Podcast: Second impressions of Clubhouse. 8 minutes.#

Poll: If you were a NYC school teacher would you feel safe starting school in a few weeks?#

Patti Smith's tribute to Jerry Garcia, who died 25 years ago. #

I just gave $100 to Joe Biden. #

It doesn’t matter to me personally who Biden picks, that said, the best choice imho is Gov Whitmer of Michigan. Mainly because I think she'd be a good president. She’s been tested in Michigan. I was impressed with this interview, in April, at the height of the tensions in Michigan re their lockdown. #

I need a backlit keyboard because I write at night and the room where I work is pretty dark. I like it that way. I have a Logitech keyboard which I like, but the keys are getting sticky, and it's blowing my concentration. I spend so much time at the keyboard. The keyboard should be transparent, I should never have to think about it while writing. As I look on Amazon there aren't many keyboards that are illuminated, at least from companies I've heard of, and the prices are suspiciously low. I would buy one from Apple if they had one. The model that I have now has been discontinued, it seems.#

Song of the day: It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding).#

Poll: Where do you get most of your links to news stories?#

A day after buying the Pixel 4a, I drop my iPhone XS/Max, which is usually OK because it's in a case, but this time the display cracked. I can't be without a phone, and the 4a won't get here until the end of the month, so I bought a new iPhone SE. I'll be comparing the two low-end products from Google and Apple. Weird timing, eh. #

I wrote this as a comment on Instagram, worth repeating here: When I was young I was afraid of what women my age would look like when I got older. I wish I could have told myself back then that they only become more beautiful with age.#

New package: davesql. #

Krugman: "Payroll tax cuts are the hydroxychloroquine of economic policy."#

Trump struggled to contain the virus as a PR thing, while the actual virus roamed freely through America.#

A friend writes: "A Pixel 4a? Wow! I thought you were a big iPhone fan!" To which I respond: "I'm not particularly wed to either iPhone or Android. I have pretty much always have had both. In the last couple of years I have not had an Android because they didn't make a phone that interested me, considering the price, but the 4a is a new product, it seems sweet and it's a nice price." Note I bought it on pre-order like everyone else. I never have liked the iPhone as a product, I think Apple blew it. I couldn't make my beautiful scripting system work on it. They wouldn't allow it. I'm just a user. I think it's kind of a bleh product, honestly. As is Android, btw. #

Today's album: Eat A Peach.#

BingeWorthy 2 tease #1: A friend wants to watch something. They ask friends on Twitter or Facebook what to watch. You put together a short list of your favorites, the ones you can think of right now. There's got to be a better way, right?#

I bought a Pixel 4A with Google Fi.#

As I work my way through Schitt's Creek, the characters are so fascinating and Moira may be the most, since we already knew the actor as Delia Deetz from Beetlejuice. It's hard for me to see the connection between the two. In one episode in Season 2 Moira is frantically looking for nude pictures of herself taken when she was younger. For most of the show you think she wants to find them so she can take them down, but no. She wants to be sure they're there. She wants to still be, in some sense, the actress we knew as Delia Deetz (Moira plays a former actress, btw). Her advice to Stevie, a super cute young supporting character, is to make sure to take lots of pictures of herself now when she's young. No matter how you think you're not very beautiful, when you're older you will see all the beauty you can't see now. I'm about the same age as Catherine O'Hara, the actress, and I want to say I totally concur. I can't believe how beautiful I was when I was younger, but of course I didn't see it then. #

Briefly discussed WordPress on Twitter last night with Don Park, long-time friend, ex-Automattician. I said I don't think they understand blogging there. Don says "members of WordPress community and employees of the company behind it use blogs all the time." I don't doubt it, yet I could never do what I do with Wordpress. Far too clumsy. Not fluid. Not designed for writers. Really weak product. #

We spend trillions on defense, but it doesn’t protect us against Russia or the virus. Humbly suggest perhaps we‘re spending all that money preparing for the wrong war.#

Trump's failure of a "border wall" didn't protect the US from the virus or tunnels. #

I heard yesterday on Clubhouse that people stopped reading my blog because of RSS. Interesting story. They subscribed in Google Reader. Stopped reading on the web. Then they shut down Google Reader. The people who were reading my blog and others before RSS, lost track of the feeds they were reading in Google Reader. There were other choices, but that doesn't change what happened. We are rebuilding slowly, because blogging is still a useful form of communication. My nightly email is the best way to get it, probably always was, even in the heyday of RSS. I have to admit reading this blog in RSS was never a great deal. I write one day at a time. I'd prefer if you read what was on the home page at midnight. That's how I write it. Since RSS is something I'm well-known for developing, I didn't want to say this too loudly. But RSS should have had a chance to grow, and it didn't. So it got stuck. Not really a surprise. #

