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I’m working on updating my resume today. I’ve decided to use the Pet Resume template in Google Docs.

In other news: Google Docs has a Pet Resume template.

Why does a pet need a resume? What are their skills? Minnie is a dynamic leader in eating poops from the ground.

Podfasting: I Tried Listening to Podcasts at 3x and Broke My Brain [Steve Rousseau/OneZero]

Most of us are familiar with binge watching and speed reading, but there’s a relatively new mode of conspicuous consumption that’s emerged in recent years: podfasting. First profiled in 2017, podfasters love listening to podcasts so much that they’re speeding them up — 1.25x, 1.5x, and even 2x speed — in order to fit more into their day.

I listen to about 15 hours of podcast weekly, and normally do it at 2x-2.5x speed when listening through AirPods, which is what I do most of the time.

In case you’re not familiar with how this works: Podcasting software like Overcast, the app I use, adjust the tone of voices when you speed up the play, so it doesn’t sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. In the case of Overcast in particular, the software also normalizes speaking volume and chops out little bits of silence.

In my experience, different apps use different algorithms to speed up play. I’ve tried Overcast and Castro, and they are both terrific, but I prefer Overcast’s audio quality, and better ability to “podfast.”

You know the President is able to shut down all US comms, yeah? An FCC commish wants to stop him from doing that [Kevin McCarthy/The Register]

Does Donald Trump have the legal authority to demand that mobile phone networks be shut down? Yes. That Twitter and Facebook stopped sending updates? Yes. That the internet itself be suspended? Yes. Does he has the same authority to push his own messages? Yes, it is literally written into US law…

Which leads to the question: would Trump do it? And the answer: yes, of course, he would at least try to float the idea if he thought it would benefit him. The President has yet to accept a single instance, theoretical or otherwise, of where his authority is limited. He has literally argued that he is not capable of committing a crime while President.

If the polls swing against Donald Trump, if he feels his presidency is under threat, does anyone seriously imagine that he wouldn’t do anything and everything within his power to retain his position?

Ex-principal in Holocaust furor defends his right not to say the genocide is a fact [The Palm Beach Post]

Former Spanish River High Principal William Latson defended his refusal to call the Holocaust a historical fact, saying opinions on whether the genocide occurred are a “personal ideology” and that it was his job to be tolerant of people who didn’t believe.

While acknowledging the Holocaust was a real event, the ousted principal said Monday that some parents at his school did not agree, and that state law required him to show “tolerance” in dealing with them.

That tolerance, he said, was a main reason for his decision to tell a school parent in April 2018 that as an educator he had “the role to be politically neutral” and that he “can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event.”

The school is, of course, in Florida. Slogan: “The WTF? State.”

Column: San Diego author Laura Preble turns a germaphobe into a heroine you’ll want to hug [San Diego Union-Tribune]

Karla Peterson:

It’s the usual love story. Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl drives a borrowed Cadillac Eldorado from Southern California to Colorado to break up boy’s wedding. And by the way, the boy is the girl’s therapist, which is perfectly fine because she loves him and she is sure that he loves her. Pretty sure, anyway.

OK, so Laura Preble’s new novel, “Anna Icognito,” is not your usual love story. Which is perfectly fine, because Anna is not your usual heroine.

Anna is a germaphobe who rarely leaves the house for fear of what horrors she might touch, inhale or inadvertently ingest.

Seems like a good book. Reminds me of the Bill Murray/Richard Dreyfus movie “What About Bob,” which I loved.

But hugging a germaphobe seems like a bad idea because germs.

'People were breaking down crying': Iowa vote-counters tell of caucus debacle [Tom Cullen/The Guardian]

You had one job, Iowa!

The drawbacks of electronic voting have been well known for more than 20 years. Republicans want a voting system that’s easily hacked, because Republicans can’t win honest elections. Democrats should know better.

My crystal ball says Iowa’s importance in the primary/caucus process is done. It’ll continue first chronologically but its position will be ceremonial. Maybe Bloomberg is right and the real action starts Super Tuesday. As I recall, in previous primaries the action pretty much ended then too.

IBM, Marriott and Mickey Mouse Take On Tech’s Favorite Law [David McCabe/NYTimes]

Section 230 protects Google, Facebook and other platforms from legal liability from content users post to them. The law has been a shield for abuse and harassment. But IBM, Marriott and Disney aren’t heroes here. Likely they just want to change the laws to protect themselves and other big business interests.

