The Art Of Not Asking Why

I have a confession to make.

For the last two weeks or so, I’ve been toying around with the idea of resurrecting my college-days blog about the Middle East and international happenings in general. There’s no way any post that even vaguely touches the topic won’t turn on the flames, so I’ve been mostly avoiding it.

Everyone has an opinion; that’s human. At the same time, the internet is shit, and it’s getting worse. Services like Instagram and Twitter have a long tradition of censoring (or not censoring) users when they shouldn’t (or should), while AI companies vacuum up all this crap and spin it back, as large news outlets often use the same resources to break the news. It’s an echo chamber that’s hard to escape, filled with often the most noisy, not most accurate, information.

During college, our newspaper advisor kept repeating the slogan “Check your facts.” That’s because we often didn’t. It’s a human habit to run with rumors, like rabbits' perking up their ears at the possibility of a predator.

On my Middle East blog, I rehashed news from the media. Taking my advisor’s mantra to heart, I developed a habit to check my information from at least three sources. I then provided my own explanation, linking back to my sources. If I couldn’t find the sources but wanted to post stuff anyway, I’d say so on the post; more often than not, someone educated me, one way or another.

I was often scorned by opposing sides, sometimes on the same piece. There were angry comments from readers based in Lebanon about my lack of knowledge and worried emails from my family in Israel that I “lost my way.” I made a friend with a Palestinian woman on campus, who took to call me “cousin,” and we sometimes argued about heated topics. Another time, I was refused an official interview - but offered a meeting - with a Middle Eastern affairs professor at a nearby university about the history of the region. It was a hobby that got out of control: looking at it now, it was irresponsible of me to worry my family and piss off strangers. It was also probably unsafe, knowing what I know today about what happens to some folks who voice their opinions - and I’m talking about here, in the US.

Writing about heated topics like these is hard on your soul. You become cynical. You believe everyone’s out to get you or want something from you, and there’s almost nothing plainly good about the world besides a walk in the woods, away from the human race. Perhaps this is why journalists adhere to the stereotype of bitter looks, cigarettes and coffee (I have a feeling NYT reporters are a stark opposite of that, but I digress). Being a good reporter means you’re constantly wrong, and people who don’t know you often hate your guts on principle. Fewer people today want to be journalists, and very few want to remain ones. It’s a dying field with no paycheck to show for the punishing effort. So, I chose to turn my back on it and chase a more rewarding career. The thing is, I never had a choice.

I recall a conversation I had with one of my journalism professors. It was in his hole-in-the-wall office, loaded with piles of books and old yellow newspaper from floor to ceiling, just like a scene from a movie. He told me no one in their right mind would choose to be a journalist unless they got the “germ,” and he was sad to inform me (so he said) that I got it. It had nothing to do with my writing (average at best) or editing (much worse) skills, but my appetite, or more accurately, my compulsion.

The germ does not make you a reporter or a blogger. The germ sits in your brain and eats your mind slowly with an impossible urge to resist: dig.

You read something, and you’re not satisfied, so you start asking questions. Questions lead to more questions. Before you know it, you end up having a couple of paragraphs written of your findings (or perhaps pieces of articles on the wall connected by pins and strings), because you got to do something with all the stuff you dug out.

At that moment, you’re not a human being with opinions about the world, but an instrument of need to write and explain, and god help you, you’re going to do it against all the good reasons and advice people throw at you. You keep doing this over and over, until you end up with a column, a blog, a wiki, whatever. You can try to bury what you find, but you can’t bury the need. You’re obsessed. You’re driven by a disease. That’s the germ. That’s a reporter.

Throughout the years, I wrote different blogs. I always had some sort of a graveyard with buried findings. At times I made it a couple of months without digging, but I never really stopped.

By now, you might think I’m writing my justification for some illusions and false confidence I have toward being a reporter. Nah, you got me wrong, sorry. Let me spell it out for you so there’s no doubt: I got a germ. I got an itch. I got a shovel, and if it breaks, I’ll use my bare fingers. I can’t help it. There’s nothing self-righteous or glorious about this.

This blog, or any other I’ll write, will probably die off someday at some corner of the web. Fine with me. That’s not the point, and I don’t think I have one anyway. I just have to dig.

Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools

I’m still looking into the sources of this article, but 404 Media has a good reputation so far:

internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

This is not surprising. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tumblr will be shut down completely within the next 2 years either. Many users are angry, but I guess few will actually do something about it and jump ship.

