Coyote Cartography
Archive About Also on Micro.blog
  • Pixelmator Pro seems to get all the love, but Flying Meat’s Acorn has always fit the way my brain works a lot more—and it really is very powerful as a Photoshop alternative.

    → 12:28 AM, Dec 21
  • As a tiki nerd desperately looking for silver linings in being stuck in Florida, I am unreasonably excited about Don the Beachcomber’s return.

    → 6:51 PM, Dec 17
  • A pointed commentary from the Duke University Library system: “Why We’re Dropping Basecamp”.

    → 6:01 PM, Nov 30
  • Swapping my modded Keychron Q3 keyboard for my Matias Mini Tactile Pro for a while. I really wish Matias would update their physical designs, or better yet, make versions of their switches compatible with de facto standards—this is still just an unparalleled feel. (If ridiculously loud.)

    → 11:29 AM, Nov 28
  • While I’m comfortable reading recipes off an iPad for cooking, my mom manifestly is not, so I tried out Mela’s recipe printing last night. Unsurprisingly, it’s just as pretty as its on-screen display—and much nicer than most “print views” from recipe sites.

    → 11:25 AM, Nov 27
  • After a bit over a year back, there are a lot of things I’ve discovered (or rediscovered) to like about Florida. If only it wasn’t for the—how might one put it?—the DeSantis of it all.

    → 5:38 PM, Nov 25
  • Okay, I am now a full convert to the way of dry brining.

    → 9:36 PM, Nov 23
  • The last few years of Silicon Valley in general and OpenAI over the last 24 hours in particular leads me to propose that “unicorn” in the VC sense should henceforth be replaced with “platinum-plated clown car”

    → 7:47 PM, Nov 18
  • Science fiction great Michael Bishop has died. I haven’t read anything by him in years; from what I can tell, he mostly stopped writing in the 1990s. But he was a huge inspiration, one of the most literary—in the best sense—sf writers I can recall. (And a good poet, too.)

    → 7:48 PM, Nov 15
  • Watched the trailer for Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon”, and its tagline “There are no heroes, only rebels” crystallized my problem with it: he (and Netflix) want this to be a new Star Wars, but Star Wars is literally the Hero’s Journey. Myths need heroes. Bitter antiheroes won’t cut it.

    → 8:13 PM, Nov 14
  • Well, with my upcoming downtime, it’s time to dust off the Hacking with macOS Swift course that I almost completed back in July, and see if the project I had in mind has any chance of actually going anywhere…

    → 11:33 PM, Nov 12
  • I’m not sure how many companies need short-term contract technical writers, but I may put effort into finding out next year. I feel like I’m sort of done with full-time work, even remotely, unless it’s a truly exceptional opportunity. (Never say never.)

    → 7:01 PM, Nov 7
  • I would say I am bidding a fond farewell to Linode, but the truth is I bid a fond farewell to them nearly a year ago, and I am bidding a Bye, Felicia to Akamai.

    → 9:40 PM, Nov 5
  • An unexpected thing from earlier today: the financial advisor asked if I was going to look for new work or just retire early, in a way that suggested he thought “retire early” was, you know, actually plausible. I plan to keep working, but that seems very encouraging, somehow.

    → 8:18 PM, Nov 2
  • Between the time I booked my first call with a financial advisor at Betterment and the time the call happened (this morning), I was informed my job would be ending on December 8th due to the company ending remote work. So the call was—not quite what I originally planned.

    → 6:09 PM, Nov 2
  • Somehow I have found myself at a drag show held at a community center at an RV park in rural-ish Florida, and I feel like I have stepped into an episode of “Somebody Somewhere”

    → 6:51 PM, Oct 28
  • I’m doing a little bit of cursory spot-checking, and my general feeling that restaurant food was often cheaper back in Silicon Valley than it is in Tampa and Orlando may actually be correct.

    → 12:25 PM, Oct 25
  • Debating between “try and line up another job in tech writing before current job ends” and “take a break and work on other things”. I think I really want the latter, but there’s always the worry that if one does take a break, getting back on the hamster wheel will be that much tougher.

    → 8:52 AM, Oct 18
  • Currently reading: Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree 📚

    → 9:51 PM, Oct 15
  • My timing with finally switching to Betterment “Premium,” so I can talk to a financial advisor, earlier this month seems rather ironic now. Topic of the first call: so what financial strategies do you recommend for unemployment?

    → 9:50 AM, Oct 13
  • I have been informed that the C-level execs at my company refuse to give me an exception to keep working remotely, so within two months I must start coming into the office. Given that I now live ~2400 miles from said office, this is a challenge.

    → 2:54 PM, Oct 10
  • Cleaned up my passwords in iCloud Keychain finally; I’ve been using 1Password for years, but let Safari save passwords inconsistently. I’m considering moving back to iCloud only, but remain unsure how wise that is.

