It’s been a few years since I used Twitter routinely, having primarily moved to micro.blog a few years ago, and while it was allowed, simply cross posting over there for the followers I had who remained. The last post that went over there was about the 2024 Super Bowl.

Today, given the current ownership, the direction the platform has gone, and the November 15 deadline where xAI can by default without your consent hoover up your data for training, I have exported my data, deleted all my messages, removed my profile photo, bio info, and locked the account. I would delete it outright, but I don’t like the idea that the user name (which matches my domain name) could be recycled and used by a new user. I also did the same for my wife’s account.

I used Micro.blog’s Tweet archiving service that simply allows you to build an archive for your entire corpus of tweets. I have nearly 30,000 tweets from 2007-2024. It seemed to build it all without a problem. The archive is public, you can see the “Tweets” link in the navigation for my site. I’m not saying it’s worth reading, but I enjoyed scrolling through the first year of mine, which date from a time I had a different job, we still had snowy winters, adventures with our past dog (she passed last year), and predating our children.

I think it’s inspired me to export my Tumblr data and my old WordPress site, both of which date to that “early-aughts” time period.

Speaking of Twitter-like services, I’ve observed a massive influx of users from Twitter to Bluesky. I’m briandigital over there, if you prefer. I syndicate my posts from this site there. I ran a service on my Twitter account (before the process I described above) to find folks I followed had migrated to Bluesky, and found a bunch of folks. I ran the same service on my wife’s account two days later, and I feel like there were even more people that we had in common just 48 hours later.

Bluesky is my best hope for a site the general public can join to recreate some of the positives of the Twitter of old. I love my artsy, techie people on micro.blog and Mastodon. But for sports, or breaking news, or general cultural events, it just doesn’t compare to the golden years of Twitter. Let’s hope news and media start migrating soon.

I believe the reason other “similar” nations to the United States have longer live spans and higher happiness is that they don’t have Open Enrollment for health insurance.

Verizon: keep your plan as long as you want. Also Verizon: except when we want you to move, we will add surcharges and remove discounts until you move to a plan that’s more profitable for us.

Just keep breathing is today’s mantra.

Perhaps, if the FBI is correct, and Russia is behind bomb threats to majority-black polling sites, President Biden should allow Ukraine to use American weapons however the hell they want.

Meet the conservative women who are keeping their votes for Kamala Harris a secret— npr.org

“In political ads and campaign speeches, supporters of Vice President Harris have a message for Republican women: Your vote is private, and no one will know if you secretly vote for Harris.”

After months of covering the 45th President as a near-normal candidate, now the top of The NY Times home page has “What’s at Stake?” “Still more scandals” “Criminal Trials” “Foreign Policy was ‘Chaotic’” “Tariffs Would Rock Global Business” “Would dissolve more than 100 environmental regulations”🙄

Got home ready to take the dog out back before bed, and there’s a whole pack of coyotes out there upset to see us.

News outlets: “Job growth slows ahead of election” — missing context: Unemployment remains near historic lows.

I was just doing some experimenting with Apple Intelligence writing tools, and had a thought. After writing a multi-paragraph or multi-page piece, select all had select Writing Tools > Summary. This could give you feedback as to whether your piece buries or expresses your points.

Received a bunch of texts on the high school drop off text thread for the first time since iOS 18.1. {Snoop voice} Apple Intelligence {/Snoop voice} perfectly summarized the outcome of the conversation.

If you are an Apple Watch owner, you may want to switch to the Snoopy face. There are Halloween-specific animations today.

Each day of these Boston area brush fires has smelled different. Day 1: morning–campfire; afternoon—cigar Day 2: Lemon-scented floor cleaner

Freddie Freeman is incredible.

I want to know what’s burning in Middleton. It honest-to-goodness smells like a cigar in our backyard right now.

Keeping an eye on the air quality, and may not let my kids attend their sports practices this afternoon. A good way to visualize your air quality, and location of fires is with the Breezometer web site.

Wild fires burning all around the Boston metro. We have one burning a few miles down the road in Middleton. Smells like a camp fire in my backyard and I can even detect it in my closed up house. Just replaced my HEPA filter media this morning, and I have that running right next to my desk. 🔥💨

Washington Post owner, and billionaire Jeff Bezos published an Op-ed about how there’s a no quid pro quo for him blocking the WaPo Editorial Board from endorsing Kamala Harris for U.S. President in 2024.

The first thing all the critics point out is that the timing was terrible in that we’re just over a week out from the election.

I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.

Timing was "poor"? Bezos is a very perceptive guy. I am not naive enough to think he would not understand how this would cast his business in a very negative light.

The next incredibly suspicious thing is that the CEO of Jeff’s rocket company, who has NASA contracts, met with Trump on the day of the (non?) announcement…

Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with (…) Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out (…) But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning.

Didn't know his rocket company was meeting with Trump? Would you meet with one of the world’s biggest lightning rods, who might soon have sway over millions or hundreds of millions in government contracts with your business without telling your company’s owner? Especially when your boss owns the Washington Post? I’d fire an employee if he met with Trump without telling me.

Come to think of it, I’d probably fire someone who lead to the loss of 200,000 subscribers over the course of a single weekend.

Can you fire yourself? Asking for a billionaire.

If I made a decision that lost my company 200,000 subscribers in a couple of days, I’d be instantly fired.

Two parents with three children is just hard. We need to restructure our economy so families can survive on one average income, so that a parent has the option to “stay home” should they choose. There are traditional gender roles here, so we would need to be intentional and considerate.

Seeing snow flurries this morning. Forecast has Halloween, a couple days from now, at 80°F. this-is-fine.gif

I would be remiss to not post a brief remembrance of Phil Lesh, the virtuosic musician, best known as the bass player and one of the composers for the Grateful Dead. Many credit Phil with bringing the bass guitar out of the backgound in popular music.

The Grateful Dead did not click with me until my mid/late-30s. As a big live music fan, most of my favorite musicians adored the Dead, so I found it surprising that they did not appeal to me.

One day, I noticed that the official live recordings of the Dead were available on the music streaming services. I thought I’d give it another shot. I tried to find “the best show recording”, and found a 1972 concert from Oregon that was beloved. I listened to all seven 3 hours of it and it finally clicked. Once I had decoded the complexity, I could now enjoy decades worth of recordings.

Shortly after, Prime Video released a multi-part Grammy-nominated documentary, Long Strange Trip which I would encourage anyone with an interest in music to watch. The Dead were such an incredible phenomenon on top of being world-renown musicians. The soundtrack is an excellent collection of some of their best live tracks all in one place. Still, that better serves to point you to excellent shows, as listening to a specific show all the way through as a single piece of art is really the best way to appreciate their craft.

If you’d like an example of Phil’s playing, composing and even singing, checkout Box of Rain. He composed it with Robert Hunter for Phil’s dying father.

Perhaps Phil’s passing will lead to others to discover their music for the first time. Fare The Well, Phil.

An excellent piece from @gruber@mastodon.social on the transparent cowardice of owners of the LA Times and Washington Post, and their anticipatory obedience to the orange potential autocrat. Profiles in Cowardice: Owner Jeff Bezos and Publisher William Lewis of The Washington Post

Freddie Freeman = Kirk Gibson

This is great advice I used to follow before APFS. I’m glad to hear it’s seamless again, and I should get back to doing this.

Use a cloned drive to recover from Mac failures