Sunday Morning Reading

“Scars speak more loudly than the sword that caused them.” – Paulo Coelho

It figures. You plan a weekend of yard work and Mother Nature reminds you she controls more than you do. In these parts that makes this a perfect chilly Sunday for a little Sunday Morning Reading. I’m not sure how, but a theme emerges in the collection of links I’m sharing this weekend, somehow suggesting that regardless of our feelings, the forces that seem to be conspiring against us just keep rolling. At some point, just like with the shifts in the weather, you just want some unshifting force to make it all stop.

Here in Chicago we’re seeing a number of theatre spaces closing. (We’re also seeing a few open.) On the national stage, we’re watching with dismay, anger, and sadness as The Kennedy Center is being shut down by cultural barbarians. Josef Palermo had an inside seat to that dismantling and tells the story in My Front-Row Seat To The Kennedy Center Implosion.

And while Madison Square Garden is more a venue for pure entertainment than the arts, the story about how its owner is using surveillance on its patrons and employees that upset the powers that be is a harbinger of things to come in all arenas of our lives. Check out The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine by Noah Shachtman and Robert Silverman.

Having experimented a bit with Artificial Intelligence in seeking information about a statue this weekend, my ongoing suspicions that this “way of the future” isn’t ready for today, much less tomorrow. The technology might be not ready for prime time, but the hype has never been. Kyle Chayka says A.I. Has A Message Problem Of It’s Own Making. I like this quote in the subhead, “If you tell people that your product will upend their way of life, take their jobs, and possibly threaten humanity, they might believe you.” True enough. And if those things are as incompetent as humans, what’s the damn point?

It’s all math. That’s one way to sum up any computing activity. Unless it comes to emotion. And yet, some think feelings are somewhere in the numbers. Mike Elgan writes, No, Math Doesn’t Have Feelings in response to those who must not have any feelings of their own, but are trying to add that into the AI equation.

Gaby Del Valle, says The Only Way To Fight Deepfakes Is By Making Deepfakes. Sounds like an arms race to me. We should be up in arms about it.

Speaking of arms races, Gideon Lewis-Kraus looks at AI in the war that isn’t a war, that’s over every week, but begins again every weekend once the markets close in How Project Maven Put AI Into The Kill Chain.

Apologies for so much AI linkage this week, but it’s been on my mind lately, especially since the news of Mythos broke. It’s the latest demon to fly out of Pandora’s box, and I’m afraid it’s not the last. Margie Murphy, Jake Bleiberg, and Patrick Howell O’Neill examine How Anthropic Learned Mythos Was Too Dangerous For The Wild.

CNN has a report by Saskya Vandoorne, Kara Fox, Niamh Kennedy, Eleanor Stubbs, and Marco Chacon called Exposing A Global Rape Academy. It’s a hard, but I think necessary read considering the topic is just how horrible humans can be to one another. Maybe we should hope the robots develop feelings. Too many humans seem to have stopped developing theirs.

Gail Beckerman says If You Want A Better World, Act Like You Live In It. I concur.

And to close out this week, Scars is a short story by Sigrid Nunez. Some scars can’t be seen. The ones we’re watching form daily, can be.

(Photo by the author.)

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Optimism comes every Spring, but Winter always nips at the edges

Temperatures are warming. Every day brings more daylight, more blooms in the gardens and trees Yet on the edges of two of my interests, politics and tech, things continue to darken a bit. The common denominator between the two? Humans. But then again, humans are the ones who read this Sunday Morning Reading column. As well as the bots that scrape it of course.

PXL 20260411 142247979.

Some of the big news in tech this week was about a new AI product from Anthropic called Mythos. So fraught with potential peril that Anthropic gathered together the major tech heads to form a consortium to keep lid on it. Monica Verma has a good run down with her piece Did Claude Mythos Break The Cybersecurity Industry.

M.G. Siegler’s The Causal Catastrophe of AI takes a look at maneuvering around Mythos as well. Call me crazy, but I don’t think there’s anything casual about this development.

The reason I’m a pessimist on this is that I agree with a comment from JA Westenberg, “Being wrong about doom costs you nothing.” Check out Optimism Is Not A Personality Flaw. The piece walks a line. You should read it and walk it too.

Mike Elgan takes a look at Black Traffic: The Corporate Sabotage Technique You’ve Never Heard Of. Now you have.

Ng Chong examines The Echo Chamber In Your Pocket. Follow that up with this from Julie Jargon: Over 4,732 Messages, He Fell In Love With An AI Chatbot. Now He’s Dead.(That’s an Apple News lnk. This is an archived link.)

