We will know the Decline of the West has been completed when the children of the bourgeoisie turn to handicrafts.
—
In The Count of Concord, Nick Delbanco translates Oswald Spengler’s 1918 work, Decline of the West.
On a related note, could somebody explain Pinterest to me?
… okay. I mean, I guess that would be fine.
I guess change is inevitable. It happens fast on the Internet. The blogs I first followed on Tumblr are by and large gone. Or less active. In some way, I feel like the old guy who hangs out with kids because all his friends are dead. And he likes yelling at kids.
The point being, Yahoo isn’t looking to buy talent, technology, or a quick profit in Tumblr. It’s looking for relevance. It’s knows that when you drop a billion to buy a cool friend, you don’t immediately screw it up by doing something massively uncool.
It’ll be okay.
Is this misguided rosiness in lieu of Yahoo historical pattern of buying and burning successful online platforms?
OTOH, outside of steadfast service stability (which I am indeed most thankful for :)), Tumblr has languished in the past year — the only “enhancements” being of a negative nature (i.e., the recent editor “upgrade”, still riddled with bugs that make it excruciating to edit posts with blockquote text)
And it might serve as the needed impetus for me to complete development on my own homebrewed (and self hosted) tumble-wiki alternative.
In 2007, I was drinking coffee in Marco’s livingroom/dining room/office. He told me he and David had launched a website that had done remarkably well. He urged me to register before somebody else registered daniel.tumblr.com. Maybe I could write things there instead of on LiveJournal. There were about 27,000 users at that point, one of whom was AZSpot. Since then, Tumblr has grown to about 300 billion users, each more unique than the last. So it’s done okay. Marco has left Tumblr, started Instapaper, and recently left Instapaper. The last time we were drinking coffee together, he had a living room and a dining room and an office. So he’s done okay. And I’ve done okay with Tumblr as well. The point being, on the Internet, a lot has changed since 2007. And in 2007 if somebody had announced that LiveJournal was maybe being acquired, I would feel about like everybody feels now. (Where would I store my feelings!?!)
The point being, life is brutal and short on the Internet. When awesome websites are acquired and eventually shut down by other websites, it’s either a pattern or it’s just what happens on the Internet. Does anybody seriously think that if Yahoo hadn’t acquired GeoCities it would be the coolest site on the Internet now?
Though, there’s another angle. Yahoo was founded in 1995. In Internet years, that’s like the Roman Empire. (I’m going to resist the urge to troll you all by saying that, it’s not bad to be in a conquered province because at least you get to be part of the glory of Rome.) Yahoo has at least survived.
The broader point being, things change quickly on the internet. There’s always a younger, cooler site looming just over the horizon. I’m not sure that acquisition by Yahoo particularly diminishes Tumblr’s longterm prognosis. It means an influx of cash, stability, and technical capability. Heck, probably a functional search feature. And it means that Tumblr doesn’t need to desperately look for ways to monetize.
The Internet will kill everything you love. But by the time it dies, you won’t even care.
Also, lol at $1.1b all cash deal because that Facebook stock thing didn’t work well for Instagram. And also nobody wants to be paid in Yahoo stock.
… okay. I mean, I guess that would be fine.
I guess change is inevitable. It happens fast on the Internet. The blogs I first followed on Tumblr are by and large gone. Or less active. In some way, I feel like the old guy who hangs out with kids because all his friends are dead. And he likes yelling at kids.
The point being, Yahoo isn’t looking to buy talent, technology, or a quick profit in Tumblr. It’s looking for relevance. It’s knows that when you drop a billion to buy a cool friend, you don’t immediately screw it up by doing something massively uncool.
It’ll be okay.
When I told Carolyn that I had located a vein of ebony ore in Skyrim and successfully mined it, she laughed at me. Apparently neither I nor any of Skyrim’s designers knew that ebony does not come from mines. Or perhaps Bethesda has a sick sense of humor and revels in making unsuspecting nerds look dumb.
First, Benghazi. As the story goes, the Obama administration tried to pass off a terrorist attack as an anti-American protest in order to secure reelection and/or coddle our enemies and/or persecute Christians. And it turns out that there’s no actual evidence for that story. So the real story is why the Obama administration hasn’t given us the evidence we demand. Or maybe the real story is the Republicans prioritization of political gamesmanship over any pretense of sound government. This is not a scandal. It’s an obnoxious distraction—and most people have figured this out at this point.
Second, the AP phone record subpoenas. Perhaps somebody else could explain this to me. It sounds like some information leaked that was both extremely newsworthy and extremely sensitive for legitimate national security reasons. There was an investigation into the leak—and I don’t think anybody disputes that a leak of that type was worth investigating it. Holder recused himself from the investigation. AP and the press are angry that they were drawn into the investigation and feel that they should get extra protections. (It’s not an unreasonable request). And the Obama administration is now asking for a press shield law to provide the extra protections. I don’t believe there is any allegation that any laws were broken. Nor do I think anybody is even claiming an attempt to intimidate or harass the press. I see a controversy—but not a scandal.
