President Obama’s administration has created a massive digital footprint, from whitehouse.gov and We The People to @whitehouse and @POTUS.

The entire thing, all of it, every bit of content on every social media handle and website, will all be preserved and archived, and the accounts themselves turned over to the incoming president:

On Twitter, for example, the handle @POTUS will be made available to the 45th President of the United States on January 20, 2017. The account will retain its more than 11 million followers, but start with no tweets on the timeline. @POTUS44, a newly created handle maintained by NARA, will contain all of President Obama’s tweets and will be accessible to the public on Twitter as an archive of President Obama’s use of the account.

Other accounts being preserved and transitioned include @WhiteHouse, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, and @VP.

What’s truly remarkable though:

In addition to the steps that the White House and [National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)] are taking, we want to open up this process to the American people. Specifically, by the end of this Administration, we’re committed to publicly sharing our social media content in an easily accessible and comprehensive way (e.g., zip files to download). In the interim, we’re inviting the American public – from students and data engineers, to artists and researchers – to come up with creative ways to archive this content and make it both useful and available for years to come. From Twitter bots and art projects to printed books and query tools, we’re open to it all. The White House will make our social media data available early to people who are interested in building something for the public.

So cool.

Inexpensive DIY solution for my future “podcasting studio”. A great “small projects weekend” project.

New York Times, in a well-researched piece on Trump’s “mathematical sleight of hand” that helped him report a $916 billion loss in the early ’90s:

But Mr. Trump’s audacious tax-avoidance maneuver gave him a way to simply avoid reporting any of that canceled debt to the I.R.S. “He’s getting something for absolutely nothing,” John L. Buckley, who served as the chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation in 1993 and 1994, said in an interview.

[…]

“He deducted somebody else’s losses,” Mr. Buckley said. By that, Mr. Buckley meant that only the bondholders who forgave Mr. Trump’s unpaid casino debts should have been allowed to use those losses to offset future income and reduce their taxes. That Mr. Trump used the same losses to reduce his taxes ultimately increases the tax burden on everyone else, Mr. Buckley explained. “He is double dipping big time.”

Robert Smith, in an opinion piece for NY Daily News, on Aaron Burr:

Burr decided to get a small army together and start a war with Spain, take over what is now Mexico, peel off several western states from the United States, and combine the results into a brand new country with himself as emperor.

And on Donald Trump:

It’s not even hard to imagine him trying to make himself emperor of another country, and screwing the United States in the process. He’d probably worry only about whether the new country would be big enough for him, and how many Trump hotels he could build there.

I had a similar thought a week or two ago: I can totally see Trump trying to pull together his supporters to form a new… something…. No way to pull off a new country I think, but a new political party? Absolutely.

This is really funny.

Really sad.

But really funny.

I bet you know almost all these audio logos. Sound may give even stronger branding than visual logos.

I still remember the old HBO “featured presentation” opening. Definitely says “movie night” to me.

Washington Post:

We show that white Trump supporters were more opposed to a mortgage assistance policy when they were experimentally induced to think of black rather than white Americans. Combined with the existing observational findings, this is strong evidence that racial animosity is indeed a key factor motivating Trump voters.

I’m not surprised that Trump voters are negatively affected by race.

What does surprise me is how many of them were straight up opposed to a mortgage relief program that would likely have helped them.

Pete Rose, should-be-Hall-of-Famer, on handling a batting slump:

You do one of six things when you get into a lull… Closer to the plate, further away from the plate, up in the box, back in the box, choke up on the bat more, choke down on the bat more. Make it heavier or lighter. Never change your swing. Your swing got you into the big leagues.

He’s sharing batting advice with Frank Thomas and Alex Rodriguez, two of the best batters in baseball, and they’re hanging on his every word.

Respect.

(Rose mentions going 5-for-5 against spitballer Gaylord Perry. @tyleracampbell found the box score, from 1968. Great find.)