the donald

not a duck. the donald is a creation of its own making. it called the news and used a fake name to promote itself. it paid for full page newspaper advertisements to promote lies. it believed the hype around it that was made to sell crap to people. the worst of all is that it made for entertaining television at a time when that screen was changing rapidly in size and reach. by the time it landed on fucking jack dorseys twitter doorstep, it was already entrenched in the american psyche by way of media. then all that needed to happen was to keep the media hooked on the mainlining of high ratings and big advertising dollars alongside the continued propping by roger and rupert and here we are heading to where the fuck no one knows.

when the people around you say 2 + 2 = whateverthefuck with the greatest confidence and hubris and you’re the one to say no, 2 + 2 = fucking 4 in front of the liars you will be the one out on your ass. i know from my own personal experience in this warped world of the truth is what I say it is and if I am more powerful or wealthy than you then that as they say is that.

2 + 2 = whateverthefuckyouthinkitis

Here it comes

When it’s easier to tap tap tap on a mobile device and buy a car than it is to tap tap tap and find a friend or hire someone to move a couple of chairs that won’t fit in standard sedan seems to be we’ve mediated our way so much closer to robocop than most people can even begin to comprehend.

RoboCop Movie Poster 1987

It’s not bullshit. It’s absolutely true and almost happening like the movie. The cops are still human but their faces are almost always covered, they can and will grab anyone off the street they’ve been told to arrest and if they do their jobs the way they’re supposed to, the person they arrest will be taken into custody immediately.

The Constitution and Amendments and due process don’t seem like they’re for little people at all anymore. Only for the hefty, wealth-laden, gold plated, egotastic mother fuckers like Donald, Zuckerberg, Putin, F’Elon, mother fucking Stephen Killer Miller, Mr. Google and Mrs. Paramount.

Donald may be the president but a fucking disgusting, abusive, trolling, bullying, baby of a human male does not make a president. He’ll have that moniker but he’s nothing but a slumlord from Queens (no offense to the place, my family is from there too but we didn’t abuse anyone, tromp over them, stomp on that last step, and keep going) who has never succeeded on his own in his entire life. The veneer is lab-made, a manufactured image projected onto TV screens for so long that the lies became acceptable and even unquestionable for some. That’s leaning toward cult by anyone’s definition.

No. Nope. No.

Do you know about what happens next? Do you know how bad it can get? Do you understand how much the fake government has stolen in Q1? Do you understand the hell that will be unleashed upon all of us because Donald got 49.9% of the popular vote? Do you know how many people will die?

Do you want to know? No? Didn’t think so. I can’t help anyone who’s not interested in caring beyond our own cults. The families of origin, the circles of old friends, the new friends, the people significantly younger than my 57 years. There are some who are engaged and active.

In the next several months, it’ll become clearer whether enough people act to oppose the darkness with some light and better ideas for a future we’ll have to share whether we want it or not.

It’s not what you thought it’d be

be entrepreneurial, they said. have a vision, they said. guide cross-functional teams. make an impact – in 90 days or less, they said. add value, they said. get shit done, they said. make a difference, they said. be dedicated, they said.

how’d that work?

no more job

Why?

I did the things they said they wanted NOT the things they actually reward, recognize, protect, promote.

I also make one other crucial mistake; I attached my whole sense of self to the work, the job, the outcomes in the short mindset that never has room for all those things they said they wanted in the first place.

I took it seriously and personally and didn’t fortify myself. Had I known the key is to develop a deeper level of emotional intelligence and detachment, build a network shamelessly, keep my distance and not only save myself but climb the dumb ladder.

Treet. What cats want.

It’s everywhere

Everywhere I look I see how I feel is also how others feel. Bummer. And it’s a huge relief to finally see evidence from others that the crap and the overload is real. I’m not the problem. I’ve been made to be the problem by a system that’s just fucking fallen apart. How’d that happen? Slowly then all of a sudden. Yep, I’m revising too. UX? Feh. What a slap in the face. Yeah it was what I did for a living but I never called it an industry. Skills you can use elsewhere. So that’s what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll use one of this persons tools tips snippets whatever.

