Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

We’re not going back!

I really should read my own blog.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

No Justins, No Peace

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

You are here: Home / z-Retired Categories / Previous Site Maintenance / Site Update

Site Update

by | 58 Comments

This post is in: ,

A small number of people have let me know that the front page has been slow loading on some tablets and phones.  The front page starts to load, then hangs a bit, then tweets start to fill in.

i am not sure how widespread this issue is, and I’m not sure whether this is the result of a change on the Twitter end of things, or if it’s a BJ issue.

In the meantime, as I try to figure things out, I just reduced the number of posts that show up on the front page from 15 to 7.  If the slow loading front page has been an issue for you, can you guys let me know one whether that change  made a difference or not?

Also, because of the law of unintended consequences, I need to ask if the change from 15 to 7 is a problem for you guys for any reason.

 

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  2. 2.

    AJ

    The tweets have been slow to load in Chrome on Android. I will see if anything changes now, but mainly I wanted to say THANK YOU for all that you do for us!!

  3. 3.

    Albatrossity

    Yeah, it has been slow on my computer; I don’t often use the phone to look at this site. But individual articles, not just the front page, are slow. That is to say, if I load the site and then immediately click on the first article at the top of the page, I get the behavior described (tweets filling in slowly). Not sure if reducing the total articles on the front page is gonna solve that. Also not sure that it is a huge problem. Three seconds out of my day is not really a big deal.

  5. 5.

    wvng

    15 to 7 made a huge positive difference for me on an Android tablet. Nothing negative.

  6. 6.

    frosty

    I haven’t noticed anything slower than before. Maybe I’m just patient (hah!). Reducing the number of FP posts from 15 to 7 won’t make a difference. I get on the site a lot* and the only time I dig back into earlier posts is first thing in the morning, and that’s usually 4 or less.

    * It might be less often IF THERE WEREN’T SO DAMN MUCH NEWS!!!!

  8. 8.

    germy

    It’s loading a lot quicker for me now.

    I think reducing the number of posts per page did the trick.

    It loads almost instantly for me now.

  9. 9.

    debbie

    Letting you know it’s been slow on both my Mac laptop and my Chromebook. For me, it started when there was that 502 error a week or two ago, if that’s any help

    ETA: It’s no speedier now than it was this morning.

  10. 10.

    Mike in Oly

    Tweets have been very slow to load for me the past two days. I am on a PC running windows 10 and using Chrome. Won’t know if it is better until another tweet heavy post is at the top.

  12. 12.

    TaMara (HFG)

    Very slow – photos, tweets – on Chrome, Win 10. Comments take a while, too. I have super high speed internet, so I really notice it because all the other pages load so quickly.

  13. 13.

    Madeleine

    I’ve been reading on an iPad with problems exactly like Albatrossity’s. I haven’t been reading enough since you reduced the front page to know if it’s better.

  14. 14.

    dexwood

    I’ve experienced this problem recently on my phone but not my desktop. On the phone now, Samsung s9, this post loaded fast, but Anne’s covid 19 post from this morning is still slow.

  15. 15.

    RandyG

    Somewhat better now on my Android phone, which admittedly was never a speed-burner. Tweets are still pretty slow to fully load. No problem before or now on my laptop…. generally use Brave, which is based on Chrome.

  16. 16.

    namekarB

    It was slooooowww loading in my Chrome browser on my PC. It was mostly Tweets that were slow to load. I turned on an ad blocker and it didn’t make much difference. Reducing the posts from 15 to 7 on the front page has made the page load much faster.

    Edited to add: Cleared my cache  and reloaded the page and although the tweets are still slow, reducing the number of posts on the front page has helped a lot

  17. 17.

    JaySinWA

    Any tweet storm post that I load can take minutes to populate the tweets on Chromebook Chrome.

    I generally see the posts in my feed reader and rarely come to the main page directly, so the page limit would have little effect for me.

    I think it would really help if the authors (and front pagers that post tweets as comments) could capture the tweets as images with a link to the tweet. I wonder if there is a tool for that. Its fairly common for tweets to use imbedded images of tweets they repost, thinking they may be deleted, so there may either be a tool or a market for one

    I see Tamara @TaMara (HFG): is having issues with pictures as well so maybe not the best solution.

  18. 18.

    Ruckus

    WG

    I haven’t really noticed a speed issue but have noticed an issue with loading any kind of picture over the last few days. On the phone, which I’m on now, it seems about back to normal.

  19. 19.

    LarryB

    Very slow on Win 10 with Firefox. I input the Balloon-juice home page to a performance checker. Check it out (TL;DR: It didn’t pass). Reducing the number of tweets from 15 to 7 made a huge difference. When the page is loading. Most of the time the browser is waiting on platform.twitter.com urls.

  21. 21.