    → 5:30 PM, Oct 5
  • I’ve been using Arc for months, but I’m taking macOS Sonoma as an excuse to go back to Safari for a while. I suspect I’ll find I still prefer Arc’s spaces to Safari’s tab groups, but…

    → 11:01 AM, Sep 28
  • Hooray! It’s time for “what fresh hell awaits me transferring a phone number between two phones” day! (It has never gone smoothly, and it is not going smoothly now, either.)

    → 6:32 PM, Sep 22
  • I am literally years overdue for a haircut, but I have long hair and don’t want a barber who just does Generic Man Cut. My test may be “give me the hair of Trent Crimm”; if they don’t respond “The Independent”, they’re not the right stylist

    → 11:26 AM, Sep 18
  • I’m letting my iPhone 12 Pro live out its last week caseless, trying out the leather sleeve I bought as an experiment. My two thoughts after less than a day: first, these phones look really good without cases. Second, I hope titanium is less of a fingerprint magnet.

    → 10:55 AM, Sep 18
  • So far I have not ordered a case for the new phone, but have ordered a sleeve. I’ll see how long I really hold out on that…

    → 2:46 PM, Sep 17
  • Good: the Audioengine HD3s are clearly better speakers than the Studio Display. Less good: I don’t know if they have better bass. (Really wish I hadn’t given up my Audyssey media speakers, which punched way above their weight class.)

    → 6:44 PM, Sep 15
  • Predictably I gave in and ordered an iPhone 15 Pro, and a USB-A to C cable for CarPlay.

    → 8:57 AM, Sep 15
  • And I have bought a new Apple Watch, my first in stainless steel. This has shaped up to be an expensive week even before a new phone. (Contemplating an iPhone 15 Pro, not Max, in “natural” titanium. But, maybe not until another paycheck.)

    → 4:10 PM, Sep 12
  • After poking at cheap-but-not-too computer speakers, I’m getting Audioengine HD3s—mostly good reviews and a decent headphone amp. I was tempted by the iconically weird Harman Kardon Soundsticks, but putting all the inputs and controls on the subwoofer is bafflingly inconvenient.

    → 10:02 AM, Sep 12
  • I decided to move my big-for-computer-speakers Vanatoo Ones from my desk into my bedroom and added a Wiim streamer, and it’s great. And the Studio Display has solid speakers for a monitor. But after a month…I think I want better computer speakers again.

    → 8:47 PM, Sep 11
  • Incidentally, is it just me, or is it a lot nicer to use the web interface for Micro.blog on the iPad than either the official app or Gluon? They’re great phone apps, but…just great phone apps.

    → 1:34 PM, Sep 3
  • Back in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was born in Dallas, lived briefly in upstate New York, and grew up in Tampa Bay, but NorCal—and the Pacific Northwest at large—feels like home. I don’t know if I can afford to return here when the time comes, but Sacramento, or further up the coast…

    → 1:30 PM, Sep 3
  • Apparently I not only signed up for the “T2” waitlist, yet another attempt to make a new Twitter, but incredibly, T2 has survived long enough for me to get an invite. I think it’ll probably fall into the same bucket for me as Post and Threads: “I’m not actually there.”

    → 1:03 PM, Aug 29
  • I’m having the disquieting thought that I might be able to shake off my current feeling of ennui and isolation by getting a co-working space and “going into the office” one or two days a week. (After the current “uptick” in Covid cases goes back to being a downtick, at least.)

    → 9:49 AM, Aug 23
  • Part of me thinks my mythical story-structure program should be an Electron app, or even a web app, to be fully cross-platform. But Dramatica Pro was just bad at being a good Mac citizen despite being native, and their 64-bit version is still Coming Real Soon Now We Promise. So.

    → 6:00 PM, Aug 3
  • I’m at a brewery to write and completely flatlining, so instead I’m poking at a crazy Theory of Story, which is associated with an even crazier plan to learn enough Swift to write a story structuring program that could replace the moribund Dramatica Pro (based on its own crazy Theory of Story).

    → 5:58 PM, Aug 3
  • Very strange to go look up information about something in the dim past of the web (Joyent’s shutting down of TextDrive), finding a TechCrunch article about it, and discovering the TechCrunch article links to…my blog post on the subject.

    → 11:59 PM, Aug 2
  • Now that my “office” shares space with the den my A/V system is in, the computer may not need great external speakers—the Studio Display is surprisingly good for non-critical listening, and I can dig out my headphones when I want more. But now what to do with the Vanatoo bookshelf speakers? Hmm…

    → 2:47 PM, Jul 24
  • A year back in Florida

    About a year ago, I moved away from the San Francisco Bay Area, back to Tampa Bay, Florida, where I’d lived for (mostly) all my previous life.

