Hillary should listen to Annabeth from the West Wing

A bit of dialog from S07E01.

Annabeth: Press is here for the Q&A. Now remember, you control the conversation. You don't like what they ask, don't accept the premise of the question.

Leo: That's my line, you know. You're quoting me.

Annabeth: I thought it was Toby.

Leo: Where do you think he got it? I've been rejecting the premises of questions since the Hoover Administration.

Of course a few minutes later Leo accepts the premise of a question and a gaffe follows that they have to live with for a news cycle.

Hillary did this a few times last night. And even worse, not only did she accept the premise of the question, she expanded the premise. Made the question worse than it was.

She needs to go to the West Wing debate prep camp.

Now, DJ Trump takes this to ridiculous extremes. By the second or third word out of his mouth he's skated off in a different direction. The interviewer is left bewildered, so they ask the question again, and he skates right back to where he went before.

I've said this many times, the press has to prepare for these debates as much as Hillary does. DJ breaks all the rules. You have know what to do when he does. I suggest cutting off his microphone when he veers off the topic. I doubt if anything less than that will prevent another debacle like last night.

First let me say that I am a lover of Bluetooth headphones.

As soon as I could get one, I did. I've suffered through early generation products that would disconnect at random times. You may have seen me stopped on the street in NYC trying frantically to get my headphones to re-pair with my iPhone so I could continue listening to a podcast. Some of them are so stubborn, nothing could convince them connect when they don't want to.

I'm happy to say I have found a reasonably priced Bluetooth headphone that aggressively stays connected to the phone. I just got my second one, the first one was drowned in a rainstorm last week and the Bluetooth connectivity died with it. I got plenty of hours of happy use of the first one.

That said, in another context I must have the wired connection, when I connect the iPhone to the Beats Pill that's mounted on the handlebars of my bike. For whatever reason, the Bluetooth connection is very unreliable in that mode. So I found a male-to-male mini-jack, and use that to hook the two together. Without the headphone jack, no music for Dave while biking. I totally love having the music, for that moment when I reach the top of the first hill in Central Park, and have a long stretch of relatively level riding, that's just perfect for Terrapin Station, which has become my cycling anthem. (Yes NakedJen, Jerry is still dead.)

That said, I'm happy to pay a few hundred for the new camera, so there's my dilemma. I love to take pictures with my iPhone and I want the best. But I really like having the headphone jack. I don't feel very conflicted yet, but I probably will once people are posting the new pics you can take with the iPhone 7 that can't be taken with the iPhone 6.

This morning I have a new RSS feed. 

http://scripting.com/misc/nightlyLinks.xml

If all goes well, it will be updated once every day at 12PM Eastern (midnight) with a single item, the stories from my linkblog from the previous day. 

It makes sense to subscribe to this feed in a mailbox style reader like Feedly. 

Think of it as a few (5-20) items that I think an informed person would want to read. Stories I read during the day and passed on to my followers on Twitter and Facebook. They also appear in the Links tab on Scripting News, and in a feed where each link is its own item.

I plan to hook this up to Medium, as an experiment. Look for a new post there just after midnight if all goes well, Murphy-willing, I am not a lawyer. 

Quick programming note.

I've changed the IFTTT recipe connecting this blog with Medium so that it posts a link to every new story posted here on the blog.

This might be a happy medium (eh sorry) while we await a more dynamic connection. 

Still diggin!

Two stories about point of view and how it leads people to different conclusions about race.

• Sara Nović writes about her aunt and uncle who are good people, not bigots, not stupid, and are supporting Trump. Beautifully told. This is exactly what I was looking for when I asked for stories of Trump supporters. 
• Matt Ufford, in a video, shows how people are not listening to Colin Kaepernick, the 49ers quarterback who doesn't stand for the Star Spangled Banner.

Taken together, both these must-read/watch pieces teach us that we all have different points of view that lead us to different incompatible conclusions. What's right for you and me might not be right for someone else. We'd do well to listen, which is what respect means. Listen to what they say, to who they are, first. Then if necessary explain who you are and why you see it differently. 

Can we find a win-win?

Can we find a candidate that works better for all of us, not just white people. Can we understand that racism is a real issue for people who are victims of it. Why not work with them to reduce or eliminate it? Who is it serving? And if you won't listen, who are you helping, and is that what you really want to do?

