Saturday, May 25, 2024

Losing Our Press

 Northern California’s largest public media company, KQED, announced layoffs of what it said was 8 percent of its staff this week to help make up a budget deficit running over the past few fiscal years.

The move is the latest of many downsizings throughout public broadcasting, including deep cuts last year at NPR.

But it isn’t only non-profit journalism that is suffering; the media industry as a whole is sin disarray. The Washington Postannounced plans to try and retool after losing $77 million last year.

The Post says it has lost half of its audience since 2020. That sounds less like a seasonal dip than a potential death spiral.

Many, many other newspapers and media companies are losing money and laying off staff as well.

There are many factors at play here, including technology, changes in consumer habits, industry consolidation, demographic changes and so on, but the fundamental concern as we lose credible news sources is what will happen to our democracy?

The media industry isn’t just any industry. If you can afford to, subscribe to the publications you like and become a member of public media as soon as possible. 

Before there is nothing left to subscribe to or become a member of at all.

Further reading from Politico: “The Collapse of the News Industry Is Taking Its Soul Down With It.”

HEADLINES:

  • This Supreme Court Term Was All About Undoing Democracy (Mother Jones)

  • Trump’s fascist talk is what’s ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ (WP)

  • There Is Literally Nothing Trump Can Say That Will Stop Republicans from Voting for Him (New Yorker)

  • A new novel shows how the U.S. fought Nazis with economics (Axios)

  • China-Taiwan conflict explained: What happens if Beijing tries to invade? (Independent)

  • U.S. tourist facing jail in Turks and Caicos for possessing ammunition is released (NBC)

  • Russian sources indicate Putin is ready to halt the conflict on the current battlefield lines. (Reuters)

  • US missionaries killed in Haiti gang violence (BBC)

  • More aid getting from US pier to people in Gaza, officials say, after troubled launch (AP)

  • College athletes are set to be paid directly by schools under a new deal. The NCAA approved the deal in a settlement this week. (WP)

  • The Washington Post lays out an optimistic new strategy after grim financial numbers (Poynter)

  • The Justice Department filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation on Thursday, seeking to break up what officials call an unlawful monopoly. [HuffPost]

  • This hurricane season could be among the worst in decades. Meteorologists yesterday predicted 17 to 25 tropical storms and said eight to 13 of them are likely to become hurricanes, fueled by record ocean temperatures. (WP)

  • Google’s AI search tool tells users to ‘eat rocks’ for your health (Financial Times)

  • ChatGPT Answers Programming Questions Incorrectly 52% of the Time: Study (Gizmodo)

  • Report: School Shootings Either Way Down Or Too Depressing For Media To Cover (The Onion)

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Friday, May 24, 2024

Cars

(I first published this last year.)

 Memorial Day Weekend.

One of those quintessential American holidays, at least where I grew up. The first of three big ones each summer, to be followed by July 4th in the middle and Labor Day, which marks the end of the season.

Act One, Act Two, Act Three, like in a screenplay, during which your lead character might fall in love. But there aren’t many screenplays in progress this summer, with the Writer’s Guild of America on strike.

I was a member of the WGA during my mostly unsuccessful screenwriting years, and while I never got rich or famous that way, working on stories that were to have been movies helped me grow up as a writer.

Meanwhile, Memorial Day is, of course, all about the coming of summer and remembering our troops but also about our love affair with cars. For example, what was traditionally the race of races — the Indy 500 — always happens this weekend. Then again, I wonder how many people know just how very close Indianapolis came to being the center of the nascent auto industry in the early 20th century as opposed to my birthplace, Detroit.

That didn’t work out, as the story was relayed to me, because the city fathers in Indianapolis didn’t think cars would be such a big deal. Oops. At least Indy got the race as a consolation.

Anyway, yesterday I got to observe one of those truly American experiences — buying a car — up close. I accompanied my son-in-law to a dealership in Petaluma where he was to take possession of his brand new vehicle.

It was a cool, shivery, wet morning in the small town where Winona Ryder grew up and was bullied as a teenager. There weren’t any other customers yet when we arrived but the salesmen were already fidgeting, walking here and there, criss-crossing the empty campus, eyeing us hungrily. Each one of them eventually greeted me, albeit with diminishing degrees of hope.

