Right after college, I moved to San Francisco, a city where I knew one person. I had a lonely time at first, and in particular I struggled to stay connected to the friends I no longer shared a campus with. I wasn’t very good at calling people on the phone and my email correspondences were sporadic at best. But what I did have was my Reader Crew, a group of friends who were all devoted to Google Reader.

Some of you have already lit up at the mention of Google Reader—it’s got a devoted following of mourners. Reader was a short-lived aggregator of RSS feeds (RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”). Sites can publish RSS feeds which allow you to access that sites content in another program, called a reader, where you can scroll, sort, and search. These readers pull together any feeds you curate, keeping them updated and tracked. RSS feeds tend to be the posts and articles from a site—scroll down to the bottom of this page and you can see ours—but most RSS readers can also handle newsletters, Tumblrs, and even specific Google searches can rendered in RSS.

Google’s Reader was special because it had some very light social aspects: you were able to follow other people, who could share things from their own feeds into your feed, with or without a small bit of commentary. You could comment on or “like” these shares, but that was about it. There was no big public feed of everyone’s stuff, there was no push to discover other users, and there was no way to make content for Reader. It was just curation and light commentary, if you wanted it.

Molly White wrote a great piece recently for her newsletter that describes RSS aggregation as “curating your own newspaper,” and this was my Reader Crew’s experience. My feed felt like a magazine I was editing, with a small group of friends popping in to guest edit every now and then. It was small, pleasant, and slow.

We were pretty bereft when Google killed Reader, as were many other devotees. It’s hard to replace. Reader was similar to social media, where you can also curate what you’re reading, but without the massive public news feeds and the jockeying for attention. Reader’s more intimate size also felt a bit like a group chat, maybe, but less chaotic and ever-present.

Thankfully, we discovered The Old Reader, which aims to recreate the Google-axed experience and does it admirably well. If you miss Reader, it’s worth a look. But if you’re just starting out with RSS, don’t stress too much about which program to use. There are a lot of free and cheap options that others have aggregated—like Molly White’s from above. Really the question comes down to interface: what is pleasant for you to use and look at? But it’s easy to import and export your list of feeds, so you can always bop around if you want.

I really recommend giving RSS a try, especially if you’re tired of endless feeds that feel like constant, multidirectional fire hoses. I love RSS primarily because you can curate who and what you want to hear from. The pacing is self directed too, and never overwhelming. It feels like riding a bike: fast enough to get somewhere, but slow that the ride is enjoyable. And like reading, you control the frame rate, and can stop, slow down, or go back in your feed if you need to. Which is unlike the stationary bike of social media, where some red-pilled millionaire engineer is cranking a dial to make you peddle faster. Plus, you can get to the end of your RSS feeds, unlike a social scroll which is endless by design.

This scale and pacing issue seems to be part of why RSS never caught on with Silicon Valley business types. It’s a tech that was never flashy or engaging enough. David Pierce wrote an interesting deep dive for The Verge called “Who killed Google Reader?” that reveals how executives never got what was so special about Reader, and had it out for the product from the start. They saw it as “a humble feed aggregator built on boring technology” and “in meeting after meeting, they’d ask why Reader wasn’t just a tab in the Gmail app.”

It’s another reason to love RSS: seems like the tech lords hate it.

When you’re a businessman making dollar-sign eyes at things like Twitter and Facebook, you’re certainly going to be less horny about a product that is slower and less addicting. RSS lacks a stickiness that keeps you compelled to go back. It’s much closer to a tool, allowing you to create something unique and private, that is only as useful or enjoyable as you make it.

We need a new word other than “feed” to describe RSS. A “feed” is for molten metals extruded along an assembly line, or for bullets pumped into a machine gun. Maybe we should start calling the aggregation of RSS feeds “fields” or “pastures”: contained spaces where you can plant and harvest as you like, with no one butting in unless they’re invited.

WASHINGTON — President Trump directed health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to crack down on misleading direct-to-consumer drug advertisements in a statement released Tuesday. 

