@jilltxt.bsky.social Happy birthday, I believe.

Speaker after speaker at this memorial is explicitly likening him to Jesus Christ. (Slain in early 30s, etc.) Don't know how this goes over with people raised in other faiths. Having been raised as a church-going Protestant Christian, I say: What the hell! This is not how Christians talk.

The distilled essence of America in late August 2025.

Yesterday's watercolor practice: winter evening at Black Rock Beach.

Speaking of the Summer Festival of Artisanal Software, here's Andy Brice (Easy Data Transform) on 20 years of successful software. @andybrice.bsky.social successfulsoftware.net/2025/02/21/2... artisanalsoftwarefestival.com

The constitutional order I was taught in law school—which was only six years ago—is largely gone

Generosity and abundance are wonderful virtues. For a time, it seemed that the Web and the Internet were exemplars of these virtues. That turned out to be a mistake: the Web lent itself to villainy. from my new book THINKING WITH TINDERBOX eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

From a reader on my THINKING WITH TINDERBOX: I just finished Thinking with Tinderbox and wanted to say: what a joy to read! ....One idea that stayed with me is the notion of generosity in software — that great tools sometimes surprise us, go beyond the expected. eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

Software should be: ❧ Built for people ❧ Built by people ❧ Crafted in workshops ❧ Savage ❧ Inspired from the artisanal software section of my new book THINKING WITH TINDERBOX eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

THINKING WITH TINDERBOX:Generosity & Abundance “Tinderbox aims to be a maximum viable product, the most capable and flexible system we can manage to support and maintain. This stance was, in part, forced on Tinderbox by its natural audience of writers and researchers.” eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

😡😡😡😡

From my new book THINKING WITH TINDERBOX “In this chapter, we turn from notes acting on other notes to examine how notes act on us — how we can design an environment that serves us well, promotes our well-being, and perhaps encourages us to be better.” eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

My Sydney paper is available at last! Amiability and the Web: Lessons from Red Vienna and the Origin of Computing dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Breaking: HHS is canceling a $600 million contract with Moderna to develop, test, and license vaccines for flu strains that could trigger future pandemics, including the dangerous H5N1 bird flu virus.

HOLY SHIT. The ban on any federal funding gender-affirming care includes stripping ACA plans of covering it as the essential care it is. I have an ACA plan. I live in a blue state, but I am about to lose access to treatments I need. We told you this was coming www.advocate.com/politics/ant...

Belgium’s Royal Palace says Princess Elisabeth is waiting to find out whether she can return to Harvard for her second year after the Trump administration revoked the university's ability to enroll international students.

“Two naturalists might not share a common language, but both will know that a Cyanocitta cristata is a big blue bird, though one thinks of it as a Blue Jay and the other has always known it as a Blåskrikje.” from THINKING WITH TINDERBOX (Ch 9: Streams) eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

“New software is fun to write. Everything is possible, the sky is the limit. Working with old software can be stressful, because old software brings with it a legacy of old decisions.” Chapter 11 of THINKING WITH TINDERBOX talks about Staying Young. eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

PBS executives forced the makers of an Art Spiegelman documentary to cut derogatory mentions of Donald Trump from the film before it could air. “If PBS isn’t going to stand up for free speech, who is?” [documentary.org]

Stream operators in Tinderbox transform text into a form that is more useful for you. They have been unloved, because they touch on questions of language that have puzzled thinkers for a very long time THINKING WITH TINDERBOX chapter 9. eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

“The placement of notes in a Tinderbox map often suggests not only how notes re- late to each other, but also how subsequent notes might be added to those already present.” Maps that rearrange themselves is the topic of Ch. 8 in THINKING WITH TINDERBOX. eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

from THINKING WITH TINDERBOX: 19th-century mathematics discovered a strange but consistent form of geometry: as things get more and more distance from the center, they get smaller and smaller....This geometry works well for visualizing big link networks. eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

from THINKING WITH TINDERBOX: how to tidy actions: • replace comments with code • extract duplicated code to functions • extract magic numbers to variables, functions • move connected vars to configuration note • simplify conditionals • extract conditions to dictionary eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

Many of the unsolicited pizza deliveries have gone to judges presiding over lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s policies.

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Latin translation: “He has eaten our dogs”

Chapter 6 of THINKING WITH TINDERBOX takes up “tidyings” — small refactoring moves advocated by @KentBeck (Tidy First?) for programming, but easily applied to notetaking. I kick off with some common cases: • Extract Attributes • Clarify Symmetries • Magic Numbers eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

THINKING WITH TINDERBOX has a chapter of ‘Influences and Other Paths,” the systems that influenced Tinderbox. Sketchpad, EMACS, VIKI/VKB, NLS/Augment, Agenda, Chandler, Gateway, and more. We can learn a lot from old software! eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

“The map view and its relatives draw from a limited range of visual traditions. ... If an office building “must be every inch a proud and soaring thing” [Sullivan, 1896], what should we expect of this map, this idea plane unfettered by material physics?” eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

“The nature of the digital flows from the core properties of Turing’s universal computing machine: it is a computing machine that can simulate any other computing machine as precisely as you require.” eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

From the first chapter of THINKING WITH TINDERBOX eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th... Why might we want a tool for thought? • To remember • To connect • To answer questions • To preserve • To control • To augment ourselves • To converse • To understand people • To liberate

One of the most shocking things I have read for a while: t.co/lg46ijHLDF

THINKING WITH TINDERBOX Our thinking about software design is muddy. We demand that our computers be “friendly.” We don’t ask our oven to be friendly: we want it to be hot. (An unfriendly oven might burn your cake or your fingers.) eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

Thinking With Tinderbox An all-new ebook on the design of things with which to think. 312 pages, with a foreword by Michael Becker. You can save a few dollars right now, as we test the delivery system. eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Th...

I need a solid review article on advanced cognition in corvids. Anyone know where to find it?

How does "grace" as in "Amazing" relate to "grace" as in dance?

Just out: Tinderbox 10.1! www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/ Visualize and analyze your ideas.

All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.

Part on of a series (I hope): A Newer Hypertext View Back to the Information City! www.markbernstein.org/Jan25/NewerV... www.markbernstein.org/elements/Hug...

Gotta love George Furnas. From CHI ’97: “Consider next a k-dimensional hypercube (not pictured)...”

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Team #Tinderbox: there's a new backstage release!

I heard this is a good place to talk about taxing the rich, breaking up big tech, and ending Washington corruption.

Pondering novel hypertext maps for Tinderbox www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/. This sketch fits 20 distinct notes into a compact but legible space. Tinderbox customers who join the Backstage Program www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/Ba... get advance looks and opportunities for input.

I expensed my cab ride home. I'm tired so I put "korea coup" down in the expense code field.

Finally poking at Obsidian, which lots of y'all recommend. I'm finding it interesting! I use Tinderbox for deep thinking, planning & research; Notion for cross-device quick notes, todos & dynamic lists. I lean on automations in both REALLY heavily. (con't)

Last chance to save $100 during the current #Tinderbox sale. Tinderbox is a MAXIMUM viable product tool for visualizing, analyzing, and organizing your notes. Powerful maps, unmatched outlines, and innovative Gaudí View are just the headlines. www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/

This sounds fantastic + fun! Learn by watching Mike problem-solve by sketchnoting in real time. 🤩

“I heard a fascinating paper about a study of the health-care expenditures of William Cecil[,] Lord Burghley, a councillor to Elizabeth I.” I think the comma in brackets is awkward. Can I dispense with it, or not?