So now you can just suspend elected officials … got it.


‘Current Affairs’ - Against Liberalism

and

The Bulwark - The Distinct Shame of Senate Republicans.

Just a couple of nicely, spot on well-written pieces that rumbled through my timeline today.


Lake Geneva, with more than 280 km2 is the largest lake in France.

… says Maps On The Web.

Not to quibble … ok I am going to quibble …

Lake Geneva isn’t entirely in France - and the bit that is - is smaller than the bit in Switzerland.

Carry on.


🎶 I am starting to prepare for Season 3 of The People First Podcast - and was reviewing some of the greatest hits from Seasons 1 and 2 … stumbling across this gem from a show I did with Scott Schorr. It’s one minute long.


Let’s Make Amazon Into a Dumb Pipe

Interesting idea, great points - but not sure how easily

  1. it could be done

  2. it would be to adopt by the average person

and if it did happen - how long Amazon would allow it for.


Vodafone & Deutsche Telekom to introduce persistent user tracking.

Seriously - with everything going on in the world they think this is a good idea?


“I mostly watch, read and listen to news to keep track of how they’re screwing us.”

💬 Dave Winer

😂😂😂😂😂


Think the martech landscape is big? Here’s the size of the software industry.

Click through for the picture.

If like me, you find Scott’s marketing landscape graphics somewhere on the spectrum of useless to pointless - then the software landscape is going to grate even more.


Free Content Marketing = Content Free Marketing

“The Content Marketing category is almost $700 billion. Almost every company is working on content and increasing their content marketing investments. And yet, when was the last time you got a piece of content marketing and you said that was legendary? Let’s dig into how the marketing world got duped into content free marketing, aka saying nothing everywhere, and why this is one of the largest opportunities hiding in plain sight.”

💬 Chris Lockhead

He’s not everyone’s cup of tea - but he often makes very good points - AND - he knows how to talk about a topic on his podcast in under 15 minutes rather than three hours (though this podcast at 1 hour is an exception). Still, worth a listen … or just buy his book - since he is essentially doing a Doctorow - reading his own book!

I THINK it was Hubspot that pretty much lead the way on ‘Content Marketing’ (defined the category as Lockhead would have it). It felt wrong then … still does … maybe finally some sanity will prevail?

A boy can hope - can’t he?

Podcast


We Need an America First Immigration Policy

Not just America, same problem in the UK and New Zealand.

Citizens of those three countries (and probably others) simply do not want to do the dross jobs that keep a country going, cut off immigration and you undercut your country.


If 911 Had Been Treated As A Crime ...

“The 9/11 attacks could have been dealt with as a crime. This would have been sane and consistent with precedent. When lawbreaking occurs, we seek the perpetrators, rather than starting wars with unrelated parties. When the IRA set off bombs in London, nobody called for air strikes on West Belfast (or on Boston, where a great deal of IRA funding came from). When the Oklahoma City bombing was found to have been perpetrated by a white supremacist associated with ultra-right militias, there was no call to obliterate Idaho or Montana. Instead, the attacker was searched for, found, apprehended, brought to court, found guilty, and sentenced.”

“This was not the approach taken by the Bush administration. Rather than seek out and punish the guilty—and only the guilty—it swiftly launched a “global war on terror” that led to the deaths of millions.”

💬 Noam Chomsky and Nathan J Robinson

Read What Do We Owe Afghanistan?


Has Apple Forgotten How to Market?

Questions about Apple and its TV+ marketing

“Marketing during the era of peak TV is hard, but as someone who lives dead center in Apple’s ecosystem, I hadn’t even heard about “Black Bird” until last week, when Tim Cook mentioned it on the analyst call and I saw an extended trailer for it on last week’s “Friday Night Baseball.”

💬 Jason Snell

Odd. Any time I switch to 🍎📺 - Blackbird is front and center. I wonder why that is not the case for Jason?

As for

‘It is interesting that Apple, a master of product marketing, is perceived as struggling when it comes to promoting its entertainment shows.”

Are they?

Are they really?


In Case You Aren't Yet Convinced Of The Mess We Are In ...

Two examples - In one email.

 


False Online Reviews

“Bounty, a startup that pays users for posting reviews to select products on TikTok, raised $4.7 million in seed funding from consumer venture capital firm M13.”

💬 Mahira Dayal - The Information

and

In case you need another reason to get off Twitter ….

“Twitter donated $25,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which is raising funds for the anti-abortion movement, newsletters Popular Information and Platformer together reported. The association is using its resources to elect attorneys general that will enforce abortion bans in various states.”

💬 Mahira Dayal - The Information


A little bit of menu reorganizing on the microblog … I would have so much time on my hands if I stopped tinkering!



In the last 📚Reader’s Republic, I said England (not the UK) suffers from many things, not least of which is an identity crisis.

I just stumbled across this.

Tolkien’s Writings Were a Mythology for the History of England

(Yes I need to get the RR notes published, sorry!)


Musk’s antics are turning Tesla customers against Tesla

Maybe the world is about to get better?


The Bluestocking, vol 244

“I don’t know about you, but my enjoyment of the Tory leadership election has increased a thousandfold since I realised that Rishi Sunak reminds me of Niles Crane.”

💬 Helen Lewis

ROTFLMAO - is that still a thing?

It should be!


Instagram walks back its changes.

“Users serve Instagram, not the other way around.”

💬 Casey Newton

“Like all of them.”

💬 John Philpin


Stowe Boyd : Preferably Paradoxical

“Quiet Quitting”

A new term to me - but yes.