Wordpress is still holding up comments in moderation and I think that people have to become a 'subscriber', so they can enter their username and password. I'm not happy about that, but if I just leave it open, I'm worried about a flood of spam.
I'm glad some others have weighed in. I tend, when in a situation that is uncomfortable, to simply back out the way I came in. In fact, one of the reasons I have spent so much time at ObWi has been to be able to talk about politics with people. Being here in Japan offers a measure of separation, and Japanese usually don't talk about politics unless pressed and even then, they will often not get too deeply into the weeds. They (or at least the people I am with) also don't have much in-depth knowledge of particular people or parties, just a larger sense of this party likes this or this spokesperson feels this. Speeches aren't closely parsed, and problems and fights seem to go into a memory hole.
However, I've had a couple situations that parallel yours, though not dealing with politics. My western upbringing wants me to sit them down, try to figure out what the problem is, work to some resolution. However, I never do that, because it never seems to result in a conclusion that is better.
I realize that is probably a big downer and it is no useful advice, and I'm still wrestling with this, especially as I head into retirement and will not have the outlets to meet and talk to people.
I know it can be confusing, but in this case 'post' is main article/item and 'comment' is something that follows from it. There is NO problem with people writing a long comment with links, it's just very difficult to post an resourced article on breaking news and people shouldn't expect that. For example, trying to write a post about Charlie Kirk, you had a situation where mainstream outlets were posting mistaken information and it is difficult to impossible to link to social media information. I have really felt that lack when looking at the archive and seeing posts that carefully laid out a position that was referenced fully, allowing you to check and understand. So the posts here are probably going to be, at least from me, more conversation starters, especially for things that are in the news.
TSMC also is doing a huge fab in Phoenix which is apparently having lots of problems. I'm really interested in that one because TSMC is also coming to the prefecture I'm living in. Here is a youtube video about the problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD1jyk3LhA8
In late 2024, a $40 billion chip factory rises from Arizona's desert, aiming to recreate the magic of TSMC's worldleading Taiwan fabs. The stakes are high. This is where chips for iPhones and AI supercomputers will be born. Yet, early on, engineers faced a baffling dilemma. The facility had to import ultra pure sulfuric acid from 6,500 m away in Taiwan. American suppliers couldn't meet TSMC's standards, and local chemicals cost five times more. Even Intel, the veteran US chipmaker next door, jumped in to buy from these overseas shipments, a fact TSMC's CEO relayed with incredulity. How did you live before? It was very hard before, but now you are here, he recalls Intel saying.
The level of technology for the Hyundai plant wasn't at the level of a chip fab, but I imagine there were a ton of things that required oversight from headquarters. So I just have to laugh with the interviews of MAGAts who say 'just hire American, we have lots of people who could do that.'
Charles, a long term redirect isn't possible, once the servers shut down, it's gone. A short term might be possible, but I think the url is a typepad domain and I can't log in to the typepad interface, (and have no way to contact type pad) I can't imagine how I would do it.
Somewhere in the settings the value of n can be changed.
It's currently set at 2, let me know if you think that should be raised.
I'm not sure how automatic comment approval is working, it looks like you have to log in to your profile. I'm going to explore this on Thursday and will try and make a post explaining the system.
Vance hosting Kirk's podcast seems a natural development. I also didn't realize that Kirk's wife's speech was also 'from' the podcast, as a livestream.
OK, I think comments are back at the archive, please poke around and let me know if there are other things. Next task is to link up with Andrew's stuff, still not sure about how comment approval works, so please feel free to comment to help me figure it out.
Spoke too soon, the comment approval thing does not work as I thought it did. I'm reminded of my favorite joke in Friends. Rachel just discovered a typo on her resume after making 1000 photocopies and getting the gang to stuff them in envelopes and she says 'oh god, do you think it is on all of them?' and Joey replies 'nah, I'm sure the xerox caught a few'.
No worries, the setting is that once people are approved, they are good to go and it transferred people who were already in the comments. Unfortunately, because we made the archive site, people who haven't commented here have to get approved, so it shouldn't be too onerous.
I'm working my way through getting the comments back in, which is tedious, but I am glancing at old posts and names so it's nostalgic at the same time. It's pretty astonishing to me that a simply text file contains all this, and when it is parsed, all these conversations spring up. Though (and it may be fatigue) I thought that I saw a post in the text file with one author, but appeared with another author on the blog, so I'll do some checks to make sure that authorship is correct.
Morning all,
Hartmut, if it happened then, I think that post was lost.
GftNC, it looks like the comments are showing for posts up until Sept 2004. The comments are in the database, but aren't appearing. I'll work on fixing that this week.
DaveC, about the SASE, I'm worried that the new Trump tariffs are going to disrupt that, so I think we may have to go back to smoke signals.
Hey Hartmut, glad you made it! If you can find that post in the wayback machine ( http://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/obsidianwings.blogs.com ) and take a screenshot, I can see if it didn't get transferred over or what.
According to Gemini, the default allowed tags are usually the following:
anchor, blockquote, strong or b for bold, em or i for italic and a couple of others.
On “Guestpost from Wonkie”
Wordpress is still holding up comments in moderation and I think that people have to become a 'subscriber', so they can enter their username and password. I'm not happy about that, but if I just leave it open, I'm worried about a flood of spam.
