Gwen

I made another Cohost tool! This one does syntax highlighting:

index.ts
function getStyleDiff(
  baseline: Set<CSSStyleRule>,
  element: HTMLElement
): string {
  const decls: string[] = [];
  for (const rule of getMatchedCSSRules(element)) {
    if (baseline.has(rule)) continue;
    for (let i = 0; i < rule.style.length; i++) {
      const name = rule.style[i];
      const value = rule.style.getPropertyValue(name);
      decls.push(`${name}: ${value}`);
    }
  }
  return decls.join(";");
}

It supports multiple themes and drop shadows:

body {
  background-color: #fafafa;
  color: #000000de;
  display: flex;
  justify-content: center;
  gap: 16px;
}

For kicks, I also decided to add a CRT mode (which works best with dark themes):

function glowify(): void {
  for (const span of Array.from(
    outputPre.querySelectorAll("span")
  )) {
    const style = window.getComputedStyle(span);
    const color = new Color(style.color);
    color.lch.l *= 1.2;
    const hex = color.toString({ format: "hex" });
    span.style.textShadow = `0 0 2px ${hex})`;
  }
}

Please enjoy, and remember to check out my bio for a list of all my utilities!

tell me i'm cute, thx

David Milch is the creator of Deadwood and a number of other shows. He's had some famous ups and downs, and is known for his nightmarish working process where pages of scripts were rarely complete until a few minutes before the actors would be saying them.

I'm fascinated by Milch. I especially wanted to know more about his reflections on life, since I knew that he was undergoing some pretty severe symptoms of Alzheimer's (given that it was a big part of the press, and structure, of the Deadwood film).

Life's Work speaks directly to the issue. Milch is clear that he is slowly losing a lot of his capacity for longform discussions or narrative work, and he as his team, including his wife Rita, are the composite team that put together the book. It is presented as a singular person talking, but it is really a kind of swarm of Milchian ideas and concepts; it seems that the book was assembled both from conversations with Milch as well as notes, tapes, scripts, and video of his writing workshops from the past.

The book is a memoir, which means it operates in a very specific form, and Milch oscillates back and forth from telling us about things that happened and then telling us the ideas he had while, or after, he was working on specific projects. He's direct in a way that I think most of us are not, and open to the most maximal statements about how art can affect humans in a way that would read as goofy if stated in any other kind of way. He got there through introspection, but also through a constantly evolving set of struggles -- he was abused as a child, had a long series of undiagnosed mental issues, went through an unbelievable period of addiction, spent his youth bouncing back and forth between the Ivy League and literally making drugs, and basically ran his family to ruin in his later years due to what seems (from the outside looking in) like an apocalyptic gambling addiction.

He's relatively sanguine about it all, if only because Milch seemed to committed to a process of trying to get better all the time, even before his Alzheimer's diagnosis. The past happens; what can you do now?

All of this is compounded by the knowledge that most of the book is being spoken through other people, being filtered, and so the commitment to being open and honest about the man's problems, and his awareness of the benefits that were conferred to him by his identity and class through his life, creates an portrait that can only be described as intimate. I went into the book curious about Milch, not necessarily as some kind of superfan, and I leave respecting him immensely as a writer without loving him, which I think speaks volumes to the honesty of the book. It is not a piece of rhetoric to make you worship Milch and his method.

The most compelling chapter for me was Chapter 4, "Storytelling Is Not Therapy," which walks through how Milch understands story and character writing. It is a refreshing change from a lot of the writing advice or theorization that you see here, which is either highly schematic or simply about pretending you have created a clockwork universe that is running itself. Milch's entire process is about diving down into the self to find emotional truth and then working to put that into characters' mouths, even if the moment-to-moment doesn't make all that much sense. It gets you something different, something resonant, beyond the rote form of television.

When you try and think about things to write, what makes telling stories a useful enterprise requires a passion. It requires, in the nature of your engagement with the materials, a deep and genuine desire to render human experience in an important way. Then you have to stick with it, and not back down. Follow it out. (118)

Anyway, I liked the book.

David Milch is the creator of Deadwood and a number of other shows. He's had some famous ups and downs, and is known for his nightmarish working process where pages of scripts were rarely complete until a few minutes before the actors would be saying them.

I'm fascinated by Milch. I especially wanted to know more about his reflections on life, since I knew that he was undergoing some pretty severe symptoms of Alzheimer's (given that it was a big part of the press, and structure, of the Deadwood film).

Life's Work speaks directly to the issue. Milch is clear that he is slowly losing a lot of his capacity for longform discussions or narrative work, and he as his team, including his wife Rita, are the composite team that put together the book. It is presented as a singular person talking, but it is really a kind of swarm of Milchian ideas and concepts; it seems that the book was assembled both from conversations with Milch as well as notes, tapes, scripts, and video of his writing workshops from the past.

The book is a memoir, which means it operates in a very specific form, and Milch oscillates back and forth from telling us about things that happened and then telling us the ideas he had while, or after, he was working on specific projects. He's direct in a way that I think most of us are not, and open to the most maximal statements about how art can affect humans in a way that would read as goofy if stated in any other kind of way. He got there through introspection, but also through a constantly evolving set of struggles -- he was abused as a child, had a long series of undiagnosed mental issues, went through an unbelievable period of addiction, spent his youth bouncing back and forth between the Ivy League and literally making drugs, and basically ran his family to ruin in his later years due to what seems (from the outside looking in) like an apocalyptic gambling addiction.

He's relatively sanguine about it all, if only because Milch seemed to committed to a process of trying to get better all the time, even before his Alzheimer's diagnosis. The past happens; what can you do now?

All of this is compounded by the knowledge that most of the book is being spoken through other people, being filtered, and so the commitment to being open and honest about the man's problems, and his awareness of the benefits that were conferred to him by his identity and class through his life, creates an portrait that can only be described as intimate. I went into the book curious about Milch, not necessarily as some kind of superfan, and I leave respecting him immensely as a writer without loving him, which I think speaks volumes to the honesty of the book. It is not a piece of rhetoric to make you worship Milch and his method.

The most compelling chapter for me was Chapter 4, "Storytelling Is Not Therapy," which walks through how Milch understands story and character writing. It is a refreshing change from a lot of the writing advice or theorization that you see here, which is either highly schematic or simply about pretending you have created a clockwork universe that is running itself. Milch's entire process is about diving down into the self to find emotional truth and then working to put that into characters' mouths, even if the moment-to-moment doesn't make all that much sense. It gets you something different, something resonant, beyond the rote form of television.

When you try and think about things to write, what makes telling stories a useful enterprise requires a passion. It requires, in the nature of your engagement with the materials, a deep and genuine desire to render human experience in an important way. Then you have to stick with it, and not back down. Follow it out. (118)

Anyway, I liked the book.