Read all of it and appreciate that sad old Mac face.

What cats really think?

Nope

Done. Nope. Not. Nope.

The device is called i (phone). That’s a nice marketing ploy but the phone part of the device is the least useful aspect of the thing. The number of phone calls that include a smooth, easy to have, back and forth dialogue are damn near zero in this year of 2025.

The phone is not a phone. It’s a computer with software that simulates phone calls of yesterday.

Does anyone remember full duplexing?

I do. It was what a fucking telephone used to do and it was amazing. I have not done any research but my gut feeling is they it’s as dead as a dinosaur. When was the last time anyone talked to anyone else on this stupid pocket computer and had a real dialogue where both parties – especially if there were only two people talking – could hear all the words spoken?

Maybe it was Y2K. Or thereabouts. Full duplex communication doesn’t exist easily in our wifi world because it’s cheap. Cheap as in it doesn’t include the necessary technical layers to enable full duplex comms. So. We get voip and chop and drop and sure call from anywhere but don’t expect to be able to have a real dialogue.

Well, that’s weird.

No. No it’s not at all weird that the calls drop or sound weird or exclude a packet here and there so you cannot hear properly.

It’s weird that this shit works at all. It’s very rickety and very insecure.

No full duplex. Only half. And no COBOL is not just an ‘archaic programming language’, it’s also extremely hard to break into which is why your bank – yes, bank – has it running in their systems too.

They’re everywhere

These guys wrecking all the things in the so-called administrative state are the same ones who have funneled money into our payment processing systems so insidiously that there really is no escape and no extraction.

Parents and schools need to be able to connect and communicate with each other. It’s a problem as old as schools and humans. What happens when a government is starved for money because tax breaks go to the super rich guys? An example is a for profit entity funded by the guys who took the tax breaks and then used their money to make more money for themselves while integrating their tech into schools around the world.

I won’t name names for the sake of black listing myself. Who knows at this point maybe I’m already on a list. At this rate it won’t be long since nothing is private and hasn’t been for well over a decade.

It’s too little too late. There is absolutely no one coming to help the people. The overlords have the keys to almost every room of the kingdom with one massive and crucial exception. The hearts, critical thinking and souls of the people who see the truth and will not be told they don’t.

Keep some cash in your fireproof box and fine, you can keep calling me chicken little but you should be calling me Cassandra.

Directions

Can’t find a way there

Being the nerd that I am, I wanted the exact mileage based on googles default route from here to there. I’ve never seen this result before.

The day the music died

I mindlessly snacked on Honey Nut Cheerios while the end of the world started. I’d already read all the things, understood all the realities, warned and whined, donated and drowned myself in independent media. The end of something should mean the beginning of a new, maybe even hopeful stage but not this ending. The one I watched during the last decade was – and maybe historians one day will deem it so – a brilliant and horrifying convergence of efforts from a few factions who do not believe in the common good or any of the things that help to create a functioning society.

The technofascists. The white supremacists. The christian nationalists. The but-maybes (but maybe it’ll be ok when…). And all the other hangers on who make justifications for their aggrieved state while the system kicks their ass and the other hangers on who have stolen all the wealth from the rest of us. There are no rules they really have to follow even if a judge says what the rules actually are. How do you hold the unaccountable to account when nothing has worked?

So, I watched the music dying and the Senators kibbitzing on the stately, blue carpet feeling both helpless and grateful. The gratitude for my personal world being relatively calm at the moment is real. So many Americans do not understand how bad things can get. I want to rewind but wishing and magical thinking is not my strong suit.

