Yes, a preview button would be great if not too troublesome to set up. Otherwise, it's taking me time to get used to the new layout, but no doubt it will get easier with more use.
I once declared on the old site that it was perfect IMO. Being fickle, I say this one is perfect too. Lacking Michael's god-like powers, I am not tempted to customize the presentation for myself, and anyway I like it as is. FWIW, my laptop browser is Firefox and my Android browser is Chrome. From the start, I set Chrome to show me the laptop version of the page, as I had done on the old site. Works for me.
A preview function would be nice, but I haven't seen its absence be a problem so far.
So, that's my 2 cents worth of opinion. My gratitude for setting up the new site and for creating the archive site is boundless.
The Academica theme is oriented a little more towards discussions. It's what I used when I was fooling around at the beginning of the month and trying to recreate the old layout. I prefer the new look overall. My main complaint (with my script disabled) is that there's way too much vertical white space.
WordPress provides an "Additional CSS" textbox in one of its configuration places that's a convenient way to override the theme's styling. Of course, using it requires that you have some understanding of the theme's use of CSS classes, ids, etc. Or you can define a plug-in that has just enough PHP to load a CSS file that overrides the style. I probably haven't said this here before since the old site was Typepad, but between the core/theme/plugin model, PHP, and CSS, WordPress has managed to recreate all of the development nightmares of late-90s Microsoft Windows.
OK made the font a little bigger. I totally agree with Michael, but the whole installation seems to have as its goal, keeping you as far away from the html as possible.
If anyone has an urge, here are some wordpress themes
https://wordpress.org/themes/
Everything seems more for an e-business website than for a group of people to communicate with each other. More's the pity.
I go running some 2 times a week and have been doing this for decades. No major problems so far, but I seem to be one of the younger ones here. What's really annoying is that additionally to my myopia, which I have had since childhood, I have developed far-sightedness as well in recent years. Also, I get the feeling that I'm slowing down when it comes to planning, multitasking and such things, feeling a bit overwhelmed at times of high stress, but generally I can handle it.
I won't be of any help here. I have a piece of JavaScript that runs on every page that I download. It forces my own choice of fonts, sizes, vertical spacing, and color adjustments on the text. I've already changed the small part that is specific to Obsidian Wings. Between a good adblocker and my script, my view of the Web is much more consistent and less garish than what non-fanatic people see. Y'all may decide that Papyrus is the official Font of Moderation, but I'll still see Noto Serif.
The JavaScript thing got started one day when I encountered too many pages that made you want to find the designer so you could ask, "Did you study ugly and unreadable in school, or are you just naturally gifted?"
I'm a believer in the original spirit of HTML -- the writer gets to specify structure, but presentation decisions belong to the reader. If it's important that the text be rendered in some obscure spidery gothic font, well, that's what PDF is for.
I was just thinking of the Constitution, I'm sure if Trump falls, there will be other things, sekaijin's list is good. Tariffs are probably difficult to tackle constitutionally, especially when one side has ignored the guardrails. Of course, after Smoot-Hawley, they gave control of the tariffs to the President, so it's not clear who could be trusted with it.
It might be instructive to consider what sort of laws were put in place after Nixon. I don't think there was any talk of amending the constitution, which might be a measure of how much more Trump has broken the system.
(I'm being incredibly optimistic that Trump will overreach and him and the people around him will be called into account, though that optimism calls to facts not in evidence...)
Wading in here. LJ's comment on amendments prompted me to weigh in on something that I've been thinking of for some time now. Here it is, as scattershot as it looks:
The first thing I've thought of is that the Emoluments Clause, as it has been, is now dead in the water. It will have to become at least law, and if possible, an amendment. I would even, in a Panglossian Best of All Worlds projection, tie it in to the proposals to ban stock trading by members of Congress and extend it down from the executive to the legislative - no running businesses or stock trading, or even sitting on boards of directors of any corporation, whether you're in the WH or the House or the Senate.
