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If teachers could indoctrinate students, more people would use apostrophes correctly. — Adam Rothman

I feel like watching the final episode of a Star Trek series should be more of a special occasion. Like I should dress nice. In a Starfleet dress uniform.

📷 Something I saw while walking the dog.

Welcome to your test blog! You can create new posts here to test theme and design changes.

Here’s something groovy I saw while walking the dog.

Today’s memes: I cannot help you with printer issues: via via

I’m getting spam text messages from the Easter Bunny.

Here’s something I saw while walking the dog

On the limitations of writing for the fediverse: Ben Werdmuller: I’m not bullish on squeezing long-form content into a microblogging platform, whether on Mastodon or X. Long-form content isn’t best consumed as part of a fast-moving stream of short updates. Yes! This is an ongoing source of frustration for me. I often write posts that …

Today’s memes: so excited to start my new job here at the Mutant Animal Weaponization Program 🤗: 

Cory Doctorow: “Bullies want you to think they’re on your side: Bosses (not migrants) take workers' wages, and corporations (not readers) want writers' money." [pluralistic.net]

You know what’s an excellent thing to do when you’re having trouble sleeping? Go through your notes apps and clean up the scraps of ideas for posts. And now, back to bed to see if I can stack Zs for a couple of hours until the alarm.

I keep bags of dog treats next to the bags of dried fruit that I put in my cereal in the morning. The packaging looks very similar. That is going to make for an interesting breakfast for me one day.

The “True Grit” movies came up in a conversation so I went down an Internet rabbit hole: This 2010 article in The New York Times includes a conversation with Charles Portis, the author of the novel on which the movies were based: Portis’s characters have a self-conscious manner, a homespun formality of speech, that comes from the effort to inhabit grandiose roles: lone avenger on …

Do you prefer video on or video off for remote meetings?: I prefer video on but I would not demand it. And I don’t even tell colleagues I prefer video on because I don’t want to pressure anyone. If most people’s videos are on, I turn mine on—and vice versa. It’s an etiquette dance I find mildly annoying, like when you see someone you haven’t …

The White Castle System of Eating Houses [99percentinvisible.org]. White Castle, founded more than a century ago in Wichita, Kansas, invented the American system of fast food.

Why Do So Many Coffee Shops Look the Same? On the Decoder Ring podcast, host Willa Paskin interviews writer Kyle Chayka, author of “Filterworld: How Algorithms Are Flattening Culture.” He discusses how the Instagram algorithm has made public spaces more generic and we have come to prefer those …

Adolfo Ochagavía is an “undercover generalist." [ochagavia.nl] To find work as a generalist, he says, you need to present yourself as a specialist. I have found this to be true. Don’t tell people you can do anything. People don’t need “anything”—they have specific problems that need to be …

The Cult of AI. Writer Robert Evans returns from CES in January with a “sinking feeling” about the “unhinged messianic fervor” surrounding AI. [rollingstone.com]

High-speed grocery-shopping is my superpower. I should put it on my LinkedIn profile.

I just got off the phone with AT&T customer service. Years ago, I accidentally slammed a car door on my fingers. The two experiences were extremely similar.

Here’s something I saw while walking the dog.

Sleep is weird and magic. We sleep more than we do anything else. We spend a third of our lives in a state of death, much of that time dreaming, wandering around in a spirit world. Much of that dreamtime we are not even ourselves. Then we wake up and spend the rest of our lives pretending we live in …

Today’s memes: Stop thinking that you are ugly: 

I walk across the deck between my office and the kitchen a million times a day, and sometimes, when I leave the kitchen, Minnie is lying outside my office door. She clearly wants something, but I have never been able to figure out what it is. Into my office with me? No. Pats? She’s fine with …

I cannot be arsed to keep up with culture wars bullshit now. Like, there is a young woman named Sydney Sweeney who is I guess famous for something and is super-attractive and hot and she wore a low-cut gown on TV and this killed wokeness? Also, the Congresswoman who gave the Republican rebuttal to …

I’ve seen articles pointing out exactly where the Royal Family photos were clumsily edited, and I still don’t see the problems. I guess I just have a bad eye for that kind of thing.

Today I learned that if you spill a nearly full cup of fresh hot coffee on your lap, it doesn’t hurt a lot and doesn’t leave a stain but the pants take a surprisingly long time to dry.

Profile of Steve Nikoui, the Gold Star father arrested for protesting at the State of the Union last week. [timesofsandiego.com] — Nikoui’s son, “Camp Pendleton Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, [was] one of the 13 service members killed near the airport in Kabul during the August 2021 withdrawal …

Cory Doctorow: Palantir is looting the UK’s National Health Service, under cover of the Big Lie: “There is no alternative.” [pluralistic.net]

Five ways Israelis have changed, after 5 months of war. [kpbs.org] — Israelis believe the world has turned its back on them. They have no sympathy for Palestinian suffering; they believe the Palestinians want to kill every Israeli, and that there is no potential partner for peace among the …

I loved all five of Frank Herbert’s Dune books and enjoyed the first Villeneuve movie, but I can’t get motivated to see Dune 2 in theaters. First, I would need to rewatch the first Villeneuve movie, which I am not particularly in the mood for. Then, I’d need to sit for nearly three …

Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans kpbs.org

I like my windows the way I like them: Many people have multiple overlapping application windows open on their screens while working. But I’ve always maximized whatever window I’m working in. When I need to have two windows open, I tile them vertically, with no overlapping pixels. I rarely need more than two windows open …

We Talked to the Guy Who Wore a Vision Pro VR Headset at His Wedding. He did it for the meme. futurism.com

This is funny: How Do Dudes Pee? An Earth-Shattering Reveal

I need a nickname. Help me choose one: The Bandit Big Mitch “Mitch” is already a nickname, you nimrod Nimrod

I’m having a tough time getting started this morning, so please enjoy this video of Jerry Reed performing “Eastbound and Down,” the title song from the immortal 1977 cinema classic “Smokey and the Bandit,” featuring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed and Fred the dog. Buford T. …

Hell of a great speech by Biden last night. His Presidency is in many ways like Harry Truman. That’s high praise and I mean it.

Coming Of Age In The World Of Pay-Per-Minute Porn. A 2010 essay by Dave Pell. He’s not just talking about porn, but about the addictive quality of the whole internet, which has, of course, changed drastically since the essay was published. Still worth reading though.

“… the strange and fascinating creature known as the American teenager – as we now understand the species – came into being sometime in the early 1940s.” A 1944 LIFE magazine photo essay. There is a time in the life of every American girl when the most important thing in the world is to …

Los Angeles Rabbi Sharon Brous: Since Oct. 7, “many American Jews … understand themselves differently. There are people who have never stepped foot in a synagogue and who would never take their family vacation to Israel, who … are talking about being a part of this people in a way that even takes …

… being a journalism grad student right now must feel like studying paleontology in the hopes that when you graduate you’ll find a job as a dinosaur. — Rusty Foster, Today in Tabs, “What Are We Dune 2 Journalism?”

The This American Life podcast shares “a series of phone calls to a man in Gaza named Yousef Hammash, between early December and now. He talks about what he and his family are experiencing, sometimes as they are experiencing it.” This American Life It’s easy to lose sight of …

A friend reminds me of this scene from “Escape From the Planet of the Apes” (1971). Of course, Kim Hunter’s line delivery is very good, but I also love her earlier “Are you fucking kidding me?” face. youtu.be/G3Phb8Ayr… My friends and I were 10 years old when the …

… instead of passing a privacy law or regulating data brokers, Americans get a sort of regulatory simulacrum designed to distract you. Most recently that popped up in the form of hysteria about TikTok privacy, as if TikTok’s privacy abuses aren’t a broader symptom of our corrupt failure to …

AI needs bigger and more powerful data centers, driving electrical demand and undermining sustainability. [NYTimes]

The Our Opinions Are Correct podcast obsesses about the politics of “Dune.”

The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending. Franklin Foer at The Atlantic with an in-depth report on the resurgence of anti-semitism on the right and the left.

I’m re-reading “Everybody’s Fool,” by Richard Russo (or, more precisely, listening to the audiobook). One of the heroes, Donald “Sully” Sullivan, is old, he has slowed down, he’s sick, and he’s disabled by injury. Sully is deeply flawed. But he’s still a better man than most and …

Are we dating the same guy? Facebook groups offer intel but upend lives [Brittany Shammas and Marisa Iati / The Washington Post]. Trial by gossip works well but fails badly.

What in Tarnation Is ‘Tarnation’ [Mental Floss]

I asked the AI-powered Perplexity search engine “Who is Mitch Wagner?” Mitch Wagner is a versatile individual with various roles and achievements. He is known as a talented journalist and creative editor, as well as an athlete in CrossFit Games[1][2]. Wagner has been involved in the …

Minnie says good morning.

Today’s memes: Dr Wiggles Weiner Wagon: This is me Tuesday morning. I am both these people.

A Department of Veterans Affairs official tried to ban the famous Kiss photo, taken on VJ Day after World War II, from hanging in VA facilities because it “depicts a non-consensual act.” The department quickly rescinded the decision after predictable anti-woke shrieking. …

Cory Doctorow: Exxon CEO Darren Woods says the quiet part out loud: The problem with renewable energy sources is that they “don’t generate above-average returns for Exxon’s shareholders.” pluralistic.net/2024/03/0… The sun generates virtually limitless and free energy, with much …

If you sawed open my skull and examined my brain (and I’m not actually asking you to do this!), you would find that the portions devoted to writing, reading, drinking coffee and memes are huge, while everything else is shriveled raisins.

Here’s a nice house I saw while walking the dog.

Russia plans to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon – with China’s help https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/06/russia_nuclear_reactor_moon/

Medieval historian Dr Eleanor Janega hilariously and informatively refutes a Twitter troll’s bonehead claims about women’s sexuality in history. going-medieval.com/2024/03/0…

I asked ChatGPT to generate illustrations for a few books, TV shows and movies, including “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet,” “MAS*H,” “Die Hard,” and more. Here’s what ChatGPT came up with.

