Blogger of the Year

Blogger of the Year

From Scripting News podcast by Dave Winer

January 5, 2026

About this episode

Dave Winer discusses the implications of modern decision-making in politics and media, drawing parallels between historical events and current trends.

As with the previous podcast I asked Claude.ai to write the show notes. It chose to write it in the third person, which is great with me. It even filled in the first name of Jack Smith, when I couldn't remember it in the podcast, so in some ways the show notes are more informative than my almost 40 minute ramble. And it misunderstands some of what I'm saying, but I left it in as-is. The situation with Venezuela feels like a replay of Iraq - emotional, cowboy-style decision making reminiscent of George W. Bush's revenge mission for his father. This isn't how a 21st century nuclear-armed nation with a powerful economy should operate. Trump's real estate buddies went to meet with Putin to make deals for the Trump brand, while Putin and Xi have professional teams in constant contact. The naïve plan to split the world into three pieces reflects the same 'move fast and break things' mentality that tech leaders have now abandoned. Facebook and Zuckerberg no longer move fast and break things - their system is reliable and steady. They're efficient at achieving goals while deliberately misleading people about what they're doing. They established Threads as an alternative to Twitter…

People in this episode

Host: Dave Winer

Topics covered

  • technology
  • politics
  • media
  • journalism
  • society
  • history

Keywords

  • Blogger of the Year
  • Venezuela
  • Iraq
  • Trump
  • Facebook
  • Substack
  • journalism
  • Threads
  • Zuckerberg

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Facebook, Zuckerberg, Substack, Threads, Blue Sky

Places: Venezuela, Iraq, 21st century, Russia, China

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