I was just reminded why I went with Harvard as the place where the RSS 2.0 spec resides permanently. And why the further work on podcasting, resulting a great new medium in the last few years, happened there as well. Harvard deserves a lot of credit for enabling that.

So why did I push so hard to do the work at Harvard, instead of MIT which would seem a more straightforward choice? The two universities, at opposite ends of Mass Ave in Cambridge have great reps, but at opposite ends of the spectrum between engineering and the humanities.

I've always believed that it was the human side of technology that had the greatest potential. When I was coming up in the 70s and 80s this was a contrarian view. So in 2003 when RSS needed a home to cement it as a standard, I chose the Cambridge university with the stronger rep as a place to be human as opposed to being a nerd. Not that the two are in any way exclusive. My point was, that through the technology we were working on, they would become the same thing.

I guess the disadvantage of going the contrarian route is that it isn't so intuitive to the people at Harvard today that the university should have played such a great role at the leading edge of technology thirteen years ago. 

No small thanks to the people at Berkman Center for their love and support at the time. ;-)

And in retrospect -- it worked. Took a long time to shake out. But all is quiet in RSS-land and it still rages as a standard for interop that continues to bear fruit.

Donald Trump said in an interview with ABC News that people don't care about his tax returns. 

So I created a Twitter poll asking the question.

https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/773171990245019649

You can vote yourself, and even better RT it so everyone gets a chance to say what they think.

Here's why it's important and it's just a start of the financial disclosures we need from Trump. We need to know who he does business with, and who he owes money to. He's the first billionaire to run for President. Or so he says. Let's see if he's telling the truth. There's so much at stake, and I think he's wrong, people very much do care about who he's in debt to and who he's in business with. What are his conflicts of interest? 

Also this should not be a referendum on who does or does not support Trump. Even if you plan to vote for him, you need as much information as you can get about who you're voting for.

I just finished bingeing season 2 of Narcos.

I really liked it. The whole thing, beginning to end. 

Now that I'm finished I find the background chatter in my brain is Spanish, with lots of curse words mixed in. It was like watching Deadwood, which made me talk like the barkeep Swearengen. Cocksucker this guy, cocksucker that one. Or The Wire which taught my inner-voice to speak like a black man in Baltimore. Now I speak to myself in Spanish, not having much of an idea what I'm talking about, but I do know what puta means and puta madre. It seems in Spanish they use that word a lot especially Pablo Escobar. I know how to pronounce Pablo btw, the b is almost but not quite silent. And I know how to tell someone to relax in Spanish. 

Maybe that's what made Narcos so interesting. It's mostly in Spanish with English subtitles. So I was able to learn and practice a new language while watching it. I like doing that.

There's a great line near the end of the last episode which will be iconic among Narcos fans, because it's such a surprise and so well done. I'm not going to spoil it here, for that you'll have to click a link. 

Anyway if you like The Sopranos, or Deadwood, The Wire or any other violent HBO-type series, Narcos is for you. 

As I watch the coverage of the 2016 election continue, I am more desperate to change the way journalism covers politics. 

An example. Yesterday on CNN, I finally heard a discussion of why they think HRC has a problem with honesty. They had tape of Clinton, which I listened to carefully. The reporters discussed it, I listened to that too. 

Net-net: I think she's telling the truth about how it worked, and the reporters were quite clear, that's not the story the American public wants to hear. 

Context: She was the top person in a 70,000 person organization, cc'd on lots of email, none of it secure, not just her server. It was not the only weak link. 

Think about how much email crosses your inbox and how much of you read carefully, and then imagine being at the top of such a large organization. It means most of what happens there is delegated. 

Did someone screw up? You have to look at the whole thing, and use your judgment and experience with how human organizations work. Even in the worst case, this doesn't merit much of our attention, imho. But only if you think of the voters as real people not an abstract concept. 

This frustration lead to a simple statement of what journalism is for.

Journalism's most important job in covering an election is to help voters decide who would be the best choice.

Maybe that doesn't fit with a theoretical idea of what journalism is for, but that's what I want them to do, for me. I'm the person who watches their ads, who wants to be informed. I'm like a juror, and this is a trial. Who would make the better president. I, and all the other voters, have to decide.