    Yutsano

    Tweets either load slowly (on laptop, Firefox 78.0.2 on WIn10) or sometimes not at all (Firefox on Andriod) but I always thought that was a connection derp.

  22. 22.

    Yutsano

    Having said that…YouTube is in its own time warp derp. It seems to not acknowledge when I’ve watched a video. Oddsfish.

  23. 23.

    different-church-lady

    1) I thought it was just me and a very old iPad, so I never said anything, but I’ve been having this issue for weeks now. I’ve pretty much given up using it for BJ.

    2) iOS 10, this iPad can’t go any higher

    3) Problems using both Safari and Chrome, Safari seems to be a bit better

    4) Worse on the front page than the individual posts. I frequently can’t get the front page to fully load at all.

    5) For the most part, even outside of BJ Twitter seems to bring this thing to its knees. Not only will the Twitter page not load, nothing else will either until I close the tab and open a new one.

    6) I’ll see if the 7 front-page posts helps things any when I get back to the iPad.

    7) Seems to be worse when there are a lot of Twitter embeds on the front page

    8) I’m not having these problems on a 2008 (!) Mac running Snow Lep. Is it exclusive to old iOS code?

  24. 24.

    GrannyMC

    Just tried it on my Android. Some ads and all tweets are still individually taking as long to load, it’s just that the whole page loads faster because there is less to load. I have a high-speed internet connection and am sitting right next to the wireless router so it’s not the connection.

    You have another minor nuisance you might want to address, in that when I hit refresh, the page reloads, but if there’s new content since the last page load it doesn’t scroll back to the top, which IMO it should, as the main reason people are going to hit refresh is to see if there’s anything new posted.

    Thanks for all your work on this.

  25. 25.

    kindness

    On my work computer (crappy pc – Chrome browser) I will have the page fill in and then it reloads the page and the embedded tweets disappear and the fields are grayed out and blank.  If I hit the reload button I usually get them back.  On my home computer (Macbook pro – Firefox) that never happens.

  26. 26.

    Juju

    I have an iPhone and it seemed a bit slower but it’s not like I’m in a rush.  When I try to load the rest of the front page, sometimes the whole tweet doesn’t load and I have to go into the column, or whatever it’s called to see the whole tweet. It’s not a big deal and if this is the most irritating thing I have to deal with on any given day, then it’s a good day. I’m sheltered in place. It’s not as if I don’t have time.  I’m going to deal with my migraine now.

  27. 27.

    Martin

    Yeah, seeing the slow tweets filling in on Safari/Catalina. It loads the plain text/alt and then incrementally replaces that with the tweet. While not a bad way to handle it, it reformat the page so the link you were trying to click on moves and lands you wherever. My guess is the iframe that contains the tweet resizing resets the DOM requiring a reflow so that the responsive features work, and it does this for every iframe/tweet on the page.

  28. 28.

    E.

    A post with tweets will take ages to load on my ancient and overburdened kindle fire. Long enough that for the morning Covid update, I set it loading and then I go off and make coffee, or feed the car or something.  It’s the only “computer” I have so I make do.

  30. 30.

    BruceFromOhio

    Win10/FF loads okay before and after.

    Kindle Fire took FOREVER to load with all the Gaia-damned twatters. Cutting FP posts from 15 to 7 made an immediate improvement, and I am very grateful.

  32. 32.

    A Good Woman

    One Plus 6T phone with Android 10 and running Chrome browser.  Definite improvement in loading.

    Difficult to see a difference with my Dell running Windows 10 and Chrome browser.

  33. 33.

    tinare

    I was having issues on my iPad. This is better.  Thank you – I thought it was just me.

  34. 34.

    ChrisG

    Last week it was noticeably slow, laggy, and almost unusable. Now, everything is fine again. Thanks!

  35. 35.

    Soprano2

    Seems somewhat better for me on Firefox for Android. It’s the tweets that take forever to load.

  36. 36.

    RSA

    A small number of people have let me know that the front page has been slow loading on some tablets and phones.

    It’s the opposite for me. Chrome on Catalina, on my relatively old 2015 Mac, is horrendously slow for Ann Laurie’s tweet-heavy posts. Pages load much faster in Safari on my also relatively old iPhone 6.

  38. 38.

    Another Scott

    @Baud:  As I mentioned to WG, it seems that Recent Comments are usually most accurate on the most recent thread, even if you refresh an older thread. I’m not sure if it’s a caching problem on Chrome or what. (Even Shift-Refresh doesn’t always update it for me in older threads.)

    It’s not a big deal for me, now that I know what to look for.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  39. 39.

    prostratedragon

    I had noticed some slowing before, but it’s much better today.

    Notes: I use adblockers; I seldom reboot my machine, just suspending it while out of use. But BJ was loading more slowly than almost anything else.

