When nobody visits your website you are dead. How can you write to no audience. To please yourself? No there are too many things to do. Life is short. All I can meaningfully do is write to my future self. I'll always have an audience for that.
My globe shows many visitors. Few humans, The visitors are mostly robots with an occasional Agent Smith. They may as well be from Teegarden's Star. My concerns need to be closer to home. There is no point in writing to a void.
But I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and take control of its destiny. Shake of the soma of empty social media to address the crisis of collapse which now comes at us. It's a false hope, 'but what-cha gonna do'?
Our climate is collapsing, and we are going to run out of stuff because of too many people. And with the strong man orange idiot in charge, who might as well be from the third planet of Teegarden's Star. Nothing can soon change. But fascists have a short-shelf life, so there is hope.
In a chosen delusion I imagine a backlash of clarity as soon as the fascist is gone. Logic reminds me this is did not happen the first time the felon in chief ruled America. It is insanity to imagine it will happen a second time around, 'but what-cha gonna do'? Does denial have a breaking point? We know sanity sure does.
On the out chance denial does have a breaking point I'll keep going. I am not sure that it does, but I keep going. The new Diner Doomscroll distracts me from the horror of collapse at the same time it puts the horror in my face.
The article count is huge thank you Surly. I have added and dated over 8000 articles so far with many more to come. Surly has been archiving articles concerning collapse for a couple of years, so most of the collection comes from Surly. I have also added some other articles, but my priority is finishing the doomscroll project first.
Surly is a moderator in the Diner, but I have not told him what I am doing yet. I will tell him when the search dialog functions. It is a Stoic thing.
“Don’t talk about it, be about it.” In our cosplay world this is good advice.
The search dialog is only a menu bar so far. Hover over the doomscroll and right click, select 'Find' to see it. When it operates users will specify a cut-off date and select keyphrases that will match keywords already attached to articles
“To get articles concerning wildfires the keyphrases 'extreme weather' and 'wildfire' are picked from a list of keyphrases and a search is than done. Matching articles load into the doomscroll, and they are opened in another tab from there.
With thousands of articles I won't be reading and attaching appropriate keyphrases to most of them. I will need help. The search dialog has a radio button that lets the user modify the keywords attached to the selected article.
The more users participate the better the index will be.
This is a big project with 1000s of articles. I have been at this project for a month. I have planned the project well, my toolbar meets specifications I wrote out earlier which is why I can say what it will do when it is done. I know it is doable, and the devil is in the details.
The greatest ambition is not the archive itself, but the planned crowdsourcing of the index from which a truth contrary to what is expressed by American politicians and ambitious talking heads can be found. The archive itself is passive. The index will be active.
American politicians and “talking heads” control the American narrative. They decide what you should know. If the doomscroll project takes off, the community working on this collection will determine what is important for viewers to see by attaching metadata to articles worth reading.
Media and politics focus on the transient here and now. Daily distractions and drama. Doomscroll keyphrases create a persistent, searchable record that documents collapse over time, and which will evolve as the community directs. Transient news or systemic truth, it will be our choice about what to see. Onward I dream.
Malicious actors will be dealt with. Dealing with them is an essential part of the plan. The entire Doomscroll project is secured behind the Doomstead Diner Forum architecture, ensuring our trusted moderators will maintain the necessary control to safeguard the index from distortion.
Update:
On Monday, I only had a toolbar working. It is now Thursday and most of the find tool is working. All I have left to do is implement the search algorithm and things will be functional.
Try it out. Right-clicking over a doomscroll article launches the find tool. Keyphrases are added and removed from articles using this tool after the second radio button is clicked. Double-clicking on a keyphrase moves it to the lower box and connects it to the article. Clicking on a keyphrase in the lower box detaches the keyphrase from the article.
The first radio button builds a search list that will later find articles. Double-clicking works the same way here, but the search list changes and not the article list.
The search algorithm will use the search date to filter results. The date will change by pushing a toolbar button and then entering numbers on the keyboard. With no keyphrases set in a search, articles from the date backwards will display.
Before I start implementing the search, I need to use the tool and attach keywords to articles.
To test the search with.
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