PS: Paul Krugman explains my frustration better than I did. 

Earlier this year I started cross-posting from this blog to Facebook and Medium. I'm no longer doing that.

Here's why.

First, if you put the two of them together, you'd have a great blogging surface. Medium handles linking, styles and titles. No podcasts, but that's the fourth item on the list for a reason. Most of my posts don't have podcasts attached. If there was one must-have feature I could live without that's the one (though giving up podcasting is giving up a huge win in interop). And Facebook handles updates, so if I make a change to a post after initially publishing it, those changes percolate to the Facebook version. So if you add the two together you get pretty close to the ideal.

But Facebook doesn't do links, styling, titles or podcasts. And Medium doesn't do updates.

I gave both a good shot, but the tradeoffs just aren't worth it.

It's true more people read my full posts on Facebook than click the link to read it on my blog. By a pretty wide margin. But the limits are confusing my writing. My reason for writing is not just engagement, but also to get mind-to-mind connections. And my mind is confused when I write for this hybrid medium, and my blog suffers. I suffer. I'm more confused, and that's not a good thing. 

And Medium is published-and-done. I end up either manually updating the posts, or I put up with incomplete or inaccurate writing on Medium. It might be worth it to maintain two versions manually, if I was getting engagement on Medium, but there are very few comments or readers there. I think I've given it fair shot of most of a year. If it hasn't started happening yet, I figure it isn't going to happen. 

I'm back to posting links on Facebook, as I do on Twitter. And I'm thinking about posting links to Medium, so people who have been reading me there have a way of knowing when I've written a new post.

If either of them change the way they work, I'll take another look. 

Where does everyone go for a quick video weather forecast for NYC?

You can send me a note on Twitter, or on Facebook.

I had this problem this morning, I still do. I used to go to weather.com, and never was very satisfied with how they approached it. This time there was a 1-minute commercial before the report. Sorry I don't stick around for that.

I expect this is something they will eventually do very well on Facebook as they now do it for sports scores. 

How it should work..

TV integrated w the Internet or mobile should be:

1. Wish.
2. Gratification.
3. In a few seconds at most.

I had the same experience last year with "find me a good podcast to listen to now." I have a great user experience for that but I expect I'm one of very few people.

Dave gets on the pulpit..

News industry, you keep leaving these big holes in what should be very simple problems to solve. Later you'll feel shut out when Facebook owns this. Act now.

Update on the contact lens situation.

I pretty much can get the lens in and out.   

I found the secret is to get really formal about the hand-washing part. Really clean the hands with hot water and soap. Use a nice towel to wipe everything perfectly dry, and special care with the fingers I'm going to use. It's healthy and it's also kind of a meditation, prepare the mind for the work to come.

Then approach the mirror with confidence.

I find that when the lens that has "engaged" with the eye it makes a few little popping sounds, as the air under the lens gets popped out. Once I hear that I know I can roll my finger off the lens and it will stay behind.

When I have trouble it's because I didn't psych myself up for it.

A campaign is a time to talk about stuff that matters.

That's why I was so happy to see that Hillary is bringing up the question of drug pricing. Huge. A real issue for so many people! 

Hillary if I could say one thing to you that you would hear it would be this. Up till now everything you've said to us, the voters, has been filtered through the press. And we both know they are terrible filters. They add so much of their own crap. They're looking for stuff that most of the time isn't there. And instead of saying it isn't there, they say it could have been there, and that's the "scandal." But...

Here's the thing: WE DON'T NEED THE PRESS.

You can talk straight to us. Use Twitter, use your blog, your podcast, Facebook, it's all good. Say what you want to say and forget about the press. They're going to be sour. We don't like them either. So let's not use them.

Thanks for listening. 

If you want a favor you're more likely to get it if you're connected. This is true in government, business, the press, education, charity, sports, etc. 

For example, LeBron James is less likely to have a foul called on him than some random D-leaguer playing off the bench.

If I have a friend in the government, I might call him or her up to get a good ticket to the inauguration. For that I might owe them a favor, which they may or may not call in.

If you're a friend of one of the founders of Twitter you might have gotten a gift of as many as a million free followers in the early days before the press was watching. (And by the way some of the recipients were reporters. Is this even remotely ethical?)

