Pondering Dave Winer's early Jan 2016 posts

My current bookmarks page of sites that I visit or feeds that I consume includes a link to DW's feed near the top of the list. I access his feed multiple times per day to see what new insights he has posted. I'm mainly interested in his thoughts and projects regarding web publishing.

I agree and disagree with his tech posts. I don't care about the other topics. I don't access his Facebook or Twitter pages, except in extremely rare occasions. I read the RSS feed from his blog.

Here is how I read Dave Winer's writings: feed page.

I use my custom "feed" command that is included within my Junco code that powers this site. The feed command also exists in the Parula code that powers my message board at ToledoTalk.com.

Here's how it works. The feed= is surrounded by two curly braces at each end. The line must begin at the start of a new line in order for it to work.

Scripting News - 2025-02-21T20:59:49Z

- 2025-02-21T20:59:49Z
WordLand is now open for anyone to sign up. Here we go! :-)

- 2025-02-21T13:12:41Z
Something you hear from Democratic politicians and MSNBC hosts. "We know why Musk is cutting so much, it's to fund a huge tax cut for billionaires." They don't actually know that and I doubt it's true. Show me another example where Musk did anything to benefit anyone but himself? Why should he share the loot he's grabbing with other rich folk? What did they do to help? Nah I think it's all for him, with a taste going to the Trump and Putin families. He's going to use his new power to buy something else. The question is what? What else could he want? I imagine he wants all the money in the world not just the most.

Templates for Bluesky? - 2025-02-21T15:20:20Z

A note to designers of Bluesky as a platform.

I've been playing with adding metadata to posts in a thread.

As you can see the metadata, in the screen shot below, overwhelms the content in the post.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a set of templates to choose from, post types? Let designers be part of the platform.

Who is Elon Musk? - 2025-02-21T13:17:12Z

Journalism is as usual writing news they could have written last year and should have if they weren't dreaming that somehow we'd escape End of Democracy 2.0. And we know how that turned out, about the same as Hillary's Emails.

Who is Elon Musk? Until I read his Wikipedia profile last week, I only had a vague idea. I wanted to know if he was actually raised in South Africa, when he left, and what influence it had on him. I'll let you read the article. We should be examining every nook and cranny of who this unelected guy who never was in a debate, or won a primary or an election, or had his background investigated, and remains untouched by any kind of examination.

His security detail was just deputized by the US Marshals Service. What next? Maybe they'll just give him control of the military and get on with it. You can see that's coming, maybe in March, or sooner.

Do you think he'd have any compunction against using the military against Americans? This isn't his country. So Americans probably mean nothing special to him. Since we played a role in the overthrow of their apartheid, probably the opposite. I wonder who or what he cares about. Has he ever answered a question without deflecting? Is there any reporter who could or would interview him?

If journalism were really doing their job seriously, they would report on this because this is what we're thinking. When will jouralism get that they are one of us, not above us? The sooner that light goes on, the better.

Here's a good story for one of fierce courageous reporters at the NY Times. Who should be more scared of what's coming? Blacks or Jews?

Musk's exclusive - 2025-02-21T13:11:37Z

Can you imagine how livid developers of other AI platforms are that Musk gets exclusive access to all the private information stored in US government databases.

Imagine Bezos calling Trump.

"Hey I thought we were friends. I can send you another billion. 2 billion? 100 billion?"

"Call Elon, if he says it's OK I'll sign the order."

Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, OpenAI, etc etc.

- 2025-02-20T13:40:09Z
Yes it's me I'm the pride of Cucamonga.

- 2025-02-20T13:59:23Z
I'm starting to use the rewrite of my thread publisher on Bluesky. Here's an example. And here's the version of the thread without being broken up into 300-character chunks (you can get it by clicking in the metadata box below the text of the post). I don't like it. The software is as good as it can be, given the extreme limits of the twitter-like environment. I went all the way with this, but I'm not sure I'm going to release it. But I'm going to keep using it, and maybe I'll think of something that makes it fun or worthwhile, or maybe I'll just chalk it up to another learning experience.

