Welcome to the new edition of rdela.com powered by\nLume and Xeo. I am still\nyour host, Ricky de Laveaga.
\nLike the new Artist Activist website and many\nmore I have brewing, this site thrives on the open source creations and\ncontributions of Óscar Otero, particularly Lume and\nthe elegant Simple Blog theme that is\nthe root of Xeo.
\nThank you Óscar.
\nI spent several years surveying the landscape of static site generation. That\nresearch culminated in the work I am currently embarking on with Lume alongside\nÓscar and its other lovely contributors and community members. As we progress, I\nam consistently blown away by Óscar’s architectural sensibilities and design\nintuition.
\nCome on in, the water is fire.
\n","date_published":"Fri, 16 Jan 2026 23:45:00 GMT"},{"id":"https://rdela.com/defenestration-twitter/","url":"https://rdela.com/defenestration-twitter/","title":"The Defenestration of Twitter","content_html":"Cannot think of a better example of how woefully unprepared we are to deal with\nforeign influence operations than the defenestration of Twitter by repressive\ngovernments\n(Saudi 🇸🇦/UAE 🇦🇪)\nusing their favorite stooge Elon Musk as a patsy.
\nThat such an obvious and easily traceable gambit to poison political discourse\nwas such a wild success at a relatively affordable price for the players\ninvolved has set an diabolical precedent.
\n\n\n\nTwitter: Forty four billion dollars.
\nSilencing political discourse: Priceless.
\nSome things in life are priceless. For everything else, there’s soulless\npatsies and bribed regulators.
\n
Reminds me of this Chris Jankowski quote about\nproject REDMAP, which was a Republican\nundertaking to use gerrymandering as a national strategy, from the excellent\ndocumentary Slay the Dragon\n(streaming on\nHulu\nand Kanopy currently),\nparaphrased here by co-director Chris Durrance:
\n\n\n","date_published":"Mon, 22 May 2023 16:04:05 GMT"},{"id":"https://rdela.com/silent-peal/","url":"https://rdela.com/silent-peal/","title":"the silent peal","content_html":"[Chris Jankowski] took control of a large number of states and basically the\nlower house of Congress for the best part of ten years and did it in a\nmarathon political sense for peanuts (for about $30 million).
\n
the silent peal
\nthe quiet wail
\nthe hollow well
\nthe empty pail
Update 6 April 2025: As far as I can tell, Apple Photos Shared Albums now\nfunction fully and without issue when Advanced Data Protection is enabled. I\nhave not found anything to link to about this (please share it if you do). I\nwholeheartedly recommend you\nturn ADP on immediately.\nI have had mixed results trying to use iWork collaboration with Advanced Data\nProtection enabled, but it is hard to tell what is iCloud file sync flakiness,\nor iWork collaboration not working in general. Few people I know use iCloud for\nfile sharing. iCloud Drive experiments with my family have fared poorly overall.
\nLet's talk about\nAdvanced Data Protection for iCloud.
\nThe upshot of this sentence in the\n“Security implications of sharing and collaboration” section:
\n\n\niWork collaboration and the Shared Albums feature in Photos don’t support\nAdvanced Data Protection.
\n
…for me [in 2022, but this no longer happens in 2025, see\nUPDATE above], was that my wallpaper on my phone\nimmediately disappeared and I was unable to access years of “photos added to\nShared Albums.”
\nNot only on my phone. Those years of “photos added to Shared Albums,” were now\ninaccessible on any of my devices because they “are stored with standard data\nprotection, as the feature permits albums to be publicly shared on the web.”\nDoes anyone know if this is expected behavior or something I should try to\nreport?
\nIf it is indeed expected behavior to vaporize all shared albums until Advanced\nData Protection is disabled (the albums and photos do return, once ADP is\ndisabled), that’s huge bummer that I suspect will make this urgently needed\nprotection a dealbreaker to most who attempt to enable it.
\nAlso beyond shared albums, which are already widely used, if Apple wants iWork\ncollaboration to find traction, making it work for people who want “their\ntrusted devices [to] retain sole access to the encryption keys for the majority\nof their iCloud data” would seem to be wise.
\n","date_published":"Fri, 23 Dec 2022 18:07:00 GMT"},{"id":"https://rdela.com/bit-cheer/","url":"https://rdela.com/bit-cheer/","title":"A Bit of Cheer","content_html":"These are dark days, and I expect darker days await. So much to feel despondent\nabout, but these three videos cheered me up a bit today.
\nFound the top two on Kornel’s Mastodon and\nthen the third on\nStevie Martin’s channel. Both\nrecommended.
