My right knee hurts. Twice while walking with Maria I stepped wrong and nearly fell. The second time was pretty close to crashing.
Yesterday it was way better than it had been for days. I was on my knees helping plant flowers and plants and I generally felt okay. It was stiff this morning, but walking two miles as per usual just wasn’t in the cards after nearly hitting the deck. This is annoying.
“Americans may not only pay tribute to our honored dead but also unite in prayer for success in our search for a just and lasting peace.” — John F. Kennedy, “Prayer for Peace,” Memorial Day 1962
Matt Singer on The Mandalorian and Grogu –
The movie’s set pieces are a little grander than the ones The Mandalorian typically produced for Disney+; AT-ATs look even more imposing in the boxy IMAX frame. Otherwise, the feature recreates the episodic vibe of the show’s first season. The Mandalorian and Grogu is a straightforward adventure with almost no character development and little to discover below its handsome surface. Even the two-act structure (complete with a cliffhanger right around the one-hour mark), suggests it could have been rejiggered from a pair of scripts for the never-made fourth season of The Mandalorian.
Which is exactly why I’m not spending time and money to see this in the theater.
Do I think it will wildly entertaining? Yes. It’s just not enough for me to go see it outside of my home.
It baffles me why they didn’t just make 7-10 seasons of good shows with this character. It doesn’t need a movie.
James Poniewzik on Colbert ending The Late Show –
He didn’t land the pope, but he got a Beatle. He didn’t have a new project to announce, but he left us with a song (in fact two). He didn’t choose to end his show, but he ended it his own weird, wonderful way. Stephen Colbert hosted his final ‘Late Show’ on Thursday night, completing the story of the TV year’s most notorious and rancorous cancellation. But his final hour-plus — an emotional and delightfully bizarre wake for a comedy institution — turned it into a cancellebration.
That’s a good word. “Cancellebration.”
Colbert’s finale was just amazingly good. Unsurprisingly on-brand. And what a song to end on. Perfect.
At 2:30 in the morning, the night clerk at the hotel is a great help if you’ve locked yourself out of your room.
But if you want to complain about the hours of the gym, the hotel’s environmental footprint or even their late check-in policy, you’re almost certainly wasting their time. And yours.
Every organization with more than a few people in it has night clerks. Most of the people who work at the phone company, for example, and even the person clearing tables at the local pizza place.
It’s the night clerks that have the most customer interaction–in fact, they’re almost certainly the highest leveraged, most insightful marketing cohort in your organization.
They have information, and if we give them agency, they could transform the customer experience.
Alas, our systems rarely help. Many night clerks are underpaid and underappreciated, and systems around them push them not to care.
When your organization gets stuck, don’t blame them. Instead, find a way to help them become the contribution they’re capable of being.
Some useful questions you might not be asking:
How much does the information we’re not collecting cost us?
What is the customer service cost and brand dilution of depriving our people the freedom to take action?
If we built a culture of mutual respect with our night clerks–using training, compensation and engagement–what would our new customer experience and reputation be worth?
Americans are increasingly divided, not only politically, socially, and economically, but geographically. Our lack of real-world interaction makes us all the more susceptible to hateful, rage-baiting messages spread by those who benefit from keeping us divided and afraid of one another. Most Americans have never met anyone in real life that they hate as much as the caricatured versions of their political opponents. The imaginary friends of our childhoods get replaced by the imaginary enemies that exist somewhere, out there, beyond the borders—online and off—of our silos of homogeneity. Forget having united states, between political messaging, physical divides, and now contorted gerrymandering, we don’t even have united neighborhoods anymore.
“I just realized that maybe (just maybe) the reason for the fact that I’m unhappy, unmotivated and slightly head-achey might be that I didn’t have my morning coffee yet.” — Dominik Schwind
I’ve been watching YouTube stuff too much. Don’t get me wrong, I like what I’m watching but I’m missing on so many things on streaming. Aside from The Pitt with my wife, I’m not really watching anything regularly yet I’m paying for all the streaming services. I’m going to start watching shows/movies I want and stop with the YouTube.
Let’s see if I can’t come up with a playlist.
I just created a Skill in Claude. I found a really great breakdown and then used it as a basis for digital Claude Council to take a question and then debate the good, bad, indifferent about it and present a conclusion. It’s pretty great. I haven’t done anything with it yet, but I think it will become useful in the future.
“There’s a difference between standing up and telling people what you’re planning to do and standing up and going and accomplishing something.” — Paul Stanley
I’ve been watching YouTube stuff too much. Don’t get me wrong, I like what I’m watching but I’m missing on so many things on streaming. Aside from The Pitt with my wife, I’m not really watching anything regularly yet I’m paying for all the streaming services. I’m going to start watching shows/movies I want and stop with the YouTube.