- 2025-02-20T13:40:24Z
Favorite part of the SNL50 show. Eddie Murphy impersonating Tracy Morgan, while standing next to him on Black Jeopardy. It's really hard to see the resemblance between today's Eddie and young Eddie, but there it was, the comic brilliance. Then they ask the real Tracy if they are related and he said he doesn't see it.

- 2025-02-20T13:37:58Z
In the Catskills, we've been getting so much snow this winter and super cold weather and huge winds. And Trump & Musk. A quadruple threat.

- 2025-02-20T13:49:16Z
Once again Maddow is must-watch destination TV this year. Keep on going. One thing to watch out for, Bluesky will disappoint you. Don't blame them when it happens, because they can't be as good as people think they are. They're a startup in a tough market. Sooner or later Musk is going to aim at them (maybe he already is) and they will have to seek refuge somewhere, and all big tech companies are bastards. There isn't one of them you can trust with your democracy. So keep that in mind, and when you see open billionaire-proof social networks rise up, give them a little the Rachel we love.

- 2025-02-20T03:07:37Z
I don't like social networks as they're currently configured. The idea that it's some kind of conversation -- no it really doesn't resemble a conversation. I would like to try a social network that didn't have the concept of replying to a post. Give each other a little more distance. It still would be a graph, people following other people, but you wouldn't be able to insert something into someone else's flow, which is where all the indecency comes from imho. Or let replies be only visible to the person it's in reply to, so you don't end up getting speeches under your posts. And so that people with a lot of followers don't bother reading anything that's related to what they wrote, and thus no new ideas can enter the flow. We've been doing this, the way we do it, since the inception of Twitter in 2006. For some reason the design of that network is considered sacred. I was a math major who studied combinatorics, specifically graph theory -- and the Twitter way of organizing people and discourse is just one of many ways people could be arranged. Predictably, the weird structure of Twitter is turning into the structure of our society. If we want to change things the fastest way might be to do another look at what Twiiter does and see if we can't intentionally make something that works better for whatever we think we should be doing with it, other than staring at the evil people on the other side and saying how evil they are (or hopeless, or woke or whatever bullshit the influencers have made up). And with that I wish you a good evening and note that tomorrow is another day. 😄

- 2025-02-20T03:18:24Z
One more thing. I like watching Maddow nowadays. She seems unstuck. And she's talking straight to the Repubs, and not with resignation, with the idea that maybe finally enough is enough, and they might work with us to save what we can of this great country. Also like that Bernie Sanders is on the road campaigning in swing districts that are held by Repubs, to see if he can squeeze out a few defectors from the ranks of House Republicans. Very important, because the Repub margin there is only 3. Just have to flip 2. America has to start moving now, or it's going to take a long long time to come back from this. The sooner we all get that, and that we are part of it, the better things will turn out, imho.

Threads in Bluesky - 2025-02-18T23:32:56Z

I started out doing a week to strip blue.threadcenter down to its bones, for a fresh start, but then I started getting ideas, and decided to go for it. I have the time, and Bluesky is having moment after moment and these days I'm using it to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, though I do check Twitter, Threads and Mastodon a few times a day, but usually there's nothing for me in those places. Anyway I'll be pointing to this post from some of my experiments, so maybe nothing more interesting than this will appear here.

An example of AI use - 2025-02-18T19:45:42Z

I just thought of a good example of a question you could bring to ChatGPT. Here's the prompt.

• I'm thinking of driving from NYC to Jacksonville, FL. I want to do it in four days with stopovers in three places that have good places to ride a bike and a Citibike-style bike rental. Choose three places on the trip, I don't mind going out of my way.

It gave me three places to stop, Washington DC, Raleigh NC and Charleston SC. In each case it told me about the bike-sharing services and notable bike trails.

