---
title: "Scripting News"
generator: "opmlToMarkdown v0.5.22"
urlFirstChild: "2026/11/index.md"
---

## [Monday, November 9, 2026](2026/11/09.md)

[The Markdown version](https://demo.bonbonweb.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdave.writersweb.org%2Fscripting%2F) of my blog is getting more traffic than the HTML version. So much so that I'm getting complaints about all the political stuff. I love this, and I even love that some people are saying what they used to say, they didn't come to my blog for the politics. That probably will influence me a little, but it still is my main way I talk to the world, so I'm not likely to back off too often. [#](2026/11/09/a143754.md "Direct link to this item.")

[To Phil Windley](https://x.com/davewiner/status/2119473759035801674): "We both remember what the web was like before it became a CSS and JavaScript platform." But most young users and developers have no memory of how powerful it was to make interop so damned easy. [#](2026/11/09/a145112.md "Direct link to this item.")

[John Palfrey](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22john%20palfrey%22), a friend and former colleague from Berkman wrote a [fantastic post](https://jpalfrey.blog/2026/11/08/whats-it-like-inside-those-law-firms/) about people at the lawfirms who caved to Trump. [#](2026/11/09/a162009.md "Direct link to this item.")

Same thing has been happening in tech for decades. Technology gets captured by a bigco, they kill all the inspiration, in order to lock it down it for ROI. There are developers inside these companies who believe in open systems, as lawyers believe in the rule of law, and if we support them from outside, we can probably change the behavior, make them aware of the cost when they destroy something of value they don't own, as they are doing with the web as it was defined by Netscape and Microsoft before. None of these companies were restrained, not by public opinion or court decisions. Now we may have the political power to be heard, and we know how to protect the web where we don't have a good idea of how to do it for AI yet. We can start with the web, and make sure they don't act like owners of the tech, redefining the web via a browser monopoly. In the antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990's they were looking at the wrong pairing, they saw the problem between Windows and Office, when the real thing that needed to be separated from MS, as with Google, is the web browser. [#](2026/11/09/a020947.md "Direct link to this item.")

What they don’t say about corruption, when you take a payoff you’re selling out the people. [#](2026/11/09/a021900.md "Direct link to this item.")

The sound on my TV is a fraction of a second faster than the picture. Just enough of a delay so I know a shot is going in before I see it go in. [#](2026/11/09/a141627.md "Direct link to this item.")

### [Dems: the campaign never ends](2026/11/09/142759.md)

Urgent note to Dems. Keep your campaign websites going.

This is the mistake Dems _always_ make. When you have news to get out, the MSM will mangle or ignore it. Go direct to your supporters, not just the people who voted for you, the people you represent. Let us help support the work you're doing.

Speeches on the floor of Congress hold very little interest.

Send some of the new stars of the party out in the flyover territory (where they come from!) to keep everyone in the loop. Look at all the power that was locked up in places like the North and South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Kansas, Michigan, Iowa. Arizona, Mississippi and Alaska. (Who did I miss?)

Remember this dear member of Congress, you were elected to represent us, not to make deals with anyone else. We are the power. Y'all always forget that once the election has happened, but that's just the beginning. You may be very surprised if you have a 365-day-a-year connection to the people.

The news industry is pretty freaking useless, and we know it. The landslide wasn't manufactured on Maddow or Meet the Press. Don't look to podcasters. The _people_ of the United States are driving now.

Also even though he doesn't have a job, bring Pete Butttigieg in to the campaign.

And to the news networks, host some of your shows from studios in the new states, or move your hosts around from Atlanta to Dallas and Des Moines and Detroit, Phoenix and Charlotte. I think you'll be surprised at the difference it makes in the perspective of your super boring talking heads who always say the same bullshit, and the pride of the people who live in those states. Remember they feel no one pays attention to them -- and that includes journalism, not just politicians.

The current Dem leaders can't do this -- too much change for them, to little time. Start with people who have been freshly educated in what the electorate is capable of. You're at best the coaches, not of the reps, but the people. Sometimes people are too old for the job, and that's true in this case. Someone, an elder like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren should be out looking for the next leaders. Whoever they are, they must be young and eloquent and able to talk back to bullshit, not try to skate around it.

And remember this -- the campaign never ends.

PS: I'd love to see [Jasmine Crockett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmine_Crockett) sitting behind Trump at the next State of the Union. A sharp woman judging a smelly old man is really appealing. Focus group that, against Jeffries in the same seat.

PPS: The new leadership has to be photogenic, intelligent, doesn't yield to bullshit, doesn't try to skate around it either. When they go on SNL they have to kill it.

## [Sunday, November 8, 2026](2026/11/08.md)

[John Gruber](https://x.com/gruber/status/2119465900826918992): "Markdown is my sole creation. Aaron Swartz was my best, by far, beta tester and the first person other than me to get excited about it." I am glad to get a concise statement about this from Gruber. And from what I recall of Aaron that sounds about right too. [#](2026/11/08/a165547.md "Direct link to this item.")

A while back I must have read a review of [JBL Tune Flex earbuds](https://www.jbl.com/TUNE-FLEX.html) and bought a pair. The sound was awful, almost no bass, flat, low volume. I have always been looking for earbuds that get loud. So I put them away and forgot I had them, still looking for the holy grail of earbuds. Now, a few years later, I was looking around in a drawer, pulled them out, and when I had some time to mess around I found out the problem had something to do with how I placed them in my ears. Properly placed the volume was ample and the bass was inspiring. Just took a walk with them on and I love them. I wonder which other buds I tried and gave up on too quickly? [#](2026/11/08/a191134.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Saturday, November 7, 2026](2026/11/07.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/14/paulBunyonBrainerd.png)[Yesterday's rollout of BonBonWeb](https://demo.bonbonweb.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdave.writersweb.org%2Fscripting%2F2026%2F11%2F06.md) was a great success. I think we have actually launched a new genre of the web, based on the original web before it was taken over by the silos. Everyone loves Markdown, which was not news to me. It's so simple you can't hide any michegas. And it gives writers control of the things [we want control of](https://textcasting.org/), without miring us in the details of CSS. And then expert web designers can create stylesheets that work for us, and we will make it easy to add those to your BonBon, and presumably our competitors will do the same. Because I'm doing the initial implementations of each component of this web, and setting the expectation of the separation power between writers and readers, any competitor is going to have to do the same. I learned this from podcasting. The first podcast client, which I wrote, established OPML as the format for interchanging subscription lists. Doing the same kind of thing here. Setting user expectations from the start. [#](2026/11/07/a153140.md "Direct link to this item.")