I am desperate in my nightmares to stop the horror from coming but it has been here all along. Now it’s just building up strength like a tsunami powering from one side of the ring of fire to all the other shores. There will be a reckoning. What shape it takes and how or when or if it comes at all is unknowable. Meanwhile, even if Cheerios don’t help, they’re a decent pacifier for this exasperatingly sad day.

Time heals

The platitude ‘time heals all wounds’ doesn’t work for me and never has. It’s been five years since CT’s been gone and it still hurts like it did before. Maybe it kinda feels even worse because others have gone more recently. I don’t know how grief works but I feel like it’s been intertwined in me since before I was double digits years old.

There is rain today / I really don’t mind at all / The sun is still there

Winter-turning-to-spring-sky

How to deal with facing something big

Observe. Do the pros and cons lists. (Things within reach with lower overhead. Managing environments.) All the things. Write it all down.

Orient. Using all the observations👆🏻get comfortable with what it’s saying. Be both as objective as possible and use the emotions to inform by observing intentionally.

Decide. Feel what has the biggest influences and then…decide. Once a decision is made, move on.

Act. There’s a lot to this part and it boils down to making real whatever’s been decided upon.

Rinse. Retro. Repeat. Remember. (OODALoop is not something I invented, I did add the R’s)

Having the time for making things – that might even someday be sellable – is in the ‘feels good’ category

Scope

One of the biggest ways to get a software development project to go sideways — or off the rails south bad to Hell to shit or however you describe it when something falls apart and absolutely does not go as planned — is by not solidifying the scope of the work and sticking to that scope.

The two other key areas that will send your shit into oblivion is to assume someone is an expert in their field by way of association with others without getting first-hand evidence. If the so-called expert resource is not able to deliver on their part of the work, you’ve wasted the last area that’ll make you want to fire yourself and that is time.

Time. Resources. Scope.

Manage all three or mediocrity is the best result you can hope for.

Broken planes, broken country

For the second time in a month, I’m stuck in a plane that cannot let passengers off because of equipment -and my gut feeling- human malfunction.

The jet bridge thing is 10 feet away, but whoever is driving it cannot get it to the plane so the planes door can open all the way and let us the fuck out. They made three attempts.

So close and yet so far that we can’t get out

We’re already almost 3 hours late so driving around the fucking airport trying to find a place to park where the jet bridge can get to the plane is the plan.

How will this plan play out? Well. It’s 11:29pm and we landed almost a half hour ago. Looks to me like it’s not working so well. The pilot and copilot have to negotiate for another gate which means we’re here for at least another hour.

The domino effect continues. Late flights late crews lost crew rest late flights and over and over.

In Donald’s America, these kinds of things will only continue to get more frequent and more intense. You cannot have a functioning society while shredding the federal government. It’s just not possible.

I don’t know how long it’ll take but it will happen. Both the complete destruction of anything decent in the US and getting off this fucking plane.

Driving with Cats

I’ve driven across this big country several times, in both directions. I’ve done it with other humans in the vehicle and I’ve done it alone. I’ve also had the unpleasant experience of attempting to make the drive from Santa Barbara to Connecticut, with two cats.

One cat was a good rider, she always had been. The other; not a good traveler. At. All. He peed on me the first time he was ever in a car when we brought him home after he was found near a dumpster at a Motel 6 in Escondido, CA. Why my ex-husband thought a significantly longer trip would work is still beyond comprehension. (It literally breaks my fucking heart that later on in that poor cats life that same guy decided it would be ok to drive from San Francisco to Massachusetts after he’d left the poor cat mostly alone in a SF apartment for a couple of months.

Anyway. The earlier drive, the one where we were moving because I got a job that paid for our move, was the first time Al was made to suffer in the car as a big kitty.

We made it from SB to Ontario, CA. Stayed overnight then made it to Flagstaff, AZ before we couldn’t (I couldn’t) take the cat stress any longer. Al was so fucking stressed out that he smelled bad. It wasn’t cat pee, it was stress emanating from him. At that point, the easy going kitty, Kahuna, started getting extremely antsy and vocal. She was worried because he was so stressed and so, we ended up in a hotel with cats trying to figure out what the fuck to do.

