I was hesitating to blog about it because I was embarrassed at how my website looked. This is it, I thought. If it has gotten so bad that I avoid blogging because I don’t want people to be reminded of how old my website looks, I need to get my shit together and fix this, I told myself.

Isn't that the most perfect reason of all?

I haven't used the library myself, but I'm glad to know it is there.

Yay! That is all.

The madness of some markets.

In a nutshell ...

Once Google set the plot point, backlinks became hard to ignore. And marketers looking to get an edge started using a variety of tactics to gain a coveted spot on the front page that didn’t involve actually creating good content that people want to read.

Tim Bray, reflecting on the numbers for his Bye Amazon post.

But aren’t blogs dead? · Um, nope. For every discipline-with-depth that I care about (software/Internet, politics, energy economics, physics), if you want to find out what’s happening and you want to find out from first-person practitioners, you end up reading a blog.

Was true, is true, will be true.

I know everybody and her mother have already linked this and bookmarked it, but I want it here for myself, because there is some good stuff in this list.

I have a suspicion that people retreat into protocol work to escape from the human work that must be done. And there’s no getting around it: we should learn to better work in this medium and we are really resisting having to confront it.

This is a very real tension, to me.

So many interesting ideas about not returning to normal when (if?) this thing is over.

Very interesting longish article on the role of the critic today. Artists are increasingly unleashing their fans on critics, and ignorant "critics" are doing a poor job of serving their audience. I don't know, though, how new this phenomenon is. Sure, in the olden days it was hard to get 3 million people issuing death threats, but nor was the relationship between critics and creators always a love-in of mutual respect.

Nicely anachronistic writing tool, too.

There have been endless articles on how to work from home. And so many of them are wrong in one way or another, yet each proclaims itself to be true for you and your productivity. The fact is that working from home means a lot of different things, and every individual has to find their own rhythm. And for some of us, it’s downright magical compared to working in an office.

At last, some sense.

I’ve learned to reframe “procrastination” as “marination.”

I'm still learning. Have been for 45 years.

On the plus side, maybe more people will stop using "exponential" as a synonym for "very large".

Nah.

"I calculate that the reductions in air pollution in China caused by this economic disruption likely saved 20-times more lives in China than have currently been lost due to the virus in that country"

Oh boy! Data analysis rocks.

[W]hen they’re just talking smack, maybe the best thing to do would be to ignore them – and instead rely on sources who actually know what they’re talking about and reporters who know enough about health and science and reality to discern between what’s true and what’s not.

That would be almost all the time, right?

👍

Lots of interesting ideas here from Venkatash Rao, although I still don't get the attraction of tweetstorms, or whetever they are called nowadays. Certainly, though, the focus on text as the thing has always made sense to me. Presentation matters, of course it does, but so does content. Just as it does in audio.

Smart piece, pointing out not only the strengths of Clive James as a cultural critic, but also his vision of what the entails.

I find it hard to believe that some university department of media studies, or whatever, isn't falling over itself to take over James' site and give it the care he obviously wanted to give it.

I'm not sure I actually read about any biggest mistake, apart from maybe not being united, in the immensely parochial piece. But I can't disagree with this:

Podcasting didn’t start in control of the monied few and gradually become democratized. Podcasting started as a democracy, and now faces the incursion of the monied few.

And while I don't mind about the monied few taking over (well, not too much) I do mind that they are even called podcasts. They really are radio on demand, and we storied few shouldn't be judged by the same standards.

I did switch to fish, once upon a time. But as I barely understood bash, that was probably a mistake. Anyway, I just want to endorse Dan's idea:

create shells cash, trash, theclash, and bangersandmash.

That is all.

This feels to me like two separate posts, the second building on the first. And while the first fascinated me, as an outsider, the second, although undoubtedly important, was of much less interest. But if you are into culture, give it a try.

Last Christmas I vowed to spend less time on my smartphone. It worked — until a couple of months ago, when I started using Twitter much more. Why? I had something to sell. That seems wretchedly appropriate.

Yup, that seems right. Even when no money actually changes hands.

For one thing, it's a lot easier to call yourself a "nutritionist". Then again, where do food scientists work except in industry, or training more food scientists?

Very good to know.

But seriously: why does it seem so weird to pay for a podcast, when I pay for music, films, TV etc?

And answer came there none.

I’m pretty sure that I will also continue to refer to them as blog posts, not blogs. I may be the last holdout of this nomenclature in 2020. I never planned to die on this hill, but here we are.

No, @adactio, you are not alone.

John Naughton's view of the huge NYT investigation into smartphone tracking. And to people who moan that the NYT is complicit in enabling tracking, I say, sure, but that doesn't diminish the importance of the report.

"TikTok versus Instagram is pretty much the perfect synecdoche of domestic cozy versus premium mediocre."

Found via philgyford, I think I understand what this is all about, and I'm a little bit guilty as charged. I wonder what Grant McCracken would say.

Tim Harford certainly belaboured the point that safety systems may make things more prone to failure, what with the Oscars fiasco (two systems bad; three systems worse). Wheeling out Galileo was a masterstroke. Little could he have anticipated that someone who actually knew about statics would be listening..

Dr. Drang kindly shared his expertise.

I think we can forgive Galileo this lapse. He was creating new knowledge and, given his trouble with the Vatican, was desperate to get it published. Editing was of secondary concern at best.

I’m less forgiving of Tim Harford. Anyone who’s taken a statics class could have told him that the story on which he was basing “Galileo’s Principle” didn’t demonstrate that principle.

I wonder whether Tim Harford will even see that. Probably not; comments are closed.

Fascinating stuff. I remember reading The Dice Man, and wondering, briefly, whether I would do something like that. Then I moved on.

Maybe they'll start to take communications professionals seriously ...

I wonder whether I'd have any of the same reactions if I re-read it, 20 years on?

One starting point is the old proverb, “Don’t wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and the pig enjoys it.” There’s truth in that. We just need to find a version that doesn’t dismiss our opponents as pigs.

And there's the rub, really. You have to get over thinking of them as pigs.