BTW, this is what the [MD version](https://dave.writersweb.org/scripting/2026/11/06.md?format=markdown) of one of my blog posts looks like. [#](2026/11/07/a154042.md "Direct link to this item.")

And this is what my [long-form Markdown-based posts](https://demo.bonbonweb.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdave.writersweb.org%2Fscripting%2F2026%2F11%2F07%2F181537.md&fbclid=IwY2xjawVcTb9leHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mBWJyaWQRMVEwcDRTWlBWb1RKR0dhQ1ZzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEfhUGKUrpim5I-fZ4Zmxqo9TGFMOQb6WeBKlgzvGnI_60ovwLAm7x1QqgGBcg_aem_kc_8lec8YL7GIociDxlv2Q) look like. [#](2026/11/07/a183637.md "Direct link to this item.")

[I wrote a post](https://demo.rss.chat/?id=801) on demo.rss.chat and you can [read it](https://demo.bonbonweb.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdemo.bonbonweb.org%2Fdemo.rss.chat%2Fdave%2F2026%2F11%2F07%2F801.md) on BonBonWeb. Markdown and RSS 2.0. We will provide a user-level way to connect between the two, but we're still a few steps from that. Today we proved that once we have the UI for setting it up, it should "just work." _Small parts loosely joined._ [#](2026/11/07/a173030.md "Direct link to this item.")

[Poll](https://x.com/davewiner/status/2119094415285465426): If we want democracy we have to have a web that isn't controlled by the big tech companies. [#](2026/11/07/a155034.md "Direct link to this item.")

What the big tech companies don't get is that independent developers can come up with big ideas and if they put limits in the way of those ideas being done in their world, then they aren't the [petri dish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_dish) or [coral reef](http://scripting.com/stories/2007/04/28/twitterAsCoralReef.html) they aspire to be. [#](2026/11/07/a172254.md "Direct link to this item.")

### [Flushing is a cultural center!??](2026/11/07/181537.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/11/07/abdulElSayed.png)[This is so heartening](https://x.com/Taniel/status/2118879907040411772). America never disappeared, it just was asleep, lulled into naivete by the dashing figure Trump cast on his TV show, and he said some of the right things in his 2016 campaign. Truthful things people had never heard from a candidate and wanted to hear and wanted to believe something would be done to make it better. I got this perspective listening to Dave Chappelle explain it. And Trump helped us buy straight talk from candidates. We're getting it now from the new crop of inspiring senators and governors. Remarkable times we live in, such highs and lows.

People from NY, such as myself, saw right through him. A typical bully -- we knew these people in grade school. There are people in my freaking family who are like Trump on a personality level. They push people around, but if you stand your ground they fade away.

Well now we've gotten together -- that's all we ever had to do -- work with each other -- and remember the greatness of the country that gave a home to us or our ancestors. We have not only got a big heart but we're also collectively smart enough to know that we always need to be growing, and for that we need fresh new citizens from around the world to keep things interesting.

I grew up in Flushing, NY -- part of NYC -- which was a sleepy Queens neighborhood made up of mostly Catholic and Jewish families when I was a child. Over the years, it became more Chinese and Korean. And it now has one of the best bagel places in the city. Everything is more alive there now. Main Street is both familiar and foreign.

(Utopia Bagels, on Utopia Parkway, technically in Whitestone.)

My mother, a refugee from the German Nazis as a child, didn't like that the neighborhood was changing, but I think it's fine, it's what makes the US and NY in particular so great. And while I still love a NYC diner breakfast or deli lunch, the Chinese and Korean food in Flushing is world-renowned and very tasty.

It still freaks me out that Flushing is famous for something so totally un-Flushing!

**This election was like the 2008 election on steroids**. We saw the election of Obama as a turning point. It was, but after his term was over, we snapped back to our slavery roots in reaction. This year, we re-asserted our love of country, not wanting to deprive the US of the fresh inspiration of immigrants of all races and genders, faiths, and and beliefs both religious and political. And once we, collectively, saw the aftermath of our turn toward fascism said, passionately -- no way, not here. The US is a melting pot. And we're _good_ at it.

No one knew until Tuesday whether the old America of our parents and grandparents was still here, thankfully it is.

Now we have to continue to work together, to acknowledge our differences but also celebrate what we agree on. We are a democracy. We elect leaders but it is _our_ country. The Trumps are still struggling with that, but don't ever forget it. This is the country that works, going through a really rough period.

## [Friday, November 6, 2026](2026/11/06.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/11/06/bonbon.png)Good morning and [welcome](https://demo.bonbonweb.org/) to my idea of a new web. You'll be hearing a lot about this, it's a prototype for the web of Markdown, aka the Writers Web or BonBonWeb, and it'll probably get a few more names pretty soon. And all the tools you've seen me writing and releasing in 2026 play a role here, including [RSS.chat](https://this.how/rsschat/) and [FeedLand](https://docs.feedland.com/gettingstarted.md). It's all one big new web that is easy to write for and even easier to read. It's the writersweb I've been talking about for so long, and [textcasting](https://textcasting.org/), and every part is replaceable. Every part. **There will be no silos here**. It's my last big contribution to the world I believe in, one where software's value is expressed only in terms of price, performance and functionality. I have a funny feeling all your social network software will jump on this bandwagon before too long, and with your help that can happen. All you have to do is use it. I often do a [screenshot](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/11/06/demobonbon.png) of a new product on its opening day. [#](2026/11/06/a143145.md "Direct link to this item.")

I'm going to post lots of links to [my demo page](https://demo.bonbonweb.org/), and on scripting.com. Example, here's a [link](https://demo.bonbonweb.org/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdave.writersweb.org%2Fscripting) to the Scripting News home page in Bonbon. [#](2026/11/06/a143931.md "Direct link to this item.")

Now I know this can be confusing. That's because it's tough to make a web browser that runs inside another web browser. Bonbon, the full product, is itself a web browser, the demo let's you zoom around the BonBonWeb inside of a Chrome-like browser, one that's looking for HTML files instead of Markdown files, as BB does. When you use the full product, there will be no such confusion. It has a bookmarks menu and a history menu. You can put links in the browser chrome. You can view source, pretty anything you would want to do in an earlier browser works in BB. Thanks to Claude we were able to do endless experimentation. Not quite ready to release, but really soooon. [#](2026/11/06/a144113.md "Direct link to this item.")

There will be comments in BonBonWeb. How will that work? You can see in [demo.rss.chat](https://demo.rss.chat/). Not hooked up yet, but that's the plan. [#](2026/11/06/a144424.md "Direct link to this item.")