I'm glad some others have weighed in. I tend, when in a situation that is uncomfortable, to simply back out the way I came in. In fact, one of the reasons I have spent so much time at ObWi has been to be able to talk about politics with people. Being here in Japan offers a measure of separation, and Japanese usually don't talk about politics unless pressed and even then, they will often not get too deeply into the weeds. They (or at least the people I am with) also don't have much in-depth knowledge of particular people or parties, just a larger sense of this party likes this or this spokesperson feels this. Speeches aren't closely parsed, and problems and fights seem to go into a memory hole.
However, I've had a couple situations that parallel yours, though not dealing with politics. My western upbringing wants me to sit them down, try to figure out what the problem is, work to some resolution. However, I never do that, because it never seems to result in a conclusion that is better.
I realize that is probably a big downer and it is no useful advice, and I'm still wrestling with this, especially as I head into retirement and will not have the outlets to meet and talk to people.
On “Excelsior 2.0: more details about the site and requests”
GftNC, I'll email you with some details.
I know it can be confusing, but in this case 'post' is main article/item and 'comment' is something that follows from it. There is NO problem with people writing a long comment with links, it's just very difficult to post an resourced article on breaking news and people shouldn't expect that. For example, trying to write a post about Charlie Kirk, you had a situation where mainstream outlets were posting mistaken information and it is difficult to impossible to link to social media information. I have really felt that lack when looking at the archive and seeing posts that carefully laid out a position that was referenced fully, allowing you to check and understand. So the posts here are probably going to be, at least from me, more conversation starters, especially for things that are in the news.
On “Hyudai, meet ICE”
TSMC also is doing a huge fab in Phoenix which is apparently having lots of problems. I'm really interested in that one because TSMC is also coming to the prefecture I'm living in. Here is a youtube video about the problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD1jyk3LhA8
In late 2024, a $40 billion chip factory rises from Arizona's desert, aiming to recreate the magic of TSMC's worldleading Taiwan fabs. The stakes are high. This is where chips for iPhones and AI supercomputers will be born. Yet, early on, engineers faced a baffling dilemma. The facility had to import ultra pure sulfuric acid from 6,500 m away in Taiwan. American suppliers couldn't meet TSMC's standards, and local chemicals cost five times more. Even Intel, the veteran US chipmaker next door, jumped in to buy from these overseas shipments, a fact TSMC's CEO relayed with incredulity. How did you live before? It was very hard before, but now you are here, he recalls Intel saying.
The level of technology for the Hyundai plant wasn't at the level of a chip fab, but I imagine there were a ton of things that required oversight from headquarters. So I just have to laugh with the interviews of MAGAts who say 'just hire American, we have lots of people who could do that.'
On “Excelsior!”
GftNC, yes he was.
Charles, a long term redirect isn't possible, once the servers shut down, it's gone. A short term might be possible, but I think the url is a typepad domain and I can't log in to the typepad interface, (and have no way to contact type pad) I can't imagine how I would do it.
"
Somewhere in the settings the value of n can be changed.
It's currently set at 2, let me know if you think that should be raised.
I'm not sure how automatic comment approval is working, it looks like you have to log in to your profile. I'm going to explore this on Thursday and will try and make a post explaining the system.
On “Kuzushi and Charlie Kirk”
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/15/nx-s1-5542239/charlie-kirks-chair-is-empty-can-maga-harness-his-movement
Vance hosting Kirk's podcast seems a natural development. I also didn't realize that Kirk's wife's speech was also 'from' the podcast, as a livestream.
On “Excelsior!”
OK, I think comments are back at the archive, please poke around and let me know if there are other things. Next task is to link up with Andrew's stuff, still not sure about how comment approval works, so please feel free to comment to help me figure it out.
"
Spoke too soon, the comment approval thing does not work as I thought it did. I'm reminded of my favorite joke in Friends. Rachel just discovered a typo on her resume after making 1000 photocopies and getting the gang to stuff them in envelopes and she says 'oh god, do you think it is on all of them?' and Joey replies 'nah, I'm sure the xerox caught a few'.
"
No worries, the setting is that once people are approved, they are good to go and it transferred people who were already in the comments. Unfortunately, because we made the archive site, people who haven't commented here have to get approved, so it shouldn't be too onerous.
I'm working my way through getting the comments back in, which is tedious, but I am glancing at old posts and names so it's nostalgic at the same time. It's pretty astonishing to me that a simply text file contains all this, and when it is parsed, all these conversations spring up. Though (and it may be fatigue) I thought that I saw a post in the text file with one author, but appeared with another author on the blog, so I'll do some checks to make sure that authorship is correct.
"
Morning all,
Hartmut, if it happened then, I think that post was lost.
GftNC, it looks like the comments are showing for posts up until Sept 2004. The comments are in the database, but aren't appearing. I'll work on fixing that this week.
DaveC, about the SASE, I'm worried that the new Trump tariffs are going to disrupt that, so I think we may have to go back to smoke signals.
"
Hey Hartmut, glad you made it! If you can find that post in the wayback machine ( http://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/obsidianwings.blogs.com ) and take a screenshot, I can see if it didn't get transferred over or what.
According to Gemini, the default allowed tags are usually the following:
anchor, blockquote, strong or b for bold, em or i for italic and a couple of others.
On “Kuzushi and Charlie Kirk”
I'm not so sure about that Charles. He got his start with a watchlist against university professors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Watchlist
The watchlist is still up.