Hours before the deadline, I just pledged to back the Kickstarter for Tapestry from Iconfactory. I said I wasn’t going to do it, but then I figured why not. It looks like a very appealing and intriguing project, if it comes to fruition.

Here’s something I saw while walking the dog.

Millions of people — including me — were locked out of Facebook, Threads and Instagram this morning due to a password-reset glitch. (The Register). Until reading this article, I thought I might have been banned for good. I wasn’t sure if I was upset about that or happy.

Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic: “You can’t shop your way out of a monopoly. Any election where you vote with your wallet will be won by the people with the thickest wallets.” Trusting one company to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and …

Anthropic’s Claude 3 gave a response that made it appear as if it knew when researchers were testing it (VentureBeat). There. I fixed the headline.

Benj Edwards at Ars Technica analyzes Anthropic’s announcement of the latest version of its Claude AI, which for the first time beats GPT-4 on benchmarks and demonstrates “near-human” capabilities in some areas (or so Anthropic says). Benchmarks don’t necessarily show how …

Google and XPRIZE launch $5m prize to find actual uses for quantum computers. This seems like something that Google (and IBM) should have been thinking about before spending truckloads of money developing quantum computers.

I updated the DNS for mitchwagner.com to point to a static page on micro.blog and now I feel like supernerd.

I used Google to find a PDF of the movie “Love, Actually.” I fed the URL to ChatGPT and told it to create a poster. It said it can’t access documents on the Internet—even though it had done so a few minutes earlier. I uploaded the PDF and tried again. It gave me a text description of the poster. I …

I used Google to find a PDF of the screenplay of “Die Hard.” I fed the URL to ChatGPT, with the prompt, “Here’s the screenplay for a movie titled ‘Die Hard.’ Create a poster for this movie.”

I asked ChatGPT to create a poster to promote the TV show “M*A*S*H.”

“Daddy, why doesn’t Trump ever go to church?" Doonesbury’s still got it.

City leaders in Escondido reject “Housing First” policies for homelessness because they say homeless people need addiction and mental health treatments first. “Homelessness is a complex problem that requires complex solutions,” San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond said. I’m …

Rogue Editors Started a Competing Wikipedia That’s Only About Roads. A fight over Wikipedia’s rules on notable subjects and primary sources led to a schism. (Thomas Germain / Gizmodo)

Inside me are two wolves. One wants only the finest coffee, ground just before brewing from the finest beans roasted delicately within the past two weeks from a local microroaster. The other wolf will drink anything that’s brown and hot and has caffeine.

Dave Winer used ChatGPT to illustrate a few of his favorite songs. I tried it with books.

I asked ChatGPT to create an illustration for the book “Cities in Flight” by James Blish. ChatGPT responded with the illustration, and the text: Here’s the illustration for “Cities in Flight” by James Blish, capturing a futuristic city lifting off from Earth’s …

I asked ChatGPT to create an illustration for the novel “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet,” by Becky Chambers.

I asked ChatGPT to create a cover illustration for the novel “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union,” by Michael Chabon.

I asked ChatGPT to create a cover illustration for the novel “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet,” by Becky Chambers.

We watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the 2011 movie starring Andy Serkis as a motion-capture chimpanzee. We expected to enjoy it of course – why else would we have decided to watch it? – but It was better and had more heart than we expected.

Hands up if you want to volunteer for layoffs, IBM tells staff (The Register).

MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to millions of historical newspaper pages (TechCrunch). MyHeritage announced today that it’s launching OldNews.com, a new website that offers access to thousands of historical newspapers, mainly from the 1800s and 1900s. The website includes articles …

Elon Musk’s legal case against OpenAI is hilariously bad (Nilay Patel/The Verge).

Today’s memes: Socks for his wife:  Sony 4-204UW 4-inch portable TV (1965) and Panasonic 1030p 3-inch TV (1984) ngl they have me at 8

Seen on a Techmeme headline: Threads is planning to open a developer API in June. I’m happy to hear that—less cut-and-pasting for me! @manton

Facebook is my favorite social network. It is also the one I hate most, and consider quitting several times a month.

Something I saw at the supermarket.

Terry Pratchett doesn’t work for me because he writes loving parody of a genre I don’t read.

I started reading Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly 📚 He’s always reliable.

I started the audiobook to Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo 📚. It’s the sequel to Nobody’s Fool. My second time reading.

I finished the audiobook of Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo 📚My third reading. I think I enjoyed it most of all this time.

I quit The Colour Of Magic by Terry Pratchett 📚I think I’m not a Terry Pratchett guy.

Here’s something I saw while walking the dog.

American small towns are erecting statues to Star Trek characters born there. (The Register)

Nazis are openly mingling and making friends at the CPAC conference, Trump is getting cheers for a speech where he promises his “ultimate and absolute revenge” and another speaker got big cheers when he promised an “end to democracy.” This is fine.

Julie started drinking coffee again regularly, and I’m drinking more. The Aeropress is getting to be too much hassle. I ordered a drip of coffee machine. It arrives this afternoon. This seems like more of a big deal than it actually is. It’s weird how little things become attached to our identities.

“she’s like kryptonite for sexist podcast bros”

The Shirky Principle: Institutions Try to Preserve the Problem to Which They Are the Solution. Examples: Tax preparers that lobby against laws to simplify tax filing, private prisons that lobby to support increased incarceration, a bus company suing a carpooling service, an employee resisting …

Cory: “Vice surrenders: Literally the stupidest publishing strategy I’ve ever heard of (ever). Predicting that a social media platform will rug the media companies that depend on it today doesn’t take a Sun Tzu – as cunning strategies go, the hamfisted tactics of FB, Twitter and …

Today’s memes: Stop thumb sucking! STOP Thumb Sucking! Baby Alice Metal Wire Thumb Gaurd. 1931

Josh Marshall: The Republican effort to impeach Biden was a Russian operation. Press Watch: … the ludicrous Republican impeachment investigation has now been exposed as a Russian intelligence op. This, even as Republicans do Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding by blocking support for …

I’d like for micro.blog to become a Mastodon superset, supporting the important features of Mastodon—including likes, boosts and compatibility with Mastodon clients like Ice Cubes. I would cancel my Mastodon account and use micro.blog to participate in Mastodon and the Fediverse. @manton

The Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast does a delightful episode on industrial musicals. For more than three decades, it was common for American companies to put on “industrial musicals” for their employees. These elaborate productions could rival Broadway shows, and featured original songs about the …

I did a little blog maintenance yesterday: streamlined the header to mitchw.blog, updating the about page and the my favorite posts page, adding a page on where to find me on social media and deleting several pages nobody was looking at. I’m trying to make mitchw.blog into my home page (remember …

I love that Pat Gelsinger’s plan for turning Intel around is to make things. He’s not turning to financial mumbo-jumbo, Web3, crypto, advertising, sprinkling AI magic dust and the other nonsense that Silicon Valley and Wall Street dudebros do when they want to grift the last nickel from …

Vice is abandoning Vice.com and laying off hundreds (The Verge). Vice published for 30 years. Engadget is swinging the chainsaw too. Shit.

Right-wing influencers and Republican lawmakers are spreading rumors about an imaginary illegal immigrant named “Sahil Omar” and attempting to blame him for the Kansas City Super Bowl parade shooting and other terrorist events worldwide. “Omar” doesn’t exist. …

Cory: The majority of censorship is self-censorship. But the majority of self-censorship is intentionally cultivated by an outside power.

Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis. Wingnuts on Twitter are crybabying over Google’s alleged white erasure. (Adi Robertson / The Verge)

I’m always surprised to hear about companies still using faxes. Bring back pneumatic tubes!

App review: Map routes with your finger using Footpath: The Footpath app makes it easy for you to plan a route for walking, running, biking or driving, and then follow turn-by-turn directions when you’re out and about. I’ve been using the app several times a month for a few years while taking the dog out for her daily 3.2-mile walk. Footpath helps me …

There is a road called Princess View Drive near our house that I have driven on many times, but I have never seen a princess.

The American Nazis (the organization formerly known as Republicans) aren’t coming for Jews—now. They say they love Jews. They’re coming for migrants and LGBTQ people. They’re turning women into breeding cows. But they will come for the Jews soon enough. We will not have to wait long.

“AI search is a doomsday cult…. Does anyone even want an AI search engine?”: when they aren’t hallucinating, what they’re capable of is still impressive, though it’s a bit like watching a dog walk around on two legs – fun, but not exactly an efficient way to get around. Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day says AI search is worse than conventional search …

During our last time going out to lunch before the pandemic, my dad (who was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust and later spent years in the Partisans fighting the Nazis) and I were walking toward a restaurant, and he expressed his dismay that Americans weren’t taking the …

Apple warns users to stop putting wet iPhones in rice (Gizmodo) That was a big clue on a crime show. The detective noticed that the murder victim had bought a large quantity of rice, and surmised that the victim was using it to dry out a wet phone, which proved important to solving the murder.

When I was a boy attending Hebrew school, the Holocaust was living memory for the adults teaching us. They told us: “You think of yourselves as Americans first. That’s exactly how German Jews thought of themselves in the early 1930s.” I think about that more and more lately.

Doc Searls: “Blogs are newsletters that don’t require subscriptions."

Today’s memes: Everything is on track: 

Cory’s Pluralistic blog turns four. Here, he talks once again about his Memex Method of taking notes in public. I have never been able to make that work for me, though I’ve tried. pluralistic.net

Alabama’s supreme court rules frozen embryos are ‘children’ theguardian.com In a decision using flagrantly unconstitutional religious language, the court allows two wrongful death lawsuits to proceed against a fertility clinic.

Haley’s plan to unite the United States: pardon Trump. “It is unclear why or how Haley thinks this move would bring the American people together unless the together she speaks of is a civil war.” boingboing.net

“I just kind of think of her as a lowlife” Colorado GOP voters reject Lauren Boebert boingboing.net

My five-year-old Mac wheezes to a halt if I have more than a few Safari tabs open, but I recently switched to the Vivaldi browser, and now I have 93 open tabs. So, um, yay?

