Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/07/hello-from-the-ruins/
I heard on that ultra-trendy news site, NPR, that Social Media is On The Way Out in 2026. What comes next? Well, I kinda like blogs. And I’m not the only one. Joan Westenberg wrote a kick-ass piece here: The Case for Blogging in the Ruins about the long view of how sharing knowledge works and how social media kinda pissed all over things … I’m going to just drop some excerpts …
Before social media ate the internet … blogs occupied a wonderful and formative niche in the information ecosystem. They were personal but public, permanent but updateable, long-form but informal. A blog post could be three paragraphs or thirty pages.
When I write a blog post, I’m writing for an imagined reader who has arrived at this specific URL because they’re interested in this specific topic; I can assume a baseline of engagement; I can make my case over several thousand words, trusting that anyone who’s made it to paragraph twelve probably intends to make it to paragraph twenty.
When I write for social media, I’m writing for someone who is one thumb-flick away from a video of either a hate crime or a dog riding a skateboard. … The format actively punishes nuance, which means that a thoughtful caveat reads as weakness and any acknowledgment of uncertainty looks like waffling.
She explains the origins of Essays: provisional attempts to try out ideas.
Social media flattens all of this into statements: Everything you post is implicitly a declaration. Even if you add caveats, the format strips them away. What travels is the hot take, the dunked-on screenshot, the increasingly-shitty meme, the version of your argument that fits in a shareable image with the source cropped out.
I keep thinking about how many interesting folks have essentially stopped writing anything substantial because they’ve moved their entire intellectual presence to Twitter or Substack Notes. … It’s like watching someone who used to compose symphonies decide to only produce ringtones.
The capacity for hot zingers like the symphonies to ringtones analogy are maybe something we can thank our social media experiences for.
She’s got some advice on what makes a good blog and how to get started, and how to address “the Discovery Problem” with the observation that blog entries get indexed and surfaced over time, where social media disappears. I have to admit, though: since Social Media came about, this humble blog has received about zero comments over the past decade. Kind of a bummer. But the quiet exploration over here in my own space beats The Monetize Everything Hate Machine.
Anyway, it is nice to find another feed to add to https://theoldreader.com/.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/09/movies-i-have-watched-recently/
Previously: Movies I Seen Lately
Late last year I started watching movies on Fandango At Home, partly just to get away from the Big Tech Companies a bit. They have an extensive catalog and now I feel like I have re-discovered the old Netflix DVD service: I can just browse endless movies or search one up and have a good time for a few bucks. Here’s some movies I have watched since October.
Cat City
This is from October so I don’t remember too well. The cats and the rats have teamed up against the mice. There’s a lot of incompetent mafia action told in the style of a cheap 1980s Hanna-Barbera cartoon in Hungarian.
My Beautiful Laundrette
Uncle Explains the Situation
Young people. Pakistani Brits, the children of immigrants. London in the 80s. Hustle Culture. The Tube constantly trundling past the flat. Racist Thugs. The sickly father who, like Charlie Bucket’s grandparents, won’t get out of bed, played by Roshan Seth, feels comfortably familiar, because you recognize him from half a dozen other movies. The protagonist starts working for a successful Uncle and takes over running a funky little laundromat, which he fixes up nice. Hijinx ensue as secrets are revealed. A fun movie.
I swear there’s a sound effect in common with “The Toxic Avenger.”
The Fugitive
Holds up. We watched this with the boys and it really is a perfect action movie, well acted. Plus it is set in and around Chicago.
Burden of Dreams
This is a “making of” a movie I’ll now need to see, called “Fitzcarraldo” which tells the story of a man named Fitzgerald who in olden days sought to corner the rubber market in part by hauling a steam ship through the jungle to connect from the Amazonian to the Peruvian river basin. But “Burden of Dreams” is about a stubborn film director, Werner Herzog, making this film in the hardest way possible.
A badly pronounced and half-finished sentence out of a cheap, stupid suburban novel.
Part of the story is camping out in the deep Peruvian jungle for several months to film, with a large camp of Native people. Part of the story is getting chased off his first film location. Part of the story is having to re-shoot half the film with a new actor when the first star contracts amoebic dysentery and is forbidden by his Doctor from returning to Peru. The film is re-shot with Klaus Kinski, who irritates the film crew and the Natives enough that I read somewhere the latter offered to kill Kinski on Herzog’s behalf, but Herzog declined because that would have further delayed his filming.
I learned of this movie from a YouTube clip of Herzog condemning the jungle as obscene.
Americana
The information screen for “Americana” taken from the “Fandango at Home” app.