If I leak to a reporter, I can ask for help promoting a new product. (Yes, journalists play this game too.)

This is how the world works. 

The press reports news about the Clinton Foundation as if this is not how the world works. Get them some smelling salts, bring in the fainting couch, someone in government did a favor for the foundation that the boss started. (Except that didn't actually happen.)

I wonder if any of the press remembers how Dick Cheney went from Secretary of Defense to CEO of a large defense contractor, then became VP, and they started a war that flowed huge amounts of government money to (wait for it) the very same defense contractor. Was this a scandal? Well, no actually they didn't think it was in Journalism World.

On a scale of 1 to 10 the outrage all this amounts to approx 0.00000001 compared to all the shit that's piled up about the other candidate for President, which somehow does not create "trust issues" for him? 

PS: Why aren't the Snowden revelations issues in this campaign? You want a scandal? Seems that's the real outrage. (I'm still voting for Clinton, btw.)

In the 1970s streaking was a popular pastime. 

Out of nowhere people would be running around naked in places where nakedness was frowned upon. 

For example, at a baseball game, a fan would run out on the field naked, and would have to be caught by police and taken off the field.

They would do it so they could be on TV, and once they caught on to this, there was a rule that the camera would never go on the streaker. 

The streaking stopped.

So maybe when a clearly Russian-contracted leak appears against the Democratic Party, and never against the Republicans, maybe the press could do what they did with streakers. Don't give them any attention. 

Nate says don't count on the Electoral College saving us. Good point. The latest polls show the race narrowing.

And even worse, Trump now can read off a teleprompter without sacrificing quality. Which means writers can create for his medium. And worse it shows that he's been taking lessons, and as an actor he's good at performing with a teleprompter. And it's even worse -- he's got great writers, they may be fascists, but they can spin a good story, as evidenced from the crowd screams last night. 

I would also assume he's also being schooled in debating. There will be a surprise when he takes the stage with Hillary in a month or so. Yeah he says he isn't rehearsing. That's spin. Setting expectations. Don't believe it. He's taking lessons and he's figuring it out.

We need to be smart, now. No running out the clock this year.

3-minute podcast with a simple idea. 

Let's go to a baseball game, or a football game or basketball, it doesn't matter, and when they play the national anthem, with great love of country, stay seated in a moment of reflection on what makes our country so great. 

The US was established without a standing army. We didn't have a standing army until after World War II. This was intentional. We were meant to be self-governing, and we were meant to fight for the country only when the country needed an army. We were to be the militia, not professional soldiers. 

I've always been scared to do this on my own. That a young man decided to stand up for his country by remaining seated, that's a great act of courage, and the people who condemn him are cowards. 

Let's stand up for America, by staying seated. 

Read this article by Joan Walsh on The Nation about how badly the press is covering Donald Trump's racism. 

Clinton's great speech on Trump's racism wouldn't have been necessary if the press were doing their job. 

Trump's racism and the racism it enables among his supporters is major news. And it probably connects to Colin Kaepernick's refusal to stand during the national anthem at 49ers game. Imagine being a black person, witnessing the open racism of the Republican Party over the years leading up to this campaign. 

The response to racism is coming out in the open as the racism itself becomes open.

None of this would be a mystery -- if the press did it's job. Biggest domestic story in a long time. But they refuse to cover it. 

Even worse, the press covers it as he-said-she-said when Trump calls her a bigot, as if calling out his racism made her a bigot? Reporters are you really buying this?

As a voter I watch this and see the press as even more of the enemy than Trump. We may dodge this bullet, but will they cover the next one and the one after that? 

I don't know if they think, what they say privately, if they're mentally ill, or totally corrupt, or living in some miserable bubble, but the truth is this -- they're selling us out. 

Apple announced that they're going to announce an upgrade to a mature product that is probably exactly what we think it is. 

Yet reporters will travel from all over to sit in a dark auditorium and oooh and ahhh and even shriek and scream as if it were Steve pulling the Mac out of its bag in 1984. 

They will all file the same story, and none will have insights that others don't have. Some will think it's great, others will say Apple can't innovate. 

The stock price won't budge. 

A follow-up to the Facebook post, that is thankfully, getting lots of RTs from influentials. 