One offered me coffee. Another climbed inside a big, sleek, black Cadillac SUV, apparently to demonstrate its prowess, even when stationary, while I was seated nearby. A third came up suddenly and uttered “Would you look at that,” to no one in particular.

The car, still wet as a newborn puppy,  awaiting my son-in-law was a far cry from the vehicles of my youth, which were big, heavy, gas-guzzling clunkers that resembled guided missiles and sometimes did just as much damage with the wrong hands on the wheel.

But this brand new EV is small, light and capable of recharging its battery even as you drive it to the point you can have more battery left when you reach your destination than when you embarked on the journey in the first place.

Now, if only we could figure out how to do that with our own bodies.

Alas, we can’t do that just yet but stay tuned. Anyway, as we prepared to leave that place one of the salesmen shook my hand and said, “*You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?”

“Yep,” I replied. “There’s not that much to say.”

At that point my son-in-law chipped in. “He’ll probably write about this on his blog.”

HEADLINES:

  • Supreme Court approves South Carolina congressional map previously found to dilute Black voting power (CNN)

  • Clarence Thomas attacks Brown v. Board ruling amid 70th anniversary (Axios)

  • Taiwan scrambles jets, puts forces on alert as China calls new war games "powerful punishment" for the island (CBS)

  • ICJ orders Israel to halt its offensive on Rafah, Gaza in new ruling (Al Jazeera)

  • Israel’s latest offensives unleash ‘hell’ in Gaza, aid groups say (WP)

  • Two out of three Americans say they are concerned that political violence could follow the Nov. 5 election rematch between President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found. (Reuters)

  • How a smear campaign against NPR led Elon Musk to feud with Signal (Guardian)

  • Trump’s latest flirtation with Nazi symbolism draws criticism (The Hill)

  • Can the rich world escape its baby crisis? (Economist)

  • This hurricane season could be among the worst in decades, NOAA warns (WP)

  • Justice Department sues to break up Live Nation, parent of Ticketmaster (CNBC)

  • San Francisco’s Hot Tourist Attraction: Driverless Cars (NYT)

  • NYC is starting to evict people in migrant shelters under stricter rules (AP)

  • OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show (WP)

  • Lawyers say OpenAI could be in real trouble with Scarlett Johansson (Verge)

  • OpenAI’s latest blunder shows the challenges facing Chinese AI models (MIT)

  • Why AI art will always kind of suck (Vox)

  • OpenAI, WSJ Owner News Corp Strike Content Deal Valued at Over $250 Million (WSJ)

  • Barron Shows Up On Trump’s Doorstep Claiming To Be His Son (The Onion)

 

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Thursday, May 23, 2024

Our Secret Rendezvous

 It isn't the extraordinary things -- the breakthroughs, the awards, the dream vacations. It isn't even the special moments we knew we were falling in love.


Those are our memories and they remain intact, as vivid as ever.

Rather it is the ordinary things that we did almost without thinking that have been stolen from us. This came to me as I rode masked in a car through my old neighborhood one day on the way to the neurologist.

(NOTE: I published this in the early stages of the pandemic. It still feels relevant four years later.)

There was that one special cluster of wisteria under a tree. A lone hummingbird usually was hovering among the flowers as I passed. I'd stop and it often rose to greet me, face to face. It became our secret rendezvous.

There was the house that always seemed to be under construction. A large truck was parked in the driveway; the workers went in and out of the site through an opening where the garage door used to be. I'd always stop to chat with them.

"Buenos dias hombres. ¿Cómo es el trabajo?" "Hola tio. Lamento que nuestro camión esté en tu camino. Usa tu bastón!"

There was the cafe where I used to order tuna melts. Now we were getting close to the office. There were the benches where my work friends who smoked would gather on breaks.

I love people who smoke. They remind me of my Dad.

There is the corner where I turned to get to the office. Every morning at 9:25 sharp, the UPS delivery truck arrived. Also at 9:25 every morning, I arrived.

As I swiped my ID badge to enter the front door, other colleagues would often be arriving. I enjoyed holding the door open for them.

Many hours later, I would reverse my route and return home.