A bunch of fun characters. I liked seeing Zahn McClarnon, the sheriff from “Dark Winds” playing a Native American revolutionary. Ghost Eye at one point explains that his nom de guerre is an homage to “Ghost Dog,” a film, I guess we both like, where Forrest Whitaker plays a New York mafia hit man who lives by the code of the Samurai. We’re all just playing a role, might as well have a cool name, right? With the violence, the non-linear storyline, and the compelling characters it felt a lot like “Pulp Fiction.”
Baurnya Salu
A kid is growing up in a village with his grandmother. He doesn’t know his birth parents beyond an old photo. He takes on extra jobs around the village to save some money to visit them. The filming is beautiful. Grandma goes to the city for a checkup and passes away. After the funeral, a bus ride brings him back to his birth family. Back with Mom and Dad and a little brother who understands how the farm works, and can ride a horse. Integrating back into the family is hard because the first born son is a stranger. It is very emotional and the story is really well told. A lot more showing than telling.
The Blues Brothers
The Wife had never seen it. It’s pretty good. A Chicago classic, like poppyseeds on a steamed bun.
The Bodyguard From Beijing
An older kung Fu Cop movie. Fun.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/12/driving-over-ice/
Visiting the Upper Peninsula as a kid, we spent a lot of time relaxing on the beach. One time it was told to me that there was a fine collection of Model Ts at the bottom of the bay. “Why would you try to drive across the bay,” asked I? Well, you see, folks had been used to crossing the ice on foot or wagon–it saved a lot of time versus going the long way around in the snow. Unfortunately, combustion cars are heavier than some early owners reckoned, and the ice would give way.
Driving over ice on the road, I have learned, takes a special form of sangfroid. I have recently been thinking about the will and skill with which my people of the Upper Midwest drive over ice, and of how some folks are eager to tell their own version of a story without concern for facts.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/13/from-our-undocumented-workers/
Excerpts from some brunch-time reading, penned by Cincinnatus Hibbard, via Metro Silicon Valley, transcribed by hand from the print edition:
“How often do you think about ICE?” I asked “Juan,” the gruff old ranch hand. He paused, reckoning, and replied, “Maybe 50 times a day.” That shocked me–was he that frightened? He had been stoical, like a rock, even when he had told me that he had not seen his wife or his children living in Mexico for 23 years. There were grandchildren now–grandchildren he had never held. His eyes were distant. Perhaps, looking inward, he was trying to see them now.
“Why don’t you go back to see them?” I asked, deeply moved. “I cannot re-cross the border,” he said. There is no work back home. My family, they need me here–working.”
We sat at a picnic table under a tree beside a field, where undocumented farmworkers volunteered after their work shifts, farming organic vegetables for the local food bank. Despite paying local and federal taxes, and despite their poverty, undocumented immigrants are inelegible for Calfresh foodstamps–as well as Medicaid medical insurance, disability insurance (though they work some of the most dangerous jobs) and Social Security retirement checks. They might be keeping those safety net programs solvent for us.
The winter crops were in. The workers were tending two types of onion, garlic, two kinds of cabbage, Brussels sprouts, jicama–and strawberries for the small children to pick. “Why do you work here, after working so hard in the vineyard all day?” I asked “Ernesto.”
“Because I know hunger,” he said. “I know what it is like …”
. . .
This is terror.
“Lupe” talked about a pain she had in her pelvis last summer. For months, the pain grew and grew intolerable, and still she told no one–she knew her friends would try to make her go to the emergency room–but the hospital wasn’t safe from ICE. What was this pain stabbing up like knives from her pelvis to her navel–“Was it cancer?” she wondered.
Finally, she admitted it–there was no hiding it; she would pause in her farm work as she breathed through the unbearable pain, swooning. Her friends and family were begging her to go, but she wouldn’t go–she would be taken by ICE. What would happen to her children then? Finally, she was taken in a faint for emergency surgery, by friends with H2-A papers.
This is terror.
. . .
“Sophia” fears for her teenage daughter, “Ana,” who was already given to panic-attacks. Like many Latino youth with undocumented friends and relatives, her social media algorithm is filled with shaky cam POV shots of raids and arrests at homes and school drop-off, or ICE contingents parading in full battle regalia down residential streets, guns pointed, or smuggled videos of immigrants deported to war zones (like South Sudan) or hell-on-earth prisons (like El Salvador’s CECOT prison.)
. . .
This shift to deportation work has caused slow-downs, stoppages, and/or unraveling of cases against “high level” child sexual predators, sex traffickers, smugglers, scammers, international criminals, embargo evaders and international terrorists. As the deportation arrests surge, the true bad guys are getting away.