David Todd McCarty thinks one path to reclaiming power over information might be in The Return Of The Local Newspaper.You don’t know what you had until it’s gone.

This Is What Will Ruin Public Opinion Polling For Good. The “this,” according to Lief Weatherby, is something called silicon sampling. Yes, you guessed it. AI.

Coming back around to my comment at the top about not having faith in humans, OpenAI’s Sam Altman got his turn in the barrel (again) this week. Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz spent quite a bit of time putting this piece together. Check out Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted? FWIW, I don’t need much more time than it takes to put this column together every week to answer their question in the negative. And not just about Altman.

Mean while Altman responded on his blog, after someone tossed a Molotov cocktail at his house. He says “I have underestimated the power of words and narratives.” For someone who has scraped all the words he can off of the Internet and tried to turn them into something smarter than humans, you’d think his machines could have at least figured out that words have power.

Natasha MH sums up a lot of my lack of faith in humans in her piece, Stop Blaming The Chatbot. As she puts it, “AI didn’t make you stupid. You were already getting there.”

Sorry to be so negative this week, but that’s where I’m living., But to change the tone, Neil Steinberg turns around the Latin term, memto mori, (remember to die) around to memento vivere, or remember to live. A nice little bit of humanity to close out this week with Little LIfe.

(Photo from the author)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Sunday Morning Reading

A basket of good writing to share

For those who celebrate Easter and Passover, and all who do not celebrate either, may you find some bit of peace on this Sunday morning, however you see yourself and the world. I’d like to say this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading is filled with Easter eggs, but instead it’s just the usual basket stuffed with links to interesting topics and stories that I like to share. Enjoy.

It’s good to be seen, certainly the way you see yourself. When seen by someone who doesn’t know you, that’s eye-opening. Check out Natasha MH’s The Taxi Driver Knew.

The war that isn’t a war in Iran continues. Whatever that story is, it is still being written. Given that this might be heading to the culmination of a conflict that has simmered, and occasionally boiled over, for decades if not longer, there are a few stories out there that offer preface. He Helped Stop Iran From Getting The Bomb by David D. Kirkpatrick is one worth reading.

JA Westenberg’s The “Passive Income” Trap Ate A Generation of Entrepreneurs is also one heckuva a read. There’s nothing passive about this take.

Seva Gunitsky takes on The Incel Global Order. Somebody needs to.

As the technology we use advances, in some spheres some are stepping back. Joshua Cohen takes a look in Sweden Goes Back To Basics, Swapping Screens For Books In The Classroom.

Social Media is under the microscope again after two recent court verdicts against Meta. Chris Castle takes a look with The Social Media Verdicts Are In. Now Ask The Hard Question: Where Was The Board? Counting the money, I imagine. Hat tip to Stan Stewart for this one.

In the category of no easy answers, Mathew Ingram also examines what’s going on in social media with Social Media May Be Bad For You But The Remedy Could Be Worse.

On the Artificial Intelligence front there are always interesting topics cooking as the AI purveyors cook the planet. I wrote about two fascinating pieces yesterday, and today I’m highlighting Angela Fu’s An AI Company Set Out To Fix News Deserts. Instead, It Copied Local Journalists Work. Something tells me we’re going to be seeing more of this going forward.

Apple is, I assume, winding up its week celebrating its 50th Anniversary. So much has been written on that topic because there is indeed much to celebrate and much history to contemplate while looking ahead. Here are four pieces that caught my eye, the first three primarily because they are more personal than historical, the fourth is a look ahead.

John Moltz gives us Missed Connections: Me and Apple.

James Thomson is one of my favorite Apple developers. His Apple At 50: Gonna Be, Gonna Be Golden is indeed a personal journey.

Adam and Tonya Engst have been writing Tidbits since 1990. I started reading it shortly thereafter. What Apple’s 50th Anniversary Misses is certainly different than most, but one that mirrors the thoughts of many on this anniversary.

And Marco Arment, looking ahead, has penned A Letter To John Ternus, the guy everyone assumes will don the CEO mantle in the future.

Baseball is back. And every team and their fans are dreaming of a championship. David Todd McCarty spins a bit of fiction that’s baseball adjacent, but rooted deep in dreams in The Taste Of A Dream.

To conclude this week, this story by Audrey Pachuta very much sums up the contradictions we’re living through at the moment. Check out A Student Set A Goal To Run Every Street In Chicago And Inspired A City. Now He Must Leave The Country.