Some other things: Term limits for SCOTUS. Abolish, or at least, claw back, the War Powers Act. A cap on EOs - make the prez present their case to Congress for this, that, or the other.
There's a whole bunch of other things that could be enumerated, but these are what I can come up with.
From the Ministry of Truth link: "the Secretary of Labor will personally certify the initiation of investigations for the first time in the department’s history."
This could only seem like a good idea to someone who had never worked in an organization with more than a dozen people.
Governments, at least successful ones, all run bureaucracies. Big bureaucracies. Everybody loves to trash bureaucracy. But the reason that they are pervasive is that they are the best solution mankind has so far developed to manage large groups of people. And there are narrow limits on how much you can accomplish without involving large groups of people.
To put it bluntly, if the Secretary of Labor really is personally certifying the starting of every investigation then either 1) he doesn't have time left to do his actual job, or 2) there are only going to be a handful of (no doubt extravagantly publicized) investigations. Or, considering this administration, probably both.
lj - Mostly muscle stiffness in my legs and back, because I am deliberately doing difficult-for-me hikes. Predictable, explicable, and - so far, knock wood - non-permanent.
I have a history of getting banged up and not paying much attention to it, unless (1) I need to go to an ER; or (2) the hurt doesn't go away after a few days. I've fallen on trails (have a patch of numb on my right leg from a fall that smashed a nerve). I have a tricky knee from bending and twisting while over-enthusiastically ripping up invasive blackberry vines. I've been kicked, bitten, and stepped on by horses; broke my arm riding. (Well, not *riding* per se; it was the falling-off-the-horse part that did the actual breakage.)
One impairment that might be age-related, or due to my history as an ex-smoker/current vaper, or a combo of the two, is I have to stop and rest frequently to catch my breath if I'm going upslope. Doesn't happen on the flat, only if I'm climbing. Stairs or trails. It's been that way for a few years now, and at least doesn't seem to be getting worse (knock wood, again).
I'm replying to this comment in the admin interface to see how this works.
The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night’s sleep.
I'm curious how you are defining 'normal ones'. 20 years ago, if I was hurting, I would generally know why. Ache in the wrist, ahh, we were doing this technique a lot. I always had a pretty good idea of what caused it. Now, I'm living in a world where I have aches and pains and I have no f**king idea where they came from. As a friend said, 'getting old is like you have the flu, but it is more like a baseline rather than an exception.'
I have never been consistently active and fit long enough to establish any pattern. I have years of being very fit followed by years of being a complete couch potato. Here I am, turning 70 in a few months, and I can't really gauge my status because I'm always in between.
On the one hand, I can still hike for miles and manage elevation gains of up to 1000' without much trouble. The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night's sleep.
On the other hand, elevation gains of more than 1000', or any hikes in 80+ degree weather (never mind humidity) are so much more draining than I think they should be. My lungs seem to get a weird spongy feel, which DuckDuckGo tells me could be COPD or fluid, gee thanks.
I have told a friend I'd love to go with her on her next Mt. St. Helens summit hike. I have a LOT of conditioning to do before that, and am hoping I am capable.
On a more whimsical note, I was about to wish us all a happy Autumn Solstice Eve when I looked up what date it actually is and - ???- the Autumnal Solstice is September 22.
Solstices and equinoxes always being on the 20th or 21st was good enough while I was growing up; it should be good for the current generation!
That's wonkie, I've been going into the backend and changing it and was going to contact her about fixing it, but that was sort of down on my list. I'll change these, and I've just written a message to her and we will sort it oul.
Since lj mentions it, and we are not far from the end of the month and I still have 8 free gift articles left, this is the relevant Ezra Klein piece that Ta Nehisi Coates was addressing:
The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress.
Who delegated some amount of that power to the President, in the event of an emergency. Congress didn't specify what was an emergency and what not. The current SCOTUS seems inclined to the position that absent a specification, an emergency is whatever the President says it is.
