March 2025
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Pictures
Still miss him. Just found a photo of Aaron Swartz from the time I recruited him for a panel at Comdex in 2002. He was a kid, but rocked it. I suppose it's one of these. The photo at the top of this story is of the Linden Cogeneration Plant in New Jersey, which I Continue reading
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Tools
And just one for New Jersey! iLoveFood says the best pizza in Indiana is Mother Bear’s here in Bloomington. Problem: it isn’t. Osteria Rago’s is better. Not that MB’s is bad. It’s good. Just not better than Osteria’s. I’m also betting there must be a better pizza than both somewhere in Indianapolis. iLoveFood also names top Continue reading
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Coming Up: More History
But I'd orbit Saturn too, if I had the chance. Saturn has 128 more moons. I am a moon of my wife. And what will we call it? What becomes of democracy when it seems everybody has been herded into separate and opposed algorithmically assembled and maintained tribes, and when most of tech is run by Continue reading
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There They Go
Also, killing surveillance, finally, maybe. Kaliya lays out some good themes for IIW. My faves: S__olving the identities of AI agents and Proof of Personhood and First Person Credentials. Unsubscribe now and skip the 7-day free trial. Is there a term of art for Substack newsletters that hide half of what's written behind a tease-wall? (Maybe "teasewall" Continue reading
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Real Agency
I nominate agency as Word of the Year for 2025. I don’t nominate agentic, which is suddenly hot shit: See, agency is a noun, and agentic is an adjective. And, as Strunk and White taught us, Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs… it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that Continue reading
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Heavy Whether
We'll know soon. Whether or not you're watching St. John's playing Arkansas, right now, in the NCAA's March Madness tournament, take out a minute and a half to take in Jimmy Fallon and the boys singing the Red Storm Shanty. Lou Carnaseca must be glowing in his grave. (Later: they lost.) Continue reading
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Gleanings
But that’s the idea, right? Lucas Ropek in Gizmodo: Data Broker Brags About Having Highly Detailed Personal Information on Nearly All Internet Users: The advertising industry is immensely powerful and disturbingly opaque. Read it. Then look at a PageXray of that same story to see how much tracking Gizmodo does, and how deeply embedded it is in that same Continue reading
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It’s Over
The Voice of America is silent. To Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Kari Lake (who now runs its corpse), the VOA was corrupt, biased, unnecessary, and needed to go. To nearly everyone else who cares, it was America’s voice on radio, and mattered enormously to an audience in the hundreds of millions, listening in forty-eight Continue reading
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Come from Everywhere
IIW, the Internet Identity Workshop, is the UN of identity. While located in the U.S., it has always represented and welcomed the whole world to work on global problems best addressed in person. As it happens, IIW was born exactly twenty years ago tomorrow—20 March 2005—at Esther Dyson’s PC Forum in Scottsdale, Arizona. A group Continue reading
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Media Matters
Missing Mike. My favorite songwriter and performer is Mike Cross. He was headed to a career in law as an undergrad at UNC-Chapel Hill when a music bug bit him, he learned to play fiddle and guitar, and then to perform in local bars and clubs. I couldn’t count how many times I went to Continue reading
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Gag of America
Here is what a Google News search for Voice of America looks like right now: ‘Bloody Saturday’ at Voice of America and other U.S.-funded networks, by David Folkenflik at NPR, begins with this: Journalists showed up at the Voice of America today to broadcast their programs only to be told they had been locked out: Continue reading
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Lightning Up
What you see above is a line of storms that is moving northeastward from southern Louisiana across all of Mississippi, western Tennessee, all of Kentucky, southern Indiana (where I am), and western Ohio. It is provided by Weatherbug. If you go there and slide the Weather Overlay up to the Storm Tracker view, the map Continue reading
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A Short History of Now
So there must be something to it. Watch how often people interrupt each other with “So—.” Also watch for speeches starting with “So—.” The first speaker I heard do that was Larry Lessig, one of the world’s best, back in the aughts. Which is why the Web is still for writers. All writers. The Longing is Continue reading
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Tonight’s Lunar Eclipse
They call it a blood moon, because it looks like this: But that came later. Right now still in the evening of March 13th in the Eastern time zone, the Moon is as full as it can get without moving into the shadow of Earth . Which it will. Shortly. Here is where Earth’s shadow Continue reading
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Thoughts
An important extinction. Overheard (between veteran unemployed journalists): “I’m not a has-been. I’m a still-was.” Because you’re the only one who might employ you. “DIY journalism” just got uttered in a call I’m on. Its the windows, mostly. I didn’t like Boeing’s 787 eight years ago, and still don’t like it now. That’s my response Continue reading
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Musical Moments
I need to learn French. This is lovely. Who is this girl? Here's one clue. Another. Look for more. Never heard of her before today. Hello, I still love you. The Doors are 60 this year. Or would have been. Good and legendary as they were, I think they are woefully underrated. Manzarek, Densmore, and Krieger Continue reading
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A Conversation with ChatGPT About Personal AI
What follows is a conversation I’m having with ChatGPT about personal AI. I guarantee it’s unlike any conversation about AI you’ll find anywhere else. If we want truly personal AI—the kind that is yours and not just a corporate service, this starts to point the way. Me: I am thinking about what personal data could—or Continue reading
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Riding on Rivers
Just learned about this, here. Thank you, Andy Sylvester! Continue reading
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Items
Death sells. So far today, this blog post has had 13 visits. Meanwhile, Radio’s Death Knells has had 356. Since I need to go out, I’ll call it a day and put a picture on top. See what happens. What was Indiana thinking? These days sunrise in Bloomington is about four hours before noon, and sunset Continue reading
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Musictown
The final round of the 10th Indiana International Guitar Competition just happened, here, as well as in the natural world. We saw it in the latter. Amazing performances. Bloomington is a fabulous small city anyway, but the Jacobs School of Music—and the whole music scene here—puts Bloomington over the top for us. In addition to Continue reading