BTW one of the problems with the name Clubhouse is that it's impossible to remember. At least for me. I never had a problem like that with Twitter, and I was a very early user, as I am with CH. #

Today's song: You and me and rain on the roof. #

If I were running an American news org, and I saw the CDC being silenced by the government, I'd boot up the equivalent of the CDC as part of my news org. I'd hire former CDC officials and tell them to say what they'd say if they were still at the CDC. Big budget. #savemylife#

What Trump is doing now is worse than dropping an atomic bomb on the US. That's how it should be reported on the news. We need some scientists we trust to say that and to make that the news. Because it is the news.#

What can be gleaned from Thighland and Yo Semite. Trump has a reading comprehension level of a child.#

In hindsight it seems like this was an especially bad time for the UK to withdraw from the EU.#

Today's song: Putting out fire with gasoline.#

They're pouring gasoline on the raging virus fire in Georgia. They don't get something simple. The virus is everywhere. You may think for some reason it isn't in that empty school building, but as soon as you fill it with people, it's there. It's the NYSE of virus transmission. It's the Atlanta airport of virus transmission. The kids and adults are walking into the fire, doused in gasoline. What do they think will happen?#

I think I've finally run out of things to do with the new BingeWorthy. I have a lot of writing and communicating, but programming? Other than moving the prototype to a real server, not much. #

Dead-head friends will want to know that there are now Dead sneakers from Nike. #

Poll: How many online publications do you subscribe to? #

With our civilization on the cusp of collapse, insider culture, career building, getting ahead -- the puffery and backslapping, it's so wrong. It's time to be smart. Ruffle feathers if you have to. Mean well. Get it done. #

Schools should not be open anywhere in the US. Any person with any math, science or medicine background knows this. Step back and think. Politics gets you to the wrong answer if it says to you that schools should open. Save lives. Be a good human.#

It doesn't surprise me that kids do well without school. I remember as a kid being really pissed off that so much of my youth was wasted sitting in rooms with my hands foldeed, with my mind anywhere but in school, learning nothing and being bored out of my mind. I thought of school as very lazy, unimaginative, typical of adults. It wasn't really until grad school that school started working for me. #

I watched an NBA bubble game this evening between the Houston Rockets and the Portland Trailblazers. I didn't realize how much I missed live sports. It's good but I think they should get rid of the fake things. I’d like to hear what the sport is like with just the player sounds, no simulated fans. The screens with fans supposedly reacting to the play is pointless. I remember that high school and college basketball had charm, because the fans weren't so much a part of the action. Please put the player names on their uniforms. And.. When Melo scores the announcer has to say Carrrrrrrrrrmellllllllllllo Annnnnnnnthony. Please. Also Melo must wear a white headband. How else can I find him on the court?#

We were inundated with rain from the hurricane with the funny name this afternoon and early evening. We were smack in the middle of the path. It was a pretty bad storm. Lights flickered a bit, the cable modem rebooted a few times, and the wind was freaky, but all's good now. #

I'm reading the book about the 1918 pandemic. And it's amazing how much the 2020 pandemic is a replay. The president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, did nothing about the outbreak. Cities were on their own. People said Oh it's just the flu. Then they got it and died. #

The founders obsessed on things the president could not do, but they didn't consider what we must require the president to do. He must defend the country against attacks. Trump is exploiting that loophole. Not defending the country against the virus. It's running wild. And without help from scientists the people don't understand it. If it were a fire burning in their neighborhood everyone would understand that it must be put out. No time to waste. But people can't feel that. Evolution didn't teach us to fear a virus at a primal level. So here we are. We have these great communication tools. What's next?#

I like the way they talk about Trump on CNN. Everything he says is a lie and that's what they say. I think they should only run pictures of him that look like this. Only discorporate heads of Trump looking foolish and/or nauseated. #

Today's song: Come and go blues. #

I just signed up for Clubhouse. I'm @davew. #

I’m watching Schitt’s Creek. It’s really funny. I was expecting it to be cringe-inducing, like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it's not. Starring Catherine O'Hara who was in Beetlejuice, one of the best movies ever made. And the geeky guy from Groundhog Day, the other best movie ever made. Schitt's Creek, like its name, is both profane and wholesome.#

