Where Is My Tribe?

It's 2026. I came back over to my own patch of grass on the internet because there was yet-another-praise-the-indie-web article listed on the Orange Site. This one was specifically, “A Website to Destroy All Websites”. The article was fine. It tried to sound more academic by referencing BOOKS! Maybe even a couple Essays. The Orange Site jackals attacked the websites style and its javascript requirement, which I didn't understand at first because I read it on mobile first, where it looked quite fine and readable, and I resigned myself to Javascript about 20 years ago. Some fights are worth it ( Linux on the Desktop, baby! ), some are not.

Anyways, I popped on over here and according to the built in WriteFreely statistic, a non-zero number of people have visited this site. That's pretty cool, but maybe you visited and wondered why it's been relatively quiet since 2023, or, more likely, you didn't give two shits. Either way, it's mostly quiet here because I found that my preferred anonymous public outlet is short posts sometimes with funny pictures. This is not WriteFreely's forte, but I really like WriteFreely as a pure writing experience, and didn't want to lose that. So I spun up a short-form site over at my sub-site Campfire. It's not perfect; I think I broke my gunicorn (or is it uvicorn? or uwsgi?) Either way, sometimes it doesn't load. One day I will look into that, but, like my real-world physical properties, since its mine, I ultimately get around to it, when I get around to it. Let's not talk about that cracked tile in my kitchen....

I do like writing, and I have always thought of Where Is My Tribe as a way for me to, “comment on that post on the internet, but NOT delete the comment after drafting it.” Are you familiar with that technique? It's a way to satisfy my compulsive need to COMMENT!!!!!, but without all of inevitable backlash that comes with public disclosure. For you see, while I am allowed to have opinions on OP, THOU SHALT NOT OPINE ON ME! Man, I am on Fire with Caps today. I forget where I picked up the technique, but it's helped me NOT respond to many a stupid, time-wasting, conversations.

Maybe I will write more here. Despite my sarcasm in my intro, I actually really like the Indie Web or Small Web (is it Vanilla Ice Cream, French Vanilla Ice Cream, or Vanilla Bean Ice Cream). I am a paid user of Kagi Search, and once in a while, I find myself over on their Small Web portal. It's nice.

What's odd is, most people rage about being forced onto the same, “three sites.” I assume they mean Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok? Or maybe it's, [Meta property], [Micro Blog Site], [Short Form Video Site]? I don't know. I do admit to spending time on Youtube and Reddit. Those are my poisons. But, do you need to? I love how there is always that guy in the online discourse around Small Web who comments, “Nobody is forcing you onto those sites.” And I find that true as well. I don't use social media as a way to be social. I find I much prefer just being social through messaging people and IRL social functions (sporting, “going out” with friends, working from third spaces).

Heck, even if no one reads this post, I feel better and lighter just writing my stream of thoughts here, relatively unedited. I don't know the scientific phrase for “person who thinks best by hearing their own ideas out loud,” but I would definitely assert that one of the best ways I refine my thoughts is through speaking them out loud. You see this pathos expressed in a few ways that you may be familiar with. Rubber Duck Debugging? Proof Reading Out Loud. These two are what I use as examples to remind myself I am not just some narcissist who, “loves to hear his own voice.” I do indeed rely on my hearing my own voice, but I don't get a chub over it. Instead, I get better refined thoughts.

I am starting to run dry and as I said, I feel lighter. Oh, one last thing that article about destroying websites or something introduced me to was WebMentions. What the heck is a web mention? How did I deploy self-hosted ActivityPub, TWICE, and never hear of WebMentions. I don't have much more to say on the topic, beyond that at a cursory glance it looks interesting! ActivityPub is a bit heavy. Embarrassingly, even the framework that powers Campfire mentions WebMentions on the github and I just missed it. D'oh!

So, here's to 2026! Here's to not re-reading this post before publishing! May those who want one, find their own patch of grass on the Infinite Web. I know where mine is, even if I don't always take the time to mow the lawn. Consider my patch of grass rewilded!

When someone is typing in chat, they typically fall into two categories: those who complete a thought and hit enter (traditional prose grammatical structures be damned), and those who write out full, complete sentences and paragraphs to express a collection of thoughts before hitting enter.

I wonder if anyone has ever thought of a Chat App user experience whereby if a user of type A above sends a million messages, and the recipient is not reading them in real-time, then the app will compress them into one message to be read in full.

Just a random thought.

Just throwing this out there, take it as you will, but... “just use our docker,” is the most bullshit way to “provide,” accessible, self-hosting, software.

I know I don't produce software that gets consumed by others. But I'm sorry, if you DO produce software, and you DO expect people to consume it and self-host it, then here's some free advice: just throwing up a docker does not solve anyone's problems. Knowing how Docker works has itself become a skill probably just as complicated as back-in-the-day knowing how the LAMP stack works. It hasn't reduced complexity, just poured the water into the next bucket.

I am increasingly a believer in local-first application development. I think it's just me getting on in my old age and wanting kids to get off my lawn and what-have-you, but I just find it frustrating that we have these beautiful operating systems at our disposal and all the kids want to just abstract them away and run client-server model solutions for everything.