    Florida is not the same place it was when I left. The metros feel more urban, more alive, than I remember. Some of that is undoubtedly on me, on my failure to explore them adequately back in the 1990s. But a lot of what I’ve been finding now simply wasn’t there two decades ago. St. Petersburg now has blocks of walkable downtown, starting from the waterfront museums and moving west through the Edge District, on to Kenwood and Grand Central, where they recently held one of the biggest Pride festivals in the country. Tampa’s downtown no longer feels like they roll up the sidewalks at five (a problem that San Jose struggled to solve for years as well). Just like St. Pete’s Central Avenue reminds me—a little—of K and J Streets in midtown Sacramento, smaller towns like Gulfport and Dunedin remind me—a little—of the smaller walkable towns back in California like Danville, Campbell, and Livermore.

    Some of the areas that were truly nothing twenty years ago have become, well, something. The town I’ve moved to, Ridge Manor, is an unincorporated area a few miles north of still-tiny Dade City, on a state road that goes straight east-west between I-75 and Orlando. The next “big small town” over, Clermont, has blossomed from a near-abandoned downtown into a genuinely interesting suburb, even if it’s hard to figure out just what it’s a suburb of. Wesley Chapel, about a half-hour south along I-75, is a surprisingly large suburb of Tampa now.

    A year ago, I wrote that you can find great coffee shops and craft breweries and cocktail bars in any metro area, and that’s true here, too. Dade City itself has a great craft brewery and a solid coffee shop, and there are far more throughout Tampa/St. Pete and Orlando. Great cocktail bars are the hardest to find here, I’ve found, but they are here.

    Florida is not the same place it was when I left. It was, back then, a relatively purple state overall. There are still Florida liberals and leftists, but the Florida of 2023 is a one-party state. And, not to put too fine a point on it, Florida Republicans lead the charge to make that party indistinguishable from the far-right fascist parties plaguing Europe and Central America. Every day brings a new attack on the rights of people DeSantis and his supporters have identified as The Enemy. Trans people. Queer people. Drag queens. Immigrants. Teachers. Librarians. Disney.

    A drive around rural Florida a quarter-century ago would have certainly taken you past houses and farms flying confederate battle flags; the state’s panhandle has long been an epicenter for the neo-confederate movement. On a similar drive today, though, the flags are almost exclusively for Trump. And there are many, many flags for Trump. Flags and bumper stickers and banners, and an ugliness I can’t remember seeing in America in my lifetime. When I left Florida, Jeb Bush had just won reelection; I’ve returned to a state where Republicans would consider Jeb too suspiciously liberal to elect him to a municipal utility board.

    I am not in the same place in Florida as I was when I left. Politically and culturally, I’m more Left Coast than I had been two decades ago, to be sure—but I spent most of my previous Florida years in Tampa or its suburbs, or the wealthy, culturally rich city of Sarasota.1 As someone who presents as a cishet male, I have little to worry about in most interactions here yet—but that yet slowly gathers weight. I’ve been open about my beliefs, moderately open about my not-so-binary, fairly asexual identity. I write queer, often political, furry fiction under my own name. So far, this has only resulted in lost friendships, but the potential for worse is real.

    Yet my worries don’t center on me. The majority of my friends are queer, too. Will any trans friend, including my BFF/partner, be safe here even for a visit? They’re certainly not going to move here. More and more, I’m hearing of people moving out.

    I am not in the same place in Florida as I was when I left. All my adult life, both in California and previously here, I could reach dozens of choices for shopping, eating and drinking in under fifteen minutes; some were just a nice walk away in good weather. But Ridge Manor’s several thousand residents spread out over rural half-acre lots. A few businesses cluster in a couple of strip malls around the I-75 interchange. There’s a grocery store, three or four decent restaurants (and three or four fast food places), so-so Chinese takeout, and a few gas stations. Anything else is twenty minutes away at a minimum.

    That might not sound like a big deal. It didn’t sound like one to me, either. I’d come home to this house every Christmas from California; I knew where it was. And, I’ve always enjoyed driving. For years, my BFF and I took Saturdays out, exploring towns hours away. How bad could this be?

    The answer, it turns out, is worse than I thought. In all my adult life, I’ve lived where I could reach dozens of choices for shopping, eating and drinking in under fifteen minutes, often in places where some were just a nice walk away in good weather. Now, hitting even most standard suburban chains is no longer a whim, it’s an excursion.

    Sometimes I’ve dreamt of living in a cabin in Big Sur. I don’t anymore. I want to be in walking distance of something, a short driving distance of anything. Markets, coffee shops, a neighborhood bar, an ice cream parlor. Ridge Manor is not a place where that’s possible, and despite the construction and development around the area, it never will be. Yes, it will get hundreds of new tract homes, but the people who move in there will find that they, too, are a half-hour away from everything.