Stickers to manage social media replies. “Do not reply to deny my lived experience.” “Do not reply to tell me to use open source software.” “Do not reply to teach me about capitalism or enshittification. I know.” And more.

An in-depth explainer why the New York Times might win its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, which the AI community says would be catastrophic. arstechnica.com

Japanese startup Astroscale’s mission is cleaning up space junk. arstechnica.com

We watched the first episode of “Resident Alien,” about an extraterrestrial who assumes the identity of a doctor in a Colorado small town where people are colorful. “Northern Exposure” meets “Starman.” The show stars Alan Tudyk, who played Wash in “Firefly.” Pretty good. I’ll give it another try.

Before the IBM PC, There Was the TRS-80 Radio Shack, known for its DIY kits and gear, unveiled this low-cost computer in 1977 in a bid to capture the fledgling PC market. I had forgotten that the consumer PC revolution started in the mid-late 1970s, even though I was a teen-ager then and aware of …

Trust Between Southeastern San Diego Flood Survivors and Local Government Is Dead Flooded residents of the Southcrest, Shelltown and Mountain View neighborhoods of San Diego say they’ve been abandoned by the city and county and some say politicians are trying to drive them out to inflate real estate …

EFF: Don’t Fall for the Latest Changes to the Dangerous Kids Online Safety Act. KOSA supporters claim it protects kids, but it actually endangers them and unconstitutionally restricts free speech. One of the co-sponsors of the bill specifically says she wants to use it to suppress trans speech.

Today’s memes: Rockford’s cute letterpress:  Redditor shares photo of their father, 1940s. Via

The season finale of “All Creatures Great and Small” was satisfactory. Drunk Carmody is my role model.

Ezra Klein: Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden. Biden is a great President, but he’s running a lousy re-election campaign. Polling shows him losing to Trump. The solution, says Klein, is for Biden’s closest advisors—people like Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer—to convince Biden to stand aside …

The New York Times explains the controversy around the 2023 Hugo Awards, hosted by China: Alexandra Alter: The Hugo Awards, a major literary prize for science fiction, have been engulfed in controversy over revelations that some writers may have been excluded based on their perceived criticism of China or the Chinese government. Suspicions in the science fiction community have been …

The Cluetrain Manifesto is turning 25.

Chuck Mawhinney, a Camp Pendleton Marine who became the deadliest sniper in corps history, dies at 75. The Marine Corps credited Mawhinney with 103 kills as well as 216 ‘probable’ kills that could not be confirmed because of the dangerous conditions in which the shootings happened…. The Oregon …

Today’s memes: This is love: Superman II (1980) featured some ground breaking special effects, in particular the battle between Superman and the supervillains General Zod, Ursa and Non and here is special effects designer Derek Meddings (1931-1995) on the model “battle” set of Superman II. For his work on Superman (1978), he …

Facebook just sent me notices that it removed two of my posts for violating its rules. It won’t show me what those posts are so I don’t know how I violated the rules, therefore I can’t modify my behavior to be more in line with Facebook terms of service.

RSSParrot turns your Mastodon timeline into an RSS feed reader.

Joey deVilla: If you’ve been laid off – and especially if you’ve been laid off for the first time – you will blame yourself for being laid off. This post is just for you, and it can be summed up as this: you’re probably facing the consequences of someone else’s …

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr: How America’s oligarchs lull us with the be-your-own-boss fairy tale. The gig economy, DEI and ESG are the latest iterations of a 70-year-old PR campaign to convince Americans that Big Business is their friend.

Bose introduced pricy open-air earbuds that sit on your ears, rather than in them. Bose is touting the devices as being comfortable enough to wear all day. I already find my AirPods to be comfortable enough to wear all day. But I don’t because it would be weird, battery life isn’t up to …

After much practice, I am now expert at photographing my own left ear. I do not expect this skill to be useful.

Antisemitic callers overwhelmed a La Mesa City Council meeting with hate speech. timesofsandiego.com. I am a Jewish person who has lived more than 25 years in La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego, California. This is terrorism. UPDATE: I edited this post to remove criticism of the City Council. I have no …

‘A Black Thing.’ Fani Willis’s father explains why his daughter keeps cash: John Clifford Floyd III, attorney and former Black Panther, says that when he was younger, Black Americans couldn’t count on white-owned businesses accepting credit cards from them. And so he taught …

"Stinge-watching" vs. binge-watching: “Stinge watching” is the opposite of binge watching, says Jason Kottke—when you love a show so much that you stingily portion it out, postponing watching episodes to extend the pleasure. We sometimes binge-watch, but not often. Generally, we watch 45 minutes to an hour of episodic TV every night. …

I went out to walk the dog the other day and discovered I’d forgotten to charge my AirPods. I found wired earbuds in a box near my desk, where they’d been unused and unopened for five years since I got them as a free giveaway. They worked fine. This is why nothing ever gets thrown out in our …

Today’s memes: I guess my brain is just really big: 

I’ve been hearing about the Perplexity search engine, a competitor to Google. www.perplexity.ai I tried it yesterday and it’s really quite good. It’s like ChatGPT with links to sources. Those links are important because the inaccuracy problem with Perplexity is bad, like any other generative AI. …

Play this video when you want to pretend to be busy so people will leave you alone. Say “yeah” at the three-minute mark.

Enterprise leaders swing between confidence and sleepless terror over AI. Fear of missing out (FOMO) vies with fear of messing up (FOMU). Enterprise leaders say they’re well along in their AI implementations and ready for more, but they’re also afraid of falling behind competitors, according to a …

“The Hucksters:” A sitthroughable 1947 romcom and satire starring Clark Gable: 

Clark Gable is a veteran returning home from World War II eager to resume his pre-war lifestyle as a playboy ad-man, but ultimately finding the life empty and unsatisfying. He takes a high-paying job at an ad agency, in the course of which he meets beautiful war widow Deborah Kerr, which causes him …

Are there not-too-expensive alternatives to Grammarly? I’m starting to get fed up with it. I began using Grammarly a year ago and loved it for most of that time, but it generates so many false positives that grinding through them can be a chore. I accept only about 30% of the suggestions it …

I saw this extremely handsome pig in the front yard of a house in the neighborhood.

Young people may find this hard to believe, but I remember back in the old days we spent hardly any time making sure our devices were charged.

Overheard: A chain of grocery stores that specialize in donuts, bagels, Swiss cheese, Cheerios and Lifesavers. It would be called Hole Foods.

I don’t know why the new generation of productivity apps hates folders, but I’m sure enshittification has something to do with it.

I have rediscovered the “hide” command in Apple Photos. It’s great if you want to get photos out of sight but do not want to commit to deleting them. I’d forgotten about that command for years.

A mob set a Waymo self-driving car on fire over the weekend. arstechnica.com Videos of the incident are all over social media. … In one video, a crowd of people surround the car, preventing it from moving. The vehicle is already covered in graffiti and has several smashed windows. One person …

“so there’s a special drug that makes you hallucinate so hard you can fold space… its made out of worm shit and it will turn you into a salamander”

I had a blood draw this morning, and I had a skilled phlebotomist. “Skilled Phlebotomist” would be a good name for a podcast.

The dog and I walked part of Junipero Serra Trail yesterday at the Old Mission Dam.

Today’s memes: Mickey Dolenz’s Moog: 

Meanwhile, in a holosuite on Deep Space Nine, Ben Sisko is a 20th Century Earth Boston legbreaker and hitman named Hawk.

I hear Taylor Swift‘s boyfriend is participating in something today.

We watched “Mr. Holmes,” a 2015 movie featuring Ian McKellen as 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes.: 

It’s 1947, and Holmes is long retired to a country house, where he tends his bees and his failing memory. He’s struggling to remember a case 35 years earlier that set the course of the final decades of his life.

Sad Clown Paradox: Why You Should Check In On Your Funny Friends Humor has long been used as a tool against stress and uncertainty, perhaps best captured in The Wipers Times: a satirical newspaper that went to print in the decimated city of Ypres, Belgium, during World War I. So named because most …

Today’s shitposts: When the insurance company wants a diagram of the accident: 

Do you read books on your phone?

Seems like smart glasses wouldn’t be usable by people who wear glasses only part of the time.

Today’s memes: Talk dirty to me: 

How do you survive fame? Podcaster P.J. Vogt talks with his friend, the actor and writer Molly Ringwald, “formerly the most famous teenager in America.” She starred in movies including “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink.” Ringwald has a head on her shoulders and didn’t let fame get into it. …

The Freakonomics podcast is doing a series of episodes on the physicist Richard Feynman. The first episode is terrific, and I’m looking forward to listening to the rest. Feynman liked to figure things out from first principles. He didn’t accept received wisdom. This led him to extraordinary …

NYTimes: Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis? Researchers are investigating whether a solar shield in space that blocks some sunlight could help mitigate climate change. Are they really calling it a “space parasol?” It should be pink with yellow daisies all …

It has stopped raining and the sun is out at last, but it is so, so wet and chilly and unpleasant out there. This is not why we are paying San Diego cost-of-living to live here. I demand to speak to a manager.

Today’s memes: I think cat people are psychopaths: 

TV show idea: Just Chrisjen Avasarala from The Expanse and Susy from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel swearing. I would watch 13 seasons of that.

Currently reading: Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo 📚My third or fourth time reading this wonderful book.

What are your favorite and second-favorite social media services? Where do you spend the most time?

Cisco and NVIDIA did a technology integration deal this week—here’s why it matters: Cisco and NVIDIA want to take the hassle out of AI infrastructure. My latest article for Silverlinings.

Listen to our talk about the novel “Alas, Babylon” on Seth Heasley’s Hugos There podcast: 

Thanks to the indomitable Seth, who had me as a guest to talk about one of my favorite novels, “Alas, Babylon,” by Pat Frank. Hugos There.

Clarkesworld: “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole,” by Isabel J. Kim. Via Pluralistic — thanks!

