Not quite as fun as the first book, but it’s just as absurd and chaotic.
I started reading at the beginning of October, in the final weeks of the 2024 election, thinking: wow, this is exactly what I need right now! As things went along it got more cynical, and the story read like a bunch of totally disconnected threads, each with its own flavor of absurdist despair, and I just felt like I do not need this book right now.
And then at the end, everything came together in a moment of catharsis, and I found myself thinking yes, this is exactly what I need right now.
Life is beautiful. And life is stupid.* And we could all benefit from a read-through of Gorecannon’s list of Unkillable Facts.
Same basics as the built-in Android launcher: a home screen for app icons, optional additional screens, grouping multiple apps in a folder – and it doesn’t push a “news” screen or force a Google search bar on you!
Unfortunately it’s not quite ready for prime time. As of version 1.0.0:
It doesn’t rotate. Always running in portrait mode is fine for my phone, but I often use my tablet in landscape mode.
Widget support needs a lot more work. Sometimes they disappear, sometimes they get stuck in the background of all screens, and sometimes they just disappear the moment I add them.
I’ll probably try it out again after the next release, though!
★★★★★ One of my must-have plugins on WordPress. I know the block editor is a major effort, but I still find Gutenberg gets in my way more than it helps. For me, enabling the Classic Editor is a necessity. (Not needed in ClassicPress, which doesn’t have a block editor.)
★★★★★ Simple and useful: it just converts #hashtags to post tags. This works great on several of my sites. (Discontinued but still available.)
Editing and Admin
ClassicPress Directory Integration (CP only)
★★★★★
I don’t know why this isn’t included by default, because this is what makes it possible to browse and install ClassicPress plugins and themes from your dashboard! After installing it, you’ll be able to use both the WordPress and ClassicPress directories. I do have trouble searching for some keywords, but that seems to be an issue with the directory itself.
Another of my must-haves, and I was so relieved to find it works on ClassicPress too. I’m still using the local checker, not the cloud version, because I’d rather keep the backend data here if I can, but it does a great job checking and classifying all the links on your site and making them searchable. And it provides good suggestions for cleanup: If the page is redirected, it’ll show you the final URL and let you choose to replace it…everywhere. With actual broken links, you can type in a replacement, just remove the link, or let it find the most recent Wayback Machine copy. And you can do any of these for an individual link, or bulk-select a bunch and let it update every link to that other blog you link to all the time that moved from www.example.com to example.com last month.
This is actually the main thing I miss when working on sites in Eleventy. I haven’t found a link checker for static sites or folders full of markdown that’s as good as this one.
Incredibly powerful search tool for your dashboard, especially useful if, for example, you’ve moved to a new server (or a new site structure), or someone’s changed their name, or any other reason you might need to update a lot of things at once in the same way. Risky too - make sure you preview any replacements first! (Sadly, this one isn’t compatible with ClassicPress.)
A simple stats package that runs on your own site, so you aren’t sending visitor data to some third party service just to count page views. Not as full-featured as Jetpack Stats, but much more privacy-friendly! Good for the basic use case of “where are most of my visitors coming from and what are the reading the most?”
Good for the main use cases: restore from backup, and moving posts between blogs. Unfortunately the image import doesn’t seem to work (WordPress 6.3 with plugin 0.8.1), which makes it a pain to clean up image-heavy posts.
One thing I’d like to do with this that I can’t is to import another copy of a cross-post and merge the comment threads. As it is, the best I can do is import the duplicate copy and then use another plugin (or dig into the database) to move the comments around.
A related posts plugin that runs locally on your server instead of calling out to a cloud service like Jetpack does. Highly configurable, privacy-friendly, can show thumbnails or just titles, can cache results or calculate them on the fly. Comparable to YARPP, which is also good, but this one comes up with better results on my site.
Does a good job of catching comment spam. But it’s a centralized cloud service, so you need to deal with getting an API key, commercial/personal licences, possibly paid subscriptions, and connecting to Automattic’s servers whenever someone leaves a comment. (Apparently it’s compatible with ClassicPress, but I’ve only used it on WordPress.)
Privacy-friendly spam filter for your comments. Works quite well without calling out to a remote service, and doesn’t require your visitors to be using JavaScript. (Seriously, I posted a test comment using Dillo and it showed up in the moderation queue!) No need to deal with API keys or licensing.
There are some optional tactics that will call a remote service for things like language identification, but so far it’s doing the job fine without them!
