> There’s probably a piece to be written someday that digs deep into the way liberal podcasts tends to pair well with the open podcast ecosystem and the way conservative podcasts pairs with over-the-top premium subscription models (see also: Glenn Beck and his activities with The Blaze), but this is not that day.

> We tested Lydon against a bunch of other people, and he came out top among Britain's housewives because they felt he was so uncompromising, he'd never just do an ad for the money - he'd only do it if he genuinely believed what he was saying.

> In other words, he was the best person to do what we were paying him to do, because he would never do what we were paying him to do, so if he did that, it's OK.

> So Mastodon is what we don’t need. What do we need right now?

> Decentralized protocols — true distributed social platforms — are very possible. There’s already a chat protocol, called Tox, that leverages a distributed hash table to store information globally across all instances, without permitting anyone to access information they don’t have the key for. It has many different clients, no centralized API with absurd limitations, and no one specially privileged official client. It’s not for persistent messaging and posts, of course, but it’s not terribly difficult to imagine a protocol that could archive content locally, that operates without any central servers or control. If we’re going to allow ourselves to be driven off Twitter, let’s not be lazy about it. Let’s work together and build something no corporation can control, and no one accident — or calculated act of malice — can wipe out.

This is part of an ongoing project, trying to determine algorithmically what constitutes a reliable piece of news online. Good luck with that, although I suspect it will have no impact on people who have no desire to judge accuracy in the first place.

Not going to listen to the podcast; life is way too short for that. But a couple of #indieweb quotes from My WordPress:

> “We’re trying to revitalize the independent web,” Matt Mullenweg said. He’s 33 now. “It’s not like these big sites are going anywhere. They’re fantastic. I use all of them, but you want balance. You need your own site that belongs to you… like your own home on the Internet.”

So, how about total indiewebness in the basic WordPress core and default theme?

> “Other sites provide space,” he said. “They provide distribution in exchange for owning all of your stuff. You can’t leave Facebook or Twitter and take all of your followers with you.”

> That’s why he recommends having your own website. It’s yours. Not Facebook’s. Not Business Insider’s or Huffington Post’s. It’s yours.

But no mention of which comes first? Does it even matter?

Facts about African agriculture. Kudos to @mfbellemare and his coeditor and contributors.