John Naughton wrote a thought-provoking piece yesterday in his Memex 1.1 newsletter entitled Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. (Note to the Substack devs, there should be permalinks on sub-sections of the web versions of newsletters, so I can point directly to the bit I'm talking about. Might as well put them in the email versions too.) Naughton says there was a point in human evolution when we decided we were above nature, and that's when things started to go wrong. It's why we think we can return to some kind of normal once the pandemic is over. But every time we try, we hit a wall resulting in more suffering and death. I've observed something similar. Our troubles with the environment started some time in the last 100 years when, through technology, we were able to make our presence felt on the ecosystem to the point where human activity could melt the polar icecaps. So in a destructive sense, we are above nature, but it's not a good survival strategy. In fact, we live infinitesmally short lifespans on an insignificant speck of dust in space, with delusions of grandeur, when the best we can achieve, which is pretty good, is friendship, love and to a small extent, self-awareness. We're going to get smart now, and learn to be the humble mortals that we are. Or we're going to cease to exist. In other words, it's time for the human race to grow up. #

BTW, a note to Google's search engine. Sometimes I put phrases into my writing that I know don't exist anywhere else on the web, so I can search for them, and enjoy the feeling of being a validated innovator. Yesterday I used a fictional name, "Hello HooHaw." When I searched for it Google said "It looks like there aren't any great matches for your search." What!?? The hell you say. There's a perfect match, way more than great. Everyone's a critic. BTW, now there are two instances of the phrase on the web. I wonder if Google will still complain. #

When will it be too much for the American people to bear? We are after all a country that was founded in revolution. Did King George do anything even remotely comparable to what King Trump is doing to us? How long will we wait for someone else to fix it?#

Ken Smith has been indulging me, commenting on stuff, blog-style, using LO2, even though LO2 is not (at this time) a proper blogging tool. Yesterday he commented on my process for archiving content on Scripting News. Here's a screen shot of Ken's post. I don't yet have a proper way to point to it. I know a lot about this. Future-safe archives. An organization has to have a strong and lasting commitment to creating a record, because there are so many ways to lose it. My backup to GitHub is actually an offline archive. In case GitHub survives and the web does not. I try to keep the URLs working on scripting.com, if not other domains I've created. My focus is on scripting.com. Even so, I've broken a fair number of links over the years. a big source was in the switch to S3. A very rational thing to do, no regrets, but their server is case-sensitive, and the server I had been using previously was not. It's too bad something like that was not mentioned in the founding documents of the web. I try to fix broken links when I find them. But keeping even one site unbroken is an impossible job. You do the best you can.#

BTW, I'm concerned that GitHub only archives projects that have a lot of followers. In my case I preserve stuff on GitHub without concern for followers, stuff I feel strongly should be archived. Maybe this is a service they can sell?#

I watched a little CNN yesterday. Starting to prefer it to MSNBC, esp Wolf Blitzer. But they say platitudes that are wrong. Example: "There’s no-one-size-fits-all approach to the virus." Sounds nice but the opposite is true. The only way out is if we all do the same at the same time until,the infection dies. First thing CNN should do is review their dogma, offline, and get it right. And then publish the results. #

Forcing schools to open in the midst of an uncontrolled pandemic is genocide. The virus is still growing. You have to think bigger picture. Opening schools is like pouring gasoline on a fire, when we want to be dousing it.#

I also listened to a bit of On The Media this morning. They said something that really irked me: The police is the only public institution that isn't properly overseen (I'm paraphrasing). But journalism is even less overseen. I think the op-ed page in the major papers should be run by non-journalists and should be all about the failings of journalism. They say it so many times in so many ways. Democracy dies in darkness. Journalism has always been dark. Never examined. Considered to be above reproach by mortals. And that's garbage. It's just resulted in an arrogance that's had enormous consequences. #

On July 12, I posted a plan for (not) re-opening schools. "It's out of the question. What may happen is they will try to open the schools in a few of the Republican states, and close them within a few days as the rate of infection goes even higher. Cause and effect. You do something stupid and a week later the infections go up, two weeks later the hospitalizations go up and two weeks after that, the death rate goes up." It goes on from there. #

A minimally competent US president would, because of the pandemic: 1. Have an approval rating in the 80s. 2. Could lead the whole world in peace..#

Every neighborhood has the crazy family. On our street the crazy family were the HooHaws (made up name). The mother of the family was the Big Crazy, her name was Hello (again, made up name). One day a few years ago I arrived to visit my mom, and she was in the street talking with Hello HooHaw, and it hit me, hard. We were the crazy family. In case the parallel isn't clear, the US is about as crazy as it gets on Planet Earth. But we were raised to believe it's the rest of the world that was off its rocker.#

Today's song: Summer Breeze. A boomer fave. #

The Freedom Cafe has the perfect policy for people who prefer not to wear masks. "We encourage employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom, but understand that some people may be allergic to certain soaps or may simply prefer not to wash their hands. It is not our place to tell them what to do." There's more. Must-read. #

How bizarre that in 2020 the president is brokering a deal for Microsoft to buy TikTok? So many questions. What's his cut. Did Microsoft agree to limit criticism of Trump on the new TikTok. How does the US government control it vs China. How bizarre that the Great Firewall appears to be going up in the US? Will loyalty to Trump be part of the terms of service for a US-owned TikTok? I can't imagine China would object. #

