🔗 WWW
There are a lot of links out to different parts of the web on this site. I try to mark them all so they get listed here.
🔗 John Battelle’s Search Blog Who Stole My Alpha?
The term is borrowed from the financial sector, where “alpha” represents the excess return or competitive edge a particular investment yields over what the market might usually return (this is where the leading finance publication Seeking Alpha got its name).
… I’d often wondered.
➕
I think what’s new is that we finally have a constituency with the power to oppose the wholesale appropriation of data that’s been the mainstay of the tech industry these past few decades. Unlike consumers, who willingly ceded control of their data for the convenience of tech services, corporations are terrified of sharing information that might expose their strategies, competitive edge, or weaknesses.
Ummm .. maybe not all .. but a lot of ‘consumers’ (I prefer ‘people’) were not willing .. they just didn’t have the power to fight back.
Crucial Track 🎵 July 8, 2026
"Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) [The Ultimate Mix]" by John Lennon & Yoko Ono
It’s going to get you. 🔗 Inspired by
More space on Colossal.
🔗 Nebulae, Comets, and Aurorae, Oh My! See the ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year Shortlist.
We are very very small.
More on the world’s Anti-Christs …..
Every ‘Differality’ I have 🖇️🔎 ever posted (these just on Micro.Blog) - and more - all put together in 🔗📼 a single SNL sketch - brilliant. 😂
.. Also via 🔗Matt
🔗📼 Matthew McConaughey - via 🔗Matt.
On September 28, Doc Searls wrote a post entitled DIY Radio with Podcasting. I couldn’t locate a subsequent post where he did a Google search and found zero hits for the term, predicting that there would be a lot more, as the idea caught on.
So it was Doc that coined the term?
Stop Blaming Failure On 'The Kids'.
Too many people blame declining club/society membership on the ‘kids don’t want to join.’ That’s not the problem ….
Some commentary for a change. Just spotted a version of this on LinkedIN and tracked it back to the source - Rosie Hatton. Like us all - I do spot a lot of frameworks that I look at move on and never go back to. This one is different. So sharing. Nicely done - and very appropriate for 2026. Thank you Rosie.
Coming to a computer near you in 6 days time.
For free.
🔗📼 Looks like it was produced by Automattic .. or maybe Matt himself
🔗 Scan More than 60 Million Stars in the Most Detailed Photo of the Milky Way Ever Taken - Colossal - another ‘when art meets science’ from Colossal … this one all about the Milky Way - and I know we have some astronomers and space physicists in here.
Crucial Track 🎵 July 1, 2026
"Life Is a Long Song" by Jethro Tull
I wrote something recently - a friend wrote back “your on song John” and my mind instantly jumped back in time 55 years and this has been ear worming me ever since. It’s not even about what he wrote.
📺 I just finished watching 🔗 Shining Girls. Most excellent and no idea how I have not seen this before given that it dates back to 2022.
★★★★
The Internet has none of those evil things. All of them are layers above. To reinvent the Internet at this point is like to reinvent the Earth. Not a good idea. But reinventing, or turning inside out the assholes that have fucked it up is a good idea.
💬 Doc Searls
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, when Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who led the 7th Cavalry, lost his entire command to Lakota warriors after falling on them unexpectedly in their own territory. The only army survivor of the battle was a horse, Comanche, who became the 7th Cavalry’s mascot, trotted out draped in ceremonial black for years after the event itself.
💬 Heather Cox Richardson
I watched 🎥 Little Big Man at the time. (In case you are wondering - ★★★★) - but it just occurred to me that at that point the film was about history from 94 years prior.
Today that would be equivalent to watching a movie about an historical event in 1932. Choices would include;
- the lowest point in the Great Depression when unemployment was 25% and millions lost their life savings.
- the election of Roosevelt.
- the beginning of the end of prohibition.
- hoover forcibly 🔗📼 emptying vet camps
They all seem a lot closer to present time than Little Big Man did in 1970.
Getting older or history rhyming at a faster pace?
🔗 Learning first AI-d - William Gallagher
So let me focus on that specific thing of new writers being left behind. Forgive me, this is quite a technical point: if you get AI to do your writing for you, why the fuck should I use you? Commission you? Publish you?
➕
I mean it. There is nothing you can do with AI that cannot be done by absolutely every single person else on the planet. So you are demonstrating to me that you are entirely worthless.
Me - sometime between 2016 and 2019. Same principle.
If a nameless wonk on the end of a wire without your qualifications can replace you - it’s on you.
Like us all, truly sad to read of Om’s passing so early in his life. I have read a lot of writing about him since then. Matt’s is the one that shines.
I’d like to celebrate his life with an awesome event on September 29, 2026 (his 60th) in San Francisco, like an OmFest. I’ll find a space where every community from the many facets of Om can come together … I can’t wait for the beautiful collision of his tech / journalism / Indian party planner / pen / coffee / shoes / photography circles, and probably some niches I couldn’t even imagine.
💬 Matt Mullenweg
🔗 Establishment Democrats are promising “war”
Establishment Democrats are promising “war” on incoming progressives and Democratic socialists. When they said “vote blue no matter who,” they were lying. So-called centrist Democrats are more loyal to the establishment than they are to their constituents. These establishment sellouts are willing to work with the Grandpa Puddingbrains and his fascist supporters to protect their oligarch masters.
💬 Mitch Wagner
.. and come Christmas the Dems will wonder why they lost.
🔗 No, jailbreaking your phone isn’t.
Apple — which now advocates criminalizing jailbreaking — was “literally founded on theft," writes Cory Doctorow.
💬 Mitch Wagner