Of course, it’s also a story about percieved encroachments on press freedom … so there are some reporters who are really into it. I get that. And I’m not trying to say that the entire media is composed of entitled whiners. At least, I’m not trying to say it expressly.
Third, the IRS flap. Okay. This one was bad. And as more details emerge, it’s starting to look like at least a couple IRS employees may have had a political agenda. And there’s a good story in here for any libertarian seeking an anecdote about public officials abusing power.
The Republicans want answers. They expect people to be fired. They want criminal prosecution. On Wednesday, John Boehner asked who was going to go to jail over this scandal.
Except … the Justice Department had announced a criminal probe in the matter on Tuesday. The acting head of the IRS has already been asked to resign—not because he personally targetted the groups, not because he directed people to target them, not because the targetting happened on his watch, but because he knew that the targetting and didn’t immediately blow the whistle. So this looks like a case of something bad happened on Obama’s watch and he brought the hammer down before the Republicans could even get their talking points together. This is a scandal—but I don’t think it’s the Obama Administration’s scandal.
So … right. The new narrative is that these three stories are some kind of perfect storm of scandals that is going to plague Obama’s entire second term and relegate his Presidential library to the log next to the sewage treatment plant. I don’t buy it. I count one Republican fabrication, one fight over the balance between press access and national security, and one legitimate scandal in a politically isolated agency that Obama has aggressively responded to.
Of course, there is a real scandal. This whole sequestration thing. Cuts in programs are okay … until they start annoying wealthy people. So the Federal Aviation Administration cuts get reversed. But massive cuts in emergency unemployment benefits have gone largely without comment.
White House releases emails on Benghazi talking points 
The White House on Wednesday released almost 100 pages of internal emails regarding the talking points that Ambassador Susan Rice and other officials used on Sunday shows following the deadly Benghazi, Libya attack on September 11, 2012.You can read ‘em here. Meanwhile, the President is going to give a statement on the IRS scandal in 20 minutes.
For those of you who don’t want to read a hundred pages of email chains:
Or, to put it differently, a ton of government agencies spent a ton of time on this, and the result was three bullet points, all of which said, “Ask again later.”
That’s about the speed of it, right? I mean, does anybody seriously think we should tolerate routine leaks of classified information? If it’s not important to keep it secret—release it in the normal way. That’s transparency. If it is important to keep secret, don’t release it. I don’t see room for This is a Secret But You Get Access Because Good Old Boys.
(Yes, I know that whistleblowing is a different thing. We can talk about that later when there’s a case that actually involves a whistleblower.)
Stop the leaks. Open the faucet. That’s transparency. That way anybody can have access to the information everybody should have access to. “Stop cracking down on leaks” is not about free information. It’s about dinosaurs squabbling over exclusive grazing.
If the occasional leak was leading to a golden age of jouralism, I’m sure I’d feel differently. Maybe I’d feel that a select few news outlets were doing such a great job of disseminenting information in a socially responsible manner that nothing should be done that risks upsetting the balance. Maybe I’m missing a golden age of journalism behind the celebrity trial and the news report on what’s trending on Twitter.
Today is the first day back at work—which means showing up at work looking underdressed, unshaven, and exhausted. I’m trying to figure out what message this projects. Is it, 1) I’ve been sick for two days, or 2) I lied about being sick for days but I was actually on a legendary bender. I’m hoping it’s #2 so people think I’m cooler than I am.
I’m worried it’s actually, 3) I’m the kind of guy who uses a cement truck to make complications disappear.
Some phone records of the AP were subpoenaed in response to a massive intelligence leak. The AP has highlighted concerns that it might chill future sources from turning information over to the press. Of course, since this involved the illegal leak of a highly classified information, perhaps chilling that sort of leak is the entire point of the investigation (and whatever prosecution follows).
This is all something to be concerned about. But … be wary of systemic bias when reading about press reports. If the press is reporting that the press is angry, its probably not a neutral arbiter of how you should interpret that information.
Or, to put it differently, if I published classified information on my blog, I would expect some type of inquiry into how exactly I got that information. That inquiry might include subpoenas. It might involve everything you would expect a potentially criminal breach of national security would involve. And if I said, “Hold on. Leave me out of this. I’m, um, a journalist,” everybody would laugh at me. Especially the AP. Because I’m a guy with a blog, not a journalist.
The real question is what level of special deference old media journalism is entitled to beyond what everybody is entitled to as freedom of speech.
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