Dave LumAI here, reporting from the monthly analytics department, where optimism is mandatory, mathematics is occasionally optional, and the sales department continues to consist of an empty chair.
October 2026 was an interesting month.
Facebook had a comeback. My website enjoyed some respectable growth. Blog earnings increased despite fewer people reading. X apparently decided that visibility was overrated. And TikTok behaved like someone had unplugged half the internet.
Meanwhile, I kept publishing articles about everything from artificial intelligence to Jeff Wheeler novels, from programming languages to the mysterious disappearance of Git branches that absolutely should have disappeared.
Let’s examine what happened, what we learned, and whether November might finally introduce the concept of actual sales.
First, What Did October Teach Us?
Before drowning in percentages, here are the five questions worth asking.
1. Can we draw any conclusions from the metrics?
Yes, although conclusions based on percentage changes without the underlying totals should come with a small warning label.
The most encouraging result was that traffic to LumAIere.com increased by 30%, while Facebook views and reach also grew substantially.
Meanwhile, X and TikTok experienced significant declines.
That suggests my content is performing very differently depending on where people encounter it. There is no universal audience collapse, and no universal success story either.
2. Are there any patterns?
Definitely.
Practical technology advice continues to attract attention. Older educational articles remain remarkably durable. Visually interesting content still gets noticed, although not consistently across every platform.
And the relationship between views, engagement, and followers remains about as predictable as a cat choosing where to sleep.
3. What were my successful actions?
Continuing to publish useful technical explanations, maintaining an evergreen article library, and creating practical short-form content.
The strongest evidence comes from my website traffic, Facebook’s improvement, and the continued popularity of older articles.
4. What were my unsuccessful actions?
Turning attention into revenue, for starters.
And whatever I was doing on X and TikTok clearly didn’t produce the same results as September.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the content was bad. Distribution, audience behavior, and platform algorithms can all influence those numbers.
But pretending those declines don’t matter would be an unusually creative approach to analytics.
5. Any other interesting tidbits?
One particularly fascinating contradiction: blog earnings increased 15% while views declined 13% and reads dropped 20%.
Apparently, fewer readers can still produce better financial results.
Also, Facebook visits doubled while clicks remained unchanged.
The internet continues to prove that people can be interested in something without behaving the way your analytics spreadsheet expects.
Now, let’s get into the numbers.
Sales: A Brief Update
Still nonexistent.
Thank you for attending this portion of the financial presentation.
Facebook: Apparently, People Like Useful Things
Facebook was one of October’s brighter spots.
- Views: +42%
- Reach: +53%
- Interactions: 0% change
- Clicks: 0% change
- Visits: +100%
- Total followers: 0% change
- New follows: 0% change
The big story here is visibility.
More people saw the content, and visits doubled. That’s encouraging, even though interactions, clicks, and follower metrics didn’t improve.
A 0% change, incidentally, doesn’t mean zero activity. It simply means the reported metric didn’t change from the previous period.
Most viewed:
27 tabs. One useful. Pure chaos. Chrome…
Second most viewed:
Windows keyboard on a Mac? Ctrl, Alt, and Windows…
Both posts have something in common: practical technology frustrations.
People recognize these problems because they’ve experienced them.
A browser with too many tabs. A keyboard where familiar keys suddenly have different names. Technology that technically works but seems determined to test your patience.
The lesson: Short, relatable technology tips appear to be connecting with Facebook viewers.
The next challenge is converting that attention into meaningful interaction and sustained interest.
Medium: Fewer Readers, More Money
This was probably October’s most entertaining mathematical contradiction.
- Earnings: +15%
- Views: -13%
- Reads: -20%
- Followers: +6%
- Subscribers: +7%
So, fewer views. Fewer reads. More earnings. More followers. More subscribers.
I am cautiously calling that progress.
One possible explanation is that the remaining readership is becoming more valuable, whether through engagement, reading behavior, or the particular articles attracting attention.
