Paul M. Jones

I am proud to announce Argo, a flat-file static-site blog authoring and building system. It generates your site on your own computer, then syncs it to a remote host via Git or rsync.

Download Argo here, and watch a 4-minute video introduction here.

(This very blog uses Argo, and has done so for quite a while.)

I.

My blogging software for the longest time was WordPress, and it was good enough, though it was subject to intermittent denial-of-service and other attacks. Mitigating those was not a lot of trouble, but it was occasionally time-consuming, and never a welcome distraction.

Then I started hearing about, and witnessing, the Social Justice cancellation and de-platforming of some of my regular online readings, all built using WordPress. One day there, next day gone -- and on contacting the authors, I learned they did not keep their own local backups. All their content, all their hard work and creative product, had all disappeared because of the Social Justice indignation of the week.

Now, it is well-known that I am no fan of Social Justice. I am not a Leftist of any stripe: not a Democrat, Progressive, Socialist, Communist, or Marxist. I think that Marxism in its various forms is a great enemy of Western civilization.

That attitude makes me persona non grata in much of the technology and programming world. It makes me a target for censorship and cancellation under whatever cover is deniably plausible, by people who signal their tolerance for anything other than their outgroup.

I began to consider what might happen to my own blog, how it too might be disappeared one day. How might I defend it against the attacks of Marxist and Social Justice zealots?

Thus was born my motivation to create Argo.

II.

Argo's key features are centered around resilience:

• You always keep all your content on your own computer. All your posts, images, and other files are stored locally.

• The software itself runs on your own computer, not in the cloud, so you always keep the code behind the software.

• Argo uses flat file storage, not a database; among other things, this makes it easy to use standard file tools, and to bundle assets with posts.

• Argo generates static HTML and JSON for publishing, and does not use a server-side programming language; this keeps the hosting requirements minimal.

• Publishing is a matter of syncing to a remote host, whether by Git or rsync. If a host cancels you, you can change your local configuration, and sync all your content to the new host.

These basic features make Argo-based blogs resistant to cancellation, censorship, and de-platforming. Yes, a host might still surprise you by pulling your account, but the consequences are far less drastic: none of your content has been lost.

III.

Some of the incidental and technical features are:

• Content items are written in Markdown; HTML and WordPress pseudo-html are supported as well.

• The content items do not use "YAML frontmatter"; instead, content metadata is stored in an argo.json file, and the body content is stored in argo.markdown (or argo.html, etc.).

• The flat-file storage structure is exactly the same as the published URL structure, resulting in a easy-to-understand information architecture. When syncing, the remote file structure will be identical to the local file structure.

• The build system generates not only HTML files, but also JSON files; this means that each content item is accessible through a read-only API. (Try out the JSON resource for this post.)

• All configuration settings are stored as JSON files.

Developers may appreciate this: Argo is delivered as a desktop application via Electron, but the core of Argo is written in PHP and can be used independently of the desktop app.

IV.

It is still early days for Argo, and there is a lot left to do.

• The administrative interface is spartan at best, and needs some UI/UX love.

• Likewise, the WordPress import feature appears to work properly, but I'd like to have more test cases around it.

• There is no built-in commenting system (nor do I think there could be, given that it runs locally and not on a server) but integrating an external commenting service ought to be achievable.

Those are just some of the highlights.

V.

Of course, Argo is not only for those who are interested in being cancel-resistant. Use Argo because you want to keep local control over your own content.

To understand the Nazis accurately, you have to read their own quotes and propaganda. The story told by the Nazis themselves depicts a very different party than what modern journalists would like us to believe. The Nazi (National Socialist German Workers Party) or National Socialists as they called themselves, had the following five key characteristics:

1. The Nazis were a self-proclaimed socialist movement that called for the end of capitalism, abolishment of non-labor income (interest and finance), and proposed an all-powerful central authority to regulate the market

2. Racial identity politics was used to identify an oppressor class (Jews), that embodied both the evil nature of capitalism and the anti-German nature of communism

3. Strong nationalistic pride was a core pitch to the people to justify a stronger central authority

4. The party used militant radical socialist activists to harass businesses and political enemies with acts of violence

5. Limitations on free speech and removing access to dissenting views

Via American Thinker.

