whateverthing.com

☰

Over the years, I've accumulated a lot of small PHP projects that are in varying stages of their maintenance lifecycle. Sometimes they feel like overgrown cars lying in a fallow yard, wheels gone, propped up on blocks, forgotten. I'm getting around to improving them, but occasionally I hit roadblocks.

Right now, a tiny but annoying roadblock is PHP 8.1's deprecation of the strftime() function. One of my Whateverthing projects uses it a handful of times in various ways. I need to find an alternative pattern to replace it, one which is either brief and low-effort, or more robust but available to all the sections of the codebase.

I waited. I saw. I bounced.

It's done. I know there are many people still using it. You shouldn't be.

As a previously-active user, I had curated a reasonably copasetic timeline. I relied heavily on muted words and account blocks. Even amidst this chaos, it's still surprisingly usable. But one peek into the trending topics reveals the rot beneath that stately surface. And in case that's not testimonial enough, here's a handy timeline of all the terrible decisions being made.

Sure, not everyone has the luxury of leaving. Some people have contractual obligations. Others have managed to build an entire career on the back of Twitter. And still more folks just don't have time for philosophical nonsense or learning the ins and outs of new platforms.

I've heard folks championing the idea of "stay and fight!". Fight for what? No amount of user pushback will change the fact that the tippy top of the company is under new management, and that management is hostile.

Consider this: a right-leaning industrial tycoon just bought your newspaper and eviscerated it.

You can't trust it any more. You can't trust him. You need a new newspaper.

For many years, I've been pursuing side project ideas in my limited free time. This always follows the same pattern: I get excited, I get started, and then everything fizzles and I forget about it until the next interesting thing comes along. Every once in a while, though, one of those projects sticks the landing. I've accumulated a few successes: a forum with a small but very dedicated user base, a handful of web-based utilities that do a simple job reasonably well, a partially-completed technical book that actually sold some copies, and a few YouTube videos here and there. I also feel accomplished in my photography hobby, having taken several thousand photos across various themes and collections.

Well, it finally happened. A billionaire bought Twitter and took it private.

You'd think I'd be happy about that. In the past, I've railed against publicly-traded companies and their duty to shareholder profit above all other considerations - and I'll continue to do so in the future. But today presents some different problems.

The main problem is that this particular billionaire has fascist fans, and pants to match. This macho business donkey wrestler is touted as a genius but acts like a bellend - to a degree that would be comical if he wasn't part of a clear and present danger to civilization.

He knows how to stir things up, but hasn't the foggiest idea how to cool things down.

In my opinion, this does not bode well for the future of Twitter - the "New Twitter". I'm not going to go into too much detail on the entire slate of problems I fear will arise from this. Instead, I'll merely state what actions I'm going to take, and explain what will be needed for me to change my mind.