The only problem I’ve had with it is that it only acts on comments/pings to an individual post or page. It won’t protect a contact form, for instance.
(Almost) seamlessly connects your blog to the Fediverse. It doesn’t auto-post to another server, it turns your WordPress blog into its own instance like a Mastodon server, so people can follow and reply to your blog directly from their Mastodon/GoToSocial/whatever account. Images are attached to the Fediverse view, and remote replies show up locally as comments. People can boost your post directly instead of just linking to it. And they’re still adding more capabilities with each release.
(It doesn’t let your blog follow other Fediverse accounts, but it can integrate with the WP Friends plugin, which does.)
Note that a lot of the settings aren’t in the plugin config page, they’re put in the relevant categories. Followers show up on your user profile. You ban an instance by putting it in the general comments blocklist.
Simple tool that keeps track of cross-posts. Remote links are shown as icons in a post’s footer and marked up with microformats’ u-syndication so that IndieWeb-compatible software will recognize that this one’s the source and the other refers back to it.
It can also create remote posts on Micro.blog, Bridgy Fed, or several sites supported by Bridgy. I’ve had trouble getting Bridgy to cross-post photos to Flickr, and for a while it had problems sending some formatting to Bluesky, but those are issues with Bridgy, not with this plugin. Unfortunately that also means I don’t use the feature as much as I might otherwise.
At its core, Jetpack is about connecting your self-hosted WordPress site to the WordPress.com infrastructure so you can use its cloud services*. And it does those things well! I’ve used it for related posts, subscriptions, stats, contact forms, email subscriptions, social media connections and probably more over the years. There are free and paid tiers, and the free tier has been more than sufficient for anything I’ve wanted to use it for. And you can deactivate most modules if you aren’t using them, so if you want to switch some features over to another plugin, you can keep the rest of your Jetpack modules.
The key thing to remember is that almost everything Jetpack provides is running on WordPress’s network. If you’re ok with that, great! It’s an effective solution! If you prefer to keep things local, or if you’re required to by policy, or if you simply don’t trust WordPress and/or Automattic, you’ll want to look elsewhere. I finally dropped it because I was feeling guilty sending visitor data to a third party for statistics, and that’s one of the few modules you can’t turn off.
Some alternatives I’ve found that run locally and work well include:
My personal blog had so few email subscribers I didn’t even bother looking for a replacement, though I think I’m going to have to find something for Speed Force.
Optimization
Classic SEO (CP only)
★★★☆☆
Provides all the features I was using Yoast for on WordPress – sitemaps, canonical URLs, metadata, etc…and a whole lot of actual SEO stuff that I don’t use, and don’t want to use. It does the job! But it’s really cluttered.
Major speedup for the typical use case. I’ve been using this caching plugin since before Automattic took over management. Since I don’t get very much in the way of comments on my site, the vast majority of hits are anonymous and don’t change what should be on the page next time, so a static cache helps a lot.
I don’t use most of the “SEO” features. Mainly it was a convenient choice to handle sitemaps, an RSS footer linking back to the source, canonical URLs and metadata for link previews. It’s good at all of these! But it’s also way overkill for what I want to use it for. (Not compatible with ClassicPress - I’m currently using Classic SEO as a replacement.)
ClassicPress is a fork of WordPress, launched by people who couldn’t stand the block editor. For a while it was mostly WordPress Without Gutenberg, but they’ve been doing work lately to improve media management and clean up some of the older code that’s just kind of grown organically over the years.
I’ve experimented with it a bit off and on for a couple of years, and put in the effort to ensure my two (veryniche) plugins were compatible. A couple of weeks ago I decided to finally migrate some of my blogs, and it’s gone really smoothly!
Pros
Stable, and familiar to anyone who has used WordPress.
Nice media features including a column that lets you know where an image is actually being used, even if it’s not attached to a post.
Easy migration from WordPress. You upload a plugin that checks for plugins or themes with known compatibility problems, then press a button and it installs ClassicPress.
Most WordPress plugins and themes that don’t rely on blocks will work with it.
A ClassicPress plugin directory and theme directory are available (though you currently have to install a plugin to access it from the dashboard).
It feels snappier so far, but that’s just subjective.
Plugin developers don’t have to deal with Subversion!
Cons
The community and plugin/theme ecosystems are a lot smaller.
Plugins and themes that do rely on blocks (or tie deeply into WordPress code that’s diverged since the fork) won’t work. But you can usually find something comparable to do the job.
Some plugins that are listed on both the ClassicPress and WordPress directories are out of date on the ClassicPress side.
