TL;DRI'm shutting down EchoFeed within the next 12 months when the final subscriptions expire. It will continue to run as it is until then so if you've already paid you have access until the end of your subscription. Last night, after a few months on and off of problems with EchoFeed from my side and general feed problems I made the decision to shut it down. As of right now, this is what I've done: Registration for new accounts is closed Existing free accounts can no longer upgrade to EchoFeed…
This post was written by Zachary Kai as part of Blaugust 2026. Read the post I wrote about art history for Zachary's site. ⁂ ⁂ ⁂ I’m participating in Blaugust this year. Like most things, on a whim.Nerd Girl, who’s coordinating this year’s edition, compiled community-builder prompts. I’m always for those, because where would we be without community?One challenge: write a guest post for someone’s site, or have someone write one for yours.I thought: why not both?If you’re wondering why the…
This update covers Sunday 07-26-26 through Saturday 08-01-26 (icon Glossary, if needed). LIFE 🈁 Funny how one small suggestion can snowball into something larger. 📕 The heat sapped a lot of my energy and willpower this week, so much of it was spent indoors. 📜 I didn’t plan to spend any time administering my website this week, but... ❤️🩹 Met with a vascular specialist on Monday 07-27, who found no issues with the circulation in my legs, but wasn’t sure I would find anything with a neuropathy…
On Sunday, Beatrix will walk out of the arena at Circus Juventas for the last time, and that thought has me up early this morning. It's not like I did not know it before, but it's hitting especially hard.I started working with Circus Juventas in 2005, before Patrick and I were even married, before Beatrix was even a concept. I was brought in on a special project to reconcile a backlog of credit cards, quickly solved some other issues (including getting a retroactive sales tax refund of several…
Week-old humpback whale calf ✒️ Written by: Abbie It may have been a little while since we uploaded a blog post, and that's because we've simply been so busy traveling, settling, and—regrettably—working. While we still have many stories to share from our travels, in the background we have officially finished the first half of our Aussie adventures and found somewhere to call home. That place being the beautiful Gold Coast. We decided on Gold Coast when we passed through during our campervan…
An Account at Oriskany |The Battle of Oriskany (/ɔːrˈɪskəniː/ or /əˈrɪskəniː/) was a major engagement of the Saratoga campaign during the American Revolutionary War. On August 6, 1777, an American column of Tryon County militia and Oneidas marching to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix was ambushed by a contingent of Britain's Indigenous allies and Loyalists. It was one of the few battles of the war in which most non-Indigenous participants were settlers born in the Thirteen Colonies. The…
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Emily McBride’s novel Queen Mab is a brilliant debut that marries folklore to postpartum depression. The New Yorker wrote of the book: “The body horror of birth gives way to the fairy-tale…
Hi! I’m back from Rhode Island, having spent less than a week there, hanging out with family, and taking a bit of a working vacation. The weather was lovely; it was nice to be outside for a change, even if it was still with my laptop. This month marked my two-year anniversary at Mobius. It’s wild how much has changed in that intervening time — I’m really proud of everything we’ve accomplished, and excited to imagine what the next two years will be like. On that note, I gave a talk about the…
1) And how would it be? A new world? A new life? A new time, made for a new form of living and a new way which is mad or madder than the madman who lives to die or dies to live.What is this? What is desire if nothing else than a spot or a place in my heart to which I swear to live and remain unfearful to die, or if at all or if anything else, who am I now or who will I be now? Who will I become now that the older versions of me have been dismissed? And so, if I am free to exist, then how can I…
As Wielder of Arms flapped her vast, strong wings she climbed away from the ground. She crested the village and saw beyond it hundreds of people running. They were armed for war and Wielder realized the others had been stalling. She cried to her friends, “We have been betrayed! More foes come to join the fight!” The people below begged Delver to wait, “Yes, we had sent word for aid.” "We’ll tell them to stop. We wish not to fight. If you wait, the peace will hold.” But Wielder of Arms heard…
in change, newbeginnings – ofstories and; whatif.
