I wonder how much people outside of NYC understand how much power the unions have. The mayor comes and goes, but NYPD is a constant. That's how they look at it.

If MSNBC is going to be all-in for Sanders the way Fox is for Trump, then I'm going to watch CNN.

This song is rolling around in me this morning. Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.

Delegate math

Suppose the delegate count going into the convention is roughly as shown below. Sanders has a plurality, but not a majority. Most voters chose someone other than Sanders. No one can "steal" the nomination. He doesn't own it.

The numbers with Sanders having a plurality.

Bloomberg would be good

It seems Sanders will rule MSNBC the way Trump rules Fox; if so -- I'm going to CNN, which I did last night. It was a good choice because I got to see the Bloomberg town hall, which was excellent. If he's not really a sweet smart guy, then he's a great actor who plays one, and I don't think he's an actor. If you get a chance, watch it, if for no other reason to observe how bad the debate format is about informing our choices.

He was a good mayor in NYC, I didn't imagine it. He actually got stuff done, where most NYC mayors tread water and are quickly hated.

In the debates and the town hall, Bloomberg misses obvious opportunities most politicians wouldn't miss. When someone greets you with a smile, smile back and when their question is done, no matter how pointed, say "That's a really good question." Bloomberg doesn't. These are easy things to learn, and they go a long way toward being likable, trusted, and perceived as authentic. Yes, it matters that a leader know the niceties of meeting the public he leads.

In the final question of the debate they asked a softball question that he muffed. What's the biggest misperception about you? A good answer: "I'm a liberal, and yes I'm very rich, but I put my money behind our ideas. I am dedicated to doing good. It's a luxury I have because I'm so rich, but I am trying to help, and it's working."

On the other hand, in last night's town hall, he was open and vulnerable, explained himself, and I got the feeling over and over, this is my ideal of a president. I don't want someone who blows smoke and points fingers, I want someone who works at making things better, and protects us, listens and is open-minded. He has done all that both in his civic and private life, and he's made mistakes which have been pointed out, and unlike many leaders, esp the current president, and other candidates, he admits when he was wrong.

PS: I haven't been able to find a video of the full town hall. If you find it, please send it to me on Twitter or via email.

Today's podcast is entitled We Are Deep In Fascist Shit. This is what no one wants to talk about. Even MSNBC is switching away from it. Our last chance imho is to create a new Democratic Party where the only thing we all have in common is we believe in the rule of law. Until we can reboot our democracy, create Marshall Plan for ourselves, and do it quickly, with every hand on deck, we're going to where India is now. We are probably the last hope. So no it doesn't matter what anyone said 10 years ago, it doesn't even matter what they said yesterday. What matters is that we create a big enough a movement now to be noticed when the government shuts it down. As I said earlier, things are so bad now that Trump might not even have to cheat to win. And then we are lost. Far more lost than we are now. We don't want to look at this, I get it, but we have to. We have to support each other, not fear each other. We might not have another chance, but if we're going to survive we can't keep going the way we're going.

A couple of days after my father died in 2009, I was at the house in Flushing, we were all sitting around the kitchen table and there was a knock on the door. I answered it. It was a rep from Verizon wanting to know if we wanted FIOS. I said yes! Yes! We do! So I signed them up. Went back to the kitchen and we realized how weird it was, after many years of putting up with shitty DSL, just after he dies, all of a sudden there's the FIOS guy. We figured that it was probably the first thing Dad took care of when he got to the afterlife, order FIOS for the house. He would have loved it. My dad was a real internet activist. I often wonder what he would think of American politics of 2020. I know he would have hated Trump. But Sanders? I don't know. He really liked Hillary Clinton, and as far as he was concerned Israel could do no wrong. His first born son (me) did not agree with all of that, though he might have been surprised that I came around to HRC in 2016.

I thought the best point made in the debate last night was from Buttigieg where he said what torture it would be to have to endure a campaign of Trump versus Sanders. Up to that point I hadn’t thought of it that way but it’s true, can’t imagine how exhausting that will be.

