Fresh Fusion

Despite ch-ch-ch-changes every minute it seems, Jared attempts to analyze the shocking power struggle going on at OpenAI and what the this all means for Microsoft—because let’s face it, they’re really the ones in charge. In addition, some conversation regarding Apple’s incredible speed gains over the past several iterations of Apple Silicon and the appeal of M3 MacBookPros. And for Fresh Fusion+ m...

Jared is feeling a wee bit down in the mouth that his career is nearly over, apparently, due to AI coming for us all. The programmers. The musicians. The designers. The this, and the that. Or…is all of that largely utter nonsense and the artists are fighting back? (Hello WGA & SAG-AFTRA!) Let’s talk about AI and how true AGI is probably centuries away and OpenAI is trying to pull a fast one. A...

I’m a die-hard Ivory for Mastodon user and “ambassador” of the Fediverse. So then, why am I on Threads? Well, it’s all about who you follow, and you can follow many interesting sorts of accounts there which aren’t all on Mastodon. Once Threads enables ActivityPub, I intend to follow all these accounts from Mastodon, but in the meantime, I must be on Threads. In this episode, I break down the vario...

Some reflections after a year of podcasting since the “reboot” of Fresh Fusion, growing success in blogging and the importance of owning your own domain name and platform, the joys of belonging to a local creative community and feeling inspired by your locale, and more. All the feelz in this episode! Links & Show Notes Leave a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to Creator Class (a Newsletter)...

Like ‘em or hate ‘em, the BBC is here and has joined the fediverse. In this episode I talk about what this means and more broadly why it’s a good thing to see another large news organization launch their own Mastodon instance—even while I fully defend other instance admins’ right to defederate due to content moderation policies. And on the Fusion+ segment—available for free today!—I talk all about...

We made it folks. ONE HUNDRED EPISODES! 🎉 On this 100th installment of Fresh Fusion, it is my extreme pleasure to welcome writer, founder, and marketing expert Mariya Delano to the show for a lively conversation about the growth of the internet and social media, when things started to go terribly awry, the cultural shift that’s happening RIGHT NOW, and where she believes this is all headed. (Spoi...

We’re here to herald the return of the aggregator-style link blog—at least for me. Listen while I break down the recent launch of That HTML Blog , the rise and fall and rise again of the blogosphere, and the occasional value of moving quickly and not overthinking new creative projects. Also: Countdown to 100! Don’t miss the very next episode which will be rather special, celebrating the 100th epis...

The episode wherein I opine on all the latest news on Threads by way of highlighting others of interest who are talking about Threads and have stood out to me during my time scrolling through my Mastodon feed. Am I excited about Threads? Do I dread the rise of Threads? Has the trajectory of the Fediverse changed forevermore? Well…yes! Let’s dive in. Links & Show Notes Leave a review on Apple P...

Countdown to 100! 💯 We only have a few episodes left until the 100th episode of Fresh Fusion…and in addition, we’re also celebrating the 5th anniversary of the launch of the show! In this episode, I muse on what I might do if my efforts to accelerate a career in content creation come to naught because the Fediverse doesn’t go anywhere. Will I…gasp…embrace Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram once again...

We are witnessing the total meltdown of the commercial internet. Enshittification (thanks Cory Doctorow!) of social media and other large Silicon Valley-style products & services, combined with the specter of “AI” (ChatGPT, etc.) infecting every company’s efforts, has led to a rather scary inflection point. It’s getting harder and harder to work with corporations and use internet services with...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! Wherein I share my thoughts having tried out Bluesky, the performative nature of (some) social media, the trail of questionable decision-making regarding this platform, good art isn’t always popular, cheerleader buses, and why when it comes to the Fediverse, I’m not go...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! Is the end game of the internet really that a bunch of algorithms slurped up a subset of popular human-created & curated content and then can regurgitate it out as if the AI is clever enough to think for itself? Meanwhile, folks in the fediverse are up in arms over...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! In this episode, I comment on recent links—articles, news, toots—I’ve posed on my blog and on Mastodon. From the iPad celebrating its 13th birthday to dreaming of a better metaverse, from ethnic stereotyping to A.I. B.S., there’s never a dull moment here on Fresh Fusio...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! Everything Everywhere All at Once won big at the Oscars, but it’s not the only ’verse-spanning creation making it big this year. ActivityPub is having a moment, and we’re here to chronicle the rise of numerous new instances, applications, and networks—including the ver...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! As Arnold would say, I’m back, baby! Yes, I am rebooting my first blog ever, and this new daily weblog all about tech and nerd culture news with a dash of fun 90s nostalgia on the side will feature archives reaching all the way back to 1996. Are you excited yet? You sh...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! How can one feel like an intellectually fulfilled citizen of the open web & fediverse and still consume regular YouTube content? Here’s what I have done to corral this monster into a cage…and in the process unlocked a whole new environment for computing & enter...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! Blog comments are BACK, and this time it’s not about software people have to use on your blog or on their blog or even over on corporate social media…it’s all about the fediverse . Using Mastodon’s API, it’s possible to find the right “toot” (that is, published status)...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! Or in French, une réflexion intéressante sur la nature du podcast . Yes, a très intéressante discussion ensued on Mastodon over the past few days: what is a podcast? What is the medium of podcasting? What is the format of podcasting? What is the history of podcasting?...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! Where do you put the stuff that you write? Where do you post your posts? How do you publish things online now that Twitter is imploding and the Fediverse is rising? Has blogging made a comeback? What’s the different between a blog and an email newsletter that’s availab...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! In this episode, I recap all my “3 words” in previous years which helped set the tone for what I hoped to accomplish throughout the year and the values to focus on most. And then I share with you my yearly theme and “3 words” for 2023, why I chose those words, and what...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! Happy New Year everybody! I meant to record this show last week, but I was sick for most of the holidays. Oh well. I’m just glad I have a top ten list like this because honestly, I thought a lot of geek entertainment fare earlier this year rather sucked (quite a few di...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! Today, we are all John Mastodon. And in this episode, I talk about the explosive docuseries concerning Prince Harry & Meghan Markle and the outrageous, toxic relationship between the British tabloids and the Royal Family, and the even BIGGER story about how online...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! In this episode, I follow up on some of the continuing Mastodon/Twitter zaniness as well as some interesting takes around the web on “generative AI”, then dive right into my review of the Anyhill UM-2 e-scooter and an initial look at FeedBin for managing and reading ne...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! In this episode I take a deep dive into (my) history of playing podcasts over the decades, and how I eventually arrived at using Pocket Casts as my preferred podcast player of choice. Pocket Casts is chock-full of great features, not the least of which is support for p...

Hello my friend! Are you enjoying this podcast? You can now support the show and share your appreciation with ☕️ Buy Me a Coffee! You won’t want to miss this episode wherein I pull back the curtain into major new developments for the future of this show, follow up on my 2019 social media predictions and compare with how current events are playing out, share specific thoughts on how to think about...