It's even worse than it appears.
The most interesting time of the NBA year, free-agency, starts at midnight Eastern. Kind of musical chairs fueled by billions of dollars. Who is the most popular free agent, landing spot? Watch it all unfurl on nbariver.com.#
A year ago today the new Knicks coach said the Knicks are a win-now team. So they shipped off three healthy players in a trade for two players with too many miles on their legs. A replay of the disastrous win-now strategy of the Nets, which now have them in solid rebuilding mode. Win-now is a shitty strategy, esp for the Knicks. Never has a team needed more to see itself as a work in progress. The thing the win-now proponents don't understand is that fans like teams with long-term strategies. They might bitch and moan about not winning or contending for a title, but a team with hope draws fan interest. A foolish team that makes shitty short-term bets? Well there are always other sports to watch. ⚾️#It's "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" and we're all New Orleans and Katrina is the Republican health care bill. #
My friend Liza explains that when you cheat crowds are small. Good point. Look Russia may not have affected the outcome of the election as they say (I have my doubts) but I'm pretty sure that voter suppression did. Which is why they have to run those nasty NRA videos, to make us think they're huge. #
Also, the NRA, which is basically a trade association for gun manufacturers, has to sell a certain number of guns every year, beyond what's out there. Increase the installed base in a saturated market. The only way to do that is to escalate fear. Rational or not. It doesn't matter, as long as it sells the product. The video we saw yesterday was a sales pitch. I wonder if she gets a commission on gun sales. #
I hate to do this, but I need another test item for my software. This item should be longer than say 400 chars. And it should have links. And perhaps other html. I want to transmit the full content of an item in a new context. And the software currently doesn't do that. Okay it's only 271 chars. I must keep typing. Now I can add a link or two. #
Most episodes of The West Wing were pretty good, some were great; one of the so-so ones featured a sub-plot where the president was obsessed with an obscure school board election in New Hampshire. #- The staff struggles with this, trying to get him to snap out of the dream. The person who offended him so many years ago and the president are now in completely different leagues. He should be looking for wins re whole countries, large ones with big armies and nukes and powerful leaders, like himself. Not a person running for a school board in a small state in a quiet part of the country he's in charge of. #
- Kind of like our current president and the morning news show he's now obsessed with. I don't think the people defending him on TV are doing him, themselves or us any favors. Any adult watching this, anywhere, understands what's going on. #
- PS: That episode included one of the best Martin Sheen speeches of the entire series, only these days the White House does host meetings of the Ignorant Tightass Club. #
I just read a piece from Doc Searls. I was lucky, I saw it because I happened to be looking at Twitter when it was in my timeline. Had the task I was doing previously taken a little more or less time I would have missed it.#- Doc writes in a lot of different places. No blame, just fact. It was true of me too until about a month ago, when I re-concentrated my web writing back where it started on my blog. #
- So we need a feed for Doc that gathers together all he does into one RSS file that our feed readers can scan so no matter where he posts we'll pick it up.#
- Idea: Maybe this is something that could be done with Wikipedia? 💡#