Fortunately, the company I was working for was generous, took care of its employees at that time – what a novel concept – and made it fairly straightforward for us to shift our plans (what am I saying, I made it possible for us to shift our plans).

We staying a night or two at that hotel then traveled south by car to Phoenix where we were able to leave the vehicle to be picked up for shipping to our final destination. After that, we took the two cats, got a taxi to the airport and because it was before 9/11/2001, we made our way through security, to the gate and eventually, onto a plane.

No cats were harmed in that journey from California to Connecticut. Only some bruised human egos and one pissed off woman.

Best thing about 2024

Finding Ed Zitron. He writes the words and says the things I’ve been saying and screaming about (in my own mind) for a long time. The techigarchy has created so much friction, and I use that word deliberately, that not a day goes by that I don’t run into so many screens, clicks, popups, chatbots not to mention all the basics of getting real work done. Seriously, we have to live with things like Microsoft fucking (insert the thing you struggled to use efficiently recently)? Unbelievable.

Friction is something most designers – myself included – look to remove from the digital world. Where it creates confusion, frustration, or just stops users from getting things done easily, remove friction. In other places, mindful designers – myself included – look to add small points of friction. To stop a user from doing something they might not want to do or give users a way to address errors easily, add friction.

Friction starts fires, friction is frustrating, friction is confusing at best, infuriating at the mid end of the scale and way over on the other end, it’s pure hell that makes some of us want to live off the grid completely. (Kinda, I’m not a great camper).

Anyway. That’s it. I hate 2024 for taking one of my favorite people but I’m grateful for finding Ed.

Industry of misunderstanding

I’ve been involved with a field of work called user experience design for about 25 years. It is a discipline, or a domain, much like software development or business management or leadership or legal or sales. What it is not is an industry. An industry, put simply, is a bunch of businesses or organizations that function within the same sphere of an economy like healthcare or automotive or higher education or financial services or technology or energy. If what we really mean is the digital industry, then we should say that. But user experience design is not only applicable to the world of tech that is coded by a software developer who makes the design of the thing come to life on a screen.

When did the field of user experience design (UX) become referred to as an industry? It is not a business that generates revenue unto itself so how can it be an industry? When did the title or moniker UXer come to life? It doesn’t mean anything except maybe user experience designer but then if we have that, what is a product designer? It seems all of these titles are meant to indicate work in a digital sector so we should say that.

The misunderstanding of user experience design will continue as long as we keep attaching the wrong phrases and words to them. It is sad that it’s about to turn over to 2025 and we’re in worse shape as a discipline, a domain that can apply to a lot of different industries. How hard is that to comprehend? It seems straightforward to me but that’s because I have a business background first, design is just a part of that 👿

Usability people!

Forget UX and all the bullshit surrounding it. Go back to usability everyone. That’s where UX was supposed to have its core and now it’s just a couple of letters that was misunderstood to begin with but now? Holy shit. Here’s a simple example of where UX is NOT happening. Anywhere on a browser that uses multi factor authentication and doesn’t tend to the interaction details that make it easiest on users. Here is what I mean:

User goes to [insert app here – like DoorDash or Instacart or some other horrible company] and signs in using whatever username.

App send user a verification code.

User goes back to screen to insert a 4 or 6 digit code.

If the cursor is NOT in the input box where the numeric code needs to be inserted, you are NOT doing UX (or product design whatever the fuck you call it when you fuck around in Figma, export to send to dev ticket).

Does it work? Yes, it will pass your unit test. Is it useable? Yes, I can get logged in. Is it user friendly or user center4ed or any of those things? NOT AT ALL. Why? Because there is unnecessary friction between me and the thing I’m trying to log into. It’s like anything where there is a number entry field and my keyboard is still showing me all the fucking letters. NO. You are not a UX person or UXer 😡 (I hate that one almost as much as UX/UI and UI/UX🤢at this point) if you do not eat your own dogfood.

