Waking up from a nightmare totally alone sucks.

Wordpress is officially in an old fashion flame war with no way out. It feels like 1999. Just like then, everyone is being a jerk who just can’t stop posting through it. Unlike then, everyone involved is incredibly rich and they have real reputations they’re putting on the line for nothing.

You know, it’s sad. I used to think that my dream next job would be to work on Tumblr. No longer.

Sunny on AppleTV is another winner.

AppleTV is building a schedule to keep me watching. Slow Horses and Bad Monkey just finished, now Shrinking is back. Silo is following. Then Severance. Right now there’s no other service giving me something every month I want to see.

Trump and Vance are lying monsters that spread fear and violence in exchange for power that they want to to use to spread fear and violence.

Their lying about FEMA’s response is just another way they prey on the people they’re meant to support and represent.

What’s a big, ridiculous sci-fi movie I probably haven’t seen that I should watch since I’m home alone tonight and just broke fast?

I haven’t read anything about Tesla’s robotaxi, but I assume we all now know this is Amazon Go or whatever again— doesn’t actually work and needs an army in Asia driving you remotely.

When I see a post like this, I know I’m old, because I start thinking, “We used to be a society!”

Elsa went away for the weekend and it’s Yom Kippur. I’m going to be whining so much.

I just had a thought that I need to work hard to eliminate from my brain.

You can make just one potato and half an onion’s worth of latkes on the regular instead of 8 pounds of potato just once a year.

The fact that I experience daily HDCP issues on AppleTV is infuriating. I spend a lot of time money instead of pirating for a significantly worse experience.

Just raise taxes is the answer that seems pretty obvious. Though I’d probably start with removing caps on payroll taxes.

Personal websites are not just about words. The presentation of information about ourselves is just as important as anything we write on our blogs or webpages. Our personal sites are fashion statements. They are a critical part of how we want to present in the world and represent a strong signifier of how we see ourselves and want to be seen.

The reason more developer-minded folks gravitate towards static site generators is obvious– their technical simplicity makes it easy for us to make our websites our own. But this simplicity is a simplicity in implementation and not a simplicity in use. Complex blogging engines and content management systems are not complex for complexity’s sake– they are trying to achieve simplicity in use for non-technical users who want to express themselves. The fact that the implementation of these systems is deeply complex to understand doesn’t matter if they provide their users with the ability to feel they can make precisely what they want.

It’s 2024, and we’re still discussing the merits and warts of WYSIWYG, no-code/low-code, and natural language systems. We are still oscillating around a mythical place that has all power and all of the simplicity and all of the accessibility.

Modern static site generators have learned a lot of lessons from the past. They serve as powerful systems that have changed the way it makes sense to build blogs. They have roared back to relevance, even as backend platforms for application/engine-like experiences. But we have not reached the stage where someone with no interest in the technical elements of the web can easily build a place that matches their potential for expression out into the world on the backs of basic HTML and CSS. I understand why, and I think that’s fine.

I’m very much feeling in need of t’shuva. I’m glad I took off Friday to prepare for Yom Kippur. The weather looks like it’s going to be perfect, and I think I need to go forest bathing and have a good think.

Netflix cancels shows before I even have a chance to watch them.

The Static Site Paradox is a great post. I think there are great options these days, but only if you’re willing to get a bit technical. That’s a bit of a bummer. It could be easier.

Google’s tightening on APIs appears to be not just for Google Drive. If true, I’m both worried for Mimestream and hoping that it accelerates their plans for JMAP support.

Lying to people whose lives have been literally uprooted for perceived political gain is disgusting.

It’s surreal to see your cousin in a Washington Post video. It’s worse when the reason she’s being interviewed is because of her experience living in a community in Israel that was overrun on October 7th.

It’s been over a decade since I’ve seen her. She came to visit us in the states when I was young and spent some weeks living with my grandmother and I remembered being fond of her. Later, when I was older, I traveled to Israel a few times where we were able to reconnect. At the time, she still lived on the farm my family has lived on since shortly after World War I north of the West Bank. We both studied chemistry, though she went on to earn her PhD.