Rebecca MacKinnon, who I trust, said: "Microsoft’s President Brad Smith once called the NSA an “advanced persistent threat.” Microsoft is also in the Global Network Initiative, whose company members commit to push back against unlawful government demands. They’re not a pliant Trumptool."#

Here's an idea. To qualify for president you have to pass a basic test in statistics. It's not enough to pass a test for dementia. Also, you can't pay someone else to take the test for you. #

I just got confirmation from GitHub that my stuff is part of their Arctic Vault program. That's really cool. Thanks GitHub. 💥#

Baseball is headed for a catastrophe like the nursing homes in March and April. A preview of what will happen as the schools open. It can't end well. And while kids may not get immediately sick, who knows what the virus does a year or two after you first get infected? Or thirty or forty years. These are kids, they'll be around to find out. We should be thinking long term for them. And the teachers. What will protect them? #

Time for a new motto? This can't end well.#

BTW, welcome to August!#

Every month I archive the OPML source for the previous month, including all the metadata, to a public GitHub repository, so you can see how the data flows. There are lots of conventions in the form of attributes on OPML <outline> elements. This is the data that Old School uses to render the HTML you see on the web. At some point when the dust clears from my other projects, I'll hook up LO2 outlines to Old School in some fashion. They're already pretty close, kind of the way San Francisco and Marin County were almost connected before a bridge was added. #

BTW there is an RSS version of the nightly email. Not sure how well it will display in most readers, it has CSS that depends on definitions they won't have. Probably could fix it up if anyone is actually reading this way. #

Our epitaph: We could imagine, then create, a world that we couldn't manage. That's what I think when I hear that Kushner didn't care if massive numbers of people in blue states died from the virus. That's a form of genocide. We couldn't protect ourselves from this. #

One of the founders of the wicked Federalist Society says Trump has gone too far, and is sort of calling for his impeachment and removal. The Repubs might want to, now, take a risk they might be punished for crossing Trump, and earn the loyalty of Americans who are not insane and want to live. If not loyalty, perhaps a bit of forgiveness. A tiny bit. A miniscule, infitesmal bit. Okay maybe they won't be tried for crimes against humanity along with Trump.#

The new Nike ad is, I hear, a marvel in video editing. It is a very nice ad, but it's depraved. The last thing we need now is more sports. They're all going to get the virus. This ad will be looked back on in despair. That said, I enjoy watching the Mets games so far. Very relaxing. I could almost believe they won't all get sick and some of them will get very sick and some will probably die. We must learn to take the virus seriously. I'd like to see a marvel of a Nike ad that said that. #

June 14: Perhaps it should be illegal for a company to own both a search engine and a web browser, esp if they dominate. They might try to take full possession of something that belongs to the public.#

President Obama eulogizes John Lewis. #

Trump proposed to postpone the election. At first I was shocked. Then when I took a few deep breaths I realized, yes, of course, today's when the second quarter numbers for the economy came out. A bad quarter is when the economy only grows by 2 percent. This quarter the economy shrank by 33 percent. That's without precedent. We're in a depression now, unlike anything ever seen in the US. Even with all we know now about macroeconomics, there's no way out of this situation until we get the virus under control, and the government shows no interest in doing that. Trump is a distraction. The real story is the hole we're in. #

A sci-fi terror comedy. A virus infects the human race. Everyone gets it but children don’t get sick or die. Adults die very quickly. ~100%. Adults must avoid children at all costs. Hilarity ensues as the kids figure it out and start making demands. #

Herman Cain died of Covid. There was a report just yesterday, via a staffer, saying he was okay, just staying in the hospital for a few days to strengthen his lungs. I thought it was probably not true. A man that age, hospitalized that long, a good outcome was not likely. He was a CEO, not the brightest, but a salesman. It seems he must have gotten the virus at Trump's Tulsa rally. He's the first political personality to die, of his stature, that I know of, Republican or Democrat. We're probably still waiting for the Rock Hudson of Covid. The one that wakes most people up to realize holy shit this can come for me too.#

I usually give products in-development codenames of cities or states. Like Iowa, Fargo, Concord. Sometimes it ends up being the product name. But recently I've been choosing weirder names. For example, one version of an app was Frankenstein. Why? Because that's how it felt. Next one was called Turd Villa. I have no idea how that came into my head, but it makes me laugh, so I keep it. I love seeing the name in the title bar of my browser. Turd Villa. I'm sure there is no place with that name, anywhere in the universe. #

