RIP "Uncle Floyd" Vivino, who hosted the cult "Uncle Floyd Show" starting in the 1970s
Fans included David Bowie, who said in 2002:
“Back in the late 70’s, everyone that I knew would rush home at a certain point in the afternoon to catch the Uncle Floyd show,” Bowie said. “He was on UHF Channel 68 and the show looked like it was done out of his living room in New Jersey. All his pals were involved and it was a hoot.
“It had that Soupy Sales kind of appeal and though ostensibly aimed at kids, I knew so many people of my age who just wouldn’t miss it. We would be on the floor it was so funny. I just loved that show.”
Vivino was 74
I bought a new strap for my computer bag the other day and now I’m on the luggage company’s mailing list. This could be one expensive luggage strap.
DHS memo declares the Fourth Amendment optional. “The DHS is acting as if the US Constitution, a document conservative wingnuts used to demand we revere in its original form, does not apply to them.”
I am on record as being skeptical of the notion that if you shop very carefully, you can make society better. “Conscious consumption” is not a tool for structural change, and any election that requires you to “vote with your wallet” is always won by the people with the thickest wallets (statistically speaking, that’s not you)
— The petty (but undeniable) delights of cultivating unoptimizability as a habit, by Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr
Here in brief is the method I’ve honed to optimize a two-week vacation: When you arrive in a new country, immediately proceed to the farthest, most remote, most distant place you intend to reach during the trip. If there is a small village, remote spa, a friend’s farm, or a wild place you plan on seeing on the trip, go there immediately. Do not stop near the airport. Do not rest overnight in the arrival city. Do not pause to acclimate. If at all possible proceed by plane, bus, jeep, car directly to the furthest point without interruption. Make it an overnight journey if you have to. Then once you reach your furthest point, unpack, explore, and work your way slowly back to the big city, wherever your international departure airport is."
AI vs. AI is the new security battleground. AI-enabled attacks at machine speed are forcing organizations to deploy their own AI defenses or risk being overwhelmed. My latest on Fierce Network.
This afternoon, Rebecca Santana of the Associated Press reported that ICE has been breaking into homes under the authority provided by a secret memo of May 12, 2025, signed by the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, saying that federal agents do not need a judge’s warrant to force their way into people’s homes.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, one of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
As Joyce White Vance of Civil Discourse notes, courts have always interpreted that amendment to mean that a judge must sign a warrant to allow law enforcement to break into a home. Now the Department of Homeland Security says it does not need such a judicial warrant, but can simply use an administrative warrant signed by an official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or ICE if immigrants believed to be inside a home have a final order of removal.
The legal training manual for DHS itself quotes a 1984 Supreme Court decision that “the ‘physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”
Immigration law specialist Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted that this memo is a big deal: it is “the federal government conspiring in secret to subvert the Fourth Amendment.”
“Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door & storm into your home,” [Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)], wrote on social media.
…
Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who at the beginning of 2025 was considered a moderate on immigration, wrote: “Yeah I am not voting to give whatever ICE has become more taxpayer money. It’s no longer an immigration enforcement arm of the US government.”
ICE agents are hanging around schools, threatening children. Reg Chapman of CBS News in Minnesota reported today that ICE has detained a five-year-old preschooler after using him as bait to get someone in his house to open their door. Then ICE transferred him and his father from Minnesota to detention in Texas. His family has an active asylum case and it does not have an order of deportation, meaning they are in the U.S. legally.
Video footage from Minneapolis also shows a federal agent spraying chemical irritants directly into the face of a man agents had pinned and held to the ground. Other video shows Customs and Border Protection leader Greg Bovino throwing tear gas at peaceful protesters.
Yesterday Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, police chief Mark Bruley told reporters that the police were getting repeated complaints about violations of civil rights by ICE and that ICE agents were stopping off-duty police officers of color. He recounted that ICE agents had stopped an off-duty police officer, demanded her paperwork—she is a U.S. citizen—and then held her at gunpoint. When she tried to film the interaction, they knocked the phone out of her hand. Finally, when she identified herself as a police officer, they got in their vehicles and left.
“This isn’t just important because it happened to off-duty police officers,” Bruley said, but because “our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted, and that’s what they were. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think [of] how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.”