Get out of Figma. Get into the mode of delivery for your design ASAFP. If you don’t, you’re doing it fucking wrong 😈

Now go donate to Wikimedia or be sorry and ashamed you didn’t when it’s gone.

It’s fucking disgraceful

Yes, Steve Schmidt, you got that right, it’s fucking disgraceful. Donald is, among many other ugly things, absolutely disgraceful and so is everything that comes along with him.

I’ll never understand how average people don’t see the con. Never. Exactly never will I be able to wrap my head around it. Cult? Sure. But come on not in 2024. People can get the truth if they really want it, it does exist. There are no alternative facts, only facts, fictions and a lot of complex things that can’t be boiled down to bumper sticker length.

But when he and his crew are stealing from us, that’s when I lose all ability to comprehend how people not only buy into his bullshit but act like rabid sports fans flying his flag and doing his jerkoff dance. What the actual fuck has happened. (Fully rhetorical question, nnta).

Kitty Rescue Me

Why I want to give you a pile of money for your house (pick me, pick me).

I’m – insert my name here – and I’m the person offering – insert $ here – for – insert address here.

The possibility of having you select my offer for your property is way too personal and important to me to communicate with you solely via – insert agent name here – (my real estate agent) and your agent.

I’d like this home for so many reasons, it’s hard to list them all but here goes:

  • All the reasons why everyone wants it!
  • It already felt like my home. Great vibe.
  • It’s peaceful, quiet, while still being near things.
  • There’s room for growing vegetables and flowers
  • I’d have the space for one of my (small-ish) dreams: an extra large catio.
    • Bonus, there’s already a cat door.
  • There’s space to start building my (much bigger) dream little by little: a cat rescue.
  • The amount of space makes it possible to consider other animals.

It’s been my dream for a long time to be able to save older cats from going into shelters when their owners pass and the animal has nowhere else to go. Where I live now is incredible but it’s California and I want to come back to this area to be close to my friends and family. I don’t really believe in “signs” from the universe and things like that but, in this case, I feel like it’s a little too coincidental that your home is on a street named Hollywood near others named Los Angeles and Pasadena.

Even though some of this may sound a little cheesy, I thought I’d share it anyway, thank you for taking the time to read it. Wishing you all the best – no matter what you decide.

Sincerely,
Me

BUT WAIT! There’s this one by ChatGPT. . .

Dear [Homeowner’s Name],

I hope this letter finds you well. My name is [Your Name], and I wanted to take a moment to share a little bit about myself and the vision I have for your beautiful home, as well as express my heartfelt gratitude for the opportunity to submit an offer.

For years, I’ve dreamed of creating a sanctuary for cats whose owners have passed away, offering these beloved companions a safe, loving home where they can live out the rest of their days in comfort. This dream is rooted in my belief that every pet deserves dignity and care, even when life takes unexpected turns. I envision this sanctuary as not only a haven for the cats but also a source of peace for families who can rest assured their cherished pets are in good hands.

When I walked through your home, I immediately felt something special. The warmth and character of the space seemed to welcome me—and I couldn’t help but imagine how perfect it would be for creating this sanctuary. The rooms could be transformed into cozy nooks for the cats, the outdoor space could become a serene area for them to safely explore, and the house itself feels like a place where love can thrive.

I want you to know that, if you choose to sell your home to me, it will become so much more than a house. It will be a place filled with purpose, kindness, and care—a tribute to the animals we hold dear and the families who love them.

Thank you for considering my offer. I know letting go of a home can be a deeply personal and emotional decision, and I would be honored to steward it into this next chapter. If there’s anything I can do to make this process smoother for you, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

With gratitude and warm regards,
[Your Full Name]
[Contact Information]

Can I detach?