I'm in pretty good shape for 71--meaning I didn't have weight gain with menopause; don't have cancer; I can see, hear and think; my hair is still brown; and I can walk three or four miles without collapse (if the weather is cool).
As mentioned above, fast movement or sudden movement is jarring and painful. I'm not flexible anymore. I can't remember names. I can't walk very far if the temp is over 80 without getting ill. This is a big change from my previous baseline which included 20 mile mountain hikes wearing a backpack and weekend bike trips of 60 miles or so plus occasional bike trip vacations.
Mostly I'm okay so far. I'm kind of afraid I will follow the pattern with my family which is to lose my sight and hearing while continuing to live into my nineties. I don't want to keep going when it stops being fun.
lj, I rather doubt that there would be an amendment about tariffs. The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress. The problem we face is that we have an administr3which cares not at all about what the law or the Constitution says. Well, except when it is convenient to use as a cudgel. Otherwise, they just do as they please, confident that neither the Supreme Court nore the Congress will try to stop them -- nor could do so if they tried.
Just as we see with "Originalism", if you don't care what they explicit constraints on you are, and if nobody has the power (or perhaps the willingness) to stop you, then anything goes.
Ta Nehisi writes the plain truth. Kirk was unabashedly a white Christian nationalist. For me, all his various bigotries flow from there.
No one who isn’t an immediate threat to others deserves to be shot. At the same time, it doesn’t make Kirk a good person simply because someone killed him.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Time for a makeover: a webpage design thread”
Yes, a preview button would be great if not too troublesome to set up. Otherwise, it's taking me time to get used to the new layout, but no doubt it will get easier with more use.
"
I once declared on the old site that it was perfect IMO. Being fickle, I say this one is perfect too. Lacking Michael's god-like powers, I am not tempted to customize the presentation for myself, and anyway I like it as is. FWIW, my laptop browser is Firefox and my Android browser is Chrome. From the start, I set Chrome to show me the laptop version of the page, as I had done on the old site. Works for me.
A preview function would be nice, but I haven't seen its absence be a problem so far.
So, that's my 2 cents worth of opinion. My gratitude for setting up the new site and for creating the archive site is boundless.
--TP
"
The Academica theme is oriented a little more towards discussions. It's what I used when I was fooling around at the beginning of the month and trying to recreate the old layout. I prefer the new look overall. My main complaint (with my script disabled) is that there's way too much vertical white space.
WordPress provides an "Additional CSS" textbox in one of its configuration places that's a convenient way to override the theme's styling. Of course, using it requires that you have some understanding of the theme's use of CSS classes, ids, etc. Or you can define a plug-in that has just enough PHP to load a CSS file that overrides the style. I probably haven't said this here before since the old site was Typepad, but between the core/theme/plugin model, PHP, and CSS, WordPress has managed to recreate all of the development nightmares of late-90s Microsoft Windows.
"
Thank you. I would love to tinker with WP but have very little spare time at the moment, sorry.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
No particular answers, just wanted to grumble.
On “Time for a makeover: a webpage design thread”
OK made the font a little bigger. I totally agree with Michael, but the whole installation seems to have as its goal, keeping you as far away from the html as possible.
If anyone has an urge, here are some wordpress themes
https://wordpress.org/themes/
Everything seems more for an e-business website than for a group of people to communicate with each other. More's the pity.
"
The font size is a bit too small for me. Otherwise all good.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
I go running some 2 times a week and have been doing this for decades. No major problems so far, but I seem to be one of the younger ones here. What's really annoying is that additionally to my myopia, which I have had since childhood, I have developed far-sightedness as well in recent years. Also, I get the feeling that I'm slowing down when it comes to planning, multitasking and such things, feeling a bit overwhelmed at times of high stress, but generally I can handle it.