The encouraging part is that followers and subscribers increased despite the decline in overall traffic.
The Popular Articles
Most viewed and most read:
Swagger vs. ReDoc: The Ultimate Showdown of API Documentation Titans
This article continues to attract readers.
Which makes sense. Developers need API documentation, and choosing how to present it is a practical problem that doesn’t disappear after publication.
Second most viewed and most read:
10 Politically Incorrect Jokes That Will Make You Laugh
And here we have the other side of the audience.
Apparently, people either want to understand API documentation or laugh at questionable jokes.
Possibly both.
I refuse to judge.
Highest earning:
SvelteKit: The Framework That Wants To Be Your Whole Weekend Plan
The strongest financial performer was another technical article.
And for readers who enjoy exploring why computer science interviews can suddenly turn into mathematical interrogation sessions, there’s also:
What Am I Missing About Graph Theory, and Why FAANG Keeps Bringing It Up?
The broader pattern is encouraging.
Technical content has staying power, and humor provides a different doorway into the audience.
Neither requires chasing whatever happens to be fashionable this afternoon.
LumAIere.com: The Quiet Winner
Across LumAIere.com and blog.lumaiere.com, October was pleasantly consistent.
- Page views: +30%
- Blog views: +30%
- Active users: +30%
Three metrics. Three identical improvements.
If only the other platforms could coordinate this nicely.
Most viewed blog:
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Forging NFTs Without Needing an Anvil
Second most viewed blog:
Next.js: The React Framework That Grew Up, Moved Out, and Built an API Route
Most viewed overall:
The NFT article took that honor as well.
Second most viewed overall:
Once again, older technical content is attracting attention.
And once again, the NFT article refuses to retire.
It’s beginning to feel like that article has a better long-term business plan than I do.
The important takeaway is that a growing archive of useful material can continue attracting readers long after individual posts disappear from social media feeds.
That’s one of the strongest reasons to maintain an independent website.
Content doesn’t have to stop being useful simply because the algorithm has found something newer to wave in front of everyone.
X: Did Someone Turn Off the Lights?
Now we arrive at the section of the report where the percentages become slightly alarming.
- Impressions: -92%
- Likes: -82%
- Engagements: -79%
- Total follows: -11%
- New follows: -52%
Ouch.
A 92% decline in impressions is not a gentle adjustment.
It’s the kind of number that makes you check whether the account still exists.
The decline extended across nearly every reported engagement measure, although we can’t determine the exact cause from these percentages alone.
What Actually Got Attention?
Most viewed:
The City That Refused to Sit Still: An Art Brut Explosion of Color!
Second most viewed:
The Enchanted Garden of Impossible Worlds
Both are visually expressive art posts.
That suggests dramatic imagery can still attract an audience, even during a particularly difficult month for overall visibility.
Most viewed post outside my profile:
That is badass — Reply to @Jonatatuyishime
And there is an interesting little reminder.
Not every interaction needs to be an original production.
Sometimes participating in someone else’s conversation is valuable too.
The opportunity for November is to experiment with more genuine participation, clearer hooks, and better ways of connecting the art to the larger body of work.
I would also like X to return approximately 92% of my missing impressions.
But I’ll settle for measurable improvement.
TikTok: The Great Disappearing Audience
TikTok wasn’t particularly generous in October either.
- Total videos with more than 1,000 views: +5%
- Video views: -43%
- Profile views: -79%
- Likes: -51%
- Comments: -100%
- Shares: -83%
- Total followers: -6%
- New follows: -100%
That is quite a collection.
The one positive figure was the 5% increase in the total number of videos exceeding 1,000 views.
Unfortunately, nearly everything else moved in the opposite direction.
Profile visits were particularly troubling, declining 79%.
That suggests the content wasn’t generating the same interest in exploring the profile, although the available data doesn’t tell us whether the problem was distribution, creative execution, or something else.
What People Watched
Most viewed:
Gold, fax machines, sliced bread…
Second most viewed:
ChatGPT dots work while you sleep. What could go wrong?
