NextDraft

Donald Trump is the equivalent of the OJ White Ford Bronco chase if it lasted for 110 days.

Consider this: Comey is 6’ 8. He was fired the moment he shook Trump’s hand.

This week’s most popular addition to Tinder profiles: “I’m sort of a Sally Yates type.”

This week, Apple got into the business of analyzing your sleep by acquiring a company called Beddit. (Funny, I slept just fine before I got my iPhone…)

Trump is obstructing justice and Jeff Sessions wants you in jail for smoking a joint.

Vice President Pence went horseback riding and chose this Reagan quote to share: “I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.” If that’s the quote he chose, his wife shouldn’t let him be with a horse without her present.

Trump only likes to stay in places that he owns. He should build a federal
prison.

Donald Trump was more respectful when he fired Gary Busey than he was when he fired James Comey.

It took just over a hundred days to elicit this response to the idea of The Rock running for president: “Hmm. Yeah, sounds good actually.”

Imagine this conversation at a University: “Hey, we just landed a keynote speaker for graduation!!!” Oh, great!! Who? “Betsy DeVos.”

I guarantee that inside his own head, Trump has floated the idea of Bill O’Reilly as White House press secretary.

Trump’s Secret Service code name is the sound of America crying.

America is being turned into United Airlines.

I’d estimate that about 20% of the Secret Service is dedicated to protecting Trump’s remote control.

Kissinger just trolled the shit out of us, bro.

Someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds just hacked like half the world.

Trump’s Secret Service code name is the sound of America crying.

There’s a good chance that Comey will testify in public in the next week or so. If he does, it will get better ratings than the M*A*S*H finale.

In a weird twist, Donald Trump will get the last laugh by holding his impeachment hearings at Mir a Lago.

Early in the week, an adult film star faked a shark attack because she wanted to have a viral video. Even weirder, like every guy you know got a little hard reading that story.

Here’s bummer. In Federal prison, no scoops of ice cream.

“When you’re press secretary, they let you do it. Just hide in the bushes. You can do anything.”

This is like Watergate, except Trump his own Deep Throat.

Wait, so gay people can’t get married but Mike Pence can have a horse inside him?

In retrospect, this all would have been way easier if Trump just shot the person on Fifth Avenue.

I’m envious of people with better Dove bottle shapes than mine.

62,979,636 voted for this guy.

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Time: 7 years Ago
Setting: Hotel Palomar. San Francisco. 9:30am

I was chatting with my old friend Arthur over a continental breakfast at the Hotel Palomar. His phone rang. He took the call. It didn’t bother me in the slightest. He had warned me ahead of time that this mission critical call might come. Arthur is an upsettingly accomplished writer and was scheduled to do a series of radio interviews while in San Francisco. He got the data he needed (where to be, when, who was driving) and snapped shut his flip phone. The minute or so he spent on his phone gave me just enough time to fire up my iPhone, check email, web stats, and incoming Tweets. It was a win win. On the surface, the moment was all too normal. A couple guys sitting across from each other at a table, both working their cell phones. But not too long ago, this scene with Arthur would have been completely unthinkable.

Time: Twelve Years Ago
Setting: Brooklyn Heights. Noon

I left a meeting downtown and raced to meet Arthur at a Brooklyn Heights cafe where he spent most afternoons huddled over a pen and a pile of dog-earred yellow pads. I was late. I wanted to call Arthur and let him know. But I couldn’t. Arthur hated being connected. When he used a laptop to type his novels, he did so only after disabling its wireless connectivity. And he hated cell phones. I saw this contempt for technology as selfish aggression.

What point was he trying to make? Forget about me. What about his wife? They had two young kids. What if there was an emergency? I got frustrated enough when my wife forgot her cell phone somewhere. But to simply refuse to own one?

Arthur took my complaints in stride. He heard them all the time. He offered an anecdote about his travels in his early twenties when he went for weeks without being anywhere near a phone. And nothing terrible happened. Sometimes he just didn’t want to be reached so he didn’t feel he needed a cell phone and he was convinced if he got one, he’d never be able to concentrate enough to write another novel. I decided I wouldn’t want to call him even if he changed his mind.

Time: Twenty Eight Years Ago
Setting: The Sizzler. 11:30am, Early Bird Special

I spent the summer working at my dad’s company. He was (and is) an amazingly successful self-made real estate developer. On a particularly slow day, everyone in the office decided to hit the Sizzler. Shortly after sitting down, we heard a too-loud voice rising above the din of the lunch crowd. We looked over and saw a guy alone at a table, holding one of those giant, newfangled portable phones to his ear.

My dad shook his head. “Don’t ever let that happen to you,” he warned. “Can you imagine having a job so terrible that you can’t even get away from your boss long enough to eat your lunch. They make him carry around that contraption.” And everyone else at the table nodded in agreement.

“David, look at that poor guy.” My dad touched my hand. “That’s why I always tell you, never work for someone else.”

Time: Today
Setting: Right behind this screen

Arthur still has his cell phone. He’ll read this blog post on his wifi-connected laptop and maybe he’ll share it on the Facebook page his publisher convinced him to set up.

