Category: Internet

Sunday Morning Reading

History has its layers and facts might be damned, but that’s what myths are made of.

Tick. Tock. Or is that TikTok? Regardless, it’s the last Sunday Morning Reading column before things take a drastic turn here in the United States. Plenty to be concerned about, but Sunday Morning Reading will sill keep chugging along until they turn out the lights. That said, quite a bit of today’s chugging focuses on that messy intersection of tech and politics, because, well, you know, that muddled mess of things is what attracts my attention. They are no small things.

Speaking of small things, David Todd McCarty suggests that when we get too overwhelmed perhaps it’s time to get small. Check out Let’s Get Small.

There’s A Reason Why It Feels Like The Internet Has Gone Bad is actually a short interview with Cory Doctorow by Allison Morrow about a term Doctorow coined that I think fits much (and not just on the Internet) of what we’re already living through and what we’re in for: enshittification.

George Dillard wonders why modern business tycoons are like their forbears in Nerds, Curdled.

Jared Yates Sexton has some thoughts on dealing with what’s coming in Back Into The Breach: Thoughts On The Second Trump Presidency. Good read.

The toadstools salivating to use government to dismantle government no longer grow in shadowy, dank places. Joan Westenberg takes on Silicon Valleys’s Secret Love Affair With The State.

John Gruber highlights and expands on an article by Kyle Wiggins at TechCrunch that hit amidst the growing chaos this week when Google announced that’s its ever declining search product would now require JavaScript in order to use Google Search. Check out Google Search, More Machine Now Than Man, Begins Requiring JavaScript.

Joseph Finder takes a look at The Russian Roots Of American Crime Fiction—And The O.G. It’s not that the characters created by Dostoevsky and Gogol were Russian. They were merely human.

We love stories, but we love our myths more. Neil Steinberg takes on The Myths of Telephone History. The lies we agree upon might just be the most pungent of them all.

To close things out, NatashaMH reminds us in Chestnut Roasting On An Open Fire that some say that “the strength of a superhero is determined by the strength of his villain—the greater the adversary, the mightier the hero.”  We’re about to find out if that’s true or not.

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.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

There Are Two Fights to Save Democracy. Pay Attention to Both

Enjoy the enthusiastic fight ahead, but remember it doesn’t end on Election Day.

Call it joy, call it a sugar high, call it a huge sigh of relief. Whatever you call it, there’s no doubt that that the Harris/Walz campaign has energized the political dynamic in America. The momentum at the moment is swinging the Democrats way. On the other side, the campaign to elect a convicted felon, child rapist, and doddering old dangerous fool is still trying to figure out how to run a campaign while keeping its candidate’s mouth shut.

At the moment it certainly feels like the enthusiasm will carry through to election day on November 5th. There’s certainly no guarantee of that, because as this last month or so has proven anything can happen. But in the short election cycle this has become, the chances are increasing. To make good on that rush of enthusiasm a lot of work has to happen, because as we all know the margins of victory in each and every state will matter, once the other side starts playing the games they’ve been plotting since Trump’s defeat in 2020.

While the work has to happen to ensure large victory margins, work also has to happen on what is sure to come following Election Day on November 5th. I hope you’re paying attention during this surge of relief, because the MAGAt folks have already laid significant ground work to do what they tried to do in 2020 and move the vote into the House of Representatives.

If that someone does happen, the MAGAts will be in the driver’s seat towards its goal of putting Trump back in the White House. Even though the Dems may win the House back, it doesn’t appear that they will control the majority of House delegations. And if this election gets tossed into the House each state gets one vote. 26 votes decides the presidency.

So, pay attention to articles like these from The Bulwark and Rolling Stone. I don’t want to dampen any enthusiasm or be negative amidst all of the joy, but this underhanded work is happening and in some places is even locked in.  Yes, the Democrats are working to prevent this, as this article points out, but keep in mind that timing and the calendar don’t work when you dealing with corrupt officials, judges, and Supreme Court justices who will try to use existing laws and constitutional provisions to further their goals.

Here’s hoping that this dangerous story moves beyond the pages of the publications above and all of the good work that Rachel Maddow is doing to highlight it on cable. This needs to be a talked about loudly and often in the months ahead, as much as we need to talk about voting and increasing margins.

We can’t say we haven’t been warned.

You can 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. 

Slam! Destroy! What’s With This Boring Bullshit SEO Headline Writing?

Click bait headline writing has become so ever present, overused, and tired that it has certainly lost all meaning to anyone except the chronically bored or the algorithmically programmed.

Whether it was “Pow!” or “Bam! Zoom!” it was usually the preface to “Right in the Kisser!” That’s what Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Cramden would exclaim to his wife Alice in The Honeymooners when she got under his skin. For some reason SEO experts think we’re attracted to this kind of cartoonish, wrestlemania-type of violence and have slobbishly skewed that assumption into the seemingly never ending stream of headlines saying “So and So Slams So and So” or “So and So Destroys So and So.” Internet publications and ad mills have followed the gravy train right along. “Rips,” “blasts,” and “bashes” also seem popular.

This type of click bait headline writing has become so ever present, overused, and tired that it has certainly lost all meaning to anyone except the chronically bored or the algorithmically programmed. As lazy as it is, I guess it works. Which is not only a sad commentary on humanity but a sadder one on algorithms and the SEO industry.

I mean where’s the creativity? Why not use “lambasts,” “harangues,” “admonishes,” “berates,” “objurgates?” Or for those with syllabaphobia how about “dress down,” “haul over the coals,” “lays into,” “lace into, or “slag off?” 

And just imagine how many of those boringly inept and inutile headlines are being fed into AI training engines. 

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.