Month: May 2025

EVERYTHING IS A COPY OF A COPY OF A COPY

From The Slow Death—and Occasional Resurrection—of Original Reporting:

How We Fix It (a non-complete list)

  1. Fund the digging. Subscriptions aren’t charity; they’re R&D for democracy.
  2. Celebrate articles that wreck your priors. Surprise is the price of learning.
  3. Demand receipts. If a story leans entirely on “sources familiar”, ask for the paper trail, The Verge does this well.
  4. Back legal defence funds. Lawsuits stop more stories than lack of curiosity.
  5. Publish your changelog. Post the list: people spoken to, documents read, and known unknowns.

Excellent post.

EMPIRES ARE STUMBLING

This bit from Jon Gruber who writes Daring Fireball:

“Ever since I started doing these live shows from WWDC, I’ve kept the guest(s) secret, until showtime. I’m still doing that this year. But in recent years the guests have seemed a bit predictable: senior executives from Apple. This year I again extended my usual invitation to Apple, but, for the first time since 2015, they declined.”

Apple might not like how critical Gruber has been in recent months, but I also don’t like how Siri will let me keep adding “bananas” to my Groceries List, and never once tell me that it’s already on the list. In 2025.

And did you know that when you say, “Siri, turn on my 6am alarm” it will just keep adding 6am alarms, over and over again? I had like 50 of them last time I looked.

I hope Apple execs will be staying back at the office fixing that, delivering their “Apple Intelligence” offerings that they promised months ago, and maybe stop fighting with independent app makers and charing them 30% of every god damn sale for eternity.

ANSWER QUESTIONS

As always, Ash Ambirge bringing the gems:

If you’ve ever been like, ugh, HOW AM I EVEN SUPPOSED TO MARKET MYSELF, why not ask yourself a new question: how can I show up & just answer my customer’s questions?????

In the early days of my Social Media Escape Club I’d just answer people’s questions on Substack’s Office Hours threads. I’d even link them to Substack help docs. I did this so well someone from Substack noticed and reached out and asked if I had any interest in joining their help team (no, thank you).

Even for the bigger picture questions, like “how will I live without social media?” I don’t have the full answer for anyone, but I have bits and pieces that I’ve learned from my experience, and how other people have done it.

Sometimes you don’t need the full answer, you just need to the experience of reading and talking to a bunch of people on the same journey.

I WRITE TO REMEMBER

From my People & Blogs interview with Manuel Moreale:

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

Honestly, no. WordPress and the hosting and such works fine for me. I don’t care much about the name, or the theme, or whatever. The blog is 100% for me.

“I write to remember,” as the lyrics go in ‘One Armed Scissor’ by At the Drive In.

Read the rest here.

TURNING 49

It was my 49th birthday, and I treated myself to some place fancy. That is, the 110 State Game Lands access road, on a chilly rainy evening here in PA.

There’s a gate at the entrance, then a gate near the “top,” which is about 1.5 miles, and about 500′ of climbing. This is one of the only hilly routes where I can run the whole thing, and by run I mean shuffle and slightly jog, but hey, I couldn’t do that a few months ago, so I’m stoked.

Also, I used to do just one lap. Up and down, and call it night. Last night I did it twice, so just over 1000′ of climbing, six miles total, and felt great.

This is the last year in my 40s I guess, might as well keep things moving.

KEEP CLIMBING, I GUESS

Just passed over 100 hours running in 2025, and almost 52,000′ of climbing.

Running about 30 miles a week the last five weeks, and over 5,000′ of elevation. Flirting with 6,000′ of climbing the last few weeks now, too.

I’m starting to double up some hills. Before I’d just go up and run back down, now I’m doing them twice in one session. Two ups. Two downs. Thighs of steel, baby.

Shuffling and jogging up some sections that I used to have to walk. Getting strong, fitting back into shirts and jackets I couldn’t wear earlier this year.

Damn, feels good to be hitting 49 tomorrow.

Infraordinary FM

A radio station by Daniel John Jones and Seb Emina delivering reliable, real-time information about commonplace and quotidian happenings around the world. Tides, aircraft movements, pinball scores, weather conditions, lost and found items, bird sightings and other ordinary events are gathered from over 150 countries and reported live in the form of spoken bulletins.

The station is automated and perpetual, and presented by a pair of state-of-the-art synthetic voices, kindly provided by ElevenLabs.