Just a quick announcement from Rockstar this morning — the video is basically just a moving JPG, so don’t worry yourself too hard about hitting play — but what’s fascinating is that the reveal will be on Netflix in addition to YouTube. I wonder who is paying who on that one?
I was looking browsing my RSS reader today and this post from Andreas popped up reminding me that not only is it somehow August already (seriously, how?), but also that it’s the start of the blogging challenge Blaugust.I’ve known about this particular challenge for some time but I’ve never really considered joining. But lately I feel like I’m in a bit of a groove as far as posting to my blog goes and I enjoy a good challenge, so I figured, what the hell, let’s give it a shot this year.My aim is…
A good two-state toggle can actually express all three data model states. Until recently, if you looked at most websites with a theme toggle[1], you’d find three options: Light, Dark, and System. Examples of tri-state dark mode toggles. In (LTR) reading direction: Ant Design, Red Hat Design System, Web Awesome, Excalidraw, Taiga, Astro, Hero UI. Thankfully, these days the trend has shifted towards a simpler two-state toggle, but tri-state ones are still incredibly common. Examples of two-state…
The venerable cp command is well-known to any Unixer. Whether you want to copy one file or a whole tree recursively, cp is always available and always ready to help. However, as with most things in life there is more than one way to cp the cat. In this article, I’m going to explore some alternatives to cp that you can use … if you dare. Copying single files Copying files to other files, or into a new directory, is fairly simple. All you need to do is ensure that the bytes in file A are…
Inspired by Automatticians James Kemp and Dave Smith, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much of our discord in the design of WordPress stems from the differences of our two big tribes: Bloggers and Builders. Many of the OG developers of WordPress, including myself, tend more towards the blogging side. Writers, photographers, podcasters, journalists, the people for whom a reverse chronological stream on the homepage is the most obvious thing in the world. We link out a lot, love comments,…
Henry Bolingbroke and his cousin, Richard, were childhood friends, but when they were older Henry became one of the Lords Appellant in 1387 who took it upon themselves to curtail what they saw as excesses and corruption in the administration of Richard when he became king.Not only had they been friends, but Henry's father and Richard's uncle, the powerful (and sometimes feared) John of Gaunt, was a steadfast supporter of Richard personally and of royal authority generally.After all that…
As a follow-up to my last post, “The AI Experts Who Couldn’t Predict AI,” I want to expound on the “memory shortage” of 2025-2026 and how no one saw it coming, even experts in AI. A seemingly sudden demand for memory due to AI has led to shortages for personal computers and other applications. This has garnered widespread media attention, including even a Wikipedia article, “2025–present global memory supply shortage.” Same for considerable discussion on Reddit, with new threads being posted…
The beauty of blogging with Pika is how low the barrier to entry is. Think of a thought, write it down, click “publish post,” and you’re good to go. No bloated “update your plugin” horror show that ruins your layout yet again (hello, WordPress); no friction (though friction can be a good thing in itself). Can’t everything in life be this simple, please? I’ve noticed, however, that a quiet, organic division has crept into my daily publishing routine. And that’s one that I don’t like: short,…
Much in the same way that the SECNAV in 1975 created 15 new “cruisers” from thin air by reclassifying DLGs to CGs to gain a two-cruiser lead over the Russkis, the Navy has just dubbed 19 planned Blocks V and VI Virginia class SSNs as SSGNs to fill the gap left by the four retiring TLAM-commando boats. The first of four Ohio-class SSGN conversions, USS Georgia is pending decommissioning after 42 years of service, with her sisters Ohio, Michigan and Florida soon to follow. Each was given a $1…