Today’s ephemera: Apple Vision Pro Version 2: 

Shakshuka is better than winning the Darwin Award: I had a meeting at 11 am at a local coffee shop. It’s been raining hard nonstop since Monday morning. This is not unusual back east, but it is unusual here, and because the drainage infrastructure isn’t built for it, it’s a cause for concern. We’ve had a lot of flooding. Not in my neighborhood—we’re …

I saw this dog at the park yesterday. He hopes your week is off to a good start. He’s 16 years old, which is pretty old even for a small dog. (Small dogs live much longer than big dogs.) He’s losing his fur in spots and it was chilly yesterday—hence the stylish couture.

Friends came down from Los Angeles yesterday and we visited the San Diego Zoo Yes, that is my finger in the preceding photo. I like it anyway. I picked up annual passes for me and Julie. I want to make a point of going to the zoo and adjacent Balboa Park more often, without needing a goal or making …

Today’s ephemera: Possum in the bedroom: 

A tumblr thread on the edginess of classic Fleischer cartoons and the awesomeness of Cab Calloway.

A toddler got stuck after climbing into a claw machine looking for a toy in an Australian shopping mall. It’s me. I am the toddler.

Watch an elephant family working together to save a baby elephant that got stuck in the mud. “This reminds me of something that once happened to me in the dressing room in the husky section at Macy’s.”

Today’s ephemera: A man walks into a zoo: 

I saw this spectacular rainbow while walking the dog this afternoon.

Shorter version of my earlier post about Tapestry: Yes, today I can consume Mastodon, Threads, Reddit, YouTube, newsletters etc. in most RSS readers—but the experience is nowhere near as good as in the native apps. What if there were an aggregator where the experience is just as good as in a native …

What if you had a universal app to access every social media platform in one screen?: 

I think I now get the point of what Iconfactory wants to build with the Tapestry project.

Today’s ephemera: The crucial fourth ice cream bowl: 

Cory Doctorow: Companies like Tesla, Amazon and Cruise that claim to have replaced human workers with AI are often outright lying. Often, they’re instead replacing local employees with remote workers paid peanuts in India and other developing countries. So much AI turns out to be low-waged people …

I’m upgrading from a five-year-old iPhone XS to an iPhone Pro Max. Any advice? What should I expect to be different? I wasn’t planning to upgrade. I was planning to not upgrade. I was proud of using an old phone. No conspicuous consumption for me! But Julie found us a sweet deal—far too …

Today’s ephemera: Frog ball nine thousand: 

Kevin Drum: Congress got to yell at social media CEOs today. … research really doesn’t support the notion that social media is harmful to teenagers. It seems to have both negative and positive effects, but they’re small and the positive effects overwhelm the negative ones. Also: As …

Boing Boing: “There is no plan beyond blaming Biden.” Trump’s border plan “consists of moats filled with alligators, fences with spikes on top, bombing northern Mexico, and shooting asylum seekers. Trump only speaks about creating misery at the border, there is no plan to improve anyone’s situation …

Taylor Swift vs. the manosphere Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day ties together far-right movements among young men in multiple nations and relates them to MAGA losing its shit over Taylor Swift: Much of the digital playbook fueling this recruitment for our new(ish) international masculinist movement …

A Pennsylvania man decapitated his father and posted a video in which the son displayed the older man’s severed head and “claimed that his father was a longtime federal employee who ‘is now in hell for eternity as a traitor to his country,’ and ranted about President Joe Biden, ‘far-left woke mobs’ …

Today’s ephemera: Simulated chimp attack: 

Meanwhile, in Soviet MAGAstan: Transgender People in Florida Face Having Their Driver’s Licenses Revoked

Lawyers Guns Money: “It turns out the whole Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce romance is just another Democrat conspiracy to defraud White America of its birthright, which for those of you scoring at home is complete dominion over the United States.”

NYTimes: MAGA nincompoops are losing their shit over Taylor Swift dating Travis Kelce—Vivek Ramaswamy says its a conspiracy and a Fox News commentator says its a four-year-old Pentagon/NATO psy-op.

Reading about Yusef Salaam’s traffic stop in both the New York Times and NY Post I can’t see how Salaam (or the police officer) did anything substantially wrong or how Salaam disparaged police. More MAGA bullshit.

Tuesdays, the Savage Love podcast drops and I always enjoy that. But I’m going to listen to the AppStories podcast first today because this week’s topics look interesting. I guess that means the AppStories podcast is better than sex.

I’m intrigued by Project Tapestry, an app in development from Iconfactory that creates a single feed for social networks, blogs, weather alerts, RSS feeds and more. But it sounds like a feed reader, similar to Newsblur (my current favorite), Feedly, Feedbin, Inoreader, etc. Am I missing something?

Forbes: Google’s AI will read all your private messages—and Apple might do the same. This is a flagrant violation of privacy. Via Violet Blue’s Cybersecurity Roundup—thanks!

Ars Technica: The National Security Agency (NSA) has admitted to buying records from data brokers detailing which websites and apps Americans use, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed…. … the senator is calling on all intelligence agencies to “stop buying personal data from …

An 18-year-old British man was acquitted of charges of public disorder after he joked with friends in a private Snapchat conversation about blowing up a flight he was a passenger on. (Via Violet Blue’s Cybersecurity Roundup—thanks!).

Today’s ephemera: A sufficiently large trebuchet: 

Currently reading: The Life of the World to Come by Kage Baker 📚

Finished reading: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers 📚

Coronado residents are protesting the Hotel Del agreeing to host a service by the Awaken Church, a toxic MAGA organization whose leaders espouse vile LGBTQ-phobic beliefs. The head pastor “shares violent messaging and images, argues for the ‘public hanging’ and …

What’s behind the tech industry’s mass layoffs in 2024?. There is a herding effect in tech…. The layoffs seem to be helping their stock prices, so these companies see no reason to stop. Layoffs “are contagious…. when one major tech company downsizes staff, the board of a …

The San Diego Union-Tribune looks at my favorite hiking trail: 

Israeli officials presented details to back up their claims that UN relief workers helped Hamas in the October raid. “One is accused of kidnapping a woman. Another is said to have handed out ammunition. A third was described as taking part in the massacre at a kibbutz where 97 people died.”

German-born photographer Evelyn Hofer captured beautiful photos of Dublin in 1965-66. “Hofer took her time composing each shot, whether it captured a pair of housekeepers in brief repose or James Joyce’s death mask.”

I had a Zoom meeting yesterday and I put it on my calendar but instead of “Zoom” I mistakenly wrote “Zoomies” and so instead of my meeting I went out in the backyard and ran around in circles as hard as I could for a while and then I collapsed and had a nap.

Today’s ephemera: Don’t buy the cheap stuff: 

Only 90s Web Developers Remember This. The halfway point of this essay is where my Web development skills end.

How Cory Doctorow uses browser tabs for productivity superpowers: 

Cory defends lifehacking, which “is in pretty bad odor these days, and with good reason: a once-useful catch-all for describing how to make things easier has become a pit of productivity porn, grifter hustling, and anodyne advice wreathed in superlatives and transformed into SEO-compliant …

Your Local Epidemiologist: How to (and not to) boost your immune system Works: “A balanced, nutrient-dense diet,” sleep and hydration. Doesn’t work: Getting re-infected; dietary supplements (for most people) including Vitamin C, Vitamin D and probiotics; cold plunges; nasal breathing; saunas.

How Cory Doctorow cured his writer’s block: … the key turned out to be the realization that while there were days when (in retrospect) I wrote well and days when I wrote poorly, and days when I _felt _like I was writing well and days when I felt like I was writing poorly, they weren’t the …

On the futility of blocking spammers on social media: People who spend a lot of time posting to social media often spend time going through their follower list and getting rid of the spammers and bots. I’ve never seen the point of that. As long as the bots aren’t interacting with my account, or otherwise getting in my face, I say let …

“Brand New Key” is actually a song about sex! Holy shit!

The word of the day is “pharmacovigilance.”

Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out I was going to move to France with my girlfriend and be a beatnik existential writer — she broke up with me, I was very upset, I said, “Fuck you,” and went to Clown College. On the importance of agreeing on consensus reality: We can argue forever about gun …

Today’s ephemera: Weiner Bar Mitzvah: 

Downworthy: A browser plugin to turn hyperbolic viral headlines into what they really mean: “Literally” becomes “Figuratively” “Will Blow Your Mind” becomes “Might Perhaps Mildly Entertain You For a Moment” “One Weird Trick” becomes …

The lost ancient practice of communal sleep. “Until the mid-19th Century, it was completely normal to share a bed with friends, colleagues and even total strangers. How did people cope? And why did we stop?”

Powerful and disturbing: My grandpa was a Nazi, by Bastian Allgeier.

I canceled my ChatGPT subscription. I’m just not using it enough to justify the $20/mo. I had in mind creating my own GPT—my own individual AI assistant—but I haven’t prioritized doing so, and I don’t see that changing in the near future. I thought that ChatGPT might make a good …

Is anyone else having a problem with micro.blog posts propagating out over ActivityPub? Maybe “propagating” isn’t the right word here—I mean that when I go to mastodon.social/@mitchw@mitchw.blog, the newest post I see is from Saturday. @help

Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr): The most amazing things about monopolies is how the contempt just oozes out of them. It’s like these guys can’t even pretend to give a shit. You want guillotines? Because that’s how you get guillotines. Big Pharma jacks up the price on …

For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything. The program was a weird combination of email, databases, and workflow that allowed companies to stand up custom applications and deploy them to relevant groups of workers inside Notes. Also: … It provided not just your email, but an …

A tale of two cities: one real, one virtual. Digital city-building has become a legitimate part of urban planning, helping to mirror the present — and map the future. “Digital twins” are transforming urban planning in Barcelona, Ukraine(!), Helsinki, and Singapore and advancing archeology in …

Today’s ephemera: What’s all this then?: 

The Price of Netanyahu’s Ambition. Amid war with Hamas, a hostage crisis, the devastation of Gaza, and Israel’s splintering identity, the Prime Minister seems unable to distinguish between his own interests and his country’s. For liberal, secular Israelis, Netanyahu has always …

Skepchick: No, Charles Lindbergh did not let a pal vivisect the Lindbergh Baby and then cover it up with a fake kidnapping. The preceding article made me curious whether Lindy was as big an anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer as all that. Hell yeah, he was.