It was all so simple, so thoughtless; it's just how I passed my days.

But on this particular day in the car, I was just passing through. My son had set up the appointment for me because he felt I was still too weak and frail from my illnesses to perform any but the most basic of tasks. 

Meanwhile, I'd developed the idea that I was like an onion and it was quite an elaborate identity, with layers and layers of complexity. 

I asked my son on our way to the neurologist if I should tell her about the onion. He said, "No, Dad, let's save that one for another day." At the meeting the doctor administered the cognition test -- the same one they gave me at the hospital many times.

My score, she reported, was 100 percent.

She explained that I'd had a stroke and that I had symptoms, including tremors, consistent with Parkinsonism. That is why my hospital doctor had prescribed carbidopa levodopa.

I loved the sound of that drug, carbidopa levodopa. I used to play with the nurses when they brought it to me. "Can you say that quickly six straight times?"

"Carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa."

They all could do it and they looked really lovely to me, the women and the men, as they spoke that poetry. Most of them wore a far-away expression as they did it.

***

That particular day, as it happens, was to be last time I drove along that route. So it was the end for the wisteria, the hummingbird, the workers, the benches, the smokers, the UPS truck and my ID badge.

It was not, however, the end of the carbidopa levodopa.

There are millions of people like me who have been missing the things we used to do, however mundane, due to this Covid-19 disruption. For us, it is not only a time of remembering but also a time of reinventing our lives.

Now I walk through a new neighborhood, with wisteria, hummingbirds and different people than I'd greet before. It's pleasant; I'm fine.

But I'm one of the lucky ones, with family, resources and the recent return of my health. The disproportionate pain inflicted by Covid-19 is to the poor, to minorities. This tells us nothing about Covid-19, but volumes about the nature of our society.

Decades of activism by my generation have sliced away a small portion of the poverty and racism we discovered in our youth, but much work remains. That there are people in my country who pretend to care about these realities but support politicians who demonize the poor and minorities through cruel fantasies like "massive voter fraud," which is a lie, saddens me.

That there are people who think that it doesn't matter that a man in power repeatedly used his money and access to sexually abuse women saddens me.

That there are people who support a coward, an obvious bully, a man who abuses other people from behind his shield of bodyguards, saddens me.

That there are people who don't care that such a man attacks my colleagues in the press who are only doing their jobs saddens me very deeply.

That there are people, many people, who buy his bullshit, saddens me, and yes, even angers me.

I didn't devote 54 years trying to practice socially responsible journalism and survive a stroke for it to come to this.

So yes I am nostalgic, I'm wistful, I miss what I've lost. But that stroke didn't kill me. 

And I still have my voice.

HEADLINES:

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Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Age

During a recent Zoom call with several old writer friends, we started off by going around with our individual checkins. We hadn’t met as a group in many months, so enough time had passed for stuff to have happened, and as it turned out, it had.

Our news in each case concerned our health. Everyone had some sort of update on their health for better or worse.

Only after relatively in-depth descriptions of our visits with doctors and listing which medicines we were now taking, did we turn to our writing projects and other professional concerns.

It struck me how age-appropriate this was. Ten years ago, the same group rarely talked about our health concerns but about what we would do in our still somewhat distant retirements. 

Twenty years ago we might have discussed our relationship status, business prospects, the state of the publishing industry maybe, but not our health.

Thirty years ago it would have mainly our careers and our writings.

Forty and fifty years ago no one would’ve mentioned health at all. We were all on life’s upswing back then. But that was then.

Now, talk turns to our declines and also the friends who are no longer with us or unable to participate even by Zoom.

I have distinct memories from my childhood about my mother reaching the stage where she seemed to be talking about the health status of various friends and relatives all the time. I couldn’t really comprehend then why she did that.

Now I do.

HEADLINES:

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Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Time Treasures


 (I wrote this on the day of the dig. It was back in 2006.)

Two nice young guys from the historical society came by today with probes and shovels, a pail and some rope. They had old maps of this neighborhood, which showed the house we live in has been here since sometime in the 1880s. (It's hard to date precisely when the homes on this block were built because most of the records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire.)me

They explained that they were seeking bottles dating from the late 19th century and from the old land maps, they had identified properties that have not been significantly reconfigured since that era. Plumbing arrived slowly in these areas of town, so everyone had privies dug in their backyards.

