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March 13,2025
Trump Orders Drone Strike On Thomas Massie - Babylon Bee
Massie was wiped out in a counter-argument operation carried out by U.S. Special Forces in the nation’s capital, following an earlier threat by the president that he should be “PRIMARIED,” which sources confirmed was top-secret government code for “taken out by a drone.”
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March 13,2025
Big stack of thank you notes for work, ready to go out with tomorrow’s mail.
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Reading
Book Review: Indie Microblogging 📚
March 13,2025My standard procedure is to read one book at a time. I spend all my reading time on that book, finish it, and move on. For whatever reason, in 2025, I started on three or four books. As a result, it took me until March 12 to finish my first book of the year. Oof.
Indie Microblogging is the work of Manton Reece, the founder of Micro.blog. Manton is a developer whose career has been spent on Mac and web technology products. Hard to believe, but eight years ago, Manton unveiled the first version of Micro.blog. I’ve been using it since near the beginning. This blog is #1576 on the platform.
The book is both highly technical and conceptual. Manton pulls back the curtain on the relatively simple lines of code that make blogs like this one run. He also talks about the evolution of blogs, the why of Micro.blog, and a vision for how the future of the internet should look.
The central premise is that the web is a better, more personal space, when it’s a network of countless personal blogs. Instead of content locked into a few websites (think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), people can post their thoughts, experiences, photos, video, and audio to their website, making it permanent. Every post you made to MySpace is gone forever; if you had posted it to your blog instead, it would still be accessible.
Micro.blog’s best feature is how it fuses together web-hosted blogs and a social network. The two features operate agnostic of each other, but together offer a powerful alternative. I use this website to share what I’m thinking about and doing with my close friends and family. If others enjoy it, that’s wonderful, but I don’t see my blog as a place to start a conversation with strangers. I use the well-written blog engine and completely ignore the social network. Manton’s design allows for the enforcement of guidelines on the social network, but freedom of expression on hosted blogs. This is the right approach.
The book reads a lot like Manton’s blog. It was a mixture of the technical, the practical, the political, and the cultural. Manton has a perspective, and as the author of his book, it was his prerogative to use it as the lens through which he understood and speaks about the important issues we face regarding social media. His arguments would’ve been stronger if they were presented with more balance in the examples, but his points were still discernible.
I enjoyed many of the ideas, and understanding the underpinnings of the system that I use to keep a running record of my daily life.
ISBN: 978-1737996552
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March 13,2025
Putin Rejects Immediate Cease-Fire in Ukraine - WSJ
Any pause in fighting at this point would be in Ukraine’s interests, he said, adding that Russia wanted a truce that led “to a lasting peace and the elimination of the root causes” of the war, which he described as a crisis.
That didn’t take long. Good work, everyone! Now we know what Putin wants as a price for peace, the elimination of root causes, like Ukrainian sovereignty. Shouldn’t be too hard to appease that little demand.
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March 13,2025
Ukraine Turns Table on Russia With Cease-Fire Proposal, but Putin Has Little Incentive to Sign - WSJ
“If Russia says ‘yes’, that’s very good news, and we’ll begin that process and do everything we can to move that process forward,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday. “If they say ‘no,’ it’ll tell us a lot about what their goals are and…what their mindset is.”
This is so naive. Bludgeon your ally, the victim, then hope the aggressor signs on? And when they don’t, what was the point?
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March 13,2025
In a mid-February poll by Blueprint, a firm affiliated with Democrats, 65% of voters agreed with the statement, “No one has any idea what the Democratic Party stands for anymore, other than opposing Donald Trump.”
It was a winning strategy for 10 years; it worked until it didn’t.
Should be a flashing yellow light for GOP because they’re courting the same problem when DJT leaves the stage.
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Reading
March 12,2025Finished Reading: Indie Microblogging by Manton Reece 📚
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Knives
Benchmade 179GRY
March 12,2025440C Steel | Made in 🇺🇸
A neat tool in the Benchmade lineup, the SOCP Rescue Tool is an all-around performer. The slender profile fits well in my hand. It gives me both precise control over each tool, and safe space in which to work. I haven’t had to use it yet in any emergency situations, but it’s always there just in case I come across someone in need. Products like this try to do too much, too cheaply. Not this rescue tool.
Purchased in 2020 | ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
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March 12,2025
Misinformation - Indie Microblogging
Perhaps we lose something when everything is moderated at the same level. When everything is sanitized and politically correct.
This is at the heart of Micro.blog’s effort to combine both blog hosting and a social timeline. Each half of the platform has its own purpose and its own requirements for moderation. On the social side, there’s less tolerance for being a jerk or harassing others. On the open web hosting side, there’s more freedom to yell into the void.
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March 12,2025
My knife collection blogging isn’t going super well. Mostly because I tend to reach for the same sub-set of knives everyday.
New challenge: I’m going to go in sequential order. I’ve already covered #1 and #2, so on to the next!