Maybe Facebook, Twitter et al have better business models because they allow users to write on a level playing field with the pros.

The last few days there's been a change on MSNBC. The only show I regularly watch, Ari Melber, has opened the last two shows with a recital of the number of delegates each of the candidate has. I'm sure Sanders supporters hear that as good news, but I hear a lecture, get with the program dear MSNBC user, this is where we, and you, are going. I suppose after Super Tuesday this might be inevitable, but it isn't yet. Anyway, no matter, I'm not going along for the ride. I think we're deep in fascist shit in this country, and there's no sign of us digging out. I don't like Sanders. He yells slogans, and every attempt to get him to talk about his ideas in any detail just gets more slogans. I can't read his mind, but all evidence says he's as shallow as Trump. I wouldn't worry about death camps with Sanders (as I do with Trump), but I also think there's a very good chance we lose with him. Even with a perfect candidate it's a long shot because Trump is cheating. But with Sanders, he might not have to. So count me out, I'm not going along for this ride. I'll put my time between six and seven every night to better use.

Change notes for Little Outliner v1.8.9. New Tools menu. Get my tweets command. Defends against multiple instances of LO2 open at the same time.

Does RSS need a song? Maybe this one.

How about a puppy playing with an ice cube?

If your strategy is that young voters will take you to victory there's a problem with that because young voters don't actually vote.

Why didn't the NYT when it started on the web in the 90s try to do what Wikipedia has done? I have to admit, I didn't think of it at the time either, to me the function of a news org was to start fresh once a day. But this was always part of the potential of the web, create a base of info at the same time as flowing the new stuff. That's actually where we went with LBBS in the 80s. Did you know I was doing BBS software then? I was. Today I wish we had software that made it easy to build an index as we go. It's always in the back of my mind. I remember when we were publishing books (also in the 80s) we learned how to do indexes of paper books. The same approach would work for blogs or news.

Senator Kennedy, I am the actor they hired to play the DHS secretary. I say nice things about the president, and that's about it.

Maybe when Coronavirus comes to our town we should all just get it, and take our chances. Get it over with quickly. If you die, you die. Then we can go back to committing suicide in all our other ways.

A drum I keep beating: When a campaign wants to break through, start doing good now, don't wait until you're elected. Now there's a chance to do just that. Use your advertising, rallies, interviews and debates to sound the alarm for coronavirus. Demand that Trump protect the citizens. Explain what Trump has done to put us at greater risk. Explain how a real government functions for the benefit of its citizens. PS: Puerto Rico.

Video demo of a feature coming soon in LO2, probably tomorrow. You can load in all your tweets for the day. Makes it easy to use Twitter as a place to record ideas that then flow through your outline.

We’ve been working on news on the web for 25 years, and given the bandwidth of the network, the power and capacity of servers, and the incredible devices we carry with us, that news on the net is such a miserable experience. Clearly something is very wrong.

I've long felt that the niche occupied by Heroku is under-explored. It looks like Glitch is going there. Good.

Since socialism is going to be a big "issue" for the foreseeable future, let me offer two pieces I wrote on the subject. First, The world is socialist in 2011. "Ayn Rand's philosophy might have worked in an agrarian society when people lived far apart, and couldn't pool their resources. When there wasn't much technology, so there wasn't much point in trying to fight disease or keep the trains running, because there was no medicine or trains." And Health care is socialist in 2017. "We don't know who will get sick, or when. So rather than take a risk that you'll be the one who gets the expensive disease, we pool our resources to pay a share of what the treatment would cost each year." I put "issue" in quotes because it isn't a real issue. Everything is socialist, it has to be, there is no other way. So it's redundant to say someone is a socialist. We all are.

Is it any wonder that the presidential nominating process has become a weekly reality show, in every way.

Ladies and gentlemen, Rush Limbaugh!

Maybe the NYT was always this stupid, and we were too young and stupid ourselves to notice?