I've been asking for this feature from Facebook for about three years, obviously, without success. This is the first time I've done a concentrated public campaign for support.

Each time when it's discussed internally they come back saying that Notes has the features I'm asking for. This is true. But there are two problems with Notes, the first bigger than the second.

1. Very few people read Notes, just as few people click on links to read posts on external sites on Facebook. 
2. There is an API for Notes, but it is deprecated. Deprecation says you should be transitioning away from the API, not towards it. Building on a deprecated API is a non-starter. Can't do it.

If you have further questions please respond to the tweet, or the version of this post on Facebook. 

Let's get the web working again.

https://mobile.twitter.com/davewiner/status/769946877311741952

Dave

Singing the Star Spangled Banner at a football game is a legitimate political statement. As is not singing. First Amendment.

Further, I think someone should always remain seated during the national anthem to remind us we are The Land of the Free.

Idea: An indiegogo fund.

When DJ Trump suspends his campaign, he can have all the money in the fund, up to the election.

When I was growing up I thought people who liked computers were all nerds with thick glasses and those pocket protector things.

Later I learned that there were hippie programmers, who loved programming the way hippies love acid rock, weed, making love not war, patchouli oil, The Dead, getting back to the land, saying truth to power, sticking it to the man, etc etc.

I knew which kind of programmer I would be. 

BTW, I had lots of friends who were the pocket protector types. They were good largely misunderstood people. I found if I gave them a chance we could nerd out and have fun talking about ones and zeros, which can be pretty funny if you really get how they work. 

Now when I hear people say white males are fucked up, I think there must be some white male kids who hear that, and feel doomed. Even when they were planning on living thoughtful, fun, deeply experienced lives. But they have to deal with being bummers instead. Even though inside they want to not be that. All kids are pretty fragile, even privileged future patriarchs. 

Think about the people you hurt when you make generalizations. Think of a white male you like, esp a very young one, as you write it. And think how your idea might bounce off him.

Brad Feld wrote a post today about cross-posting to Medium.

He says: "...when I publish something on WordPress, update it, and then publish it again, it doesn’t update on Medium."

I've been theorizing why Medium doesn't flow-through updates from external CMSes. 

I think it may have to do with the highlighting feature. 

Here's the narrative...

Suppose one of my posts appears on Medium.

• Then someone highlights a section and comments on it.
• Then I update the post.
• What happens to the highlights?
• The offset could have changed. 
• The text might have been deleted. 
• Or the text might have changed, rendering the annotation obsolete.

The highlighting feature in Medium is a good thing.

I expect this is something they're working on.

Earlier this year I recommended watching the first few seasons of The West Wing to provide an optimistic antidote to the crazy political season of 2016. But I stopped around season 4, when Donna and The Chairman go to Gaza and all the cringe-worth TV that follows. 

The show went off the rails for a couple of seasons. But then in Season 6 it got back on track, and that's what I'm bingeing through now, and I'm loving it. 

I'm at the point where both the RNC and DNC have happened, both parties have nominees. And while I remember the rough outlines of the various plots and characters from the first time through, the specifics are still surprising me. 

It's such great stuff. I know how it ends, but no spoilers. If you're still depressed about 2016, I highly recommend Season 6 as great escapism from our reality. You'll laugh and cry. It's a total joy.

It's 1994...

Press: No one is making Mac software.

Dave: We are!

Press: Everyone knows no one is making Mac software.

Dave starts blog.

The domination of the web by Facebook is just as much a problem for bloggers as it is for journalists. Fact. 

People want to read stuff in Facebook, they do -- it's great, but when our stuff appears there, the links to pages on the web are missing. And if we use a little styling in the post, like bold or italic, that's gone too. No titles and no ability to include a podcast.

Facebook says "But it works in mobile through Instant Articles, and that's where everyone reads these days."

Yes. But I want these features in the web version of Facebook. Because we're talking about the web, where web writers work. It's like D'oh. It finally dawned on me that's the bug.

I think most users are aware there's a problem but have trouble expressing what the problem is. I am very focused on it because I've been developing new blogging software for the web. I want to cross-post on Facebook without losing the links, styling, titles, and enclosures. That's it. That's the problem. Once Facebook supports this, the problem goes away and we can stop bothering them. Until it's solved we will watch the web continue to decline, and a very good art, linking, will diminish. I'm sure Facebook doesn't want to cause this, but they are causing it just the same.

