were written today it would probably be some JavaScript monstrosity.

Musk is dangerous. He has a very potent platform (even without owning Twitter) and is using it actively harm US & Western interests and support those of a brutal war criminal. Should he gain control of Twitter, the consequence for discourse/politics in the US will be v. damaging. https://t.co/fX0dvGAcCK

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) October 17, 2022

Politico: “In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Hill warned in an interview with POLITICO that what Putin was trying to do was not only seize Ukraine but destroy the current world order. And she recognized from the start that Putin would use the threat of nuclear conflict to try to get his way.”

Ah, yes, more Musk, the fragrance that lingers. Not only is he trying to destroy Twitter he’s trying to bring about the destruction of Ukraine and Democracy and set himself up to be ruler of the world.

Scary.

Jack Black makes a young man’s day. Jack Black is the best of us… pic.twitter.com/K7svV4XezU

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) October 17, 2022

I was leaning on the good old heating pad and had to get up for a bit.

Flynn decided it was a nice warm spot to lie down. 😂

COVID bivalent vaccine in the arm. 👍🏼💉

I’m gonna give the worst alternate uniform award to the Green Bay Packers

At least make the all yellow helmet into a giant piece of cheese or something.

I have plenty of work to do on Stream, plenty. I have a list of features a mile long. Some submitted by the fine folks using Stream — thank you! — some right out of my goofy brain. Yes, I wish I could move faster, yes I’d like to do this full time. Yes, yes, yes!

The best I can do is muster is an hour here an hour there. Anywho, I’m putting this idea out here. It’s one I’ve added to the Stream list. It’s absolutely something I want.

Read Later

I use Pocket as my read later app. It plays a crucial role in collecting posts and news for Saturday Morning Coffee. What I’d really love to have is a read later feature in Stream. One of these decades it’ll happen.

Twitter Support

It would be much better if these features were part of Twitter.

First, I’d love to be able to follow Twitter Lists as if it were an RSS feed. This is a very selfish feature because I have a Twitter List called Politics. It has all my favorite news sources and other sources of politics. I made it because Politics can really stress me out, especially around election time. I’d like this so I could follow any list from any Tweeter, including my own. Of course it would be best to be able to do it without going through Twitter’s authentication system, but I supposed I need that so I can use the API.

Second, it love to have an extension to Stream that could unroll a Twitter thread into a nice single post. That’s it. That’s the feature.

Here’s what it would look like. This example used Thread Reader and Pocket. Stream could be great at this if its darned developer would get off his butt and write some code. 🙃

Kolby very impatiently waiting for his pup cup.

Good morning fellow coffee and tea drinkers! Grab a cup, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.☕️

CNN: “Robbie Coltrane, the actor who brought to life the lovable gamekeeper Hagrid in the Harry Potter film franchise, died on Friday, according to his agent, Scott Henderson. He was 72.”

This is so heartbreaking. Our beloved Hagrid is gone. Mr. Coletrane, of course, appeared in many other films but he will always be Hagrid to me.

RIP 💔

Sketch - Via LinkedIn: “Today is a very tough day for everyone at Sketch. In response to challenging market conditions and with a desire to keep our product-first strategy, we’ve taken the difficult decision to reduce our team by just over 80 people. This will mostly impact Operations and Marketing, who have done great work in the recent weeks and months. Our Product team remains well-equipped, with a core team continuing to drive things forward.”

This is a real bummer to see. In my mind Sketch is a prime example of a modern Mac application done right. I know many designers who use it daily. To see such a reduction in workforce makes your heart sink. All those people looking for work toward the end of the year.

On the flip side there are now many very qualified Mac and iOS developers on the market. Go find one and hire them.

Also, why in the world wouldn’t you put this on the company blog or as a standalone news announcement on your own website?

Fortune: “Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna…things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”

William Shatner is a Canadian Treasure, I originally said American Treasure but a friend corrected me. He’s still an American Treasure if you ask me. 😁 I don’t know what more say, other thank this: We must protect our planet. It’s the only place that can sustain life we’re aware of. Even if we found another planet it would be impossible to reach.

BREAKING:

WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) -- Jury says Alex Jones should pay $965 million to people who suffered from his lies about the Sandy Hook school massacre.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 12, 2022

It couldn’t have happened to a better man. Now, get this jerk off the airwaves.

