Sorry if items from today's blog appeared in your RSS readers multiple times. I was doing a brain transplant on my blogging software, and some outputs were hooked up to the wrong inputs. Long story. With any luck it should be fixed now. Still diggin! Praise Murphy! 🍐#

Just tried watching MSNBC and gave up. They can't handle news like the escalation that Trump took in possible nuclear war with North Korea. There really isn't anything else to talk about now. It doesn't matter what the president's approval rating is or whether Congress will flip in 2018. The president did something you can't do: openly, publicly, threatening to nuke North Korea. Now he has no good choices. Obviously if he launches nukes unprovoked, there's a good chance China or someone else will nuke us back. You think they'd just sit still for that? Or he has to back down. Great. Now what. There goes the nuclear deterrent, not just with North Korea but with Pakistan, India, all the other countries that have nukes but haven't announced. The current format of news, amped-up sensationalism about trivia, doesn't scale to this level. We need a new kind of news, right now. I will try Maddow later. #

On this day in 1974: Nixon resigned. #

Steve Garfield found a bit of ancient ThinkTank schwag, a button users could wear proudly at MacWorld Expo and other software shows. I'm going to say it was 1985, it was part of our Fanatic at Work ad campaign. Our users loved ThinkTank. We wanted to advertise about them more than the technical capabilities of the product. #

Om writes about Amazon's relationship with their vendors. it must be kind of tense. They know when you're doing well, and if they like your business they could launch a brand that competes, and give themselves a better deal of course. This is factored into development everywhere. There are lots of projects I won't do because it's a lot of work, but much easier for a BigCo, so when and if I prove the idea makes money, they'll just take it over. Even when you don't make money sometimes they take it over. The biggest hole in the market is a complete user data storage system that's as easy to authorize as Twitter or Facebook. Totally doable. For some reason no BigCo will do it. Opportunity has been there for a decade or more. #

We should all keep our own feeds and control what's in them.#

I just got something working. Let's see if it really worked. Haha. Of course it won't. (It didn't work the first time, but it worked the second.) #

If you only tolerate people who agree with you then you are intolerant. #

Inspired by Bijan Sabet, here's the home screen on my iPhone. It's not as meaningful as it might be because I don't put any time into grooming my choices. Some of my most-used apps are on the second, third and fourth screens. They all have their place which I remember, and why should my phone be any more organized than anything else in my life? 🍓 #

Are there any good future-of-journalism conferences coming up in the US?#

In the New Republic, Jeet Heer quotes Robert Bear, a supposed expert on aging in men: "When was the last time you saw a 70-year-old man change for the better?" This is a bit of miserably prejudiced nonsense, as crazy as any thought as anyone has ever been fired for. What he really means: He doesn't think Trump will change (I don't either, but I have been surprised) so he slammed a whole class of innocent people, many of who do change after 70. Turns out people over 70 change more than people between 30 and 70. How about that. Now let's not fire Bear or Heer (both men, btw), as Google did with their politically incorrect male employee, but please work on your prejudice. #