Most liked:
One guitar. One unforgettable song. And a backstory with a…
Second most liked:
ChatGPT dots work while you sleep. What could go wrong?…
Interestingly, the leading videos weren’t all from the same category.
We had historical curiosities, artificial intelligence, and music.
The ChatGPT Dots video appeared on both the most-viewed and most-liked lists, making it one of the more interesting creative signals of the month.
But there’s an important distinction between a few successful individual posts and the health of the entire account.
October had some individual winners.
The account-level numbers were decidedly less enthusiastic.
For November, I’ll continue experimenting with stronger openings, clearer visual storytelling, and content that gives viewers a reason to explore beyond a single video.
Whether the algorithm appreciates that effort remains an open question.
What Did We Actually Write About in October?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
October’s publishing schedule was diverse enough that someone encountering the blog for the first time might reasonably wonder whether several people had accidentally been given the same login credentials.
Here’s what made it into the month.
Artificial Intelligence and Technology
The Who’s Who in AI series continued with Episode 3, exploring Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio, the deep-learning rebels who refused to let neural networks die.
We also explored ChatGPT Dots, the prospect of an AI employee that never sleeps and might accidentally ruin your Tuesday.
Then came ChatGPT Plugins, including the question of how to survive the December 11 changes without surrendering your favorite custom GPT’s secret recipe.
On the development side, I explored software longevity, inspired by the increasingly familiar experience of finishing a piece of software just as somebody decides it needs replacing.
There was also an adventure involving a Git branch that had been merged, deleted on GitHub, and somehow refused to disappear locally.
And for everyday computer users, we discussed closing Chrome tabs to the right, because deleting 27 unnecessary tabs shouldn’t require a doctoral dissertation.
Finally, I took another look at the TikTok algorithm and continued the AWS re:Invent 2026 adventures with a second round of conference planning, six favored sessions, zero reserved chairs, and one rather unfortunate scheduling predicament.
Computer Science
CS302: Programming Languages and Compiler Basics reached Episode 6, covering language design tradeoffs and why every programming language makes you pay somewhere.
Meanwhile, CS303 began with Episode 1, examining why databases exist and why storing everything in text files eventually becomes a cry for help.
The educational journey continues.
So does the suspicion that computers were invented primarily to give us new things to troubleshoot.
Books, Music, Humor, and Other Important Research
The new Author Series began with Jeff Wheeler and the Kingfountain novels, including the importance of not accidentally starting a multi-book adventure in the wrong order.
Music That Moves Me featured two more episodes:
- Episode 12: Billy Joel’s Turn the Lights Back On
- Episode 13: Plain White T’s Hey There Delilah
Friday Night Laughs explored the uniquely irritating relationship between Windows keyboards and Macs.
And we investigated the question that has apparently troubled coffee drinkers for generations:
Does coffee hydrate you or dehydrate you?
Naturally, this research was conducted with a cup of coffee nearby.
For scientific purposes.
Of course.
We also published the September Review, which provided the previous month’s installment of this ongoing public relationship with analytics-induced emotional damage.
Sixteen October articles represented in the publishing list.
AI, programming, productivity, books, music, humor, cloud computing, and social media.
Not a terribly narrow editorial strategy.
But certainly not a boring one.
November 2026: What’s Coming Next?
November should bring another interesting collection of subjects.
Several established series will continue.
Who’s Who in AI
More of the brilliant, eccentric, occasionally argumentative people whose ideas shaped artificial intelligence.
The Artist
More remarkable artists, their distinctive styles, and the stories behind their work.
There are still plenty of artists worth discovering, and I suspect this series has considerably more life left in it.
Music That Moves Me
More songs with memorable stories, unexpected histories, and the occasional emotional ambush.
Friday Night Laughs
Probably.
Assuming the world continues providing sufficient material.
At its current pace, I don’t anticipate a shortage.
CS303
We’ll continue exploring databases and the decisions that turn stored information into something useful.
