Primary-school-level nonsense caught the U.S. Secretary of Defense, which I think adds up to a useful public service in this context.

First prize: A masterclass in military pranksmanship conducted by the service personnel who gave Secretary Hegseth "CSAR 25:17."

"Wikipedia is the most successful experiment in collective provenance management in human history." That's the tentpole proposition in Godwin's Ethic Part 6—provenance, the Dead-Link Problem, and a new ethics question for the AI age. Part 7 coming soon. mikegodwin.substack.com/p/godwins-et...

A lot of what I’ve said on the record will seem smarter after I’m dead. Also, I’m afraid, will be some of the dumber stuff.

Godwin’s umpteenth law: There’s always some aspect of design that’s overlooked.

Geez, Bill! But thanks on behalf of us ailurophiles for your service!

That is a good-looking cat, with the lovely tough edge that comes from having (what looks like) a fight-damaged ear.

I don’t mean to be obtuse but what’s your angle?

Checking whether someone else really exists is a co-sign of the times.

I can testify that she exists—I met her at a con decades ago. She had a portable computer (not really a laptop) back then, iirc. Of course, proving I exist might be difficult.

imagine if i happened to be a trillionaire and bought twitter and 80% of the stuff on the site was just about big pants. you couldn't escape it. just an endless deluge of big pants propaganda

Daryl Hall & John Oates - A&E Live by Request (2003) YouTube video by Rick

Tonight's music while I cook my late dinner: Hall & Oates live in 2003. They took requests by phone, with at least one prearranged request from Carly Simon. She asked for "Every Time you Go Away."

Believe me, I know it.

I subscribe to the Atlantic already, thanks.

How do we make the internet suck less? We start by lookin at our history.

I’ve launched a "From the Archives" section on my Substack to house three decades of writing on law, tech, and culture.

Today’s addition: my 2019 review of NETWORK PROPAGANDA. 4 of 4

mikegodwin.substack.com/s/from-the-a...

Cheer up! Most of us will probably still be alive for at least two more weeks!

Geez, is my fandom that obvious?

Happy to consider a competitive platform when one arrives!

Thankfully, it's just another TACO Tuesday!

Godwin’s Ethic, Part 5: Verify and Correct From the principles to a plan: the nuts and bolts of integrating the ethic of internet stewardship

Part 5 of my Godwin's Ethic series is out. It’s the "nuts and bolts" edition on how to act as a steward of the information ecosystem.

Join the Ethical Conspiracy! Let's make the internet suck less, one vetted post at a time.

Part 5 link: mikegodwin.substack.com/p/godwins-et...

We still had to take a lot of wrong turns to get from there to here.

Vague or not, the coincidence is linguistically improbable.

I've found bell hooks to be quite accessible, myself. I'm not prepared to say that he cannot have read hooks. If you look at the book titles you have to wonder.

I totally agree with Professor Solove. I hope you do too.

I had a little quarrel with TIME reporters and editors a few decades ago, telling them it was foolhardy to build a cover story around a (manifestly fraudulent) law-review article. They had assumed the journal was peer-reviewed, so I had to explain that, uh, we mostly don't do that.

Probably the most generous thing I can think of to say about Vance is that he may well have read bell hooks.

This is monstrous.

It's terrible when political leaders wants to build monuments to themselves. But even worse when they close and tear down and replace structures that have come to symbolize our democracy. It's the tragedy of Edifice Wrecks.

I can see it. (But I do have to squint a little bit to do so.)

Maybe, but I'd have to see the polling data for the "abnormally high number" part. Maybe it's just normally high?