    But do I regret moving? No. I moved to be with my mother, to help take care of her and the house. Our relationship isn’t frictionless, but it’s good, better than many such relationships that I see among my own friends and, for that matter, among hers. I know her better now than I have at any previous point in my life. It’s not just a solid, loving parent-child relationship, it’s a solid, loving friendship. That’s invaluable.

    I still take Saturdays out, albeit mostly by myself now, and I’ve discovered or re-discovered plenty of cool places, many of which weren’t here before and all which have changed. There are places I could truly feel at home in, if I lived closer to them, and if Florida’s politics ever become less fraught. And if I can still deal with Florida summers.

    The what-ifs remain, though, no matter how much I try to shunt them away.

    First what-if: My ability to carve out my own time has been markedly impaired over the last year, from writing to TV watching to reading. Perhaps I am not good at setting boundaries, or perhaps I am just not used to living with someone who wants a lot of attention compared to past, undemanding housemates. Would it have been better to live in the suburbs a half-hour down the road, drive up here a few times a week for dinner, spend the night every other week?

    I’m doubtful. The connections I’ve been making with my mom couldn’t have been made if we weren’t living together. Beyond that, I wouldn’t be here to be able to help with routine small things, and helping with large ones would be that much more challenging. She’d be markedly lonelier, and despite my penchant for solitude, I would be, too.

    And there’s the cost of living. Despite the isolation, there are many things to like about this house—it’s on over an acre of wooded land, for a start—but the number one thing is, simply, that it’s fully paid off. A year ago, I wrote, “I won’t miss paying as much in rent share [in California] as I would pay for an entire two-bedroom apartment in Tampa.” That turned out to be optimistic; a decent one-bedroom, not two, apartment in Wesley Chapel would be hundreds more a month than my rent share in Santa Clara was. The median rent in Sacramento is, as of this writing, lower than both Tampa and Orlando.

    Second what-if: my mother and I could move somewhere else, somewhere that checks off more of my boxes and, ideally, more of hers. She’d like to be closer to amenities, closer to medical care, closer to the water. We’re both concerned about the heat, too. As I write this, Florida swelters in record-breaking heat. The SF Bay Area and Sacramento are at unusual highs, too, but the old “it’s a dry heat” joke hits home. Sacramento’s projected high of 103°F tops our projected 94°, but our heat index hits 116° compared to Sac’s 104°—and our low will be 74° (with a heat index ten degrees higher), whereas Sacramento will make it down to a comparatively arctic 58°. If this is the new normal, it may be untenable for both of us.

    Housing prices anywhere we’d want to live are likely to be challengingly high even with our resources pooled together, though, and I don’t know what place we’d both agree on. Stay in the state, or leave it? She thinks about going back to Baltimore, where she grew up, or around Asheville, where Floridians seem to be moving to when they want to leave this state. I have no personal affinity for Maryland or North Carolina, though; the places I do have affinity for—most of California and the Pacific Northwest, parts of the Southwest—aren’t places she does.

    Beyond that, the thought of moving anywhere leads to uncomfortable thoughts of mortality—both my mother’s and my own. When will I find myself living alone once more? Will I want to stay where I’m living then? If it’s still here, still in this house, the answer is likely no. But if my mother and I move to a new place, she’ll push for a bigger house. I doubt I’d want a bigger house by myself, or even with a housemate. (And if it’s in Florida, the current politics all but ensure my trans BFF won’t be that housemate.)

    Of course, maybe a bigger house still makes financial sense; with luck, having a more expensive house means I get more money if I sell it and do move somewhere else, ultimately. The money isn’t being lost. Objectively, I know that. But I don’t feel it.

    So, where does this leave me? It leaves me with a loving parent and great finances; it leaves me isolated, frustrated with my inability to manage my own time, wondering why I’m even worse than I used to be at coordinating with friends. It leaves me in a good and bad place. It leaves me in limbo.

    I’ll check back in after another year.


    1. Sarasota is now ground zero for not just Florida’s culture wars but all of America’s, as the home of the neofascist Moms of Liberty and epicenter of QAnon conspiracy nonsense. My college, New College, is the one that DeSantis is in the process of transforming from a nationally-recognized liberal arts school into a national laughing stock. ↩︎

    → 11:30 AM, Jul 20
  • Thesis: the people most likely to announce “I am leaving Mastadon for Threads” are also the people most likely to spell “Mastodon” that way.

    → 9:09 AM, Jul 19
  • One year ago today was my last day of living in Silicon Valley; next Sunday will be the anniversary of moving back to Florida. I feel like I should write a followup to “Thoughts on Leaving California”, but I’m not sure if I have it in me. We’ll see.

    → 11:33 AM, Jul 16
  • You know, I suddenly have reason to think it would just be super if there was a way to mute a thread on Micro.blog.