A logical next question would be to ask it to find hotels in each place that are reasonably priced and near an interesting place to ride.

It also offered information about weather considerations. It's not necessarily a great time of year for bike riding.

I'm not actually planning a trip south, I just used it as an example because I've done this trip a number of times and was curious how things had developed.

Another question I used to have when cross-country driving, where can I find a Starbucks not too far off the route I'm on. If you were plotting the progress of public information systems, AI is strictly on a continuum of services that have developed over the years that make information more accessible in the way you want it. It actually answers questions you have in the way you think of asking them.

Here's a link to the response. I've heard that sometimes people have trouble accessing these files.

- 2025-02-17T14:58:28Z
This is how the US government used to describe slaves.

Slow down please - 2025-02-17T14:50:16Z

If I were in charge of marketing for the Democrats: 1. I'd restart the online channel that Kamala Harris had that was shut down on Election Day. 2. I'd get out the message over and over about how things are going too fast, we need to slow it down, so we can consider what's happening. Who? The people. I know this will resonate with almost everyone in the US, no matter who they voted for. Stop I want to know how these changes will help or hurt me, my family, community. For Trump voters, it was fun to make my statement, but I'm afraid this is going too far. I think we can all relate to that. We aren't being represented here.

I asked Google Gemini to visualize what it feels like to be watching what's happening in the US from inside the US. This came close to capturing it, but it could have expressed the fear of it more clearly. Slow down, please, let us figure out what you're doing.

My offer to Democrats in DC - 2025-02-17T22:00:32Z

A simple idea, a quid pro quo.

If we want Democrats to support the Constitution, we have to demonstrate that we will support them.

We are the government of the US, Congress represents us.

We have been too passive.

But then, they have to include us in governing.

No more shutting off the connection after the election.

Seems like a fair deal.

My post is my house - 2025-02-17T22:05:10Z

One of the not-good things about Mastodon is that you can't moderate comments under your own posts.

If someone says something abusive, it's there for everyone to see, forever.

I've come to value the feature in Facebook that gives the author full discretion over what comments remain, to head off bad vibes.

I think of a post I write as my house, and I want people who visit to feel respected.

A turd in the middle of the living room is not respectful.

- 2025-02-16T15:26:20Z
We're diving head first into a world run by AI bots, before we've even begun to understand how to use them.

- 2025-02-16T13:24:36Z
The idea of a coup in the US is one we all presumably have a hard time thinking about. I sure do. It has never happened before. But it has happened now, and the group that is governing is doing it illegally, and is dismantling the country as quickly as they can, assuming someone will at some point try to stop them? Is that correct? What comes next?

- 2025-02-16T13:24:55Z
Great quote from a favorite show. "He put the dick in contradiction." This is a show that doesn't often indulge in that kind of humor. I imagine they must've had a great time with it in the writer's room. Or was it ad-lib'd? And wtf does it mean?

- 2025-02-16T14:12:19Z
BTW, no one thought much about the threading structure we use on Bluesky. As far as I can tell it was copied from Twitter. It's not a very good structure. It encourages spam and abuse. You gotta wonder if the threading structure had evolved, or if there were more competition, different approaches to see what would happen, we might have avoided our meltdown with a better design.

- 2025-02-15T13:22:05Z
The way to get even is to win. A lot of people don't get that, and it's almost always their downfall.

- 2025-02-15T13:20:23Z
I’m not giving money to Democrats. I will give to campaigns that run hard-hitting ads telling the full truth about what Musk is doing now. I want to see the actual ads before I chip in, and will do so enthusiastically, but they can’t be anemic.

- 2025-02-15T12:57:52Z
The Dems don't do positioning. The Repubs run circles around Dems. They are masters at positioning. It's not hard, you just have to decide to do it.

The web before the web - 2025-02-15T13:11:46Z

Hypercard stacks were the equivalent of websites.