May you find peace however you can.

(Photo from the author.)

Sunday Morning Reading

Life is a roll of the loaded dice

Nostalgia can be a mind fuck. Democracy, journalism, personal computing, they all feel like games with rules we all understood. No longer. Yes, the house always wins. Especially when everything feels like a war we’re not sure is beginning of ending. When all bets are off if feels more like sticking your head in the mouth of a tiger than a roll of the dice. Yet we play on. Time for a little Sunday Morning Reading.

Eyestetix studio m0EzHtexapU unsplash.

Kicking off is an excellent piece from JA Westenberg called Everything’s Casino. From Iran to the Dutch tulip crisis, with a dash of Dostoevsky. The section on When The Future Stopped Arriving is aces.

Follow that up Jon Ganz’s Command-Shift-War. Snake eyes.

Spend some time with this terrific series from Quinn Norton on Emptywheel that began a little over a year ago with A Normal Person’s Explainer On What Generative AI Is And Does. It concludes with an epilogue that is titled Small Models, Gently Loved, and subtitled An AI Speculative Fiction. It won’t spoil the rest of the series, so I’d suggest starting with that fictional epilogue, but also checking out Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

John Gruber and Manton Reece both linked to this piece by Les Orchard called Grief And The AI Spit. I’m glad they did. You will be too.

Orchard’s piece above kicks off talking about how making computers do things is fun. Which is a nice companion to Sam Henri Gold’s reaction to Apple releasing the MacBook Neo called This Is Not The Computer For You. There’s nostalgia there, certainly. But I think it’s deeper than that. I’m betting Apple’s stake in the next game is solid.

Speaking of gambling, McKay Coppins was staked by his bosses at The Atlantic to a year long escapade to dive into the rise of gambling. His piece Sucker, tells the tale of his year as a degenerative gambler.

There’s an excellent series worth your attention from various writers on The Verge titled AI vs. The Pentagon: Killer Robots, Mass Surveillance, and The Red Lines. We sure are betting the farm on this, aren’t we?

If not advertising, then now what? That’s the question Hamilton Nolan poses in Patrons of Journalism.

In a piece on democracy dating back a few years, David Todd McCarty sticks his and our heads in the mouth of the tiger in Dreaming of Tigers. The house and the tiger always win.

(Image from Eyestetix Studio on Unsplash.)

Sunday Morning Reading

“The life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” -David Hume

On the weekend when some parts of the world think they can alter time by simply changing the clocks, I’m reminded of the biggest lesson most learn in life: we’re each not the center of the universe. Most learn it. Some never do, or if they do, they continue to operate under that delusion. We pretty good at setting up systems and structures that reinforce and rely on that delusional thinking. Somehow that seems to be the theme running through the articles and writing I collected this week for this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

Bronze statue of a child sitting on an outdoor stone bench with legs crossed, reading an open book that rests on their lap, a small bird perched on the top edge of the book, and a stack of books beside them, with a paved walkway, grass lawn, and buildings in the background. Kicking things off is the story of how Humanity Altered an Asteroid’s Orbit Around The Sun by Becky Ferreira. The article links to the ScienceAdvances abstract on the nudge that might be as good as a wink.

Last week the war in the Middle East had just kicked off as I was publishing this column. This week it continues. And, yes, it’s a war, regardless of the stupid debate. Jonathan Taplin looks at The Terrifying New Era of American Imperialism, and Jay Caspian Kang examines The No-Explanation War.

“Society grows great when old men plant trees who shade they’ll never sit under” and the opposite of that wisdom is how Scott Galloway kicks off his piece on Role Models.

Ali Breland takes a looks at those yearning for a return to McCarthyism in ‘We Need To Do McCarthyism to the Tenth Power.’ Turning back time only works as a song lyric.

JA Westenberg offers up a A Soft-Landing Manual For The Return To The Second Gilded Age. It’s tough to avoid the usual hard crashes.

The Dodgy Code examines The Great AI Arbitrage: Making A Killing Before Your Client Wises Up. The inevitable turnaround on this is going to be something to see.

Before we get to that turnaround, Mathew Ingram says The Danger Posed By AI Just Got A Lot More Real All Of A Sudden. Going to be interesting to watch AI bots fighting each other to be the center of the universe. If we’re around to see it.

David Todd McCarty is Searching For Originality In A Sea of Slop. Even on dry land that’s tough.