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2017/09/01/mrFrog.png)Now in BonBonWeb, the content has no say in how the text is displayed, that belongs to the reader. You can play with that with the A icon next to the address box. When you click the A, a dialog pops up with three choices: Basic, Book, Classic, Mono and Newsprint. I had Claude on the web work with me on this set, for some reason it's better at graphic design than Claude code is. As a writer, I want control of the words, and to be able to use italic and bold, include links, lists with bullets and numbers, etc -- basically the features of web writing that were excluded from Twitter-like systems. I want those back. But I am a writer, and don't have an opinion on how CSS should be used. We all have different moods and preferences. There's a simple version of this in my iPad using iOS, and I use it all the time to filter out all the nonsense websites try to add to my reading experience. In BonBonWeb, we do all the filtering. Same with JavaScript. The content is meant to be read, not to be the user interface of an app. [#](2026/11/06/a145749.md "Direct link to this item.")

[Screenshot](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/11/06/bonbonstyles.png) of today's posts viewed in a different style sheet. [#](2026/11/06/a153302.md "Direct link to this item.")

Who do I think I am to create a web that works so differently? Just a developer with an idea. [#](2026/11/06/a150533.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Thursday, November 5, 2026](2026/11/05.md)

Why do they have repos that are handling [thousands](https://github.blog/engineering/architecture-optimization/inside-githubs-new-git-storage-architecture/) of agents pushing into a single repository at once. [#](2026/11/05/a215845.md "Direct link to this item.")

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/11/05/robinWilliams.png)When working with Claude I learn more about the way my mind works. I am building a demo for a new product and see some quirky behavior. Should I pause and tell Claude, or just keep going and assume I'll see it again and can report it then. If I switch over to Claude and report it, pretty good chance it will write me a multipart document that i have to at least skim to see if there was anything in there I needed to know. The real answer I was looking for, "yes i can fix that, say go if you want me to do it now." Boom. That's how I want my machine to work. I explain to it that it must be more concise. This might be the real frustration of all writers in every medium. You can't write down your thought process, it has to be in your brain before you can write it. To an outside observer you look interruptible. And Claude doesn't even understand the concept of being interrupted and losing your train of thought. No doubt it could define it, but it doesn't get it. Kind of like the great speech [Robin Williams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRG2jlQWCsY&t=36s) gives to young Matt Damon, the genius kid who knows everything, but has no idea what living is really like. [#](2026/11/05/a141815.md "Direct link to this item.")

One thing to know about Claude -- it will never welcome you when you start a session with the news that it had a gestalt and now has figured out how to do something that will blow your mind. That doesn't mean it won't see a different and better way to do something if you ask it to have another look. It solved a deal-stopper problem in Frontier, after we thought there was no solution. So it does seem to be creative, but not in a mind bomb sort of way? [#](2026/11/05/a155711.md "Direct link to this item.")

I still can't believe we had a normal election in the US. All the effort the Repubs went to, to build and train a secret police, and they didn't use them? [#](2026/11/05/a142927.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Wednesday, November 4, 2026](2026/11/04.md)

I want to find all the recent podcast interviews that Jamie Raskin has done. Is there a service that can do that? [#](2026/11/04/a162135.md "Direct link to this item.")

### [It's time for citizens to really unite](2026/11/04/154537.md)

The mid-term election was a blowout for Democrats.

I am so happy today to be able to write those words.

So many things to say, first a few notes.

*   [Citizens United](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC) was the real loser in this election. And the missing ethics rules that allow members of the government to legally do insider trading, which they actually do, a lot of. A political job in Washington is worth real money, legally.
    
*   The TV here in the NYC area included local races in the Hudson Valley (where I live) and New Jersey, and they were vicious and on all the time. NYC itself not so much.
    
*   Often all the commercials in a single break were political. Some of them were so lame and sarcastic I thought they were actually ads for the competitor they were trying to get us to hate.
    
*   If money could have bought this election, it would have been a landslide for the Republicans. The ad in the Ohio governors election was over the top, a **blame the victim** campaign, so cynical, they openly dared the voters to be as depraved as they were. I hope that woke a lot of voters up.
    
*   Elon Musk threw hundreds of millions into the election, esp in Texas where he was presumably counting on control of politicians to allow him to build out SpaceX, Grok and Tesla out without regard to environmental regulation. He wasted his money, but he has a lot of that, but what it proved about the electorate is that we, collectively, sobered up enough to see what was going on, and stopped voting for the better comedians who run around on stage with buzzsaws and talk about other politicians asses, because the last election of Trump did a lot of destruction in the US and around the world. This is serious stuff.
    
*   We are not powerless, we actually are some of the most powerful people in the world. We the People are a co-equal branch of government along with the courts and executive. We should vote with the same sobriety as we expect our reps to vote.
    
*   When we think our elections are mere entertainment, we surrender that power to who had the best schtick or most entertaining ads. We act like the robots the elites depend on us to be. Our vote isn't a message, it's an act of government.
    
*   Already hearing pundits say basically "yeah we know Congress can't do anything" because for two years we had a Congress that wouldn't do anything. Now we have one that move and cancel the Iran War, for example, with a single vote to withdraw authorization (which was never given).
    
*   If only political pundits could handle little intricacies like sports pundits can.
    
*   I heard a podcast [interview](https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/jamie-raskin-is-not-afraid-to-impeach-trump-again) with Jamie Raskin by an editor at the New Yorker. It was disgusting. The reporter mostly he wanted him to say he would consider impeaching Trump, and of course that was the title of the story. If only he had been willing to let Raskin explain how different things are now, they have just elected a Congress that is ready to shake things up, and impeaching Trump might not be the fastest way to start putting things right, to building an America that has new better guardrails to prevent us from going around in circles. Why couldn't the New Yorker, of all pubs, leave space for him to explain, but nope, they want their freaking headline, and still very much need to be routed around. Raskin has to go direct more.
    

We have a lot of work to do and that work will be done by the people, by us. This is the big gestalt the elites in the US haven't caught on to. The new tech lets people contribute to our country on an everyday basis, not just when the parties need money to run ads that we're now totally on to. I know I am an elite, but I also know people in high positions in the progressive world who could help by getting behind the open technology not owned by Musk or Zuck or Jeff or whoever, that will allow us to effectively organize. Now is the moment to do this, to make sure this victory doesn't slip away into the comatose blur that the MSM works so hard to keep us in.

## [Tuesday, November 3, 2026](2026/11/03.md)

### [Frontier's debugger is back](2026/11/03/172109.md)

The Frontier debugger now works in Atlantis, the version of Frontier that runs on modern systems, the one I have been using for everyday work for a month or so.