I re-typed this stuff from the print edition because 1) I prefer reading print to begin with 2) my modest manual effort in transcribing the words means more to me and my soul than simply copying-and-pasting the same quickly-forgotten text around the Internet. I hope that in some small way, these words find meaning for you.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/14/total-elapsed-time/
Whether you gauge the temperature with an F or a C, 40-something is nasty. That’s what we had this morning. I rode my bicycle as far as Caltrain, and figured that I could dress better, but I could just as easily hop on the train, in hopes of decent afternoon weather.
Casually sloppy: all these bikes are just riding to Palo Alto.
Today was also our “End of Sprint” which is weird becauce every other Tuesday feels like a Friday? Whatever. I had things pretty well wrapped up by shortly after 3pm, and announced I would head home.
“When you bike home all the way, how long does it take,” asked a colleague.
“I dunno: about an hour? Google says an hour. But I can just ride as far as I feel then hop the train.”
I got outside into around 63F and it was amazing! So, I started to pedal, not towards Caltrain, but home. And not in a very straight line: I had time to meander. A new hobby the past couple of years has been wandrer.earth, where I gradually fill in the map with places I have walked and biked. I pull the phone out, stick it in the handlebar mount, set Wandrer to full screen, and work my way towards home, favoring “red streets” where it doesn’t know I have been.
“This charming old house could fit in my backyard!”
Gotta stop at every Little Free Library along the way. At least half a dozen. And a table of free stuff where I picked up a black light for finding the mystery cat urine. (TMI? Sorry, toots!) And of course, making extra turns and rolling down red-lined cul-de-sacs. Is that a gorgeous house? I’ll need to stop and take a picture. Never went anywhere near Caltrain: things were too amazing out there. But as I neared the house and sunset, I decided some red routes can be saved for future adventures as I would prefer to get home before dark.
“Oh no wait, this is the house, scaled down, that I want to ask an architect to squeeze into an ADU!”
Total moving time? Around an hour fifteen.
Total elapsed time? Near an hour forty.
I gotta take the road less traveled. It is a habit my loved ones mostly tolerate. That’s how you can tell they love me.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/15/more-movies-i-have-watched-recently/
Previously: Movies I Have Watched Recently
Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away
Buddy Guy started Down South, picking cotton, as his ancestors had done for too long. He loved playing guitar and made his way up to Chicago. Worked a long time to get The Industry to dig his sound. Got some help from the English, who were more directly inspired by and keen on promoting Guy’s rawer, more energetic style of Blues.
About twenty years ago my father came to town to re-wire the recording studio he had wired up decades previous, and they put him on the guest list at Buddy Guy’s. I joined him and his wife and we listened all through the night, moving from standing around the perimeter, as is common in Chicago blues clubs, to sitting at a table once the crowd thinned. There was a blind organist that Dad’s wife had grown up listening to. It was a long loud night. Afterward we piled into Dad’s car. The wife wanted popcorn shrimps, so we cruised through the night to a stand that sold popcorn shrimp in paper bags.
I had heard Buddy Guy’s had closed down, but I looked it up and not only is the place still open, but Buddy himself is listed as playing more nights than not.
Die Hard
They had the original Charlie Brown Christmas on Apple TV, which is a sweet little thing I re-watched with the family. But you know what is a Christmas Movie we had never seen before? Die Hard! You know? That is an amazingly great movie. Another perfect action movie. If you haven’t seen Die Hard, go for it. You needn’t wait for Christmas.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Because it was referenced in “Americana” and because I remember enjoying it decades ago … once upon a time, a mafioso saved the life of this weird kid who was into Japanese culture. In the present day, that kid, now a grown man, lives alone on a roof with pigeons, working hits for the mafioso, His Retainer, in the spirit of the Samurai.
A gimmick in the film is when he chats with the Ice Cream Truck man, who only speaks French. They each speak in their respective languages, arriving at the same conclusion. This probably illustrates something relevant about perceiving the world beyond the limits of language. It is a fun movie and I’m glad I watched it again.
The Samurai is a way that is no longer followed, and the mafia in this movie also understands that it has lost its spirit and is also on the way out. Ghost Dog came out in 1999, when the world was changing quickly into the Brave New Digital World of today. It feels like every day, I see a bit more value in bringing back some Older Ways.
Le Samouraï
A loner hitman lives upstairs with a bird. He is very careful about his work and covering his tracks. He steals cars with ease. License plates are swapped. When a female witnesses his work, he takes no action against her. His client turns violently against him. Ghost Dog clearly drew some influence from this 1967 film, where everyone speaks French.
