Cherish the Nostalgia

Last week I mentioned the President of the Signal Foundation, Meredith Whittaker. She popped up in my Podcast feed on the 404 Media Podcast this week which was pleasing. In case you are unaware, 404 Media is a newish, journalist-founded digital media company doing some fantastic reporting and filling a significant gap left by a crumbling media landscape.

In related podcast news Joseph Cox of 404 popped up on the Search Engine podcast to discuss his new book which is a pretty wild story about massive global police operation where the FBI released a 'secure phone' and spied on drug cartels.

Last week I talked about being a digital vegan. This week I tried to sign up to Facebook for the first time in about 13 years and it took me three goes. I wanted to used a masked email but Facebook wasn't having it. I ended up using an email address I've used for some freelance stuff which it like, presumably because I use that email address on LinkedIn and they have a shadow profile of me already. The only reason I wanted a Facebook account was to buy and sell a few things on Marketplace which now seems to be the dominant second-hand platform.

I recently discovered Pivot-to-AI which feeds my AI shitposting a little too well. Can anyone name a profitable AI company at the moment? I'll try and string something vaguely interesting about AI in future posts, but I was please to have confirmed that Corporate AI projects fail at twice the rate of other projects.

The Outer Sanctum Podcast came back to life for a limited run of shows. I miss them all dearly and find my AFL media diet considerably diminished without them. In particular, final episode really struck a chord with me where they discuss nostalgia and, importantly, the lack of women and other diversity when harking back to the good ol' days. Don't get me wrong, I can what that 1989 Grand Final over and over again, but thank the gods we've moved on from there.

Wheelchair Sports Camp have a new single and I love it