Bob Dunn

I admit that I spent way too many late nights obsessing over the name (thanks for nothing, 3 AM brain), but now we finally have a home for those quirky, honest chats, random ideas, and offbeat interviews. openchannels.fm/its-channel-4-…

It's a real look at why we still need these kinds of bridges, the ups and downs of working in open source, and what it's like turning a side project into something that lots of people rely on. openchannels.fm/connecting-dec…

How Instant Internet Changes Our Patience and Learning openchannels.fm/how-instant-ac…

@KatieKeithBarn2 I use Claude for some basic stuff but for repurposing audio CastMagic nails it.

Marketers - what AI tools are you using to plan and implement content changes? For example: - Researching content ideas - Recommending article titles which are are likely to rank and convert - Writing article outlines - Updating existing articles for AI overviews

Exploring Ethical Hosting: Challenging the Internet's Future openchannels.fm/the-evolution-…

@joyofwp @OpenChannelsFM It's there, just pulled back ;)

@OpenChannelsFM Channel 4? NBC? BTW - what happened to your hair?

Channel 4 coming tomorrow...

An elevator parking lot in New York, 1920.

@rmelogli Agree I will do it before I sleep, although many times revisiting it I ask "WTF" ;) 🤣

@BobWP Writing things down, even a few mins before going to bed, has been a life saver to me in the past. I should've done it yesterday too!

They say never go to bed with a full brain... I should've emptied first last night 🙃 Anyhow, had a great idea for Checkout Summit and you'll hear about that soon 🔥

@BoweFrankema Same here. Leaving Thursday afternoon.

@BobWP I'll be there from the Hackathon onwards, you?

Are you at Cloudfest? We wrote a guide on how to get the most out of it as an agency, product creator or host in the WordPress industry! Not going? You're missing out, here's why 👇 getdollie.com/blog/wordpress…

There is one thing I really like about international conferences. We are all in the same timezone. 😅

@BoweFrankema Sweet, let's make sure that happens?

@BobWP Absolutely! Looking forward to catch up Bob!

See you there?

Age Verification: A Technological Challenge with David Snead

@rmelogli ✅

Right, I’m $75 away from reaching my $4,000 contribution goal for Checkout Summit 2026. By contributing, you not only get public recognition, a dofollow link, and a huge “thank you!”, but you also earn double your contribution towards next year. Join the 64 people who have already contributed and help Checkout Summit run smoothly in year one, so that I can build a strong enough foundation to run it every year! 💪

Scientists put kids through 100 hours of reading, then scanned their brains. New wiring had physically grown inside the language regions. Communication between brain areas sped up by a factor of 10. Kids who didn't read showed zero change. That was a 2009 Carnegie Mellon study. It gets wilder. In 2013, Emory University scanned 19 students every morning for 19 straight days while they read one novel chapter each night. Mornings after reading, the brain areas responsible for understanding other people's emotions lit up with new connections. So did the region that processes physical sensation. Their brains were simulating what the characters felt, as if it were happening to them. Those changes stuck around for 5 days after they finished the book. Now flip to scrolling. A massive review published in Psychological Bulletin last September pulled together 71 studies covering 98,299 people. Heavy short-form video use (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) showed a clear pattern: worse attention, weaker self-control, and more anxiety. Consistent across teenagers and adults, across every platform tested. Oxford didn't name "brain rot" its 2024 Word of the Year for nothing. A 2024 brain wave study found that people hooked on short-form video had weaker activity in the front of the brain, the part that controls focus and impulse control. Separate brain scans showed the same thing: heavy scrollers had less activation in the exact regions that deep reading strengthens. UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf has been studying this for decades. Humans were never born to read. There's no gene for it. Reading is something we invented, and it hijacked neurons that were originally meant for recognizing faces. Over time, it built entirely new brain circuits connecting language, vision, and emotion. But those circuits only survive if you use them. Stop reading, and they fade. Wolf's conclusion is simple: screens built for speed produce a speed-wired brain. Books built for depth produce a depth-wired brain. One honest caveat: most of these studies are snapshots, not long-term tracking. People who already struggle to focus might just prefer short videos. But the same pattern showing up across nearly 100,000 people is hard to shrug off. The tweet repeats the line seven times. The research backs it up with brain scans, EEG data, and white-matter imaging across tens of thousands of people.

In the world of digital branding, consistency is more than just a buzzword. It's the foundation of user trust and recognition. openchannels.fm/why-design-sys…