At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration said it would begin rulemaking to close a regulatory loophole that allows drug companies to direct patients to an external source instead of listing a drug’s full safety profile, including potentially serious side effects, in the advertisement itself. The agency also said it was sending thousands of warning letters to drug companies currently running “deceptive” ads, but did not share which companies. 

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There’s a bit of theater sometimes performed in hospital rooms: the play-acting of what’s known as a “slow code.”

A slow code is a half-hearted attempt at CPR. Maybe the doctors will walk, not run, to the room. Maybe they’ll push a little less hard on the person’s chest. Whatever the method, it’s pretend CPR. They are not trying to resuscitate the patient. Instead, they are trying to limit the harm and brutality that might otherwise characterize the inevitable death of the patient while also avoiding conflict with grieving families struggling to face the inevitable.

Read the rest…

I travel a lot by air — far more than is probably rational or reasonable. I’m on a plane at least every 8 to 10 days. And lately, I’ve been seeing something I haven’t seen in a long time, outside of the height of the pandemic: empty seats on airplanes.

Why Airfares Are Dropping and How You Can Benefit

While many flights are still packed, I’m consistently seeing available seats, especially on flights to Europe. Airlines are pulling back service left and right. Just recently, I saw an article about how many flights Southwest has been actively reducing, right in the middle of summer.

Normally, airlines don’t cut service until the traditional fall or spring schedule changes, but technology now allows them to make these adjustments even during peak season. They’re scrambling to get the supply of seats down because, frankly, there are just too many seats in the air.

This is particularly true for international travel. In preparation for discussing this, I was looking at seat maps for popular routes to and from Europe for flights departing tomorrow. I checked flights to and from London, Paris, and Rome, and it’s truly “freaky weird” to see so many available seats where you used to see none the day before a flight.

It’s absolutely a slump, and the airfares popping up for the fall show some panic. Especially out of New York, which I consider the bargain capital of America for flights to Europe, I’ve seen round-trip fares published in the $200s, $300s, and even $400s for fall travel. These are typically low, “winter-kind” fares showing up for fall travel, which is highly unusual. Eventually, airlines will pull planes out of service or reassign them to different routes, but for now, even domestic travel is soft.

Your Wallet’s New Best Friend: The Art of Re-Shopping Your Flights

I’ve been recommending this since spring: if you’ve booked a ticket in advance, re-shop that ticket! On most fares originating from the United States, even those going to other countries, there’s no penalty to change your flight. If you find a lower fare, you can rebook and get a credit toward future travel.

In fact, I have a trip coming up in September, and the fare dropped by 37% from when I originally booked it. I rebooked it in late June and got that much lower fare. You know what? I’m going to re-shop it again and again to see if the fare comes down even more. Then I’ll have a credit that I can use for other travel. I believe I have until March of next year to use that credit.

This re-shopping strategy is unusual for airfare but completely routine for car rentals and hotels. However, in this current slump, because of all the “tariff wars” (or rather, the supply-demand imbalance), you have the potential to get a lower fare for where you’re going. Try it! Your wallet may just thank you.

The Future of Flying: Standing Seats?

Speaking of your wallet, I know many people hate Ryanair, the largest airline in Europe. While they are an incredibly well-run company, they’re also always trying to “pick your pocket” with other fees. But there’s something they’re pushing that I know many people think I’m nuts about: Ryanair wants to sell standing seats on shorter flights, those up to 90 minutes.

They’d be able to put a lot more people on the plane, and it’s a fully safe thing. You’d wear a harness and kind of stand and lean against a support. They can get all these extra people on there, and honestly, I love the idea! Why not, if I’m on a flight for an hour or so? Being able to save money, I’d absolutely love to stand. Those of you who watch my YouTube show know I stand the whole time; I don’t sit. And sitting on your rear end isn’t great for your health anyway.

Would you do it if you could get a much cheaper fare? We may find out soon enough.

The post Why It’s a Great Time To Get a Cheap Ticket to Europe appeared first on Clark Howard.