By the turn of the century, when the houses got indoor plumbing, the outhouses were carted away and the privies were filled with dirt. First, however, most people sealed off the aromatic "night soil" with a layer of bottles and other items. 

They typically found what they were looking for about four and a half feet below the surface. So they went around the perimeter of our backyard, probing for glass at about that depth. They quickly identified the spot -- it's about halfway back to the rear property line on the left side of the yard.

They roughed out the likely dimensions of the old privy and set to work. When they were about four feet down they hit the first glass -- shards and some whole bottles from the Prohibition era. They were ceramics, liquor bottles and other machine-engineered bottle pieces.

Then they hit layers of a new kind of dirt -- the fine ash from fireplaces. This indicated a dry hole, where not much corrosion was likely to have occurred.

On and on they dug -- five, feet, six feet -- now finding bottles from right around the year of the earthquake. Other items emerged -- the corroded half of an old pistol, the remains of what looked like a toy train, a piece of a pipe. Down another foot and they reached the 1890s.

They brought up an almost perfect brown teapot. The ceramic handle for a dresser drawer, a partial glass candlestick, an old button.

At eight feet they finally hit pay dirt: A whole cache of bottles, many bearing their manufacturer's names like Dr. J. E.Plouf's Rheumatism Cure, and Lengfeld's Prescription Pharmacy, San Francisco. These were all from the 1880's and 1890's, and thanks to the ash, in surprisingly good condition.

My eight-year-old daughter helped comb through the pile of dirt excavated shovelful by shovelful. When the pit got too deep, the guys lowered the pail and then hauled up, like miners, the following:


Piso's Cure for Consumption
Paul Rieger's Jamaica Ginger, S.F. Cal (for hangovers)
California Fig Syrup Co.
Tillman's Extract
Dr.King's New Discovery for Consumption
Enterprise Sodaworks S. F. (soda bottle)


Lots of bottles of petroleum jelly, including Vapo-Cresolene Co. All in all, the haul was about three dozen bottles -- including a red bitters bottle, milk and cream bottles, as well as the exquisitely painted purple candlestick fragment.

That pit told more about who lived here and how they lived than anyone alive today could possibly remember. After extracting these treasures, the guys (aided again by my daughter) refilled the pit and let the rest of its history rest in piece.

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Monday, May 20, 2024

Nothing is Forever



A new report from the Pew Research Center finds that an alarming amount of the content on the World Wide Web is no longer accessible a decade later.

The study says that 38 percent of the webpages available in 2013 no longer can be accessed.

Among the reports findings

  • 23 percent of news webpages contain at least one broken link, as do 21% of webpages from government sites. News sites with a high level of site traffic and those with less are about equally likely to contain broken links. Local-level government webpages (those belonging to city governments) are especially likely to have broken links.

  • 54 of Wikipedia pages contain at least one link in their “References” section that points to a page that no longer exists.

  • Nearly one-in-five tweets are no longer publicly visible on the site just months after being posted.

  • Tweets don’t always disappear forever, though. Some 6% of the tweets we collected disappeared and then became available again at a later point.

This is a reminder to those of us who use the web as a kind of scrapbook of our lives that it isn’t necessarily more durable than the old-fashioned kind.

HEADLINES:

 

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Sunday, May 19, 2024

With AI, Follow the Money

If you just can’t bear to sort through all the noise about AI, maybe think about it through the limited lens of voice assistants, like Siri or Alexa.

Plus remember that adapting to new technologies has a generational component. Millions of kids have grown up issuing commands like “Play Taylor Swift” and getting a response that satisfies them.

Meanwhile, the tech companies have been amassing data on how to improve those assistants and AI now promises to exploit that data in new ways.

For example, Google is incorporating AI (Gemini) into its search results. This matters because not only will search results be more conveniently presented, the original sources of that information will be further buried behind the AI layer.

All of which is convenient for users as well as for Google but bad news for media.

Just follow the money. Journalism is about to take another blow in the market for online advertising thanks to AI.

Because it’s all about who gets that revenue.

HEADLINES:

 

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