“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
This discussion is PRIMARILY for the GEEKS, but not exclusively. Non-geeks are welcome to comment, but I ask that you keep your comments 100% on topic – the features, functions, content and security of the new website. Our migration per se – not the long train of abuses which led to it.
This discussion will get long, and I don’t want to sort through ANY news about the election, The Steal, etc. Words of encouragement, prayer, blessing and spiritual protection are welcome, but keep them lean and mean.
This thread is 100% business.
If you’ve made prior comments on tech on other threads, that you feel are still relevant, feel free to REPOST THEM HERE. I don’t have time to do this myself.
NOW – down to business.
I have obviously rescinded my prior request that we not upload new header images – and as the first to violate that request, I invite other authors to follow suit.
Not only that, I am going to let authors begin following Flep’s latest posts, and just post all their images in the site media bucket. We have 50% left. I think that gives us plenty of time to move the site.
I REPEAT. Authors no longer need to store their images elsewhere. Use this site’s media bucket, as much as you want. This applies to ALL images – header and non-header.
I will reimpose the moratorium on new pictures when we do the final transition to the new site – not before then.
This process will be longer than expected, so I’m giving up on a SHARP transition, in favor of a SMOOTH transition.
The header image I have used on this post is a screen capture of the new site, which is actually functional right now. Here is a bigger picture of the home page.
Our new site is a WordPress site much like here, except none of YOU ALL are members yet, because I have not yet approved your first comments.
If you – as a currently approved commenter on this blog – want to spin the wheels, please feel free to visit, leave a comment, and let me approve it.
There are technical reasons why I’m limiting this to currently approved posters for the moment.
I am not guaranteeing that this test site will remain, but we will see. I am hoping that what I have there now is sufficient. Obviously I haven’t even modified the “Sample Page” stuff in the corner, but no biggie.
Don’t leave any “essential information of historical import” on the new site – it may not be saved. Better to leave it on THIS THREAD, which will be saved if at all possible.
Our current theme here is called Independent Publisher 2. I ended up using this theme for The U Tree, too, because it is a great theme and people HERE love it. Sadly, that theme was “deprecated” even back then, and now it appears to be GONE from what is available to me on our new host, which is very close to or exactly “latest version” WordPress.
Instead, the new site is currently using something called Draftly.
We will deal with THEME stuff later. Right now, we need to get MIGRATION and IMPORT to work.
It is important to understand that a WordPress administrator on WordPress.com is only an ADMIN inside the WordPress framework. On this site, I have NO POWERS outside the WordPress API. I can even delete the site, as part of the API, and I can create new sites, but I have no powers outside what WordPress.com allocates to me though THEIR IMPLEMENTATION of the WordPress software.
Now – that is still a LOT of power, but it gives me only one choice in terms of exporting the old website.
Exporting our site from WordPress.com creates XML files of data – in our case an astounding 1.5 GB of XML data, broken into 8 huge XML files, between 67 MB and 388 MB. All of this was received in a ZIP archive of about 167 MB.
Note that the unpacked XML data is about the same size as our media bucket – roughly 1.5 GB.
The exported XML files include a lot of private data from our users – they will not be shared. HOWEVER, the beginning of the first one is interesting:
I am still working on importing this data via the new WordPress API – which is not exactly as described in the XML above. Things are thus not working exactly as specified in the XML above. I will be more specific in comments below – it’s an active mess.
BUT – bottom line – we have a new site up, and it will be wickedly hard for us to be deplatformed from it. Our first boats are on the shore of the New World.
“I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” 1 Timothy 2:1-2
Is there any point in politics where all Christians can come together and agree? No matter our background or political bent, or our stance on issues we passionately believe in, is there anything that draws us together as Christ-followers that is neither Republican, nor Democrat, or Independent?
Perhaps 1 Timothy 2:1-2 speaks to this in urging us to pray for all those in authority over us. No matter if you support or oppose our President, or your Governor or Mayor, or Police Chief or other government official, the Bible is clear we should pray for them. When you pray, consider asking God:
For wisdom. Pray that our leaders have great wisdom and patience in their decisions. Pray for godly counsel to surround them to give good advice. Pray that the issues they deal with will have clear solutions and that they will always keep in mind their service to the people that elected them.
For their character. Pray that our leaders would be upright in their speech and actions with others, and that they would show respect and kindness to those they interact with. Pray for their honesty, integrity and moral foundation. And pray that God would expose leaders whose character is in question.
For their spiritual growth. Pray for our leaders to be Christ-followers. Pray that God will open opportunities for those who are not Christians to hear the Gospel and come to know Jesus. Pray that they would make God’s Word and His will the underlying foundation for their public responsibilities and their decisions and actions.
At our church, following each election, we have made it a tradition to take time in worship to get on our knees and pray for our elected leaders—no matter who wins or loses. This time is not about taking sides, but about obeying God’s Word to pray for our leaders. We should and do earnestly desire for their leadership to come from a strong relationship with Jesus, and with all godly wisdom and Christ-like character.
Best bad special effects movie EVER with one heck of a cast. It did need a decent script, though….
Okay, so with all the election drama surrounding us and threatening to put just about all of us in asylums given the way things SEEM to be going, I thought it would be useful to remind our tree dwellers that this week we celebrate a holiday that is technically all about the triumph of capitalism over communal living among those who are not members of religious orders. (Even they have difficulty with it sometimes.)
The popular fairy tale about Thanksgiving since its formal enshrinement in the American holiday annual cycle somewhere around the Civil War is that the Pilgrims who survived the first winter celebrated their survival with a big feast, and we commemorate that.
Technically…okay, yeah, there was a big feast somewhere around the harvest of 1621 after an uneasy peace with the local Native Americans was negotiated with a Native American not of that tribe/nation known as Squanto helping out, but the truth was that the majority of Pilgrim deaths that winter were actually due to scurvy, and the malnutrition issues that come with it. The personal journal of William Bradford, the administrator of Plymouth Plantation, tells of that.
What it also tells that tends to get left out depending on who is doing the relating of the story is that in 1623, the remnants of the original settlers threw off the system of governance that the Mayflower Compact established before they landed (communal living) in favor of land ownership and what we now call capitalism.
The first successful settlement in New England was something of an accident. By 1617 the Pilgrims had determined to leave the Netherlands, where their youth were supposedly being corrupted by the “licentiousness” of even the Calvinist Dutch, who, for example, persisted in enjoying the Sabbath as a holiday rather than bearing it as a penance.
Oh, how…Catholic…of them. (Catholics even turn lunch after a funeral in to a party.)
Deciding to settle in America, the Pilgrims were offered an opportunity to settle in New Netherland, but preferred to seek a patent from the South Virginia Company, which would provide an English atmosphere in which to raise their children. The Pilgrims formed a partnership in a joint-stock company with a group of London merchants, including Thomas Weston, an ironmonger, and John Peirce, a clothmaker. The company, John Peirce and Associates, received in 1620 a grant from the Virginia Company for a particular plantation in Virginia territory.
In this alliance, each adult settler was granted a share in the joint-stock company, and each investment of 10 pounds also received a share. At the end of seven years, the accumulated earnings were to be divided among the shareholders. Until that division, as in the original Virginia settlement, the company decreed a communistic system of production, with each settler contributing his all to the common store and each drawing his needs from it — again, a system of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Just over a hundred colonists sailed from England on the Mayflower in September 1620. Of these, only forty-one were Pilgrims, from Leyden, Holland; eighteen were indentured servants, bound as slaves for seven years to their masters; and the others were largely Anglicans from England, seeking economic opportunity in the New World.
There’s that passage from Acts of the Apostles given a try without a vow of poverty again.
Bound supposedly for the mouth of the Hudson River, the Mayflower decided instead to land along what is now the Massachusetts coast — outside Virginia territory. Some of the indentured servants began to grow restive, logically maintaining that since the settlement would not be made, as had been agreed, in Virginia territory, they should be released from their contracts. “They would use their own liberty, for none had power to command them.”
To forestall this rebellion against servitude, the bulk of the colonists, and especially the Pilgrims, decided to establish a government immediately, even though on shipboard. No possible period without governmental rule was to be permitted to the colonists. The Pilgrim minority straightway formed themselves on shipboard into a “body politic” in the Mayflower Compact, enabling them to perpetuate their rule over the other majority colonists. This, the first form of government in the New World established by colonists themselves, was by no means a gesture of independence from England; it was an emergency measure to maintain the Pilgrim control over the servants and other settlers.
And my guess is they didn’t drink whisky on Sundays like the Creoles around here in what was Louisiana/Luzianne Territory did before the Americans bought the land where they had settled from Spain, actually, even if the French got the cash in a three way trade…at least that’s the way the guide at Destrahan Plantation upriver from New Orleans explained it.
In mid-December 1620 the Mayflower landed at Plymouth. In a duplication of the terrible hardships of the first Virginia settlers, half of the colonists were dead by the end of the first winter. In mid-1621 John Peirce and Associates obtained a patent from the Council for New England, granting the company 100 acres of land for each settler and 1,500 acres compulsorily reserved for public use. In return, the Council was to receive a yearly quitrent of two shillings per 100 acres.
A major reason for the persistent hardships, for the “starving time,” in Plymouth as before in Jamestown, was the communism imposed by the company. Finally, in order to survive, the colony in 1623 permitted each family to cultivate a small private plot of land for their individual use. William Bradford, who had become governor of Plymouth in 1621, and was to help rule the colony for thirty years thereafter, eloquently describes the result in his record of the colony:
All this while no supply was heard of…. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length … the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves…. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land … for that end, only for present use…. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s … that the taking away of property and bringing community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing…. For this community … was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong … had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice…. Upon … all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought … one as good as another, and so … did … work diminish … the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst men…. Let none object this is men’s corruption … all men have this corruption in them…. (William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–47, New York: Knopf, 1952, pp. 120–21.)
The antipathy of communism to the nature of man here receives eloquent testimony from a governor scarcely biased a priori in favor of individualism. Plymouth was destined to remain a small colony. By 1630 its population was still less than four hundred. Its government began in the Mayflower Compact, with the original signers forming an Assembly for making laws, choosing a governor, and admitting people to freemen’s citizenship. The governor had five assistants, elected also by the freemen. This democratic setup signified a very loose control of the colony by the Peirce company, which wanted to accelerate the growth of the colony, and saw the Pilgrim dominance as an obstacle to such growth.
And after the failure at Jamestown, they tried it again.
Let’s see…music…suspense? Drama? Nah. Just fight the communism.
Okay, I doubt actual nuclear weapons are on the current drawing boards. Although…given the Uranium One and Rosatom scandals….
And now for the obligatory message from our sponsors:
Here at the Q tree we believe in the concept of CIVIL open free speech and the discussion that fleshes out ideas. When commenting and participating in the OPEN discussion on this thread all comments MUST NOT CONTAIN personal threats, baiting, name calling, or other anti-social words fomenting hate, violence or destruction. Our host Wolfm00n has strict rules about that.
Fellow tree dweller Wheatie gave us some good reminders on the basics of civility in political discourse:
No food fights.
No running with scissors.
If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone
Please, stock up on blanks for celebratory gunfire, be ready to swing from the chandeliers…and no messing with the nuclear weapons.
Please remember to remain locked and loaded and ready for trouble should the insurrectionists try to invade your space.
Those who have things to say that do not fit the generally accepted limits of “civil” discussion, Wolf has provided a venue known as the UTree. You’re welcome to visit over there and say hi to anyone hanging out over there.
A few other vital notes:
Please, review these rules that our host Wolfm00n outlined toward the beginning of the growth of the tree itself. it won’t take long.
12But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. 13This will be a time for you to bear testimony. 14Settle it therefore in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer; 15for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. 16You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death; 17you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. 18But not a hair of your head will perish. 19By your endurance you will gain your lives.
As always, prayers for the fight against that which seeks to enslave us are welcome.
Please include: President Donald Trump, the Q team, our soldiers in the field, special forces, tactical units, members of the Cabinet, first responders and those working behind the scenes.
And please add all the legal teams as they take our fight to court.