So I guess I won that battle. But thinking of us sitting at the table, phones in hand, does make me wonder whether Arthur was really so wrong to want to disconnect from everyone for a few hours a day.

While he doesn’t use it much, my dad has had a cell phone for years. And it’s always in his pocket, even when we occasionally go back to that Sizzler near his office.

Couldn’t the pity my dad felt for that guy at the Sizzler be applied, on some level, to any one of us today?

These days, I’m publishing all of my longform essays over at Medium. (Click Over there to get a link.

Here’s the coverage of Paris, the refugees and much more from today’s NextDraft.

(Remember to subscribe or get the app here).

Other recent writings include:

Consider Yourself on Notification.

Why You’re an Expert on ISIS.

In the latest What Hurts podcast, Phil Bronstein (who wrote the exclusive article on the man who shot Osama bin Laden) and I talk about the struggle to know when it’s OK to share information you weren’t even supposed to know about in the first place.

You can listen on the What Hurts site.

You can subscribe on iTunes.

Or you can listen on Overcast.

On the writing side: The SxSW debacle and why you have to stand for something.

In the latest episode of What Hurts, Phil Bronstein and I talk about the week’s news and the end of an era at Playboy.

Listen and Subscribe on iTunes.

or:

Listen and Follow on SoundCloud.

On the writing side, here are five simple steps to fix iTunes.

Phil Bronstein and I have a new podcast called What Hurts (still very much in its beta form). Have a listen and let me know what you think. You can:

Listen and Subscribe on iTunes.

or:

Listen and Follow on SoundCloud.

Or just search for What Hurts in your favorite Podcast App.

I’ve been doing most of my long-form stuff over at Medium. Here are some of the recent highlights. If you want to get the daily news updates from NextDraft, get the newsletter or app here.

Jay Z and a bunch of his big time friends in the music business held a press conference this week to re-launch Tidal, a music treamervice he recently acquired. Let’s use that event as an excuse to reassess the state of online music. Here are eleven steps to the future of online music.

1. Before Jay Z bought it, Tidal’s claim to fame was that it was one of two music services (along with Deezer) that have focused on the American audiophile crowd. The idea is that you get access to streams of higher quality files that make it sound more like you’re listening to a CD. I’m not knocking it this idea. I recently had a serious midlife crisis that manifested itself as a need to learn about and purchase anything that would improve my listening experience. But here’s the thing…

2. As long as you’re listening to music via your headphone jack (going out to your headphones or out to some external powered speakers), that extra file size and music quality will not make a difference. Zilch. I used to be a Tidal customer. One night I gathered about 8 people and let them listen to tracks from both Rdio and Tidal. Not one person picked the Tidal track as superior. That surprised me. But it shouldn’t have. Here’s why…

3. Every laptop and smartphone has something called a DAC (a digital to analog converter) that takes the computer stuff (to use a technical term) and converts it into something the human ear can hear. The DACs that come with your computer and/or phone just aren’t good enough to take advantage of a higher quality stream. To do that, you need to bypass the internal DAC (via USB, for example) on your machine and run the signal through an external DAC (either a standalone or one that’s integrated into an AMP and/or receiver). I won’t go into too much detail about these products because then you’ll have nothing to study during your own midlife crisis. If you want an entry level way to try out the world of external DACs, get a Dragonfly thumbdrived-sized model, and see what you think. In the meantime…

4. If you’re listening to music out of your headphone jack and want a pair of headphones that can do the job for $100-$300, I’d focus almost all of your research on one factor: How do they feel? Don’t bother with anything more expensive than that unless you want to enter the remarkably confusing and ridiculously costly audiophile world. Not enough of you will do that (and even fewer can actually hear the difference), so Jay Z and Tidal will not win on sound. Here’s what they — or someone else — could win on…

5. Exclusive content and superior marketing. They got some of both of those with a relaunch that included the support of many massive artists. And the backing of those artists — such as Alicia Keys, Arcade Fire, Chris Martin , Daft Punk, Jack White, Kanye West, Deadmau5, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Usher — is locked in because Jay Z gave them each a piece of the company. Don’t be distracted by any marketing about superior sound. This is the play. This is why Jay Z bought the company. And it’s a very smart move. But it’s not his only advantage…

6. He’s also got Beyonce. Seriously, if I had known that Beyonce was looking for a guy who was willing to blow a lot of investment cash on Internet startups, I would have given her a call a long time ago. For now, I’ll just give her husband some advice…

7. Sell the company. Now. You just created a lot of value by getting a lot of big name artists to sign onto this project. That was right in your wheelhouse. Competing on tech and features and UI is not. Take the value you created in the first few days of owning your company and flip the whole thing to one of the existing behemoths. The publicity and industry punch that Tidal brings is significant, and you’ll be paid well. And if you think music money is good, wait until you see Internet money. I know, I know. I’m in no position to give advice to a guy who married Beyonce. But consider this…