Yahoo! News: “The House select committee held its 10th and possibly final public hearing on Thursday, presenting new evidence stemming from its 15-month investigation into the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

Well, well, well, TFG will finally get his subpoena. Of course he’ll worm his way out of it, like he always does. Here’s hoping the Justice Department gets him.

Welp… that 5-minute montage the Jan 6 committee just played leads me to the conclusion that America did have a president on January 6th. Her name was Nancy Pelosi.

— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) October 13, 2022

CNN: “Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd delighted “Back to the Future” fans when they were reunited at the weekend, 37 years after the release of the sci-fi comedy.”

I love this film series. My favorite episode is the third and final installment. They’re all very good of course but the third one is best.

Axios: “Google has approved Donald Trump’s Twitter-like social media app Truth Social for distribution in the Google Play Store, Axios has learned.”

This company is doomed to failure. Besides, if Musk gets his hands on Twitter, which is highly likely, TFG will be allowed back on to continue his reign of terror unabated. That sucks.

Fast Company: “With 15,000 locations across the U.S., the coffee chain is betting it can convince electric vehicle owners that it’s the perfect place to charge up. (Literally!)”

Starbucks has some much bigger fish to fry with workers form unions and their attempts to bust those unions but this is an interesting idea.

I was going to question why a company like McDonalds wasn’t interested in doing something like this but Starbucks is definitely a more high end brand. It’s a place folks spend “disposable” income.

With one or two exceptions, I simply don't care about web sites that don't publish RSS feeds. RSS via the indispensible [@NetNewsWire](https://micro.blog/NetNewsWire) is how I stay abreast of the \*vast\* majority of web sites with content I care about. https://t.co/sluWtnoB3J

— Peter Cohen (@flargh) October 14, 2022

That’s right Peter! You tell ‘em!

Hey! Did you know I developed a feed reader for iOS called Stream? That’s right, I did, no, really, I did! It’s free in the App Store but you’re welcome to leave a tip. 😄

Kim and the grandkids had fun today. I hope she brought one home! 😄

These are mummy brownies.

I’d mentioned a few days back I always look out the kitchen window into our back yard looking for deer. It paid off this morning. My wife and I watched three grazing along our back fence. 🦌

They’re so beautiful.

i really love this picture.

Yes

Hacker News Comment: “This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren’t looking to profit. Firstly, they care about their users and are more likely to take difficult decisions, like the one Ash has made, for the good of themselves and their users. In doing so everyone involved has time to make an orderly move.”

I really love seeing this take. It’s the first reply to this Hacker News post on the shutdown of mastodon.technology. Yes, it is a sad day amongst folks in the Fediverse, especially for folks on mastodon.technology but the network persists because it’s federated with other instances. The folks who are losing their accounts will be able to move to another instance or perhaps spin up their own!

It some ways it’s like having your own blog. If you decide to stop writing and let the domain lapse your writing will disappear but the internet of blogs continues to march along.

I’ve heard so many folks say Mastodon isn’t a good substitute to Twitter but if it isn’t, what is?

Once Elon Musk has Twitter it would be fantastic to see Twitter implement the protocols necessary to participate in the Fediverse.

What does that even mean?

It means Twitter would write some code that would allow Mastodon based servers to find it and render Twitter tweets into a unified timeline of users.

It would allow a Twitter of Twitters to blossom. Sure, Twitter is a for profit company and others could have for profit Mastodon instances but it wouldn’t be required. All that’s required is the will to fire up an instance.

A true open social experience

Folks like Manton Reese, the creator of Micro.blog, have already implemented these protocols to allow Micro.blog to federate with other Mastodon instances! In fact, I follow quite a few folks on Micro.blog from my Mastodon account on my instance, curmudgeon.cafe.

I could also see news papers, streaming companies, and movie studios running their own instances. Think of names on services like @wolfblitzer@cnn.social for Wolf Blitzer, @maggie@nytimes.social for Maggie Haberman, or @maddow@msnbc.social for Rachel Maddow. Of course I made all those names up and each of those companies may choose to use a different domain extension for their federated servers, but you get the picture.

Those custom domain names can’t be used on Twitter today because it’s completely centralized as opposed to the open, federated, system employed by Mastodon.

The really nice benefit to the federated system is the survivability of the network. If one system disappeared the remainder of the systems continue to operate. There is no set of central servers.

Hey! That’s how the internet is built!

Latest Halloween themed flag.

Oy, I have a domain queued up and ready to purchase. I don’t need another domain, I don’t need another domain, I don’t need another domain.

