Nolan
There is also a phenomenon on the internet where those with the most boring, poorly-thought-out, or downright destructive thoughts are also the ones who think, "The world must know."
So 95% of all comments on the internet are not worth reading. Especially when something goes "viral" and stops becoming the thing itself and instead starts becoming a representation of that thing, a totem to be bickered over. (As in the case of the classic "I only read the title, but here's my opinion…")
Nolan
Like, imagine if The Great Gatsby went viral today, and the majority of the online comments were about whether Gatsby was a heroic rich dude or an evil rich dude, playing either the hero or the villain in someone's ersatz political allegory
Nolan
"What It Felt Like When 'Cat Person' Went Viral" by Kristen Roupenian https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-it-felt-like-when-cat-person-went-viral
Sometimes I feel like the internet is a nuance-destroying machine. I recall reading the original piece and thinking that it captured something subtle and thought-provoking about human courtship. But then it went viral, so online commenters started fashioning it into a blunt weapon for one side or the other of a culture war.
Nolan
"The Ethics of Performance" by Tim Kadlec https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2019-01-09-the-ethics-of-performance/
Interesting perspective. I'd never really thought of performance that way.
Nolan
"On the Experience of Entering a Bookstore in Your Forties (vs. Your Twenties)" by Steve Edwards https://lithub.com/on-the-experience-of-entering-a-bookstore-in-your-forties-vs-your-twenties/
"In my twenties the question was never 'What do I want to read?' but rather 'Who do I want to be?' — and bookstores were shrines I pilgrimaged to for answers."
Baldur Bjarnason
“Harold Crick and the Web Platform”
https://bkardell.com/blog/Math.html
On MathML.
Nolan
@baldur I haven't switched to v2 yet, but it bugs me to update every time I run the "now" command, so I probably will soon. :)
Nolan
@danwchan Yeah it's not that bad all told. I also switched to microG and that helped a lot. (Location services and push notifications actually work now! Mostly.)
Nolan
@baldur I use "now" and actually consider it a great service. But yeah it is nearly impossible to search for help on it. I usually have to use `now --help` or manually look through the Zeit documentation.
Zeit are also the creators of "next", "serve", "micro", and "hyper." 🤔 https://github.com/zeit/
Nolan
I can see why normal people just throw their hands up in the air about data privacy. I've put so much effort into this stuff, but instead of feeling like a super-cool guy in a spy movie, I feel more like a guy with a half-working phone and no decent emoji input
Nolan
Then again, I'm a software developer, not a lobbyist or a politician, so I'm just doing what I can. 😊 Also I'm trying to remain optimistic, and as part of that optimism I'm trying to "be the change I want to see in the world," i.e. build the alternatives I want to exist.
So let's hear it for the fediverse in 2019! And hopefully by building up a viable alternative, we can make a case to policymakers that it's worth reviving antitrust rather than handing the reigns of power to the monopolists.
Nolan
As technologists I think it's tempting to believe that decentralization can be achieved if we just had the right tech – better interfaces, more options, the right algorithms, whatever. I've been guilty of this myself; Pinafore is my attempt to make Mastodon's UI more accessible. But Doctorow makes a good case that these are just band-aids on what is fundamentally a policy problem. And unfortunately the policy solutions being floated right now would entrench monopolies rather than break them up.
Nolan
Pinafore is getting pretty mature as a project, so I decided to take some time to write about all the weird stuff to look out for in the codebase, for the benefit of a new contributor. I dunno if this kind of "here's all the weird stuff" overview belongs in CONTRIBUTING.md, but it seems to make sense to document it somewhere: https://github.com/nolanlawson/pinafore/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#codebase-overview
Nolan
Note this is the homepage, not the logged-in timeline. But still! I'm happy with it.
Nolan
Woot, #Pinafore's homepage gets a perfect score from WebPageTest. Total page weight is <200KB compressed, renders in ~2.5s on mobile 3G. ("Compress Images" is N/A because there are no images, only SVG. 😊 ) https://www.webpagetest.org/result/181213_5J_d973f1ecf52d50b08954b41732d54baf/
Nolan
If you want to support #Pinafore development, please donate to Eugen or your local admin/moderators instead. They make it all possible. ♥
I have a day job, and I do Pinafore for fun. The server costs me $15 per month to run, which is cheaper than a lot of other hobbies
Nolan
@strypey @djsumdog Both. https://github.com/nolanlawson/pinafore/issues/369
Nolan
@strypey Glad to hear. :) Thanks for reporting!
Nolan
@strypey Can you please provide steps to repro and file a bug at https://github.com/nolanlawson/pinafore/issues ? I tested this thoroughly and thought it was fixed :)
Nolan
@djsumdog @strypey @Gargron This is supported in Mastodon but not yet in Pinafore FYI.
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