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happy 5th birthday xkit rewritten! (counted from version 0.0.4, the first one that actually did something)

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I don't have time to write up a post about this but: I think it's an interesting litmus test what you think is wrong—if you think anything is wrong!—with this picture. mine is something like "corporate ownership is indefinite and uncapped in profit"

article: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-07-31/you-can-insider-trade-nfts-now

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tfw your code isn't fixed when you expect it to be because you fixed it in a dream

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fun fact: having a vague, pretty much entirely unintentional part of your life plan be "I will reconnect with my friends and family after I stop being a shut-in" works better if you ever. you know.

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hey are you guys working on something to fix the current hideous unusable ui??? ur work is GODLY

Oh hey! Glad you like the extensions.

I can't actually tell for sure what you're referring to (since you just said your opinion about the UI but not what it is :D) but I figure the most likely change you could be talking about is the modified post footer with 4 buttons spread across the bottom of the post, where the note count is separated into categories.

In that case, no, certainly not currently. I believe a minority of accounts are opted in to seeing it and it is being tweaked every few days; my rule is not to touch stuff in that part of the development cycle if possible because a) the code I write today might not work tomorrow or once it's finished*, b) maybe you will actually like the version tomorrow or once it's finished and not want the old version back, and c) if you're good at UI design, think there is a way to make the test UI better, and can communicate it in a constructive way, I actually want you to be running the test UI during this period, so you can contribute to Tumblr's development by telling your ideas to Tumblr support and make even non-xkit users have the best possible experience in the end! Decisions about whether to code anything to adjust or revert the final version will be made once there's a final version. (That being said, I would say don't hold your breath.)

*we've already discarded at least one revision of a fix for one of the XKit Rewritten features—I forget which, probably Quick Reblog—because the UI tweak that it was to deal with for never actually got finished and deployed to any users; we just saw it in the site code and tried to preempt it.

Now, aside—not directed at you, anon; this is just a good example of something a huge number of people do that I've been meaning to discuss—I think we can all improve the way we talk about these things somewhat. There's a difference between fixing something and reverting something. It's natural to feel uncomfortable with UI changes and to focus on specific pieces of muscle memory or workflows they make less convenient, and to desire changes, but in a space like UI design it's not inherently clear what the correct changes would be. "Fixing" something makes sense when it's obviously broken or nonfunctional, which notably means that everyone agrees what the working, functional version would be. On the other hand, as a random example, the UI change in which Tumblr put the menu elements beside the timeline instead of on top of it (i.e. the Twitter layout) made some people feel that the screen was crowded; proposals were made to "fix" it by snapping the menus to the edges of the browser and automatically collapsing the left menu, increasing visual space, and some liked that. Others, of course, didn't find that that "fixed" it for them and insisted that only a revert to the original layout would be satisfying.

I think it's more clear to request "reverting" a change if the old behavior, and only exactly the old behavior, is what you're requesting. That's unambiguous! If you have more general parameters you would like in a proposed UI tweak, saying what they are is helpful! Otherwise, there's little way for the person you're talking to to know exactly what you want "fixed" or exactly what you find "hideous and unusable." Yes, it probably feels like everyone who sees the new UI feels the same way you do, but in fact when you dig into it, most people have very specific things they don't like, often nonobvious ones.

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will there ever be a dark mode option in xkit for when blog view automatically makes posts white, or will we have to get another extension like palettes for that?

hm, there are a bunch of things you could be talking about here; some are subtle, others are not. the first thing I would check is whether you have "use blog colors when viewing blogs" enabled or disabled on https://www.tumblr.com/settings/dashboard and what you want that setting to be. if you disable that setting and have your Tumblr palette set to a dark one, the posts on tumblr.com/anyblogname should be dark, right? is that what you want? or are you trying to keep the per-blog colors but override certain people's white colors, or something else?

