There is no liquid soap that can outperform good bar soap at cleaning a stinky, hairy armpit.
Which is why I hate that hotels have replaced bars of soap with bottles of "body wash" or whatever. I'm at one of those hotels now.
Corporatization is a form of enshittification
While driving from SoCal to NorCal today, my wife noted that the places and products people love tend to be quirky and original. And that typically, when those get taken over by some bigger entity, they get corporatized: made uninteresting. Such as how this hotel now has liquid rather than bar soap. (The front desk did just provide me with one they found in a drawer. It's in a plastic sleeve and the size of a butter pat.)
—Where I had plenty of time to fantasize about what could or should be done with the iconic but idle Theme Building in the heart of the airport, while waiting for my wife to pick me up. (She was, in the city tradition, stuck in traffic.)
Ideas? Bear in mind that the LAX Automated People Mover will soon be done, meaning parking for that building might soon be a remote issue.
Your present isn’t private. Not in the digital world. Not while you always agree to their terms, and not them to yours.
With MyTerms, they agree to your privacy terms. Ones that, for example, disallow being tracked everywhere like a marked animal.
There’s a standard for this now: IEEE 7012, nicknamed MyTerms, and published just this year.
Development has started. You can see some of it at VRM Day, and join in work toward lots more. It’s at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, and starts at 9 AM sharp.
It’s also free. Just be ready to work. For all of us. And for the rest of Computing’s future history.
You can listen on your own time. That’s just one optionality.
Near the end of this Pivot podcast, starting at about the 55 minute mark, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway give a great summary of why podcasting is “the fastest-growing ad-supported medium.” Among other things, they say “People actually listen to the ads,” and that host read-overs are very effective and remunerative (bringing much higher CPMs).
Five additional points.
First, you can listen on your own time. You’re free from the tyranny of “What’s on.” This is the triumph of personal optionality over … I dunno, you name it. Yes, we still need what’s live, at least for news and sports. But we don’t need it all the time for everything else. While that doesn’t completely obsolesce the things called “stations,” and “networks,” it does relegate them to a legacy niche. It’s an open question how big that niche will be when the transition is over.
Second, not all podcasts are ad-supported. I know, the ones without ads are mostly out on the long tail, but what matters is that anybody can podcast on the Net, just like anybody can publish there. RSS—really simple syndication—gives all of us scale. This is, as Kurt Vonnegut once said, a miracle on the order of loaves and fish. It’s foundational.
Third, podcasts are liberating. Radio and TV required licenses on the transmission side and dedicated instruments (radios and TVs ) on the receiving end. With podcasting, the thresholds of production, distribution, and consumption verge on zero. Got a phone? You’re in.
Fourth, a huge advantage of podcasts is that you can skip over the ads. Whenever I hear Kara announce the first “quick break,” I usually hit the forward-30-seconds icon six times, to jump over three minutes of 30-second ads. (Though lately Pivot has gone to seven of those in the first break.) Still, I’m sure the advertisers’ money is well spent, because some percentage of the audience won’t skip all the ads all the time. And the host-reads are good and effective, as they say.
Fifth, if it’s not “wherever you get your podcasts,” it’s not a podcast. The context for what I sourced above was Kara and Scott’s back-and-forth about Netflix moving into video podcasts. I think “video podcasts” is a contradiction, especially if those podcasts are just another form of TV you can only get from one exclusive producer. If that’s the case, it’s just a show. But look at Us magazine’s list of the 7 Best Podcasts on Netflix Right Now (April 2026). The audio versions of all seven are available wherever you get your podcasts. That makes them real. If they become exclusive to Netflix, or to anybody, they aren’t podcasts anymore. Find another word for them.
Found this image in my media library. Seems kinda relevant.