    → 3:22 PM, Jul 11
  • The cool thing about crossposting between social networks is that if you have a controversial take that goes viral you can blow up your mentions across all of them at once

    → 7:49 AM, Jul 11
  • You're So Vain, You Probably Think This App Is About You: On Meta and Mastodon

    Those of you not plugged into the Mastodon community may not be aware of the predominant reaction to Instagram Threads. This started when it was merely rumored, reaching a crescendo with reports that Meta had been talking to a few of the larger Mastodon instances under NDA, presumably to encourage them not to “defederate” with Threads when it came online.1 Let me describe that reaction for you, with only mild exaggeration:

    Meta is coming! If Threads is allowed to become part of the Fediverse, it will destroy it! It will steal your data! It will inject ads onto your timeline! It will corrupt Mastodon into being everything you hate about Facebook and Twitter combined!

    Let’s stipulate that Meta has a long history of doing demonstrably bad things, and that the argument I’m about to make—that Threads is not what people on Mastodon believe it is—should not be mistaken for an argument that Meta is just here to give everyone free cookies. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has written extensively about how Facebook wanted NSO spyware to monitor iOS users, produced their own spyware VPN and pushed it within their mobile app, and how Facebook’s “unknowable megascale” created “societal harm…as easy for anyone to see as the respiratory problems caused by smoking.” Threads is a product of that data-tracking, spyware-installing, society-harming Facebook, and it is not joyless unreasonable alarmism to keep that in mind when we evaluate how fun and interesting it otherwise may be.

    Having said that, Threads is not an attack on Mastodon to subvert it for nefarious purposes.

    How can I say that so confidently? Because Threads is not a Mastodon instance. It is its own self-contained, centralized social network with plans to let its users follow Mastodon accounts and vice versa.

    The difference is not mere semantics. Mastodon doesn’t care what client software you use—or even what server software you use. Threads does. Threads needs you to use their app. It’s baked into the business model. Facebook and Instagram never killed their robust third-party client ecosystem the way Twitter and Reddit recently did, because they never had one. They understood their business model from the get-go.

    When push comes to shove, Threads is Instagram. That’s how, as of this writing, it already has over 100M accounts created. If you have an Instagram account, you have a Threads account. If you get a Threads account, you get an Instagram account. Threads has zero-effort access to over one and a half billion users who, by definition, tolerate Meta’s privacy policies and Instagram’s monetization strategies.

    By contrast, Mastodon is maybe two and a half million users on a network explicitly positioned as “social networking that’s not for sale”. The users are much less receptive to monetization strategies. And as Mastodon founder Eugen “Gargron” Rothko notes, the design of the network makes it effectively impossible for Threads to collect personally identifiable information on Mastodon users merely interacting with Threads users.

    So, on one hand: a billion users who accept Instagram showing them ads, algorithm-jamming their timelines and hoovering up as much personally identifiable information about them as they can. On the other: two or three million users on an explicitly anti-corporate platform engineered to be highly resistant to leaking private data. I dare you to make a convincing business case for Facebook spending a single cent trying to capture a fraction of the second group, when it’s less than a percent the size of the first group.

    Threads is not now, and never will be, about Mastodon. It’s not about embracing it, extending it, or extinguishing it. It’s not about it at all.

    So if Threads isn’t trying to overwhelm and destroy Mastodon, why have ActivityPub support at all? Two answers. First, “Look, see? We’re open!” is not only perceived as a great talking point these days, it’s perceived as a regulatory relief valve. Look, see? ActivityPub! We’re open!

    Second, remember that the business model for Threads is keeping you on Threads. If 95% of your friends are on Threads but 5% are over on that weird Mastodon thing, now you don’t have to use Mastodon to follow them! Just follow them from Threads! Woo! Will Threads be a good Mastodon client? No, but it just has to hit “good enough.” Will any Mastodon client be a good Threads client? Fuck no. They don’t want you accessing Threads from Ivory or Tusky or Elk, they want you accessing it from the Threads app, guaranteed to show you as many ads and gather as much data as possible.

    The argument Mastodon is collectively mustering against Threads is, at the end of the day, “but Facebook is evil!” Again, no argument. But Mark Zuckerberg is evil in the way of a greedy, privacy-flouting tech bro, not in the way of Sauron.2 Not only would the “extinguishing” part of “embracing, extending and extinguishing” Mastodon be extremely difficult at a technical level, the plausible ROI on doing so would be minimal at best—and probably even counterproductive.

    Yeah, but should people defederate?

    The aforementioned John Gruber is bullish on Threads’s chances, and he wrote “Threads is the most fun, most interesting new product of the year” on Mastodon (while taking a swipe with “have fun over here in the library,” as if libraries are terrible sad stern places, a weird dig for a professional writer to make, John). Seriously, while I love the estimable Mr. Gruber’s writing, when I look at Threads what I see is an influencer-infested, brand-driven, algorithmically-jammed-up crapfest. A lot like, well, modern Instagram, without the silver lining of pretty photographs.

