Chris James

Chris James

@chris.whywhatsnext.com

+ indie web presence | - walled gardens + creating art to share | - commodified content + intentional futureshaping | - being tossed by algos + decentralization | - society's eggs in a single basket

42 followers100 following147 posts

I want so bad for this to result in ranch dressing soon being available to buy here in Europe. If so, I'm calling it: FIFA Peace Prize - totally worth it.

This post is unavailable.

Beautiful. There is smth profound and richly true about the 'shadow' world that runs parallel to the capitalism/GDP world. Shadow, not because it's less real, but that GDP metrics & 'the market' doesn't directly see it. But it's where real life happens. Capitalism was meant to serve it-it flipped.

mandy brown@aworkinglibrary.com

This month marks *18 years* of A Working Library. I will have more to say about what it means to blog for this long, and what I'm building towards, but for now I just want to thank everyone for reading. aworkinglibrary.com/writing/umyazu

Chris James reposted

PSA: Unfortunately the "Every accusation is a confession" rhetorical response does nothing to convince. To the ears of those across the aisle, it equals: "I know you are, but what am I?" - only snooty-soundier. It may, however be useful as an internal heuristic to create a theory-of-mind.

A leghatásosabb egészségügyi reform ami történhet az kulturális: ha végre eü dolgozók úgy kezelnék az embereket mintha emberek lennénk. De gondolom egymás között is úgy bánnak egymással mintha kasztrendszer lenne. Hány évtized mire kineveljük magunkból? 2026 van már. Már nem foghatom szovjetekre.

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.

Usenet to Blogrolls to subreddits to Bluesky custom algos to Fediverse - we keep discovering 'neighborhoods' - and then discovering how hard it is to keep them small with frictionless mass-posting. We need either limited identities per person (👎) or a posting speed-limit across your identities. (👍)

The question of 1st Am. rights to 'express' is a hairy one when code is speech and corporations are people (thus corpo AI is people) - The 21st century needs to see a new framework. With pieces of current patent and copyright/license law reconfigured to a new bucket of "compuright."

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 node - Excel: Multi-currency FIFO Lot 1/4

View full thread

... in generative AI. But without LLMs, some of this would have been impossible for me. For others, I would have needed to learn so much beyond my specific need, that it would have never been worth figuring out if what I wanted to do was even possible! 3/4

... But for the 'tool' aspect of it, I'm going to have to disagree with Steve Jobs - LLM chatbots are the real 'bicycle for the mind' if used well (Anything further is beyond a bicycle, and into self-driving car territory.) 4/4

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 node - Excel: Multi-currency FIFO Lot 1/4

... Lot tracker for tax across 2 countries (gl finding int'l accountant) - Web: Config free SSL (hosting co. doesn't make it easy) - Obsidian: Templates and Dataviews in seconds - Home device backup architecture for our large family Yes, there are huge copyright issues latent (and blatant!) 2/4

At 37, late to the party, I'm finally participating in public posting. I just remembered: 18 years ago I had a blogspot for 2 months, so to help overcome self-consciousness and mortification, I'll jump into the deep end with this post from a 19-year-old me in 2007: whywhatsnext.com/2025/06/thro...

whywhatsnext.comThrowback: Liberté, egalité, futilité…Note: This post is a “crosspost” from an old Blogspot blog I had for a couple months when I was 19. Posting online again after an 18-year hiatus – and as a tactic to overcome sel…

Untitled 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

whywhatsnext.comUntitledTesting 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

Well - on Bluesky, using Jetpack Social, it adds the Title (which for social posts is undesirable) and then I guess it's Bluesky the app that is expanding the shortlink to show the content (again). Anybody with any suggestions?

Chris James reposted

🎙️ Have you heard Future Knowledge? This new podcast from the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance explores how knowledge is created, shared, and preserved in the digital age. Listen & subscribe ⤵️ Two episodes out now: 🎧 futureknowledge.transistor.fm #internetarchive #podcast

🤣 I am SO RELIEVED that we get such a blatant and clownish example of the latent social dangers of bias-engineered LLMs. I was worried that it would first have global impact in a subtle way before the general population could recognize the threat.

apparently Elon's gotten so mad about Grok not answering questions about Afrikaners the way he wants, xAI's now somehow managed to put it into some kind of hyper-Afriforum mode where it thinks every question is about farm murders or the song "Kill the Boer"

Been bouncing around my head lately: Amend copyright law with #compuright law. The right to copy was mostly a stand-in for 'being able to do something with'. But digital copies are free and unlimited. Digital licensing stepped in to fill some gap. But compuright is next. Is there a 'there' there?

Early-mid 2000s internet saw thoughtful blogs about the future of the web as open protocols (e.g. RSS, and Twitter at first). Who can I follow that is thinking/writing about the future of the open internet and post-walled-garden sharing of ideas and content?

You are up to date.