Truth for sale
Who Will Monetize Truth? asks Francesco Marconi in a long, thoughtful paper. Pull quote: “Content is free. Intelligence is not. The entire media industry is being repriced around that distinction.” HT to Rasmus Kleis Nielsen for linking to it here, and sharing this excerpt:
The media industry is splitting into three different species. The Intelligence Business, the Attention Aggregator, and the Public Good. Only the first has pricing power in an era of abundant content. The second faces structural collapse not because awareness lacks value but because AI is making it free. The third will not survive as a business and it needs a different funding model entirely. These are not stages of evolution. They are distinct businesses with distinct economics. The classification is determined by who pays and what they do with it … The question for every institution is not whether to move right. It is whether it has intelligence assets trapped inside a content wrapper.
Death Kept Warm is a post I put up in 2007 and forgot about. But it is getting some action now. No idea why, but I do notice that most of the links in it fail. Later, when I have time (if ever), I’ll find what can be found and fix the links.
“Creative Commons is one of the most amazing feats of stunt-lawyering ever attempted, and it has been an unmitigated success, with tens of billions of works licensed CC, including all of Wikipedia. Like EFF, CC is a charitable nonprofit that depends on individual donors to keep its work going.”—Cory Doctorow
This one was at Brightside Cafe in Bloomington, Indiana.
Yum
On the latest Prof G Pod, David Brooks says, “One of my favorite sayings about writers is, ‘Writers are beggars who tell other beggars where they found bread.’”
And now I’m disincentivized from subscribing to anything published by Hearst.
I don’t know how I started subscribing to the Esquire newsletter, or if I had anything to do with it at all. But unsubscribing is a PITA. Here is how it should work: 1) Click on the unsubscribe link, 2) A page appears confirming the decision. Here is what happens with Esquire: 1) Click on the (very tiny) unsubscribe link, 2) a Hearst “Email Preference Center” page appears, saying, “We don’t want to see you go, but we do want to make sure you’re only receiving emails you’ll enjoy. To update your email preferences, uncheck the box next to each email you no longer want to receive.” There are ten pre-checked boxes to uncheck, next to four newsletters from Cosmopolitan, three for Esquire, two for Mens Health, and one for an e-commerce thing called “Add to Cart.” And, of course, “Please allow up to 48 hours for your changes to take effect.” After I clicked to confirm my decisions, it jumped to a new page that said, “This email address is not currently subscribed to any emails from Hearst Magazines.” Good.
Should have been Wrongday
Just after midnight last night, when the computer clock said “Thu Apr 23,” I thought “It’s now tomorrow,” and then thought I needed a headline for Friday’s bloggings through Wordland. I came up with Whyday, went to bed, woke up, and now find it is still Thursday.
In order to make anything (search, for example) work in Apple’s Mail.app, I have to turn it off and on again. I won’t run down all its issues. I’m too tired of it, and…
So send them some money. Seriously.
Says here an LPFM station in Michigan just ceased operations. Two in Santa Barbara have come and gone. One was a Spanish community station. (Though its website is still alive.) The other was run by a local evangelical church. Calvary something or other. Two others got licenses but never went on the air.
So, on the whole, small time radio, like the rest of the business, is what investors call “distressed.” But community radio can be vibrant and vital. WFHB, here in Bloomington, Indiana, is a great example. I think it has a much bigger cultural footprint than the university’s NPR station, WFIU, whose footprint is not small.
“It’s easy to get caught up in product releases and cycles, and forget that every technology traces this spiritual arc. You are born into it, converted, or you recede. So it iswritten. The car, the plane, the personal computer, the mobile phone: each arrived as a disruption and became, within a generation, invisible infrastructure. Amen. Today, more than 4 billion people carry a networked computer in their pocket. The majority of them are in the developing world. They did not get a library or a bank branch first. They got a phone. The phone is the library and the bank.
“Technology’s arc bends toward access. But it does not bend on its own. Behold the technologist’s creed: through building to scale, we extend what is possible. Possible for whom has always been the humanist’s question. It is now everyone’s. The more the machines build and scale, the more that matters.”