Goofing around at the park

I need to do something about my mobile layout:

Some fixes are obvious. I can decrease the owl’s bottom margin, preventing the description from splitting (the font might need to be smaller, too). Other fixes are more challenging. I should have fewer buttons, but which to remove or join together? 🤔

Whether you’re fully into the anti-AI movement or not, Reddit’s filing should light some warning lights for you:

We believe we are in the early stages of monetizing our user base…

…Given the value of Reddit’s data in sentiment analysis and trend identification, we believe that there is an emerging opportunity in data licensing. As LLMs continue to grow, we believe that Reddit will be core to the capabilities of organizations that use data as well as the next generation of generative AI and LLM platforms.

Reddit is selling your data and will happily continue to do so, to make more money. Training AI with it is just yet one more way to gain profit from your content.

Credit goes to 404 media (the article is free, but you do need to register):

The long-awaited S-1 filing reveals much of what Reddit users knew and feared: That many of the changes the company has made over the last year in the leadup to an IPO are focused on exerting control over the site, sanitizing parts of the platform, and monetizing user data. The filing says Reddit has already entered into contracts that will pay it at least $203 million over the next 2-3 years for “data licensing” that consists of “allowing third parties to access, search, and analyze data on our platform.

That’s what happens when you use Instagram for news – but is there an alternative? Lot’s of thoughts around this one.

Demoted, Deleted, and Denied: There’s More Than Just Shadowbanning on Instagram – The Markup

Meta declined to comment on why the war photos seemed less likely to appear than other kinds of photos on a hashtag page, despite the fact that they did not violate Instagram’s guidelines on intense, graphic imagery.

Cleaned up my CSS a bit and added more comments to illustrate what I’ve done with TinyTheme. Feel free to borrow ideas! This is an ongoing fun:

    /* Global changes are defined in variables in TinyTheme. These are the theme's default colors, of which we have two sets: light and dark. Instaed of calling a color over and over, we call "link" or "link-visted," etc. Matt, the creator of TinyTheme, explains this here: https://mattlangford.com/2023/06/07/how-to-change.html
    
    At this point, I have both the same more or less - I only have one theme. I have dark/light theme listed as a todo later on. */
    
    
    /* Light Mode */
    :root {
            --text: #666;
            --link: #666;
            --link-visited: #666;
            --link-hover: #8b0000;
            --accent1: #8b0000;
            --accent2: #666666;
            --background: #eee8d5;
            --code: #e3e3e3;
            --button-text: #ffffff;
            --blockquote: #fffee0;
            --note: #FFFF00;
    }
    
    /* Dark mode */
    @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
        :root {
            --text: #666;
            --link: #666;
            --link-visited: #666;
            --link-hover: #8b0000;
            --accent1: #8b0000;
            --accent2: #f8f8f2;
            --background: #eee8d5;
            --code: ##e3e3e3;
            --button-text: #282a36;
            --blockquote: #fffee0;
            --note: #44475a;
        }
    }
    
    
    /* Using the globals colors above, the links' color for the blog are defined here. The links change to crimson red (also defined above) when hovering over them, and keeping the underline, making them easier to identify as links */
    
    a, a:visited {
        color: var(--link);
        text-decoration: underline; 
    
    }
    
    a:hover {
        color: var(--link-hover);
        text-decoration: underline; 
    }
    
    
    /* Change the color of h2 link posts and dates to the red-crimson I use. Because the overall rule for links asks for an underline when hovering over them, I have to specify here that for post titles, I don't want an underline.  */
    
    h2 a, h2 a:hover, a.post-date.u-url {
        color: #8b0000;
        text-decoration: none;
    }
    
    /* Change the font and the color of the title to Righteous font, and the color crimson red. The font requires Google Fonts, with additional code in microhook-head.html */
    
    header h1 a, header h1 a:visited {
        font-family: Righteous;
        color: #8b0000;
    }
    
    
    /* To change what the tagline says, we need to use a Microhook: layouts/partials/microhook-description.html. Because by default this description is the same color and font as the text of the blog, I had to create a class here, description. It is also defined in the above microhook.
    
