More than a billion people now watch podcasts on YouTube every month. This seems bonkers to me. Podcasts aren’t for watching. They’re for listening to, while walking the dog, driving or doing chores around the house. And yet YouTube is apparently now the most popular podcast platform by far.
Prominent military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, pitched a plan for mass deportations calling for ‘processing camps’ and a private citizen ‘army’.
“The idea of forcibly removing 12 million people from the United States is not just operationally impossible — it is a moral and economic catastrophe in the making,” said Jason Houser, former ICE chief of staff in the Biden administration.
RIP Michelle Trachtenberg, 39. She played “Dawn,” the younger sister on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and also appeared as a villain on “Gossip Girl.” Her death is apparently from natural causes. She recently had a liver transplant.
A company looks to relaunch the commercial airship business with a design that looks like a flying butt
A British company hopes to launch commercial airships to carry cargo and up to 130 passengers on relatively short trips, replacing regional airlines and ferries.
This is very cool, but it feels like I have read an article like this every five years, and the businesses never take off (so to speak). Airships seem to be just plain impractical.
I downloaded about 250 of my purchased Kindle ebooks, roughly a third of my collection. And now it appears Amazon has shut that option down.
I’ve been a loyal Kindle customer for 14 years, and Amazon gave me (and its other customers) a “fuck you” in return.
(Relatively) easy instructions for downloading Kindle ebooks before the deadline, which is today or tomorrow
From the Department of Doing Thing at the Last Minute: I think I was able to successfully use these instructions to batch-download all my Kindle books before Amazon switches off that capability tonight or tomorrow. The instructions require installing the Tampermonkey Chrome extension, cutting-and-pasting a script into the extension’s configuration window and then letting the script run in the background.
As I type this, the script has been running for four hours and is only a third of the way through. That’s OK; I can just let it run in the background until it’s done.
I had previously found these instructions, which require more advanced command-line skills than I possess.
Sucks that Amazon can get away with making this change. I am far less likely to buy more ebooks from them after this rugpull.
“AITA for refusing to let my girlfriend bring her dead dog’s ashes on vacation?" 100% he’s the asshole.
Archaeologists discovered fossilized footprints and tracks suggesting the oldest known use of a handcart. The discovery illuminates life at the end of the last ice age about 23,000 years ago
Monitors at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development were hacked [Monday] morning and made to display an AI-generated video of President Donald Trump licking Elon Musk’s feet."
— Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day
Broderick theorizes that Trump lets Musk gets away with what Musk does because Musk has convinced Trump that Musk bought the election.
Also from Broderick: Yes, the far right did pretty well in Germany, but it was an equally big showing for the Left party. My $0.02: This underscores the theory that we might not be seeing a global swing to the right in democracies, but rather global ouster of incumbents.
And: “A crypto trader that went by the username @MistaFuccYou killed himself on a X livestream over the weekend, telling viewers, ‘If I die, make me a memecoin.'”
Rep. Mark Alford tells fired Kansas City federal workers “God has a plan." Alford’s constituents, are suffering and angry and Alford is laughing at them.
Alford is a former Fox News host because of course he is.
How an obscure advisory board lets utilities steal $50b/year from ratepayers
Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic: Americans served by privately owned electric companies saw their rates increase 49% over inflation over the last three years. Americans served by publicly electrical utilities saw rates go up at 44% below inflation over the same period.
Cory:
Power is that much-theorized economic marvel: a “natural monopoly.” Once someone has gone to the trouble of bringing a power wire to your house, it’s almost impossible to convince anyone else to invest in bringing a competing wire to your electrical service mast. For this reason, most people in the world get their energy from a publicly owned utility, and the rates reflect social priorities as well as cost-recovery. For example, basic power to run lights and a refrigerator might be steeply discounted, while energy-gobbling McMansions pay a substantial premium for the extra power to heat and cool their ostentatious lawyer-foyers and “great rooms.”
But in America, we believe in the miracle of the market, even where no market could possibly exist because of natural monopolies. That’s why about 70% of Americans get their power from shareholder-owned companies, whose managers' prime directive is extracting profit, not serving their communities.
Your Local Epidemiologist: “The overlap between medical and scientific professionals and pro-vaccine positions is nearly universal–because vaccines work” The Trump administration is undermining our public health infrastructure as flu and measles are rising.
Ian Welsh: Germany’s Merz Is A Moron, But At Least He’s Got Some Guts Merz realizes Germany needs to declare independence from the US.
Mapquest, which is still a thing, has a “Gulf of… " generator. The body of water formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of Mitch.
Rusty Foster: “If Trump Season One was a galvanizing historical threat to the Republic, so far Season Two is a re-tread with a lot of the same tropes but more D-list celebrity cameos and a much less coherent plot.”
The coup has failed
The Coup Has Failed. Also: The Democratic Brand Has Tanked. Trump Is Doing the Same to the Republican Party. And: James Carville says the Trump administration will collapse within 30 days. Democrats just need to “play possum,” Carville says. All may be true; but Trump has more lives than a cat. He repeatedly teeters on the verge of destruction and bounces back stronger than ever.
I’m not counseling despair — Trump and his movement are beatable. But don’t take anything for granted.
Looks like Dave Winer is doing valuable work on Wordland, a simple, web-based front end for Wordpress. It appears to be an implementation of the WordPress for One idea he talked about last year. No Mastodon or BlueSky integration, just RSS. I love seeing more simple, easy-to-use blogging platforms.
News that got my attention today
Conservatives won German elections, a beginner’s guide to long covid, the new antitrust consensus and more.
Something I saw while walking the dog: This “Blessing Box” in front of a church, stocked with small food donations
Today's news and links that got my attention
Pope Francis is critically ill. Measles outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico. Weird politics in Chula Vista. An American missionary spying for Russia. Six things ER doctors wish you’d avoid. And the perfect girl next door — living your mediocre life in the shadow of a hipster goddess.