Scripting News podcast Dave Winer

We're depending on big companies that are nuzzling up with Trump, at best hedging their bets, to let us use their networks to organize ourselves politically. That's never worked for us, in fact it's worked against us. Trump's election in 2016, for example, could he have done it without Twitter letting him go direct to organize?
The Harris organization is doing great, they have to take on the journalists, where previous Democrats had no answer, they've done it in a clever way, by using their channels to talk about the things journalism should be talking about. People listen to their competition, and that's what this is.
It's not hard for a few of us, who are good listeners and writers, to build lists of sources and provide them for people to access away from the nonstop (often entertaining) bullshit of the social web of 2024.
I've asked for ideas for podcasts that would go into a list of shows people who are voting Democratic would find interesting or useful. Not for spreading religion, but based on facts, not the unhinged lunacy and revenge of Trump. Our news now is too polluted by that. He shouldn't be able to lie about Harris's race, and have that be an issue carried by journalism, for example. That should not be possible but it happens.
Podcast: 12 minutes.

Someone in charge at the NYT needs to take a step back and view events, and the NYT role in those events, from the point of view of an ordinary non-NYT-employed citizen, bewildered at the enormous risks journalists are taking with the system of government of the United States.
In the context of who we are as a country, and what the Repubs do and say about the country, "weird" is pretty mild. What word would you prefer the Democrats use? Imagine William Safire were here, the great linguist columnist of the NYT, writing that column. (Safire was a Republican btw.)
And to the Democrats, no matter what the NYT says, keep using the term. This is where you get to speak out about what they're doing over there, and how it's not journalism. One of the rare things we agree with Trump on.
Podcast: 3 minutes.
PS: Safire went to Bronx Science! I did not know that. (So did I.) I love the idea of writers who aren't scared of tech stuff.
PPS: Even Richard Nixon would think today's so-called Republicans were weird.

I lost my iPhone a few days ago. I think all the data is safe. First time I ever lost a phone. I ordered a new iPhone 15 Pro with 256GB, it will arrive on Monday hopefully.
In the meantime I've needed to use my Android phone to record voice memos. Google's product is called Recorder. It's just what I wanted.
It has a website, so you don't have to export your recording to get it where you need it to be, and it automatically does a transcript. There's an editor on the website, which again is exactly where I want it.
A 2-minute voice memo/podcast I recorded with the app.
BTW, I think the files are smaller?
Here's a screen shot.

A 20-minute morning coffee notes rambler podcast, started with a narration of how we do linkblogging these days, mostly by hand, and how Bluesky is being hurt by not having a large-enough character limit. Another plea for textcasting, some standards for what we put on the wire over the social web.
Also talked about twitter-like systems, and idea borrowed from algol-like and lisp-like.
I talk about what made Unix so great.
Eric Raymond once told me that XML-RPC was very much like Unix, and I said oh yeah, and so is RSS and the rest. Huge compliment because the simplicity of Unix is what I strive for, put huge time into.
Journos once said Apple is dead, but that was ridiculous because they had built a product that was just starting to grow and they had planted the seeds of huge growth in the 80s when they focused on selling to education, which made sure that kids when they grew up would have good feelings about Apple, and it totally worked. When the reporters were calling them dead, they were actually just about to boom in a whole new way, on the web, which the Mac was perfect for, given the built in simple networking. And then boom again when Jobs came back. And again with the iPod and then again with the iPhone. See how reporters miss the big picture. We shouldn't give them so much power, they pretend they know, but they are usually pretty clueless.
This podcast is also a demo of how my mind works. I flit around all over the place but also have learned over the years that if I want to get anything done I have to focus on one thing for at least a few hours every day, and string those days together.
I want to document this stuff for the benefit of young programmers. I learned a lot from reading the code of Unix, I always want to pay that back, the message is to strive for simplicity, keep technical debt to a minimum, and factor, factor and factor again to reduce technical debt. Those are the hardest projects, I'm doing one of those right now, but in the end it's worth it, because with simplicity you get to build higher.

A two-minute podcast where I dictate an op-ed the NYT should run in its own name, apologizing for trying to take over the US government, and promising to return to being a news organization.
I am so fed up with it. Today they ran an op-ed written by Aaron Sorkin giving advice to Democrats based on his experience writing scripts for a fictional White House television show in the late 90s and early 00s.
Yeah the NYT has lost its way. I hope some people down there think they're way out on a limb and it's time to get back to what they do. They are not qualified or entitled to do what they are doing.

A 25-minute ramble with the themes of the Dreaming piece I wrote earlier today.
Spoiler alert: I reveal the ending of the movie Casablanca.
Respecting yourself means sticking to problems we can and need to solve, and work together.
We can't make anything to happen until we start listening to and working with each other.
There is no perfect super-Democrat. Our candidate is Joe Biden. Any real candidate is going to suck.
It's like We Make Shitty Software, all candidates suck. But we do a great job.
The Democratic song this year, and always, should be With a little help from my friends.
Read George Lakoff, a great linguist who figured out how American politics work.
Check out Elizabeth Spiers piece about how it's time to get over the West Wing ideal. Martin Sheen never was and never will be president.
And remember your vote is a chess move, not a love letter.