I stopped traveling to Israel for a few reasons. I got busy. I became a young adult with no money. But also, increasingly, it became impossible to ignore the rightward and hawkish shift of the Israeli government. I didn’t feel ok supporting them financially with my tourism dollars, even though I missed the family connections I had and frankly missed a place I loved. Elsa would ask if we would go, and I always told her that I hoped to go again one day, but not with this government and this posture. It took until my 20s to go to Israel because of the perceived lack of safety during the Second Intifada. But the window was short between then and when it became clear that Israel had all but abandoned peaceful coexistence with Palestinians and that was intolerable.

Throughout the last year I’ve seen a lot of my friends write about Israel. I see many people thoughtlessly supporting Israel. I see many people thoughtlessly criticizing Israel. I remember one of the only things I was able to say to Elsa about the situation (once it became clear that although my family had their lives upturned that they were safe) was how angry I felt toward Americans who overnight felt like they were experts on this conflict. What little I could say is “a whole lot of people seem to think that this is all very simple and clear – simple and clear what the United States should do and what Israel should do– and anyone who has ever spent any time understanding the Middle East would not be so sure.”

Months later, triggered by… I’m not sure what, I remember sitting in a booth at a restaurant and just crying. I hated feeling like I had to mourn an Israel I wanted to exist and once glimpsed. I hated feeling that despite my long standing complex anger and criticism of Israel, which started long before October 7th, was having all of its complexity stripped away. What I’ll loosely call the Western leftist pro-Palestine consensus has absolutely fueled anti-Semitism and has been empowered by it. This bloc is absolutely right to call out what is happening in Gaza as a fucking travesty. But I cannot believe that we’re going to rally behind “from the river to the sea” and pretend it doesn’t mean exactly what it means. I cannot believe we’re going to act like the United States is allies with Israel, especially from a military and intelligence standpoint, for no reason other than AIPAC or some thinly veiled notion of Jewish money in America.

October 7th was monstrous. The conditions in Gaza before then were monstrous. The actions of Israel in pursuing the end of Hamas has been monstrous. The actions of the Houthis and Hezbollah and Iran have been monstrous. I use the word monstrous over and over again not to create a sense of equivalency, but instead to suggest that all of these actions feel somewhat beyond our ability to measure and compare and understand. Netanyahu has been a piece of shit for a long time, and the Israeli government has been working hard to achieve Palestinian erasure. Israel does not deserve our support. Israel’s actions have long passed defensible.

How we got here is not simple. Where we go from here is not simple. There’s very little that’s obvious here other than the utter lack of heroes.

I love my family in Israel. I have had profound experiences there. I miss the food. I miss the language. But Israel lost its partner in peace and rapidly gave up on peace itself a long time ago. No one in power in the region is trying to solve this problem in any way but obliterating their perceived enemy. Israel, the nation state, hasn’t had my support for some time. October 7th didn’t change that. And yet, everywhere I look, everyone is trying to make this simple and I can’t sign on to that.

I am sad, I am dealing with this in a deeply personal way, and it feels utterly lonely to be surrounded by the self-righteousness of those who discovered Palestinians exist one year ago.

My worst writing goes on my blog because it’s all crap I have to get out. And I write terrible first drafts.

Many Tricks really should have pushed Moom 4 harder on me. $8? I don’t even need to know what changed, I can figure that out years from now, but Moom has been great on my Mac for … ever and $8 is an easy ask to upgrade.

The band I’m in has slowly gone metal-ish, which is fine, I really dig the music we’re making. Still, I’m going to work hard over the next month or so to write a chimey post-rock song or some ethereal shoegaze something just to reset the balance a bit.

I cut the ethernet cable that terminated in a jack in my office, freshly crimped a male RJ45 connector, and mounted my Unifi U6 In-Wall with no issues on my first try (even if it took much longer than all those YouTube videos led me to believe). Then I setup a Sonos Arc for our Loft TV. 💅🏻

My favorite (somewhat hidden) slash page so far is my style guide, which is not about how I write, but instead, highlights many of the bits and bobs in my CSS.