Whenever I see an Econoline van, I think of a short story that Joe Haldeman wrote about a man who sets off a series of nuclear bombs in cities. Econoline vans play a role in the conspiracy. I read that story 50 years ago, but I still think of that story every time I see one of those vans.

“Doctor Who” showrunner Russell Davies says he grew up twice-closeted, hiding that he was gay and that he was a Doctor Who fan. For him, the two are tied together. “I’d walk home from school wishing I could turn the corner and see that blue box and run inside to escape everything. I don’t think that wish has quite gone.”

Russell T Davies on secrets, sex and falling for Doctor Who: ‘Something clicked in my head: I love you’

Recent college graduates are drinking less. It’s even a movement with a name, NoLo—no-alcohol, low-alcohol.

I’ve never been a heavy drinker, and over time I drink less and less. I rarely like the effect alcohol has on me.

But I do sometimes like a drink. I expect I’ll have one or two on Thanksgiving.

It’s time for Gen Z to lose the sobriety stigma

Why the Senate is increasingly skewed on race, parties and policy The Senate overrepresents Republicans and disenfranches people of color and people who live in large states. The Washington Post, by the numbers:

If you are a resident of California, with 68 times the population of Wyoming, your influence in the Senate is paltry.

The likely GOP nominee is forgetting where he is, stumbling over words, and waxing full fascist…. the armchair gerontologists parsing every utterance from President Joe Biden, trying to distinguish his congenital stutter from his natural aging, should look at Trump, whose behavior has gone from bad to weird to bizarre.

— Has Trump Gone Even Crazier?

“The antisemitic left hates Biden. The antisemitic right loves Trump.” — Jonathan Chait. Republicans Have an Antisemitism Problem. Democrats Don’t.

Trump says he wanted to participate in the Jan. 6 insurrection, but the Secret Service would not allow it.

Reprehensible on two levels: He wanted to participate in a violent, criminal attempt to overthrow a legitimate election, and he was too chickenshit to do it.

CNN Airs New Tape of Trump Discussing Capitol Trip on Jan. 6

No, there isn’t a wave of TikTok teens supporting Osama bin Laden.

… everything we see about TikTok is just being filtered through a media and political apparatus that doesn’t know how it works and has no issue cherry-picking random nonsense out of the app to fit whatever agenda they subscribe to.

— Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day. TikTok teens aren’t stanning Osama bin Laden

For several months, I noticed that my MacBook Pro made weird hissing and clicking sounds in the morning. That’s bad, I thought, and I checked to be sure my backups were OK.

But other than that, I didn’t think about it. The sounds only lasted a second or two and only happened once or twice in the morning.

Recently, I realized the MacBook Pro wasn’t making the noise. It was my insulated coffee carafe, which rests next to the MBP when I’m having coffee at my desk in the morning.

I recently received this message in text spam:

Evelyn, it’s no sin to love each other and it’s not annoying.

Just that one single line of text. No greeting, no context, nothing else.

A+ for creativity. Genius.

Red Hat: ‘The power of AI is open’. I wrote about how the crimson cap crew at Red Hat says open source has what it takes to meet AI’s demands for rapid development cycles and compliance with security and regulatory standards.

I hate when blueberries get wrinkled. They’re like Oompa Loompa scrotums.

Esquire: Nazi-Curious Madman Currently Under Indictment For 91 Felonies Gives Speech. Headline of the week.

Interesting analysis on using social media to drive traffic by Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day (one of my favorite newsletters). A couple of highlights:

• Threads is driving the most traffic. He thinks that’s just a bait-and-switch by Meta but is happy to ride it out while the fun lasts. I agree on both counts.
• He creates one-minute videos talking about what he’s written and posts them to various places.
• He takes a screenshot of one good paragraph and posts to X, Threads, etc. Taylor Lorenz at the Washington Post and Casey Newton of Platformer seem to do the same.
• Like me, he doesn’t have a lot of patience with posting in each place in its native format. To me, that’s too much like work. Like filling out expense reports.