Plugin developers do have to deal with GitHub.
My Experience
Like I said, migration was super-easy. I did a couple of local sites first, then my wife’s occasional blog, Feral Tomatoes. Then I had to do some research on plugin compatibility before migrating the behemoth** that is K-Squared Ramblings, which turned out to be a lot simpler than I expected!
Wordfence Security…once I turned off the scan options for modified WordPress core files, anyway. (It thought my site was reaaaaally broken at first!) There’s some debate over how well it works with CP, so I’m going to be keeping an eye on it to see if I run into any other problems.
Various IndieWeb and ActivityPub plugins are reported to be compatible, and they didn’t deactivate when I converted the site, but I haven’t really tested them yet.
IndieWeb
Webmention
WebFinger
NodeInfo(2)
Incompatible plugins:
Search Regex. I haven’t used it in a while, though, so I figure I’ll wait until I need it before looking for a replacement.
Yoast SEO. It’s overkill*** for what I want anyway, so I don’t feel too bad about replacing it. The Classic SEO plugin includes all the features I’m using Yoast for, and W3P SEO offers most of them. I may still switch to a collection of smaller, focused plugins in the long run, but I was able to migrate immediately by just swapping in Classic SEO!
I might still move the older posts to Eleventy, but at least it’s on a simpler platform now than it used to be, and it’s shown no sign of new problems yet.
That leaves one more gigantic, complicated blog: Speed Force. It’s got some additional complications like co-authors so that more than one person can be credited on a single post, and subscriptions through Jetpack. So it’s going to need some more research before I migrate that one.
Diedrich used to be my favorite coffee chain. They were relatively small, and mostly based in Orange County – in 2005 they had a something like 20-25 cafes there, plus two each in LA and San Diego… and three each in Houston and Denver.*
The coffee was great. The atmosphere was great. I used to go to the Tustin and UCI locations all the time with friends and for takeout. The PCH location in Laguna Beach was a great place to hang out after the city’s fireworks show at the beach, have something warm (the ocean breeze is usually cool at night, even in July) and wait for traffic to die down. The one at the Irvine Spectrum was a post-movie and post-book-shopping hangout spot until the Barnes & Noble next to it moved (and added a Starbucks). Diedrich was off in a corner, and without the bookstore traffic it closed.
They also had a bit of an attitude. The cup sleeves were labeled “Of course it’s hot!” They sold T-shirts and travel mugs with slogans like “Not so big” and “Venti, Schmenti.” (I need to check whether that mug is still kicking around somewhere. I know I still had it in 2017.)
In 2006, after founder Martin Diedrich stepped down to focus on a single artisan coffee house in Newport Beach, Starbucks bought all the company-owned locations. There were a couple of franchised kiosks and one of the Texas cafes, but that was it. Over the next few years, Starbucks shut down or converted them all. Sometimes both: the one in Tustin had always been busy as a Diedrich. After it had been assimilated, though, I never saw it full, and Starbucks closed it in 2008. Amusingly, Martin Diedrich opened a second Kéan location there, and it’s still going strong 15 years later.
The last two Diedrich locations after the buyout were both in Irvine. Peet’s bought the one across from UCI in 2008, and the one at Barranca and Culver some time later. Within a year the Diedrich website was only handling online orders, and even that had disappeared by 2015.
I hate that Starbucks bought an (apparently) successful business and ran it into the ground. But I’m glad Kéan is still around, even if it’s too far from where I live now to visit regularly.
Notes
*It’s always funny when a chain has a whole bunch of locations in a smallish region, and then one or two halfway across the continent or even farther. Around the same time Diedrich’s was at its height, Kelly’s Coffee had something like 35 locations in Southern California, a handful in neighboring states…and one in Riyadh!
Wiki-Walking to Related Companies
Everything above is from my own memory or from blog posts I made across 2005 through 2015 (the later ones are completely incorporated into this page now, and I’m redirecting them here). Except I couldn’t remember which year the company sold off the retail business. So I checked out the Wikipedia article.
Apparently the company owned the US franchise rights for Gloria Jean from 1999, when they bought Coffee People, through 2009, when they sold the rights (back?) to Gloria Jean International. And then Green Mountain Coffee Roasters outbid Peet’s to buy what was left of the company. And Green Mountain is now…Keurig Dr. Pepper???
Coffee People appears to have been local chain in the Pacific Northwest, which explains why I wasn’t familiar with them, but now that I see the name again, I do remember it coming up in articles about the Starbucks buyout.
