Like everyone who was alive in the summer of 1969 I remember where I was when Neil and Buzz got out of the LEM and walked on the surface of the moon. I was 14 years old, on a trip with my summer camp to the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, RI. #

It was an amazing experience, in so many ways. I saw Muddy Waters, BB King, and Johnny Cash, and so many more (my memory is pretty weak) and then on the evening of the 20th someone put a small black and white TV on top of a VW microbus, and everyone left the show and gathered around, to watch, and even though we couldn't see much, we felt a part of something amazingly great. #

1969 was a pretty amazing year. The moon landing, Woodstock, the Miracle Mets. At 14 I didn't fully appreciate that life wasn't always like this. #

1. Rex should read this post Mike wrote about cycling in Kansas. #

2. Scoble is missing his calling.#

3. The Facebook editor is dangerous to ideas!#

Including them here gets them into my RSS feed, much on-topic. #

Far West#

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Please excuse the construction. #

Sorry for any inconvenience. #

Dig we must.#

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Western states#

Mid-Atlantic states#

I'm the last person to defend Comcast, but I just want to say that the behavior that Ryan Block documented in his taped conversation with them is industry standard. #

AOL and MSN both did it to me ten years ago when I wanted to cancel my accounts. I hadn't used either account in years. But I dreaded interacting with them so much that they got a bunch of extra money from me. It's part of their business model. #

It's great that people are tuning into this now. Let's clean this cesspool of shitty customer service up. Get the FTC involved. (BTW, to all the libertarians out there, this is what you get from a "free" market.)#

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Lately I've been working on software snacks. But there's some serious platform stuff coming too, soon. pic.twitter.com/ByyWJU2P55

— Dave Winer ☮ (@davewiner) July 12, 2014

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Yesterday I wrote a piece that explained, among other things, that I see software as a performing art.#

This led Jhay Em Calderon to ask "why develop in an environment where [one of the platform vendors] will eventually shut you down for going over an unknown line?"#

The conversation was interesting, and ended with me saying I'm not worried about getting "shut down" by Zuck or Dick Costolo, because shipping software is only the visible part of what I'm doing. The important part is I'm (hopefully) getting a fan club together.#

I'm like a dancing bear in a circus. Twitter and Facebook have great tents. So I'll use them as long as they'll have me, and hopefully the fans will like what they get, and remember that if I have to go to another tent, or create my own.#

I think perhaps the tech industry may have matured to the point where they get that a guy like me isn't doing what their employees do. Analogously, the NBA employs a lot of people. They get paychecks year-in-year-out, while the players may only get a season or two in the league. There's more risk in what I do. And these days, the employees make more money. I think that's a bit out of balance, and that things will even out over time. #

Other people have said that Twitter is not a good bet, just look at their stock. But I am looking at their stock and that's why I feel especially comfortable with Twitter. They need new ideas. The market knows this. I believe the management knows this about the market, and may even feel they need new ideas from outside their company. #

In any case, that's one reason why it's good to have two legs, and I haven't forgotten that underneath it all is the web, which no one owns, and Linux and JavaScript, Node.js, cheap cloud servers, etc that make all this stuff possible today.#

I feel it's a good time to get in the sandbox and play a bit. And if it all blows up, well that's happened before. I don't like the feeling, but I'm still here. #

PS: It's worth pointing out that today's new release, "thesaurus.land", relies on neither Twitter or Facebook. #

Update: Thanks to my friend Sarah Pressler for showing me that my outliner thesaurus wasn't just a toy. #

She said: "OMG will use this all day long. Generally use thesuarus.com but it's so cluttered that I cringe every time." I realized how right she was. That's why I didn't use thesaurus.com. I had forgotten!#

I also realized that with the cute name I gave it, it would never show up near the other thesauri on searches, so it would be much better to change the name now, at the beginning so it would be more visible and memorable. #

So that's why the name just changed to "thesaurus.land". #

Riding my bike the other day, crossing 9th Ave on 54th St. A NYPD van is blocking the bike path and much of the intersection. I have the light, so I go around the van, into the car lane. As I come around the van there's a pedestrian in my path. I swerve to avoid her, but it was close (to be clear, she was crossing against the light). A half block later, the cop van pulls up beside me (again, in the bike lane), the driver says I fucked up. I said I had the light. By the time I could say "and you were blocking the bike lane" they had pulled away. Grrr.#

Had there been an accident, they would have been the cause of it. I don't see how I was at fault. I was crossing an intersection and I had a green light. What was I supposed to do? Stop in the middle of 9th Ave and wait for the cop to stop blocking the bike path? Heh. This is NYC not Minneapolis. #

BTW, the NYC definition of a bike path is a lane bike riders can use when pedestrians and cars aren't currently using it.#

I am a NYT Digital Subscriber. I pay the money.#

Yet I still get promotions via email telling me about the special deals I can get if I act now! #

Interestingly I never get any promotions saying here are some cool things you can do with your NYT digital subscription. That's basic marketing. Citibike does it. Airlines do it. Why not the NYT? #

Don't they have any ideas for me?#