Also:

… my main takeaway from these early days living out in the wilderness of the new internet is that everything is a big mess right now and you can kind of go and do whatever you want wherever you want. Which is, obviously, a little scary for folks who haven’t used their browser’s URL bar in a while, but four of the biggest platforms are all showing the same recycled video content and the smaller social networks that aren’t are, well, just social networks. Which means platforms don’t really matter anymore. We’re in a moment of possibility and, sure, I wish I could just write my little emails and call it a day, but exploring the web and figuring out what works for me isn’t the worst thing in the world either.

The video idea is intriguing. And the audio could run as a podcast, too! On the other hand, I go weeks now where all the work I’m doing is marketing writing, which I’m still figuring out how to promote—much of that doesn’t have my byline. Nearly ALL of it, actually. How do I promote that kind of thing? And yet, some of my favorite podcasts come out on an intermittent schedule.

Red Hat debuts edge platform for vast device networks. I wrote about the Burgundy Beanie bunch at Red Hat launching Device Edge, an open-source, minimal-footprint platform for edge computing on small, resource-constrained devices.

It’s Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk

Michael Tomasky at The New Republic:

To announce that the real enemy is domestic and then to speak of that enemy in subhuman terms is Fascism 101. Especially that particular word.

Tomasky says Trump is “not going to be throwing anybody in the gas chamber,” but:

The Nazis did a lot of things from 1933 to 1941 (when the Final Solution commenced) that would shock Americans today, and Trump and his followers are capable of every one of them: shutting down critical voices in the press; banning books, and even burning some, just to drive the point home; banning opposition organizations or even parties; making political arrests of opponents without telling them the charges; purging university faculties; doing the same with the civil service….

Many Americans would not be shocked by those measures. Many would cheer—until the Republican Gestapo came for them.. And don’t be sure that Trump isn’t going to throw anybody in the gas chamber. Trump is already talking openly about building concentration camps.

Trump invoked “vermin” on the very day that The New York Times broke yet another harrowing story about his second term plans, this time having to do with immigration. “He plans,” the Times reported, “to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.” And he wants to build huge—yes—detention camps. There’s much more. And all of this, by the way, appears to have been fed to the paper by his own people, who are obviously proud of it. They want America to know. And just before this, remember, Trump told Univision that he would use the Justice Department and the FBI to go after his political enemies.

Plans to add ActivityPub support for Tumblr are likely dead. I can’t see that as a priority given Tumblr’s recent drastic staff cutbacks.

Rodrigo Ghedin: Automattic’s Tumblr/ActivityPub integration reportedly shelved.

Laurens Hof: ActivityPub support was a “hasty announcement” by CEO Matt Mullenweg, followed by “quick quiet shelving of the project only a few days later.” Tumblr is supported by ads and subscriptions, and interoperability undermines both those business models.

Hof: Tumblr and interoperability, revised

Trump thinks Veterans Day is the day we salute veterans of the Nazi Wehrmacht.

“Imagine a mug that’s left on a coffee table.” — Anil Dash, That goddamn mug

“Reality isn’t brand safe. If you’re in the reality based community, brand safety should be your sworn enemy, even if they help you temporarily get a couple of Nazis kicked off Twitter.” — Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr “Brand safety” killed Jezebel

The US Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time in the ’70s. People Hated It

Alleged pickleball masturbator nabbed after Columbia Pike peeping incident. From the comments: “Pickleball penis perp perpetually pleasures phallic package, police properly prohibit person.”

The documentary “Sly” reveals depths to Sylvester Stallone.

What emerges isn’t the superstar who turned Rocky and Rambo into American icons as much as a thoughtful, surprisingly self-aware artist, who happens to be much smarter, more sensitive and steeped in cinematic history than even his biggest fans might have known.

Both Bruce Springsteen and Stallone “have channeled their inner selves through art to create a third identity, one that exists somewhere between truth and fiction, that has become a potent avatar, especially for their male fans.”

We’ve been getting Sylvester Stallone all wrong