Om says to write as you think. I totally agree, but I'd add this: Then edit. When I speak I use extra words as I plot my way through the idea, uncertain of which way I'll go at any step. After writing a first version from the speech in my head, I tighten it, remove unnecessary detours, and flourish, the equivalent of spoken umms. #

Remove phrases like "a lot of" and words like "very." They don't add anything. The writing is tighter without them. Unless somehow it's very important to communicate the very-ness of some idea. #

I've recently added a bunch of people to the nightly email subscription list. Plenty to catch up on, but nothing as important as this: Google and HTTP. The tech industry is trying to take control of the open standards of the web. They're doing it slowly, with a lot of PR, and also punishment for people and companies who don't comply. A perfect example of monopoly power used corruptly. Plenty of people noticed, but few want to cross Google. I don't care. I'll let them make my writing inaccessible, but I will never comply with their rules. The web is unique in that it's a platform with no platform vendor. They're guests, as we all are. Guests don't make the rules. There are other issues. Facebook has knocked the legs from under the blogosphere. Every time I've asked them to help, they've said no. So all progress has to flow through them and they never move. They don't support the most basic features of the web, linking, simple styles, titles, podcasting. The tech industry is as bad as it was when I started in the 70s. And of course it's much more powerful today. #

2018: The best platform vendor is no platform vendor. #

Three sites for Covid tracking. Stat. 1Point3Acres. CovidActNow.#

What is it about the ethics of journalism that says reporters and columnists have to forget every bit of news that came before the atrocity they're reporting now? It's how news became Groundhog Day. We're always learning how Trump works for Russia. Over and over.#

The notorious Louis Gohmert has coronavirus. Yesterday I promised to post some good news here. I'm a man of my word. #

I was invited to buy Echo Frames, even though I don't wear prescription glasses, and there is no cell service where I live, I went ahead and ordered a pair. Yes I am a technology addict. #

If you asked what I thought about antitrust and the big tech companies, a subject to be explored today in Congress, I would tell you about the open web and how Google is trying to privatize it.#

Trump loves Putin. He's never going to leave him. No matter how much we need him to.#

The virus makes us smarter. 🚀#

The thing that makes fiction interesting is if they take you to a world with characters who feel real who you connect to. And their world, which might be very different from yours, feels real too. The whole thing hangs together. It makes sense what they do, and say, and some of it isn't exactly what you guessed. This is all a long-winded way to say is it gives good suspension of disbelief. That's why a show like Succession works so well. The people are mediocre and foolish. Their world is vastly different from the one we live in. The people are colorful and interesting, educated, but also frail, simple and kind of disgusting, and really stupid at times. But you keep coming back for more because you feel it. #

I don’t care who Biden picks for VP as long as it isn’t a Republican.#

Sports teams are a lot like nursing homes for concentrating and distributing the virus. This restart of everything is ridiculous. We're damaging ourselves in obvious ways that we're in denial about. A pandemic is nothing to fool around with. We need to start over with a new lockdown, only this time do it right. #

Some of us walk around the world in white, male privileged bodies, yet we still, at our core, don't believe we deserve real friendship. #

I wonder sometimes if people read their own Twitter replies and think how they’d feel if someone talked to them that way. If you must reply, try a little humility, as in “imho.” Better to RT with a comment so everyone can feel your attitude.#

On this day in 2016 -- Don't feed the Trump. By now most people have figured out Trump's schtick, but back then it was new and to many, entertaining. #

I'm going to try to find some good news to put here tomorrow. #

Living in the country, part 3071. Some animal, apparently, has made a nest in the air conditioning system of my car. This includes a fair amount of animal urine. So when I drove into town today, about 1/2 hour in each direction, I was inundated in the smell. Ugh. #

I'm reading John Barry's book about the 1918 pandemic. I'm up to the part where they're deciding in Philadelphia whether to hold the war bonds parade. Seems like where we're at now with MLB. At least then the US was at war, not sure what the excuse is today. Basically we're the most spoiled country, not serious, can't think, reason, don't listen, take pride in pissing other people off (the Fox watchers) and couldn't save our own lives if all it took was wearing a mask and staying home for a few months, all of us at the same time.#

We need an online service, like a Gofundme or Kickstarter, that makes it easy to set up a PAC. There should be thousands of PACs. #

BTW, The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis, completely predicted the government's handling of the pandemic. I read it a couple of summers ago, but never imagined we'd see the chaos so soon.#

Premise: We are not limited by what the president will or won't do. Suppose we felt that the one thing we need more than anything is to have Fauci on national TV every night to tell us what's new with Covid. If we really wanted that, could we make it happen?#