The blogosphere does amazing things. Little wonder the amazingness is slowing down these days because we're being cut off from our air supply -- readers. Mobile isn't everything. For the web, it's the web that matters. Just give us a few of the features of IA in the web version of FB and we're happy campers.

Call to action 

In this 15-minute podcast there are three calls to action.

1. If you're the person who decides whether or not to add web support to FB posts, please do it. You'll be happy you did. I promise.

2. If you're a technology influencer please support this effort to convince Facebook to open itself up to the open web through linking, style, titles and podcasting. 

3. No matter who you are please listen to the podcast. It's a good story. Just 15 minutes.

All silos are not equally silo-y.

For example, Twitter is a silo, but I can reliably point to a tweet from outside Twitter, and you will be able to read it even if:

• You are not logged in to Twitter.
• You are not following the person who wrote it.

However, if the user has blocked you, you won't be able to read it.

So that's mostly like the open web in this regard.

Facebook on the other hand is also a silo, but you can't reliably point to a post, because unless you're willing to research the settings for this post and the settings of the user, it's so hard to say whether or not people will be able to read it, that I usually don't bother linking. For example, here's a link to a public Facebook post. Can you read it? I don't know.

Some sites we don't think of as silos, are as hard to point into as the most restrictive silo. For example, news sites with complicated paywalls. Some paywalls are designed to be porous, meaning if you point to them from a social media site they let you in without paying. I find that's hit or miss, and none of them view my rivers as exempt from the paywall. So I tend not to link to stories that are behind a paywall. 

The point: we could come up with a Consumer Reports-like rating for all sites that indicates how much they participate in the open web at a content level. 

It struck me last night as I watched MSNBC, and all the talk about Trump's tortured flip-flop on immigration that this outcome was totally predictable, and that all the time leading up to this point in the election process was wasted, at least on the Republican side. 

We need a much shorter process, so the entertainment value of the election is lessened. If the people want long entertainment, give them an incredible reality show that runs 365 days a year, every year, but whose winner is merely a title-holder, not an office-holder. 

We revert to the Electoral College to choose the president, and we can choose to watch or not. Far too much depends on the outcome of what has become an incredibly strange process. 

I've learned more in the last few days about how people are using Fargo than I have in all of 2016. Of course that's coming after I told the users that Fargo will not make the transition to the new Dropbox API, and it will stop working in June of next year when the current API is turned off.  

I made this choice because I now have better technology for storage, that isn't dependent on one vendor, and neither users or Dropbox showed much interest in the product. As a developer I depend on that interest. The way I do software is user-driven. If there aren't smart people using the product, and if I don't hear from them, I can't do my work.

This is kind of ironic because Fargo is designed for people to communicate. If people had something to say about the product, they could write a blog post and send me a link. That way I could: 1. Read what they have to say and 2. Share it with other people who might be interested in the product.

I can see from Google Analytics that there are some people using Fargo. But what are they doing with it? Hard to say.

Imho, when you're using a free product, and you want to see it continue developing, you have a responsibility to be part of the word of mouth of the product. Help introduce people to it, provide useful feedback to the developer. Not just when it isn't working, but also when it is. 

What you like, what features you'd kill for. Put some effort back into the product, and you may be rewarded with new features, and continued development. If no one is talking about the product, then there's nothing I can do. 

Now we have 1999.io and the new Little Outliner. Some people seem to be using the products, but I don't hear much about it, so neither do potential new users. I have heard from a few users that they'd like some of the features of Fargo to show up in LO2. I know how to do that. But you have to give me a reward if you want me to work for you. It's so hard for people to understand that the person who's developing the software is human being just like they are, and we need support. 

Users aren't without responsibilities. I've said this all along. When I have an active user base, I am interested. If I don't hear from you, I find other things to motivate my interest. 

When reporters interview Clinton people they always bring up the topic of a press conference. They're being tricky, and I as a voter know it. 

The big question: When are you going to have a press conference?