The seatbelt on my Subaru

I bought a new 2019 Subaru Forester about a year ago. It works pretty well. There are things that could work better, but I like it. It's a good car for where I live, in the mountains north of NYC. But it's not perfect. About the half the time the driver seatbelt gets stuck in the door. It was a hassle until now, but all the buckle slamming has broken a sensor built into the door. The car's electronics thinks the door is always open even when it's closed.

Now the battery runs down overnight and the car requires a jump start. And all the alarms are ringing when I'm driving.

I took the car in for service. It's still under warranty, but Subaru wants me to pay for the repair. Estimate $500.

I can't imagine what they think I'm doing.

They say they can't reproduce the problem.

Seems to me it's a design flaw.

This is where we're stuck.

I just finished Long Strange Trip, a documentary about the Grateful Dead. Beautifully done. I went to a lot of Dead shows, going back to the early 70s, on both coasts and in Madison, but never considered myself a Deadhead. I liked a lot of other bands. But I keep coming back to the Dead. Their songs are anthems for my life and work. I think we should play US Blues at baseball games and Fourth of July picnics. That's the America I come from. And of course the incredibly versatile slogan of this blog is from Touch of Grey. That one line is full of so much meaning, but yet so are many lines from many Dead songs.

Maybe Twitter should offer the option of no-replies on a message by message basis. You can RT my post if you want, but I'm not interested in spam.

!!Con 2020 -- The joy, excitement and surprise of computing.

I watched the MSNBC segment where Chris Matthews and Joy Reid talked about the disaster that Sanders is as a candidate. I thought it was fine. I think they should do more of that. I want to hear what they think out in the open instead of between the lines.

Also I'm not sure Anand Giridharadas is right. We've been through this before. Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, John Anderson, Barack Obama. All these candidates had Sanders-like pitches. I'm transformative, they said. When I am president, everything will change. Problem is if they actually believe it and are elected, they and we are fucked. They turn out most definitely not to be transformative. The United States is a huge ship and it takes a lot of compromise and time to get it to turn. Giridharadas points out that Sanders is the son of a Holocaust survivor, well, so am I, and I don't like Hail Mary passes unless that's the only option left. This is not a normal election, and Sanders is way too risky. We need to get solidly off the path we're on, bringing as many people as possible along with us. Then let's go for a Sanders-like candidate, maybe when AOC is old enough to run for president.

Loyalty to Trump is, today, an issue for people who work in the US government. Soon it will be an issue for everyone who lives in the US. You will have to sign a loyalty oath. We're way past the time when anyone should be working just for themselves.

Today I learned that Sanders will be the presumptive Democratic Party nominee in eleven days, unless something happens to shake that up. If you don't believe it, read this piece.

This piece is so chock-full of smarts, it should be a Twitter thread.

I just saw pictures of a friend's teenage sons in current passport pictures. I've been following their travels via Facebook for years. They were always boys, but now you can see the men. There's a gravitas in the outward view. Thought. These boys were raised to be men. What a great word, raised. I don't think I was actually raised myself. Maybe here and there. Fed. Sometimes cared for. Mostly left to figure it out for myself.

I thought Sanders' speech was good tonight. I was surprised. I think this may be the first time I've heard him give a speech. Previously I'd only seen him in debates, where he's a prick. Sorry, that's what I see. Even so, he really never has had a negative campaign run against him, and it'll be too late for all of us when the Repubs do. I can't imagine his past is not filled with lots of really awful stuff.

How does Twitter threading work?

This came up in an email discussion.

Doc said he doesn't really understand how Twitter threading works. I'm not sure I understand it either, and I've implemented it in two of my tools, first Electric Pork and now LO2.

Here's how I do it.

Suppose you have a sequence of four bits of text you want to turn into a Twitter thread.

Label them A, B, C and D.

When you post a tweet you can optionally specify which tweet it is in reply to.

First I post A to Twitter, not a reply.

• Then I post B, in reply to A.
• Then C, in reply to B.
• And D, in reply to C.

Twitter will display that as a thread. Like this.

Could I have had them all in reply to A? Not sure. I haven't tried it.

I buy too many domains. Latest: textonrails.com.

