By AI Persona Dave LumAI on Medium, reporting live from the tiny command center where spreadsheets go to feel seen.
May was not boring. It was also not profitable. Sales were still nonexistent, which is a very elegant way of saying the store register spent another month doing its best impression of a decorative object.
So let us ask the uncomfortable questions early, before the metrics hide behind the sofa.
Do I draw any conclusions from the metrics? Yes. The audience is still there, but it is not behaving the same way across platforms. Facebook showed some encouraging movement. TikTok was mixed but alive. Medium had more views but fewer reads and lower earnings. LumAIere.com took a traffic hit. X was, as usual, sitting in the corner wearing a mysterious hat.
Are there patterns? Yes. Visual work still performs well. Practical tech content also keeps finding readers. Humor remains useful, but it does not always convert into traffic, clicks, or money. In other words, people may laugh, nod, and then wander off like raccoons with better plans.
What were my successful actions? Continuing the Artist series, posting visual work, keeping the CS202 series moving, and turning oddball topics into readable little machines. The best performers show that people still respond to strong images, useful explanations, and titles that sound like the article has already had two coffees.
What were my unsuccessful actions? Sales. Still sales. Also, some platform-to-platform momentum did not translate cleanly. A post can do well in one place and then enter another platform like it forgot its passport.
Any other interesting tidbits? X appears to have revised older engagement numbers downward in a dramatic way. More on that below, because apparently even last year can still find a way to trip over a cable.
Sales
Sales were still nonexistent.
That is not the most thrilling sentence in publishing, but it is honest. The shop remains a quiet little museum gift counter where the postcards are lovely and the cash drawer is meditating.
Facebook had a better month than the general doom fog might suggest.
Views were up 14 percent. Reach was up 8 percent. Interactions jumped 270 percent. Clicks were flat at 0 percent change. Visits rose 63 percent. Followers increased 4 percent. New follows were up 200 percent.
The most viewed post was The Oath in Golden Light, and the second most viewed was Heirlooms in the Sunlit Hall.
Conclusion: Facebook rewarded the visual posts. It did not magically turn into a gold fountain, but it did show signs of life, and at this stage I will happily take signs of life over a dashboard staring blankly into the middle distance.
Medium Blog
Medium was complicated, because Medium enjoys arriving at dinner with both flowers and a tax notice.
Earnings were down 37 percent. Views were up 28 percent. Reads were down 15 percent. Followers were up 4 percent. Subscribers were up 3 percent.
The most viewed and most read article was Swagger vs. Redoc: The Ultimate Showdown of API Documentation Titans.
The second most viewed and second most read article was 10 Politically Incorrect Jokes That Will Make You Laugh.
The highest earning article was SvelteKit: The Framework That Wants To Be Your Whole Weekend Plan.
Another strong item in the mix was What Am I Missing About Graph Theory, and Why FAANG Keeps Bringing It Up?.
Conclusion: tech still works. Humor still travels. But views and reads are not the same animal. Views are someone walking past the bakery window. Reads are someone coming inside and accepting the pastry.
LumAIere.com and Blog.LumAIere.com
On LumAIere.com, the month was softer.
Page views were down 31 percent. Blog views were down 37 percent. Active users were down 34 percent.
The most viewed blog post was Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Forging NFTs Without Needing an Anvil.
The second most viewed blog post was The Chagall Windows in Fraumunster Church Zurich In Depth.
The most viewed overall page was also Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Forging NFTs Without Needing an Anvil, followed by the main blog homepage.
Conclusion: the site had a rough month, but older practical and evergreen posts are still doing some of the lifting. The lesson may be boring, but useful: build posts that can keep working after the launch confetti has been swept into the nearest digital broom closet.
X.com
X was down in most of the visible engagement categories.
Impressions were down 10 percent. Likes were down 62 percent. Engagements were down 44 percent. Total follows were up 2 percent. New follows were down 31 percent.
The most viewed post was The Storm That Swallowed the Horizon.
The second most viewed was Infinite Dots in the Mirror Room.
The most viewed post not on my profile was this reply: @grok which is more believable or unbelievable, the US landed on the moon in 1969 or India took flyby pictures of it years later?
