Ivan Mehta, reporting for TechCrunch, explains the new Musk Twitter changes and how they completely broke the site.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk limited the number of tweets users can read in a day, which he said was to prevent data scraping. While this measure has affected all Twitter users, TweetDeck users in particular are today reporting major problems, including notifications and entire columns failing to load.

Musk initially enforced read-limits of 6,000 daily posts for verified users and 600 daily posts for unverified users. Hours later, he increased these limits to 10,000 tweets and 1,000 tweets, respectively. Given that TweetDeck loads up multiple tweets through various columns simultaneously, it’s likely that the effects of the read restrictions are amplified within TweetDeck.

As I’ve said for a while, if Twitter kills Tweetdeck or puts it behind a paywall I’ll put my account into private mode and walk away.

David Pierce, writing for The Verge, is lamenting the end, so to speak, of Twitter and social media. He wants someplace else to go.

…the social web is changing in three crucial ways: It’s going from public to private; it’s shifting from growth and engagement, which broadly involves building good products that people like, to increasing revenue no matter the tradeoff; and it’s turning into an entertainment business. It turns out there’s no money in connecting people to each other, but there’s a fortune in putting ads between vertically scrolling videos that lots of people watch. So the “social media” era is giving way to the “media with a comments section” era, and everything is an entertainment platform now. Or, I guess, trying to do payments. Sometimes both. It gets weird.

We could go back to blogs, newsletters, and message boards. Does that sound like fun?

Long-term, I’m bullish on “fediverse” apps like Mastodon and Bluesky, because I absolutely believe in the possibility of the social web, a decentralized universe powered by ActivityPub and other open protocols that bring us together without forcing us to live inside some company’s business model. Done right, these tools can be the right mix of “everybody’s here” and “you’re still in control.”

Fediverse is hilarious. No one wants that. At all. They want Twitter before the fascists, nutjobs, and ads came.

Mastodon is impossible to figure out even if you manage to find a server. Bluesky is still in beta with lots of people waiting around to get on.

I expect something will break the dam.

Manuel Morale –

You can still set up your tiny quiet corner on the web, do your own things, and connect slowly with other people. You can still set up a forum dedicated to something you’re passionate about and create a community with 50 other people, even if Reddit turns to shit. Things can live on the web simply because enough people care about them and pour time and love into them. And that is what makes the web special.

This is my tiny, quiet corner of the web where I post and share things.

Diana Moskovitz, writing for Defector, has an interesting story about Georgia Football and a guy on the football staff with an interesting set of skills.

This guy, Bryant Gantt, seems like a lovely fellow.

Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in The Atlantic, has one of the best reviews of the latest album by the Foo Fighters and about Dave Grohl.

The latest Foo Fighters album, But Here We Are, is a soaring, frenzied guitar attack whose songs often recall the band’s best stadium-shaking anthems. But more to the point, it is filled with lyrics that feel true in their sustained confrontation with the album’s main subject: shattering absence.

Read the whole piece.

Nicholas Bate –

1. Ignore chronological age: hang on to a child-like curiosity.

2. Ignore physiological age: hang on to physical flexibility.

3. Scribble outside every damn box you can get hold of and boost your psychological age and mental agility.

4. Ask why there is sand in the sand pit anyway; there is more and better on the beach.

5. Dream dreams. And make them happen.

6. Do it on a whim.

7. Know deep down that you can be your own expert: study hard. But not as at college. As in Brave New World and I need to be ready.

Delia Cai, writing for Vanity Fair, has an interview with Ted Chiang about AI and what the future holds.

I think this is the kicker of the piece –

There’s no software that anyone has built that is smarter than humans. What we have created are vast systems of control. Our entire economy is this kind of engine that we can’t really stop. That’s a different thing than saying we’ve created machines smarter than us. We have built a giant treadmill that we can’t get off. Maybe.

A giant treadmill is an interesting analogy.

It’s time for Paul Atreides to fulfill his destiny.

Dune: Part Two opens November 3 and it just released a new trailer that’s leaps and bounds more epic than the first one.

Lindsey Adler, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

Before the season began, New York Yankees pitcher Domingo Germán changed his jersey number from 55 to 0. It turned out to be a prescient move. On Wednesday night, Germán became just the 24th pitcher in MLB history to throw a perfect game, using just 99 pitches to mow through 27 Oakland A’s batters without allowing a single baserunner.

Entering the game with a 5.10 ERA in his first 14 starts of the season, Germán completed the first perfect game since Félix Hernández threw one for the Mariners in August 2012. There were three perfectos thrown that year — by Hernández, Matt Cain, and Phillip Humber — but nearly 11 seasons had passed without one occurring.

“Growing up, [Hernández] was my idol,” Germán said through a translator after the game. “I really looked up to the way he pitched.”

What a feel good story.

You’ve undoubtedly already heard the audio recording of Donald J. Trump allegedly committing one of the offenses for which he is accused. This shifts the question of “Will he be convicted?” to “How much time will he do?” in many circles.

YouTube’s Legal Eagle has a new video available right now that thoroughly explains sentencing criteria. The only thing it will tell you about Trump is that he very definitely won’t receive the jillion-and-three years in prison that some people are speculating, and that we are unable to predict with any degree of precision what the true magical number may be.