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this morning, a visibly exhausted president of the United States of America rambled in angry free association in a speech before the world’s leaders. At one point, speaking of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) dignitaries, he told the audience: “Until the last few days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy, right, last time. Very smart man said, ‘He’s our daddy. He’s running it.’”
He meant Greenland.
The president of the United States went on to give a virulently racist, insulting, rambling speech in which he complained that people call him a dictator but that “sometimes you need a dictator.” More than anything, though, the speech demonstrated his mental unfitness for his position.
What Is the Scale of the Resistance in Minnesota? Kottke: “The Trump regime’s secret police force has invaded the Twin Cities to kidnap, torture, terrorize, and murder its residents — and Minnesotans aren’t having it. They’re pushing back with all they have.”
Dementia Don says he has the "concept of a deal" on the future of Greenland and the whole Arctic Circle
This deal will get the US nothing new, at the expense of burning down 80 years of relations with our strongest allies and trading partners and weakening the US with respect to China and Russia. Nonetheless, MAGA will applaud the deal as a triumph. The Trump family will get hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit gains.
I have zero details about the deal. But that’s how things work in the Trump White House.
Also, the Epstein files were, by law, supposed to have been released Dec. 19.
Risk, reward, and revenue: Defining the telco role in the AI economy
Now I can reveal what I was working on much of the last six months — this massively researched Fierce Network report on the role of telcos in the emerging AI economy: Risk, reward, and revenue: Defining the telco role in the AI economy
Artificial intelligence is reshaping network requirements and creating new revenue opportunities for service providers. As AI adoption accelerates, telcos must define how they will participate in this shift - whether as infrastructure providers, enablers of AI service ecosystems, or builders of their own AI-driven solutions.
This report explores how carriers can leverage existing strengths, including resilient networks, edge assets, and deep enterprise relationships, to compete and grow in the AI economy.
The report draws on industry perspectives and a recent survey of 500 telco leaders worldwide — yes, that’s five hundred — along with 11 in-depth interviews with executives at global telcos and cloud providers, including AT&T, Bell, Zayo Group, C Spire, MetTel, Microsoft, Google Cloud, Oracle, Cisco and more. The report highlights where the strongest opportunities are emerging, the barriers that could limit progress, and how collaboration across the ecosystem can help unlock long-term value.
Download the report to gain timely insights into the changing role of telcos in the AI era and what it means for future growth.
I preordered the Clicks Power Keyboard. It’s a slide-out thumb keyboard that attaches to your phone with MagSafe. $79 early-bird pricing, delivers in the spring. I’d love to be able to do more things on my phone that now require me to be on my MacBook.
If I hate it, there’s a one-month refund policy. Hopefully that’s a month from when it’s delivered, not a month from now ha ha.
There's an observation that every Star Trek is an observation on the state of the US at the time it was made
Sometimes Trek anticipates the future, but only by three to five years
The original series: Cold War. Klingons are Russians, Romulans are Chinese.
“The Next Generation:” America ascendant. The lone superpower. The Enterprise is an embassy, bringing diplomacy and classical music to other nations.
“Enterprise” became paranoid post-9/11.
“Strange New Worlds” is nostalgic for the good ol' 20th Century, when things were simple (or at least that’s how we remember it).
“Starfleet Academy” anticipates the post-Trump world, when the US has to rebuild on the ruins of what MAGA destroyed. In the second episode, the Betazoids come to the Federation and say why should we trust you now when you betrayed us before?
We just had our fourth visit from refrigerator repair people since the fridge broke the day after Thanksgiving, and I guess he got tired of visiting us because he fixed the refrigerator this time.
We watched “Fallout” (violent, profane, cynical) and “All Creatures Great and Small” (wholesome, uplifting, optimistic family entertainment) on two consecutive nights and my brain can’t handle the disconnect.
This morning, I saw two squirrels chasing each other up and down the big palm tree in the backyard. Minnie was straining at the leash to get at them. So I let her off the leash to circle around the tree and jump for a while. Whether this was kind or cruel of me depends on whether you view things from the perspective of the dog or the squirrels.
After washing up for bed I put on my sleep T-shirt and then I realized I had absentmindedly put on my exercise T-shirt, so I took it off and put on my sleep T-shirt, but then I realized I had absentmindedly put on my everyday T-shirt and I took that off and put on my sleep T-shirt.
Then I thought of a recent post by John Scalzi in a similar situation where he talked about needing to sit his brain down and have a conversation about how T-shirts work.