| website | https://whywhatsnext.com |
Kids don't know what day of the week it is.
Until one day begins an _unbroken streak_ of each day knowing what day it is.
Sometimes 'oh, it felt like Thursday' - but to go through to the 2nd day of being wrong means your life has either fallen apart or you are doing so well, you are above society.
🍿 I happened to be listening to the latest Vergecast's: Brendan Carr is a dummy when I saw the Colbert censorship thing pop up on reddit yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh7DPSP65JA
Nilay's radicalization journey that started decades ago about to reach new heights, and I'm here for it. 🍿
For those who have ideological or psychological objections to New Year’s Resolutions or rituals in general:
I am psychologically uncomfortable with New Year’s Resolutions
I have always been dismissive and even borderline derisive of New Year’s resolutions. The two contributing factors are 1) my disdain for ritual and 2)...
Yes, there are huge copyright issues latent (and blatant!) in generative AI.
But without LLMs, some of this would have been impossible. For some, I would have needed to learn beyond my specific need: it would not be worth figuring out if what I wanted is even possible!
I'm going to have to disagree with Steve Jobs - LLM chatbots are the real 'bicycle for the mind' if used well as a tool. (Anything further is beyond a bicycle, and into self-driving car territory.)
Some personal projects I've done this year, that only 2 years ago were impossible for me (or at least 10x harder):
WordPress: Getting site to cleanly work with title-less posts (POSSE).
Linux: 2 headless home servers for media, backups, and validator
Excel: Multi-currency FIFO lot tracker for taxes across 2 countries (gl finding int'l accountant)
Website: Configuring free SSL (hosting company doesn't make it easy)
Obsidian: Templates and Dataviews in seconds
Home device backup architecture
1/2
Threads is allegedly part of the fediverse, yet I'm nowhere near the point of being able to ask Threads users to follow my Mastodon profile. Attached is how my Mastodon profile looks over there. Some of the issues:
1. Threads users can follow Mastodon Me *only if* they themselves have turned on fediverse sharing (an arbitrary hurdle).
2. They have to exactly type my Mastodon handle.
3. You can like but not reply.
4. "Some posts may not be visible" (why?!)
5. There's no bio!
Any other hurdles?
At 37, late to the party, I'm finally participating in public writing and posting. I just remembered that 18 years ago I had a blogspot for 2 months, so as a tactic to overcome self-consciousness and mortification, I'll jump into the deep end with this post from a 19-year-old me in 2007:
https://whywhatsnext.com/2025/06/throwback-liberte-egalite-futilite/
Testing my Wordpress->Bluesky/Fediverse pipeline. My main frustration with figuring out how to POSSE has been lack of clear and up-to-date guides. I now greatly appreciate the onboarding UX design of the big platforms. Hoping this works from my own domain without a hitch...😮💨 #posse
Richard MacManus