The Clinton person gives a decent answer, she's done 300 interviews this year. And there have been plenty of gotchas and fake controversies. That's why reporters want to interview her. To help perpetuate the idea that she can't be trusted and won't give a straight answer. Which is both ridiculous and not news. She does answer the questions, answers that they would be delighted to get from her opponent, who rarely answers any of their questions, when they can get an interview, and these days he won't even be interviewed by any reporter, unless you count Fox News people as reporters (they're more like PR people or campaign flacks).

And her opponent has real controversies not these bullshit ones. Is he owned by Russia? Where are the tax returns? How badly did he screw the Trump U students? Was he raised as a member of the KKK? Why did it take him so long to disavow their support? That's just the beginning! And what are you worried about with Hillary? It's so stupid I can't even find words to describe it.

Look I don't give a shit if you trust her. You're so confused about what's real and not that your trust doesn't mean anything. 90 percent of the time you're just interviewing each other about optics and impressions as if they had any substance. I have an almost permanent eyeroll as I watch you guys discuss politics. You just recite the same bullshit over and over. You never get an expert in to tell us what it might be like to have a Russian puppet in the White House or a President who's just now learning what the Constitution is. 

Has anyone looked into his education? Did he learn anything in school? Ask him a basic history question next time you're granted an interview and see if he can answer it. Hey Trump, can you name 10 former US presidents? I would be surprised if he could. Name the wars the US has fought in in the 20th century. What year was the Constitution signed? Who was the second president? Third? First?

And where are the fucking tax returns?

Anyway, reporters, I think people who care know exactly what you're doing. The only difference between a one-on-one interview and a press conference is that in a press conference there are 50 reporters asking gotcha questions and in a one-on-one interview there's only one. The number of ridiculous questions is exactly the same, either way. 

If your listeners were stupid, your tricks might work, but even the dumbest among us have probably figured it out, because you've repeated the same bullshit over and over. 

Reporters who ask about a Clinton press conf are like post-truth Repubs. She's running a good campaign. That's why you're so stuck.

BTW, my guess as to why no press conferences is that she doesn't like them. But your thesis that she's hiding from the press is a lie. She's not hiding from the press. 

Mostly, I tried to keep Gawker and its subs at arm's length. 

I had mixed feelings about them. Some of their journalism was excellent and needed. We needed more news orgs to take on Apple. They were too controlling, and covered too much territory. They were stifling progress. 

There are many other tech companies that do the same.

But Gawker tended to go after individuals, and often not individuals at big powerful companies, just individuals, some who didn't even have a job. And when they did go after big execs it was often because they were caught being human. Which meant they became even more private, and less accessible, and their thinking became more introverted, narcissistic and inbred, even paranoid. So Gawker while it was sometimes a force for good, was often a source of pain for the people of the tech industry, and as a result had a negative net effect. 

News orgs have to strike a balance, and they have to appeal to the good nature of their readers. I know Nick doesn't think this way, but that's why I so rarely pointed to them, and why I so rarely wrote for them. I didn't trust them. 

There's a lot I didn't know about Gawker as a result.

Reading some of the postmortems, I think wow I should have tried to write for them. But then I remember how they attacked people I knew who were struggling to make a go of it in tech, and how they treated me even. They once wrote about a trip to the bathroom at a conference that I never took, another time criticized me for a personal ad that had run 15 years prior when I was in better physical shape. 

Mostly they were a source for bad in tech. So I understand how a guy like Thiel with too much money and an exaggerated sense of self-importance might do what he did. But that doesn't excuse it. 

On the New Republic they say Gawker was a blog and now blogs are past tense. 

We've been over this so many times. Blogs are what sources write, not what reporters write. An irreverent scandal sheet written by professional reporters is not a blog. 

Blogs are under pressure from Facebook just as journalism is. 

The shame is that reporters never learned to use blogs as a way to be informed by sources. They thought what they do is blogging. They are idiots. (Bloggers can be irreverent too.)

So when they say blogging is over, they mean they aren't listening. As if they ever were.

When I was growing up I knew a family with two kids, a boy named Ronald and a girl named Jillian. The girl studied hard and got good grades. The boy threw tantrums. 

Jill was blamed for Ron's tantrums, because that's what Ron said, and it was easier for the parents to punish Jill than to argue with Ron. He seemed to have an answer for everything, even though the parents and Jill all knew he was lying, always.