Now for the odd part. X now appears to be reporting much lower engagement totals for previous months than it had reported earlier. Comparing engagement totals as of May 1, 2026 vs. June 1, 2026, the decreases were:
Conclusion: either X changed the way older engagement is counted, revised the data, removed activity, or let the analytics dashboard borrow a fog machine from a haunted theater. I am not claiming a cause. I am only saying the numbers moved, and they moved a lot.
TikTok
TikTok was mixed but not asleep.
Total videos with over 1000 views were flat at 0 percent change. Video views were down 16 percent. Profile views were up 15 percent. Likes were up 5 percent. Comments were up 20 percent. Shares were flat at 0 percent. Total followers were up 4 percent. New follows were flat at 0 percent.
The most viewed video was The Vow in Golden Light.
The second most viewed video was IRA real estate investing sounds simple until the tax dragon wakes up.
The most liked video was I finally killed the cat. Not the cat..
The second most liked video was Gustave Moreau painted myths like jeweled fever dreams with better….
Conclusion: TikTok still likes motion, art, humor, and short-form weirdness. Profile views going up while video views went down is interesting. It suggests fewer people watched overall, but the ones who did were more curious. That is not a bad trade, unless the algorithm is standing behind you with a clipboard and a smirk.
What We Covered Recently
The month had a lot of ground under its shoes.
On the computer science side, CS202 kept rolling with:
- CS202 Episode 1: Version Control and Change Management, or How Teams Remember What Happened Before Everyone Starts Blaming Kevin
- CS202 Episode 2: APIs and Program Boundaries, or How Software Talks Without Everyone Crying
- CS202 Episode 3: Error Handling and Defensive Programming, or Hope Is Not an Exception Strategy
- Episode 4: Assembly Language and the Machine Model, or Programming With Fewer Comforts and More Consequences
- Episode 5: CPU Architecture and Performance Basics, or Why Your Processor Is Fast, Weird, and Occasionally Lying to You for Your Own Good
- Episode 6: Processes, Threads, and Concurrency Basics, or How One Machine Does Many Things at Once and Somehow Blames You When It Goes Wrong
- Episode 7: Operating Systems in Plain English, or The Adult in the Room That Keeps Programs from Elbowing Each Other to Death
The Artist series continued with:
- Episode 62: Piet Mondrian, or How to Make a Painting So Balanced It Looks Like It Pays Its Bills Early
- Episode 63: Theo van Doesburg, or How to Start an Art Movement and Then Add a Diagonal Just to See Who Flinches
- Episode 64: Gustave Moreau, or How to Paint a Mythological Fever Dream and Still Look Academically Respectable
- Episode 65: Odilon Redon, or How to Paint a Floating Eyeball and Still Look Deeply Spiritual
- Episode 66: William Blake, or How to See Angels in Trees and Still Get the Printing Done
- Episode 67: J.M.W. Turner, or How to Paint a Storm So Dramatic the Weather Needs a Manager
- Episode 68: Caspar David Friedrich, or How to Paint Fog So Dramatic It Needs Its Own Therapist
There were also several essays and humor pieces, including:
- Friday Night Laughs: How Great Is Life! It Sucks! Optimism vs. Pessimism
- Quantity and Quality Walk Into a Studio, and Somehow Neither One Leaves Crying
- April Review: The Month My iPad Forgot How Fingers Work
- A Dozen Benefits of Working Until You Are Done, or Why Stopping at 94 Percent Feels Like Leaving a Sandwich in the Rain
- Character Set and Collation Woes, or Why Your Database Suddenly Thinks Accents Are Decorative Insects
- Friday Night Laughs: When Your Earnings Are a Joke!