\n","date_published":"Wed, 06 Jul 2022 23:18:03 GMT"},{"id":"https://rdela.com/guardian-promoting-putins-fear/","url":"https://rdela.com/guardian-promoting-putins-fear/","title":"Guardian Promoting Putin’s Fear","content_html":"Looking at the Guardian US site this morning,\nI was dismayed to see these two Opinion pieces featured so prominently with\nno counterpoint.
\nChristopher S Chivvis
\nSimon Jenkins
\nBoth articles display a wild misunderstanding of the reality of Russia’s\naggression and Putin’s ultimate goal, which is the restoration of the Soviet\nempire. Appeasement will not work this time any better than it did in 2008 and\n2014, and by promoting these Putin-friendly viewpoints so carelessly (that\ncontradict so much of its own valuable reporting) The Guardian has lost my trust\nand has me considering canceling my yearly digital subscription.
\nFor counterpoints that demolish the arguments made in the two dreary, misguided\narticles above, see:
\nLuke Harding and Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv
\nPhotojournalist Serhii Korovayny has twice uprooted his family because of\nRussian invasion. He talks to others with the same experience
by\nSergey Korovayny
Veteran philanthropist tells World Economic Forum civilisation ‘may not\nsurvive’ what is coming
Larry Elliott Economics editor
Boris Bondarev issues public statement saying: ‘Never have I been so ashamed\nof my country’
Andrew Roth, Moscow correspondent
If all of this is depressing you, as it should, I invite you to read\nVirginia Heffernan’s\nexcellent\nVolodymyr Zelensky and the Art of the War Story\nfor Wired, that contains this refreshing passage:
\n\n\nZelensky’s\nfirst video of the war appeared\non February 23, the eve of the invasion. In Russian, he addresses “grazhdanam\nRossi”—the citizens of Russia—as a “grazhdanin Ukraini”—citizen of Ukraine.\nThe word citizens and not people reminds listeners that they’re members of a\nmodern nation and not infantry in a holy war for an ethno-state. Zelensky also\nnotably zeroes in on a Kremlin talking point that vexes him. He says, “You are\ntold that we hate Russian culture. But how can you hate culture? Any culture?”\nIn that moment of incomprehension, Zelensky dexterously clarifies for all the\nworld the absurdity of a “culture war.”
\nLet’s slow it down. Broadly speaking, a culture is a patchwork of dialects,\ncustoms, habits, music, arts, mores, ways of living. In Russia, culture might\ninclude everything from forest folklore to vigorous strolling to the rave band\nLittle Big. Deeper in, you might find Chagall, Turgenev, Anatoly Karpov, the\nBolshoi, Lyudmila Ulitskaya. How can a culture be hated?
\nI’d never thought of it that way, but of course. A culture has no budget, no\ngovernment, no army. It collects no taxes; it has no CEO, bible, or\nheadquarters. If it can’t be precisely identified, how can a nation’s whole\nculture, which is made up of innumerable artifacts and practices, be loathed?\nAnd yet the constant warning of the far right in Russia—and France, and the\nUS—is that someone, somewhere, hates your culture and thus deserves to die. No\none but Zelensky has ever dissolved this hollow alarmism with such dispatch.
\n“Europe must wake up now,” Zelensky says in a\nvideo from March 4. Where he’d\nbeen in a funereal black suit and necktie a week earlier, now he wears the\nolive-drab that has become his trademark. “Russian troops are firing upon the\nnuclear power plant in Ukraine.” He again calls his audience into being and\nreminds us who we are: citizens with rights, not serfs with superstitions.\nSpecifically, he addresses “all people who know the word ‘Chernobyl.’”
\nI dare you to read that and not call to your mind’s eye the story of Chernobyl\n(in the news in 1986 or on\nHBO in 2019)\nand however you understand that nuclear disaster. This is shrewd.\nComprehension of this byword does indeed mark a person as informed, familiar\nwith the dangers of nuclear tech, and mindful that lethal catastrophes are\nnever merely local. Our understanding of history has now been both flattered\nand enlisted in the fight.
\nThe other video from that day serves as Part II, and it’s\naimed at Russian citizens.\nAgain Zelensky is in army green. But this time he doesn’t expect his audience\nto startle at the mention of Chernobyl, so he issues a stern, scolding, vivid\nreminder of 1986 and how Russians and Ukrainians fought together as Soviets to\ncontain the meltdown. “You have to remember irradiation,” he says, seemingly\nhoping the video will find its way to those who have been denied an education\nin history. For them, he issues a more primordial threat: “Take to the streets\nand say that you want to live, that you want to live on Earth without\nradioactive contamination. Radiation does not know where Russia is, radiation\ndoes not know where the borders of your country are.”