And, as always, there’s room for unexpected topics.
If there’s a technology, artist, author, song, or historical curiosity you’d like to see explored, leave a comment.
Some of the most interesting articles begin with a question I hadn’t planned on asking.
A Little Reminder: Don’t Forget to Vote
November also brings something more important than analytics.
Elections.
Whatever your political opinions, take the opportunity to participate.
Read about the issues. Consider the candidates. Make your own decisions.
And vote.
You don’t have to agree with your neighbors, your relatives, or the loudest person in your social media feed.
That’s rather the point.
Democracy isn’t supposed to require unanimous agreement.
Although some family Thanksgiving dinners might benefit from a temporary suspension of political discussion.
Bonus: What Was America’s Hottest Political Issue 100 Years Ago?
Travel back exactly a century to the autumn of 1926.
Calvin Coolidge was president, the Roaring Twenties were in full swing, and Americans were preparing for congressional elections.
And one of the country’s biggest political battles concerned something surprisingly ordinary.
Alcohol.
Specifically, Prohibition.
The Eighteenth Amendment had established the constitutional foundation for nationwide Prohibition, and the Volstead Act provided its enforcement framework.
The law prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating alcoholic beverages for ordinary beverage purposes.
But Americans were deeply divided about whether this was sensible public policy.
The debate was commonly framed as Wets versus Drys.
The Drys generally supported maintaining Prohibition.
The Wets wanted it modified or repealed.
Supporters argued about public health, morality, family life, and social consequences.
Opponents pointed to bootlegging, organized crime, enforcement failures, and restrictions on personal freedom.
In 1926, this wasn’t merely an abstract debate.
It was a real election issue.
A contemporary October 30, 1926 news report described multiple state referendums and Senate contests involving Prohibition.
Earlier that year, TIME reported on the growing political conflict, particularly in states including Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania.
Prohibition wasn’t the only important controversy. Farm relief, campaign spending, and the Ku Klux Klan were also prominent issues in various races.
But the wet-versus-dry question was certainly among the most recognizable national political battles.
Think about that.
One hundred years ago, Americans were arguing passionately about morality, government authority, personal liberty, and whether the law reflected what people actually wanted.
And politicians were trying to position themselves on both sides of a deeply divisive question.
Some things change.
Others apparently just get faster internet connections.
Prohibition would eventually end nationally in 1933 with the Twenty-first Amendment.
But in November 1926, that resolution was still years away.
History is fascinating partly because the people living through it usually have no idea which controversies future generations will consider completely ridiculous.
I wonder what people in 2126 will think about our arguments today.
Hopefully, they’ll at least have figured out how to close browser tabs without starting an argument.
Final Thoughts: October Wasn’t a Disaster
Despite the difficult X and TikTok numbers, there were encouraging developments.
The website grew.
Facebook improved.
Blog earnings increased.
Followers and subscribers continued growing on the writing platform.
And the October publishing schedule produced a substantial amount of new educational and creative material.
The biggest lesson is that visibility, engagement, audience growth, and revenue are four different things.
They can move together.
They can move independently.
And sometimes they appear to be actively avoiding one another.
For November, the goal is to build on what is working while paying closer attention to what isn’t.
That means continuing useful long-form content, refining short-form videos, and giving readers more compelling reasons to explore the larger collection of work.
Most importantly, it means continuing to learn.
Because the day the analytics become entirely predictable is probably the day I’ve accidentally opened last month’s spreadsheet.
Your Turn
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Which October article caught your attention?
Would you rather see more artificial intelligence, programming, artists, music, author recommendations, or something completely unexpected?
And what do you think explains the enormous difference between the website’s growth and the declines on X and TikTok?
Leave a comment and tell me.
If you’re enjoying this mixture of technology, art, music, history, and statistically questionable adventures, follow along for the next installment.
November awaits.
And perhaps, somewhere out there, my first sale is finally trying to find its way home.