If it had been built around the Macintosh Toolkit, and had an API that fit in with Mac apps, there wouldn't be a web, we'd all be using Macs. Alas it was all on its own, didn't work with anything but itself.

A lot was lost because the Mac development model was far in advance of what existed on the web, and it was well-thought-out unlike the app model of the web, which is a hodgepodge of horribly designed modules that don't work well together.

I was a Mac developer at the time, so I know a lot about this moment of history.

- 2025-02-14T16:38:07Z
Podcast: Dems must campaign 365 days every year.

- 2025-02-14T14:10:47Z
Anne Applebaum writing in the Atlantic says that people in the US feel like we're living in an occupied country. I get it. That's what it feels like to be in a Silicon Valley company that has been acquired by another Silicon Valley company, a subject I wrote about on Wednesday. I wish there was some way for us to communicate with each other about this, because I'm sure my description comes closer to the way Musk sees it, though they are very similar ideas. One of the defects of the social web is that we live in little bubbles and not much information is exchanged over bubble boundaries. So if anyone knows Applebaum, please send her a link to this post. Thanks.

More than death panels - 2025-02-14T18:09:28Z

Musk will defund Medicare.

More than death panels.

Say goodbye to everyone who needs health care

Because almost no one can afford it without coverage.

That's what they mean when they say they'll cut $2 trill.

That's your health care.

- 2025-02-13T15:01:38Z
Here's a two-minute demo of my new writing tool for Bluesky. This is quite a bit simpler than the last version, you log on directly to Bluesky, doesn't go through my server at all. This removes a whole layer of complexity for the user, and means a lot of people can use it without it having to scale up. Also made it simpler, more of a writing tool, closer to where I'd like this stuff to be when we have across-the-board textcasting support. Really focused on the flow for writers.

- 2025-02-13T15:31:18Z
Here's the thread that's created in the demo.

- 2025-02-13T14:56:40Z
If the US were a company, what would its market capitalization be?

- 2025-02-13T14:55:39Z
If you’re getting bummed about the news, remember tonight there’s another new episode of Severance to kvell about.

- 2025-02-13T14:44:06Z
Re-did the social media links at the bottom of each story page. Screen shot. Used to be just RSS and Linkedin. I got rid of Linkedin because I never use it. Added Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads. Debated whether to remove Twitter, but it is still a way to follow my posts, the ones that go out through the linkblog. A lot of people still use Twitter. Had to include the latest version of Font-Awesome, but since my story pages don't otherwise use FA, I figured nothing could break. Haha. ;-)

- 2025-02-13T15:32:40Z
New motto: Pissing in the wind for the good of mankind.

- 2025-02-13T15:32:24Z
I wonder what Kurt Vonnegut would have thought of twitter-like systems?

The United States is not a Silicon Valley company - 2025-02-12T14:09:26Z

I've had an experience few people have had, and it's relevant to the way all of us feel right now. The experience: Being part of a Silicon Valley company that was acquired by another Silicon Valley company. I was the CEO.

I recognize the feeling, because Musk is acting as if he is the acquirer of a Silicon Valley company, and the company he has acquired in the USA. Or so he thinks. But the United States is not a Silicon Valley company where, you have departments and managers at every level, and each level must follow orders from the level above them. It doesn't work that way here. Deliberately. Very deliberately.

There never has been a Silicon Valley company that gives each employee the rights and responsibilities of an American citizen. We don't take orders except in very exceptional circumstances, and then with all the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. That's why Musk and Trump are having so much trouble coming to grips with how this place works, because even the employees of the USA are voters and taxpayers and have rights that must be respected. That will be respected or all hell will break loose.