The Cops feature more in this film. Dogged Big City Cops. The boss detective is trying to pin the protagonist down: his alibis are too perfect. But the beautiful piano player lady swears absolutely, this is not the guy.
There’s a lot of hide and seek on the Paris Metro. And vintage French cars with headlights so dull that every not-young person would swear “aha! they have gotten so much brighter!” The plot is engaging, but the movie tends to drag a bit, in my esteem. Yeah, you’re doing a Noir crime chase but a lot of the scenes loiter too long in the dark.
I also learned that the 1967 Paris Cop term for a surveillance bug is “walkie talkie.”
The Apartment
This was playing at Alamo, but the online seat selector said there were no good seats to be had and the weather was crap so I pulled this up on Fandango at Home. 1960s Manhattan. A guy works on the 19th floor of an insurance company: a vast open sea of desks crammed together beneath a ceiling of fluorescent lights. But he has a scheme to advance his career: he makes his apartment available to executives who need a place to bring their mistresses for an hour or two.
This, of course, is a logistical hassle and often a great inconvenience. I like his apartment. Pre-war. Cozy. Nice architectural details. An air conditioner and a pathetic kitchen. Anyway, he has a crush on the Elevator Girl and as his prospects improve so to does his confidence in courting her. Of course, she’s working through her past(?) fling with The Big Boss … long story short, the protagonist comes home to find the Elevator Girl in his bed overdosing on pills. The neighbor, a Doctor, helps save her life and counsels that he needs to closely monitor her recovery.
It was a wonderful movie. Suspenseful and humane. One scene that caught in my attention is earlier when he’s trying to impress her by explaining “I know everything about you. Where you live, your family …” and he explains that he pulled her policy card to learn more about her. She takes this creeper news in stride. Either folks thought somewhat differently about privacy and ethics back then or we’re being told that her standards for decency in men have been lowered below the horizon. Point being that it can be really hard in New York to sort through all the ambitious young men and distinguish the ethical lapses of the over-eager from the bald lies of the truly rotten.
The Hospital
After “The Apartment” Fandango suggested “The Hospital.” Another hectic Manhattan workplace in 1971: a busy teaching hospital. The protagonist runs the place. The hospital is a giant complicated mechanism of endless headaches and his life and mental state are both badly on the slide.
There are people picketing outside because the hospital’s expansion plan requires the demolition of tenements across the street. At one point they have a meeting with the protestors and everybody wants something else. I have experienced enough public meetings to know that scene. Oh and it seems that maybe the medical staff are being carefully murdered.
Pairs really well with The Apartment. This time, the workplace affairs are conducted in broom closets, or, when a patient dies, in an empty bed in a room shared by a comatose patient. Young Doctors have no time for the shenanigans of Insurance executives.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/17/a-man-becomes-his-attentions/
Along the Leestown Road, near an old whitewashed springhouse made useless by a water-district pipeline, I stopped to eat lunch. Downstream from the spring where butter once got cooled, under peeling sycamores, the clear rill washed around clumps of new watercress. I pulled makings for a sandwich from my haversack: Muenster cheese, a collop of hard salami, sourdough bread, horseradish. I cut a sprig of watercress and laid it on, then ate slowly, letting the gurgle in the water and the guttural trilling of red-winged blackbirds do the talking. A noisy, whizzing gnat that couldn’t decide whether to eat on my sandwich or my ear joined me.
Had I gone looking for some particular place rather than any place, I’d never have found this spring under the sycamores. Since leaving home, I felt for the first time at rest. Sitting full in the moment, I practiced on the god-awful difficulty of just paying attention. It’s a contention of Heat Moon’s — believing as he does any traveler who misses the journey misses about all he’s going to get — that a man becomes his attentions. His observations and his curiosity, they make and remake him.
William Least Heat-Moon
Blue Highways
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/18/fifty-years/
When this post is published, I am fifty years old.
Go me!
Thanks, Mom!
This website is about thirty years old.
Go World Wide Web!
Thanks, Sir Tim Berners-Lee!
I have spent just over half my years in California versus Illinois. It is where we raise our kids, and where we own our home. Chicago and the Midwest will always hold a special place in my heart, but I have become one of those sunshine people who are just an earthquake away from sliding into the ocean.
Go Bears!
Thanks, California!
Our marriage, like our older kid and our mortgage, not to mention our cats, and my current job tenure, are all just over a decade old. (And the younger kid is closing in!)