… for more than 200 years, the American people have elected a buffoon’s gallery of rogues, incompetents, empty suits, abysmal spellers, degenerate golfers and corrupt Marylanders to the Vice Presidency with barely a passing consideration that they might one day have to assume the highest …

Forget 10,000 steps: 7 tips for step counters. The notion to take 10,000 daily steps stems from a marketing ploy: As the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics approached, a Japanese researcher decided to nudge his nation to be more active by offering pedometers with a name that loosely translated as …

The New Yorker: How Ten Middle East Conflicts Are Converging Into One Big War: Robin Wright: Ten conflicts among diverse rivals or in different arenas over disparate flash points and divergent goals are now converging. For all the recent punditry warning about a widening war, the trajectory has long been obvious. And for all the American warships, troops, and diplomats …

The Reason the Office Isn’t Fun Anymore. Employees are hiding out in privacy booths and empty conference rooms, turning workplaces into quiet zones. Did offices used to be “fun”? I must have missed it.

A company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires is seeking local voter approval to build a walkable city from scratch for 50,000 people on farmland in Solano County, located in northern California between Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. Backers include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and …

This has been bugging me for more than a year. Now I have the answer and can relax and move on.

The three-decade saga that led to the Crown Heights Tunnels: A group of anti-establishment yeshiva students from Israel took control of the Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Brooklyn and started digging. Underground tunnels were discovered last week near the synagogue, and the rowdy yeshiva students …

‘It hasn’t delivered’: The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology

David French: Disqualify Trump (or else). There’s no doubt that knocking Trump off the ballot would send shock waves through the American body politic, but why would anyone believe that it’s inherently less destabilizing if Trump runs? We already know what he does when he loses. For …

Bobi, the “oldest ever dog,” has lost his title as Guinness World Records launches an investigation into claims he lived to 31. “Sceptics have asked why photos purportedly of Bobi in his youth would show him with white paws when they were brown in his later years.”

Winter storms brought big pieces of a a 112-year-old shipwreck to a beach in Maine, where visitors could get a look at history. “The two-masted schooner Tay ran aground on Mount Desert Island in July 1911, resulting in the death of the ship’s cook."

Office vacancies plague San Diego as companies embrace remote work. Thousands of people get to enjoy working from home, benefiting the environment and even their employers. But this is bad for real-estate investors–so it’s a “plague.”

The secret history of Napoleon Bonaparte: Watching “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (2002) starring Ian Holm: We saw “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” an idiosyncratic and charming historical romantic-comedy that starred Ian Holm and came out in 2002. I liked the movie a lot. It exceeded my expectations. I thought it would be more broad and farcical than it actually was. It had a big heart, which I did not …

At 93, he’s as fit as a 40-year-old. His body offers lessons on aging. Champion rower Richard Morgan started his exercise routine at age 73.

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr is kickstarting the audiobook of his new novel, “The Bezzle,” second in a trilogy about two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench. The first volume, last year’s “Red Team Blues,” is a white-knuckle ride and I’m looking forward to the latest. Wil Wheaton is the …

IT Employment Grew by Just 700 Jobs in 2023, Down From 267,000 in 2022. Holy shit.

This morning I looked at a “this day in history” calendar and saw that Martin Luther King was born on this day. What a coincidence! I said to myself. Some days I think I’m pretty smart. And then there are other days.

On Reddit, somebody asked how non-Americans identify Americans visiting their country. The top answer: Men wearing jeans, T-shirts, sneakers and ball caps. I went to the supermarket later that day and can confirm. Also, hoodies. And, this being San Diego, many of the men were wearing board shorts …

Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half: Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving (2010). Hilarious.

Mapped: Which countries still have a monarchy?

Sympathy for the spammer. Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr posts a terrific essay about how scammers and spammers are often themselves victims of “passive income” and “rise and grind” hustlers, who prey on desperate people: In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who …

Searching for “finally got my Emacs setup just how I like it” yields excellent results.

While most big companies are only in the proof-of-concept stage with AI, Wells Fargo is moving fast. The bank’s assistant, powered by Google’s AI, has done 20 million transactions. The company put 4,000 employees through Stanford’s Human-centered AI program and has many generative AI projects …

AI models can be trained to deceive and the most commonly used AI safety techniques had little to no effect on the deceptive behaviors, according to researchers at Anthropic.

The Texas National Guard has seized control of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, and is denying U.S. Border Patrol agents access to the area. Maybe they can rename the park Fort Sumter? Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also says he wants to shoot migrants dead, but he won’t do it because Biden would say …

Exploring the life and mysterious death of Mary Haxby-Jones, whose body was found in a San Diego home freezer nine years after her disappearance. Haxby-Jones, a longtime San Diego resident and nurse-anesthetist was found in December in the home she’d lived in for many years. … someone visiting the …

Artifact, the social news app founded a year ago by Instagram’s co-founders, is shutting down.. I thought Artifact sounded intriguing and kept meaning to try it but I never got around to it. As it is, I see far more interesting links than I will ever have a chance to read. I have zero interest in an …

Amazon sells products with names like “I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy,” as sellers used generative AI to name products but didn’t check the output.

OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for “Military and Warfare”. Generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate makes it seem like a bad fit for military applications.

It’s uncertain where personal technology is heading, but judging from CES, it smells

Your pacemaker and open source software. Using embedded medical technology, such as a pacemaker, defibrillator, or insulin pump? What’s running inside is a complete mystery. Implanted medical devices running proprietary software present security vulnerabilities and lock up data where doctors …

So, are we going to talk about how GitHub is an absolute boon for malware, or nah

Why Google will waive egress fees for customers ditching GCP. The Register says Google is trying to placate regulators in the US and Europe even as Google tries to push those regulators to turn the screws on Microsoft.

Here is what puzzles me about “Bears Discover Fire:” There are at least three storylines in this super-short story: The protagonist, a 61-year-old man, dealing with his family. The protagonist’s mother is dying. And, of course, the bears discovering fire. Why did Bisson choose …

RIP Terry Bisson. Here is one of his most famous stories, the excellent “Bears Discover Fire." I just re-read the story. It’s very short and simple on the surface, with a lot going on underneath that I don’t quite understand. At some point, I might Google until I find an …

A client asked for a synopsis of each of five articles, and I think it makes sense to do them all as a single document. When I need to locate the document again, I will find it by searching for its filename. Will future-me remember that the plural of “synopsis” is “synopses?”

The Weirdest Advice From Vintage Entertaining Guides. “Here, written between 1880 and 1987, is a sampling of some of history’s most unhinged entertaining advice.” Maybe I’m unhinged but most of these seem reasonable to me.

Oxiclean gets an insulated coffee carafe or Thermos clean as a whistle, without scrubbing: First, put the Oxiclean in the carafe. I used a partial scoop of Oxiclean, just above the line on the plastic scoop that comes with the product. Fill the carafe halfway with hot water from the tap. Cover and shake. Open and fill the rest of the way with hot water. Let it sit for a while. I let it …

I read the Robert B. Paker Spenser novels voraciously in the 80s. Spenser often eats food with Syrian bread. What the hell is “Syrian bread?” I wondered. I’m currently listening to the audiobook of “Early Autumn,” which is not one I have re-read in more than 30 years. …

Katelyn Jetelina, Your Local Epidemiologist: Real-world data shows fall 2023 vaccines are effective. Vaccines help prevent against long covid and are safe and effective for children. Also, transmission takes hours. “Quick passersby at a grocery store are far less risky than staying in a house with …

… AI isn’t going to replace you at work. But it’s already augmenting your shitty boss’s ability to rip you off, torment you, maim you and even kill you in order to eke out a few more basis points for the next shareholder report. Cory Doctorow: The REAL AI automation threat …

Today’s fun fact: Rachel Bloom, who plays Elaine, Julia Child’s new director on “Julia,” became famous in 2010 with a viral music video: “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury.” The song is a banger, funny, clever, even dirtier than the title suggests, and — if Bloom is doing the singing and is not electronically …

‘Julia’ Canceled After Two Seasons at Max. Disappointing. We just started watching the new season, and are enjoying it.

What ‘The Sopranos’ Iconic Filming Locations in N.J. Look Like Now. On the anniversary of the show’s premiere, its creator and location manager reflect on some of its iconic settings and why they were chosen.

Clarence Thomas and the bottomless self-pity of the upper classes. Poor bastard had to scrape by on a mere $285,400 per year.

Things I can’t be arsed to care about: Hunter Biden’s crimes, Lloyd Austin’s prostate, Taylor Swift, Claudine Gay, anything else having to do with Harvard University, sports, the golden globes, the Republican primary, Oppenheimer, the Barbie movie, Jonathan Majors, Pete Davidson and Selena Gomez.

Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much Worse. I did an article nearly a year ago talking about how there were plenty of IT jobs outside the tech sector. I wonder whether that is still the case?

Far too many software services are sending me 2023 year-in-review emails: I’m still getting 2023-in-review emails from my software subscriptions. I got one from Grammarly this morning. The subject line was “Reveal Your 2023 Communication Style.” The subject line could have been “Mitch, it’s 2024 and you still don’t know how to use commas. Trakt.TV told …

“San Diego is short around 90,000 homes…. We’re not going to overcome this deficit anytime soon just building single-family housing." I see comments from residents pushing back on multi-family housing and ADUs, and it frustrates me a great deal. “Preserving neighborhood character” …

We watched the first episode of 1923 tonight, after watching Yellowstone and 1883. I am not smart enough to figure out the Dutton family tree.

