I'm doing some really excellent work on WordLand II, which is almost starting to get useful. We should be doing a lot more than writing posts next year. It's helping that a few of us are using Instant Outlines in Drummer to coordinate work. I work so much better this way, but it's not something you can do on your own.

"I don't have time for this." That might be the name of a podcast. I just ended one with that exact phrase, and it totally fits the way I feel about these rambling diatribes by the time I'm about to sign off.

When you're buying a house, the most important thing to check is the roof. Get two inspections. Get three. A house with a good roof will keep you dry. A house with a shitty roof isn't really a house is it?

We love Pluribus because it has the features we find irresistible.

1. AppleTV.
2. The makers of two previous huge hits.
3. An unsung and much loved star in the last hit.
4. An intriguing sci-fi plot.
5. It’s pretty good adventure type thriller in the first episodes then settles into a slower sexy love story, where the lead character takes us through the mind of someone falling in love and trying to figure out if the other person is worth it.
6. A clever final scene in the final episode.
7. A typical long wait for the next season that we knew was coming.

But all this is incidental, what really matters is that we’re all involved, have opinions, and thank goodness it doesn’t actually matter like the other stuff we debate.

This came up on Kottke. I'm going to try commenting on other old school blogs more here on my blog. Want to see if we can reboot the original sphere as a way of priming a new one.

I rated Common Side Effects as Loved, the second highest rating on Bingeworthy.

The biggest contribution ChatGPT et al could make to software development, beyond what it has already done, which is enormous — is help us come up with a new general purpose programming language which is a lot easier for human programmers to work with, esp over time. I work in one of the most complex environments imaginable — browser apps talking to server apps in JavaScript. We could do so much better. And now we have a partner that knows all about all our languages, unlike any human being. Instead of having a lot of disconnected bubbles, it would be great if programmers could come together on a new language that make it easier for us to manage lots of software projects.

Sarah Kendzior is a political writer who I greatly admire. Her frustration sounds a lot like mine. I wrote in 2017 that the bankers in tech should watch out because Twitter had just elected a president, and its market capitalization was so low that it was bound to get bought by someone who saw that you could buy the presidency of the United States for a few billion dollars. Was it worth that? Absolutely, as we're learning. All I got were pats on the head, stories about PE ratios, which of course I understand. What it did show is they didn't understand that the presidency could and would be monetized.

Yesterday Kendzior posted a tweet about how frustrating it was that all the "new" details of the Epstein scandal were known in 2020, and published in her book Hiding in Plain Sight. Sounds like what I've been saying about how tech and news works, we just come at it from different perspectives.

I don't know if there's a way around the ownership of news in the US, if there's still a way to route around it, but I'm sure that publishing on Substack, which is owned by the same people she doesn't trust with other journalism, is not the answer.

In order for news to have a chance of working we need to be using only the web, commodity services that are completely replaceable, and we keep our own writing, and route it to everyone who's interested via the open protocols of the web. That's the only way people with important ideas and info can get it out there.

I think in order for this to work we have to have people like Kendzior, and Heather Cox Richardson, Paul Krugman, publishing via the web, not via Substack. It should be fine for Substack to continue to publish their stuff, no problem with that, but they shouldn't be the only place their stuff is published. That gives them near-total control of the writers.

Our bigger problem is news distribution that works, and not depending on system we have. It may be too late to fix it, but we have to try.

PS: The story Kendzior was writing about was not covered yesterday on CNN or MSNOW, as far as I can tell. It got dumped on Christmas Day, I guess — and that's probably the best day in the US to dump a story you want to get lost in the haze.

PPS: The title of this piece recalls a great documentary, The Fog of War, about America at war in Vietnam.

Just realized I'm like a Black Lab. I always have to have a ball to chase, and really like it if someone says I'm a good boy. I think it really is that simple. Maybe it's different for other men, but I think a lot of us are just that simple.

It is Christmas Day, and last night the emails did not go out. I think I know what the problem is and if it's correct the emails should go out very shortly. Lucky that it's Christmas themed! Ho ho ho. (Actually on a second check, it appears they did go out. Glad to not have to deal with that. Whew.)

I asked ChatGPT to put together a subscription list of student newspapers at American universities. Added it to lists.opml.org.