Doc Searls's Blog

That's weekend, auf Deutsch.

As happened yesterday, something I wrote here in Wordland got too long, so I made it a separate post, titled So maybe it’s not too late to teach it to myself. German, that is. I still have the book I failed to versteh in 1962, so why not?

And all of them need all of our help from all of us

Dentsu says the whole advertising business, for which the most personalized kind is the most ideal, and by design depends on surveillance, will pass $1 trillion this year. This is what ProjectVRM has been up against since 2006, Customer Commons since 2013, and MyTerms since January. 

But it won't work on malaria

Wired says you can stop a mosquito bite from itching by applying cold or heat.

And there is—or could be: Emancipay

I'm back to unsubscribing (or not subscribing in the first place) to newsletters that require subscriptions to read whole posts. Apologies if you're one of them. You can't subscribe to everything. There has to be a better way.

This image is clipped from one in the story below, about how people in Sofia mark potholes so the city can debug them.

In my Oofday post, I shared a post in Hackernoon titled We Treated Potholes Like Software Bugs and Accidentally Built a Civic Hacking Playbook. The story is about a civic hack in Sofia.

Everything in the piece is excellent. The writing is vivid and clear. Its case is well-made. My only problem with it was suspecting it was written in some way by an AI. The tell:

short sentencesone-line paragraphs, often in listscontrasty (“not this, but that”) phrasingclever subheads (and/or clever everything)outline-like logical organization

So I had originality.ai examine it. The result: “We are 62% confident that the text scanned is AI-generated, NOT to be interpreted as 62% of the text produced is AI-generated.”

However, even if a piece is AI-generated, does it matter if it’s exactly what the author is trying to say? 

Back in March, Daniel Barkhuff, MD, one of the most valuable sources of wisdom on the Web, copped to writing with AI. Specifically, 

Let’s stop pretending. Everyone on Substack is using AI. If you think they aren’t, you’re high. I know because I am (using AI, not high), and I’ve been doing it for a while.

My process isn’t complicated. I sit down and write about a page, maybe 450 words. It’s not elegant. It’s not structured. It’s basically a brain dump. Half sentences, ideas that don’t quite connect yet, things I’d say out loud but that look ridiculous when you see them on the screen. It’s intellectual vomiting. A rough sketch of what I’m trying to say.

Then I paste it into AI and say something like, “Hey, give me an essay.”

And it does.

Three things about that:

Not everyone on Substack (or anywhere lots of people write) uses AI. (I’m on Substack a bit, and I don’t write with AI.)This makes me think less of Dr. Barkhuff. Sorry, can’t help it.Knowing that he writes that way colors everything he’s written on his blog since I read that—and I read everything he writes, because his brain dump is the opposite of shit.*

Also bear in mind that the author of the Hackernoon piece, Bogomil Shopov – Бого, aka @bogomil, is writing to be read in thirteen different languages. Does it sound like AI in Bulgarian to begin with?

Hell, why not use AI to write something in your native language when you also know it will be translated into another twelve?  (Is AI-style writing better for that? I’d bet it is.)

It should be clear by now that there is a learning loop that runs out through all of us, then through all the AIs that harvest and process our outputs, and then fed back to us in an idealized style that makes us (or at least me) reflect on ourselves and our own styles, while knowing that we too are being hacked by AIs and not just by other humans. Co-evolution at work.

By the way, I just ran this blog post through Originality.ai as a kind of controlled study. It said,

Likely Original
99% Confidence.

It also said I have only three scans left before I have to upgrade, which I probably won’t.

*I asked ChatGPT what “the opposite of shit” might be. I got, of course, a long-winded answer that boiled down to one word: gold. I can see the case, but it’s wrong, and I wouldn’t use it, except here, as a case in point.

This one is too good at them

I just wasted an hour of writing and research by hitting the wrong chord on my keyboard here, after neglecting to save my work in progress. You can't teach an old dog old mistakes.

Uh oh

Some bad shit is going down in Garden Grove.