“The infrastructure layer for your thinking. One database, one AI gateway, one chat channel. Any AI you use can plug in. No middleware, no SaaS chains, no Zapier.
“This isn’t a notes app. It’s a database with vector search and an open protocol — built so that every AI tool you use shares the same persistent memory of you. Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code, whatever ships next month. One brain. All of them.
“Open Brain was created by Nate B. Jones. Follow the Substack for updates, discussion, and the companion prompt pack. Join the Discord for real-time help and community.”
Fresh new nightmare
404 Media: This AI Tool Rips Off Open Source Software Without Violating Copyright. It begins, “For a small price, Malus.sh will use AI to ingest any piece of software you give and spit out a new version of it that ‘liberates’ it from any existing copyright licenses. The result is a new piece of software that serves the same function, but doesn’t have to honor, for example, the kind of copyright licenses that ensure open source software remains free to use and modify, a process which could upend the already fragile open source ecosystem. The site is an elaborate bit of satire designed to bring attention to a very real problem in open source…”
A velella colony, from Paolacolegi on Wikimedia Commons
Blurp
I am told that Santa Barbara’s beaches are covered with velella now. I mean a lot like the one above,
See you there
A couple of nights ago, a friend and reader of mine said he didn’t understand what today’s talk by Judith Donath would be about. “Signaling theory?” he said. “What’s that?” To him, signals were information transmitted by wires or waves. I told him signaling theory was about “the other thing that’s being said.” For example, when a brand sponsors a game or a stadium, it’s not just saying its products are good. It’s saying the company is substantial. Was I right? I’ll have to ask Judith today. She’s a great authority on signaling and will speak with us about it, live on Zoom, at 4 pm Eastern today. I recommend the talk highly. Click on Join Event here.
Another nail for the coffin waiting for free over-the-air TV
As a lifelong over-user of em dashes and F bombs—hey, I'm from New Jersey—it's fun for me to learn that AI slop generators follow my style and F bombs are a way around detection. I'd say more, but would rather point to Tom Fishburne's typically excellent cartoon and post about the whole thing.
Delayed gratitude
As a patient who yielded a spleen to surgery many decades ago, I am now relieved to know they didn't take my liver by mistake.
While we're on a topic nobody cares about—a claim I validated with this post yesterday (which thus far has had, seriously, no visits)—I'm wondering what happened to Nielsen's radio ratings starting in January. Many stations and/or their streams have dropped from low to "N/A." For example, look at the bottom of the San Francisco market. Hard to believe that KNBR, the biggest AM signal in California with a full-size FM as well, has dropped to nothing and stayed there.
When I hear public media leaders talk about the state of audience, ratings, and legacy platforms, I hear a very strong decline-centered narrative, with one station CEO infamously saying that “radio is dead.” Really?
When you look at audience behavior—and the attitudinal markers in dozens of qualitative studies—a somewhat different story emerges.
Public radio isn’t dead to them (though, arguably, public radio is pretty much the last radio they listen to any more). Public radio is a part of their lives, still. It and its mission are still deeply important to them.
Do they listen less? Yes. But that’s more because public radio has been stagnant–largely unchanged in any meaningful way–for a generation, not because the audience are no longer interested in listening.
Radio isn’t dead, it is evolving. But public radio, in real and meaningful ways, isn’t.
So why did I stop writing about public radio? I stopped writing about this not because it’s hopeless—but because the answer hasn’t changed. Yet that doesn’t mean the opportunity is gone.
I wasn’t being flip when I mentioned that what I’ve written still holds. If you are reading this and wondering, “Okay, well, what should we do then?” Read. The. Linked. Posts.Above. It’s all there, the entire playbook–from national organizations all the way down to production assistants at local stations.
The links go (in chronological order) to here, here, and here. All good stuff.