I let a few lapse recently. Maybe that makes it ok to buy this one? 🤔

Gotta keep it brief today my granddaughter is visiting so it’s busy. 😄

Petapixel: “It doesn’t look good for Meta as the company is trading at its lowest stock value since 2019, advertisers are dropping spending, and users are leaving its platforms.”

Couldn’t have happened to a better company.

As you can tell, I don’t like Facebook.

This is not rocket science. Right after the midterms, this is going to be my constant refrain: DOJ must put us out of our misery, end the Trump shenanigans, and friggin indict him. As Bob Mueller used to say if he thought you were taking too long: stop playing with your food.

— Andrew Weissmann 🌻 (@AWeissmann\_) October 5, 2022

Cal Newport: “As I recently discovered, however, the bestselling fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson put us all to shame. His home office heroics began in 2008, when he and his wife bought a nondescript house in a nondescript Utah suburb.”

Go read the article. I now want to do what he did.

The Atlantic: “Yesterday, the world got a look inside Elon Musk’s phone. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is currently in litigation with Twitter and trying to back out of his deal to buy the platform and take it private. As part of the discovery process related to this lawsuit, Delaware’s Court of Chancery released hundreds of text messages and emails sent to and from Musk.”

Tech bros at their “best.”

Barn Finds: “The 1956 Golden Hawk was one of the many derivatives of the Studebaker Starliner, craftily styled by Raymond Loewy.”

I want this car for my collection! Of course I don’t have a collection but if I did I’d want this one.

Ash Furrow: “I have sad news that I have decided to shut down the mastodon.technology instance. In accordance with the Mastodon Server Covenant, the server will be shut down no earlier than December 1, 2022.”

It’s a bummer to see Ash go through a rough time and it’s completely understandable why he’s shutting it down.

Poynter: “The question is whether Musk is serious this time or if it’s some sort of legal maneuver.”

Platformer: “Today let’s talk about the backdrop against which he made this decision, whether it’s somehow an incredibly elaborate effort to get out of the deal, and what Twitter’s beleaguered employees were saying about it internally.”

Slate: “Here are four theories as to why Musk is now changing course. Let’s loosely rank them from ‘by far the most likely’ to ‘certainly in the realm of possibility,’ which covers almost anything when it comes to Musk.”

Daily Beast: ”Just a day after Elon Musk announced his intention to complete his purchase of Twitter, a group that intended to provide $1 billion earlier this year to fund his proposed buyout has reportedly stepped away from the deal.”

The Guardian: “Lawyers for Elon Musk on Thursday asked a Delaware court to halt an upcoming trial over Musk’s $44bn deal to take over the social media company.”

The Verge: “The pending trial between Elon Musk and Twitter is suddenly on hold, as Judge Kathaleen McCormick granted the Musk side’s request for a stay, pending the closing of their deal for Musk to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share.”

New York Times: “An influx of Trumpists is not going to improve the vibe. Twitter can’t be saved. Maybe, if we’re lucky, it can be destroyed.”

What a roller coaster of a ride!

I’m happy to see Twitter didn’t pull its lawsuit and it’s fine the Judge put it on hold for now.

Musk should be brought to account. If he signs the deal and drops a huge wad of cash on the table he can stop the lawsuit. If he doesn’t, well, that’s a horse of a different color.

It really does sound like he’s trying to avoid some embarrassment. Text messages can bite you on the butt.

No matter. I’m here for it. 🍿

P.S. - Mr. Musk, musk.social is still available for way less than you’re paying for Twitter. Pick it up and you could map it directly to Twitter or use it for whatever.

When I stand at the kitchen sink I always scan our back yard for deer. Every once in a while I get a nice surprise with one or more deer grazing or just passing through.

None so far today but it doesn’t stop me from looking.

Some of our fall flowers. 🌼 I’m surprised the rose is still blooming.

I don’t know why I’d like to do this, but I’d love to do a Mac and Windows word processor that implements a WordStar clone. All the way down to keyboard shortcuts and file format.

Some writers still use WordStar as their word processor of choice.

Of course there are projects I will spend my time on instead of this odd thought.

Stream comes to mind. 😃

My dreams always include one of the places I love; Seattle, Exeter, or Lindsay.

Lately, instead of dreaming of my time at Visio in Seattle I’ve been dreaming about returning to Microsoft. Did that last night.

Brains are weird. 🧠