‪Remarkably, this is six years to the day after I started at LR. I opened my journaling app to make a note of the event, flipped through the “on this day” timeline and found my “first day at Light Reading” entry for Feb. 3 2014. ‬

Big news: I’ve left Light Reading after six years. It’s been a great ride but it’s time to move on. I’m looking into other options now and excited for the future.

I’m grateful for the iPad and social media because without them I wouldn’t be able to stare at a screen for an hour and a half at shit I’m not really interested in when I should be getting ready for bed.

I’m becoming convinced, for the third or fourth time in as many years, that the hassles of DevonThink are not worth the benefits. At least for me.

Your mileage, as they used to say in car commercials, may vary.

But this seems to be an app I need to try for about a month every year and a half or so.

An intriguing list of “little-known but obvious facts”.

The word “helicopter” has two components. They aren’t “heli” and “copter”. They are “helico” and “pter”. “Helico” (helix) and “pter” (wing, like with “pterodactyl”)…

u/TikiTC asked on r/askreddit: “What’s a little-known but obvious fact that will immediately make all of us feel stupid?” Many of the 20,000+ replies are funny, useful, and fascinating

[Mark Frauenfelder/Boing Boing]

New Bill Would Bar Duncan Hunter from Collecting a Congressional Pension

Duncan D. Hunter is years from collecting a congressional pension, but a bill proposed Friday would keep the Republican awaiting sentencing from getting it.

Democratic Reps. Josh Harder of California’s Central Valley and Max Rose of New York introduced the “No Pensions for Corrupt Politicians Act of 2020.”

The bill specifically prevents the payment of pensions to members of Congress who commit – or conspire to commit – campaign finance crimes, they said….

Six-term Rep. Hunter, 43, resigned Jan. 13 in the wake of his early December guilty plea to one count of conspiracy in a corruption case involving misuse of more than $250,000 in campaign donations for personal expenses. His sentencing is set for March 17.

[Times of San Diego]

Original 1965 ad for The Addams Family Haunted House kit, made by Polar Lights. The original kit was a simple grey, but the company reissued the kit in 1995 in a luminous, glow-in-the-dark plastic. via

“This facility has gone 5843 days without an assimilation.”

How an 'election meltdown' could throw the US into crisis in 2020 [Fresh Air]

There are lots of ways the election could go terribly wrong What happens if one side doesn’t concede? Not just Trump – the Democrats might well have reason to call foul too. What if the power grid goes out in a major city on Election Day, knocked out by terrorists or an unfriendly nation-state? What if voting machines are hacked, or strongly suspected of being hacked?

These are among the things law professor Rick Hasen considers in his book, ‘Election Meltdown.’

“There’s lots of ways that things could go south,” he says.

I have a Johnny Cash t-shirt that I wore today. When I’m wearing it I often forget I have it on. People will say to me, “Johnny Cash!” And then I wonder why people are going around randomly saying “Johnny Cash!”

Minnie Mouse throws down. The cartoon shoes complete the scene.

I bought a 16-ounce bottle of Dr. Brommer’s liquid soap a couple of weeks ago. It is concentrated. I use about four drops to wash my hands a half-dozen times a day, and to wash my face once a day. At this rate, I expect to leave the soap to our grand-nieces and nephews, and their children after them.

It saddens me that it’s too late in my life for me to get a cool nickname, like “Ace.”

Boston-area natives Chris Evans, John Krasinski, Rachel Dratch and David “Big Papi” Ortiz in a wicked good commercial for Smart Park for the Hyundai Sonata.

PR pitch of the day: “Parents find sex education conversations easier than technology conversations.”

Because unlike USB connectors, with sex it’s easy to figure out which direction it should be facing when you stick it in.

This trailer for "Spenser Confidential" looks great!

The Netflix movie coming March 6 stars Mark Wahlberg, Winston “Black Panther” Duke, and Alan Arkin.

I wasn’t sure about the movie after reading on Wikipedia that it’s only very loosely based on one of the Spenser books and merely “uses the names of characters created by Robert B. Parker.” I’m a huge fan of the novels, and I was afraid this would be travesty.

But the preview looks great. It has some hints of the novels and the Parker characters, and that’s all – but that’s enough. It looks like it’s going to be its own thing.

A few months ago we re-watched Beverly Hills Cop I and II, and I rewatched Midnight Run. And I’ve seen 48 HRS many times, also Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. I was commenting a few weeks ago that they don’t make action-buddy movies like that anymore. Well, looks like they did this time.

Juniper Returns to Growth – No Thanks to Service Providers lightreading.com My latest on Light Reading: Juniper returned to growth in its fourth financial quarter, but cloud and enterprise had to carry the stumbling service provider sector.