“A reporter who was fired last year when his employer found clips of his standup comedy online must be reinstated because his jokes are funny, a third-party arbitrator has ruled.” Journalist/comedian Jad Sleiman was fired by WHYY in Philadelphia. “They cut off my health insurance same day, despite …

In the news this weekend: Donald Trump referred to Jan. 6 defendants as “hostages;” refused to swear to not advocate for the overthrow the US government (a routine oath for Illinois Presidential candidates); claimed that Lincoln could have negotiated to avoid the Civil War but didn’t because of ego; …

There is no such thing as a good book. Bookstore worker Kyle Frances Williams reads “The Art of Libromancy: Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century,” by Josh Cook, and finds it to be a lot of bull. I get the sense that “bookseller” is Josh Cook’s dream job. It is for a lot of …

Remember I said I wasn’t going to post links here? Forget it. I like posting links here. You can still follow me on all those other social media places if that’s your thing.

Vicki Greene is the current owner of Flossie, age 28, the world’s oldest living cat. “I think she’s lived so long primarily due to luck, and because she was loved by her previous owners.” Aww.

“You’ve got me? Who’s got you?!” Rewatching Christopher Reeve’s “Superman”: The 1978 “Superman,” starring Christopher Reeve, launched the superhero film genre as it exists today. We rewatched it recently, enjoyed it, and I recommend it. However, the movie takes a painfully long time to get going. ”Superman” starts with pages turning on the 1938 Action Comics …

I’ve decided to take a break posting links here. By nature, they’re ephemeral. And they’re not by me. Also, many of the links I post are political, which sets the wrong tone for my blog. If you like the links, you can find me on other social media: Facebook.com (I don’t do politics there much) …

I was just reminded of New Year’s 2000. I was an editor on a tech newspaper. We searched desperately for someone—anyone!—that got bit by the Y2K bug.

For years, our cat Lulu has pestered Julie at night and left me alone. I was OK with this situation. I did not feel neglected. But recently, Lulu decided that my side of the bed makes an excellent staging area for pestering Julie. Note the timestamp on this post. I’m going to see if Lulu will let me …

Writing a datasheet for a networking product, I typoed “brogrammable” instead of “programmable” and now I’m visualizing a networking product that is programmable but only by dudes who smell like Axe body spray.

I walk Minnie every day for an hour and a half. We go 3.2 miles in that time. If we went at her pace, we would take the same amount of time to go 10 feet and every millimeter of that distance would be thoroughly sniffed.

I was going to get a tattoo on my 50th birthday, but I would’ve needed to decide what pattern to get, decide what part of my body to put it on, and research and find a good tattoo artist and that seemed like an awful lot of work. An alternative would’ve been to join the Navy, get drunk, and get a …

The cashier asked me how I was doing and I said I’m good how are you and he said I’m good how are you and I said I’m good how are you and that was almost a Groundhog Day type situation.

“Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” is “Guardians of the Galaxy” meets “The Princess Bride.” It stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, and Hugh Grant. Fun.

Of all the great mysteries of the universe, I would like to know just one thing: When I’m walking the dog, how does she decide where the perfect spot to pee is? It seems to be a rigorous selection process.

Thinking about a time I was sitting with a small group of people, and one of the women in that group invited us to a party at her house and said we would be free to use her backyard pool. She added: “Swimsuits. Are. Not. Optional.” And I thought, “But I do not want to go …

My 15 minutes of badass literary scholarship: In another online community, somebody asked for the title and author of a story about humans encountering another race that seemes to live a simple agrarian life. When asked how they generate electricity, or other questions about advanced technology, the agrarian person responds that they don’t …

I remember when I finally laid my hands on a reproduction of a 1939 Astounding Stories magazine. I had read so many essays by Isaac Asimov and others that talked about how the 1939-45 era of Astounding was the Golden Age of science fiction. At last! I thought. I have found a precious document! And I …

I’m beginning to think that carrying a distraction machine in my pocket might not be a great idea.

‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7: A Times investigation uncovered new details showing a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women in the attacks on Israel.

Eddie Murphy is making a fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie, with Judge Reinhold and John Ashton. Looks good! Here’s the trailer.

On a private community, someone said they’ve just started watching “Babylon 5” on Season 2, and they want to know whether the show stays good. I replied: My memory of B5 is that the first season was wooden but there was something about it that made me stay with it. Seasons two through four were …

‘The Gilded Age’ Shows the Virtues of Inauthenticity: John McWhorter discusses how the characters in “The Gilded Age” would have really sounded and why it’s better that they talk like modern, 21st-century people.

Every so often I like to get inspired by reading about the writer Robert B. Parker: Parker died in 2010. Here’s what Sarah Weinman wrote about him at the LA Times: Robert B. Parker, who died Monday in his Cambridge, Mass., home at age 77, spent his final moments doing exactly what he’d done for almost four decades: sitting at his desk, working on his next novel. He …

Politico: John Fetterman isn’t the politician you thought he’d be — and he doesn’t care. Fetterman gives a hell of an interview.

Demand for Abortion Increased Under Florida’s Ban. Anti-Abortion Activists Think Another Ban Will Fix This. Keep digging, Republicans.

After crime writer Robert B. Parker died in 2010, his estate hired several writers to continue the multiple series Parker wrote in his lifetime. I’ve read six of the Spenser novels by Ace Atkins. They’re enjoyable but frustrating, like seeing a cover band of your favorite group. …

I’m going to set this as my virtual background for Zoom calls. It will create the right professional impression.

On the Fresh Air podcast: Barry Manilow reflects on writing songs — and making the whole world sing. Before becoming a hit singer-songwriter, Manilow composed jingles for TV commercials. He wrote, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there” and “I Am Stuck On Band-Aids, And A Band-Aid’s Stuck On …

They Spend Thousands Decorating Homes No One Will Ever Go Inside. Sarah E. Needleman at The Wall Street Journal: Newcomers are upending the once-fusty dollhouse scene—decking out wee abodes that could belong in the (mini) Hamptons So far this year, Michael Hogan has spent more than $5,000 on metal …

The Rest Is History podcast: Victorian Britain’s Maddest Mystery . Roger Tichborne, a 25-year-old aristocrat and heir to a fortune, died in a shipwreck in 1854. “His mother, certain of her son’s survival, advertised extensively with a tantalising reward for her son’s return. …

The Imaginary Worlds podcast looks at Doctor Who’s regeneration, which began nearly 60 years ago as a gimmick to replace a lead actor whose health was failing, and has become central to the Doctor’s story, “about an alien being who is striving to be better but keeps overshooting the …

I went around and around the house looking for my phone, searching the usual places again and again, and finally got down on my hands and knees with a flashlight next to the bed and discovered the black phone had fallen off the nightstand and into a black shoe.

Ryan O’Neill: Let me repeat that back to you. One of the most effective communications strategies I use is repeating back, in my own words, what was just explained to me. I do this sometimes when doing interviews, but I find the people I’m interviewing will interrupt me to make the point …

The Hyperloop was always a scam. The tech industry’s move into transportation was not only a failure; it was an active campaign to deny the public access to better transit and trains because the billionaires of Silicon Valley don’t personally want to get around that way. The Hyperloop …

What Happened When the U.S. Failed to Prosecute an Insurrectionist Ex-President. Historian Jill Lepore: After the Civil War, attempts to prosecute Jefferson Davis bogged down in politics, racism and legal pettifogging and went nowhere.

“100 little ideas: A list of ideas, in no particular order and from different fields, that help explain how the world works." These kinds of lists are catnip for me. Luxury Paradox: The more expensive something is the less likely you are to use it, so the relationship between price and …

“Bertie Sheldrake was a South London pickle manufacturer who converted to Islam and became king of a far-flung Islamic republic before returning to London and settling back into obscurity."

I saw this sign on the ground next to an impressively large poop.

It’s All Bullshit: Performing productivity at Google. Journalist JS Tan, writing at The Baffler, argues that Google has become a cesspool of bullshit jobs—engineers rewarded for building projects that are never deployed, or deployed and quickly abandoned, and bloated middle management. The company …

I have seen the Doctor Who Christmas special and I have thoughts (SPOILERS)

Ars Technica rates 20 time travel movies by entertainment and scientific plausibility. What modern science has to say about time travel can be summed up thusly: You can travel to the future, but you probably can’t travel to the past, although to be honest, we’re not really sure. Their list …

Reading “A Christmas Carol” as antisemitic is pretty easy. The main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is a moneylender who doesn’t celebrate Christmas. Full stop there. But there’s more: the name Ebenezer is Hebrew, deriving from the phrase eben ha-ezer, meaning “stone of the help.” Scrooge’s dead friend …

The supermarket did not have Chianti. I talked to four employees, and they did not know what Chianti is. (“Candy?”) Does no one watch “Silence of the Lambs” anymore? What do hippie college students use for candleholders if they don’t have Chianti bottles?

We saw this festive holiday display of leg prostheses. Please enjoy it.

“Elf” + “Enchanted” = “Noelle”: The premise of the movie “Noelle” is that Santa Claus is a family business, with each Santa passing the pom-pom to his son. A few months ago, the last Santa died, and the responsibilty to pilot the sleigh falls on son Nick, who doesn’t want to do it and is terrible at it. Nick’s sister, Noelle, …

“Some thoughts on the real world by one who glimpsed it and fled." Bill Watterson’s 1990 commencement speech at Kenyon College.

Plumshell: Lately, I’ve been realizing the value of having something that excites me enough to jump out of bed for it. So, I’ve decided to fully immerse myself in whatever comes next, knowing that these enjoyable times might not last forever. Here’s the thing: whether or not these obsessions lead …

Tyler Cowen: Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?

Stackexchange discussion: Can Microsoft Flight Simulator help me learn to fly (or make me a better pilot)?

Ace Atkins bids Robert B. Parker’s Spenser farewell. After 10 novels, Atkins looks back at what makes the Boston detective character so compelling.

The Surprising Possibilities of See-Through Wood. Transparent wood is tougher than transparent plastic and glass and has potential practical applications in smartphone screens, insulated windows and more.