Florida-based KelTec continues its established trope of delivering strange yet intriguing new guns to the market, introducing the SUB-SDP last week. The pistol, dubbed the “Nub Sub” in the company’s own marketing materials, is based on the KelTec SUB2000 folding carbine, made into a pistol format and sporting a stabilizing brace instead of a stock on a shorter extension tube and a 6-inch barrel. Set up to take Glock-pattern 9mm double stacks (i.e., G17, G19, G45), the base model ships with a…
Sixth Fleet images, some 40 years ago this month. How about this surreal photo of a 44,000-ton Soviet Kiev class (Project 1143 Krechyet) “heavy aviation cruiser” (CVHG) seen from across the deck of a Sovremenny class destroyer, Mediterranean, August 1986. USN Photo DN-ST-86-11164, via NARA And this full-length version, sans Sovremenny: USN Photo DN-ST-86-11165, via NARA How the Kiev and the Sovremenny stack up to the rest of the fleet: DD-ST-86-06685 The above CVGH is believed to be the Minsk,…
One obscure, but very useful Bash trick is CTRL+X CTRL+E, which will open $EDITOR to edit the current line. This means I can switch to a Vim session with whatever I was typing on intact. This is handy for those times where I need a search-and-replace operation or fix things in a long command or build a long complex command from scratch. I’m aware of Bash’s vi-mode, but I prefer using the default Emacs keybindings because I also work in other’s remote servers. Also, it’s a Vi emulation. I’ve…
When AI-generated code breaks something, the real problem is often how we reviewed, understood, and trusted it.
End of another week and my apparent remission from ME continues. More gardening, more going to the shops with my family, more playing games together. The lawn and some cutting back of overgrown weeds and bushes are done. My heart rate hit 165 during this and I’ve had no issues. Time to return to work, hopefully. Rant; I wish Netflix would have an option to hide films I’ve rated (as a proxy for I have seen it). I don’t care if this means there is not much left, I would still pick something and…
I believe I have been fortunate to have had a spontaneous remission of my ME/CFS symptoms. It has been a few weeks since I’ve felt a change. I take the position, based on both published evidence and on numerous reports from people with ME/CFS that I have seen over the years, that the percentage of people who recover and return to full normal health is small and that ‘spontaneous recovery’ is almost unheard of. Source: ME Association Coincidence It may be coincidental that this seemed to occur…
A couple of days ago I published Life is too short for a slow terminal. It got quite a bit of traffic, and someone sent me the kind of feedback you actually hope for. The gist of it: A stripped-down config isn't the only way to a fast shell anymore. I simply didn't know about a lot of this stuff, I just worked with what I knew. Luckily, the Zsh community has a lot of smart people. So here's where the post falls short, point by point, because a correction is more useful than a defense. I…
🍕 I’m JA Westenberg. I write essays about technology, philosophy, productivity, and what it means to be human. If you like ideas that take their time, you’re in the right place.While you’re here, a few things I’ve built: Kerouac, a writing app | Post Through It, a solo microblogging tool | Distributism.ai, my MCP platform | Laterware, all the AI news you need | Studio Self, a thought leadership agency for founders x VCs.You can buy my book Permissionless here.I don’t know who first told you…
Come write HTML with me this Saturday. HTML Day is an annual celebration of getting together and writing HTML, created by Elliott Cost and Laurel Schwulst. Saturday, August 8, 2026, is this year's date, and I'm running two online sessions again, same as last year. Sessions Two one-hour sessions, so folks across time zones can join in. Oceania Time — 6-7pm AEST European Time — 6-7pm CET The European session also works out to 9-10am PT, 11am-12pm CT, and 12-1pm ET, if you're in North America. No…
What, Who & Why? The original challenge was to post 31 times during the month of August. This can be posting every day or doubling up on some days to make the schedule a bit easier. The idea is to spark creativity and get folks to create more content, not grinding them into burnout for some lofty goal. Blaugust is the brainchild of Mark Temple, more commonly known as Belghast, author of Tales of the Aggronaut. We lost Belghast on July 2, 2026. The Blaugust Discord mentors have decided to move…
