Media

Threads: Follow Your Friends and Never See Them Again

My take on Threads is a lot like Amit Gawande's: Threads reminded me of why I eventually fell off the Twitter timeline. It's the same people talking about the same stuff they always do. The early adopters, the famous bloggers and podcasters. The social media celebrities. They have a bubble of their own. They talk amongst themselves as you listen. You are not part of any community -- you are watching a show. Then there are the posts that are written mainly to go viral. The memes. The questions. ... (read more)

2023/07/09

The Night Arthur Godfrey Fired a Singer On Live Radio

Christmas with Arthur Godfrey and All the Little Godfreys (1953 album) I'm a fan of old time radio, in particular the wise-cracking detective shows like Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Rogue's Gallery. Some of the series are getting well-deserved criticism today for their offensive racial and gender depictions -- Wisconsin Public Radio just cancelled its old time radio program after 31 years over such concerns -- but among the thousands of shows preserved at places like the Internet ... (read more)

2020/06/19

Whatever Happened to the Blogroll?

One of the side effects of reviving an old site design on Workbench is that this blog has a blogroll again. Bloggers used to put a long list of links on their homepage to other blogs they read (or wanted you to think they read). I don't know why everybody stopped doing that. Since I was borrowing an old design from 2008 I decided to bring back the blogroll too. I used the same blogroll but dropped the sites that are inactive or gone after 12 years, leaving these 20 diehards: A Whole Lotta ... (read more)

2020/05/12

Virology Blog Offers Level-Headed Take on Swine Flu

If you're looking for solid information on swine flu from sources who haven't lapsed into hysterics, Professor Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University Medical Center, who has studied viruses for 30 years, publishes an excellent Virology Blog that's heavy on facts and short on panic. Racaniello believes the flu will stop spreading soon in the U.S. for the same reason that ordinary seasonal flus fade every year around this time, but it could come back stronger in the fall: Flu season is ... (read more)

2009/04/28