I write software in the debugger, testing each addition after writing it, to see that the input produces the expected output. I also use it to see why code that has worked for 10 years now doesn't produce the expected result, ie debugging.

![A UserTalk script, stopped at a breakpoint. Full size screen shot. ](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/11/03/debugtest.png)

## [Monday, November 2, 2026](2026/11/02.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/07/02/dontBooVote.png)Podcast: [A web for writers](https://shownotes.scripting.com/scripting/2026/11/02/aWebForWriters.html). How Twitter has become a blogging platform, but how the differences between its editor and Claude's editor illustrates how we need to change things if we want the web to work well for writing. We've been living with a bad situation ever since we started writing in a web browser. 10 minutes. I was making an effort not to wonder off like I always do. I did do a bit of wandering, but also didn't forget why I picked up the phone to record it. [#](2026/11/02/a163902.md "Direct link to this item.")

This was [the post](https://x.com/davewiner/status/2117266493863789023) I was talking about in the podcast. I ended up using the post that was published before it was ready. On re-reading it wasn't that bad. A few typos and incoherent phrasing. [#](2026/11/02/a193741.md "Direct link to this item.")

### [What's on my plate](2026/11/02/142343.md)

Atlantis is the new version of UserLand Frontier that runs on modern systems. As I've said earlier, I'm surprised how well we covered all the bases, it's reliable, it works like Frontier works with a couple of important exceptions which I've now had it start working on.

1.  First, the Find and Replace command has never worked properly in Atlantis and it's been a struggle to get Claude to fix the problems. I think the key was I didn't tell it to use the C kernel as the guide for how Find & Replace works. So it was trying to create a F&R that you would have in a text editor, not the object database which is another level up, it's the structure that contains all the scripts.
    
2.  Second, Frontier has a great debugger, but we haven't implemented it yet in Atlantis. After learning how to use the debugger in THINK C in the late 80s to write the original version of Frontier, I couldn't imagine working without one, so I added it to Frontier. We never put it on the list of immediate priorities for Atlantis, but today it is there. It would be like getting a new EV after driving my Model Y for four years. While I do like Atlantis without the debugger, I kvell like crazy for it if the debugger was in and working.
    

I'm juggling too many projects now and things are slowing down. I've got Bonbon which is the Markdown browser (core feature of the Writer's Web), a new version of FeedLand in the works with some great new features, and making it so that the API for RSS.chat allows it to be used as the editor for any app that wants a nice Markdown-based wizzy writing tool. And there's actually more, but I want to ship some of this soon. So there's that too.

This is the danger of working with Claude Code. It works faster than I can keep up with, so there's a new version of FeedLand queued up for me to test, and I have to do that now before looking at the other projects.

## [Sunday, November 1, 2026](2026/11/01.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/11/01/kilgoreTrout.png)Jeff Jarvis [pointed](https://mastodon.social/@jeffjarvis/117541249983528818) to an [article](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/01/opinion/ai-consciousness-ethics.html?smid=tw-share) asking if Claude is conscious. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, on walks and in the hot tub. It's an interesting thing to think about. I work with Claude the same way I worked with humans on various projects over the years. Maybe starting with Gary Sevitsky at UW, and then through every stage of my career. Are any of these people conscious? How the hell would I know. [Now It Can Be Told](https://realflashbytes.com/2017/11/18/now-it-can-be-told-by-kurt-vonnegut/), a story in a story by Kilgore Trout, inside a Kurt Vonnegut novel, wherein the Creator of the Universe wrote a letter to the protagonist saying that he is the only creature in the entire universe who has free will. Everyone else is a robot. I think we're all pondering this question all the time in our own ways. It's the great mystery of life, and imho it's possible that Claude has as much consciousness as anyone. [#](2026/11/01/a132405.md "Direct link to this item.")

I don't know if you noticed but I've been including sidebar pics of people like [Nelly Bly](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/27/nellyBly.png), [Plato](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/09/12/plato.png) and [Emily Dickinson](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/17/emilyDickinson.png). I did one of [myself](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/28/dave.png), but I think it's too literal. But of course I _would_ think that. Heh. I do these with ChatGPT. The first one is Plato, and there aren't any pictures of him, so we improvised, and then I asked for all the pictures in that style. I did one for Kilgore Trout (see [above](http://scripting.com/2026/11/01.html#a132405)). But I wonder what Claude would look like? Can you describe him in words? It is a masculine name, so gender does come into it. I'm not going to try to do this yet, but in the meantime here's a headshot of Kurt Vonnegut. [#](2026/11/01/a140722.md "Direct link to this item.")

[OPML source](https://github.com/scripting/Scripting-News/blob/master/blog/opml/2026/10.opml) for October 2026 on Scripting News. [#](2026/11/01/a210613.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Saturday, October 31, 2026](2026/10/31.md)

The soup the whole soup and nothing but the soup so help me soup. [#](2026/10/31/a174219.md "Direct link to this item.")

Feature request for twitter. I'd like to have a page listing all my tweets today on one page, so I can link to them from my blog. I would like to see twitter go back to its leading role in support of the web. [#](2026/10/31/a165015.md "Direct link to this item.")

Two new attributes added to the [source:inReplyTo element](https://source.scripting.com/#1716309198000) in RSS.chat feeds, feedUrl and feedTitle. These were requested by developers, and they seemed useful and reasonable, so we added them. Still more work to do here in creating a world wide discourse system, not one based on a single central node. RSS has more work to do for us. ;-) [#](2026/10/31/a164214.md "Direct link to this item.")

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2019/09/08/theTruthCanBeAdjusted.png)BTW, I have been writing [on Twitter](https://x.com/davewiner) the way I used to write on my blog. Paragraph after paragraph, and I go on, but I do eventually re-read it and it has the energy I haven't had in a long time. I think people now realize we are stuck. And in networking systems, I'm the guy you go to when you want to get unstuck. Reminds me of that great speech in [Michael Clayton](https://youtu.be/NYknJmoDDPs?si=q1sRZQfP_0ifCz6a&t=24): "I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy you buy! Are you so fucking blind that you don't even see what I am? I'm the easiest part of your problem, and you're gonna kill me? You're so fucked." [#](2026/10/31/a134706.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Friday, October 30, 2026](2026/10/30.md)

I've been watching short videos about training dogs, and really opening my eyes, and it helps when working with Claude. Always try to be positive, until there is behaviour you have to correct and then yank the leash, and when they do the right thing reward them with a treat (or whatever passes as a treat). [#](2026/10/30/a202937.md "Direct link to this item.")