The other two don't

There is no contrast between the US, China, and the EU more stark than AI regulation. Here in the US there is effectively none (especially after yesterday's news). In China there is the usual state control, but with a strong AI development imperative. The EU has the AI Act, which I was briefed on yesterday during an online session with the Berkman Klein Center (which is covering the AI thing well). What I see with the AI Act is very little drag on innovation and implementation of AI, but the simple fact that AI regulation exists in the EU has the AI giants (all based in the US) pumping the brakes there. To me the main difference between the three regions is that only one of them cares about personal (or any kind of) privacy, and backs that care with policy.

Does that mean it's dead… or just a zombie?

The Democratic party has conducted an autopsy on itself.

Wisest words ever sung

Uncle Josh is my favorite Mike Cross song, especially now that I have the life expectancy of a puppy. Alas, the lyrics are nowhere on the Web. Should I put them there? They matter. Mike will be 80 this year and hasn't been active for a long time. His agency still has a page for him, if you run a search. His old URL, mikecross.com, redirects to the agency, but you can find what it used to be at archive.org. Here's one snapshot, with a popover explaining his absence. But listen to the song. 

More here if you care to dig

Says here that Sports Illustrated deleted the entire archive of a writer accused of using AI as a co-author, or something like that. 

A hole new approach

Hackrnoon: We Treated Potholes Like Software Bugs and Accidentally Built a Civic Hacking Playbook 

Since what followed from the above got too long, I made a separate post of it: Getting Real.

A MODIS satellite view of NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System) view of the Santa Rosa Island and Simi Valley fires on California’s South Coast. Click on it for the full view.

Following fires

In normal times, Santa Rosa Island is easy to watch from our deck in Santa Barbara. But right now it’s burning up, and smoke from that fire and the Sandy Fire in Simi Valley have added layers of brown to the gray marine haze that comes and goes. So here are some sources of visuals in addition to those the links above:

NASA: Fire Chars Santa Rosa IslandNASA GOES Image ViewerNASA Worldview Interactive MapNASA FIRMS MODIS view, zoomed in on the two fires, and showing smoke paths

Most of those are interactive and good for following developments anywhere on Earth.

Talk me out of it. Or into something else.

I need a mic for doing podcasts and similar audio work here in my Santa Barbara office. Thing is, I’m here much less than I’m in Bloomington, which is kitted out. All I really need is a mic that’s not too expensive. Currently leaning toward the Shure M7VX.

As to so many other doomed things

At our New Jersey home in the 50s and 60s, my parents expressed a relatively cosmopolitan level of taste by drinking Savarin Coffee, brewed in a percolator. The brand is long gone now, but it’s interesting to see what happened to it.

Iain Henderson, talking MyTerms at IIW last month. Look for him at #CPDP2026.

CPDP stands for Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection. The theme of this year’s CPDP is “Competing Visions Shared Futures.” The MyTerms future is replacing consent with contract in our online dealings with websites and digital services.

Consent is what cookie notices speciously obtain from your clicks on the forced choices that interrupt your first experience with nearly every website—and do nothing to protect your privacy or data. With MyTerms, sites and services agree to your privacy terms, rather than you to theirs. And your privacy agreements are backed by contract law, not by empty corporate promises, which always lack ways for you to monitor compliance. With MyTerms, you can do that.

So (this is important) Eric Pol of MyData Global writes this on LinkedIn:

Attending #CPDP2026?
Looking forward to paradigm shifting at last towards the individual in personal privacy?
Let’s talk about MyTerms, the first machine readable standard for personal privacy, IEEE 7012

3 options:

1⃣ Attend our CPDP workshop on Friday 22 May 14:15 – 15:30
2⃣ Reach out here to the MyData Global #MyTerms champion Iain Henderson, who will be on the conference all 3 days
3⃣ Reach out to me in DM giving me your contact details, and I’ll pass them on to Iain. I will myself be on site Friday.

Looking forward to building paradigm shifting solution with you!