I’ve been revisiting a lot of Shakespeare of late, so this piece by Alice Cunningham caught my eye. Check out Author To Revive Shakespeare Club After 300 Years. We could all do with revisiting the his works.

And to conclude this week, James Verini brings us the wild tale of The Man Who Broke Into Jail.

(Photo taken by the author.)

Sunday Morning Reading

Slicing life close to the bone

It could be said that the world is off its axis. Or it could be said that we’re just slicing the meat closer and closer to the bone. Because we don’t know what we don’t know about the war the U.S and Israel launched against Iran I’ll leave off any direct links on that topic for this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. Be warned though, some might be peripherally related. Things happen that way. I’m sure there will be plenty to share in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, here is the usual serving of links on a variety of topics that caught my eye this week. You’re on your own for the tzatziki.

Parthenon 14.

David Todd McCarty is bringing his writings from other platforms to his own site, and some of his earlier writings often strike with new currency. This piece, Defiantly Daft, Duplicity Delicious is certainly one that does.

What is journalism for? Good question these days, but it’s actually been an important one for quite awhile. Take a look at this piece from 1989 from Janet Malcolm called The Journalist And The Murder-I.

Journalism, like everything else, might be under fire at the moment, some of it friendly, some of it not so. Check out Zack Whittaker’s adventure in FBI Agents Visited My Home About An Article I Wrote, And Now I Can’t Go To Mexico.

Tom Nichols says The Republican Party Has A Nazi Problem. Well, duh.

One of the many charges against Artificial Intelligence is what it will do to the cost of the energy needed to power it. Chris Castle takes a look in Update: Trump’s “Ratepayer Protection” Pitch Becomes A Private Power Plan for AI — But Grassroots Revolt Won’t Fade. Hat tip to Stan Stewart for this one.

Apple is about to release a number of products this week at a time that it is under increased criticism on a number of fronts. Recently, Jason Snell of Six Colors released The Six Colors Report Card, in which he surveys a number of the Apple faithful on how things went in the last year and compares that to year’s previous. The scores are always interesting, but the commentary is even more so, which you can read here. Also of interest is Kieran Healy’s charting out the bad vibes based on that commentary.

Speaking of Apple, Wesley Hilliard takes a look at some of those bad vibes in Apple’s Week February 27: Chasing The Puck.

On a local Chicago front and also on the tech beat, The Chicago Tribune’s Editorial Board takes on a local (yet owned by Albertsons) grocery store’s shopping app in Fix Your Lousy Shopping App, Jewel-Osco! Having suffered through using this app, and watching store personnel and other customers show their distaste for it, I can agree. Fix the lousy app.

Libraries, like so much else, are under attack these days. So this piece from 2017 from Eliza McGraw reminds us of a bit of history. Check out Horse-Riding Librarians Were The Great Depression’s Bookmobiles. Knowledge, like life, finds a way.

Sunday Morning Reading

Weird plants, weird politics, and weird tech

Winter’s back. Though less here in the Midwest than it looks to be on the Atlantic Coast. And it’s another Sunday. So time for some Sunday Morning Reading between shoveling sessions.This day of rest features a collection of writing on tech, politics, science, botany, and bots. There’s even a bit of satire. All written by humans. Not sure who hired them though.

Shutterstock 232794637. Writing satire is tough these days with the world being what it is. David Todd McCarty found a way with The Risk Of Inflation In The Age of Plutocracy. You don’t always get what you overpay for.

Speaking of overpaying, Ed Zitron takes a look at what he sees is a yet another looming financial crisis. This one is The AI Data Center Financial Crisis. It is intriguing that we haven’t heard much about how AI might help fix the rigged accounting game. I mean “fix” as in actually make the numbers resemble reality. h/t to Ian Robinson for that one.

Imagine that. A scientist has discovered a way to harvest water from dry air in the desert. Natricia Duncan takes on the discovery in ‘Reimagining Matter’: Nobel Laureate Invents Machine That Harvests Water From Dry Air. A boon to humanity if it scales. Next work on doing the same for political hot air.

Meet Strongylodon Macrobotrys. Or rather let Neil Steinberg introduce you to the botanical find and the entomological roots of this plant that has its roots in the “intersection of botany and colonialism.” It’s also an interesting story in accountability which seems as rare as that plant these days.

Mike Elgan asks Is AI Killing Technology? The headline might challenge the Betteridge Law of Headlines depending on what vibe you have about AI.

