Mitch's Blog

The Amazon rainforests seem like “an environment largely untouched by humans.” But new archeological discoveries are changing that perception.

“With so much evidence of ancient human activity, it is now thought the pre-Columbian Amazon was inhabited by millions of people – some living in large built-up areas complete with road networks, temples and pyramids.”

And they did it all without the benefit of agriculture as we now understand it.

These discoveries defy conventional wisdom about the nature of civilization.

newscientist.com (subscription required)

apple.news

I’ve been disappointed in the direction Tumblr has taken under Automattic, though I acknowledge that it’s a hard business. None of Tumblr’s four owners has managed to make the platform financially sustainable, despite an enthusiastic user base.

Also, I acknowledge that I am not the target audience for Tumblr. I am old enough to be the target audience’s grandparent.

America loves happy warriors; it’s why we loved FDR and Reagan. Biden was a happy warrior as VP, but by 2020, his age caught up with him, and mostly, he seemed tired and angry. That’s not his fault, but it worked against him.

Trump seemed like a happy warrior in the 2016 election — or at least he did in the primary — but now he’s an angry, bitter rageaholic, as are his supporters. A happy warrior can do extremely well against angry, bitter rage.

Wait, does America really still employ a ton of news reporters? Searching for bright spots in the twilight of the newspaper industry. wapo.st

Surprisingly, given the dire state of the journalism industry, America employs about as many news reporters as it did three decades ago.

That’s not a win—America has nearly 20% more jobs and people than it had 30 years ago.

But it doesn’t point to an industry in collapse either.

The catch is that many of these reporters work outside of journalism organizations, often in PR and marketing.

Having read the article, it describes my winding career path well. I’ve been a daily newspaper reporter, covering local government, crime, community and features. I’ve been a business-to-business tech journalist, which some might argue is not actually journalism. I’ve been a content marketer. And now I’m an analyst. During all that time, I’ve been using the same skills. Even the transition from print to the Internet was gradual and involves many of the same skills.

Israeli former national security leaders and military officials blasted Netenyahu. Biden supports Israel and Netenyahu returns that support with disdain, sending a message to American leaders, particularly Democrats, that there is no benefit to supporting Israel — NextDraft

I decided I don’t like having the memes, vintage photos and other found media on mitchw.blog, so I spun up a couple of separate places for those.

If you’re reading this in Mitch’s Newsletter, you’ll soon be getting two newsletters, one for my posts and the other for the memes, etc. One is Mitch’s Newsletter and the other is Mitch’s Other Newsletter.. You can tell by those newsletter names that I have worked as a marketing professional.

You can also find the memes, etc., on zestymonkey.micro.blog.

More changes to come.

This is Robert A. Heinlein’s bibliography. I love nearly all the books listed here in his Early Period and have re-read many of them multiple times. I dislike almost everything later, even though those later works include novels that are generally considered his best work, “Stranger in a Strange Land” and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” to name two.

“The racism distracts from all the other ways in which this is a terrible novel, one that foreshadowed terrible Heinlein novels to come.”

I love Heinlein, and several of his novels and stories are explicitly anti-racist. This novel is hard to fit with that body of work.