If you’re at CPDP, find and talk to Iain. This will be easiest on Friday, when he will be giving the workshop linked above and now here  in the Music Room on Friday from 14:15 – 15:30. Absent that, read what he’s been writing here, I’ve been writing here, and Nitin Badjatia has been writing here.

Flaming excess

Big fire on Santa Rosa Island.

Largest fire ever on Santa Cruz Island.

Success story

Susie James: Three chords, the truth, and a woman behind the signal is a nice piece about good local radio in Lebanon, Tennessee. It's in the Lebanon edition of Good News Exchange, which explains itself here.

I love basketball. I love watching it, and in my youth (columns A and B above, row 2), I loved playing it.

I wasn’t good. My only skill was shooting the ball, which I did flat-footed from the nether regions of the court called “outside” or “downtown.” I hit about half of those shots if nobody guarded me, which was most of the time, because I was a slow white guy who stood 5′ 9 1/2 inches on a tall day, with “alligator arms” that were two inches less than that. But I did have that shot, so when sides were chosen for pickup games, I’d be in the middle of the pack, which was good enough for me.

Playing at that low level still conditioned me to maintain a steady interest in how the game was played. This went through my years in North Carolina (’65 to ’85, with a break for New Jersey from ’69 to ’74), the Bay Area (’85 to ’01), Santa Barbara (’01 to now), Boston (’06 to ’13), New York (’13 to ’25) and Indiana (’21 to now). I went to countless Duke, Knicks, and Warriors games, plus the occasional Lakers, Harvard, Celtics, and Hoosiers games. I’ve watched a lot of games on TV, of course. (Caught the Pistons being creamed by the Cavs last night.) And I listen to half a dozen basketball podcasts in addition to the many hoops channels on SiriusXM.

So I got to thinking this morning about how much the five positions in the game have changed, both in how they are played and what they are called. Guards, forwards and centers have turned into points, shooters, wings, bigs, and numbers, among other labels. So, with artistic help from ChatGPT, I created the chart above. It’s my own thinking at a moment in time, and subject to improvement and debate. So let’s have both. A pickup game. Fun exercise with no losers.

Coasting

I'm in Santa Barbara now, and it is typically perfect outside. Love living here, even though I mostly don't.

Talk about dumb

Last Thursday's post, titled Person Networks, was occasioned by outreach by a friend who urged me by email to join Intelligence.com, a slick new-ish thing with LinkedIn-like ambitions. Since then, others in my real-life circle of friends have received the same invitation. Turns out the invitations were not made with the permission of the putative source. Talk about dumb: the friend in question—the one who did not send the invite—is one of the world's top cybersecurity experts. He complained loudly to the company, which said it would stop. Meanwhile, their excuse to him for creating these fake emails was basically, "Even LinkedIn does it." The expert is wisely not on LinkedIn. Or on Intelligence.com, we presume.

The first version of this post became Snucked and sucked, but never mind that. I'm also packing to fly early tomorrow, so for now I'm just blabbing an annoted link pile during what's left of today. In other words, sort of like the usual but without subheads.

I didn't know we were in an Axial Age (it's a thing) until I read We May Be Entering A Second Axial Age, in Noēma. The subhead lays it out: "The transition from small hunter-gatherer societies into complex civilizations gave rise to the first Axial Age. Today, the planetary polycrisis of climate chaos, mass migration, increasing warfare and transformative AI represents a rupture of comparable magnitude." I agree with the headline, kinda, but not with much after that. But it's a good read. Makes ya think.

Joshua Benton in NiemanLab explains how some for-profit local news sites are seriously kicking ass.

CJ Shivers in SeO What?—"A new algo dropped from Google and it appears to have the world of SEO in a tizzy…There are a few notable new challenges that have arisen with this update, in combination with industry deals, that should have bloggers and newsletter publishers more concerned than usual." He has suggestions. I'm exploring some.

If you want stories that aren't from the amen corners of the left and the right, Reason is useful. Examples:

A U.S. Citizen Is Suing ICE for Arresting Him Twice. He Just Got Arrested a Third Time.