I listened to the first episode of the Joe Trippi podcast yesterday. I met Joe when he was running the Dean campaign in 2004. First campaign to make use of blogging, opened up politics to the people. He made an important point in the podcast, that politics is additive. Of course we want to have Republicans speak at this year's DNC in support of Joe Biden. This is one of the benefits of having Biden as the candidate. We need to re-form the political system in the US, the opposition are the people who don't follow the Constitution. Republicans who believe in the rule of law are our friends, our fellow Americans. #

This video of a Chicago car-jacking raises a couple of questions. 1. How did the bike riders rent the Divvy bikes without giving up their identities, or did they hijack the bikes too? 2. What if the victim had locked his doors, would they have been able to get in the car? Also he had the power to move, why didn't he? Would you have? What if it meant injuring or killing the car-jackers? How would the web have responded if he had done that? Would you have? If the roles were changed, would you feel differently? If the driver was black, and the hijackers cops, for example.#

MLB should shut down, as should the NBA and NFL. Of all the leagues, the NBA has the most realistic approach to keeping the virus out of the game, but even that approach won't work. The disease is highly communicable. The tests are imperfect enough that the virus can get into the bubble, as it did with the Florida Marlins. The NFL, the craziest of the leagues, even wants to allow fans to attend their games. Major commercial sporting events are over until the virus is done. Same with schools, office buildings, mass transit, airlines, the White House.#

Wouldn't it be great if DHS and president put the same energy into into helping the American people defeat the virus as they do to try to start a second Civil War? It also ironically might help him get re-elected.#

I love reading local real estate ads and imagining who would live in such a place, who did live there, what kind of life I would live if I lived there. Here are two local properties. One has four cottages. You could start your own art colony for a mere $825K. This listing gave NakedJen all kinds of ideas. One cottage for dog lovers, one for beets, one for the Deadheads and one for a year-round NakedJen Film Festival. Another listing, $650K, is land only, 6 acres, but it's pretty amazing land. It gives you an idea why artists like to relocate to the mountains on the west side of the Hudson Valley. Definitely a site to dream about. #

I'm having a debate with myself. Should we encourage or discourage people wearing swastika masks? On one hand, it's a disgusting symbol of race hate. They tried to destroy my people, forced my family to emigrate to the US (not a bad thing btw). We fought WWII against the swastika people. We won. On the other hand, swastika masks probably do as a good job as any other mask, so if that's what they want to wear, maybe we should say okay that's fine, wear your swastika. We may think they're miscreants, desperate for attention, trolls of the first order, but at least they're not spreading the virus. Maybe we should even give them swastika masks??#

If the future is an uncontrolled virus, and/or a raging climate crisis, will there be isolated self-sufficient communities on mountain tops, like Winterfell, that allow no ingress or egress? Will it be like Battlestar Galactica, with no networking to keep the electronic viruses out? What will be the ideal vacation? Will we envy people with large families, or no families? We already know that porn will be people talking without masks in public places. #

Every evening I wonder how I will come up with new stuff for the blog the next day. I wonder if this is it, this is the end, I'm fresh out of ideas. But then morning comes, and a big glass of iced coffee, and lots of ideas ready to write. It seems I'm working on tomorrow's posts three or four days in advance, without even being aware of it. #

Today's song: Father and son.#

What if the little green men in Portland are Russian?#

If you've been asleep your whole life, the last thing you want to do is wake up. I think there's a lot of that in our world right now. #

What if Sinclair Broadcast Group is owned by a Russian oligarch?#

Once Trump was acquitted in impeachment that meant the Constitution was no longer in force in re this president at least.#

The MLB season starts at 4:10PM with the Braves v Mets. #

As a Mets fan I don't hate the Yankees because they're our rivals (they aren't). I hate them because they're the Yankees.#

You know the saying "locks are for honest people" -- I think this is also true of the Constitution. If enough people decide that they don't respect the rules, then the rules don't hold.#

Poll: Is there a Twitter accent?#

The web doesn't have the equiv of an asterisk in typography. #

If they built a wall between Russia and the US, it would go through Donald Trump.#

Twitter subscriptions. Fine with me. I bought $25K of Twitter stock a few years ago. I don't mind putting money behind my use of Twitter. What would I pay for? No character limit. Titles, simple styling, links. Basic blogging features. It can carry multi-megabyte images and videos as payloads. A blog post is no big deal. Add a More link. People still don't click links in Twitter. That's why threads are so popular. That's why image posts are popular. Pave the cowpath and let's go unlimited-length. #

Krugman gets in the middle of a long-term conversation I've been having with Paolo. America has to look up to Italy. We have huge advantages, but have terrible leadership, that's why we're failing to deal with the virus. Italy is back online, America is still crashing.#