This is not a post about Scientology. I’m talking about tech. And when I say tech, first and foremost, I mean “Can I detach from my iPhone”? I need to because it’s just gone too fucking far. I read a comment in the Washington Post in response to an editorial about how to deal with the latest changes to Apple’s operating system which is one of the things that led to digging for my flip phone this morning that made me want to throat punch someone or just bury my head in my pillow. (I chose the pillow and a little more snuggle time with my cat).

I’ve been in or adjacent to UX since the late 1990’s. I almost don’t want to type that but it’s true and I will own what that means to me somewhere else. Not defending UX right now. What I do need to do is vent which is why this stupid blog is here! So, the comment, in relation to Apple’s iOS (NOT a fucking upgrade) move to iOS 18.1.1 on my poor, little iPhone SE (yes it has a fucking home button, so what?!) was about how it’s the fault of all those UX whatever…ok, lemme find said comment somehow…I’ve impressed myself and here it is:

Screenshot

Now that I’ve re-read it, I want to cry a little. What JL from Seattle is referring to is a problem I contributed to creating – without realizing it at the time. It didn’t take me that long to settle on the fact that I had to ditch the profit-driven entities (ahem, talking to you CareerFoundry and Designlab and General Assembly and others) that were and still are more involved in ruining an entire discipline than me. The thing I do have to laugh about for a sec is how I’m on the outside of all of it now which reminds me of a movie scene from In Good Company which I’ll find if anyone ever gives a shit. (Yes, I’m totally ADHD and referring to two facts:

1. the fact that I mentored a lot of students at bootcamps where ‘user experience’ (UX), as the commenter mentions above devolved into being only understood as the shit that surfaces on the screen which is the ‘user interface’, a part of the UX but only a part.) cry, a little

2. the fact that I was a UX person in the corporate world and ended up on a layoff list in 2023. laugh, jokes on me

Back to the bigger picture of being addicted to the iPhone (thanks Steve!) because I can’t give my profession more energy right now. What I can do is look at how the tech industry (UX is not an industry god dammit!!!) is impacting me which is to say, how on earth can I get away from this fucking device?

The detaching starts by charging the flip phone and getting the # out of it because I’m not sure I know where I put it. Oh, wait. It’s in my fucking iPhone! The ability to answer the question Can I detach affirmatively means having a process. Starting with getting all the necessary pieces of information out of the fucking iPhone. Maybe I’ll go to Chaucers and buy myself another present, a new Moleskin notebook 😈

What’s the word for that?

What’s the word for that thing that happens to a lot of us when we sit down to write and everything that hits the page gets deleted? That thing happens to me where I try, I start, I might have a thread of an idea but then whatever I write seems totally fucking irrelevant, stupid, ridiculous, unoriginal and unnecessary. Hard on myself? I guess that’s a yes.

The overload or distraction has to do with that voice but at this point in the evolution of everyone saying everything out into the internet it really feels more like screaming into a void than ever. But here I am with my own little blah dee blag machine trying to say something worth saying.

When I started all this tech and digital stuff I never thought it’d get to the point where I’d be repulsed by my own addictions to it while simultaneously finding wonder in the predictive nature of the thing I’m typing into right now. So what is that word? Attention deficiency for sure but there’s something else. That discounting of my own ideas before they’re even fully formed. The destruction is strong, almost immediate and definitely constant.

“who gives a shit” “get over it” “snap out of it” “it’s not … enough”

I guess naming it with a word doesn’t really matter. Awareness is more important and I’ll keep trying to shut that all down even though it’s a force – or maybe I flip that around – I’m a force to be reckoned with 😈

How’s Al Gore?

I wonder how Al Gore is doing these days. Here we are more than 25 years later and it’s not only worse, people have a complete inability to imagine how bad things can get.

I wander around my neighborhood and marvel at everything. The fruit trees, fresh air, pretty flowers, birds, islands, clouds, sky and sun. It’s special. It’s also delicate. The ocean and air are clean right now but the unpredictable nature of the weather means that could all go away – anytime. But today. Perfect.

