🔗 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.
👁️ 🔗 We need a social web for nobodies. writes @dave
1] Every nobody is a somebody to somebody.
2] That is what we have … it’s just spoiled by tech bros, algorithms and loud mouths.
3] People typically have more pride in that which they own versus rent. I think this a core tenant of why ‘global town squares’ are not the future and instead an ever growing network of interconnected micro communities is.
🔗 We Are Living in Pinocchio’s World
The grifters and the hucksters and the influencers selling impossible things succeed because audiences reward certainty and punish doubt. They honor confidence and resist complication. A clean story about a genius who will fix everything travels faster than a difficult story about tradeoffs. The Field of Miracles stays open because people keep wanting to bury their coins there.
💬 Om
Trust isn’t something a brand builds with an ad campaign. It’s what’s left if the marketers don’t ruin it.
Curiosity isn’t simply what’s left after a complete education. It’s still there if the system doesn’t ruin it.
Musicality isn’t a feature you add to an amplifier. It’s what’s left when you stop ruining it.
Customer delight isn’t something we add to our projects. It’s what’s left if we don’t ruin it.
Satisfaction in our work isn’t created by the boss. It’s what’s left if they don’t ruin it.
Reminds me of two connected thoughts that I have always liked …
How do you make a statue of an elephant? Get the biggest granite block you can find and chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.
💬 Too many people to name. [🔗 Why](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/22/chip-away/)
Music is the space between the notes
💬 Coltrane, Mozart, Debussy… take your pick ...
📺 Finally got a show I could watch from beginning to end - not the best - but compared to some others I have been trying out, 🔗 The Beast in Me is worth ★★★
🔗 Honestly, Stop Saying Honestly
We already killed the slop in our writing . The em dash, “delve,” “tapestry,” “in today’s fast-paced world” - the measured lexicon of words that spiked in published text the moment the models got loose on it. “Delve” alone rose about 1,500 percent in scientific abstracts between 2022 and 2024. These words are not wrong. They are tells. A reader sees three of them and stops trusting the page, even when the substance is fine.
💬 Adventures in Claude
Two Thoughts
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Very self aware 😂 and interesting to see how anyone can control the LLM’s output if they spend time on the problem - something which we don’t typically do - used as we are to our world of ‘instant gratification’.
-
Just a couple of months ago 🖇️ I wrote: “but no one can deny that we have seen a bucket load more of them ( (em dashes) ) since LLMs turned up.
Jeremy Keith [ @adactio ] writes 🔗 here and quotes 🔗 Time
What is being mechanized by AI is our tastes - our ability to discern quality (or originality)
💬 Ray Nayler
Might I suggest that we have been doing that all by ourselves for decades - if not forever?
Tech accelerated it and now AI is certainly moving it into hyper drive - because that is what AI does.
🔗 Scripting News: Is Bluesky on the web?
But it doesn’t work the other way. They love it when you send people to their site, but not so much if you want to send them away. Sending people away is a sensitive concept to Bluesky’s investors. Why would you do that? This is not a new point where the web and silos disagree. The web says “let them go” and the silos ask “do we look like idiots?”
💬 Dave Winer
I am clearly missing the nuance here.
I syndicate to BlueSky - and in Bluesky I see …
I click on that link and am taken to my blog
Question
What is not happening?
🖋️ Caveat - Not My Words ...
… but there for the grace of whatever power you hold true - do we all go. Sometime sooner. Sometimes very much later. But go we do. Few have the power to control ‘when’.
In case you were wondering where 🖇️ this quote came from …. the answer is 🔗🎵📼 Ren - he is just so good. This one is a kind of 🔗📼 Musical Gary
If you are reading this post on my site, you will see that this link is rendered as an embedded video at the bottom of the post. (THANKYOU @rknightuk]. It will render just fine - unless the video owner wants you to watch it over on YouTube (and to be fair - there are very good reasons for that). If that happens, click on the link above and you will be taken to YouTube. The 'error' is only because the creator wants you to got to YouTube to watch it. That said - on rare occasions, it might actually be broken. If it is - sorry about that - try sending me an email and I will check if I made an error.🖋️ The Myth of Maslow
I’ve always taken the 5 levels to be more a series of ongoing processes .. not necessarily that you achieve them … more to reflect the focus at a moment in time .. also the triangle pinnacle is misleading in that the work going on in there is likely inversely proportional to the shape’s area … and finally you are almost constantly working on multiple levels at the same time.
But that’s my take - might not be what Abraham meant?
🖋️ They Buried Smiths. Now They Might Have To Bury TG Jones
The rebranding of WH Smith to TG Jones led to large and rapid declines in revenue - which means that the buyer of the brand did not actually undersatand what they were buying.
Meanwhile - over on 🔗 Blusky
Before ATmosphere
After ATmosphere
No doubt the old one is too overpowering and ‘all logo’ - no message. BUT - not a fan of the new one either.
🏗️ Need to find where that layout can be changed.
🔗 Anthropic, AI and The “Numbers” Problem.
A $40 billion run rate with 40 percent net revenue retention is a different company from a $40 billion run rate with 130 percent net revenue retention. From outside, the two are indistinguishable. The valuation gets the same multiple in both cases. The first company is worth a fraction of the second. This is not a small problem. It is the entirety of the problem.
💬 Om
It’s not an earth shattering observation. Anyone in ‘the business’ knows this. So it isn’t ignorance - it is deception.
Also important … Om gets to it in a paragraph to get to where Ed Zitron arrives after a 20 minute monologue. Am I wrong?
I wouldn’t worry too much about CBS becoming another Fox News. Roger Ailes, who created Fox News, was a genius - an evil genius, but a genius nonetheless in the practice of manipulating the medium of television for political ends. Bari Weiss is not this sort of genius. Rather than being transformed into a sophisticated right wing propaganda operation, it is more likely that CBS News is just made dumb and pointless.
💬 Hamilton Nolan
Which is why I dislike this whole trend of digital twins, that has become gospel in Silicon Valley. The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about how prominent names in the industry are creating digital twins, because they are just so busy and it is better for the rest of us to engage with a copy.
💬 Om
The problem with modern tech is that they don’t have any historical perspective. Did they never see 🔗🎬 Multiplicity
Congrats to my friend Manton Reece, a San Antonio fan, for their victory in the Western Conference last night. The Knicks will be playing them starting on Wednesday for the NBA championship. Knicks representing the east, Spurs for the west.
💬 Dave Winer
@dave / @manton - I am thinking ‘Cage Fight’❓
Or is that a spectacle strictly reserved for tech billionaires running surveillance states?
I am often accused by Jax of being a ‘music snob’. ‘No’. I say. ‘I just know what I like’. According to Lin Fisher who writes: 🔗 I Confess, I’m a Snob seems to agree. Music is just one domain she looks at. Another is food .. on which topic Jax is an absolute ‘snob’ - though of course being a gentleman, I would never bring it up.
In fairness to Jax, she sent me the link.
One kind of snob looks down at others.
The kind I’m describing looks inward at self.
One is about superiority. The other is about alignment.
And the difference between the two is everything.
💬 Lin Fisher
🎥 On The Waterfront ★★★★
In a nutshell - if you havent seen it - watch it. If you have seen it - watch it again.