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.

I asked ChatGPT to adapt two images. Grandpa from The Munsters and Ted Cruz, US senator from Texas. The adaptation is pretty nice. Another pair, the logo of Los Pollos Hermanos from Breaking Bad. The adaptation is thoughtful.

I've never written a review on Amazon even though I shop there regularly. I was about to write a negative review for a product they can't seem to support, that I depend on, but got this message. Weird. I bought the product from the page I wanted to review it on. How else would they determine if I actually purchased the product? They don't say. They do offer to tell me a joke if I rate products I've bought. I've heard the company isn't doing that well now that Bezos has stepped aside. Hopefully this is just a bad set of coincidences.

I got a bit of pushback on what I wrote about The Newsroom yesterday. If you think it was great, you should watch it again. They got everything wrong, imho -- and the storytelling is as simple as Atlas Shrugged. If you loved it in 2012, okay -- but we've all been through hel...

I asked ChatGPT to "colorize" the first picture. The second picture is what it produced. Note I didn't say "editorialize." I don't know what you think but I think it's art! (I'm serious, I'll write more about that. I love that it's making us define art.) The first picture. The second picture.

Aaron Sorkin is like Ayn Rand. Reviewing his stories after you've grown up makes you wonder why you liked it in the first place. 😄

I'm watching the HBO series The Newsroom from 2012, it's an Aaron Sorkin show. It's fairly insipid, but for some reason I keep watching. They have a multi-episode controversy as they go crazy trying to source a rumor they've heard that the US bombed a town in the Middle East...

I don't understand using an email to send a code to verify the email address, that you then have to enter into a dialog. Why not just send a URL that the user can click on? What's the design rationale for making the user do the extra steps in remembering the number, switching back to your app, and entering the number by hand, when it could all be done with a single click?

I tuned into MSNBC this evening as one of their anchors was about to interview a CNN anchor who just wrote a book about an election in the 1800s.

And that my friends is what passes for news these days. Just passing the time waiting to see if there's anything left of journalism after the election.

Lalala.

Today, in 2024, AI cannot create art. But a human being can use AI to create art. It's a medium, like paint and canvas except it's not static. It gets new skills all the time. It gives me the ability to create in a way I've never been able to before. I can't wait to see what it can do in a few months or years.

The blogroll on scripting.com is a real breakthrough. It's actually a feed reader, but don't tell anyone. Actually go ahead and tell them. 😄

I have done this before, when a blog post I wrote became something I wanted to add to over time. Two examples -- Rules for standards-makers and Trolls.

At the beginning of the Trade Secrets podcast on Sept 22, 2004, is when I would say it got its name. Adam and I were the leaders of the community. It had been discussed briefly on the mail list. We all recognized that what we were doing needed a name. There was a consensus, i...

I started a new this.how doc on how podcasting got its name, so I could include new information. It links back to the piece I wrote in 2014. I have done this before, when a blog post I wrote became something I wanted to add to over time. Two examples -- Rules for standards-makers and Trolls.

And the show notes for the podcast from Sept 2, 2004, and now we are fully caught up.