    My point is that Threads and Mastodon are already really different culturally. Even when-slash-if the ActivityPub bridge exists, I don’t think many Threads fans will rush to follow us Mastodon users over here having fun in the library, nor will many Mastodon users be rushing to follow their friends on Threads through the Mastodon client of their choice. I predict the vast majority of people who want to use both networks will maintain separate accounts to do so.

    Instagram has thousands of content moderators, and while they’re already making decisions that will make everyone mad, they’re clearly making decisions. While I doubt Threads will officially follow the Mastodon Server Covenant, in practice I suspect they’ll be more strict in some respects. Instagram has a puritan streak that Threads will carry through—there’s a non-zero chance that Threads may refuse to federate with your instance because, I don’t know, you allow titties and people who say “fuck”. The chances of Threads becoming a conduit for harassment on Mastodon are slim.

    Personally, I would federate with Threads in “silence” mode: my instance’s users would be able to follow Threads users and vice versa, but posts from Threads would not show up in any public timelines on my server. I think, though, this should be a choice each instance makes with input from their users, and it is a little dismaying how many instances are perfectly happy making that decision unilaterally.

    The truly toxic idea, though, is that Mastodon instances should not only refuse to federate with Threads, but they should refuse to federate with other servers that do federate with Threads. In other words, users should be punished for decisions they have no control over and may not even be aware of, made by the administrators of servers they don’t belong to. I am dead serious when I call this toxic. The default position must, must, be that breaking your users' social graphs is a last resort against clear and present danger. A server explicitly welcomes Nazis, child porn, TERFs, and serial harassers? Block that fucker. But it’s absurd to insist that federating with Meta’s general-interest server presents the same threat level.

    Look. At the end of the day, I’m a Mastodon partisan. But I don’t love its collective tendency toward self-important dogmatism. I’ve seen more than one friend get set up only to pull back, worrying there are dozens of unwritten rules about content warnings and alt text and linking and boosting they will constantly be put on blast over. I have never seen so many self-identified queer leftists reflexively drop into well, actually mode.

    New users frequently get stuck on the “pick an instance” part of Mastodon’s signup, and we always say oh, it doesn’t matter that much, which is just not true. Some instances seriously up the unwritten rule count; some suck at moderation, and the admins go tinpot dictator when they’re called on it; smaller ones get their plugs pulled with some regularity.3 How much worse will it be when hundreds of small-to-medium servers decide they won’t federate with the largest servers—the ones new users who took our “don’t stress about picking your instance” advice ended up on—because those servers have chosen not to block Threads? That level of fracture won’t preserve the Fediverse, it will mortally wound it.

    The truth is, Threads is not about Mastodon. It’s about Meta and only about Meta, and Mastodon isn’t important enough to them to spend the considerable effort that would be necessary to destroy it. It’d be awfully damn ironic if the Fediverse decides it’s become necessary to destroy itself to stop them.


    1. An “instance” in Mastodon parlance is one of the many distributed servers that comprises the network; Mastodon users have accounts on individual instances. Nearly all instances are “federated” with nearly all other instances, e.g., they allow their users to follow one another, but any instance can choose to “defederate” with any other instance. ↩︎

    2. Peter Thiel, however, is evil in the way of Sauron. ↩︎

    3. And let’s not get into how many asterisks there still are to “moving between instances is easy”: sure, as long as you remember to export the right things first, do everything in precisely the right order, and oh yes, don’t care about losing your entire post history. ↩︎

    → 9:00 PM, Jul 10
  • Mastodon’s collective understanding of Meta’s goals with Threads are so at odds with what I think they are that I’m increasingly tempted to write a post entitled “You’re So Vain, You Probably Think This App Is About You”.

    → 3:25 PM, Jul 6
  • In an acquaintance’s home for the holiday evening, and trying hard to resist the temptation to grab their TV remote, properly adjust the colors and turn off motion smoothing.

    → 8:31 PM, Jul 4
  • While my SwiftUI knowledge remains quite limited, the more I learn the more I suspect that “because it’s in SwiftUI” is not a sufficient explanation for why the new macOS System Settings app looks and behaves the way it does.

    → 12:16 PM, Jun 2
  • It’s still fun to go out with an iPad as my “ultra-lightweight” machine—in my case, a 2020 iPad Air and the Keyboard Folio. In some ways, it’s really hard to beat, although in other ways, it’s still irrationally frustrating. Definitely curious what iPadOS 17 will bring next week…

    → 6:11 PM, Jun 1
  • Me: I wonder if I should make my app subscription-based rather than a single purchase…

    Also me: Maybe see if you can write the app before you worry about pricing models, hotshot

    → 2:26 PM, May 22
  • As much as I appreciate Hello Weather, I think I’m going back to Carrot. It has more detail, better widgets, and a much better iPad app.