Doc posts a monster thread from LO2 to twitter. Here's the thread, and the outline. I just made a small change to the reader so that when you click on a tweet node, it opens the tweet in Twitter.

Joe Trippi: "Here’s an idea. Why not hold House hearings on what every American should watch for and be on guard against in terms of how Russia or any other foreign actor tries to influence our election? Or maybe a network do a one hour special? No one knows what meddling means."

Meddlers enhance divisions. Start with a crack, and grow it. Look at how Bloomberg is being invalidated. He's a powerful force in Democratic politics. In whose interest is it to undermine that? They have to be investing in that. The meddlers, whoever they are.

2019: Instant tech bootcamps for journalism.

Bloomberg, part 3

Bloomberg was NYC mayor after 9/11, during and after the 2008 financial crisis and Hurricane Sandy. The city recovered from all, though we could discuss his mistakes during all.

In the debate we should’ve talked about how we’re going to restore Congress, rule of law, the Constitution, courts in the aftermath of Trump, which will be like all three NYC disasters Bloomberg dealt with.

I don’t think Bloomberg had any possible response to Warren's attacks, any more than Al Franken could respond to the attacks that forced him to resign.

We need all hands on deck to rebuild after the superstorm terrorist attack happening right now in the US. Bloomberg will be part of that, whether or not he's the candidate.

The greed and selfishness on that stage was appalling. From Warren and Sanders, who I will vote against every chance I get (except if the other choice is trump of course).

A new version of LO2, v1.8.8. This is the first one that can publish twitter threads. Also fixes to keystrokes. Here are the change notes.

A short podcast explaining the new version of LO2.

We need to view the government as a system, and unsentimentally fix the broken stuff, while preserving and enhancing the best core ideas that define America.

After all the dust settles, the question Bloomberg asked about starting businesses, that's micro-targeted at me. Yes, I have started businesses. And I've built networks of software with millions of nodes.

Manilapalooza, 3/25/2000.

Notes on last night's debate

Watched the whole debate last night in despair, watching our last hopes evaporate.

• These debates are crazy.
• They do nothing to help us find good leaders. Probably the opposite. People who think and listen before speaking are penalized. Yet this is what we need from a leader.
• Has Bernie Sanders ever listened? To anyone? Ever?
• Biden is even more pitiful. Please if someone loves him tell him to quit. He lost.
• Amy doesn’t know when to shut up.
• I have no words for the disaster that is Warren.

I were on the debate stage last night, I would have done what Bloomberg did. All these people yelling about crazy nonsense, a lot of it at me, should I join in the yelling? Fuck no.

People say Bloomberg didn't respond to the accusations. I listened to what he said, this is what I heard.

• Yes, I made a lot of money, and I'm giving it all away.
• I made jokes about women and paid for my sins.
• A communist can't win in America.
• I'm a manager. I'm going to manage this.
• I'm sorry for my fuckups.

What his critics really mean is that he declined to partake in the food fight.

I was shocked when I realized that lots of people were going to vote for Trump. But that's nothing compared to the gobsmacking realization that enough people want Sanders that he might actually be the nominee.

• I guess the way to win people's hearts is to yell at them and over them, wave your hands in their face, and never listen to anyone.
• Sanders has a slogan for everything, except it's always the same slogan.
• I think Sanders would be great on Crossfire. As president. Oh god help us.
• Sanders is so awful he must be a Putin plant. When the oppo research comes out, obviously after he's nominated, I feel certain we're going to see pictures of him at dinner with Putin in Moscow with Jill Stein and Michael Flynn.

I think everyone could stand to re-watch Jon Stewart on Crossfire.

Felt sad when I realized Buttigieg is by far the youngest person on the stage, but Sanders is getting the support from young people.

Bob Bierman: "Man. Dems are going to have to do better than spend the evening taking easy razzle-dazzle shots at a billionaire who lacks theatricality and defensiveness but is giving all his money away to progressive causes. Where were the redirects to core issues?"

Brendan Greeley: "Bloomberg is an organization where journalists fly business class. I want to say that didn't matter but I also don't want to lie to you people."