I recently heard it said that your first decade is the happiest. But my forties have been really great as well. What makes a good childhood — being surrounded by loving people who support your growth — can really come back to you when you work to be a good spouse, a good parent, a good friend and a good citizen.
I am a very fortunate person.
Go Family!
Thanks, My Sweetheart!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/26/it-was-one-guy/
I heard that with the Super Bowl coming to Santa Clara, we could expect a rush of federal Law Enforcement, so I signed up for Santa Clara County Rapid Response Training. That was my Saturday morning. A room full of volunteers and a word at the start that an observer had been murdered in Minnesota the same morning. We learned a bit about how ICE has been functioning locally, and how Rapid Response works. We signed up.
Back to the house and switch to the minivan to schlep the Pinewood Derby track over to the Pinewood Derby. “Have you seen the video?” “No, and that’s just as well.” I helped set up the track, then excused myself. “I am crashing. I need to eat.”
I ate and then climbed into bed. I rested but couldn’t nap. I missed most of the Pinewood Derby. I had just run out of energy. Not a physical thing so much as a state change. National despair. I can’t explain it but there’s a good chance you understand.
I caught the tail end of the Pinewood Derby, helped pack up the track. I stopped at Trader Joe’s for some non-alcohol Hazy IPA. The Family had eaten at The Derby. I dined on candy and fake IPAs for dinner. I don’t recommend that. But that’s a Sometimes Saturday Night. We watched Saturday Night Live. No mention of Minnesota and I understand why.
Come morning I couldn’t sleep. I really like to sleep in when I can. That’s what Sunday is for, right? I got up and went to the computer. The letter E in 700 point font. Two of them. And N, D, I, and C. I taped up the old sign: END ICE. I dressed warm and headed out.
Around the corner a guy walking his dog encouraged me to be a dumbass and go get shot by federal agents. He seemed good natured about it. I walked down to the crossroads where other protests have been held. A few cars tapped horns quietly in the residential neighborhoods but as I got to crossing the streets of the main intersection over and over, many enthusiastic honks. Kind words out of windows. Hand gestures of solidarity. A ride share driver pulled over and handed me a can of Red Bull. Another man, who looked a little like a priest, beckoned me over. He had an orange juice, a Kind Bar, “a chocolate milk, for later” and a $10 gift card for the coffee shop. He thanked me for what I was doing. As a son of immigrants. Rene nearly brought the tears to my eyes.
I did my thing for about two and a half hours. My first solo protest. I think organization is generally a better thing, but when people start coming out spontaneously, the mood has shifted. I didn’t mind being alone. I wasn’t. Most folks saw past me but plenty knew that I was there for them. We don’t want to live in a country that is ruled by Fear. I don’t want that for my boys. I really want my country to be that special place where people come to escape Fear, and for opportunity. Death in the streets is nothing new, but blessing Federal Police with power to murder people at their own discretion? I can not live with that.
Walked downtown for brunch. On the way home a lady asked if there was a protest. “It was one guy,” I said. She pointed me out to the kid as an example of a good person. What made me good, in my book, was heading home to plan out and run a Den Meeting for the Cub Scouts. We talked about pets, but mainly we enjoyed being kids together.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/27/one-liners/
Brita Hummel left a job at Meta.
A temp-worker’s view of the usefulness of Dilbert cartoons as a gauge for dysfunction.
“The land, still cold and wintery, was alive with creatures that trusted in the coming of spring.” –William Least Heat-Moon
A blog is the cultural equivalent of a yard sale.
Elon Musk turned a lot of people off by giving Nazi salutes, but the media never mentions this when reporting Tesla’s falling sales. “Elon Musk spent several chaotic months crudely slashing government programs,” reports The New Yorker.
During our Happy Birthday Phone Call, my Uncle mentioned that I was a Bicentennial Baby. “Yeah, I’m sorry our 250th is under such Circumstances.” “That’s okay, just stick around for 300.” “Uh … yeah, I’ll take some vitamins.”
“You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you’ve been feeling bad.” –William Least Heat-Moon
“I don’t trust pride, but when you realize that we are all one, you can be proud of being part of that gigantic entity that we all are.” –Bob Weir
I had a dream that my bicycle got stolen and I was annoyed about having to replace it because can you even buy an affordable awesome new bike with a front fork suspension and rim brakes anymore?
My wife is going for an evening walk.
She asked if I would like to join her.
The cat sitting on my lap looked up at her and meowed “no.”
The older son is going in my stead.
“A city of men is also a city of horses–balding horses, horses beautiful as Brooke Shields. Cars kill more people, but relieve us of the sight of beings whipped on our streets.” –Sparrow
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Arrr!
. . .
Avast!
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