    → 9:25 AM, May 21
  • I’ve never been a multiple-monitor person, but having Hacking with macOS open on the iPad Air in portrait mode next to the Studio Display is pretty great.

    → 3:03 PM, May 14
  • I’m trying to learn Swift as my first “non-web, non-scripting” language in literally decades. It’s exciting, although I’m clearly swimming against the tide in focusing primarily on the Mac. (If the project happens, I’d want it on the iPad, too, on general principle.)

    → 9:42 AM, May 9
  • Watching the first seasons of “Midsomer Murders” with my mom. This show was sure keen on working gay panic into the plot even when it had no connection to the case.

    → 10:43 PM, May 6
  • Following my earlier thought: going with SwiftUI would limit my audience (only Mac and possibly iPad), be far harder to do (I’ve really only made web apps, so I’d have to learn from scratch)—but it’s probably the right choice, because I think that’s the version of the app I’d most want to use.

    → 11:43 PM, May 3
  • Continuing to noodle around with a fiction brainstorming app idea, but also continuing to dither on whether to do it full server-side web in Elixir, more SPA-style (which offers a possibility of Electron-based desktop apps), or learning Swift & SwiftUI for desktop-only (and Mac-only).

    → 10:31 AM, May 3
  • You may think all HDMI cables are the same, but I tried an AudioQuest® HDMI cable recently as an experiment and discovered a profound difference—the number of HDCP errors my Apple TV reported went up by an order of magnitude!

    → 2:31 PM, May 1
  • I think I have now hit the “too many monthly subscriptions” point and am going to have to start quietly looking for things to cancel. Probably YouTube Premium is on the chopping block.

    → 10:47 PM, Apr 5
  • Since I no longer have space for surround speakers, I’m considering replacing my A/V receiver with a great two-channel hi-fi system—possibly going very minimalist with active speakers. It’d be a big change, though.

    → 2:00 PM, Apr 4
  • I still don’t know if I can pull off the spiritual replacement for Dramatica plot development software that’s in my head, but I can promise if it ever happens it will not involve GPT in any fashion.

    → 4:42 PM, Mar 31
  • I have bought a JBL Flip 6 Bluetooth speaker to replace a seemingly dying Bose SoundLink Mini II. The Flip is good for its size and price, but the SoundLink is just…better. Possibly worth the price difference better.

    → 10:47 PM, Mar 22
  • I perversely hope Dramatica keeps failing to show any visible progress in making a 64-bit release of their fiction brainstorming software, because it might eventually kick me into making my vaguely-sketched-out alternative.

    → 5:30 PM, Mar 18
  • The weather is (usually) one of Florida’s (increasingly few) saving graces.

    → 3:49 PM, Mar 3
  • Safe and secure under an ancient oak tree, but definitely not on a schedule.

    Outdoor cafe tables under an old, giant oak tree, with the kitchen trailer visible in the background.
    → 4:10 PM, Mar 1
  • In a quest to see if a problem I’ve been having with a wifi-enabled A/V receiver is actually the house wifi, I’ve switched out my old router for two Eero Pro 6s. It’s too early to be positive it’ll fix the receiver, but everything is a LOT faster suddenly.

    → 7:33 PM, Feb 26
  • I demoed the active speakers I’m considering replacing my home theatre system with, now that I have no space for surrounds, and it’s really good—but the local dealer has a 25% restocking fee if I do an in-home audition and take it back. I want to support local stores, but…yikes.

    → 10:21 PM, Feb 20
  • I saw someone post a screenshot of Mark Zuckerberg announcing “Meta Verified” and genuinely thought it was Zuckerberg dryly trolling Elon Musk, not a real product.

    → 3:17 PM, Feb 19
  • Not thrilled with Akamai killing the Linode brand. The product is the same for now, but it’s hard not to get Joyent/Textdrive flashbacks here, as they kept pushing their low-end customers out the door in pursuit of bigger and bigger fish.

    → 2:00 PM, Feb 15
  • Time to begin the Update All The Things dance. I have content caching enabled on my Mac Studio to theoretically make this marginally faster, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a difference in practice.

    → 11:38 AM, Feb 15
  • I was in a Best Buy with a Magnolia Hi-Fi substore in it and an employee—who actually knew about hi-fi—suggested Best Buy was “sunsetting” that concept. If true, that’s a shame; they carry KEF, Arcam, and a few other good but hard-to-find audio brands.

    → 7:35 PM, Feb 11
  • I’m slowly edging toward the idea of replacing my 5.1-now-3.0 home theater setup with a two-channel audio system. Despite the temptation, probably not just two HomePods (no matter how I slice it, they’ll be a step down sound-wise). But what?

    → 7:51 PM, Feb 9
  • Every time I take the iPad out with me for serious portable computing, I’m reminded why I like it—with the Smart Folio keyboard (no, not the Magic Keyboard) it’s so light and versatile. But it is just so easy to smack into OS/software-driven limitations.