Meanwhile, let’s look at the ratings for public stations in the top ten markets:
Alas, radio itself. Listening is moving from narrow-purpose instruments called radios to universal instruments called phones. Last night at a party, I asked a bunch of people what radio stations, if any, they listen to. All of them said they listen to podcasts and streams, some from public radio sources (shows more than stations). And most of these people were retired or close. (One was 20. To her, podcasts and streams are radio, like Netflix and TikTok are TV.)
My point is that public radio has a growing wedge of a shrinking pie, and it’s a pie that tastes like death. But of broadcast. AM is in hospice. Over-the-air TV is on death row. FM is terminal, but in denial. (Give it time. I’d say about a decade.)
The only hope for statons is with engagement. People, digital tech, and the Internet are perfect for that. AI and transmitters are not.
"The Gambler" may be the best country song ever written. And performed. (Kenny Rogers' version is the definitive one). Alas, its author, the great Don Schlitz, has passed on. Not many details on that: Nashville hospital, sudden illness. He was from Durham, NC, one of my former homes and favorite towns.
In his latest blog, Dave says, “If I were running WordPress, my first priority would be to get something exciting out that even non-WordPress users would talk about. Then do it again.” He follows with a good suggestion.
I have one too. I’ve told Matt about it, and he was receptive. But it’s not the kind of thing WordPress itself would need to do. Anyone who builds WordPress plugins can do it. There are lots of those.
The WordPress plugin I want will provide a way for sites to agree to MyTerms, and then store agreement decisions.
We also need browser plugins to proffer terms to sites, and store the same decisions.
So this is an appeal for both.
I want to make clear how big MyTerms is to the world, and to me.
For the world, it’s the only way we’ll get personal privacy online.
We’ll won’t get it from corporate privacy policies, which tend to be fig leaves over hard-ons for personal data. We won’t get it from “consent” to cookie “choices.” Those are mostly ignored by the sites that offer them, and are meaningless in any case. (See here, here, here, and here.) Regulations are essential, but getting them right is a very long slog.
MyTerms works because it makes privacy a contract. And contracts are backed by laws that have been with us forever.
With MyTerms, you are the first party—not a mere “user.” The site is the second party. It can agree or not. If it does, you’ve set the privacy terms. If it doesn’t, your browser plugin can record that choice as easily as it can record an agreement.
Far more business can be done based on privacy agreements that you require than is possible with the surveillance-based guesswork fecosystem we call adtech. (For more on those business possibilities, read Nitin Badjatia and Iain Henderson. Especially this piece here.)
In my not-humble opinion, MyTerms will launch the third stage of the Internet’s evolution. The first was the Internet itself. The second was the Web. The third will be MyTerms and the constellations of trust-based business ecosystems it will enable.
That’s why I’m dedicating what’s left of my life to it. Yes, I’ll do other stuff, but getting MyTerms moving is the main thing I’m still here for.
MyTerms is an IEEE standard that took nine years to finish (though it’s radically simple). I chaired the working group. You can read about and download a copy of it here.
To start, we need development. There are a few things in the works, but the most leveraged ones will be browser and server plugins. Anyone want to make the Visicalc of the real Web 3? Get us those plugins.
As it happens, there are two events coming up where we can meet and work (both are designed for that):
If you want to approach MyTerms development from an AI angle, there’s also the Agentic Internet Workshop (AIW) on Friday, 1 May. All three are at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. VRM Day is free. IIW and AIW are cheap as conferences go.
Love to see and work with you at any or all of those.
The Monroe County Alert System just called me. I didn’t answer, because they call too much. Glad to hear from them when there’s a tornado risk, or when one is coming. Deep snow is another. But … fog? Thunderstorms? (Those can be almost daily in the summer.)
Close your invisible robot eyes
This is good news, but not yet enough. Spying on people going about their ordinary lives is wrong, whether it’s the government, your car, or your TV doing it.