During the Vietnam war, protestors had a slogan, Bring The War Home. Except for war casualties, the country didn't feel any pain from the war. That was optimized in subsequent wars, in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan. No draft. Tax cuts. What's new, what's so shocking to Americans, is that the same chaos we brought to other countries is now coming home. Karma is a bitch. We deserve this. Now let's hope we can overcome it. We're like the people who work at Facebook today. We know we're doing shitty stuff, but not all of us are bad. Too bad. We all pay the price for our acquiescence. #

Earlier, Jillian York on Twitter said she is tired of having her ideas stolen. Rebecca MacKinnon says that's the way it is. I agreed, having had many ideas used, which is okay but sometimes against itself. Example: the unconference. Our conception of it, the original, was usurped by a format that we were opposing. This shit happens. I hit a particularly ugly form of this later, when I was trying to find a reference to Bring The War Home, as a Vietnam War protest slogan. It's been usurped by the White Power movement. Oy. See how ideas flip. Some ideas stick, others get absorbed, and others are perverted. #

Do you wear a mask with a slogan or image? If so, what do you wear? Include a picture if you can. ;-) What's the best mask you've seen? Maybe the national mask should have an American flag on one side and #BLM on the other. Redefine unity as including all Americans. And let's win this together. Love America. All of America.#

American exceptionalism was our preexisting condition. Very well-put. We were accustomed to bringing chaos to foreign lands, but the combination of Covid and Trump brought the war home. We thought we were immune. Above it all. Exceptional. Why else would we have the chutzpah to elect a gross and obvious incompetent as president. We're lucky it was just Covid-19 and not Eboloa, we'd all be dead by now if that happened during Trump. #

Good morning sports fans! The so-called baseball season starts today with a game in DC between the Nationals and the Yankees. Dr Fauci throws out the first pitch. #

I love the look on Randy Rainbow's face when the subject turns to Ivanka. He finds some redeeming qualities in the other women in TrumpWorld, but definitely not Ivanka. #

Good progress on the new BingeWorthy. The big difference in this version is that you can submit programs, no need to go through me. How it works. Find the page for the show on Metacritic. Choose the Submit a program command from the Main menu. Enter the URL of the page. The server reads the file on Metacritic, extracts the Facebook and Twitter metadata from the page, using the title in our database. I just want to be sure it's a real program, keep out the spam. I have some ideas for new UI's. But the main goal, as before, is to learn about worthwhile streaming programs. #

Trump is such a fool. Trying to invent a domestic enemy, but we already have one, killing 1000 of us every day. And it’s his job to fight the virus. Instead he attacks moms and blames Black people.#

On Maddow last night, a virologist interviewed. The biggest mistake the US made is not going into total lockdown. We should still do it. Travel should be stopped until the rest of the country catches up with NY metro area. We will get re-infected if they don't.#

12/28/05: "One way to do something, no matter how flawed that way is, is better than two, no matter how much better the second way is."#

One of the best lines in any movie ever. "You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company." #

Before there was AOC the politician there was AOC the West Village restaurant. I used to live a block away, so I'd go there all the time. A good place to meet for breakfast. I wonder if they're still open with the pandemic.#

Many writers never get to the point.#

Today's song: Truckin. (Of course.)#

Americans are wearing masks and wondering when Trump will show up for work, or resign and get out of the way.#

We now know what happens if Trump screws with the election. He's going to have to answer to the moms.#

My mom would have been one of the moms. #

Portland could send a handful of plain clothes cops to DC to arrest the temporary acting secretary of Homeland Security. Grab him off the street, into an unmarked car with DC plates, fly him back to Portland, lock him up, and put him on trial for kidnapping. He's a nice looking guy, he'd probably look great in orange. 💥#

Ken Smith nails it. Depressed people think too linearly. Trump shot his wad, for nothing -- motivated his opposition, which was already pretty motivated. Did he see the protests just a few weeks ago. #

Today's song: The Deadbeat Club.#

R. Crumb: Was I now a "spokesman" for the hippies or what?#

I'm working on a new version of BingeWorthy. Solved what I believe is the biggest problem the previous version had, and the second biggest problem too. 💥#

As disgusting as this is, it's a distraction. His storm troopers can kill a few people. The virus will kill many thousands, very soon. It's running uncontrolled through the population. This is what Trump does so well, change the subject.#

Reading about the interview with the governor of Missouri, I think everything else is a distraction including the storm troopers in Portland. I hadn't thought of this before, but it's time to raise an issue with the World Court, in preparation for (we hope) trials for crimes against humanity. That's the scale we're operating at right now. We need to fight the pandemic. Our government is using it as a weapon against the people. #

I wish the news industry would solve its distribution problem so I can read any article I want to, without having to subscribe to the publication it came from. The users all know this problem exists. We've got your money in our pockets. Come get it.#

