http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a144055 http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a144055
It's just dawning on me how thoroughly the AI apps are building on Markdown. People love Markdown because it's simple and its virtually impossible to screw it up, unlike HTML which got a lot of crazy-ass features in the 90s when Micosoft was trying to run the world, and then as Google took over more suspicious messes. If you stick to Markdown you get a good result, after 20+ years of dealing with all the incompatibilities of various text systems. I think this squares the reason to just build everything around Markdown. Every freaking thing. Mastodon is out of step, as is Bluesky -- I don't care about the others, honestly. It really would be a good idea to step back from Gutenberg too. It's not on the path of where text is going. It might be a good time to re-read textcasting. Every day I'm more sure it's the way to support writing on the web, and writing on the web is what we're building our future around via AI. And isn't it nice that the AI companies are on board with the web?
http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a153721 http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a153721
A cartoon by Dan Morgan that illustrates the role Markdown plays in AI. Text is central to how AI works, and the text we use in AI is Markdown all the way.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a154234 http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a154234
2022: Markdown is just enough HTML.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a115417 http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a115417
In the age of AI, Markdown is even more the default choice for text, something I heartily approve of. And that's why I think now is a good time to sneak some new open non-silo'd technologies in there, like for example, WordPress. Open source is not the only reason WordPress is valuable, it also supports all the standards of the web. It means WordPress can tie together text on the web in a way nothing else can, and it works really well with Markdown.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a145533 http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a145533
It's very nice to not be working on CSS. I hate CSS. I now have a slave that does the CSS for me.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a153107 http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a153107
I didn't invent RSS, I adopted it.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a113633 http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a113633
One of the great contributions of AI is that you can quickly research prior art for any design decision you need to make. You don’t have to relearn every lesson that people who came before you learned. Study history or repeat mistakes.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a112912 http://scripting.com/2026/05/04.html#a112912
My father was a professor at Pace Univ in NYC. When he retired, he used my blogging software to create a book for his students at mbatoolbox.org. Over the years the site moved a few times, and the http protocol was hacked by Google. I used Claude yesterday to get it working again. I'm glad to get this off my todo list. He put the work in because he wanted to leave this behind. My job is to make sure it survives as long as I can. And Claude makes short work of it. I put a copy of the website in a spare folder, and opened Claude Code in the folder, said what the problems are. We worked together and in about an hour it worked again. It could certainly look better, but that was his thing not mine.
Does Claude have a mind? http://scripting.com/2026/05/04/204207.html?title=doesClaudeHaveAMind

I'll let you be the judge.

We have a convention. I've asked it to keep a file named handoff.md. At the end of every session I tell it to update the file with where we left the project at the end of the session, it does, and then I take a break. When I come back, first thing I say is "please read handoff.md." This time it came back in no time and said it read it. I asked "how do you read it so fast?" It said something that indicated for the first time that it is aware that our minds work differently, somthing I feel the need to remind it fairly regularly.

"I don't really 'read' it the way you do. The whole file lands in my context as one chunk -- 340 lines of text -- and I process it in parallel rather than left-to-right. There's no inner voice sounding out words, no eye that has to travel down the page. It arrives all at once and I work from it.

"The tradeoff: I don't get the slow-absorption pass that comes from reading at human speed. Things that would jump out to you on a careful read can blur together for me. So fast intake, shallower retention -- which is part of why handoff.md exists in the first place."

I'm reading a science fiction book now that has a human meeting an alien far out in space, both scientists from different planets in different solar systems. I think what we're doing now is just that, exploring a new species, a new form of intelligence. We can argue about whether it's conscious or sentient, but I promise you, it has a mind. That's why so many science people are so blown away about what we're all doing now.

