Go to HUD.gov, and you’ll get this: Go to USDA.gov, and you’ll get this: Seems to me these violate the Hatch Act, aka “An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities.” It was passed in 1939 and amended a couple of times since then. I am not a lawyer, but I know some, and I can […]| Doc Searls Weblog
This blog is mine. While it is hosted somewhere, it could be anywhere. The main thing: it isn’t on a platform, and doesn’t have to be. I publish it on my own, and syndicate it through RSS. This puts me in a publishing ecosystem that is wide open and full of interop. If you want […]| Doc Searls Weblog
This is Part 2 of a post that began with a Jimmy Kimmel monologue, but really wasn’t about that. It was about the grave situation in which over-the-air (OTA) TV finds itself. Here is Part 1. Even people who don’t like leftish comedy should admit that Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue after he returned to the air […]| Doc Searls Weblog
I’ve split this post into two parts, because it’s important to unpack how legacy TV works, and why the whole thing is falling apart, with OTA—over-the-air—TV dying first and fastest. He…| Doc Searls Weblog
We had a party recently that required cooking an enormous number of baby back ribs. To acquire a volume of barbeque sauce sufficient to soak all the slabs, we took a run to our nearest Costco (an hour away on the south side of Indianapolis), where thee were plenty of Kinder’s and Sweet Baby Ray’s. […]| Doc Searls Weblog
The other day I bought a refrigerator at Costco. When a guy rolled it out on a flat to help me lift it into the car, he said, “This isn’t going to fit in there.” Then it did. It might not have fit in some SUVs. And while it would have fit in the bed […]| Doc Searls Weblog
In the natural world, privacy is a social contract: a tacit agreement that we respect others’ private spaces. We guard those spaces with the privacy tech we call clothing and shelter. We also signal what’s okay and what’s not using language and gestures. “Manners” are as formal as the social contract for privacy gets, but […]| Doc Searls Weblog
The first thing R.C. Ward taught in our biology class at Guilford College was his eponymous Law: “If it works, it’s good.” He frequently mentioned Ward’s Law by name and required it as an answer to nearly every test. As Richard Nilsen explains here, Professor Ward was not a normal dude: It was 1966 and I was […]| Doc Searls Weblog
It’s a battle of the holidays at the Sam’s Club here in Bloomington: Christmas on one aisle and Halloween on the next one, back-to-back. Hey! Come in and stock up on stuff that occupies otherwise useful space for 350 partially overlapping non-seasonal days of the year! At least this stuff (at Sam’s Club in June) […]| Doc Searls Weblog
I wrote for Linux Journal from 1996 to 2019, and have been involved with IIW since I helped start it in 2005. So, in an effort to help substantiate a future Wikipedia article on IIW, I wanted a lis…| Doc Searls Weblog
When I read that some conversations with ChatGPT had appeared in Google searches, I did a search for “Doc Searls” ChatGPT and got a long and not-bad but not entirely accurate AI summary…| Doc Searls Weblog
Ray Simone, my good friend and long-time business partner, died this morning. He was 63 years old. He is survived by his wife Gillian, his daughter Christina, and many good friends for whom he rema…| Doc Searls Weblog
Eight years ago, I called ad blocking The Biggest Boycott in World History, because hundreds of millions of people were blocking ads online. (The headline came from my wife Joyce.) Then, a few days…| Doc Searls Weblog