April showers
Even as a little kid, I thought “March winds and April showers bring May flowers” was bogus. First, we went almost every Easter from New Jersey to North Carolina, where New Jersey’s May flowers would be gone by April. Second, it seemed too general to be a rule, as well as too geographically specific. But I’m reminded of the saying today, as a soft, steady rain falls here in Southern Indiana, which is more like North Carolina than New Jersey. (We’re at the same latitude as Washington DC.) Crocuses are long done, and so are the daffodils. Tulips and irises are up. And our dry garden (of hardy native plants) and lawn are drinking it in.
Also this story on transponder spoofing in Wired. Transponders are how one can see what ships are where, their routes, and other important facts for cooperative maritime navigation.
We have a leader
I just checked to see if my booked window seats on all four planes I'll be taking in the next several weeks each have a window. In the old days (before last November), I would check SeatGuru. But TripAdvisor killed it, and none of the six replacements I listed in Life After Seat Guru seemed equal to the job—at least not when I checked for my next few flights. But I can report that AeroLopa has that feature, for example, here. Nice.
Interesting how old posts get new traffic. The biggest this morning on the ProjectVRM blog is to Health Care Relationship Management, which ran almost nineteen years ago. It was about a Steve Lohr story in the NY Times titled Google and Microsoft Look to Change Health Care. The gist: "The Google and Microsoft initiatives would give much more control to individuals, a trend many health experts see as inevitable. 'Patients will ultimately be the stewards of their own information,' said John D. Halamka, a doctor and the chief information officer of the Harvard Medical School."
Next Tuesday, 21 April, at 4 pm Eastern, Judith Donath will speak here at Indiana University and online on The Alchemy of Confidence, addressing the most pressing question in our still-new digital age:
Why do we trust some signals—and fall for others?
She explains,
Deception and honesty have long been locked in evolutionary arms races. From peacock feathers to social media profiles, signals shape how we judge honesty and deception. But when false signals become widespread, trust breaks down—and only signals backed by real cost remain credible.
This talk introduces signaling theory, a powerful framework for understanding:
Why costly behaviors signal authenticity
How deception spreads in human communication
What this means for disinformation and identity in the digital age
How can technologies support trust and when does it undermine it? As rapid technological change reshapes the incentives for deception and detection, understanding the foundations of trust has never been more urgent.
Beyond signals alone, we’ll explore how trust, social systems, and oversight determine what—and who—we believe.
In a time when every AI passes Ye Olde Turing Test, deepfakes can look and sound better than the originals, and adtech trackers follow you everywhere, unseen, watching everything you do, who you do it with, and worse, there is no more important subject to study and master. Judith’s talk will be a great way to start—and to expand your knowledge if you’re on the case already.
Look at it this way: personal privacy is a vacuum in the digital world, and will remain so as long as we're naked there. Surveillance will fill that vacuum. Inevitably. Constantly.
We're not naked in the natural world because we invented the privacy technologies called clothing, shelter, doors, and locks. We also invented privacy protocols called manners. We have none of the equivalent in the digital world. Not yet. Bonus link.
Finally Fixing Health Care is a post I started here and finished on the ProjectVRM blog, where it belonged in the first place. It's about how Google and Microsoft wasted $billions not fixing a problem they could only make worse. And how healthcare needs a VRM solution: because it's our health, our data, and we're the only ones in a position to scale it. Here's Adrian Gropper's latest on the issue.
A world-wide view of MarineTraffic.com. The site and its app are extremely useful right now.
The world runs on boats.
Yes, also on trains and trucks. But boats are at issue, as the Strait of Hormuz is being blockaded. Here is how it looks on MarineTraffic.com (updated 14 April):
The red arrowhead shapes are tankers in motion. The green ones are container ships in motion (or underway, as they say). Small green arrowheads are general cargo or bulk carriers in motion. The red and green dots are the same kinds of ships, but not in motion. Note how those are clustered on either side of the strait. Click on any of them for more info. Zoom out and look around the world to learn more types of ships, where they are headed, and more.
Most of what you’ll see are boats sending AIS signals, explained here. Since military vessels tend not to be interested in that, you won’t see them.
But you will have some live background on news being made.
Engadget: 