The War Comes for Your Wallet: Inflation Hits 3.8%, Highest Level in 3 Years.

Even Dictatorships Don't Fight Wars This Way.

Pete Hegseth Can't Explain Why America Needs a $1.5 Trillion Military Budget.

More at Latest.

Gam Dias on his podcast about MyTerms with Iain Henderson.

While I avoid politics, I am interested in why Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire are said to be tanking. So I listened to Taylor Lorenz's podcast interview with Will Sommer. It's a good unpacking of the whole right-wing talker scene; but I was amazed that Taylor said of George Will "I don't know who that is," when she and will had both been columnists at the same time for the Washington Post. (She for two years, Will since the Pleistocene.)

Prayers, or whatever might work

Scary bad news from Maine.

RIP

A good memorial take on Colbert's late Late Show.

I shot this at DEN five days before a Frontier plane at the same airport ingested a trespasser during takeoff on Runway 17L, aborting the flight and causing news.

When you read a gruesome story on a polite service, and it sources a story on another polite service that still doesn’t give you the information you want—the gory stuff—you continue digging. The story in question here is a FlightAware one titled Frontier plane kills fence-jumping pedestrian during Denver takeoff.  Its source is a story on AOL titled Frontier plane kills fence-jumping pedestrian during Denver takeoff. That one opens with pointage to a @DENAirport post on X that says,

Emergency crews responded to the scene and bussed passengers to the terminal. 231 souls were on board. Emergency response and investigation are ongoing. The NTSB has been notified. Runway 17L will remain closed while the investigation is conducted. 2/2.

The story continues with this:

The Airbus A321 had begun accelerating down the runway for takeoff when the pilots reported to air traffic controllers that they’d hit someone, officials said. The pilots aborted takeoff as smoke began filling the cabin, and passengers evacuated the plane via slides, Frontier Airlines said in a statement to USA TODAY. The identity of the pedestrian was not immediately released.

The hanging question then is “How?”

Well, below the @DENAirport post is a comment by @SteveMRush pointing to a story on PYOK headlined, Horrific Accident at Denver Airport As Person is Sucked into Engine of Frontier Airlines Plane as its Speeding Down Runway For Takeoff. The author of that one is Mateusz Maszczynski. And therein lies another story: about the author.

PYOK stands for Paddle Your Own Kangaroo, and is at paddleyourownkanoo.com.  Its About page is, like everything else at the domain, by Mateusz Masczcynski. (Took a few tries to write that correctly from memory. Need to keep stretching those neurons.) There is only one of him, but he occasionally writes in the plural:

It all started back in 2017 when I managed to achieve my dream yet again. The same dream as yours; to become a flight attendant.
We devote huge amounts of time, effort and money to achieve this dream. The world of cabin crew recruitment is tough and ultra-competitive. Getting through this ruthless process can sometimes seem like an impossible task.
That’s certainly what I felt when I was knocked back time after time by airline recruiters. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong but I was determined to learn from my mistakes.
paddleyourownkanoo.com was borne out the information and knowledge I gained in achieving my dream. This works – I’ve been invited to numerous cabin crew Assessment Days and I’ve been offered jobs from a number of major international airlines.
Today, I continue to send applications and attend Assessment Day’s. My mission – to help you through the process. There’s no secret, checklist formula or 100% guaranteed promise. But I hope that what you read here will prepare you for your journey.
Cabin crew recruitment is never going to be easy but I hope the PYOK website helps you on your journey!

And that’s not his only thing. There’s also Crew Insider (“the airline industry explained”), Cabin Crew Forum (“Demystifying the ultra competitive world of cabin crew recruitment”), Points and Miles, Offers, accounts on Facebook and Xitter, and a newsletter. I just followed and subscribed to all of them.

The only bummer, at least for me, is that even PYOK’s privacy page comes with a lot of tracking. Of course, that’s typical of most websites, and the focus of my most persistent  Quixoticism.

Anyway, if you love flying as much as I do, check PYOK out.