Obituary
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Bing Bonk
As a geography and map freak, I loved loved loved Birds Eye views in Microsoft’s Bing Maps. Birds Eye’s advantages over Google’s and Apple’s satellite views were enormous, because all the imagery was shot from airplanes flying at low altitudes, rather than from a hundred miles up in space. Among other cool things, you could rotate your Continue reading
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Remembering R.C. Ward
The first thing R.C. Ward taught in our biology class at Guilford College was his eponymous Law: “If it works, it’s good.” He frequently mentioned Ward’s Law by name and required it as an answer to nearly every test. As Richard Nilsen explains here, Professor Ward was not a normal dude: It was 1966 and I was Continue reading
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Thursday, 17 July 2025
An incomplete waste of time. New colors without shooting lasers into your eyes. No shit. Machine Bullshit: Characterizing the Emergent Disregard for Truth in Large Language Models is a scientific paper by four authors from Princeton and two from UC Berkeley. A pull-quote: "While previous work has explored large language model (LLM) hallucination and sycophancy, we Continue reading
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Movements
Really. Click on it. This is scary. Via Wndy.com. Windy’s views are the best. Watch the storm activity here: I suggest rocketing his ashes into space. I’m still shocked and sad to know Dave Täht has died, but I only have one source of information so far, and it says nothing about where and how Continue reading
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Remembering Dave Taht
I just learned here that Dave Täht died today, at just 59. I don’t know how or where. I do know he was one of the world’s great human beings, as well as a brilliant and generous producer of tech and wisdom about it. Example: if you know about (and no longer have a network Continue reading
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Remembering Dewayne Hendricks
Thank Dewayne Hendricks for Wi-Fi. Hell, thank him for what Bob Frankston calls ambient connectivity: the kind you just … assume. Like you are now, connected to the Internet without wires. Dewayne wasn’t alone, of course. Far from it. But he was instrumental. I learned about that during the 3+ hour memorial zoom we had Continue reading
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Remembering Paul Marshall
In a vote for “Senior Superlatives” among his 36 classmates at Concordia Prep, Paul Marshall won in several categories. The yearbook staff, however, limited the Superlative distinction to one per student, and Paul chose to be recognized for his wit, which was boundless. He was also the editor-in-chief of The Prepster, our student paper, because Continue reading
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Remembering Iris Harrelson
In the late ’70s, I worked for a while at the Psychical Research Foundation, which occupied a couple of houses on Duke University property and did scientific research into the possibility of life after death. My time there was a lever that has lifted my life on Earth ever since, including many deep and enduring Continue reading
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The Organ Builder
On the right is the high school yearbook picture of Allan John Ontko, one of my best friends during the three years we were classmates at what I half-jokingly call a Lutheran academic correctional institution—because that’s what it was for me. For most of the boys there, however, it was a seminary. Allan, then known Continue reading
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The Long View
This blog has been looking like my personal obituary section, and I suppose it is. While I promise to change that, for this post I’ll stick with the theme, and surface some correspondence with an old friend who recommended that I read The Five People You’ll Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom. In the correspondence Continue reading
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Remembering Heather Armstrong
My email archive contains dozens of postings in which Heather Armstrong* and I are among those writing, receiving, mentioning, mentioned, cc’d or otherwise included. Most postings are from the ’00s and between bloggers in the brief age before media got social and blogging was still hot shit. Heather, with her Dooce blog, was the alpha among us, Continue reading
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Remembering Bill Swindaman
That was Bill Swindaman on the last day I saw him: June 2nd of this year, at a gathering of friends from the best community I’ve ever known: a real one, of friends living in a place. The place was called Oxbow, and it was a collection of mismatched houses on a short dirt road Continue reading
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Remembering Craig Burton
I used to tell Craig Burton there was no proof that he could be killed, because he came so close, so many times. But now we have it. Cancer got him, a week ago today. He was sixty-seven. So here’s a bit of back-story on how Craig and I became great friends. In late 1987, Continue reading
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Remembering David Hodskins
A hazard of aging well is outliving friends and other people you love. For example, two of the three in the photo above. It dates from early 1978, when Hodskins Simone & Searls, a new ad agency, was born in Durham, North Carolina. Specifically, at 602 West Chapel Hill Street. Click on that link and Continue reading
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Rage in Peace
The Cluetrain Manifesto had four authors but one voice, and that was Chris Locke‘s. Cluetrain, a word that didn’t exist before Chris (aka RageBoy), David Weinberger, Rick Levine and I made it up during a phone conversation in early 1999 (and based it on a joke about a company that didn’t get clues delivered by Continue reading
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The gentle lawgiver
This is about credit where due, and unwanted by the credited. I speak here of Kim Cameron, a man whose modesty was immense because it had to be, given the size of his importance to us all. See, to the degree that identity matters, and disparate systems getting along with each other matters—in both cases for Continue reading
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Remembering Kim Cameron
Got word yesterday that Kim Cameron had passed. Hit me hard. Kim was a loving and loved friend. He was also a brilliant and influential thinker and technologist. That’s Kim, above, speaking at the 2018 EIC conference in Germany. His topics were The Laws of Identity on the Blockchain and Informational Self-Determination in a Post Facebook/Cambridge Analytica Era (in Continue reading
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Remembering Gail Sheehy
It bums me out that Gail Sheehy passed without much notice—meaning I only heard about it in passing. And I didn’t hear about it, actually; I saw it on CBS’ Sunday Morning, where her face passed somewhere between Tom Seaver’s and John Thompson’s in the September 6 show’s roster of the freshly dead. I was Continue reading
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Angel from Maywood
John Prine and I are both from Maywood, though not the same one. His Maywood was in Illinois and mine was in New Jersey. Not a real connection, but one among many small doors souls might open to common likes. One of those we share is country. Both of us were domesticated rural animals, born Continue reading
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Remembering Freddy Herrick
The picture of Freddy Herrick I carry everywhere is in my wallet, on the back of my membership card for a retail store. It got there after I loaned my extra card to Freddy so he could use it every once in awhile. As Freddy explained it, one day, while checking out at the store, Continue reading