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Just watched a Harris rally in Charlotte NC. She's using what Trump said in the debate in her new campaign speech. Brilliant. Getting him on the record in that context is a gift. 60 million viewers. Up till then he only took interviews where he could bully his way past the interviewer.

Braintrust query: I got an email from OpenAI saying I could access the new models, but I don't see the new models in the popup menu.

And btw I also am wasting my ideas, one in a hundred has any influence, and even then it's minscule, the ideas drift away unimplemented. I keep writing, hoping I see a way to get into the global conversation, again. I remember what it's like. But I'm not done. We still have a big problem to solve in our political and communication system. Online software is where it's at.

Another fantastic thinker and writer who is mostly scattering his ideas into the wind -- Dan Conover, who when he comes out with a piece, I stop everything and sit down and carefully read it and savor it, because not only is there sure to be new info and new ideas, but the writing is sooo good. He's a former local reporter in South Carolina. I met him on a road tour I did a bunch of years ago. Where does he post this stuff? Facebook. I want it to be part of the concentrated web writers union. Maybe think of it as my karass, my version of The Atlantic, perhaps. Or my version of the op-ed page of the NY Times. I think there is definitely enough good stuff out there, unorganized, to easily rival them for originality, depth of thought, experience and great writing. Dan is on my list of such superheroes.

I've been enjoying the recent blog posts by my longtime friend Jeff Jarvis. A couple of months ago, I was practically begging him to do this. He was pouring so much unfocused energy into making journalism play an appropriate role in our democracy. When Jeff started posting t...

Someday an election will be like Game of Thrones or Succession. A campaign would be a season. There would be character development, arcs, twists, revelations, unforseen events. Near the end of the season you have the election, with the following episodes the plotting, intrigue, and undermining of democracy, and at the end of the season the inauguration of a new president. Each year you have more of this, until four years later you go through the election all over again. People would really study the candidates, and would have reasons they like one character over another. And maybe the patriarch doesn't die, and decides to run again. This is where we're heading, we might already be there.

It would have been cool if Harris had said "He's going to have you for dinner" instead of "He's going to eat you for lunch," which is what she said Putin would do to Trump.

Makes you wonder if that was a slip of the tongue or if it was a little Easter Egg she dropped for our later amusement.

What Harris is doing is marketing. It takes a lot of impressions to get people to believe she can be president. If she wants to win, she has to do a lot of interviews and rallies and say quotable things, and be tweeting all the time, not just in the campaign snark accounts (...

Idea for TV series. Law and Order style crime drama where all the crimes are against humanity.

Even if his supporters don't see it, Trump is a pathetic broken has-been. When he's gone we'll dance in good riddance.

Trump was at his most pathetic lying bullshit asshole self. He looked and sounded terrible. I wouldn't have traded places with Harris for anything in the world, she did fantastic. The pressure on her was enormous. I don't think Trump said one thing that was true. And Harris made the point that the division is coming from that guy over there, and if we don't want it all we have to do is turn the freaking page. For once the power is with the people. The Repubs in the Senate wouldn't vote to convict, the Supreme Court just gave him immunity, but the American people, in a few weeks, can tell them all the fuck off.

The most encouraging thing about last night's debate was that the moderators were journalists. When Trump repeated his most egregious lie about murdering babies being legal in certain states, moderator Muir confidently, almost derisively, said that there is no such thing. And when Trump said he didn't admit he lost the election, and then when challenged said in a snotty way he was being sarcastic, Muir plainly that wasn't true either. It was like the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. ABC News was the last place you'd expect real journalism to surface, maybe the NYT et al will follow their lead.

Harris must become the president of Twitter before becoming president of the United States.

BRIC countries == Brazil, Russia, India and China.

12 minute podcast.

I made kittens the theme for the presidential campaign, it was my attempt to bring levity to it for readers of my blog. Then came "childless cat ladies" and now cats being eaten in Ohio. Either I was prescient, or the Trumps are copying me! Anyway, here's the Wordle Kitty $5 postage stamp, next in the series. She just broke out of prison to rescue the Ohio cats from JD Lance. My collaborator of course is ChatGPT.

Today's song: Spanish Moon.

After the debate, Harris should be interviewed anywhere they'll have her. Go ahead and be overexposed. Answer every question with one of your major positioning statements. Call in to radio talk shows, podcasts, whatever you can think of. Biden hardly ever promoted himself. Not being heard all the time was his biggest sin. Harris should get accustomed to being accessible when she's in office. Keep the kamalahq snark channel going. This will have been Trump's contribution to American politics, no fear of being heard.

James Earl Jones: "I don't know if we ever learn from history."

Ed Kranepool was a Met when that really meant something. He started on the Mets in their inaugural year, 1962. They went from the worst team ever to World Champions in record time. They became the heroes of NYC in 1969. I was riding the subway back then to get from Flushing to the Bronx to go to school, and in the Bronx, when the Mets won, everyone was smiling. If you've ever been to NYC you know how unusual that is. And in the Bronx, which is of course where the always-hated Yankees were HQ'd. Ed Kranepool died Sunday. He was watching a Mets game when he had a heart attack.

Famous heroic kitten breaks out of prison to rescue house pets in Ohio from being eaten by JD Vance.

Are the Apple announcements like great reunions for people who have been going to these things regularly for 20+ years? If so, I can see the value in it. I went to a reunion at Berkman, after 20 years, and it was great, made me wonder why we didn't do it every year for the ...

Could Kamala Harris look into the camera tomorrow night and say "To Fox News viewers, they've been feeding you a load crap. Just thought you should know that. And I wouldn't trust what the others are saying either."

A very practical issue.

BlueSky has a 300 character limit, which is less than the other services I cross-post to, namely:

• Mastodon: 500 (using mastodon.social as benchmark)
• Threads: 500
• Twitter: 10000 (assume paying the montly fee)
• RSS: no specific limit
• WordPress: no specific limit
• BlueSky: 300

This will be a problem when we eventually get peering working cross-network among twitter-like systems.

Do you think you've ever had an online chat with an AI impersonating a human without you knowing? Have you had such an experience with someone you know? If no, when do you think you will have such a conversation? Would you mind if a friend used an AI to front for them, so they could do other things while they were "chatting" with you? Would you be liable for anything your avatar did or said?

Also, when the Berlin Wall came down there were no blogs or podcasts. We got what we were given by the news networks and NYT and WSJ.

It's a fascinating moment, somewhat like when the Berlin Wall came down. When it happened, we were all kind of in a daze. That wall had been there my entire life. No one knew, for many years, what its disappearance would mean. Same with the wall betw the Democratic and Republican parties. It was still the same US when one or the other was in power, there were constants that didn't change. There was an agreement that politics ends at the border. But now, are there two parties? What became of the one we call Republican?

The next in the series of podcasts from 2004. This one was done driving from Banff to Kelowna, on the way to Seattle.

I found a bug in opml.visitAll in the OPML package I use in various software including Drummer and FeedLand. Had to fix it, even though there's a slight chance of breakage.

There's a difference betw journalism in 2023 and 2024, it really is changing that quickly. They are a mechanism for delivering some really tragic lies now, without correction, and a lot of people will believe them. Esp the two Trump is pushing now about Roe v Wade and Democr...

Journalism doesn't come back from the election of 2024, any more than the Republican Party does.

I got a beautiful new Pixel 9 Pro yesterday. It was amazingly easy to move the data from the old phone to the new one. Just turn both on near each other, and click a couple of dialogs and it works. Haven't used it for anything yet. Will report.