Once I add the ability to embed arbitrary blog posts from other blogs on here it's over. I'm gonna be reblogging like a wild animal. Y'all are gonna have your eyes blown clean outta your heads.
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I love that people are thinking about how to make chunks of the web reusable in standalone contexts, but I really truly deeply with that all the solutions like htmx and web components weren't so hopelessly intrinsically tied to JavaScript. I cut my teeth on the ideals of the semantic web and I strongly believe that a web page should be fundamentally usable with JavaScript disabled. For highly interactive applications I concede this as a lost cause, but it breaks my heart to think that personal websites and blogs, which are essentially plain hypertext, are being built on technologies that simply can't work without scripting.
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A triumph of anti-fascist filmmaking that never allows itself to become complacent or moralistic. Although the film is structured around the personal failings of Clerici, it's not a pillory. It's deeply interested in his own battle with himself, between the part of him that longs to be normal and the part which the Quadris catch glimpses of that aspires to be a whole person. It is the tragedy of a man who has choices and chooses wrong again and again.
Despite this tragic bent, it's also dryly humorous. The set design, particularly in the scenes set in fascist Italy, is quietly but deeply satirical: huge useless empty spaces, people shuffling around lugging gargantuan fascist statues, marble so pervasive it becomes a parody of elegance. Tacky prints mounted like fine art. A room drenched in walnuts. The film is clear: fascism is deadly but it's also ridiculous. For all its supposed grandeur, it was only ever a bully dressing like a Roman to make himself feel big.
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I added the ability to automatically pull down and embed Cohost posts. I just paste the URL on its own line and my automation takes care of the rest (checking it in so it doesn't need to make a separate request each time the build runs). Hopefully this will be the first of many sites I do that with: I want to see if I can integrate the notion of the Tumblr-style "reblog" with a more traditional site-specific blog structure.
In celebration, please enjoy a post I still think back on and chuckle:
Breaking: In an effort to push video game enthusiasts to take graphical fidelity less seriously, the Academy of the English Language issued a ruling today that the term "4K" will be officially pronounced "forkie". This ruling is effective immediately for governmental sources, but non-government entities have until the third of February to update their materials before facing fines from the FCC, CRTC, Ofcom, or other relevant regulatory body.
Immediately afterwards, California-based studio 2K Games issued a press release saying "Fuck dude we really dodged a bullet there. Goddamn can you imagine"
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Cohost in memoriam: the friends and family beta
Look, I know only a handful of people actually experienced this first-hand[1]. But I think it's worth remembering anyway, because it set the stage for everything that came after. We[2] joined because we wanted to support our pals and we hoped this could one day really become our fourth website. But we quickly realized that we were actually using Cohost as social media. Most of us came from Twitter—it was still Twitter at the time!—and it was immediately viscerally clear that Cohost was better.
It had so few features at the time, no one had made any tools for it, and the stylesheets would just refuse to load with distressing frequency. But the posts kept rolling in, jokes and essays and so so much marveling at the unforseen positive effects of not having numbers anymore. I really think this early era both established the culture of the site and helped people understand how and why to spread the word among those who would appreciate it.
You might say "there weren't enough of those in the end", but I didn't think that's right. I really think given another five years of runway and maybe a payment processor with its head less to its ass, Cohost could have become sustainable. It's not for everyone, but the people it's for love it with a burning passion. These past few weeks have demonstrated that in spades.
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I've finally become sick enough of Firefox's horseshit that I've begun using LibreWolf. turns out it's pretty nice! you can even set it up to sync with your Firefox settings without much trouble
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this thing has comments now! click through to a post to see 'em. maybe say hey
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Cohost in memoriam: only carbon now
On a site that I've seen described as "a retirement home for the greatest posters of our generation"[1], there's only shitpost that truly shook it to its foundations. It's not my favorite @willow post, it's the only post that went so viral on here that it seemed like the entire website was riffing on it for days afterwards. (not to mention permanently altering my vocabulary). You know it, you love it[2], it's the obituary for Ryan Reynolds:
oh geez, just heard the news out of vancouver. ryan reynolds was torched to death by a beam of light from the heavens. yeah the report described him as being “only carbon now” which strikes me as a little insensitive but i guess that’s the modern world for you.
It's actually kind of shocking to me that the phrase "he is only carbon now" doesn't appear as such in the original post, because that's how I (mis)quote it constantly all the time.
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This is the first of probably a number of my posts that I'm directly porting from my Cohost. This was, to my knowledge, the first "CSS crime" on the site. I made it when I realized how broad the set of inline styles the site allowed, and this was the cleverest thing I could think to do with it. Others would quickly outstrip me, but I'm very pleased to have opened the floodgates.
eggbug playground
move your cursor to let him play
edit: now Firefox compatible, thanks @ticky!
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Cohost in memoriam: 80 Days in 80 Days
I fully forgot about this until @authorx reminded me just now, but back in 2022 I ran an 80 Days race called "80 Days in 80 Days" where the conceit was that each player could only spend a single in-game day per real-time day (for a game that's only supposed to take a few hours for a leisurely run). It's not the sort of thing that could only take place on Cohost, but it's the sort of thing where only Cohost would get into it as whole-heartedly as it did. People were emailing me their updates in full character as Passepartout, with @Zandra even sending her updates in French. @RatBaby won the race in only 36 days. We had more than 30 participants, over a third of whom made back to London.
The website I made is still up, complete with an interactive globe showing everyone's routes and a bunch of fun achievements I came up with. What a lovely little moment that was. Thanks again to everyone who joined me for it.