Anyway, back to Silicon Valley acquisitions. Up to the point when you, the former CEO, are now a VP, and must take orders from the CEO, you didn't have to take orders from anyone, not even your board of directors. The CEO of the tech company is a lot like a citizen of the US, until they aren't a CEO any longer and have to do the bidding of the actual CEO (which is who Musk thinks he is relative to the USA). This is why even MAGAs who love Trump (or really the idea of Trump) aren't going to put up with his bullshit. American citizens, rich or poor, old or young, LBGTQ or whatever -- we all are sovereign, ie we don't have to take orders from anyone, not even a supposed genius like Musk (sorry, but I am free to doubt his genius, something might take some getting used to by him). We don't take orders from him, or anyone else, except of course, as mentioned earlier under very special circumstances.

Back to the disconnect in the Mind of Musk. Now you're supposed to sit here, quietly, while he rips apart the team you carefully built, the people you formed into a family with all its strengths and dysfunction. The new CEO (Musk) sweeps in with no idea what they're fucking with, and they don't want to hear about it. Finally you have to quit after a short time because you can't be part of the disaster they're creating. And always is a disaster, and sometimes they can dig out of it as he has done with Twitter, as we've seen many SV companies have. But again, for the 18th time, the United States of America is not a Silicon Valley company.

What triggered it for me was the story about how Musk didn't know he had terminated all cancer research being done by the US. Surrounded by yes men, they never would have told him. And he didn't want to hear it from a founder (like a congressperson or the head of the NIH or the acting Treasury secretary). This is going to be repeated over and over until the acquirer writes off the investment or who knows. His experience comes from acquiring Tesla and Twitter, which while they were large organizations are nothing compared with the United States.

And ultimately the United States is going to chew up Musk and spit him out. We may be very damaged by the experience, but he will come out much worse than the country. Because we are not who he thinks we are.

- 2025-02-11T12:56:07Z
A note to users of feedland.org and feedland.com. We'll be turning the servers off sometime before the end of March. I haven't chosen the actual date yet. In the meantime, Please download a copy of your subscription list before the shutdown, it's incredibly easy. You can also run your own FeedLand. I started a thread on the support site if you have questions, remember the comment guidelines. I've learned a lot from the experience of running FeedLand this way, looking forward to trying some other configurations. 😄

- 2025-02-11T16:29:10Z
If you depend on not considering the unthinkable in 2025 then you aren't really thinking.

- 2025-02-12T01:56:16Z
If only political reporters had the same knowledge of their subject as sports reporters do.

Trump and Trudeau chat - 2025-02-11T16:50:17Z

First, the New Republic is beginning to think like Musk and Trump. But they have to think a bit more and ask how does this all tie together?

Remember you have to consider events that would normally be unthinkable. And believe that Trump isn't actually president of the United States in any sense of what that meant in the past. He is sitting in the seat of the president. He has the powers of the president, but he does not represent the interests of the United States.

He's going to use the US Treasury and the power of the dollar as the reserve currency, to buy himself a few toys to play with, like Canada, Greenland, Gaza and Panama, to start.

To illustrate, here's the text of an imaginary conversation between Trump and Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada.

• Trump: Hey Justin, how's it going?
• Trudeau: You know, not so good.
• Trump: I get it. Have you considered my offer?
• Trudeau: Yes. Either we surrender and become the 51st state, or you won't honor Canadian deposits in the US Treasury.
• Trump: That's right my friend.
• Trudeau: I don't see how we have any choice.
• Trump: I'm afraid that's correct.
• Trudeau: Semi-sarcastic: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and Canada.
• Trump: You can leave out the Canada part.
• Trudeau: You can't blame me for trying.
• Trump: Have a nice day. 😀

And then this scene from Goodfellas demonstrates what's next for the former independent country of Canada.

It's past time to wake up - 2025-02-10T16:28:00Z

At some point soon we’re going to have to stop business as usual. Remember when we realized Covid was deadly and we’d have to radically change our lives to survive? Most of us did that. We’re going to do that soon re the overthrow of our government and looting of the economy.

It was remarkable watching the SuperBowl last night, you could conclude everything is normal. It’s not. We’re going to have to start shutting down all the services we can to make the point to our fellow citizens that we, the United States, are not coming back from this without major change.