On “Time for a makeover: a webpage design thread”
I won't be of any help here. I have a piece of JavaScript that runs on every page that I download. It forces my own choice of fonts, sizes, vertical spacing, and color adjustments on the text. I've already changed the small part that is specific to Obsidian Wings. Between a good adblocker and my script, my view of the Web is much more consistent and less garish than what non-fanatic people see. Y'all may decide that Papyrus is the official Font of Moderation, but I'll still see Noto Serif.
The JavaScript thing got started one day when I encountered too many pages that made you want to find the designer so you could ask, "Did you study ugly and unreadable in school, or are you just naturally gifted?"
I'm a believer in the original spirit of HTML -- the writer gets to specify structure, but presentation decisions belong to the reader. If it's important that the text be rendered in some obscure spidery gothic font, well, that's what PDF is for.
On “An experimental first post”
I was just thinking of the Constitution, I'm sure if Trump falls, there will be other things, sekaijin's list is good. Tariffs are probably difficult to tackle constitutionally, especially when one side has ignored the guardrails. Of course, after Smoot-Hawley, they gave control of the tariffs to the President, so it's not clear who could be trusted with it.
It might be instructive to consider what sort of laws were put in place after Nixon. I don't think there was any talk of amending the constitution, which might be a measure of how much more Trump has broken the system.
(I'm being incredibly optimistic that Trump will overreach and him and the people around him will be called into account, though that optimism calls to facts not in evidence...)
"
Wading in here. LJ's comment on amendments prompted me to weigh in on something that I've been thinking of for some time now. Here it is, as scattershot as it looks:
The first thing I've thought of is that the Emoluments Clause, as it has been, is now dead in the water. It will have to become at least law, and if possible, an amendment. I would even, in a Panglossian Best of All Worlds projection, tie it in to the proposals to ban stock trading by members of Congress and extend it down from the executive to the legislative - no running businesses or stock trading, or even sitting on boards of directors of any corporation, whether you're in the WH or the House or the Senate.
Some other things: Term limits for SCOTUS. Abolish, or at least, claw back, the War Powers Act. A cap on EOs - make the prez present their case to Congress for this, that, or the other.
There's a whole bunch of other things that could be enumerated, but these are what I can come up with.
On “To H-1B or not to H-1B (or leopards eating multiple faces)”
From the Ministry of Truth link: "the Secretary of Labor will personally certify the initiation of investigations for the first time in the department’s history."
This could only seem like a good idea to someone who had never worked in an organization with more than a dozen people.
Governments, at least successful ones, all run bureaucracies. Big bureaucracies. Everybody loves to trash bureaucracy. But the reason that they are pervasive is that they are the best solution mankind has so far developed to manage large groups of people. And there are narrow limits on how much you can accomplish without involving large groups of people.
To put it bluntly, if the Secretary of Labor really is personally certifying the starting of every investigation then either 1) he doesn't have time left to do his actual job, or 2) there are only going to be a handful of (no doubt extravagantly publicized) investigations. Or, considering this administration, probably both.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
lj - Mostly muscle stiffness in my legs and back, because I am deliberately doing difficult-for-me hikes. Predictable, explicable, and - so far, knock wood - non-permanent.
I have a history of getting banged up and not paying much attention to it, unless (1) I need to go to an ER; or (2) the hurt doesn't go away after a few days. I've fallen on trails (have a patch of numb on my right leg from a fall that smashed a nerve). I have a tricky knee from bending and twisting while over-enthusiastically ripping up invasive blackberry vines. I've been kicked, bitten, and stepped on by horses; broke my arm riding. (Well, not *riding* per se; it was the falling-off-the-horse part that did the actual breakage.)
One impairment that might be age-related, or due to my history as an ex-smoker/current vaper, or a combo of the two, is I have to stop and rest frequently to catch my breath if I'm going upslope. Doesn't happen on the flat, only if I'm climbing. Stairs or trails. It's been that way for a few years now, and at least doesn't seem to be getting worse (knock wood, again).
Not sure that answers what you wanted to know...?
"
I'm replying to this comment in the admin interface to see how this works.
