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.

Even if my scammers had been slightly foiled, there was no guarantee that they couldn’t just start fresh with new profiles. The system was still in place. Airbnb has created a web of more than 7 million listings built largely on trust, easily exploitable by those willing to do so. Maybe it’s not so surprising that the company would rather play a half-assed game of whack-a-mole than answer basic questions about its verification process. For every person who doesn’t receive a complete refund, Airbnb makes money.

I've had good experiences on Airbnb so far, but this sort of thing makes me wary about continuing to push my luck. The hotel aggregation sites are little better.

The cost of ownership is up front and visible; the cost of access is back-dated and hidden.

I need to print this and stick it where I will see it all the time until I have internalised it.

Sensible, practical advice, it seems to me.

Good perspective

Very thorough guide that covers both how and why you might want to do this. Most interesting, it links to a Python script for adding a Table of Contents to a PDF, which would be very handy indeed.

But shouldn't it be "digitising"?

This is how you do this sort of thing.

Look at the people, not at the institutions.

Say it isn't so!

Don’t get me wrong. I am sure a lot of people like free stuff. But I just find it hard to justify removing ads / bypassing paywalls from external content while enforcing paywall for some Medium stories.

Well now, there's a thing.

h/t Peter Molnar

All of the above.

Preparedness pays -- at least for the Irish PM.

Brexit means Brexit — that is one of the dumbest statements that has ever been uttered by a head of state. And I’m aware that there are thousands of tweets one could compare it with. I mean, it’s simultaneously meaningless and wrong.”

I don’t agree with Roger Scruton on much, but I do agree with him that limiting social dance to clubs and EDM festivals where everyone is drunk or high is not good for us. Scruton’s solution is to yearn for the glory days of eighteenth century Europe. My solution is to look to our friends from the African diaspora, whose social norms around music and dance are very different from those of white people, and in a lot of ways, more grown up.

Very well said; one the other hand, there is always Irish, Scottish and English "folk dancing" and its many derivatives, which are so much fun and which I could do, more and more often.