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: Scott, did you try my suggestion of clicking the link just above the comment box – when you have that problem?  That link manually breaks all cache and forces a reload without cache,

    if you don’t have the right recent comments, click that. If it gives you the right recent comments, we will know it’s cache related. If it makes no difference, we will know it’s not cache related.

    Then let me know the result. :-)

  42. 42.

    Another Scott

    @WaterGirl: Sorry, I missed that fix.  I’ll try it when I get a chance.

    (The line of east cost thunderstorms knocked out our power at 4pm so I’m limping along on my phone now.)

    I’ll let you know!

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  43. 43.

    Croaker

    Sorry it’s been total shat. Merica’s websites ALWAYS WORK …. BUY NOW!!! WTF ?!?! TRUMP FLAGZ ZZ NOW!!!

    Definitely experience problems with the iPad.

    Suggest you work your Production Outage ticket as follows:

    1) Your hyper drive motivator has been damaged!
    2) Replace the negative power coupling?
    3) It’s not fair?
    4) Get a fucking Hydro Spaner !!! DUH
    5) Your MOISTURE VAPORATORS are not programmed correctly!!! Gain experience working with Binary Loadlifters!
    6) THOSE DROIDS better be on the South Range or there’ll be HELL 2P!
    7) Keep the Jawas away they are “filthy creatures”

  44. 44.

    frosty

    I just clicked on Repubs In Disarray and the first tweet came up instantly. So yes, it’s faster for me just from changing the page loads from 15 to 7.

  45. 45.

    Dev Null

    FWIW, I see similar delays loading twitter images – as much as 10s – on both Balloon Juice and dailyKos. (this on an MSI laptop, 32G RAM, linux + chrome beta). On the other hand, I have something like 200 URLs active, so perhaps that explains the delays I see.

    I assume you have looked at network traffic? if twitter were unreasonably slow responding for whatever reason that might be a factor. eg if twitter were to queue up requests from an IP and deliver responses in bursts, that could explain the improvement people see with the reduction in posts per page. (And no, I have no reason to think that twitter is queuing up responses, it’s just a thought.)

  49. 49.

    Madeline

    Thanks, WaterGirl. Everything seems ok on my iPad now.

    Hmm. Except that my number and email are disappearing.

  50. 50.

    Madeleine

    Good grief: nym not number and Madeleine not Madeline. It’s  below 90 and I still can’t think or type. Horrid humidity.

  51. 51.

    Dev Null

    @different-church-lady: Nice!

    But … where is the sea lion?!?

    (I once had 358 tabs open at the same time, but that seemed a bit too, hmm, twee. 10K tabs is beyond my grasp, and – more to the point – my poor laptop’s grasp as well, I suspect.)

  52. 52.

    Frank McCormick

    @WaterGirl

    I had seen the problem with the full GUI version of tweets taking a long time to load on my laptop (Win10/Chrome) and noted that this morning that the issue was not present!

  53. 53.

    HinTN

    @WaterGirl

    Chrome in android – previously the tweets were delayed as you described. Now almost immediate. No issue with the number of posts. Thanks

  55. 55.

    Another Scott

    @WaterGirl: Power is back on.  Yay!

    Here on this page at midnight, Recent Comments shows the top one stamped 11:23 PM.  Normal browser refresh, still shows top one stamped 11:23 PM.

    Click on the “click here if tabs not showing in editor”, longer time to refresh, and most recent comment is 12:xx AM.  So, that did it.  (As you suspected.)

    Thanks very much!!

    (Latest macOS Catalina on mid-2013 MBP with latest Chrome and UBlock Origin.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: Well, that points me in the direction of the problem, and gets you and immediate solution when it happens, so I’ll call that a win.  Will still have to figure out the solution, but this takes us half the way there.  Thanks much

  57. 57.

    cope

    I’m not sure you’re still soliciting feedback on this issue but I have been having some weirdness with the site on my gen 4 iPad.  Sometimes it would be so slow to load the front page that I would give up and move on (hello “Raw Story”).  That seems to have improved.

    Another set of issues has to do with making comments and not being able to see the top couple of lines of the comment box even while typing in my comment.  Once I got to my third line, things would be fine.  This comment has been relatively normal except that in the comment text box, when I move my cursor up or down, the cursor moves to the correct place in the text box but the displayed window goes all the way to the bottom of the entire page and I have to slide my way back up to the text box.

    I’m not usually one to complain so I never brought it up but since you asked…

    As long as I am in complaining mode, I have a couple of questions about making contributions to the site.  I threw in a hundred bucks a few months ago and will likely do so again in the future.  I am just wondering if it is possible to have a threshold monetary contribution to the site that would make the adds go away as is the case in a couple of other sites to which I make monetary contributions (Three Quarks Daily, Charles Pierce).  If not I understand.  It would, however, have been nice to get at least an email thanking for my contribution.

    Complaints over, as you were.

Comments are closed.