8. You just held a press conference with some of the biggest celebrities of our time. And the consumer buzz and press you got wasn’t even close to a Tim Cook Apple keynote. You’re in the technology business now. And we’re all in a new world. Today, product is a bigger star than any celebrity. That’s so important and so right, I’m gonna make it the chorus of this post and repeat it a couple more times. Product is a bigger star than any celebrity … Product is a bigger star than any celebrity. And in the high end tech business, we got 99 problems, but UI ain’t one. Seriously, if you think having a beef with another rapper is dangerous, try dealing with a product manager who disagrees with your vision. Here’s what the company that acquires Tidal should do to further differentiate itself…

9. Push back against the Internet-era dogma that we all hate having our music streams hosted by a human curator. That idea was never more than an assumption. And it’s one that needs to be tested. You’ll still have access to uninterrupted music when you want it. But when you want a radio station or a hosted playlist, then someone should let you hear a human voice. SiriusXM does that now, and I enjoy it. More importantly, my kids love it too. Technology is always better when it enhances the human element instead of erasing it. Yeah, I know. Number nine is a long way down a list to start dropping this kind of serious knowledge on you. But think of this as a concert that was building as it goes, until it gets called out for this encore…

10. Apple… Beats and Apple are set to release their competitor in the streaming music space and they have all the elements they need. The Beats business team, the Apple technical and user interace teams, and the friggin iPhone. So here’s what they should do to win soon and win big… Improve the DACs on their devices and make sure those DACs work especially well with their own streaming service and headphones (even if people don’t have an ear for music, it turns out that the placebo affect is huge), buy Tidal to get their artist deals (and the combined cred of Jay Z and Dr. Dre on one team), focus on the human element (DJs), let users be DJs and build their own audiences (no one ever grew up wanting to be a playlist maker), and combine it all with a video and live music offering on the soon to be dominant Apple TV. You go after Spotify, Vevo, SiriusXM (via Carplay) and even LiveNation, all in one massive move that could only be made by one massive company. And, as is the case with any decent music list, this one goes to…

11. Buy SiriusXM. Yeah, it’s crazy. But they have tens of millions of paying subscribers and they provide the fastest way to get into the cars of millions of Americans. Sure, it will all be replaced by Carplay, but that process will go a lot faster with a beachhead like Sirius. And there are two other big factors. First, you’d get Howard Stern. He is the best radio personality and interviewer in the world today and that’s not a bad anchor for all those podcasts that are being pushed through iTunes. And second, SiriusXM’s stock symbol is SIRI. It’s a match made in (Stairway to) Heaven.

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It’s showtime on the Internet. With the launch of Periscope, Twitter has enabled each of us to livestream video to our followers. That’s good news for our cats, and that’s good news for Twitter, a company that has seen some of its promise limited by the very technological age in which it emerged.

There are those addicts who won’t be satisfied until they bear down and squeeze every iota of content from the deepest recesses of their unconscious gray matter to the bright lights of their Twitter timelines. For the rest of us (ok, the rest of you), Twitter is most useful and entertaining when those tweeting are gathered around a unified topic.

Think about it. Twitter is at its best during presidential debates, the Academy Awards, the World Cup, Apple keynotes, and the Super Bowl; those moments when we’re all talking about the same thing at the same time.

Television has been the primary screen around which we have gathered on our virtual coaches to make points, crack jokes, and transform our personal jealousies of celebrities and famous athletes into retweetable snark. (“Sure, that guy who just won an Oscar is going to spend the night having sex with three models on top of a pile of cash, but did you see how many retweets I got?”)

The DVR and subsequent modes of watching video have conspired to make these universal moments all too rare. Everything is time-shifted or binge-watched according to our own individual schedules and our willingness to suffer the risk of show spoilers (sidenote: Please don’t tell me who shot J.R.).

Aside from sports, major awards shows, breaking news events, and the occasional reality show finale, live television is dead. That’s bad news for Twitter. That’s bad news for the advertisers whose commercials you’re fast-forwarding over. And that’s bad news for those of us looking for some conversation, who more often than not, find that we’re left to mumble to ourselves on our own virtually deserted front stoops.

Twitter doesn’t work if we’re all talking past each other about entirely different topics; lost in the egocentric, pathetic, little fake worlds of our own making. That’s what Facebook is for.

So what do you do if your product is at its best during live, shared events, but there are almost no live events left to share?

You make the live events yourself.

Or better yet, you get us to do it.

That’s where Periscope comes in. Except in rare cases, these streamed events will not be global or even national in nature. But they will be live, we’ll know exactly who’s watching with us, and the content will be pushed through the same pipes that support our conversations around it. Live fodder for discussion and the discussion itself all on the same social network.

To paraphrase the great Bonnie Raitt, Twitter had to give us something to Tweet about.

Your live cat video will be the start. But advertisers and content creators won’t be far behind. For years, Television networks and Twitter have been trying to figure out the best way to build buzz and share data. The true promise of that goal could be reached when both are being shared on the same platform. TV would never be able to figure out social. So Twitter has to figure out video.

Sure, there’s something a bit depressing about a future that requires us to be sharing the same live video in order to actually get a conversation going. But it sure beats just looking at our own screens all alone.

So take your places everyone. Because we’re live.

Click on the head to find out more about NextDraft, the day’s most fascinating news.