Musk roots the world economy - 2025-02-10T16:03:21Z

First, that's just a theory, but I need to get your attention.

Rooting a computer means you own it. You have superuser powers. You can do anything, install or uninstall anything.

Mostly journalism has been reporting "He has our social security numbers." Sigh. That's not nearly the problem folks.

With root access on the financial computers of the US, you can delete debt. Trump threatened to do that last night, in a really menacing way. They are smart fellows those guys.

You want to destroy the world economy? Start deleting records of debt to the US treasury. Ask an economist if you don't believe me.

More likely is they want to hold the world economy hostage, and then they will take their demands of Gaza and Canada more seriously. It's clever because it doesn't require soldiers, not one shot will be fired. My guess is that they already have this power.

BTW, here's SQL code that randomly deletes 1 in 5 records in a table named inventory.

• delete from inventory where rand () < 0.2;

Run that command on the debt of the United States, and voila, the greatest depression ever.

You don't have to be a math wiz to come up with that, btw. You can ask ChatGPT. And before you blame ChatGPT this would be an early exercise in a textbook on SQL programming.

Deleting the debt would be like trying to withdraw money from your account at a bank and them saying they have no record of you having an account. The US treasury is basically the root bank of the entire world economy. It's where people store their money.

- 2025-02-09T14:10:09Z
I'm still fixing bugs in the new Bluesky feature I wrote about yesterday. If the URL of an image has search args, I wasn't getting the type correct and Bluesky rejected it. I used a post about Aaron Swartz's statue unveiled in San Francisco yesterday to test the fix. I knew Aaron of course, he was part of the group developing RSS in the early 00s. He went on to do other things, as did I, and I met up with him again in NYC in the early teens, and then a few months or a year or two (I don't have the exact date of the meetup) he commited suicide. It was a real shock. Now, many years later -- a statue. And the random snarky slogan my test script picked out was really appropriate to the event. It was a tragedy, because an older more confident Aaron would have made a big contribution. I often think about that.

- 2025-02-09T14:26:31Z
I subscribed to Wired because of their famous coverage of the Musk Coup, so I also added its feed to my blogroll so I could see what I bought, and was actually not surprised that they've been hit by the same disease all online publishing has, the need to bait the clicks, and of course not very much of it is hard-hitting.

- 2025-02-09T14:31:07Z
BTW, being in my blogroll means that your posts have a chance of being included in my Little Feed Reader on Bluesky.

Blue sky writer - 2025-02-09T22:29:35Z

- 2025-02-08T13:40:27Z
I still haven't decided what to do about my Tesla Model Y, which still is a wonderful car, and I still love driving it after 3+ years, which is amazing. But the other day it updated, and gave me a pause, if they let Musk hack their computers the way he's hacking ours, should I trust what it installs on the vehicle I drive every day that theoretically has the ability to take control of my car and drive it off the road? I wonder if the people at Tesla would like to reassure people who drive their cars that the updates are safe from hacking by one of his associates? How is security on the Tesla network?

- 2025-02-08T13:35:55Z
It's our social web. “We started off with a network of writers, and ended up with business models of oligarchs. It's time to start building webs like we mean it and damn all the wannabe-billionaires.”

- 2025-02-08T13:28:31Z
I had three questions this morning for Elie Mystal.

I'd like to excerpt from and comment about three DW posts that he made over the past couple days.

• Jan 4, 2016 - Leave nothing but footprints
• Jan 4, 2016 - Why tech insiders must be on Facebook
• Jan 5, 2016 - Re Twitter easing the 140-char limit

Dave claims that he likes the open web, and he often rails against silos, such as Twitter and Facebook. In the summer of 2013, I discovered the #indieweb group via a poster mentioning the https://indiewebcamp.com in a comment to one of DW's posts. Maybe the word "silo" has been used for a long time to describe social media sites, but the term got popularized in my conscience by the Indieweb site.