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i really do believe that the answer to a lot of people's self hatred is not to try and reassure them that they are wonderful and okay and enough, but instead to remind them theyre a completely unremarkable regular ass person who is not the center of the universe or especially important so why would they expect themselves to be some superhuman savior. like there really is a kernel of out of control self importance at the heart of thinking youre an evil lazy piece of shit. because why would you expect you be anything but just like some guy. if you wouldnt expect the guy who works at the vape shop or your mailman or whatever to be able to do something then why would you expect yourself to? youre just some random ass person. its fine

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If you do need to re-import and re-evaluate a module without restarting the entire JavaScript environment, one possible trick is to use a unique query parameter in the module specifier. This works in non-browser runtimes that support URL specifiers too. – x

oh! never mind about (b); that makes sense.

Using query parameters in the import specifier allows module-specific argument passing, which may be complementary to reading parameters from the application-wide window.location (or on Node.js, through process.argv). For example, with the following HTML: <script type="module"> import "./index.mjs?someURLInfo=5"; </script> The index.mjs module is able to retrieve the someURLInfo parameter through import.meta: // index.mjs new URL(import.meta.url).searchParams.get("someURLInfo"); // 5 – Passing query parameters - import.meta - JavaScript | MDN

a) weird. I'm not immediately thinking of something to do with that, but it sounds like it could be useful.

b) uh... hold on. if I have a module graph where A imports B and C, both of which import D with different query parameters, which query parameters will be in import.meta.url in D? I guess the ones in the import in B since it was listed in A first?

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Using query parameters in the import specifier allows module-specific argument passing, which may be complementary to reading parameters from the application-wide window.location (or on Node.js, through process.argv). For example, with the following HTML: <script type="module"> import "./index.mjs?someURLInfo=5"; </script> The index.mjs module is able to retrieve the someURLInfo parameter through import.meta: // index.mjs new URL(import.meta.url).searchParams.get("someURLInfo"); // 5 – Passing query parameters - import.meta - JavaScript | MDN

a) weird. I'm not immediately thinking of something to do with that, but it sounds like it could be useful.

b) uh... hold on. if I have a module graph where A imports B and C, both of which import D with different query parameters, which query parameters will be in import.meta.url in D? I guess the ones in the import in B since it was listed in A first?

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tumblr feature idea

editable reblogs 2: you can edit other people's posts ██t ███ o███ ███████ A█████ ██m█████ ██████ ████ █o████████ █n█ ███████g █████ ██████u█ ███████ ████ ████s████

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pro tip: familiarize yourself in advance with app pinning (android)/guided access (ios) in case you ever want or need to hand your phone to a child, official, acquaintance, et cetera. ios users in particular should note the options menu at the bottom of the guided access interface, in which you can toggle things like the ability to lock the phone/change the volume (you probably want those on) or touch interactivity for the entire screen.

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can you imagine being this sexy though

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okay, you know what, no, I'm not done!

the kind of movie where we generally decide that it doesn't matter if the writing is good—a summer flick, a mindless action triller, a harmless distraction for the kids—trades on one thing, and one thing only: wish fulfillment. we want a movie to line up a bunch of pins and then knock them all down, you know? we want to get to see the heroes defeat the villains and save the world; it's fine if there are some plot holes in the particulars. we want to see the relationships that began as rocky grow ironclad through extended proximity, no matter how forced. we want to get to see the character whose character introduction was being disrespected prove to be critically important, whether or not it feels entirely justified. we want to see the least subtle callbacks in the world so we can be like, aha, I remember that part; that's what that was for! we either want to see character growth or an explicit rejection of that idea in which the reason the character wins is because of the way they were the whole time.

this movie carefully set up every single one of those things and then declined to do any of them! it would oil its lane, select its balls, line up its shot, wind up, send the ball hurtling down the lane, then smash cut to the setup for a different payoff basically every single time. again, that seems like it would be extremely hard to do if you were trying to on purpose! that's actively impressive!

it's a classic setup in which the protagonist is introduced as not caring about the topic of the movie and must come to love it and save it, but he spends the entire movie being placed about three inches too far away from anything to be able to have an effect on anything that occurs. it's a classic setup in which the deuteragonist is introduced as a hypercompetent resource if only anyone would think of her that way, but she spends the entire movie being swiped conveniently offscreen about three seconds before she would have demonstrated her value. it's a classic setup in which the core driving force of the plot is a mystery to be uncovered, but the uncovering of information throughout the whole movie has basically nothing to do with the mystery that begins and (kind of? in a way?) ends the adventure.