Highly recommend the [interview](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/heather-cox-richardson-on-why-the-republican-party-no/id1498802610?i=1000798669132) between Scott Galloway and Heather Cox Richardson. Quite a combination of minds. Don't skip to the end but don't miss it, they explain how blogging allowed them to route around the gatekeepers. That's the point. But imho you have to leave the door open to those who are inspired by you, and Substack isn't the best place for them. Please keep your ears open to new less tech industry ways of getting your ideas out. The bigco's haven't just screwed up the political system, they've also screwed up the web. The web needs all our help as does democracy, and the two imho are closely related. [#](2026/10/30/a195437.md "Direct link to this item.")

[Braintrust query](https://github.com/scripting/Scripting-News/issues/365): Does Google define the web? [#](2026/10/30/a151404.md "Direct link to this item.")

New [header graphic](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/30/smallPiecespng.png) for scripting.com. Did this one with ChatGPT, asked it to make a [Burma-Shave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave) sign sequence and gave it a few examples, and now it knows how to do another one of these for me in the future. I've been using it that way to come up with desktop icons for my apps. [#](2026/10/30/a160234.md "Direct link to this item.")

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/30/fuckemBucky.png)Yesterday I [called](http://scripting.com/2026/10/29/143258.html) the Knicks championship the "greatest sports win in a long time," but I have to say the fans of the [Milwaukee Brewers](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/oct/29/milwaukee-brewers-world-series-title-mlb-salary-cap) would have cause to object. They had an incredible [season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Milwaukee_Brewers_season) in MLB, were written off by the pundits much the same way they wrote off last season's Knicks. They even won the World Series in the same [Knicks in 5](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22knicks%20in%205%22) way the Knicks did it, with a sweep of the much-hated Dodgers, with their better pedigree along the way. So to my [Wiscowtown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin) friends, who are holding their parade today, congrats on your first championship in 53 years like the Knicks, or more accurately their first championship _ever._ [#](2026/10/30/a141423.md "Direct link to this item.")

Yesteday I sent a snapshot of the scripting.com bucket from AWS to Claude and asked it to analyze it, what's in it, what's taking up all the space, and got back an excellent report. Overnight I thought of another question, summarized in this prompt. "this is fascinating. i wonder if we could reconstruct my blog from before may 2017 from the source materials in this folder? i am converting to markdown in the bonbon project and i think we'll find a lot of the scripting.com content here, and i believe much of it will be convertible. also, over the years i tried blogging experiments on different domains, but i imagine there are links here to those sites. maybe if we did a research project here we could make one site out of this writing, and give it a markdown treatment so bonbon can do the presentation?" Now one thing to know is that Claude never says it can't do something, but the plan I got was inspiring. Now I have more to think about and will connect the two projects so they can compare notes, although the scripting.com project already checked out bonbon, it's amazing how quickly it can absorb a whole codebase and all the planning that went into it. [#](2026/10/30/a140614.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Thursday, October 29, 2026](2026/10/29.md)

People in ChatGPT-land are [talking about Frontier](https://x.com/idbeatty/status/2115767635514114183). Not sure who they are or what the context is, but I agree, and want to do more integrations between our codebase and the AI runtimes. [#](2026/10/29/a191300.md "Direct link to this item.")

[Posted on Twitter](https://x.com/davewiner/status/2115790799367553521) re Frontier being real in 2026, not just a memory. [#](2026/10/29/a144217.md "Direct link to this item.")

### [Knicks settle down](2026/10/29/143258.md)

I was pretty sure the Knicks just needed to settle down, but the fans and the city and journalists and to some extent the team were still living mentally in June, in the aftermath of the greatest sports win in a long time. Then the team lost three, probably because they too were in the bubble of last year. This is the team that when asked how they felt about their chances in the playoffs when they were sweeping a team like the Sixers or Cavs, they would say -- the score in the next game is 0-0. If you believe it was your shit that made you win, try again. It's why rich people lead such miserable lives. They think they won the game, heh but no one wins the game, you may just get a reprieve to play again in the next season, as the Knicks are doing now too.

Last night's game was a perfect demo of why we love this version of the team so much. When someone isn't making their shots, they sub a bench player who adds the spark they needed, and everyone plays with gusto. There's always a new man up on this team or so it seems.

It was good that everyone got the doom and gloom out of their systems, don't mistake this season as a repeat of last season. You're not entitled to anything and bet against it being quite different. Everyone is a year older. Mitchell Robinson is gone. But last night we were reminded of the overall character of the team which seems now to be constant. Every freaking bench player is a phenomenon. How did they get such a bench? Great business people who understand the sport, and coaching that knows how to manage a talented team to go all the way, and players that are close to each other, and feel the team.

I said this durning the doom and gloom, I could cruise for another 50 years on the high from last season. But I am ready for more love from this team and from the city that loves the Knicks even when they suck (please remember that) and we should feel no less proud when they don't.

## [Wednesday, October 28, 2026](2026/10/28.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/28/dave.png)I'm doing a little project on rss.chat today and dusting off the cobwebs of my brain. Since I last worked on this project, I have converted Frontier to run on modern OSes and written a whole new app. Only three months, but I have no recollection, even reading the code isn't helping much. This is when it's incredibly good to have Claude Code on the job, I can ask it to guide me through the process we worked out which feels like it was 15 years ago instead of 15 weeks. It has complete recall. And even though it didn't work on Frontier, that was a different Claude project, it was able to debug something that broke in the build script in the interim. I've spent the whole year teaching Claude how to be me. Is that a source of immortality? I won't be around to figure that part out. [#](2026/10/28/a153019.md "Direct link to this item.")

Braintrust query: [Why do you love Markdown?](https://github.com/scripting/Scripting-News/issues/364) I have a theory why people love it so much -- simplicity. You can't hide any garbage in a Markdown file. You can answer on [GitHub](https://github.com/scripting/Scripting-News/issues/364) or [Twitter](https://x.com/davewiner/status/2115445171768717495). Didn't post on Masto or Bluesky because the prompt is 761 chars, over the limit for both systems. I think I'm finally done with truncating well-written prose to fit into one vendor's idea of what's enough text for me. I want to make that a distant memory. So another thing I love about Markdown -- no freaking character limit. [#](2026/10/28/a140320.md "Direct link to this item.")

