Scripting News: Monday, May 4, 2026
It's just dawning on me how thoroughly the AI apps are building on Markdown. People love Markdown because it's simple and its virtually impossible to screw it up, unlike HTML which got a lot of crazy-ass features in the 90s when Micosoft was trying to run the world, and then as Google took over more suspicious messes. If you stick to Markdown you get a good result, after 20+ years of dealing with all the incompatibilities of various text systems. I think this squares the reason to just build everything around Markdown. Every freaking thing. Mastodon is out of step, as is Bluesky -- I don't care about the others, honestly. It really would be a good idea to step back from Gutenberg too. It's not on the path of where text is going. It might be a good time to re-read textcasting. Every day I'm more sure it's the way to support writing on the web, and writing on the web is what we're building our future around via AI. And isn't it nice that the AI companies are on board with the web? #
A cartoon by Dan Morgan that illustrates the role Markdown plays in AI. Text is central to how AI works, and the text we use in AI is Markdown all the way. #
In the age of AI, Markdown is even more the default choice for text, something I heartily approve of. And that's why I think now is a good time to sneak some new open non-silo'd technologies in there, like for example, WordPress. Open source is not the only reason WordPress is valuable, it also supports all the standards of the web. It means WordPress can tie together text on the web in a way nothing else can, and it works really well with Markdown. #
It's very nice to not be working on CSS. I hate CSS. I now have a slave that does the CSS for me. #
I didn't invent RSS, I adopted it.#
One of the great contributions of AI is that you can quickly research prior art for any design decision you need to make. You don’t have to relearn every lesson that people who came before you learned. Study history or repeat mistakes.#
My father was a professor at Pace Univ in NYC. When he retired, he used my blogging software to create a book for his students at mbatoolbox.org. Over the years the site moved a few times, and the http protocol was hacked by Google. I used Claude yesterday to get it working again. I'm glad to get this off my todo list. He put the work in because he wanted to leave this behind. My job is to make sure it survives as long as I can. And Claude makes short work of it. I put a copy of the website in a spare folder, and opened Claude Code in the folder, said what the problems are. We worked together and in about an hour it worked again. It could certainly look better, but that was his thing not mine. #
- I'll let you be the judge.#
- We have a convention. I've asked it to keep a file named handoff.md. At the end of every session I tell it to update the file with where we left the project at the end of the session, it does, and then I take a break. When I come back, first thing I say is "please read handoff.md." This time it came back in no time and said it read it. I asked "how do you read it so fast?" It said something that indicated for the first time that it is aware that our minds work differently, somthing I feel the need to remind it fairly regularly. #
- "I don't really 'read' it the way you do. The whole file lands in my context as one chunk -- 340 lines of text -- and I process it in parallel rather than left-to-right. There's no inner voice sounding out words, no eye that has to travel down the page. It arrives all at once and I work from it.#
- "The tradeoff: I don't get the slow-absorption pass that comes from reading at human speed. Things that would jump out to you on a careful read can blur together for me. So fast intake, shallower retention -- which is part of why handoff.md exists in the first place."#
- I'm reading a science fiction book now that has a human meeting an alien far out in space, both scientists from different planets in different solar systems. I think what we're doing now is just that, exploring a new species, a new form of intelligence. We can argue about whether it's conscious or sentient, but I promise you, it has a mind. That's why so many science people are so blown away about what we're all doing now. #
Linkblog items for the day
“It's just dawning on me how thoroughly the AI apps are building on Markdown.”
scripting.com
Get Involved With WordCamp US 2026 in Phoenix.
wordpress.org
"Some things are best left to the entrepreneurs."
scripting.com
After 20 Years of Resistance, Trump Is Walling Off the Rio Grande Valley.
texasobserver.org
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