The agony of weekend loneliness: ‘I won’t speak to another human until Monday’ theguardian.com

Paula Cocozza: “For growing numbers of people the weekend is an emotional wilderness where interaction is minimal and social life non-existent.”

Business Fashion, Australia, Summer, 1975.

The socks make the outfit. via

The iPad is fantastic but also disappointing daringfireball.net

Great short essay by John Gruber. Among other things, he perfectly captures why iPad split screen, slideover and multitasking confuse the jeebers out of me and I almost always don’t bother.

Ivanka tells donors she got her moral compass from her dad politico.com

Only Monday and we already have the headline of the week.

Trump Impeachment: A Ukraine Smoking Gun Exposes Republicans bloomberg.com The White House knew Bolton’s book was coming, but they let it blindside their Republican Congressional allies anyway.

Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez was suspended after tweeting a link to an article about Kobe Bryant’s rape case, following up with screenshots of the hate mail and death threats she received. vox.com

Seeing reports about a woman physicist who developed a theory of gravity that, if proven, would fundamentally change our understanding of the universe.

If only there were a song to commemorate this event, a Broadway type anthem about female empowerment and defying gravity.

"Spenser Confidential," a movie based on the Robert B. Parker novels, hits Netfllix March 6.

It stars Mark Wahlberg as Spenser and Winston “Black Panther” Duke as Hawk. “It is very loosely based on the novel Wonderland by Ace Atkins, and uses the names of characters created by Robert B. Parker.” Spenser is an ex-cop and ex-con and Hawk is an MMA fighter. wikipedia.org

Okaaaaay. What the hell, I’ll watch. I loved the early novels and the later ones are fun.

It’s an action-comedy directed by Peter Berg.

Also: Appreciating Robert B. Parker’s Spenser thrillingdetective.com

Quiz: Which of these 2020 Democrats agrees with you most? I came out Mayor Pete and Yang, which wow. [washingtonpost.com]

20 questions on the issues.

I do not support Mayor Pete – the best thing I’ll say for him is he’s inexperienced; other days I just hate him.

I don’t know much about Yang.

On many of these issues, I picked a side but really I don’t know. For example, on health insurance I strongly support a public option. Should we then outlaw private insurance? Don’t know. Let’s see how the public option works first.

Should the US expand nuclear power? Let prisoners vote while they are still in prison? Limit or better regulate fracking? Don’t know.

I support Sanders and Warren. But I don’t have a strong investment in the primary. I’ll vote for and support whichever Democrat wins. The only ones I actively dislike are Pete and Bloomberg. And I’d vote for, and support, them too.

Until recently I was anti-Biden too. But the recent Times interview, and discussion of his philosophy on Vox, causes me to think twice about that. Biden’s philosophy is that in American governance, sometimes to get what you dearly want you have to vote for something you hate. He may be right.

I treat elections like a job interview. I am often uninterested in the candidate’s positions, but interested instead in how they arrived at their positions.

How is the most unpopular and divisive president on his way to a second term? – theguardian.com

It’s the economy, says David Smith. Also, unlike 2016, Trump is running a highly organized, well-funded campaign. And Trump’s opposition is split.

On that last point: The Republicans are a minority party and, paradoxically, that is their strength. Every Republican is signed on to their agenda of white supremacy, xenophobia, gun fetishization, sex policing, preserving property rights, and their version of Christianity, which conveniently leaves out the bits about loving the stranger and least fortunate.

Whereas the Democrats are an unruly coalition of white moderates, second- and third-generation Eastern and Southern European immigrants, first-generation immigrants, Jews, African-Americans, minorities, socialists, LGBTQs, feminists and I’m probably missing some. Some of those groups disagree. For example, immigrants and African-Americans tend to be socially conservative, which puts them at odds with the LGBTQs and feminists. Those white moderates can’t stand the socialists, and vice versa. And yet they’re all supposedly one party.

Ode to San Rafael: my unremarkable hometown [Carolyn Jones/SFChronicle.com]

I had a vision recently: I’m at a little market buying cream soda and Ding Dongs. Bathed in luscious, late-afternoon amber light, I head out to the levee and perch on some rocks. Seagulls soar overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a Camaro blasts “Frampton Comes Alive.”

Now and then, I have the same nostalgia for Long Island. Hearing “Frampton Comes Alive” does it.

The head of ICE says he will deport DREAMers if the Supreme Court ends DACA - vox.com

To Trump and his supporters, cruelty is not an unfortunate by product of his policies. They are the point. These are people who believe government should be putting children in cages.