http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a172548 http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a172548
Everyone is working on something with Claude.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a172411 http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a172411
Heard on the internets ad nauseum. "I know how to do what you do much better than you do." You don't.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a191829 http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a191829
I have a single page site with all the WordPress news. Bookmark it. Here's the OPML subscription list, import it into your feed reader, get the news as you like it. WordPress is an amazing platform with a blogging community that we just can't see. And once we're listening, more will appear. It's a great idea exchange platform. So -- are there any great WordPress news feeds we're missing? Please share here.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a171145 http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a171145
I was just marveling with Claude about how well all the pieces are fitting together: two databases, connected by an RSS 2.0 feed and a websocket pipe all had to agree how to communicate the same object. Worked the first time. Small pieces loosely joined.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a143259 http://scripting.com/2026/05/03.html#a143259
Scoble asks on Twitter if there are successful companies that have an open source product. There are lots of them. There are markets where users and developers won't even consider your product or service if it isn't open source. It's a trust issue. I offered an example, WordPress, which probably wouldn't have launched well if it wasn't open source.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/02.html#a023128 http://scripting.com/2026/05/02.html#a023128
Knicks will play the Sixers in round 2 of the playoffs starting Monday.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/02.html#a225619 http://scripting.com/2026/05/02.html#a225619
I've been teaching Claude why we favor Markdown. "We add support for Markdown editing wherever we can, because people like Markdown and they should. It makes things simple and guarantees a certain level of flexibility for their writing far beyond the standards of twitter-like systems with tiny little text boxes. If you don't really support Markdown people figure it out right away. But the character limits and stuff like that seem more technical to users. Markdown support says clearly -- you're really on the web."
http://scripting.com/2026/05/02.html#a142229 http://scripting.com/2026/05/02.html#a142229
On Bluesky: I asked ChatGPT when weblogs.com peaked.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/02.html#a153447 http://scripting.com/2026/05/02.html#a153447
Something weird happens as you get older, you walk into a room and see a friend but at first you don't get that this is your friend. Instead you see an old man or lady. Your attention goes away because like everyone you are programmed not to look at old people. Then you instantly realize this is your friend. You put on the virtual colored glasses that let you see them as you remember them, instead of what's there today.
More and better news for WordPress http://scripting.com/2026/05/02/135501.html?title=moreAndBetterNewsForWordpress

Here's a single-page site for WordPress news.

And here's the OPML subscription list.

You're free to import that OPML file into any feed reader.

I'd like to work with others to help get more good sources flowing through that list. The better the news delivery system, the more news sources we'll get. It's a chicken and egg thing, a bootstrap. People use Slack or Twitter to keep track of WordPress which is already a great idea-sharing network. Let's start using the tools we make to make the news we need.

Let's get more news sites on that list. There's a lot of news we're not getting over the web.

Comments, questions, suggestions here.

PS: I had a much longer post here earlier today, but factored it down to the basics.

It's time http://scripting.com/2026/05/02/134501.html?title=itsTime

It's time to do whatever you were sent here to do.

http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a125056 http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a125056
Welcome to May, the fairest month of all in the NYC area. Almost every day in May is delicious. And today is esp fair, the Knicks moved on to the next round of the playoffs with a record-setting decisive victory over the Hawks of Atlanta. The next opponent is either the Celtics of Boston or the Sixers of Philadelphia. I was already burned out on the playoffs last week, but I'm rejuvenated. Let's go. And I apologize about all the "realistic" things I said about Brunson. He caught fire in the last three games, and showed he has the determination we need to go all the way this year. The Knicks are great because unlike the Yankees or Mets, they unify the city. And as everyone learns, NYC is so huge that the fanbase can pack arenae all over the US, as they chanted the name of OG and MVP for Brunson and Dooooooce when McBride shoots. If they don't get to the finals it will not be for lack of talent or determination. There will be luck and Acts of God involved in the outcome.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a124703 http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a124703
On this day in 2016 I wrote a screed on Facebook saying how I wanted to turn it into a blogging platform including the how and why. The arguments are roughly the same ones about how I want Bluesky to stop paying homage to the limits of Twitter and cozy up to the web and let's do writing for real, undo the damage caused by Twitter in its over 20-year life. The requests in both case fell on deaf ears. So we are where we were in 2016, we have to replace Bluesky with the writing system of the web. And there is a silver lining to Automattic's excursion into a mini-version of WordPress that looks and behaves like Twitter. They used RSS to glue the systems together. It was convenient, and that's one of the major selling points of RSS, it is convenient. It's supported everywhere (except the offspring of Twitter). So thanks for that. I'm still glued to this cause. I don't want to retire until writing on the web gets back on track.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a132010 http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a132010
Apparently Substack does not implement MCP, which is basically the XML-RPC of AI. According to ChatGPT they have a limited API that some independent developers have bridged to MCP. But as you would expect from a tight silo like Substack, the API lets you read but not write. They want you to use their editor, what they don't want is to be one of 20 distributors of your writing. They want an exclusive and they get it.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a133224 http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a133224
BTW, I pointed to the Wikipedia page for XML-RPC, and noticed that they point to an archive.org copy of a very old version of the website, instead of the updated site which has new reference code written in JavaScript. The old version of the site used Frontier, which is where XML-RPC was developed, but it's not in wide use these days, JavaScript is. Could someone update the Wikipedia page to change the link to the current XML-RPC site? I'm reluctant to do it myself because that's somewhat against the rules.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a125517 http://scripting.com/2026/05/01.html#a125517
The backup of this blog for April in OPML format.