Let’s see if I can’t come up with a playlist.
A direct transfer of billions of your taxpayer dollars directly into the bank account and the pockets of Donald Trump, all dressed up as a settlement of a lawsuit in which Donald Trump is both the plaintiff and also the defendant… All of this happening as the Trump administration is literally making your life harder and more expensive with wars and tariffs. But none of that has stopped Trump from trying to get his hands on more of your money.
The president, in effect, sued himself for more than $10 billion, or he sued the government he controls. This is an attempt at the largest theft ever by an American politician. Plainly, flagrantly, blatantly, in plain daylight. It is a conflict of interest so enormous, the term itself, ‘conflict of interest,’ hardly begins to capture what’s happening.
The mob has a word for that: shakedown. He’s suing the federal government that he controls. A check for $10 billion that he hopes to secure that will go to Donald Trump, signed by Donald Trump. And who’s paying the check? The American taxpayers.
$10 billion is almost enough to fund federal disaster relief for a year. It is enough to fund the entire National Park Service, one of the great jewels of this nation, for five years. You could fund the Peace Corps for 20 years. It could all go straight into the Trump family coffers.
I am telling you, there is no scale or precedent for corruption like this in the United States. It would put every other Trump grift to shame. This is what life looks like under a mad king. Every day brings a new ‘let them eat cake’ moment.
You have to seize all of his assets when this is all over.
Robert Kagan’s ominous view of the Iran war –
“There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be ‘open,’ as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.”
Doc Searls has a fantastic breakdown that I agree with 100%, especially the point about skipping ad reads.
Near the end of this Pivot podcast, starting at about the 55 minute mark, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway give a great summary of why podcasting is “the fastest-growing ad-supported medium.” Among other things, they say “People actually listen to the ads,” and that host read-overs are very effective and remunerative (bringing much higher CPMs).
Five additional points.
First, you can listen on your own time. You’re free from the tyranny of “What’s on." This is the triumph of personal optionality over … I dunno, you name it. Yes, we still need what’s live, at least for news and sports. But we don’t need it all the time for everything else. While that doesn’t completely obsolesce the things called “stations,” and “networks,” it does relegate them to a legacy niche. It’s an open question how big that niche will be when the transition is over.
Second, not all podcasts are ad-supported. I know, the ones without ads are mostly out on the long tail, but what matters is that anybody can podcast on the Net, just like anybody can publish there. RSS—really simple syndication—gives all of us scale. This is, as Kurt Vonnegut once said, a miracle on the order of loaves and fish. It’s foundational.
Third, podcasts are liberating. Radio and TV required licenses on the transmission side and dedicated instruments (radios and TVs ) on the receiving end. With podcasting, the thresholds of production, distribution, and consumption verge on zero. Got a phone? You’re in.
Fourth, a huge advantage of podcasts is that you can skip over the ads. Whenever I hear Kara announce the first “quick break,” I usually hit the forward-30-seconds icon six times, to jump over three minutes of 30-second ads. (Though lately Pivot has gone to seven of those in the first break.) Still, I’m sure the advertisers' money is well spent, because some percentage of the audience won’t skip all the ads all the time. And the host-reads are good and effective, as they say.
Fifth, if it’s not “wherever you get your podcasts,” it’s not a podcast. The context for what I sourced above was Kara and Scott’s back-and-forth about Netflix moving into video podcasts. I think “video podcasts” is a contradiction, especially if those podcasts are just another form of TV you can only get from one exclusive producer. If that’s the case, it’s just a show. But look at Us magazine’s list of the 7 Best Podcasts on Netflix Right Now (April 2026). The audio versions of all seven are available wherever you get your podcasts. That makes them real. If they become exclusive to Netflix, or to anybody, they aren’t podcasts anymore. Find another word for them.
The NBA Draft Combine runs May 10-17 at Wintrust Arena. Three names from this year’s Final Four team are on the invite list: Keaton Wagler, Kylan Boswell, and Andrej Stojakovic.
Wagler’s the lock. Top-10 projection, consensus All-American, Jerry West Shooting Guard of the Year. He won’t have to scrimmage. The interview rooms are basically a formality.
Boswell is the one I’m watching. He averaged a double-double at the Portsmouth Invitational a few weeks back and made the all-tournament team. He’s projected late second round right now. A strong week in Chicago could only help his stock.
Stojakovic has until May 27 to make up his mind, and the smart bet is that he comes back. The three-ball still has to come around (please shoot 500 threes all summer), and another year with Underwood is worth more than a contested 50th pick.