I do have an improved version of the official Octothorpes WordPress plugin, but unfortunately the original authors have refused to open-source it, and without an open source license attached to the original files I built on, I can't share it. <rant>I have to express some frustration. I'm extremely disappointed that Octothorpes do not seem to work at all. The whole project is a brilliant idea—I went for it hook, line, and sinker. In fact, I liked it so much that I immediately started working on improving things, such as their extremely lacking WordPress integration plugin... so eagerly, in fact, that I put in a lot of work before testing whether Octothorpes actually work at all. And it appears that they don't. At least, I couldn't ever get them to, despite sinking several long nights into it. Disappointingly, I had to add a lot of unneeded extra structure to my site code to even try and get Octothorpes working—contrary to what the documentation suggested—and even after doing everything right, as confirmed by their debugging tool, my Octothorpes never appeared on their server. Given that I never got it to work and couldn't find anyone who was able to assist me, all the complexity I had to add to my site in the effort—such as serving Octothorpe-specific page versions, like the one you are looking at right now—became needless cruft. So after a few very long nights of fruitlessly spinning my wheels, I've given up, and removed it all again. I have to add that I'm disappointed. I'm not used to showing up enthusiastic to contribute to an open-source project and so quickly winding up walking away with absolutely nothing, no involvement, no ability to use or run it, no interest in my desire to contribute (even code I've already finished!), nothing. Maybe I've been lucky before now. Octothorpes are a brilliant idea, in concept. I hope they work someday, and become a project that might see wide adoption and contribution by enthusiastic developers. (And that the main devs see the value in WordPress plugin developers expressing an interest in authoring OP integrations with WordPress... 43% of the world's websites can't be wrong...) Sorry to rant, but, my site, my several nights of work lost, my prerogative to express it.</rant>Frustrated rant about it here, click to read...
Seeing as how this Octothorpe-compliant low-bandwidth page version serves no purpose anymore (and doesn't contain any code related to the Octothorpe service anymore, except for noticing visitors using URLs referencing it, in order to show this message), you probably want to view the original page in its complete technicolor glory at https://michaelkupietz.com/fascination-and-dangerous-weather/.
Springtime hits hard in some quarters. I call this 'dangerous weather'—like, you've got to watch out where you're going. You might trip and fall. Somehow this always coincides with the rise of halters and midriff shirts.
Fascination, you know, is a universal feeling. I hesitate to call it an emotion, it's more than that, it's a condition, a thesis. It's strongly rooted in our biology, I think. I'm sure our closest animal relations feel it the same way we do. It's tough to know what's on a housecat's mind most of the time, but when he's gazing at that fish swimming around that bowl, I know exactly where his head is. And it's not "I'm hungry" or "how can I get that?" or "in a moment I shall execute my plan", as you might think. It's not something that rational, like when he wants something—in that case he meows, shuffles and generally makes his state of need, if not an exact complaint, known. It's just being transported, lost in the presence of something mysterious and wonderful. It's fascination. I wouldn't be surprised if our more distant kin further down the evolutionary chain don't feel something like it too. Perhaps a protozoan feels something like it for the mold in the soil. Or even a flower, for the sun.
An explorer feels it for the horizon, for the negative spaces just out of visual range. It's no different, I honestly believe that. You're enthralled, you impulsively long to engage it, you want to touch it and immerse yourself. Maybe to a cat killing a mouse or a fish, it isn't killing, it's dancing.
The difference between cats and humans is that we know a richer vocabulary of dance, not that the spark that pulls us towards a dance partner isn't the same. Women's bodies are fascinating, seen through these male eyes. The important curves are so simple, in the right photograph the bottom of a breast, the arch of a back, the curl of a hip are enough to convey the thrill in its entirety. Yet when you see one in person, once someone takes her clothes off in front of you, it's always more amazing than you even expected, because besides the simplicity there's also something so complex that the mind can't ever carry it. You can't anticipate it. It always comes as a surprise. It's fascinating.
Sometimes I talk to a woman, and it's like a good song. There's no real reason, nothing I can point to about it, to indicate why it should make me feel so good, but it does. I'm transported. And then I realize it's probably just the flowers, and the sun.
Content originally from https://michaelkupietz.com/fascination-and-dangerous-weather/. © copyright 2025 Michael E. Kupietz