DESIGN–CREATE
Drivers Coop is a ridesharing cooperative in New York City. This is a great idea. It strikes back at Big Co, who are rapacious, completely enshittified, and worth striking. Buffalo could use this. I m going to ask around, see if anyone has worked on this or is considering it.
A story I heard on the radio years ago, from I think John McPhee but possibly one of his talented non-fiction-writing colleagues: He was on a tour of the Hershey chocolate factory in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He was walked and talked through the manufacturing process, from receiving the chocolate nibs through cleaning, roasting and processing. The ... Read more
. . . I ve always believed that any work of art should stem from genuine feelings and understandings . . . I didn t work with any sense of purpose. As an artist, I was only looking to express myself. I did it to share my feelings with the audience. I need to be touched emotionally to come up with meaningful works. When the work resonates with the audience, it s a satisfaction that money can t buy.…
St. Ann s School burned overnight. Four alarm fire, full involvement. This is a direct result of the City s neglect in protecting and preserving its historic buildings. These buildings were wide open, unmonitored, as far as I can tell unregulated in the sense of inspected, cited, summoned to court. What a preposterous waste. This building was ... Read more
Dries/Drupal/Markdown/RSS Dries Buytaert posted about tweaking his personal website to output Markdown. He made it discoverable by bots and crawlers, minimally, and was surprised to find immediate discovery. He borrowed a feature from RSS: But how did those crawlers find the Markdown version so fast? I borrowed a pattern from RSS: RSS auto-discovery. Many sites include ... Read more
I have a $20/month subscription to ChatGPT. I ve used it for a year or so. Here are some of my thoughts on its usefulness to me, also some thoughts on AI in general. I use it mostly as an aid in technical troubleshooting. I run a bunch of self-hosted WordPress websites and a couple of ... Read more
My Dad s favorite poet was Anon, a prolific scribbler. Here s one he collected, probably in the 1950s: Don tcha worry, honey chile,Don tcha cry no more.It s just a little ol atom bombIn a little ol limited war. It s just a bitsy warhead, chile,With a little ol tactical shell.And all it s gonna do is blow us allTo a ... Read more
Here s another Uncle Lubert story, actually two related stories showing Lubert s practicality. Uncle Lubert gave his nephews some lumber and told them to build an outhouse. They worked away at it but came up short not enough lumber to build the last piece, the door. They said Uncle Lubert! We don t have enough wood ... Read more
Not all my Dad s jokes were about his Uncle Lubert. One of his favorites: A man in a small town strange to him is looking in vain for the Post Office. He encounters a small boy and asks him Son, how do you get to the Post Office? The boy says I dunno. The man ... Read more
ER had several jokes that came from his uncle Lubert Theiss. Lubert was a dairy farmer in the hills of Meigs County. On one of Uncle Lubert s barns, the sliding door had not one cat hole, made so cats could enter and exit the barn, but six cat holes. When asked Uncle Lubert, why do ... Read more