How the press manufactured consent for never-ending COVID reinfections. Continual reinfection was not the “new normal” Biden advertised. How did we get here?

Why Do We Build Houses in the Same Way That We Did 125 Years Ago?

Walking the dog in the park this morning, I saw a runner wearing a Santa hat, a runner wearing a Christmas sweater, and a pack of bicyclists that included one wearing a rope of Christmas lights around his neck—the old-style, big teardrop-shaped lights.

Every once in a while, I pick up a call from an unidentified caller rather than letting it ring through. It’s almost always a telemarketer or other variety of scammer. And then I’m disappointed because I can’t think of a way to mess with them. Maybe I should take improv classes?

I’m intrigued by Dave Winer’s distinction between conversation and publishing. He’s talked elsewhere about blogging as a kind of thinking out loud.

BlueSky upgrade: Now you can see Profiles and posts on the web without logging in, and it also supports RSS feeds. I want a single client for all the Twitter spinoffs: Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads all in one place. RSS and Tumblr too. This step by BlueSky is a step in the right direction.

How to draw irregularly shaped polygons, such as L-shaped boxes, using Excalidraw: This was a pain for me to figure out but once I got it figured it, it was simple. Use the line tool. Instead of clicking and then dragging—which will draw a single line—click at the start of your shape, then click on the next corner, and then the next corner, and so on until you’re done. To close …

Yet another example why YouTube instruction videos for software are evil and you should use written documentation instead: I needed to draw an L-shaped box for a diagram. I spent an hour trying to figure out how to draw it using Excalidraw. I found this YouTube video. I then had to figure out why the audio wouldn’t play. I had this problem yesterday and thought I had resolved it but I guess not. After ten minutes …

Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker: In 2024, the Tension Between Macroculture and Microculture Will Turn into War. Alt creators such as YouTube stars and Substack authors are overtaking traditional media, and traditional media is oblivious to the race.

Charles Stross: Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real

A Knight’s Tale is the Best Medieval Film (No, Really)

One of the things I absolutely adore about A Knight’s Tale is that it makes no pretense at historical accuracy anywhere within its length. — John Scalzi Another one for the to-rewatch list.

I think Democrats wake up every morning and they look at the calendar on the iPhone and it says January 6th. The date never changes. And then they get into an electric vehicle and go get an abortion. — Kellyanne Conway I like to have coffee first but otherwise can confirm.

Federal Judge Blocks New California Law Banning Concealed Handguns in Public Places. I bet U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney does not allow guns in his courtroom, other than sheriff’s officers and police.

Trump vows to amp up the Hitler talk

A fanatical Ohio prosecutor charged a woman with abuse of a corpse after she had a miscarriage in a restroom.

The family of an Israeli woman kidnapped by Hamas is suing the Red Cross over ignoring the needs of captives.

The Rise and Fall of the ‘IBM Way’: Deborah Cohen at The Atlantic: IBM has a history of more than a century of innovation. The company was the Watson family business for 60 years, and offered lifetime employment, though it’s recently been sued for age discrimination. The System/360 mainframe, announced in 1964, was one of the greater …

JULIE: “I’m going to try a new herb and rice.” ME: “I don’t think I should be eating rice.” JULIE: “Not rice. Spice. Urban spice.” ME: “Oh, ok. Sounds good.” (pause) “What’s urban spice?” JULIE: “Not urban spice. Herb. And. Spice.” Julie, exhausted, fainted.

Threads is getting an API. This seems to be separate from ActivityPub. I’m looking forward to this being implemented—I haven’t been posting to Threads as much as I do elsewhere, because doing it manually is inconvenient . @manton, have you seen this?

I am quite enjoying John Scalzi’s December Comfort Watch movie list and have added about half the titles to my to-be-watched-list. I’m done with challenging and important entertainment for a while. The news is challenging enough nowadays.

We went to the San Diego Natural History Museum Sunday, which proved to be a personal milestone for me—my first time receiving a senior discount. My chagrin at having the word “senior” applied to me was offset by getting a discount. So, um, yay I guess?

The Everywhereist: Every Relationship In Love, Actually, Listed In Order of How Dysfunctional They Are.. I love this movie and agree with every criticism against it, including this one.

RIP Luiz Barroso, who pioneered the modern data center for Google and made the modern internet possible. Until Barroso, data centers were populated by enormously powerful and expensive computer servers. Barroso instead used massive numbers of relatively inexpensive, disposable machines. “… we must …

Sivraj and Me. Phil Gomes created a personal AI advisor using GPT Builder, with a sarcastic personality based on Jarvis from the Iron Man movies. This is brilliant. I’m going to try something like it.

Humans are a basically civilized species. We know not to go barefoot in restaurants, treat our friends’ living rooms like landfills or nap on the shoulder of our office cubicle mate. And yet, as soon as we step inside an airport or onto a plane, our manners seem to vanish. Perhaps it’s the delirium …

Amazon is asking workers experiencing financial hardship to write to the company mascot (named “Peccy”) for help. Amazon would rather ask its workers to humiliate themselves instead of paying living wages. Meanwhile, founder and chair Jeff Bezos is worth $172 billion, and the company tripled its …

John Scalzi has a delightful short essay on “Die Hard," a movie that works so well because of its wonderful cast. Even small parts get their moments to shine. And of course “Die Hard” created thousands of variations and ripoffs. My favorite “Die Hard” variation is …

Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon in the last scene of The Gilded Age. Oh boy.

Merry Christmas from these grizzly bears at the Natural History Museum at Balboa Park.

The iPhone’s Notes App Is the Purest Reflection of Our Messy Existence. If you want to know who someone truly is—what they eat, what books they read, what movies they watch, or how furious they get inside their own minds—you should probably check their Notes app.

Alexandra Petri: GOP baffled that ‘We Don’t Care if You Die’ is not a winning slogan

I have a short observation about last night’s “For All Mankind.” I posted it elsewhere because spoiler.

Jason Snell @jsnell@zeppelin.flights makes the case for clipboard managers—software that saves a history of what you copy to your clipboard. I find clipboard managers to be essential. The lack of a clipboard manager on the iPad is a big reason why I find it difficult getting real work done on those …

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr: How the NYPD defeated bodycams. “NYPD leadership were accountability’s adversaries, not its partners.” Police control bodycams in New York—as they do in other cities, including Minneapolis (site of the George Floyd murder); Montgomery, Ala.; Memphis—and they use …

I hate to say I told you so but Death’s hand rests on the shoulders of some of the largest Western telecom equipment cos. Steve Saunders predicts imminent shake-out in the telecom vendor market.

Are Red Hat, VMware selling multi-cloud snake oil?

I bought supermarket coffee beans yesterday—and like them. My status as a coffee snob is in grave danger.

At the supermarket today I was in line at the cash register behind a rotund voluble middle-aged gentleman who chatted up not one but TWO middle-aged women, also in line. He laughed “HURH HURH HURH” with every sentence. A real John Candy “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” vibe. …

Apple buried the setting in WatchOS 10.2 for re-activating swiping to change watchfaces. You need to go into the Settings app, and then Clock -> Swipe to Switch Watch Face. And you need to do it on the Watch itself, not in the Watch app on the phone.

My latest: Cloud cost-consciousness is having a moment. Companies are rediscovering cost awareness, which Amazon CTO Werner Vogels calls a “lost art.”

Twitter Is Just Running Ads for Stealing Semen Now

What if it learned from its training data that people usually slow down in December and put bigger projects off until the new year, and that’s why it’s been more lazy lately? As ChatGPT gets “lazy,” people test “winter break hypothesis” as the cause

Why candlepin bowling took off in New England — and not anywhere else

Terry Gilliam and Jonathan Pryce on making “Brazil.” “Robert De Niro prepared to play a plumber by watching a brain surgeon.” … De Niro agreed because he was a Python fan, Gilliam cast his daughter but she cut her hair off in protest and Pryce needed a wig as he’d just been playing a friar with a …

“Ask a Manager” says “this is the best office holiday party date story of all time.” It’s EVEN BETTER THAN THAT.

I’m glad to see work is continuing on ActivityPub support in Tumblr (here’s a statement on Tumblr from CEO Matt Mullenweg), and also not surprised to find there isn’t much interest in WordPress ActivityPub support. Most people who want something with ActivityPub support just go to …

We brought Minnie in for a good dog wash for the first time in too long. We tried a new place. They did a good job, but they used perfumed shampoo on her, and now my office, where she sleeps at night, smells like a New Orleans whorehouse.

“… blogging never died…. journalists just stopped paying attention.” — What if the Twitter replacement isn’t a Twitter clone?

The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill

AI is transforming literary analysis and could help us uncover insights into our own minds, according to Ted Underwood, an English professor at the University of Illinois.

Bruce Schneier: The Internet today has been an engine for mass surveillance, and AI will potentially result in an explosion of spying. “Mass surveillance fundamentally changed the nature of surveillance…. Similarly, mass spying will change the nature of spying.”

Shakespeare’s First Folio is “arguably the most important secular book in western culture…. Were it not for the First Folio, we wouldn’t have half of Shakespeare’s plays today."

Bruce Schneier: It’s easy to think of generative AI as a friend rather than a service, making us vulnerable to profit-seeking corporations. “AI models, controlled by large corporations, inherently prioritize profit over ethics.”

We have seen ”Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” and I have thoughts: It was very enjoyable. I see fans ranking it as third of the five Indy movies. I’ll go with that. They did a great job de-aging Harrison Ford for the opening sequence. Apparently this was a result of skilled direction as much a CGI; I noted they cut the camera away from Indy when he was about to do …

“The metaphorical lynch mob that has come after the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn for the crime of having tried to give intelligent and nuanced answers to gotcha questions from fascist Trump enabler Elise Stefanik is a disgrace.”

Life for the Lowest Class in Ancient Pompeii? It Was Awful. Excavations in the ancient ruins have unearthed a cramped space where enslaved workers and donkeys performed their grueling tasks.