I am running macOS. I want my personal computer to execute a task that I have written in Python. My understanding is that I could plug it into launchd as a LaunchAgent but there doesn't seem to be a pythonic way of doing this (please enlighten me!).

Alternatively, I could run it as a cron job and output my logs to standard logging locations. I guess that would be the most OS-y way of running a small task.

I would love something a little bit in the middle. Definitely not Airflow-size. Even smaller than Celery/Redis size. But also maybe not as barebones and unopinionated as cron/logs.

What is a lightweight personal task framework that is designed for local first? I guess my wishlist would be (off the cuff):

1. Python module that you import into your python script that provides:

   1. A standard function for logging at production and debug levels
   2. A standard way of producing results for success and error

2. An app (Preferably a GUI, preferably not a web app, Am I the only one who doesn't like running everything in my browser...?) that allows me to see a history of task execution, view the logs, adjust the schedule, understand the memory and disk usage of the task

3. The same python module provides command line parameters to execute my task in a managed runtime so that I can build within the framework from the first line of code (i.e. an SDK)

Anyone know anything like this?

Rotten Tomatoes does not own and redirect rottentomatos.com. I feel like that's a mistake.

Whois says rottentomatoes.com is owned and managed by Verisign (i.e. anonymously managed). rottentomatos.com displays NBC Universal in its whois data.

The Apple macOS Podscasts app is an unpolished turd of an app. I cannot believe I still try to use it 🤦🏾...

Totally re-posting this from this Linkedin Post: https://postimg.cc/t1Mvxgd0

I am a fan of the Strong Towns brand/podcast/ideology/movement (whatever it is or has become). However, I am relatively new to following it. Therefore, I am not fully aware of who Charles “Chuck” Marohn is, his beliefs, etc. (beyond his love of Strong Towns).

I recently listened to his 14 March 2023 podcast (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/3/13/conservative-reaction-15-minute-cities?apcid=0061975856bdd2d9a00b4d01) where he addresses Conservatives who are scared of the 15-minute city concept. In this episode, he chose to address them directly by first stepping back, self-identifying as a conservative, and sharing some of his own beliefs of n the North American political divide.

I appreciated how he began the conversation by identifying a set of spectra on which humanity in general may fall, and how by one study, “conservatives,” and “progressives/liberals,” (which he regularly used interchangeably), often cluster towards certain ends of these spectra. I thought this was great.

I just wish he had used this approach more throughout the rest of his conversation. I appreciate only more, as time goes on, how acknowledging all exists on these various spectra or axes or whatever you want to call them is what makes us all more unique than we'd realize. I understand human need to for social cohesion, for banding together like-with-like, but I only wish we could begin elevating modern discourse above this base reality. I am not saying we need to break down all social groupings and go it alone, but only that we acknowledge humans seek groups of individuals, not groups of clones, and appreciating the role of individuality on social cohesion.

Charles still uses the labels, “conservatives,” and, “liberals,” in a far too broad fashion for my taste. He remained calm and collected throughout, and his final message in the last minutes of the podcast, were still perfectly on message for what Strong Towns is really about: bottom up efforts by people who live together, working together to improve where they live, regardless of political leaning. I'd like to take that message and evolve it more to promoting how an individual can first accept where they lie on various spectra themselves, then ask how their individuality can contribute best, without worrying about their single political label.

I am not a lawyer. I know a few, even call them friends, but sometimes they act like lawyers. I am not a fan of general lawyering in business. Service Contracts, NDA, Non-competes, T&Cs, are all written in the most heinous language, legalese.

Now I understand that maybe, at some point in the past, there was a reason for this , maybe. I like to give the benefit of the doubt to history. Humanity has written a messy story, and legalese certainly would not have been the worst thing to come out of it. But, today, its archaic and counterproductive.

You see, these documents are meant to be the rules of engagement between players on the opposing sides. But the players don’t understand the rules! Who plays a game where the official rulebook is written in a foreign language?!

I’m not saying we don’t need objective third parties to assist in settling disputes, but before we even get there, let’s make sure both parties really know what the rules are.

And to everyone who is thinking that this obfuscation of intention allows the players to distance themselves mentally from these rules, allows some lateral thinking; grey area; what-have-you, then I say the game is broken.

Prompt

In the video game world of Pokemon, do people eat pokemon?

Response

In the world of Pokemon, it is implied that some people do eat Pokemon as a source of food. However, it is not shown or discussed in great detail within the games or anime series. The topic of consuming Pokemon is a somewhat controversial and sensitive one, and it is generally not openly addressed or explored in the franchise. Some fans and players have speculated that certain Pokemon, such as those that resemble common animals or are explicitly shown to be raised for food, may be consumed by humans in the Pokemon world. However, it is important to note that the consumption of Pokemon is not a central or encouraged aspect of the franchise and is not depicted in a positive light.

Thoughts

Seems well-composed. Also, it did seem to take longer to produce the output. I wonder if it felt sensitive about the topic. Doubtful. Probably just my own projecting.