Continuing on the Artificial Intelligence beat for a beat, Kyle MacNeill takes a look at The Rise of RentAHuman, The Marketplace Where Bots Put People To Work. I’ve often said the place to start with replacing humans in the workforce is at the top.

Political winds might seem like they are shifting faster than anyone can predict these days. One thing’s for certain, neither U.S. party owns the mantle of most incapable. Mark Leibovich thinks The Democrats Aren’t Built For This. I happen to agree. But then is anybody? Because who knows what “this” is? It certainly isn’t politics. Bean bag, hardball, or otherwise.

Apple seems to want to change things up with its iPhone hardware lineup over the next few years. Of course that means changes to software as well. Matt Birchtree thinks it’s inevitable that Apple Will Kill iPadOS. I think that’s correct as far as how we think of that OS today.

Whether it’s the Olympics or any other form of competition, once you reach the top, the air is always rare. But it eventually becomes stale. David Pierce takes a look at what it means to be number one on the Apple App Store in The Biggest App In The Whole Wide World.

The Chicago Bears have turned football into a hot political potato with news that they might be moving to Hammond, Indiana. Is it a negotiating tactic or the real deal? Nobody really knows. The Editorial Board of the Chicago Tribune like everyone else is confused saying The Chicago Bears of Hammond, Indiana, Is Bad News For Illinois. But What About Chicago? Oh. In case you didn’t know, we’ve got an election for governor happening in Illinois. Fumbling will occur.

(Image from ppl on Shutterstock)

Sunday Morning Reading

Big stuff is happening.

Something big is happening. Everywhere all at once. At a pace that seems like it’s uncontrollable. We can either try to keep up, or tune out. Those are the options. I choose to try and keep up, try and stay aware. Mostly just try. That’s one of the reason this Sunday Morning Reading column exists. To share some of the writing about some of things that I think keep me aware. Hope you agree.

Person in a bright yellow hoodie and jeans sits on a floor covered with newspaper pages, holding an open newspaper in front of their face so it hides their identity, with a wall of newspapers behind them. Photo by Egor vikhrev IFdQ6ea7r0s unsplash.

I took the first sentence of the above paragraph from the excellent post from Matt Shumer. Yes, it’s called Something Big Is Happening. Because there are so many big things happening. As a spoiler, Matt’s post addresses Artificial Intelligence. Pay attention.

“Art begins when the words stop.” That’s a quote from the excellent Every Brushstroke Is A Philosophy In Motion by Natasha MH. It’s the text of a Valentine’s Day speech of hers. Read these first two pieces back to back. Connect the dots. Pay attention.

A Great Social Rewilding Is Coming. So says, David Todd McCarty. So say I as well.

Wonderful actor Bob Odenkirk tells us what his agenda will be in I Will Be Your Next President. He nails the moment. If he ran I’m sure he’d get votes. Probably mine. Can’t be much worse than what we’ve recently seen.

Mike Elgan writes Why There’s No ‘Screenless’ Revolution. I happen to agree that there won’t be one. Anyone still watching 3D TV?

Curtis McHale takes on Binary Bias, Cancel Culture, and the Death of Nuance. Sadly, it wasn’t a quick or a painless death.

There’s no question that journalism is in as big a mess as most everything else. David Brooks Sucks. This Is Who Should Replace Him by John Warner lays out the case for the first sentence. But read it for the links to those who he thinks should replace him.

The surveillance state is going to the dogs thanks to a Super Bowl ad. Mathew Ingram tells us about Building the Panopticon: The Doorbell Camera Version.

It’s been quite a cold winter, though it’s warming up a bit in these midwestern parts, but apparently this cold weather across most of the U.S. led to increased demand for firewood and just about anything that will burn. Neil Vigdor writes about it Shivering Americans Snap Up Firewood As Winter Grinds On.

And since this is Valentine’s Day weekend, I’ll close the circle with Catherynne M. Valente’s piece, On Valentine’s Day. There are indeed worse things to feast over.

(Photo by E gor Vikhrev on Unsplash)

f you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Sunday Morning Reading

Football, opera, dying newspapers and politics are on the menu

Somehow amidst all we’re living through in the dual state of America it’s the Sunday of the Super Bowl. A dual state that will feature dueling half time spectacles. Apparently we have nothing better to fight over. Go figure. Even so, there’s Sunday Morning Reading to share on a variety of topics amidst it all. I’m avoiding links on Artificial Intelligence this Sunday, because I shared a few in a post on that topic earlier. If you’re interested you can find that here. So, onward.