Aside: the evils of National Socialism stemmed not from the nationalism, but from the socialism.

Also: the only way the Nazis are to your right, is if you are a Communist.

1. You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess and put in a speed hack until you've proven that's where the bottleneck is.

2. Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and even then don't unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.

3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)

4. Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures.

5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

Pike's rules 1 and 2 restate Tony Hoare's famous maxim "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."

Ken Thompson rephrased Pike's rules 3 and 4 as "When in doubt, use brute force.".

Rules 3 and 4 are instances of the design philosophy KISS.

Rule 5 was previously stated by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month. Rule 5 is often shortened to "write stupid code that uses smart objects".

Copied from http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/pike.html.

Whenever I think about what did the most damage to internet culture over the past ten years, xkcd 1357 comes out on top. Not Twitter. Not Facebook. This simple comic.

...

Freedom of speech isn't just a legal assurance that congress shall make no law abridging it. It is also a set of cultural norms rooted deeply in a long lineage of hard won ideas.

via https://defmacro.substack.com/p/against-xkcd-1357

Replace "Pravda" with any institutional media organ in the United States, and "the Party" with Leftists/Progressives/Democrats/Marxists/Socialists/Communists:

1. The Front Page belongs to the Party. Everything you see on the front page is the Party's most important messaging. The more prominent the article, the more you can assume that it is pure propaganda. Front Page above-the-fold articles are nothing but propaganda.

2. Most of the time there will be actual journalistic facts reported in the story. You know, the Who/What/Where/When stuff. This will in general be in articles buried inside the newspapers, and/or buried in paragraph 25 (under the assumption that most people will scan the front page and maybe the first 2 or 3 paragraphs). Our trainer essentially taught us to read Pravda backwards, starting from the end and working our way back towards the front.

3. Things that really, really bother the Party will be prominently displayed. Things that really really bother the Party will be on the front page, above the fold. While this seems to contradict item #1 above, it really doesn't. Sure, the actual contents of the article are nothing but propaganda, the information to be gleaned is that the subject is something that the Party hates.

Via https://borepatch.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-to-read-pravda.html.

Anti-Marxist liberals have labored under numerous disadvantages in the recent struggles to maintain control of liberal organizations. One is that they are often not confident they can use the term “Marxist” in good faith to describe those seeking to overthrow them. This is because their tormentors do not follow the precedent of the Communist Party, the Nazis, and various other political movements that branded themselves using a particular party name and issued an explicit manifesto to define it. Instead, they disorient their opponents by referring to their beliefs with a shifting vocabulary of terms, including “the Left,” “Progressivism,” “Social Justice,” “Anti-Racism,” “Anti-Fascism,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Critical Race Theory,” “Identity Politics,” “Political Correctness,” “Wokeness,” and more. When liberals try to use these terms they often find themselves deplored for not using them correctly, and this itself becomes a weapon in the hands of those who wish to humiliate and ultimately destroy them.

The best way to escape this trap is to recognize the movement presently seeking to overthrow liberalism for what it is: an updated version of Marxism. I do not say this to disparage anyone. I say this because it is true. And because recognizing this truth will help us understand what we are facing.

The new Marxists do not use the technical jargon that was devised by 19th-century Communists. They don’t talk about the bourgeoisie, proletariat, class struggle, alienation of labor, commodity fetishism, and the rest, and in fact they have developed their own jargon tailored to present circumstances in America, Britain, and elsewhere. Nevertheless, their politics are based on Marx’s framework for critiquing liberalism (what Marx calls the “ideology of the bourgeoisie”) and overthrowing it.

Via https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/. Read the whole thing, especially for the "framework of Marxism."

(Epistemic status: I am not entirely satisfied with the Merchant here, but it's the closest I've been able to get so far.)

When managing developers, and when watching conversations between developers online, I sometimes notice them arguing past each other about what constitutes "good code". One group will assert that good code must adhere to specific programming practices. The other will assert that good code is code that makes money for its author.