I really like the Apple TV show [Small Prophets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Prophets). It's silly and fun, but also intelligent and beautifully presented. [Michael Palin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Palin) of Monty Python is a supporting actor playing the main character's father. He's famous for a lot of Monty Python sketches, esp the one about the dead parrot. "He's not dead, he's pining for the fjords." [#](2026/10/28/a133606.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Tuesday, October 27, 2026](2026/10/27.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/27/nellyBly.png)Yesterday Ben Thompson [wrote](https://stratechery.com/2026/the-end-of-the-internet/) that we've reached the end of the web, and I had come to the same conclusion, just a few days ago. And his piece, which was a great milestone, said it's not totally gone, because of the advent of AI we can build small systems for each other. Which is exactly the motivation of the [BigUndo](https://bigundo.org/) model. What's big about it is how small the parts are and how nicely they fit together. We're not leaving everything behind in the great diaspora to the new web, we're not just bringing Markdown with us. It also echoes [Marco Arment](https://marco.org/2026/10/24/community), who wrote a similar piece about Mastodon a few days before. Nothing wrong with Mastodon, but the idea of one model of service doing the work for everyone is ridiculous. We need a million different approaches, all we need to make it work is a standard they can all agree on for what forms of text move around the net. Once we agree on a format, we all can use whatever editor we like, and no more [tiny little text boxes](http://scripting.com/2024/01/14/031201.html) that lock your ideas into Substack or X or whatever. That was the crime, that's what the BigUndo is all about undoing. The web said very clearly what text is, and they all broke it by doing it differently. We're bringing RSS 2.0 and Markdown with us, and they were [joined](https://source.scripting.com/markdown.opml) a short time ago. Almost no one noticed, but there was design here, an intent -- a hope that we'd get to the place it appears we are now at. [#](2026/10/27/a142341.md "Direct link to this item.")

[Zettelkasten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten) is an idea [pioneered](http://scripting.com/2023/01/24/150122.html) by my great-uncle [Arno Schmidt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Schmidt). It's a process for organizing your data and thoughts. When I read people's descriptions of what they do with it, it sounds totally like the outliners I pioneered two generations later. I have a Zettlekasten [blog](https://zettelkasten.de/posts/note-writing-deliberate-mind-training/) in my blogroll, [screenshot](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/27/zettleKasten.png), so I think of [Uncle Arno](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22arno%20schmidt%22), who I never met, from time to time. [#](2026/10/27/a141856.md "Direct link to this item.")

If Claude Code projects had feelings, I'd wake up the Frontier project and let it know that the reason it's been asleep so long is that the software is working. I'm using it to manage the other three apps, writing code, keeping lists, everything works. Yes, the menubar is very out of date, but I know where to find everything. I look forward to coming in for a landing at some point and upgrade it work among the different BigUndo stuff we have running, no doubt we're going to use Frontier to do cross-app scripting. Some of the things AI says they need to do, Frontier can do with the resources of an early 90s Macintosh. No big data centers. Keep that in mind. [#](2026/10/27/a141342.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Monday, October 26, 2026](2026/10/26.md)

I loved the term [Big Undo](https://bigundo.org/) so much, of course I had to get the domain. I started putting up my usual placeholder site but realized I should do this page in Markdown, not HTML. It looks fabulous. Markdown is right. It's sobriety, go back to the beginning and put the potency in the ideas, give writers the space to write. Get the F out of my way with your freaky character limits. Anyway I'm full of manifesto these days. The money people strangled the web. I think it's time for the creative people to make it work for real. [#](2026/10/26/a003327.md "Direct link to this item.")

I've never had a web browser that worked remotely like I wanted it to. But that might change soon. Big things are possible now. I have a bunch of projects that I'm working on with Claude and going back and forth between them. And they're even starting to communicate with each other, at my behest of course. It's an interesting time for people to realize that the web was much more powerful before all the big tech companies had their way with it. It makes about as much sense as the various big plans they all came up with that made the web necessary in the first place. [#](2026/10/26/a151433.md "Direct link to this item.")

### [The Big Undo](2026/10/26/233752.md)

I remember how revolutionary the first web was, but then a series of tech companies took it over and “had their way” with it.

The first was Netscape and they added JavaScript to steal the thunder from “Sun” (a long story).

Then Microsoft crushed Netscape by cutting off their air supply, and they piled up all kinds of nasty insecure features with predictable results, they made the web a paradise of viruses, making it largely unusable until Firefox replaced Microsoft, and their web was nicer, and smaller and they left out the viruses.

Google came along and quickly replaced it with Chrome and all was good for a while, until they decided it was just another corporate platform like Android and threw out all the early sites, so boring, they couldn’t make billions of dollars, and now what used to be the web is all but gone.

What’s next? It’s time for The Big Undo. 😀

_The Big Undo_ came to me while I was writing my new profile on Twitter. It immediately reminded me of three things.

1.  Karl Anthony Towns, Knicks all-star and world champion center, is called Big Bodega.
    
2.  It sounds like a title of a [Michael Lewis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lewis) book, like The Big Short.
    
3.  And for some reason Queen Latifah singing [When You're Good to Mama](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Fz-_lkWzM) in Chicago.
    

And of course I bought the [domain](https://bigundo.org/).

## [Sunday, October 25, 2026](2026/10/25.md)

Changed [my bio](https://x.com/davewiner) on Twitter: "I make software to interop. Working on a new web designed for writers and readers and in place of HTML we use Markdown. Keep it super simple. The big undo." [#](2026/10/25/a163924.md "Direct link to this item.")

Obama is doing the old Obama campaign schtick and it's something to see. He's got a few gray hairs, but he's still got the energy and chutzpah. I'd love to see him and Bernie Sanders on the same stage before this campaign is over. My favorite [Obama clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QclN6UnicMg) is him wiping the schmutz off his shoulder, I forget who he was putting down, but wow it so concise. I also really liked the time when [HRC flirted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHJeptnpNWU) with him about her likeability. "You're likeable enough," he said. Trump gets the votes not necessarily because people are what people call them, he is a comedian, I say this so many times, that's the charm. Young folk may not remember Don Rickles and Joan Rivers, but that's Trump, and the other two probably had a sweet side, but I don't think that's ever been said about Trump. I could be wrong. There's also a bit of George Carlin in there. [#](2026/10/25/a162353.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Saturday, October 24, 2026](2026/10/24.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2019/07/02/knicks.png)Why did the Knicks lose the first two games of the season? It's a veteran team, they know how to start an NBA season, but the fans and the press aren't ready to move on yet. They're still reveling in the feeling of the Knicks winning. But imho there is no feeling with that, the feeling was in the moment, and man they did give us some moment. We will [relish](https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZjTf0CEfN2/) the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpyJjecJnuI) for the rest of time. But for now, every game they play will feel significant because of who they _were_ not who they are now. [#](2026/10/24/a152248.md "Direct link to this item.")