    → 11:32 AM, Feb 8
  • Hanging out in the International Drive/Sand Lake area of Orlando. Way back when, I didn’t have the context to interpret this as “the Vegas Strip without the casinos,” but it is—all bars, gift shops, boutiques and celebrity chef restaurants.

    → 2:58 PM, Feb 4
  • I’m currently carrying my iPhone 12 without a case, and it feels positively illicit.

    → 6:33 PM, Jan 31
  • St. Petersburg, Florida, is so cool a city in some ways. If only we could replace Ron DeSantis with someone more liberal, like Joe Manchin. Yes, I know what I said.

    → 6:55 PM, Jan 28
  • Are some folks seriously pulling a Twitter-esque performative outrage dance of “how dare they call their Mastodon app ‘Ivory’?” Do we have to do this? Look. Tapbots makes robots. Ivory is a robot elephant. So it’s obviously artificial ivory. You’re welcome.

    → 4:31 PM, Jan 27
  • Just as a heads-up again, if you’re following me from Mastodon, it’s better to follow my actual Mastodon account (@chipotle@mstdn.social) now that I have one, not my Micro.blog account.

    → 10:25 AM, Jan 27
  • I finally remembered this Mac has Stage Manager, so I just enabled it, and after about five minutes of use I can definitively say I have no idea what’s going on here. It’s multiple screens! It’s a one-window interface! It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping! What? Huh? What?

    → 4:44 PM, Jan 25
  • I’m sure not every British TV show has credits set in Gill Sans. Just, like, 95% of them.

    → 10:58 PM, Jan 22
  • As much as I’ve migrated a lot of my life back to the Mac, it’s still really fun to be able to use the iPad in portrait mode with an external keyboard for writing. Maybe I’m secretly hoping iPadOS 17 will pull me back to the iPad as my out-in-the-world device.

    → 5:48 PM, Jan 21
  • After my return to California, my totally scientific empirical analysis is that “woke” states make better beer. Sorry.

    → 7:17 PM, Jan 17
  • If you’re looking for a decent macOS Mastodon client, your options are:

    1. Ice Cubes

    Seriously, right now that’s it. Get into the Test Flight. testflight.apple.com/join/tqI3…

    → 5:26 PM, Jan 17
  • The downside of returning to the Bay Area for a week is that it makes me acutely aware of what I’m missing now.

    → 1:42 PM, Jan 17
  • The more I poke at the idea for this application, the more I think there’s something there—but it’s a dilemma whether to try and make it a web app, or a real Mac app. (Or first one and then the other? Argh.)

    → 5:49 PM, Jan 16
  • The hotel I’m staying at in San Jose this week has cardboard sleeves for their coffee cups with the Wawa logo on them, and I am really curious about that given there are no Wawas within at least a thousand miles.

    → 1:13 PM, Jan 16
  • While it’s great the Apple Watch prompts “it looks like you’re on a walk, start a workout retroactively?”, it’d be nice if it knew how to end it retroactively, too. I just got 10 minutes of walking credit for ordering a beer flight at my destination. Oops. 🍻

    → 5:13 PM, Jan 14
  • I’m renting a Nissan Altima and the adaptive cruise control is comically terrible. When it doesn’t just tell me “front radar blocked” and refuse to come on, it doesn’t actually see cars in front of it anyway and would be happy to ram them.

    → 6:22 PM, Jan 12
  • Finally reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. So far it is as good as everyone says, and still depressingly relevant. 📚

    → 7:06 PM, Jan 5
  • A great joy of my work life since 2017 or so has been the ability to pack up and work from coffee shops or microbreweries. Even after going 100% remote since 2020, I’ve kept up the tradition, even when outdoor patios have been required/prudent.

    → 5:37 PM, Jan 4
  • Dusting off my Elixir/Phoenix knowledge for a potential project down the road, and Panic Nova is just…not cutting it. BBEdit has a decent Elixir package (spoiler: it’s mine), but it suffers from limitations in template highlighting that VSCode and Sublime Text don’t share. Hmm.

    → 5:28 PM, Jan 4
  • Next week’s challenge: see if I can fit a week’s worth of clothes and electronics (both work and personal laptop) into a single carryon bag. I may make the personal “laptop” my iPad Air for space reasons; we’ll see!

    → 4:43 PM, Jan 3
  • I’m considering switching from Carrot Weather back to Apple Weather. I haven’t looked at in quite a while, and you know what? It’s gotten pretty good.

    → 1:47 PM, Jan 2
  • Feeling like a web app will work for this novel plotting-helper. As much as I like native apps, it should make development easier and not tie it to one platform. Of course, now comes figuring out the actual scope and mechanics…

    → 6:42 PM, Jan 1
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