🔗 WWW
🔗 Long Live RSS - Phil Windley - via Doc Searls
A timely reminder. It’s RSS in general - good, but Phil also writes specifically about Substack.
I found that if you enter
/rssafter the URL for an author or category page, you get RSS for that author or category.
Meanwhile Substack’s own help. - says to tack on ‘feed’ not ‘rss’.
I do find that both work - and sometimes neither - which is more often than not because of the beginning of the URL …
Replace “your” with the name of your Substack publication.
It isn’t always clear (to me at least) what that ‘your’ replacement should be.
Bonus - If you use Reeder
If you just put the URL https://
Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.
💬 Ernest Becker
… and then I thought of 🔗🎵 The Overview
🔗 Mathematicians uncover the logic behind how people walk in crowds | ScienceDaily
.. not read it yet .. but wondering f the equation includes parameters around the phone that is inevitably in people’s hands, more often than not being looked at.
🔗Authoritarian Grift Meets the Grind of Justice
America (that country that promoted itself (past tense) as the beacon of democracy) continues to be the ONLY country in the world that does nothing to stop these kinds of people.
Why would anybody believe - ever - that America stands for democracy?
🔗 Pockets of Belfast - Gapingvoid
On 20th March, in celebration of the UN’s World Happiness day, the BBC’s Mark Easton conducted a little social experiment: dropping ten wallets (with money and his phone number inside) on the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
He got them all back.
Makes me happy - and today isn’t even World Happiness Day!
On Om
Om writes about the mediocrity of modern Google - for me most of what they do has always been mediocre because their UX sucks and the best (older) example would be why Google Sheets when you have Airtable? And the thing is with better UI Google was on pole positon to do Airtable before Airtable - and on acrsoo the entire product line.
🔗 Were Your Managers Managing Your Decline?
This is “managed decline,” – the art of overseeing failure with exceptional documentation. Managed decline hides under terms like cost control, risk minimization, and streamlining, but it guarantees one thing: job security for managers. The EU and UK exemplify this, where managed economic entropy and decline have become a boon for the managerial class. Managers multiply like Gremlins in water.
🔗 Division is easier than connection - Seth Godin - just reminding us all of good behaviour.
I don’t know - I share a lot of Om - but this one - this right here is in a class of its own - so beautiful. A delight to read. A level where you don’t just give up highlighing the best parts - but maybe even give up writing - because how can you even begin to achieve this.
Talking of 🖇️ Herb .. this is one of his iconic ones and it got me to wondering why Haight Ashbury wasn’t called Ashbury Haight. I now know the answer - BUT - now I’m wondering what rules the signage in SF follows .. I have my suspicions, but need to check - and if they are consistent.
🔗 Another cracker from Ambrose …. by @bradenslen
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility. 💬 Ambrose Bierce
How could I not share another Ambrosian delight?
Sitting and catching up with the world - and not one, not two but three Substacks all on a single theme;
🔗 Open Source and AI, FSF Edition - Dana F. Blankenhorn
🔗 The Mar-a-Lago Accord, or the Plan to Crash the US Economy - Umair Haque
🔗 State Of The (Super)Consumer: Why Government Cuts Are Spooking The Market
They are all different and come from different angles but the theme is not good. And planned?
It’s head-scratching if you’re a boomer. You lived through JFK, proffering what you could do for your country and… Now it’s WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME?
💬 Bob Lefsetz
🔗 Scripting News: Monday, March 24, 2025
Peter O’Toole starred in 🔗🎬The Ruling Class, a favorite when I was younger. The 🎵📼 last song in the movie is pretty freaking great.
💬 Dave Winer
I agree with Dave - ‘The Ruling Class’ was a good movie (not great - but good). ‘Favorite’? Not so sure, definitely not ‘in general- since it was pretty much panned at the time only time turning it into what we now call a ‘cult classic’. (But do watch the song - it has all the expected cheesiness of its time!)
Four years earlier was 🔗🎬 If - now THAT was a film and arguably did for McDowell what Layer Cake did for Craig.
💯 🔗 It’s Scorched Earth Time - let’s start with over throwing 🖇️ Chuck.
This is the second post from Indexed with that headline …
The People’s OS
Back in the archives of People First I used to talk about ‘The People’s OS’. 🔗 Here for example. It sat together with something that I also called HumanIT. In many ways playful ideas on a tech first world that even then was apparent - much less today. (Hat tip to my friend Jeff Orgel who gave me ‘HumanIT’.) (And now you know why I started ‘People First’.)
Reading this today makes me think that this movement might just be an idea whose time has finally come … (another hat tip - this one to ‘Victor’.)
I’ve been following 🔗 Umair for years - but - only 10 references to him on this blog (I just counted). I think partly because he sometimes seems do be so out there and partly because he desperately needs a good editor - because he can go on … and on … and on …
Still - when you look at some of his old stuff that was ‘out there’ then .. and you look at today - maybe he isn’t as weird as he sometimes reads. So I commend you to today’s offering ….
What’s going to be left after five years or so of this? What we’ve already seen, and we’re just two months in?
💬 Umair Haque
🔗 Trapping misbehaving bots in an AI Labyrinth - well beyond my technical competence to understand if this will really work - BUT - I applaud the effort - and on the face of it - very clever … swamp the zones where the zone swampers hang.