Doc Searls
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Throbsday
On AI wronging and writing I hate AI writing and can spot it in a second. It’s not just the excess of one-line paragraphs, the contrasty “not that, but this” argument constructions, the excessive use of em dashes. It’s a tone that sounds like the average of a million well-put hunks of text published by… Continue reading
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Whetherday
Digressions & shit, or vice versa Willy Staley in the NYTimes: To O’Mara, the diet is not just a temporary means of losing weight but a way to eat for good. He has been doing it for 10 years, and credits it with turning his life around. At one point in our conversation he pulled… Continue reading
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Chooseday
Working to kill off cookie notices The IEEE’s cookie notice says, “This website utilizes technologies such as cookies to enable essential site functionality, as well as for analytics, personalization, and targeted advertising. Privacy Policy.” Its privacy policy, at that last link, says it collects eighteen kinds of personal information, and says one of the purposes… Continue reading
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A Lesson in AI Economics
I am a heavy Photoshop user, and recently upgraded to Photoshop 2026 at Adobe’s robotic insistence. But, when I went to do a “generative fill” on an old photo (in the outlined area above), I was met with this: Fuzzed by that, I hit the View my balance button and got this: This shows I’m… Continue reading
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Ownday
Elemental differences Look up graphite, graphite company, or graphite the company, and you’ll mostly get geological and industrial answers. (Unless, of course, your search history suggests the company signing the billboard above.) The easy way to find out, of course, is to ask your friendly AI. It will tell you the company behind the billboard above is Graphite.com,… Continue reading
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Rollday
Well, two of us know With Apple Is the King of AI and Nobody Knows It, Limited Edition Jonathan does a better job of saying what I’ve been saying about where Personal AI is going, most recently here. Mutterings Dana Blankenhorn on The Biggest Shitpie. Steven K. Roberts on Archiving Meets AI. Cory Doctorow: Dealing… Continue reading
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Local radio lives in Burlington and Graham
WBAG’s callsign stands for Burlington And Graham: two adjoining towns between Greensboro and Durham in North Carolina. I have many kinfolk in the hood, and have been living or visiting here all my life. As it happens, WBAG and I were also born the same year. So was the station’s broadcast tower, which stands in… Continue reading
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Earth to Southwest (and every other service company): make your surveys about your service, not just personnel facing customers
Here is the survey hook that came in an email after a Southwest flight: And here is the first question in the survey one gets hooked into taking: I gave up after it seemed that all the questions were about flight attendants. None were about the whole service experience. So one doesn’t have a way… Continue reading
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No body day
Let’s have her sing a country song about life in the uncanny valley Goldie Boone is a “digital country artist” who looks too good to be real. So I’m sure she’s not. Convince me otherwise. Nothing personal. Yet. Mozilla’s The State of Open Source AI is required reading. It makes a great case for open… Continue reading
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Cryday
Haven’t figured out lighting yet, but I like the idea After struggling for days to make my new Epson FF-680W photo scanner, which does a much poorer job of scanning photos than my iPhone 16, I’m ready for one of these. Welcome to New York AeroXplorer: LaGuardia Tower Alerts Pilots to Possible Shoulder-Fired Missile Threat Near… Continue reading
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Thurbsday
It’s still a bubble In May of 2018, I posted GDPR will pop the adtech bubble. It didn’t. The bubble is now bigger than ever. My mistake was assuming that there was a policy answer to a morally awful business that paid well. In retrospect, it’s a humbling reminder of how long one can be wrong… Continue reading
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Verilies
Talked out Jason Lewis: It’s Over—Talk Radio (as well as traditional media) has run its course. A newer beginning Nitin Badjatia has been laying out more and more reasons—and ways—that enterprises will adapt to customers, rather than the reverse. More at ProjectVRM. Continue reading
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Twistday
Uh oh Tornado watch for all five New York City boroughs. How the radar & lightning map looks now. And here are planes not landing at Newark (EWR): And the last center that holds Mediapost: Sports Is The Last True Mass Medium. Continue reading
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Intelliday
How about mintelligence? We need different words for human and machine intelligence. The human kind is a quality, like empathy, anger, or contentment. You can’t measure it, as if with a ruler or a dipstick. If you could, you’d get the same measure every time. IQ testing pretends to measure intelligence, but it doesn’t. (I… Continue reading
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InOrOutDay
This is the first morning since I arrived in Baltimore on Wednesday that stepping outside in the morning didn’t feel like walking into an oven. It was 76° F (24.4° C), which isn’t bad. I also couldn’t see far up the road, because the air was full of smoke, and it was hard to breathe.… Continue reading
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Heatday
To your health It’s 96° here in Baltimore, where the air quality sucks thanks to fires in Canada and Minnesota. But write on I shall. And your money Ed Zitron’s long read on the coming AI crash is worth your time. Seriously In paleoenshittification and a path to adoption for MyTerms, Don Marti gives us a… Continue reading
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Oneday
That’s all I have to prep for a month on the road. Tomorrow is Baltimore. After that, North Carolina. After that, California. Back in Bloomington in mid-August. Right now it’s hot in all my places: Ground down Says here that Rogers Sports & Media has closed six of its radio stations. One of those, CKWX… Continue reading
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Brunday
RSS Forever Alas, NiemanLab (which I have long followed, honored, and even loved) joins TechCrunch in lauding a new app called HyperTexting for not calling what it relies on “RSS“: Hailey isn’t the only one attempting to introduce the technology formerly known as RSS to a younger generation. (Nieman Lab predictors have been saying this was… Continue reading
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Eponyday
To whom else has God sold naming rights for days of the week? And you thought Tuesday was a grace of our turning Earth. <bonus content to avoid if oral surgery grosses you out> Since I had a molar extracted last week, there remains an open wound in my mouth where the tooth used to… Continue reading
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Flyagain Day
I leave shortly for fun family matters in Minneapolis. Meanwhiles, here are some worthy tabs to close: While finding this kindness by Kaliya Young (quoting a now-vanished utterance by the late and very great Craig Burton) published in 2005 on her IdentityWoman blog, I also dug her latest post there, which is about commons and… Continue reading