I’m going to try this format for a little while and see how it goes.
I’m trying to help build the future of the open web, so I want to try to do more here, and less in various silos.
What’s interesting today
The MetaFilter thread from September 11th. I remember refreshing this thread all day as we were all trying to figure out what was going on.
The Specter of AI-Generated ‘Leaked Songs’ Is Tearing the Harry Styles Fandom Apart. Middlemen scammers are taking advantage of fans. AI only accelerates it. Hacker News discussion.
Federation vs. Small Pieces Loosely Joined. More on the future of the open web from Dave Winer.
404 media is an outstanding new news site. They’ve had a lot of scoops in their first couple of weeks.
The junk fees aren’t going away. I think it’s better that you’re seeing the all-in price upfront.
I see this through the day job: there are lots of new sites that are generating thousands of AI-generated and spun articles. I play a depressing game of cat and mouse to keep them out of my index. I’ve evolved my librarian tools enough over the years to catch them almost instantly, but it’s not fun.
Also, if your domain is one character off of a popular domain and you’ve posted 3000 blog posts today, I’m probably going to notice.
And wield the mallet of loving correction.
When I’m weeding my index, I’m usually listening to the local high-school radio station. Right now, they’re playing Be Good Johnny. Which I most have associated with the Fenway music guy playing it for Johnny Damon in 2004. Of course, I also remember when it was a hit on the radio in the early ’80s. I’m old in many dimensions.
What I’m reading
I have the (I’m told) bad habit of flipping among several books at a time. I’m ok with it. And, the Kindle takes up less space on the nightstand than several hardcovers…
Here’s what’s open on the virtual bookshelf right now.
Survival of the Richest: Escape fantasies of the tech billionaires. Douglas Rushkoff has a new book out, and I’m enjoying it so far. It turns out that building your own post-apocalypse bunker has problems on the physics level, along with the biology, the sociology and the psychology levels.
Founder vs. Investor. I’m not in this wing of the tech world anymore, but it’s interesting to see how the dynamics have changed since the late nineties.
Master of Change. Brad Stulberg writes about how to handle things that come up in life. His term for it is “rugged flexibility.”
Fan mail of the day
I’m going to try to shout people out more often.
Today: Heather Cox Richardson.
Each day, she writes an essay on the most important news of the day, with the perspective of an historian. It’s usually one of my favorite 10-minutes reads of the day.