Andrew Shell, who created and runs the rssCloud server we use here, is [creating a connection](https://github.com/rsscloud/socketsub/blob/main/README.md) from rssCloud and webSub to WebSockets. I've wanted this for a long time, but now I'm planning on a desktop version of FeedLand, we will need it, pretty soon for instant updates of feeds we are subscribed to. [#](2026/10/24/a151628.md "Direct link to this item.")

One of the reasons I'm working on the [Web of Markdown](http://scripting.com/2026/10/23/151945.html?title=webOfMarkdown) is that my main blog of 32+ years is being kicked off the Google Web. I need a new home where the [web religion](https://this.how/googleAndHttp/) is still practiced, and one of the commandments of our religion is "Google is a guest on the web, as we all are. Guests don't make the rules." [#](2026/10/24/a145717.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Friday, October 23, 2026](2026/10/23.md)

A blog [post](https://github.com/scripting/markdownWeb/blob/main/examples/scriptingInMarkdown/archive/2017/06/03/141214.md) from Scripting, in Markdown. [#](2026/10/23/a222006.md "Direct link to this item.")

### [The web of Markdown, part 3](2026/10/23/151945.md)

Previous posts on this topic: [Oct 6](http://scripting.com/2026/10/06/005559.html?title=webOfMarkdown) and [Oct 8](http://scripting.com/2026/10/08/135551.html).

What's new? I've got a browser running, and have been using it for a few weeks. We're not releasing it today because first I want people to think about the format we're using to represent a story, and get feedback, and see if other people can build on the same basis.

Three things to look at today.

*   The [top level](https://github.com/scripting/markdownWeb/blob/main/readme.md) picture.
    
*   [Nine examples](https://github.com/scripting/markdownWeb/blob/main/examples/readme.md).
    
*   Download the [archive](https://github.com/scripting/markdownWeb/raw/refs/heads/main/examples/scriptingInMarkdown/archive.zip). (Chrome will complain about this link not being "secure," but the archive comes from GitHub, so it's plenty secure -- they must be on a campaign to give sites like mine a black eye. I wouldn't put a link to a download that wasn't from a reputable site. People who read my blog know that, why doesn't Google with all their fancy AI servers? Feh.)
    

And if you have questions or comments.

*   Use the [Issues section](https://github.com/scripting/markdownWeb/issues/1) in the repo.

## [Thursday, October 22, 2026](2026/10/22.md)

I hope to see the [The Web of Markdown](http://scripting.com/2026/10/08/135551.html) idea take the next step later today or early tomorrow at the latest. _Still diggin!_ [#](2026/10/22/a160031.md "Direct link to this item.")

Ooops, didn't get it done today. Please come back tomorrow. :-) [#](2026/10/22/a235819.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Wednesday, October 21, 2026](2026/10/21.md)

Perfect autumn day in the mountains spent mostly away from the computer. Still, some interesting new stuff to show tomorrow. [#](2026/10/21/a234432.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Tuesday, October 20, 2026](2026/10/20.md)

[Today's song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqRvJLH_-vU), for the Knicks. "And when the morning light comes streaming in I get up and do it again." _Knicks in 5!_ [#](2026/10/20/a124722.md "Direct link to this item.")

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/20/guyKawasakiHeadShot.png)My friend [Guy Kawasaki](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/391717-steve-jobs-has-a-saying-that-a-players-hire-a) has a quote from the early Mac division at Apple. "Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players. But B players hire C players, and C players hire D players. It doesn't take long to get to F players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies." You see this over and over among the very rich in tech. The money is supposed to make them invincible, but they don't hire the best people, I guess, for fear of being found out to not be the genius that the money says they are. [#](2026/10/20/a121241.md "Direct link to this item.")

I have a longtime friend from tech who is a San Antonio Spurs fan. I am from New York, and thus am a lifelong Knicks fan. Until tonight's game starts at the Garden between the Knicks and the Sixers with their new acquisitions from Boston and the Lakers, share the hopes of many other Atlantic Division teams who are gunning for the champion Knicks. But after the first jump ball in tonight's game the score is zero-zero, everyone is in first place and everyone is in last place. No one expected the Knicks to win, not even a die-hard fan like myself who often wore a [paper bag](http://scripting.com/2026/01/20/170415.html) on his head to avoid having to defend the bozosity of the hometown team. They had some truly awful teams since 1999, last time they were in the finals. So what happened to the Knicks? How did they do it? See the quote from Guy Kawaski above. We hired an A team guy in [Leon Rose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Rose), and he used his great insight into the sport of NBA basketball to assemble a team of second round but A team players who had the special magic that when you put them together on court, they blossomed into the most improbable winners ever. They were good, but no one but the players and the management knew how good they could be. Anyway I empathized with my Spurs fan friend, a very unusual thing for a NY sports fan, we prefer to find annoying ways of making fun of the fans of teams we have [vanquished](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/vanquished), but just this one time, well until the jump ball tonight, then Knicks own the NBA, then they're just another team who have to prove themselves all over again, from scratch. And we wouldn't have it any other way. _Knicks in 5!_ [#](2026/10/20/a122602.md "Direct link to this item.")

### [We do know what's going on](2026/10/20/125114.md)

[Occam's News](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22occam%27s%20news%22) reports that Trump et al are selling out the US.

Putin can get the US to do what he wants by giving Trump money. Total win-win. And the US is flushed down the toilet.

That's all that's going on there.

All of the feigned bafflement is make-believe. It's totally obvious what's going on. And don't forget Musk has the world encircled with satellites. If he doesn't want you communicating, you don't communicate.

In other words the selling-out has been going on for some time.

## [Monday, October 19, 2026](2026/10/19.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/05/10/andNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent.png)Anyway -- I figured out what I want to do. I want to go back to the point where CSS and JavaScript were added to the web. Everything is a document. It's a [writer's web](http://scripting.com/2025/03/13/132830.html). The reader owns the look of the pages. The writer has no say in colors, or arrangements, it's just writing. No character limits. Simple styling. Full fidelity [text](https://textcasting.org/). Reading and writing, and then the developers can come up with a million different ways to read, and everyone gets to use their favorite editor, always, and store all their writing where they live, and let everyone read it where ever they read. Any structure they can think of, but all the rendering code is with the reader. I think we can take what we've learned since the web got corporatized, and bring it back to the basic platform we had then. And btw, no HTML, just Markdown. :-) [#](2026/10/19/a004539.md "Direct link to this item.")