The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night’s sleep.
I'm curious how you are defining 'normal ones'. 20 years ago, if I was hurting, I would generally know why. Ache in the wrist, ahh, we were doing this technique a lot. I always had a pretty good idea of what caused it. Now, I'm living in a world where I have aches and pains and I have no f**king idea where they came from. As a friend said, 'getting old is like you have the flu, but it is more like a baseline rather than an exception.'
"
Sorry about the apostrophe.
"
I have never been consistently active and fit long enough to establish any pattern. I have years of being very fit followed by years of being a complete couch potato. Here I am, turning 70 in a few months, and I can't really gauge my status because I'm always in between.
On the one hand, I can still hike for miles and manage elevation gains of up to 1000' without much trouble. The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night's sleep.
On the other hand, elevation gains of more than 1000', or any hikes in 80+ degree weather (never mind humidity) are so much more draining than I think they should be. My lungs seem to get a weird spongy feel, which DuckDuckGo tells me could be COPD or fluid, gee thanks.
I have told a friend I'd love to go with her on her next Mt. St. Helens summit hike. I have a LOT of conditioning to do before that, and am hoping I am capable.
On a more whimsical note, I was about to wish us all a happy Autumn Solstice Eve when I looked up what date it actually is and - ???- the Autumnal Solstice is September 22.
Solstices and equinoxes always being on the 20th or 21st was good enough while I was growing up; it should be good for the current generation!
On “An experimental first post”
New place looks nice.
Whatever blessing lies in my power to confer, on all of you, and on all of us.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
That's wonkie, I've been going into the backend and changing it and was going to contact her about fixing it, but that was sort of down on my list. I'll change these, and I've just written a message to her and we will sort it oul.
"
Maybe it's just me, but it's quite hard to interact with someone whose handle is '
On “Precursors”
Since lj mentions it, and we are not far from the end of the month and I still have 8 free gift articles left, this is the relevant Ezra Klein piece that Ta Nehisi Coates was addressing:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nU8.Vndl.HW2nTIeTvTs-&smid=url-share
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
Lest anyone think I'm asserting that I'm immune to aging, I have a list of things to demonstrate that I'm not. It's just that none of them hurt.
On “An experimental first post”
The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress.
Who delegated some amount of that power to the President, in the event of an emergency. Congress didn't specify what was an emergency and what not. The current SCOTUS seems inclined to the position that absent a specification, an emergency is whatever the President says it is.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
I'm in pretty good shape for 71--meaning I didn't have weight gain with menopause; don't have cancer; I can see, hear and think; my hair is still brown; and I can walk three or four miles without collapse (if the weather is cool).
As mentioned above, fast movement or sudden movement is jarring and painful. I'm not flexible anymore. I can't remember names. I can't walk very far if the temp is over 80 without getting ill. This is a big change from my previous baseline which included 20 mile mountain hikes wearing a backpack and weekend bike trips of 60 miles or so plus occasional bike trip vacations.
Mostly I'm okay so far. I'm kind of afraid I will follow the pattern with my family which is to lose my sight and hearing while continuing to live into my nineties. I don't want to keep going when it stops being fun.
On “An experimental first post”
lj, I rather doubt that there would be an amendment about tariffs. The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress. The problem we face is that we have an administr3which cares not at all about what the law or the Constitution says. Well, except when it is convenient to use as a cudgel. Otherwise, they just do as they please, confident that neither the Supreme Court nore the Congress will try to stop them -- nor could do so if they tried.
Just as we see with "Originalism", if you don't care what they explicit constraints on you are, and if nobody has the power (or perhaps the willingness) to stop you, then anything goes.
On “Precursors”
Ta Nehisi writes the plain truth. Kirk was unabashedly a white Christian nationalist. For me, all his various bigotries flow from there.
No one who isn’t an immediate threat to others deserves to be shot. At the same time, it doesn’t make Kirk a good person simply because someone killed him.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.