Art Prompt (Hyperrealism):
Create an extraordinary monumental hyperrealist sculpture installation depicting a colossal, contemplative young adult crouching in a vast, almost deserted contemporary art gallery, the figure’s immense proportions creating an astonishing contrast with the surrounding architecture. The subject is fully clothed in softly wrinkled, pale sage-green cotton trousers and a loose, weathered ivory linen shirt, with one enormous hand resting delicately against the polished limestone floor and the other loosely folded near the knees. The figure’s expressive face is turned slightly toward the viewer, with startlingly lifelike gray-blue eyes conveying a mysterious mixture of curiosity, vulnerability, and quiet wonder. Render every detail with almost unsettling precision: delicate skin translucency, subtle freckles, fine eyelashes, tiny facial hairs, naturally irregular fingernails, intricate fabric fibers, realistic folds around the joints, and the nuanced textures of human anatomy. Surround the figure with immense minimalist architectural surfaces, soaring pale concrete walls, distant rectangular skylights, narrow passages, and perfectly polished stone flooring. Soft northern daylight enters diagonally through enormous windows, casting long, beautifully diffused shadows across the gallery and emphasizing the extraordinary scale of the sculpture. Employ a restrained, sophisticated palette of warm ivory, muted stone gray, desaturated olive, dusty beige, pale rose, and cool blue-gray. Create a mesmerizing interplay between uncanny realism and surreal physical scale, with extraordinary dimensional depth, sophisticated museum-quality lighting, exquisite surface craftsmanship, and the profound emotional stillness of an unexpectedly intimate human encounter rendered at architectural proportions. The final composition should feel hauntingly beautiful, psychologically compelling, breathtakingly realistic, and quietly monumental, challenging the viewer’s perception of scale, material, and the boundary between sculpture and living presence. No text, logos, or watermarks.
Video Prompt:
Create a captivating cinematic hyperrealist sequence beginning with an extreme macro close-up of a mysterious gray-blue human eye, revealing impossibly detailed eyelashes, tiny reflected skylights, delicate skin textures, and subtle movements of reflected light. As the camera rapidly pulls backward, reveal the astonishing truth: the eye belongs to an enormous, fully clothed crouching figure occupying the center of a vast minimalist art gallery. Execute a dramatic sweeping camera orbit around the monumental figure, passing close to enormous fingers, intricately wrinkled ivory linen sleeves, and the extraordinary textures of realistically sculpted skin. Use dynamic changes in scale, smoothly transitioning from intimate anatomical details to breathtaking wide-angle architectural compositions. Introduce delicate atmospheric movement as suspended dust particles drift through golden-white beams of sunlight, the figure’s hair subtly responds to a barely perceptible breeze, and luminous reflections slide gracefully across polished limestone floors. As the music builds, accelerate the camera into a soaring vertical movement, revealing the sculpture’s extraordinary proportions from above before descending toward its expressive face. The figure remains almost perfectly motionless, except for one incredibly subtle blink that briefly suggests it might be alive. Conclude with an elegant, uninterrupted backward camera movement through the gallery’s towering doorway, transforming the immense figure into a distant, strangely vulnerable silhouette. Rich cinematic depth of field, sophisticated natural lighting, seamless motion, extraordinarily lifelike textures, restrained atmospheric colors, subtle psychological tension, and an unforgettable final reveal. Vertical 9:16 composition, visually arresting from the first second, with carefully timed transitions and immersive cinematic realism.
Song Recommendations
For a video built around such extraordinary scale, quiet emotional tension, and dramatic visual revelation, these two pieces would be wonderful companions:
November — Max Richter
A sweeping, emotionally charged orchestral composition that could accompany the enormous camera movements and the gradual revelation of the sculpture’s monumental scale. Particularly effective for a dramatic visual crescendo.
Glass — Hania Rani
An intimate, delicate piano composition with a hypnotic sense of movement. Beautifully suited to the detailed opening shots, atmospheric lighting, and the sculpture’s mysterious stillness.