I'll be following the ISOJ conference on and off during the day. It's online only this year. Last year I spoke in person in Austin. Here's a search on this blog for ISOJ.#

An incredible heart-wrenching save my life story. #

Today's song: Shiny Happy People. #

When did we first get an idea that masks work? This is when I got the message. March 30. Watch the video. I got my mask on the 31st. Imagine if we had all listened. How many people would be healthy who are sick. How many people would be alive, who are now dead.#

People debate whether there is such a thing as "cancel culture." I don't think there's much debate that Al Franken got canceled. Woody Allen. You could debate whether they deserved what they got, but not really that they got it. #

The tech industry is like pharma, they only make products that have huge financial upside. That means there are lots of drugs for cancer, arthritis, high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic diseases, ones that might not kill you right off, but require lifetime use. This is like virality and lock-in in tech. Tools that don't bring in other users, or get you addicted can't make a ton of money. They might be worthwhile though, they might help someone figure something out that saves humanity, for example. #

The reason came to me in a dream. The politicians and their masters aren’t saving our lives because there’s no money in it for them. But pharma sees big bucks in a vaccine and even more in a treatment. I hear the vaccine might require a booster every few months. They must love that. Every human on the planet would need it. Think of the enormous cash flow for the holder of that patent. #

I went back to UW-Madison for a visit a few years ago and got a tour of a new building created to generate patents. But it didn't appear it was used for much. Extravagant and luxurious. Very unlike a typical utilitarian campus building at a large state school. I learned they built it to recruit a professor who generated billions from patents, and I guess they felt was likely to continue to do so. The money apparently flows to the university, but the professor gets to work in a Taj Mahal of campus buildings. Not sure. But it was very impressive, and surprising. #

If you read this blog you should also follow me on Twitter. People say Twitter is bad, and of course they're right, but it's also good. It's an integral part of how I write this blog. Of course the really important stuff shows up here too. And I would like a Twitter that was just for my friends. And I think that'll happen too. 💥#

Talking Heads: "When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed. Say something once, why say it again?"#

People are writing about the risks associated with Twitter, hacking and misinformation, after the hack of last week. There's an even bigger risk. Twitter itself could be bought for 1/2 of $28 billion, the company's valuation according to the stock price. That's a fraction of the net worth of a number of billionaires. And you could probably finance the acquisition, so you would need much less than $14 billion to pull it off. Basically Twitter itself, legally, is very insecure. We're depending on something a bad actor could take over, legally. I've been writing about this for years. I hope other people tune into it before it actually happens. (Do you think Peter Thiel hasn't thought of it? Don't be naïve.)#

Pro tip: Any time you're thinking of Trump as "the president" replace it with "the enemy" and the statement all of a sudden makes sense.#

Biden is now getting the intelligence briefings. And finally, someone is actually reading them. I bet his staff is planning on how to address each of the issues. Anyway, for now he says both Russia and China are interfering with our election and he says what you'd hope a president would say. BTW, "meddling" is the wrong word, meddling is what a Jewish mother does. What Russia did in 2016 was an act of war. Americans are dying because of what they did. #

I prefer Metacritic to Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. I like it because it's clean and simple. They gather reviews of lots of pubs, rate them on a scale of 1-100, and they give the movie or show a rating based on the average. A show with an 80 or higher is must-watch.#

I was talking with a friend yesterday about Woody Allen. We both felt that he had been unfairly canceled. And yes the word applies to his experience. He's one of the great film makers of our time. The movie Manhattan came up in our discussion, I saw it was playing on Amazon, so I watched it. What an incredible movie. People forget that Allen wrote the movie, so any flaws you see in the main character, and they sure are there, were put there by him. In the end you feel his heartbreak at having been so dismissive of Mariel Hemmingway's character, she was so much more wise than him, even though she was so much younger. I had forgotten that Diane Keaton was in the movie. It's a masterpiece. #

It's so weird. I could swear I saw a notice that John Lewis had died three days ago. I even wondered why no one was commenting on it. Did I dream it?#

Biden appears to be doing what I hoped he would. Trying to suck in as much of the Republican Party as possible. Yesterday I saw AOC pointed out that the Dem Party is a conservative party. That's cool, so maybe we'll end up with 3 or 4 parties out of this instead of 2. And we can have governments that aren't all one or the other. We keep doing and undoing, with little consistency in American govt over the decades. Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump. Biden is the single most comfortable Democrat for Repubs. Good. Let's have a unity government that isn't completely nuts. Let's get used to compromising and working together. Let's have some goals, and not drift from them. I know it's a lot to hope for.#

I wonder if it would be possible to do a BloggerCon style unconference using online tech. No audience, no speaker, just a room full of expertise with a discussion leader who is basically a reporter. #

A live webcam of the Rialto Bridge in Venice. #