like... I don't get it! it seems actively harder, almost, to not make the movie out of the plot elements you keep repeatedly setting up for yourself and which your actors do quite a good job of preselling. the fact that there are many credited screenwriters on this thing absolutely doesn't surprise me.

my review of detective pikachu:

this movie is, on the plus side, made almost entirely out of scenes that you could build an actually very good, competently written movie out of! on the minus side, they included about, oh, forty percent of the scenes which would be required to make a plot which made any goddamn sense whatsoever. I would feel like I understood this movie more if the writing was, in a sense, worse and I could think of it as simply for children with short attention spans; instead it feels like the script was written to be a "real" movie with emotional weight but then they cut half of it and forgot to tell the (non-ryan-reynolds) actors they were going to have tomorrow off and didn't need to, like, try actually quite hard.

(one could argue that they cut half of the title: there is absolutely a pikachu in this movie, but if you pay close attention you may notice that there is in fact... no detective work performed? which seems actively difficult to pull off.)

again, the individual scenes are pretty darn good though—just bring your handheld and pause the movie on every transition to catch a pokemon, then pretend you missed two scenes and have to figure out what's now happening from context, and I'll bet it's great. actually if you did that you might be annoyed that you missed some of the good parts, which I think is the real problem.

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my review of detective pikachu:

this movie is, on the plus side, made almost entirely out of scenes that you could build an actually very good, competently written movie out of! on the minus side, they included about, oh, forty percent of the scenes which would be required to make a plot which made any goddamn sense whatsoever. I would feel like I understood this movie more if the writing was, in a sense, worse and I could think of it as simply for children with short attention spans; instead it feels like the script was written to be a "real" movie with emotional weight but then they cut half of it and forgot to tell the (non-ryan-reynolds) actors they were going to have tomorrow off and didn't need to, like, try actually quite hard.

(one could argue that they cut half of the title: there is absolutely a pikachu in this movie, but if you pay close attention you may notice that there is in fact... no detective work performed? which seems actively difficult to pull off.)

again, the individual scenes are pretty darn good though—just bring your handheld and pause the movie on every transition to catch a pokemon, then pretend you missed two scenes and have to figure out what's now happening from context, and I'll bet it's great. actually if you did that you might be annoyed that you missed some of the good parts, which I think is the real problem.

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Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner's roadblock to art isn't even technical skill it's frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach's capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That's how you build on the technical skill. Throw that "won't even start because I'm afraid it won't be perfect" shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck.

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Money Stuff: Do Your Betting With Your Broker

My theory — that financial markets represent investments in real economic activity, while betting on sports represents zero-sum bets on sports — is outdated. The link between finance and real economic activity was always indirect and imperfect — lots of financial markets activity has always been speculative and irrational — and it is increasingly inessential. All of it is betting on sports. Sports are sports, and entertainment is sports, and politics is sports, and crypto is sports, and stocks are sports. Democratizing finance doesn’t mean giving people easier ways to invest in broad economic growth, or to finance new business ideas. It means letting them make the bets that they want to make.

We have talked about Hunterbrook — the hedge fund that’s also a newspaper — a lot, and one thing that I have said is that, if you are in the business of finding problems at public companies [...] Also, if your business model is “find bad companies and sell their stock short,” you will investigate a lot of companies (to see if they are bad), and some of them will turn out to be good. You could … buy them? > Hunterbrook initially envisaged that it would short stocks in instances where its newsroom exposed scandals, but this approach has been sidelined in an “irascible bull market”, according to the investor letter. The letter also details how Hunterbrook is generating a sizeable portion of its returns by taking long positions in businesses its journalists have investigated and found to be sound.

It wasn't the point of this particular edition of the newsletter—these were entirely separate topics—but I love the juxtaposition here of "finance these days often has little/nothing to do with actual economic activity and the efficient allocation of capital; much of it is just a game" and "the work the game of finance is incentivizing is to engage with real economic activity and efficiently allocate capital." Just such a neat way to look at the industry.

(The topic in between those two is about AI in investing, which is a great example of a trend which, in my opinion, can absolutely contribute to both sides of that dichotomy.)