Kicking off, Jason Snell penned a post on Apple’s Long History With The Super Bowl. Call me old fashioned but when a sports contest becomes as much about the commercials and half-time shows, I don’t think anybody wins regardless of how many points anyone scores.

If football or sports aren’t your cup of tea, perhaps the arts are. Ronald Blum tells us about ‘Monster’s Paradise,’ Lampooning US President Donald Trump, Has World Premiere At Hamburg Opera. It’s inspired by Alfred Jarry’s play “Ubu Roi.” I imagine it will be quite some time, if ever, we see this on an American opera stage. Although I can dream of seeing it at the Kennedy Center, restored from Trump’s desecrations long after he’s gone. (This week’s image above is a publicity still from the Hamburg State Opera.)

Media attention on ICE atrocities may be fading at the moment, but ProPublica continues to do excellent investigative work on the subject even after the headlines fade. Check out The Real Story Behind The Midnight Immigration Raid On A Chicago Apartment Building by Melissa Sanchez and Jodi S. Cohen.

It’s tough to keep up with the avalanche of things rolling our way. That’s certainly been true with the torrent of news surrounding the partial release of the Epstein files. There’s so much information that I can’t imagine anyone trying to sum it all up, and yet, Elizabeth Lopatto might have come damn near close in her piece, How The Men In The Epstein Files Defeated #MeToo. It’s a bigger article with an even more powerful scope than the #MeToo in the headline suggests.

Also addressing the scope of that mess, Anand Giridharadas says It’s So Much Bigger Than Epstein. I agree.

JA Westenberg tackles The Coherence Premium. No real hints here beyond this quote: “When I say coherence, I mean something specific: the degree to which every part of an operation derives from the same understanding, the same model of reality and set of priorities and tradeoffs.”

Ashley Parker writes about The Murder of The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, David Todd McCarty suggests that The Return of The Local Newspaper may be the path to reclaiming power over information and securing democracy. It certainly might beat the ways we seem to be trying now

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Sunday Morning Reading

Small Pieces Loosely Joined

Connecting the dots can be one helluva hard game when you have so many dots. The volume of dots and the plots might seem overwhelming, but, if you care to look, it’s easy to find the connective threads, thin though they may be. String them together and the picture becomes clearer. Take a look at the links shared in this Sunday Morning Reading column. If you can’t find the connections, I suggest you’re not even trying to look.

Different colored strands of yarn woven together into a strong strand. Shutterstock 504091696.

Dave Winer writes of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, what he considers the best description of the web. It fits for the web. It fits for most things.

JA Westenberg discusses Why Intelligence Is A Terrible Proxy For Wisdom. Smart.

Backseat Software. That’s how Mike Swanson sees the state of things with software that is constantly interrupting us. As he puts it, “the slow shift from software you operate as a tool to software as a channel that operates you.” Excellent read.

John Gruber thinks we should shift from calling the bad guys Nazis and facists, instead use The Names They Call Themselves. Come to think of it, not sure why it’s so hard to do so given the dictates of the brander-in-chief.

Good dots among the bad are easy to spot. Ava Berger tells the story of how A Red Hat, Inspired By A Symbol Of Resistance To Nazi Occupation, Gains Traction In Minnesota.

In the boiling battle that is Canada and the U.S., Cory Doctorow is elbows up with another of his speeches on enshittifcation. (I’m glad he publishes these.) Check out Disenshittification Nation.

If you’re looking for an antidote to all that’s flying around and at us, it’s tough. Gal Beckham says we can connect those dots through what we’re seeing in Minneapolis. She finds the right word to describe the activism, protests, political opposition, neighborism, and resistance. I won’t spoil it, but she threads them all together in There Is A Word For What Is Happening In Minneapolis.

David Todd McCarty suggests America is a dual state in Then They Came For Me.

Steven Levy says After Minneapolis, Tech CEOs Are Struggling To Stay Silent. Silence speaks volumes. So do actions. So too do “tepid free-floating empathy” memos that mean nothing. Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

Joshua Panduro Preston tells the story of John Carter Of Minnesota: The “Convict Poet” Who Won His Freedom.

Pro football fans, especially those in Chicago know Charles ‘Peanut’ Tillman and the “peanut punch” well. Most don’t know that after his gridiron career he became a FBI agent. Even more don’t know that he walked away from that second career after the immigration raids started. Dan Pompeo connects the dots in After Charles Tillman Transformed Football, He Joined The FBI. Then The Immigration Raids Started.

(image from RA2016 on Shutterstock)