Sorry for all of us that oil and gas took control in 2000. What does it get them, the few with all the power and money, if the planet they’ve taken from can’t sustain life any longer?

Apple makes iBloat 🫥

Apple’s added more bullshit bloat to iOS in the last handful of updates than I ever could have imagined. Is there an iMessage emoji team? Does anyone on it talk to the iMessage sticker team or is that the same team? Someone decided to add even editing editing to iMessage which I expected would happen eventually. I know more than a couple of people who have whined about wanting italics in their ‘text’ messages. I get it. So many of us use the iThings constantly that we develop our own product feature backlog.

But. That doesn’t mean the Apple product people have to make the thing have italics – and bold, underline and strike through. Why the fuck on the perfect, little planet would humans need to be able to underline in their iMessage. Notice that I do not say text. That’s because they’re not the same and it’s ok it it’s unclear what’s blue and what’s green.

And the they had to go and add effects to the iMessage. Animate a word for emphasis. Make it bounce or get bigger or smaller or even explode. Holy shit we have been missing that forfuckingever. THANK YOU Apple iMessage software product people!

If this is what kills the battery of the device faster I guess Apple wins again if winning means making a shit ton more money for a relatively small number of people. Good one, Apple. You win the toxic garbage game again. But really fucking clever of you to hide it right under the consumers thumbs.

Who to listen to

The playbook is open and the authoritarian is out in the open. To keep sane and able to see the big picture of what’s happening, there are voices to trust and others to be very, very wary of. It’s binary this time, no more placating the squishy bullshit. To that I say fuck no. But first the positive, the absolutely yes list off the top of my head.

Yes:

Timothy Snyder

Mary Trump

Brian Karem

Wajahat Ali

Danielle Moodie

Steve Schmidt

Jeff Tiedrich

Kara Swisher

Scott Galloway

Cindy Gallop

Jon Stewart

Josh Johnson

Seth Meyers

Desi Leidic

Ronnie Cheng

Stephen Colbert

Jimmy Kimmel

Rachel Maddow

Amy Goodman

Fuck No:

NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, Washington Post, Fox News, Newsmax, OAN

Any other hypocritical opportunistic MF’s.

the No Code joke

have you heard the one about the software or excuse me, the app, that just makes things for you and you don’t have to know any code? well, the software can do things but the human has to tell it what to do, the software doesn’t think. and, the app won’t say, “hey, you just pasted thousands of unnecessary characters while adding a three-word heading”. but you did. and I’m tempted to paste it all right here just to prove to people it is true, the shit is everywhere and it’s why your next flight might be canceled. imagine adding new (no code) stuff to this.

one heading: 35,927 characters, 496 lines. multiply that because there are five more just like it on your three tiny website boxes. that’s hundreds of thousands of extra characters. and it is utterly useless, it doesn’t even give you a glimpse into someones trade secrets – although it could.

I just took a closer look and the culprit is Fucking Figma this time. Geniuses. (/figma)

Way worse than anything I have ever seen.

Speechless.

Do not be afraid

Fear. Fatigue. Friction and a whole lotta fucked up. That is what they want. The oligarchs want the rest of us to be cleaved in two and arguing about all that which does not matter. Look at what they’re really doing, set aside the firehoses of shit coming from media – social, corporate, mainstream, no stream – because it’s just not useful. It is only going the fuel fear and outrage which leads to fighting each other and exhaustion.

Standing up means being separated from those spaces which for me can be lonely but I’m not going to live there. I live here where the mountains meet the pacific.

Do not be afraid of anything. This is our country and it’s the only one we have.

~ Alexei Navalny (June 4, 1976 – February 16, 2024, murdered by Putin)

Nope. No fear, I can’t waste energy there because it only ripples outward. It’ll take a ton more energy but today is another day of doing it.