Anything over ten is a death sentence anyway.

The always creative Dustin Ballard of There I Ruined It quite hilariously reimagined the late, great Elvis Presley singing the lyrics from the 1991 Sir Mix-A-Lot single “Baby Got Back” in the style of his hit 1956 song “Don’t Be Cruel.”

Shawn Blanc:

They are your health, your relationships, your inner-personal life, your work, your finances, and your rest and recreation.

Each area of your life overlaps with and impacts the others. And yet you only have the capacity to give your full attention to one or two areas at a time. Use habits and routines to maintain health in every area while giving extra attention to the one or two areas that need it.

Holly Hein, writing on her blog, found a “good” list.

I found a list of good things, written in purple ink in an old notebook in 2021.

chocolate milk, the way things get still and luminous after sitting in silence somewhere for awhile, freshwater pearls, my iPhone, dirt paths and the way dirt lies at the base of tree roots, the internet, babies laughing uncontrollably, the sound of sprinklers, mohair sweaters, hot tubs, hot springs, dogs, dog smell, wet dog smell, the happy way Stephen said skunk smells like coffee, traffic signals, gladiolas, oxalis and all edible things in the woods, creeks, rivers, my sleeping bag, overalls and pigtails, Animorphs and Baby-Sitters Club, the smell of hose water and mown grass and petrichor, flicker feathers, washing plates and sweeping steps, roller skating, tennis, cross country skiing, audiobooks, chocolate pudding, poppies, puppies, composition books, cushy socks, soft t-shirts, gel pens, bike paths along water with Canada geese, desert mornings, early mornings on vacation, coffee, coffee shops, friends, Ken’s parties, writing numerals, writing algebra, Sanguinity, leg hair, glass jars, glass beads, honey.

Rick Astley shocked and delighted the crowd at the Glastonbury Festival by not only doing a genre 180° to classic heavy metal, covering AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” but played drums as well!

I love this.

Kirk Swearingen, writing for Salon, has a commentary about the word “woke” and about what conservatives hear when it is used and what they refuse to listen to when it is invoked.

Conservatives didn't want to hear about white privilege. So they abandoned reality and joined the orange man's cult.

I don’t think I could explain it any better.

Mark Manson lists out five personal traits that everyone should master to get through life. They are spot on.

1. SELF-AWARENESS: THE ULTIMATE OPERATING SYSTEM

2. RISK TOLERANCE: EMBRACE THE ART OF FAILING AND EMBARRASSING YOURSELF

3. SKEPTICISM: QUESTION EVERYTHING (EVEN THIS POST)

4. COMPASSION: WE’RE ALL FUCKED UP, SO LET’S LOVE EACH OTHER ANYWAY

5. PATIENCE: SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE

Read the piece for more info and video.

Tom Nichols, writing for The Atlantic, has some astute observations regarding Donald J. Trump and the ringing in his ears about the level of trouble he is truly in. Brett Baier interviewed Trump and came prepared.

Trump’s discomfort had a lot to do with Baier. One-on-one interviews are hard for Trump, because they require him to focus on individual human beings and engage with them as if he cares about—or even heard—what they just said. He always runs the risk that the other person might continue to ask pointed questions even after he has wandered into some incomprehensible reverie. Perhaps Trump was expecting a Fox anchor to cut him a break in such an arrangement; instead, Baier came prepared, and pushed back—with data—on many of Trump’s claims. Given how extreme so many of Trump’s no-one-ever-did-anything-better-than-me statements tend to be, pushing back might not seem so difficult, but credit where it is due: Baier interrupted Trump, corrected him, and challenged him on multiple fronts, including his election lies, his indictments, his record as president, his involvement in the January 6 insurrection, and even his predilection for silly nicknames.

Credit to Brett Baier for not being a typical Fox flunky.

John DeVore, writing on Medium, takes us through the kind of discourse pouring through right-wing media.

I’m not saying it’s impossible for two people who don’t see eye-to-eye to have a civil conversation. But If someone demands you debate them, they’re selling something, and your soul is part of the deal.

I do not trust people who insist other people debate them, and I don’t trust them because the “debate me” crowd is usually always the “agree with me or else” crowd.

They are fanatics at heart. They believe what they believe with the fire and passion of a desert hermit who claims he talks to god. There is no arguing with a prophet. And everyone’s a prophet these days, preaching and passing the hat. An endless scroll of “listen to me, me, me.”

There is no debate, only yelling, yelling, and finger-pointing. There is only reason and consistency, and courage. The best you can do is repeat facts and truths and then smile. Stand up for yourself. But don’t expect to win. Never expect that. Just say your piece, and let go.

There is no debate. As the famous fictional space lobster once said, “It’s a trap!” It’s a trap because the people who demand debate don’t care about what is true or right, facts or evidence. There is no debate because every debate can be won by saying, “Because I said so.”

The idea that one can use reason and civil rhetoric to persuade someone to change their mind is a fantasy — humans don’t want their minds changed. They want flattery. Humans will betray their neighbors for a compliment. History’s greatest atrocities were committed by a cynical, highly-motivated minority who praised the petty prejudices of a vain body politic. The podcast hosts routinely tell his faithful precisely what they want to hear, and they swoon.

Kudos on the space lobster bit.