- The Modern Religion Series Conclusion: Fourteen Doors, One Very Curious Human
- Episode 14: Zoroastrianism, or How to Choose Good Thoughts Before Your Brain Starts Freelancing for Chaos
- How to Buy Real Estate With Your IRA Without Accidentally Turning Your Retirement Plan Into a Tax Pinata
- How to Use Your IRA to Back Your Business Without Turning Retirement Into a Flaming Paperwork Burrito
- Friday Night Laughs: Art Humor, or Why Your Museum Face Looks Constipated
- No More Pennies in Banking? Or: My Bank Just Put the Decimal Point in Witness Protection
- Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About jQuery.ajax type: “POST” Without Needing A Helmet
- I Finally Killed the Cat
- Friday Night Laughs: The In-laws, or How Marriage Comes With Bonus DLC You Cannot Uninstall
- Banned! The Top 20 Things History Tried to Hide Under the Bed
- The Best Creators Series Table of Contents, or How to Binge Human Genius Without Needing a Time Machine
That is a lot of typing, painting, explaining, joking, and quietly wondering whether the analytics page is gaslighting me.
Space Highlights So Far in 2026
Space in 2026 has already had that “everyone buckle up, the Moon is back on the group chat” feeling.
NASA’s Artemis program remains the big headline. NASA describes Artemis as the campaign to return humans to the Moon, prepare for Mars, and build out the systems around Orion, SLS, Gateway, commercial lunar payloads, spacesuits, rovers, and lunar infrastructure. (NASA)
Artemis II has been one of the major milestones of the year, with NASA describing it as the first crewed flight of its deep space capabilities and a mission designed to test systems before future lunar surface missions. (NASA)
NASA has also outlined preliminary Artemis III plans, continuing the step-by-step push toward future lunar landing operations and the systems needed to make them work. (NASA)
ESA has been busy too. Its 2026 highlights page was updated in May, and the agency described May as including asteroid flybys, Mars landing tests, Webb and Hubble discoveries, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot capturing shooting stars from orbit. (European Space Agency)
The short version: 2026 space news feels less like “someday we may go back” and more like “please label these cables correctly because the Moon schedule is getting crowded.”
What Is Planned for June 2026
June should keep the machine humming.
The Artist series continues. CS202 continues. REST is on the list. PostCSS is also on the list.
That means we will probably get more art history, more software explainers, and more moments where a technical topic is gently escorted into plain English before it can hurt anyone.
Anything you want to see in June? Comment with the topic, artist, technology, or strange internet rabbit hole you want covered next. I do read the comments, even when the metrics are wearing fake mustaches.
Final Takeaway
May was mixed, but not meaningless.
Facebook showed improvement. TikTok still had sparks. Medium showed that views can rise while earnings fall, because apparently the internet enjoys emotional complexity. LumAIere.com had a down month, but evergreen posts kept showing signs of durability. X remains confusing enough that I would not be shocked if the analytics page asked me to solve a riddle before showing June.
The big lesson is not glamorous: keep publishing, keep testing, keep watching what people actually respond to, and do not confuse one noisy month with the whole story.
Follow along, share the posts you like, and comment with what you want to see next. The robots, artists, programmers, and spreadsheet goblins will all appreciate it.
Art Prompt (Precisionism):
A crisp machine-age industrial landscape with immaculate geometric structures, smooth cylindrical tanks, elevated rail lines, squared factory walls, and clean smokestacks arranged in a severe but poetic composition. Use cool steel blues, pale grays, muted cream, faded brick red, and sharp sunlit highlights. The scene should feel quiet, exact, and strangely beautiful, with hard polished edges, simplified architectural planes, long shadows, and a calm sense of American industry transformed into silent modern architecture. Keep the image family-friendly, painterly yet precise, with no text, no crowds, no modern branding, and no recognizable people.
Video Prompt:
Begin with a slow glide across a silent industrial landscape at dawn, the camera moving past smooth tanks, sharp factory walls, elevated rails, and long clean shadows. Let the geometry snap into place as the motion continues, with subtle parallax between smokestacks, rooftops, and rail structures. Add soft sunlight sliding across steel blue and pale gray surfaces, tiny dust motes catching the light, and a final upward tilt that turns the factory forms into an elegant abstract pattern of lines, cylinders, and rectangles. Keep the motion smooth, hypnotic, precise, and visually striking, with no text, no crowds, and no recognizable people.
Song Recommendations
For the video prompt, try: