Can you believe it? I’m actually writing a blog post. It has been 1,258 days since my last post; has anything of note transpired since April of 2020? Let’s think. Does the image above, the “featured image,” have any relevance to this post? Uh. No. No, it does not. It’s just my way of remembering if all the humans died off tomorrow, the sage and junipers along the Deschutes would still be there.

What caused this burst of writing action was an article I noticed on the dashboard page of my so-long-ignored personal website while I was visiting to clean out the gobs of spam my site has been attracting. It was this article.

WordPress began eons ago as a way for mortals to publish web content. It has since morphed into a multi-headed hydra-like beast increasingly designed to create websites that shout louder than others in end-stage capitalism’s rush to hoover up the last few sheckles before the world falls apart.

It seems there’s consternation in the WordPress world over the slow adoption of the “Block Editor” standard WP is foisting on users. Evidently, after four long years, only 54% of users have moved to the block editor. Frankly, I’m surprised the percentage is that high, considering the experience using the Block Editor sucks donkey balls. Oh, did I say that out loud? I meant, “The experience of utilizing the block editor is suboptimal in the majority of cases.”

I find nothing, as in not a fucking thing, improved by switching to blocks. We still write words, include images, and want those elements displayed legibly. We now have “block pattern options” to deal with: “Do you want an image or a gallery? How many columns?”

But what I find most disturbing is the end product is entirely generic and joins all the millions of other generic websites cluttering the world.