    The CSS then specifies the color (brown like the owl's bronw), the font (from Google fonts, imported in microhook-head.html), the size, and also makes it italic. */
    
    p.description  {
        color: #a5846e;
        font-family: "Caveat", cursive;
        font-size: 1.5em;
        font-style: italic;
    }
    
    /* Change the nav bar boxes links color to my crimson red, and when hovering over them, change the background to gray and the text to the beige color of the blog */
    
    nav a, nav a:visited {
        color: #8b0000;
        border-color: #8b0000;
    }
    
    nav a:hover {
        background-color: #666;
        border-color: #8b0000;
        color: #eee8d5;
    }
    
    
    /* a border for images in posts only */
    
    .e-content img {
        border: .2em double #666;
    }
    
    /* Make the avatar float to the left of the text. TinyTheme uses microhook-profile-photo.html for the image's URL. As well, a bit margin between the avatar and the site's title. */
    
    .site-header img {
        float: left;
        margin: 1em;
    }

That’s it. My blog’s theme is now based on TinyTheme, with my colors and additions implemented. I will fix a couple more “gotchas” as I notice them. I also want to make my CSS modifications available to everyone soon.

Last night, I finished reading: Starter Villain by John Scalzi 📚.

This was a fun read! Pure entertainment. I chuckled around my apartment reading through this book. It’s not something too heavy or thought-provoking; the best parts are probably the dialogues.

Highly recommended if you own cats!

My weird logic of (still!) using Google Cloud products:

• Everyone has a Gmail account, so it’s easy to share
• I know Google sells everything of mine, so I don’t have illusions about what to put in their cloud
• Great and easy exporting options

A few things that kept me occupied this month:

• Playing around with TinyTheme
• Denote public information notes
• Pushing my comfort zones

TinyTheme: I can see why so many folks like TinyTheme. It’s slick and good as is, but at the same time, it’s built thoughtfully and makes customization easier. The best part yet: Matt is very responsive and helpful, and when I got stuck, I got an answer and learned new things at the same time. I like how my single CSS sheet for TinyTheme looks like, whereas in my current theme, I have several hacks scattered about. The new theme will be ready for prime time soon!

Denote: Going ahead with switching from TiddlyWiki to org-mode notes is a good idea. It’s all about laziness at the end. GitLab renders org files just fine, but there are a few hiccups in how Denote creates links: GitLab doesn’t understand Denote’s linking syntax. I reached out to Prot for help, and he created a function that converts Denote links back to org-mode links. This is almost working, but the resorting links contain absolute paths (which lead to a folder on my computer) and not the relative link needed on GitLab.

I enjoy “talking” to Prot back and forth in video recordings. I’m learning a great deal. I said it once, and I’ll say it again, if you’re an Emacs user, Prot is worth every single penny for his coaching. Give it a try!

Comfort Zone Stretching: This will come as a shock to y’all, but I can be a bit grumpy and prefer the company of my warm coffee over strangers. Realizing this is all good and fine but it won’t do much to expand my circle of friends, I’m trying to say no a bit less to social hangouts.

I had a great time in Long Branch NJ last weekend (this is where I took this picture) with my partner and a couple of friends, and it might have been the first time I saw snow on the beech first hand.

More of this stretching is happening in baby steps. It comes back to the little conversation with @Anne about dating apps recently: it’s up to us humans to get out there and develop the skills we’ve had for centuries but neglected in favor of our phones. We’ll see how this goes.

When @matt added Microhooks to his popular Tiny Theme, I decided to give it a try. My current theme, which is based on the Alpine theme, is a messy mesh of CSS fragments and several modified HTML files. I thought I could use a fresh start and get things more organized.

I’m having fun exploring and tweaking my test blog so far. This time I hope to keep all the changes in one CSS file with comments. Here’s what it looks like for now:

    /* 
    Importing Righteous font from Google Fonts for the site title. I still need to work here to get the Title set up; there's a Tinyhook for that.
    */
    
    @import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Righteous&display=swap');
    
    /* Setting up my beige background color  and my fonts to dark gray from Tiny's white: */ 
    
    body {
            background-color: #eee8d5;
            color: #666
    }
    
    /* Change the color of h2 link posts and dates to the red-crimson I use */
    
    h2 a, a.post-date.u-url {
            color: #8b0000;
            text-decoration: none;
    }
    
    /* Chane the color of the links, and remove underlines; when hovering over a link, underline it to indicate it's a link
    
    With links, we need to define these different instances of link selectors. These are: link, visited, hover, and active.
    
    In TinyTheme, the little "blurbs" on the main page listing the posts are inside an "e-content" div. We want to specify these links only. Otherwise, other links will be affected: */
    
     .e-content a:link, a:active, a:visited {
            color: #8b0000;
            text-decoration: none;
    }
    
    .e-content a:hover   {
    text-decoration: underline;
    }