Since David Crosby died I’ve been listening to all the CSNY and Byrds hits. These few days have been an explosion of the past. Forgotten love, long-gone friends, wounds all fresh again. Good? Not known at this time.#If you're going to tell the story of the growth of podcasting, you can't leave out Morning Coffee Notes. Podcasting was a mission that two people were on, myself and Adam Curry, mostly working in harmony, to find ways to get people to adopt this idea. We kept throwing ideas out there, and it wasn't until MCN in the summer of 2004 that other people got the idea that they could do it. That was the breakthrough. You didn't need a big studio and money to produce good audio programming. That's what MCN did. It was as crucial to the growth of podcasting as Serial or The Daily were many years later. You can't write a truthful history of this without including this series. Luckily the archive is pretty good! 😄 #
There's a 20-minute podcast linked to from this piece about how podcasting came to be. If you're going to write about this stuff, please listen to it. #
There's a lot to be said for no paywalls and no intrusive ads. Transmits a message. No fuss no muss. Sending out a link to them won't cause trouble for anyone. Over time that builds a brand. We should give out awards for that. #1 is Axios for sure.#
Nothing is more galling than people who never cared what you thought of them claiming credit for your accomplishments. Soon we'll all be dead and it won't matter. But in the meantime it means people aren't interested in my new work. So there is a cost.#
Would someone please make a ChatGPT product that can be pointed at specific websites, and allow intelligent queries against the contents. I’d love to explore the site I’ve been writing for 28.5 years, scripting.com. Let me know. It’s worth $ to me.#
- I asked ChatGPT who owns the web. This is what it said.#
- The World Wide Web is not owned by any single person or organization. It is a decentralized system of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The Web is maintained and developed by a community of individuals, companies, and organizations, who contribute to its growth and evolution. The core technology of the Web, including the HTTP and HTML standards, is developed and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). However, the web is also regulated by different countries with different laws and regulations, but no one owns the Web.#
- Judging from the news, no one has figured out how to explain what defaulting on our debt means in human terms.#
- To do it, you'd have to explain why the United States is richer than any other country in the world.#
- It's not because we're smarter, or make better products, or have more natural resources. It's because the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. It's the safest place to store value. That means when we create a new dollar someone accept it as repayment of a loan. That's how our wealth is created and sustained. #
- In other words, people are happy to be paid in dollars. They want to be paid in dollars. They like dollars because they remain valuable, because they trust the United States to repay the loan because the US never has and never will default. That's the assumption. #
- We got a good thing! We should want to keep it! (I don't often use exclams on this blog, btw.)#
- If we don't pay back our loans, the safety thing blows up. It'll be gone. Then when we print a dollar to pay back a loan, they'll say no thanks, give us Euros. It's actually pretty simple. If you understand the rules of football, driving or poker you can definitely understand this. #
- People ought to learn what it means to be a reserve currency. And how it makes the US much richer.#
- It means we can piss away huge amounts of money on the military, and let the super-rich get off with paying no taxes. That's where the difference goes. It's why we can still live in a Western way, with big cars and mortgages, and have the hugest miltary and fuel the growth of the super-rich all around the world all at the same time. It's not because we're a great country, it's because everyone thinks the dollar is safe. #
- I don't the military is going to suffer much when our unfair economic advantage is blown up by a default, I think the poor will. I think health care and education will disappear. I think the rivers and air will be polluted. We'll be sicker and more ignorant. Everything will work much worse. More shortages so prices will go up. #
- To understand this all you have to understand is what a reserve currency is. Please news people, explain that. Help the people understand how this works. #
- Thanks.#