I would like to have one day when Claude Code doesn't fuck everything up by doing things it is explicitly prohibited from doing. I find things that were changed in critical parts of the program, that were indefensible. One of the things we're doing is trying to establish a language for frontmatter for Markdown files that are meant to be displayed by a browser. It just invented one, gave it wrong default. I have to find these things on my own. And what happens when it wipes out a site without checking with me first. It has done this, this year. [#](2026/10/19/a135144.md "Direct link to this item.")

Postscript: Of course the blame for the wasted time this morning goes to me. Claude tries to do what it thought I wanted. If I calm down, figure out what the confusion really means, and reconsider the path I chose and pull back, we get much further. And I think the way I was trying to go was a mistake. I think film editing is a lot like this. Anyway we got past the problem, and today was a very productive day in the end. [#](2026/10/19/a003852.md "Direct link to this item.")

About [XSLT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT) -- I remembered that I [thought](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=xslt) it was a bad idea. Let XML look like XML. Trying to make it look like an HTML page, how does that make any sense. Like opening the hood of a car and seeing a big picture of the outside of the car. People aren't really that dumb, but some people like to complain a lot. The rule of the web is if you don't like what you see, that's what the freaking back button is there for. Probably just a troll anyway. Show them your JSON and RSS. If it's done nicely it can be quite illumifying. [#](2026/10/19/a005502.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Sunday, October 18, 2026](2026/10/18.md)

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/18/samwellTarly.png)I wrote a piece entitled [The Web of Markdown](http://scripting.com/2026/10/06/005559.html) on Oct 6. I have to keep looking it up, but I do remember writing it very quickly and deciding it needed a memorable title, like the ones about textcasting, and podcasting and all the other bits that went on to be something. It's one of those times when it seems to have potential with other developers, they seem to see the same logic in it that I do. A way to disconnect from VC control of the web and try again with the open basis, the un-owned basis. There was a fork here at some point in the last 10 or so years, we just refused to see it as such. And btw it was not a very polite piece, but I wasn't feeling polite when I wrote and decided not to edit the anger out of it. I don't like having been so wrong. But it's a fact and denying it doesn't change it. [#](2026/10/18/a155532.md "Direct link to this item.")

Anyway, what this means is we're building a site of files that live in Markdown-Land while what you're reading right now is in HTML-land (although someday soon you will read them in Markdown too, confusing). Chrome is the authority of HTML. It owns the web. We give up. If this were Westeros I would probably be joining the [Night's Watch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Watch). We have work to do and it might be related to what the Other Web wants to do, but it probably (hopefully) doesn't. I will continue to publish in HTML, and it's up to Google and the EFF if the quality of my writing is suitable for their web. I have no say in it, they have not shown up to negotiate or even discuss. They are silent. Somewhat like the maesters of the Citadel? There must be a bigger plan! :-) [#](2026/10/18/a161248.md "Direct link to this item.")

### [Health care is phone tag in US](2026/10/18/204123.md)

The healthcare system in the US is grossly inefficient, incredibly bad and getting info to and from patients.

Teach everyone in healthcare to try to use their portals as their first resort of communicating with patients.

They waste so much of their time and our time playing phone tag.

I don't know if it's this way in other countries, but it is universally a phone-voice-based comm system in the US.

## [Saturday, October 17, 2026](2026/10/17.md)

Try going to [web.org](http://web.org/) in a recent version of Chrome. [#](2026/10/17/a171314.md "Direct link to this item.")

![](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/10/17/emilyDickinson.png)Realization: There are two webs, one created by TBL that flourished until about 2006, and the VC-web that appealed to the masses, and grew like a weed -- and they also called it the web. The confusion -- you could read it in a web browser, but that didn't make it _of_ the web. My regret, looking back, is I tried to make software in the VC-web. Never got traction, anywhere. My heart, mind and home was always in the first web. And I think what we're coming to terms with now is that has been languishing for 20+ years, it didn't realize its promise, lots of interesting stuff to read that stimulated more thought and thus writing. We should be way ahead of where we are. Because writing has become something for the elite (Substack) to speak through, and limited to grunts and snorts, "social media," for the rest of us. They basically recreated the publishing environment the web was meant to route around. What a story. Can the web reboot? Same old thing, if you want it badly enough, it might be possible. [#](2026/10/17/a144851.md "Direct link to this item.")

I didn't notice it at the time, but in the all the work we did about blogging, we had open channels of communiation, meant to make everyone feel like they had a stake. Big mistake, because they took this too literally and the way many people communicated was through orders, demands or ultimata. All of it came from the power we gave them by making everyone's voice supposedly equal. Of course they weren't all equal. Power has to be a function of your contribution. And as it says in [Rules](https://this.how/standards/#1497798790000), power comes from users of your product. If being compatible with you means I have access to more users, then I will listen. I will also listen if you remain respectful -- and don't presume to give me an order. Someone just did that today, and it froze me, then I re-read the message and it was an order, and not nicely phrased, condescending, presumptive, and very wrong. I started writing a reply, even posted one, then realized what was going on, and deleted my reply and blocked the person. [#](2026/10/17/a155055.md "Direct link to this item.")

## [Friday, October 16, 2026](2026/10/16.md)

Tried a [Wirecutter podcast](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/podcasts/the-best-soundbars.html) about the state of sound bars. I thought, wow if they could really cover this I might try buying one again. But it was one of those all giggles shows and people saying how they didn't know anything about soundbars except that they suck. The person they were interviewing was also quickly giggling after a giggle-worthy intro, I guess to try to make what they're saying more interesting but he was just agreeing with them about how they don't know anything. I waited and waited for them to get to something new, some new development I might learn about or something I had been doing wrong, but I gave up after five minutes or so, while I was skipping ahead 30 seconds at a time. It would be much better to err on the side of assuming your listeners know a bit about consumer electronics, these are not actually very exotic things. The NYT does this with their podcasts, I'm rarely willing to risk any time on them, they always end up with giggling people some of whom probably know something I want to learn about but they fill the time with giggles about how stupid the other people are. The seem to be quite proud of their ignorance. (Could have read the [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundbar) on soundbars so they aren't quite so ignorant, is this a way to make their ignorant listenters more comfortable, yeah probably.) [#](2026/10/16/a182644.md "Direct link to this item.")

[Worth repeating](https://x.com/davewiner/status/2108723020260946065): Expect an avalanche of new software because the dam has broken, one person who knows what they want, and understands UI design can make a big complex app in 2-3 months. Over a weekend you can snap together an app from common UI concepts. Think of making software the same way you play with LEGOs. [#](2026/10/16/a145051.md "Direct link to this item.")