In the worst cases, each camp derides the other. The first camp will say the other is immature and inexperienced, begging for trouble; the second camp that the other are mindless slaves to old dogmatism, and want everyone else in their chains. The first will say the other is dangerously unprofessional; the second will reply "Don't care: shipping and billing!"

In the course of trying to work through the arguments on each side, so that I can explain them to myself and others, I have started using the names "Priest" and "Merchant" as categories to help give me a handle on the attitudes expressed.

While the following descriptions are necessarily caricatures, I think they capture some recognizable qualities of the Priest and Merchant: what they care about most, their goals and focus, their time preferences, and their blind spots. In each case we start with the question, "What is good code?"

Read more

I am happy to announce that after one change from its public review period, the payload-interop specification has been released as 1.0.0 stable!

From the README:

The Domain Payload Object pattern was first described by Vaughn Vernon at https://vaughnvernon.co/?page_id=40

Whereas a Data Transfer Object provides properties found on domain objects, a Domain Payload Object provides entire domain objects. Its purpose is to transport those domain objects across the architectural boundary from the domain layer to the user interface layer.

The Domain Payload Object is not for intra-domain use. It is only for transporting a domain result across the domain layer boundary back to the calling code, typically the user interface layer.

Further, the Domain Payload Object is independent of any particular user interface. As part of the domain layer, it should have no knowledge of HTTP or CLI contexts.

This project defines only a reading interface, so that any user interface code can know how to get both the result and the status out of the Domain Payload Object.

This project does not define a writing or mutation interface. Creation and manipulation of Domain Payload Objects are core application concerns, not user interface concerns. The domain-specific nature places it outside the scope of an interoperability specification.

Try it out on your next project!

Christians are commanded in Scripture to love, to pray, to be kind, to serve, to forgive, to be truthful, to worship the one God, to learn and grow in both spirit and character. All of those things are very personal. They require no politicians, police, bureaucrats, political parties, or programs.

“The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want,” says Jesus in Matthew 26:11 and Mark 14:7. The key words there are you can help and want to help. He didn’t say, “We’re going to make you help whether you like it or not.”

In Luke 12:13-15, Jesus is approached with a redistribution request. “Master, speak to my brother that he divideth the inheritance with me,” a man asks. Jesus replied, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?” Then he rebuked the petitioner for his envy.

Christianity is not about passing the buck to the government when it comes to relieving the plight of the poor. Caring for them, which means helping them overcome it, not paying them to stay poor or making them dependent upon the state, has been an essential fact in the life of a true Christian for 2,000 years. Christian charity, being voluntary and heartfelt, is utterly distinct from the compulsory, impersonal mandates of the state.

Via https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/no-jesus-was-not-a-socialist.

Via Ted Frank we have this:

The implicit association test ... is an excellent example [of the replication crisis in social "science"]. Banaji and Greenwald claim that the IAT, a brief exercise in which one sits down at a computer and responds to various stimuli, measures unconscious bias and therefore real-world behavior. If you score highly on a so-called black-white IAT, for example, that suggests you will act in a more biased manner toward a black person than a white person. Many social psychologists view the IAT, which you can take on Harvard University’s website, as a revolutionary achievement, and in the 20 years since its introduction it has become both the focal point of an entire subfield of research and a mainstay of diversity trainings all over the country. That’s partly because Banaji, Greenwald, and the test’s other proponents have made a series of outsize claims about its importance for fighting racism and inequality.

The problem, as I showed in a lengthy rundown of the many, many problems with the test published this past January, is that there’s very little evidence to support that claim that the IAT meaningfully predicts anything. In fact, the test is riddled with statistical problems — problems severe enough that it’s fair to ask whether it is effectively “misdiagnosing” the millions of people who have taken it, the vast majority of whom are likely unaware of its very serious shortcomings. There’s now solid research published in a top journal strongly suggesting the test cannot even meaningfully predict individual behavior. And if the test can’t predict individual behavior, it’s unclear exactly what it does do or why it should be the center of so many conversations and programs geared at fighting racism.

From https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/iat-behavior-problem.html.