The Repubs backing Trump should be careful not to break the law. Trump won’t care, and won’t have the power to pardon, anyway. I bet he’d enjoy seeing Ted Cruz go to jail. I bet a lot of people would. Seriously, they would be easy scapegoats, everyone could agree they deserve to be punished. #If Ted Cruz and his crew are true freedom fighters, if they are rebuffed by the corrupt deep state, and forced to choose between an illegitimate regime, or resigning in protest, they should must resign. It's the honorable thing to do, and we know they are people of principle.#
If the press didn't pay so much attention to the Repubs stunts, they would have less power. #
I heard today from a friend in the Bay Area that the homeless camps in San Francisco are shocking. Has anyone written a story about it, with pictures, or video? #
Larry Yudelson, a longtime reader of this blog, recommends The Story of Human Language audiobook, by John McWhorter. #
I hate sites that make you give them your email address before you find out what they do.#
- Yesterday I wrote a short admonition about podcasts that tell you about the experiences and feelings of experts who I don't know. #
- Andy Weissman suggests that it might be the unlimited length of podcasts that encourages people to go on and on. I'm sure that's part of it. I also think producers aren't listening to their own podcasts, so aren't aware of how poorly these indefinite ramblings about nothing go over. #
- The other day I was on a walk in the country, bundled up with three layers covering everything including my head and the new AirPods. I was walking basically inside a podcast pillow. I choose the podcast I'll listen to before I get all bundled up. This walk, I wanted to learn all about the pandemic from a reporter who had been covering nothing else for a year. I had been reading his articles. But the interviewer wanted to know about about the author's personal feelings about the pandemic. I went with it for five minutes, they were still talking about the author's feelings, so I tried another podcast. Same thing! And another. The topics were all interesting to me. But they took forever to get going. #
- Finally I hit on a BBC podcast about the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 60s and 70s, which I was fascinated by as a kid. I got what I wanted, I learned something, but I'm sure there was good stuff in the podcasts I skipped. #
- There are rules about this medium. It's not a joke -- it's for real and it looks like it's going to be here for a while. So we should be thinking about how to do the best possible podcast for people who are really interested in the depth the podcast medium offers that isn't available elsewhere.#
- PS: Sanford Dickert, a friend from the Kerry campaign and the first BloggerCon, does a daily thing on Facebook live video, riding a bike around London. I just kind of interviewed him, while he was riding, me on the keyboard, him on video and voice. I realized his is a podcast that's totally about how he's feeling, and of course it's interesting because he's interesting. So that's an obvious exception. #