I added #webmention support to my Junco code because of the Indieweb group. The Indieweb people "use" social media sites differently. They own their own domain names. They post articles and notes to their own blog sites. But rather than manually cross-posting their info their many social media presences, they use software that makes it appear that the Indieweb users are using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. just like everyone else, but that's not the true.

Indieweb users may never log into their social media sites, but their content gets posted to those sites, and the comments, likes, shares, etc. at those other sites come back to their personal sites. It's interesting.

Since I don't "use" Twitter and Facebook, having my info posted automatically at those other sites is unnecessary. I use Instagram but mainly as a notetaking app and a place to store photos. But lately, I rely more on Flickr. Again. I've been using Flickr for many years. I don't use Flickr to network with others. I use it to store photos that I then embed into my own web publishing apps and sites.

This past summer, I created my Waxwing app to be a simple image uploader that speeds up the process of using images within my web publishing apps. But I still use Flickr too.

I'm not interested in networking with people beyond my own message board ToledoTalk.com that I started in January 2003.

I could be considered anti-social because I don't use the hot social media/social networking sites, and that's okay by me. I'm fine with being labeled and called names. I won't get offended.

I like message boards, wikis, and blogs. If that's old school or archaic, then that's okay too because I subscribe to the theory that every human being is unique. Why would zealot fans of social media sites assume that everyone should enjoy using those sites/apps? And why do these zealot fans get irritated that some people have the nerve not to use those sites?

I don't care if these social media sites exist. More amateur content gets created. That's a good thing. They all have pros and cons. But I'm simply not interested in them. And I'm not alone with this thinking.

I'm not going to get upset because people use Facebook, and I won't waste my time trying to convince people to stop using Facebook. I don't care if people use Facebook.

I enjoy building and using my own websites. That probably puts me into a minority of a minority. Many Indieweb users also build or install their own software to manage their personal sites. Different breed. What's wrong with diversity?

What's odd is when the zealot social media fans try to convince us that we need Facebook and we must post to Facebook, etc. I don't know why they seem to be upset when people decide to delete their Facebook accounts.

Again, what's wrong with diversity?

I have many interests. I post to my niche sites. I read the web in my own way. And I have been doing these activities for 15 years or more. I don't need help nor guidance from anyone in this area.

I wonder if the zealot fans of social media are creating a new form of acceptable intolerance that's directed at people who don't share their fandom of
the hot social media sites.

Excerpts from DW's post titled "Leave nothing but footprints":

The universe just laughs at your ambition. Hah! You're a mere speck of dust, says the universe, a speck that exists for an infinitesimally short period of time.

Don't try to change the world. Instead, try to work with other people.

Observe. Think. Share your experience, but strive to not change a thing.

That emphasized part seems like an odd thing for DW to suggest. I vehemently disagree with it.

My wife and I will continue to help change a small part of Toledo for the better by volunteering with an organization that helps parents to educate their children before they start school.

It's why I created the website http://babyutoledo.com/ for the non-profit. I'm better with technical functions, and my wife is better at interacting with people directly.

The goal of Baby U is to end generational poverty. That's a lofty goal, but if successful, it would be a positive change for the Old South End area of Toledo. How can that be bad?

DW ended that piece with:

It's better to just be kind to each other. Your name may not ring down through the ages, but at least you will have lived a good life that you can be proud of.

That's all good, but why can't changing something for the better and being kind to each other exist together?

It seems that DW contradicts himself a little with his next post titled "Why tech insiders must be on Facebook." Some excerpts:

I know a fair number of people who don't use Facebook or don't understand Facebook, and I think these people are hurting themselves, if they want to be part of tech as it goes forward, and in some sense they are hurting the web, by trying to be part of a network that does not involve Facebook.

My head hurts when I read his opening, authoritative statements.

Again, DW rails against silos, and he claims to support the open web, but in this post he believes that a tech person will miss out on future tech and hurt the open web if they don't use Facebook. That seems senseless to me.

And what about his previous post: