Doc Searls Weblog

Just trying to make stuff happen

  • Differences

    Peacocks in Pasadena. Well, that’s the alliterative way of putting it. More accurately speaking, they were strutting southbound across Lombardy Road just east of Santa Anita Avenue in San Marino.

    All errands today here in Pasadena, which is one of my favorite places in SoCal. Or hell, the world. Check out City Hall. Looks like the capital city of some country on the Mediterranian. Sure, it’s chock full of cars and traffic, but that’s an American thnig. Right now I’m at the Arroyo-Calif Car Wash (what it says on the sign), which is the best around. There is nothing like it in Indiana, which is a car state as well. For $34 they give your car the best cleaning it can get, short of a full detailing. And they do that too. Next is Toyota Pasadena, with which my experience has been nothing short of exceptional.

    The end is nearer. 5G to eat some over-the-air TV stations. That’s the idea, anyway.

    Watch others follow. Harvard did the right thing. Let me expand on that:

    Via ChatGPT

    All that stuff, plus the Web and much more, came from government funding of university research.

    I should add that I know nothing about what the $8 billion Harvard is at risk of losing is for. I just believe it was right for Harvard to push back on White House pressure to make changes to how the university works.

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  • Days

    baskketball
    It isn’t how the ball bounces. It’s how you play. There comes a time in high-stakes basketball games when a team melts. That’s what happened to Duke. You could see it in the players’ body language, all through the closing half. They were playing not to lose. Houston was playing to win, with wicked, committed defense. Duke got so lame that players were dribbling off their legs and failing to inbound the ball. As a fan, it was hard to watch. I hate to say I had no faith that Cooper Flagg’s heroic final shot would go in. Then it didn’t. Through the whole 4th quarter I kept saying to my wife, “Shit, they’re going to lose.”

    More the next three days at IIW. VRM Day was good. Very packed with good info about who’s working on what, especially around MyTerms.

  • Sunny Vinny Afternoon

    The family (well, in-laws’) vineyard in San Martin, California

    I’m here (a short drive south of San Jose) for the afternoon, if any local friends feel like stopping by.

    Tomorrow it’s VRM Day. Tuesday to Thursday, it’s IIW.

    See you theres.

  • Hear in Near L.A.

    Just loving the hang time we got yesterday with Tony after two long flights and one short drive from LAX.

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  • Fry Day

    Subscription economy suckage. Just made my annual call to The New Yorker, to get a better subscription deal than what they offer with automatic renewal. So, instead of paying $169.99, I'm getting a new subscriber promotional rate of $99.99. I've been a new subscriber every year since the 1960s. Bonus link from 10 years ago.

    All good. Writings by Katalin Bártfai-Walcott: Digital Locusts, Digital Void, We Optimized Everything But Ourselves, The Great Fork: An Anthropological Retrospective on Homo Intentus and Homo Modelus, Exploring the First Principles of AI, The False Intention Economy: How AI Systems Are Replacing Human Will with Modeled Behavior.

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  • What-Happenedings

    Though it may take longer. Usually does. I say some stuff I trust will eventually prove true in Pew's Imagining the Digital Future report on being human ten years from now.

    Be theres. In The False Intention Economy: How AI Systems Are Replacing Human Will with Modeled Behavior, Katalin Bártfai-Walcott lays out the battlefield between the real Intention Economy and the fake one that surveillance creeps are talking about. We'll be working on the real one next week at VRM Day and IIW. VRM Day (on Monday) is free, and IIW is cheap as conferences go. (Among other good things, I hope that this by Dazza Greenwood comes up.)

    It's not about identity on the Internet. It's about the better system that replaces it. As Jamie Smith explains, Steve (Lockstep) Wilson does a great job explaining verifiable credentials.

    Answers are in the comments. Oddly, among my most-visited (and presumably linked-to) blog posts is What are the balls on Prague’s spires called??

    In case you didn't know already. Mark Hurst: AI is creating a frictionless surveillance state.

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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 he died. Or if there will be somewhere the customary celebration of his life.

    It will never die. Phil Windley says Long Live RSS.

    Department of Political Correction. Wired: The DOGE Axe Comes for Libraries and Museums.

    Maybe. Tornado?

    Turns out this was bullshit. Marcus Smart is still with the Wizards.

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  • Remembering Dave Taht

    Dave Taht on FLOSS Weekly

    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 that suffers from) bufferbloat, thank Dave.

    I’ve lost count of how often Dave has been a guest on one of my podcasts. He was always reliably informative, good-humored, and a source of music and songs. Behind him in the screen grab above is the guitar he carried everywhere. The sticker says, “This guitar kills Vogons.”

    Here are some links I’ll be watching for more news. Feel free to contribute:

     

     

     

  • 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 shot while flying in or out of Newark sometime. 

    Here's a shot I took flying in or out of Salt Lake City. 

    But if you need one, there are 123 others in this collection here. They didn't use my best shot of The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern in this Martha's Vineyard Times story a few days ago.

  • Tools

    For pizza, it’s hard to beat Felix, on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice Beach, California.

    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 pizzas for all fifty states, and has four entries for California and only three for New York.

    Here’s to a lifetime of “What’s that?” Gothamist: This SoHo brewpub is offering a year of free beer if you get a tattoo of its logo. And what if it goes out of business next month? Or whenever?

    Though suspiciously perfected. As TV series go, Reacher is candy. But we enjoy it. If you do too, this Q&A with its star, Alan Ritchson, is worth a watch. Seems like a good guy.

    A good look. If you’re ever tempted to get old-fashioned free over-the-air signals for your TV, the way to tell exactly what you might get is RabbitEars.info. Where we live here in Bloomington, the only station you’ll get with actual rabbit ears (or a loop thing, or a straightened paper clip) is the local PBS station. All the rest require an outside antenna, which will look like a fish skeleton on your house. But I got and built one anyway. By compromise with my wife, it’s on a pole next to the garage where most people won’t see it. It pulls in most of the Indy signals listed here. The model is felicitously named DAT BOSS MIX LR antenna High-VHF/UHF (Repack Ready) antenna, which (speaking of old fashioned) comes in a kit and takes an hour to build.

    Be your own tool. Unbelievable MacOS Apps That are Worth More Than They Cost has some good selections, but dig down in the comments and links to similar pieces below. My own fave is the path tool, which I believe is not defaulted in the Finder toolbar, but should be if it isn’t. Find it and others by right- or control-clicking on the toolbar and selecting Customize.

    Push out the frontier of your buyer’s remorse. Our new Samsung OLED TV is beautiful. In the Samsung tradition, however, the UI is awful. But never mind that. Instead note that Sony is pushing the limits of what can be done with LEDs displays.

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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 oligarchs (for a few years while tech oligarchy stays a thing), and every status quo will prove transient in a Digital Age that's maybe a decade or two old and will be with us for decades, centuries, and millennia to come? Whatever the answer, it should now be clear that history is happening, big time. And we hardly know if or how any of the old anchor institutions (libraries, universities, journalism) from which Authority long derived in the past will survive in familiar forms.

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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" is it.) Look, I do have paid subscriptions to some newsletters, but I'll never have subscriptions to all of them. So I think from now on I'll just drop every half-newsletter with teases me.

    New blogging game: Whack-a-Spam. My Real Agency post got covered nicely here in Ars Technica. Then copies of the same Ars story appeared in a dozen faked-up "news" websites, pinging back to my post. I've been marking them all as spam.

    Just a thought. Since the redstream is the new mainstream, I suggest we re-brand the old mainstream (NYTimes, WaPo, Atlantic/Time/New York/New Yorker/Wired/etc.) the bluestream, and the WSJ and other econ-oriented rags the finstream.

    Tell your algorithm I sent you. Emily Catalano is now every reel Facebook's algorithm suggests to me. I suppose that's because she's the best deadpan comedian since Steven Wright.

    You can't search an unconformity. What Tristan Louis says about digital archives makes complementary points (lots of them, all good) that are consistent with what I said about bits not leaving a fossil record.

    What is your DNA worth? 23andMe is filing for bankruptcy. I'm a customer, so it concerns me that they have a heap of data about my DNA. While I'd like the world to benefit from that DNA, should it be useful (and, given some of my odd genetics, e.g. this, it might be), I also like to think that my genetic profile is on loan to 23andMe, and not their property. But, I suspect, in a bankruptcy auction, it's theirs. 

    Advice welcome. Are the scanners in printers all the same? Or as good as standalone scanners? The scanner in my Epson printer is no longer visible to my laptop (no idea why), and I'm looking for a replacement printer or printer/scanner.

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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 give good writing its toughness and color.

    The word agency is derived from the Latin agere, meaning to do. It speaks of our capacity to act with effect in the world. Or, in the words of the OED (the print version, not the website): Action or instrumentality embodied or personified as concrete existence.

    In a chapter of The Intention Economy titled Agency, I say this under a subhead titled The Argument:

    Agency is personal. It is the source of confidence behind all intention. By its nature the networked marketplace welcomes full agency for customers. So, because the best vendors are customer driven, there will be many more ways for both vendors and customers to thrive in the networked marketplace, and therefore also in the Intention Economy.

    Later I add,

    In the Intention Economy, liberated customers enjoy full agency for themselves, and employ agents who respect and apply the powers that customers grant them.

    I wrote that (and created the graphic at the top of this page) thirteen years ago, when nobody was talking about agency, but I thought somebody had to.

    Now it seems everybody is talking about it. I am sure that’s because we have AI. Or, more specifically, agentic AI. That’s what makes agentic so hot:

    My concern with both agentic and agentic AI is that concentrating development on AI agents (and digital “twins”) alone may neglect, override, or obstruct the agency of human beings, rather than extending or enlarging it. (For more on this, read Agentic AI Is the Next Big Thing but I’m Not Sure It’s What, by Adam Davidson in How to Geek. Also check out my Personal AI series, which addresses this issue most directly in Personal vs. Personalized AI.)

    So, what will give you real agency—an archimedean lever that gives you enough leverage to move worlds?

    Meet IEEE P7012, which “identifies/addresses the manner in which personal privacy terms are proffered and how they can be read and agreed to by machines.” It has been in the works since 2017, and should be ready later this year. (I say this as chair of the standard’s working group.) The nickname for P7012 is MyTerms (much as the nickname for the IEEE’s 802.11 standard is Wi-Fi). The idea behind MyTerms is that the sites and services of the world should agree to your terms, rather than the other way around.

    MyTerms creates a new regime for privacy: one based on contract. With each MyTerm you are the first party. Not the website, the service, or the app maker. They are the second party. And terms can be friendly. For example, a prototype term called NoStalking says “Just show me ads not based on tracking me.” This is good for you, because you don’t get tracked, and good for the site because it leaves open the advertising option. NoStalking lives at Customer Commons, much as personal copyrights live at Creative Commons. (Yes, the former is modeled on the latter.)

    On the Creative Commons model, agreements take three forms:

    creative commons layers
    The MyTerms standard addresses just the Machine Readable layer. It also doesn’t say exactly what tools should be developed. Basically, it just says,

    • The person is the first party
    • The site, service or app is the second party
    • The person chooses an agreement from a limited roster (resembling Creative Commons’ roster of licenses) listed by a disinterested non-profit
    • Both sides keep an identical record of what they agreed to

    On your side—the first-party side—browser makers can build something into their product, or any developer can make a browser add-on (Firefox) or extension (the rest of them). On the site’s side—the second-party side—CMS makers can build something in, or any developer can make a plug-in (WordPress) or a module (Drupal).

    Mobile app toolmakers can also come up with something (or many things).

    For the Legal Code and Human Readable layers, we (Customer Commons and ProjectVRM) have been at work on a list of prototypes for the roster of agreements. We’ll present these on April 7 at VRM Day, at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. Discussion will happen both there and through the following three days in the same location at the 40th Internet Identity Workshop (IIW). VRM Day is free. IIW isn’t, but is cheap for a three-day conference that (IMHO) is the most leveraged in the world.

    So let’s make this happen and show the world what agency really means.

    And, if you’re interested in helping support Customer Commons, use some of that agency to hit the Donate button on its home page. Thanks!

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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.)

  • 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 fecosystem:

    Care to report on that, Lucas? If you do, you won’t be the first. That was Farhad Monjoo, here, six years ago in The New York Times. You’ll be the second.

    What if it helps everyone do a better job? Steven Wright: “I take my dog for walks outside my apartment… on the ledge. Some people are afraid of heights. I’m afraid of widths.”Somehow that joke (as best I recall it) comes to mind when I consider OpenAI’s Deep Research. Everybody I know who uses it gushes about all the amazing things it can do. I mean, a lot. A company CEO says it produces marvels with sales and usage data, with forecasting, with you-name-it. A law professor says it radically improves her job in almost every way. An innovation director says “It will change your life.” But there is push-back, naturally, on the usual AI threat: it will cost jobs. We’ll see.

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  • It’s Over

    A Google StreetView of the entrance to the Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station for the Voice Of America, near Greenville, North Carolina

    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 languages. For many of those, the VOA was the best, and in some cases the only, source of relatively unbiased news.

    I am sure some of it was biased. Reporters tend to stand in a place, and most who report on political matters stand on the left (see here and here). Dan Robinson, who spent thirty-four years with the VOA, stands on the right and posted a long bill of particulars in Voice of America, Global Media Agency are rightly in budget cut bull’s-eye: Entire operation should be dismantled, in the Washington Times. An excerpt:

     I have monitored the agency’s bureaucracy along with many of its reporters and concluded that it has essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting a leftist bias aligned with partisan national media. It has sought to avoid accountability for violations of journalistic standards and mismanagement. The list includes:

    • During President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, VOA allowed and often encouraged key correspondents to carry out opposition journalism against him. This included an uprising, growing out of VOA’s central newsroom, against Mr. Trump’s choice of chief USAGM executive in 2020.

    • That newsroom and the agency have a known left-wing bias. Between 2016 and 2020, some VOA reporters did little to hide their disdain for Mr. Trump in their reports and social media posts.

    • Since Amanda Bennett, VOA director from 2016 to mid-2020, returned as USAGM chief in 2022, managers and employees dissed Republicans in Congress who criticized VOA’s inexplicable refusal to refer to Hamas terrorists as terrorists. One agency official called lawmakers “silly.” VOA’s new director has equated congressional critics to troublemakers.

    Whatever. I’d rather they fix it than kill it. They wanted it dead, and now it is.

    More reading here:

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  • Come from Everywhere

    Three Canadians—Kim Cameron, Kaliya “Identity Woman” Young, and Dick Hardt—at the Identity Gang meeting in Scottsdale, 20 March 2005

    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 of eleven that called itself the Identity Gang gathered around a table there to plot what became (IMHO) the most leveraged conference in the world. Three of the eleven were Canadians. One (Esther) was born in Zurich. As for the rest, I suppose they could have been born anywhere. (I was born in the U.S., but half my ancestors were Swedish. Those on my father’s side were Irish, English, German, French, and God knows.)

    All of the Internet’s protocols, from TCP/IP on up, were made to ignore national boundaries.  I am inviting participants in the next IIW (April 8 to 10) to do the same: ignore the noise coming from the U.S. government and come join us to work on what’s good for the whole connected world.

    If you want to get away from wacky retro nationalism in tech, IIW is the place to do it.

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  • Media Matters

    Mike Cross

    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 hear him play. His songs were—and still are—fun, deep, wise, and catchy. Uncle Josh. The Scottsman. Elma Turl. Nobby. Born in the Country. The Lord’ll Provide. Bounty Hunter. Kentucky Song. A few years ago Mike was bitten by a tick, got Lyme Disease, and has hardly been heard from since. I hope he’s well and can get back out there, showing the next few generations what an amazing gift he is to us all. Bonus fact: The album cover above is by my old friend and business partner Ray Simone. Gone thirteen years, I still miss Ray every day.

    Drowning in Red. Fifty years ago, when I was getting my nickname while working at WDBS (a sweet little commercial radio station owned by Duke University in Durham, North Carolina), our slogan was “Let the music keep our spirits high”—a line from Jackson Browne’s “Before the Deluge.” Give it a listen. Take in the lyrics. Then think about the kind and generous purposes behind all the federal programs, agencies, and departments now being demolished. The abandoned alliances and international friendships. The dropped American support for people and organizations trying to do good throughout the world. The Voice of America, silenced. Think about the new political corrections:  forbidden words in grant applications, red flags now waving atop corporate giants, weather vanes vectored right. Think about the shaking trap doors under millions of federal employees—especially ones tasked with helping the weak, the old, the foreign, the oppressed, the dark, the gay, the oddly gendered. And then listen to the news. No, not the old bluestream news we still call main. I mean the redstream news that now predominates on TV, in podcasts, on radio. What you will see and hear is one big amen corner for all of it. This is the deluge.

    Sounding Good Everywhere. If you like old album rock and Americana rooted in North Carolina, the best thing on radio in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill is That Station, on 95.7 FM.  Technically, the station translates (rebroadcasts) WRAL-FM/101.5’s HD2 stream, and rarely mentions its true callsign, which is W239CK. What many listeners may not know is that the signal on 95.7 is only 250 watts from an antenna about 1100 feet up a tower near Apex, while the HD2 stream is coming from WRAL’s 98,000 watt signal pumping out of its antenna almost 2000 feet up a tower southeast of Raleigh. Compare the two signal footprints here and here (thanks to the wonderful RadioLocator.com). Naturally, the station also has an app. That’s what I usually use here in Bloomington, Indiana, although right now I’m digging it on my computer, which has outstanding 2.1 Logitech speakers I picked up for $5 at a yard sale.

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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: Federal officials had embarked on indefinite mass suspensions.

    All full-time staffers at the Voice of America and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and Television Martí, were affected — more than 1,000 employees. The move followed a late Friday night edict from President Trump that its parent agency, called the U.S. Agency for Global Media, must eliminate all activities that are not required by law.

    In addition, under the leadership of Trump appointees, the agency has severed all contracts for the privately incorporated international broadcasters it funds, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

    The termination notices for grants for the funded networks, two of which were reviewed by NPR, carried the signature of Trump’s senior adviser Kari Lake, whom he placed at USAGM, not the agency’s acting chief executive. Lake does not appear in her current job to have the statutory authority to carry out that termination.

    She may not, but here is how the USAGM site looks, above the fold, this morning:

    Here is the story behind that image:

    Today, in compliance with President Trump’s Executive Order titled, Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, dated March 14, 2025, the US Agency for Global Media initiated measures to eliminate the non-statutory components and functions to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law. USAGM and the outlets it oversees will be reduced to their statutory functions and associated personnel will be reduced to the minimum presence and function required by law.

    This action will impact the agency’s workforce at USAGM, Voice of America, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and all Grantees. Most USAGM staff affected by this action will be placed on paid-administrative leave beginning Saturday, March 15, 2025, and remain on leave until further notice.

    “While at USAGM, I vow to fully implement President Trump’s executive orders in his mission to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. Today we continue the process of doing that by streamlining our operations to what is statutorily required by law,” said USAGM Senior Adviser, Kari Lake. “The US Agency for Global media will continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview and shed everything that is not statutorily required. I fully support the President’s executive order. Waste, fraud, and abuse run rampant in this agency and American taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund it.”

    A few of the most egregious findings:

    • Massive national security violations, including spies and terrorist sympathizers and/or supporters infiltrating the agency
    • Eye-popping self-dealing involving contracts, grants and high-value settlement agreements
    • Obscene over-spending including a nearly quarter-of-a-billion-dollar lease for a Pennsylvania Avenue high-rise that has no broadcasting facilities to meet the needs of the agency and included a $9 million commission to a private real estate agent with connections
    • $100s-of-millions being spent on fake news companies
    • a product that often parrots the talking-points of America’s adversaries

    This agency is not salvageable.

    From top-to-bottom this agency is a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer—a national security risk for this nation—and irretrievably broken. While there are bright spots within the agency with personnel who are talented and dedicated public servants, this is the exception rather than the rule.

    It is unfortunate that the work that was done by self-interested insiders in coordination with outside activist groups and radical Leftist advocacy organizations to “Trump-Proof” the agency made it impossible to reform. In fact, they weren’t just “Trump-Proofing” the agency from political leadership, they were accountability-proofing the agency from the American people.  They did all this while spending taxpayer money to create false narratives. These were amplified by biased media counterparts with clear conflicts of interest at the Washington Post, NPR and more, to actively cover up their obscene waste, fraud, and abuse.

    “This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States and promoting freedom and democracy.  Going forward, I am going to ensure accountability will be the norm and not the exception. I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Agency and its outlets. I look forward to moving forward with modernizing the core mission of telling America’s story throughout the world in a meaningful, impactful and effective way,” Lake added.

    Whether you agree with it or not, this is not a news story. It’s the kind of shit one hears from a junta after a coup.

    As for Lake’s claim about the “obscenely expensive 15-year lease,” here’s what David Folkenflik reports in his ‘Bloody Saturday’ story:

    Lake’s claims of waste on new HQ challenged

    On Friday evening, before Trump’s order, Lake posted a video of the new headquarters for USAGM and the Voice of America to argue that it’s an exemplar of profligate spending.

    “I’m sitting here on the 13th floor of a shiny, brand-new beautiful skyscraper building that is costing you, the taxpayer, a fortune,” Lake said, as camera footage lingered over features including glass walls, interior waterfalls, and modern conference rooms. “Here’s the kicker: They already have a building that they’re located in, that is paid off, that they could have renovated or updated.”

    Former USAGM CFO Grant Turner says she’s got it backwards. According to the USAGM’s announcement last September, the lease, thanks to a slow real estate market caused by the pandemic, stands to save the federal government $150 million over 15 years.

    “That’s a bunch of lies and misinformation coming out of her mouth,” said Turner, who left the agency in January. “In fact, it’s probably one of the best deals struck by a tenant in D.C. history.”

    Four USAGM and Voice of America staffers backed up Turner’s account on condition of anonymity, citing fears of retribution in the current climate. For one thing, they note, the new building is not new. It’s nearly two decades old — built in 2006, according to the general contractor on the project. For another, the old building wasn’t “paid off” — the agency doesn’t own it. The agency got three years in free rent at the new headquarters, and was drawing staffers out of the old Wilbur J. Cohen building, they said, thus sizeably reducing its footprint and rent paid to the federal government.

    And the new building’s landlord gave $27 million toward the construction of state-of-the-art studios. That would have been necessary in the technologically archaic Cohen building — absent the existential question now hovering over the networks.

    As Scott Adams says, Facts don’t matter. What matters is how much we hate the person talking.

    The VOA isn’t one person. But it is a voice, and Trump and Lake clearly hate it.

    Now, two questions:

    1. Is the VOA still on the air? I’m asking around, and haven’t heard yet.
    2. If it stays on, will it be in a politically corrected way that sounds like Fox News? Or will it go away completely?

    Any guesses?

    Bonus link from Francine Hardaway: The Scream Test: Elon Musk’s Tech Bro Strategy.

    [Later…] CNN says VOA is silent while I am told both that some services are on the air and that some are just running music. Ah: the NY Times just confirmed it.

    More:

    Note: I’ve added the list above to a later post: It’s Over.

     

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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 will now see, in addition to colors for densities of rain, symbols for lightning and the paths of the heaviest storm cells, which are all currently in Mississippi and Tennessee.

    This is a storm that has been edging eastward out of the Mississippi Valley and has already killed at least seventeen people. It is also full of tornadoes. There is a good chance some of those are happening here:

    Note the brown wedge-shaped polygons. Those are storm paths.

    LightningMaps.org is another useful resource. Zoom in and it will show each lightning bolt, plus growing (and fading) circles around the bolt, displaying the spread of thunder. (By the way, not all lightning strikes ground, and many bolts stretch through and between thunderclouds.) Here’s Tupelo, Mississippi, a moment ago as I write this (3 PM Eastern time):

    Oh, and one more:

    That’s here at Windy.com. The white areas are live lightning, with sound effects. Eastern Alabama is getting hit hard right now (11:45 PM Eastern). Big thanks to Tanya Weiman in the comments below for pointing me to it. I was already a Windy fan, but didn’t know about this feature.

    I just noticed that it’s also on the Windy app, under “Weather Radar.” It’s free. Go get it.

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