\nThese videos lay out two significant ideas about Russian culture. First,\nthere’s nothing to hate in it. A culture is grounded in sensory-emotional\nexperience; it is too vast, multifarious, and shape-shifting to be hated as a\nmonolith. Second, Russia as an authoritarian kleptocracy is a matter of utter\nindifference to the planet Earth, which is the source of our shared humanity.\nTo poison Ukraine is to poison Russia. Say that you want to live, that you\nwant to live on Earth.
\n
🌍🌏🌎
\n","date_published":"Thu, 09 Jun 2022 19:36:40 GMT"},{"id":"https://rdela.com/imagine/","url":"https://rdela.com/imagine/","title":"Imagine","content_html":"Imagine Russia, China, and the USA suddenly became radically open-minded and\nloving to all of their inhabitants, embracing and accepting each other,\npracticing abolition of all forms of oppression and enslavement, upholding\negalatarian principles, and recognizing the intersectionality that makes\nus whole.
\nWhen you hear\nthe speech\nRavyn Ariah Wngz gave at Ryerson University, you know it is the truth. You may\nbe in various states of denying that truth, avoiding it, but it is still\nthe truth.
\nA majority of people in Russia, China, and the USA support that truth. Fostering\nit into being is simply a matter of triggering the conditions that allow that\ntransformation, that transcendence, to take place.
\n","date_published":"Sun, 16 Aug 2020 01:22:59 GMT"},{"id":"https://rdela.com/fever-dreams/","url":"https://rdela.com/fever-dreams/","title":"Fever Dreams","content_html":"🚀 Why wouldn't we?
\n🌱 If we cannot survive here where we evolved for billions of years in\nadaptation to the environment why would we fare better anywhere else?
\n🚀 So the argument is to just give up?
\n🌱 Resolve not to give up or give in to escapism. To focus on repairing our\ndamage instead of exhausting crucial resources further to chase fantasies of\npermanently existing elsewhere. Exploration and observation are science;\nexploitation and colonization are fever dreams.
\n","date_published":"Thu, 13 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT"},{"id":"https://rdela.com/bora-bora-nui/","url":"https://rdela.com/bora-bora-nui/","title":"Bora Bora Nui","content_html":"Turquoise water leads up to the beach and a lush green hill above the overwater\nbungalows at the Bora Bora\nNui Resort\nin French Polynesia, with\npuffy white clouds in the sky over\nMotu Toopua.\nMount Otemanu can be\nseen in the distance rising over the bluffs on the left.
\n","date_published":"Mon, 04 May 2020 06:16:55 GMT"},{"id":"https://rdela.com/target-bunk/","url":"https://rdela.com/target-bunk/","title":"target=_bunk","content_html":"Often, while building a website, clients and designers will ask something like:
\n\n\nWill you make the links open in a new tab so we don’t take people off the site?
\n
I am super against this for various reasons, the main one being that target=_blank breaks the back button, the only browser feature most people understand.
\n\nSince 1999, it’s been a firm Web usability guideline to refrain from opening new browser windows for several reasons:
\n\n
\n- When new windows appear that users didn’t ask for, it’s both confusing and disruptive.
\n- If the new window completely obscures the old one, many users don’t even realize a new window has opened.
\n- Less-technical users can’t manage multiple windows.
\n- New windows can defeat users who are blind or have low vision, as, for example, when a new window opens outside the part of the screen that’s magnified for a low-vision user.
\nThe common rationale designers have for opening new windows is “to keep users on our site,” but that’s bogus reasoning. If people want to leave, they’ll leave. And if they just want to look at the other site, they’ll return to your site by clicking the Back button—the second most used feature on the Web (after hypertext links). In fact, one of the usability problems of opening new windows is that they alter the expected behavior for returning to the previous location.
\n
There are also associated security issues, the upshot being that if you do ever decide to use target=_blank you need to also include rel=noopener always, and possibly rel=noreferrer for older browsers.
\n\nDon’t use
\ntarget=_blank(or any othertargetthat opens a new navigation context), especially for links in user-generated content, unless you have a good reason to.
That last link is to a solid article on CSS Tricks about possible reasons to use it legitimately, like when someone might lose work in progress or there is media playing. Marco Arment provides another example in his 2014 article, Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended 15 years ago.
\nFor more background on the security issue:
\nSo if you do use it anywhere, the link should look like:
\n<a href="https://www.iana.org/domains/reserved" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Example domains</a>\n