The "textcasting" idea is great but it's backwards
I love Dave Winer’s vision of textcasting (as discussed here by Kottke) but I think he’s mistaken putting the writer first. We need to put the reader first. I’m active on Facebook, Tumblr, BlueSky, LinkedIn Reddit and Micro.blog and a newsletter and I hate it because it’s too much fussing and cutting-and-pasting. I just want to post my things and have it reach my friends and family and everybody who’s interested in seeing it.
The Pitt has a sharp take on AI . It’s potentially a useful tool, but it doesn’t solve problems of short-staffing and underfunding. This message is meaningful beyond the healthcare system.
I think I’ll replace my smartphone with a dumb phone. Or maybe start smoking again. Carry around a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
I’m losing interest in “Starfleet Acadeny.” I don’t dislike it. I like it. But I forget to watch it.
An unpopular opinion about making coffee with the AeroPress
You should only use the AeroPress to make one cup of coffee at a time. Don’t weigh anything, don’t use external measures. One scoop of beans, grind, fill with water to the 4, stir, press and drink.
Aeropress is an excellent, convenient way to make one cup of great coffee. That is its virtue. It is a single-purpose device and it is fantastic at performing that purpose. If you’re making more than one cup, use another method.
If you’re weighing, measuring, taking precise temperatures and timing precisely, you need to rethink your life choices and go outside and touch grass.
Also, the AeroPress XL is an abomination.
I follow the river of news approach for RSS feeds. I have done for twenty-plus years. I ignore unread counts. On the other hand, there are few RSS feeds where I do want to read every one that comes in. I use folders to separate the must-read streams from the high-volume, read-whenever feeds.
I don’t follow podcasts on proprietary platforms like YouTube and Spotify. That’s not out of principle. I just don’t bother with it. For 95% of my podcasts, I listen rather than watch and I do it in Overcast. Why fuss with another app?
Why telcos shouldn’t fear an AI apocalypse — yet. AI doomer hype is surging, but telcos shouldn’t expect catastrophic change to OSS/BSS modernization. My latest on Fierce Network.
Voter ID isn't designed to protect voting. It's designed to steal elections.
Voter ID is a scam to disenfranchise millions of voters. The conservative Heritage Foundation, one of the biggest backers of the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to vote, claims voter fraud is a major issue. But in the groups own records, there have been 68 documented cases of residents casting a ballot in a US election since the 1980s.
That’s just 68 over the past 40 years — a fraud rate of 0.0001%.
The SAVE Act would require a passport or Real ID to vote, both of which cost money. It’s a poll tax, meant to punish people who can’t afford to pay.
Trump would like the government he leads to pay him billions. Staggering corruption: Trump is suing the US government for billions of dollars as a result of the criminal investigations against him, and Trump and his cronies — including Pam Bondi — will decide how much he gets.
MAGA’s “People’s Capitalism”: An Alliance of Bourgeoisie and Mob. Corrupt family-owned businesses that support Trump reap billions from ICE’s terror campaign, along with a “reactionary fraction of the tech sector…. It’s the mob from top to bottom.”
The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With Pete Hegseth. Does not disappoint.
I’ve been doing a lot of chopping lately. I like to have an apple nearly every day with lunch. My teeth have been bothering me for a couple of months — not enough to schedule an emergency dentist visit — but it’s uncomfortable for me to bite into an apple. So I’ve been cutting the apple into bite-sized pieces. And even though I don’t cook, I’ve gotten great at chopping, and also pretty good at not slicing open a finger.
Last weekend I decided to once again migrate my Mastodon usage to my blog at mitchwagner.com, hosted by Micro.blog, as my only outpost on the Fediverse. Micro.blog seems to work pretty well for me as a Mastodon client, though it has not in the past.
However, I’d still like to be able to see other people’s boosts from Micro.blog — that is a feature that @manton has steadfastly resisted implementing.
Arrcus bets on a smarter network fabric for AI inference. The company’s new Inference Network Fabric aims to solve growing latency and performance challenges for telco, hyperscaler and large enterprise AI networks. My latest on Fierce Network.
I have been a professional writer for more than 40 years and I still can’t figure out affect vs. effect. I have to look them up every single time I use one of those words. It’s affecting my mental health. Or effecting.
“There is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism”
Talarico is a Texas state lawmaker studying to be a minister, who criticizes the Republican use of Christianity as a political weapon. Such politicization of Christianity both distorts politics and cheapens faith, he says. The true way to practice Christianity is simple but not easy, he says: it is to love your neighbor. Political positions should grow out of that to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and heal the sick. “[T]here is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism,” he told Colbert. “It is the worship of power in the name of Christ, and it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.”
I was the first one on a Teams meeting this morning and for a few minutes it was just me and three note-taking and transcription AI bots.
Who needs a laptop when you have a folding phone?
Galaxy Z Fold 7 phone + Logitech Keys 2 Go. keyboard = a great mobile workstation, or “Purse Computer,” according to The Verge’s Allison Johnson.
I should use my iPad Air more often. Also, I preordered the Clicks Power Keyboard, a combined battery pack and thumb keyboard for phones. I’m looking forward to trying that out.