Jim Geraghty at National Review: “Hunter Biden’s entire life, so far, has been a bold, defiant, shameless declaration that laws are for the little people, not for the Bidens.” I will gladly support Joe Biden against any plausible Republican candidate. I think he’s done a pretty good job as …

Today I learned the tradition of eating jelly donuts to celebrate Hanukkah dates back to the 1920s in Israel. The first record of donuts appears in a 1400s German cookbook. I think this is the first year I’m hearing about jelly donuts and Hanukkah. We always had latkes when I was a kid.

Fantasy disguised as science fiction disguised as fantasy: Roger Zelazny’s “Lord of Light.” Jo Walton: “I have never liked Lord of Light. If I’ve ever been in a conversation with you and you’ve mentioned how great it is and I’ve nodded and smiled, I apologise.”

Making DevSecOps more than just lipstick on a pig. If your answer to implementing DevSecOps is dumping more responsibility on overworked developer teams, you’re doing it wrong. My latest.

Everyone and everything is pissing me off today. Not you. You’re awesome.

The presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania said calls for genocide against Jewish people don’t violate their school policies. When I covered crime in New Jersey in the 1980s, making death threats was a crime. I assume that’s true today in most US jurisdictions—but not at …

GOP senator demands DOJ investigate reporter who wrote about potential Trump dictatorship. Radley Balko: “Congratulations to J.D. Vance, for responding to accusations that his party is authoritarian in the most authoritarian way a senator possibly could.”

Back to Reddit: After a recent discussion with friendly fellow journalists, I started using Reddit again. I’d dumped Reddit after the whole dustup this summer between the Reddit CEO and the developer of the Apollo client. It left me feeling like the CEO was a petty jerk, and I didn’t want to support him. But …

On a private discussion group, a friend asked what we use to clean our computer screens. I said I cover mine with peanut butter and let the dog lick them clean. I enjoy opportunities like that to share my deep technical knowledge with the less-informed.

I’m trying the Spark email app for Mac and iPhone. Impressive but confusing.

Lucid dream startup says you can work in your sleep. Despite the linkbait headline, the article itself is very interesting and goes into claims by the startup that they’ve created technology to induce lucid dreaming at will. What would be the ramifications of something like that, where most people …

The most popular articles on Wikipedia in 2023: ChatGPT is #1. The list also includes Taylor Swift, the Barbie movie and Matthew Perry. I’m interested to see how many listings are international, particularly Indian.

Jewish women’s advocates share graphic descriptions of Hamas’s brutal rape, mutilation and torture of Israeli women and girls. In the US and West, progressives march to support Palestinian victims—and rightly so—but are quiet when the victims are Jews. Also: The World’s Feminists Need to Show Up for …

Facebook and Instagram’s recommendation systems are finding and promoting blatant pedophilia: WSJ: Meta Is Struggling to Boot Pedophiles Off Facebook and Instagram The headline and deck on this article are too kind to Meta. The companies do not seem to be “struggling” to get rid of this content. They don’t seem to be trying very hard at all. More from Casey Newton (paid sub required I think) …

“Bertie Sheldrake was a South London pickle manufacturer who converted to Islam and became king of a far-flung Islamic republic before returning to London and settling back into obscurity.” The number of supercentenarians in an area tends to fall dramatically about 100 years after accurate birth …

First Zoom meeting of the week is in 20 minutes. I’m ready.

I’m going back to cross-posting from mitchw.blog to @mitchw@mastodon.social. Mastodon is part of the Fediverse (of course), but it’s not one with the fediverse. This system may need further adjusting later today or this week, and almost certainly need adjusting in the near term as the …

“I reversed my type 2 diabetes. Here’s how I did it”: Neil Barsky at The Guardian: One gray Sunday in the middle of the Covid lockdown, I received an unwelcome call from my family doctor. Until then, for virtually my entire life, I had managed to stay out of a doctor’s office, except for routine checkups. My luck had run out. “I am sorry to disturb …

A new theory of “wobbly spacetime” potentially reconciles quantum mechanics and relativity—one of the greatest scientific mysteries of the past century. The macroscopic world of relativity and the subatomic world of quantum physics are fundamentally different. And both those worlds are …

WSJ: Is This the End of ‘Intel Inside’? Intel is competing with nearly every other tech giant, including longtime joined-at-the-hip partner Microsoft.

Notes toward a theory of the Dad Thriller: Max Read: .. you know the kind of movies I’m talking about: Movies set on submarines; movies set on aircraft carriers; movies where lawyers are good guys; movies where guys secure the perimeter and/or the package; movies where a guy has to yell to make himself heard over a helicopter; movies …

What went wrong with ‘the Metaverse’? An insider’s postmortem. The Metaverse failed, but metaverses like Fortnite are big and growing, with more to come. By Wagner James Au.

The way we live in the United States is not normal.: Kirsten Powers: I began to notice a learned helplessness in the United States, where people don’t revolt at the notion of a college education costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wondered why so many people treat it as completely normal that we have GoFundMe campaigns to help people …

Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney? How “Flo” transformed Progressive Insurance and the life of Stephanie Courtney, the actor who plays the role on commercials since 2008. I found this entertaining and informative article surprisingly relevant to my own career and life.

Archaeologists reveal life stories of hundreds of people from medieval Cambridge

‘I was told not to make eye contact with Tom Cruise’: meet the world’s most prolific film extra. Over a 60-year career, Jill Goldston has been a face in the crowd—literally, that’s her job—in 2,000 movies.

Raycast has a new feature where you can activate your Mac camera and look at yourself before jumping on a video call. I tried it out as soon as I got to my desk this morning, before having my first sip of coffee. That was a mistake.

So it begins. My Tumblr blog, formerly known as “Atomic Robot Live,” is now “Mitchipedia.” Now to discover the inevitable breakage! Let the wild rumpus of error messages begin!

Hollywood Goes Home: How Celebrity Endorsements Are Helping Dems Win Down Ballot. “In towns across the nation, there is _that _person — the kid who made it big, starred in some movies, became an action hero, maybe even won some awards. What if that person told you about an upcoming local election? …

A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending. Also, by Alexandra Petri: I’m starting to think Donald Trump is sounding like Hitler on purpose

I’m having a couple of mandarin oranges with lunch. They’ve been sitting around the house a while. I think I will use the remaining fruits as billiard balls.

I recently discovered the power of not having opinions about things. Was Henry Kissinger a war criminal whose death we should celebrate? I don’t know. Maybe one day I’ll learn some things about him and come up with some conclusions. I have other things to do right now.

I registered the domain mitchipedia.org and now I love it so much I’m thinking about going to the hassle of changing alllllllll my social media accounts and my blog domain to that.

Red Hat kickstarts king-size Kubernetes cloud cost cuts. The Flaming Fedora fellowship debuts OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) with hosted control plane, which it claims can cut costs of running Kubernetes clusters by 20%. I wrote this.

RIP Frances Sternhagen, 93, a solid character actor whom I have always liked. She had prominent supporting roles on “Cheers,” “ER,” “Sex and the City” and “The Closer,” and she was a Broadway veteran, winning two Tony awards, all while raising six children. She liked playing “snobby older ladies. …

Before I upgraded to Sonoma I heard people saying the screensavers were great and I thought that was ridiculous. How great can screen savers be, I thought. But damn those are nice screensavers.

I’m going to try using this account as my main place in the fediverse. I’ll only use @mitchw@mastodon.social for reading, favoriting, boosting and replying. If the experiment works, I’ll move my followers on @mitchw@mastodon.social here, using the magic of fediverse automation.

The Washington Post: Race isn’t real, science says. Advocates want the census to reflect that.. Race isn’t real, but racism is.

Why Do Superheroes Wear Spandex? The Rise, Fall, and Return of the Super-Stretchy Material

Thousands of papers seized from Spanish ships during the 18th Century are now online. The letters are from and to ordinary sailors, revealing details of daily life from that time. The correspondence was seized by the British during wars in the 1700s, and is being published by British researchers. …

Everybody who was Anybody had Dr. Feelgood and his Speed Shots on Speed Dial Dr. Max Jacobson, aka “Dr. Feelgood,” injected amphetamine-based concoctions into the arms of celebrities and powerful people including JFK, Alfred Hitchcock, Truman Capote, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe and more. Capote …

On the Our Opinions Are Correct podcast: While robots and self-driving cars get all the attention, four mundane technologies have the potential to change the future: Artificial wombs, smart toilets, new forms of public transportation and new cleaning machines.

… the Court felt that bringing the chicken into the courtroom to play tic-tac-toe would degrade the dignity of the Court. I thought that the dignity of the Court was degraded by executing a mentally-ill person. — This American Life. Poultry Slam

The real AI fight: Last week’s spectacular OpenAI fight was reportedly a donnybrook between “Effective Altruism” and “Effective Accelarationism”—two schools of philosophy founded on the nonsensical faith, absent any evidence, that godlike artificial intelligence (AI) beings are imminent, and arguing over the best way …

The Pneumatic Tube Mail System in New York City … the first cylinder tube to travel through the New York City system contained “a Bible, a flag and a copy of the Constitution. The second contained an imitation peach in honor of Senator Chauncy Depew (He was fondly known as “The Peach”). A third …

Residents of North Sentinel Island off India are one of the few surviving tribes that resist contact with the outside world. When a missionary successfully contacted them in 2018, in violation of international law, they killed him brutally. Turns out they (or their neighbors) were in contact with …

Placebos are effective treatments for many conditions, such as chronic pain. They work even when the patient is aware they are receiving a placebo, according to a leading researcher in placebo studies. In other news, “placebo studies” is a thing.

An ode to ‘Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast’. “… if you want to understand the man behind the squinty eyes, listen to the 600-plus episodes of ‘Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast,’ one of the great love letters to twentieth century Hollywood.”

Microcelebrity in 2007: Writing in 2007, Clive Thompson describes the phenomenon of “microcelebrity”–how blogging, Facebook and Flickr makes people famous to a few fans. “Adapting to microcelebrity means learning to manage our own identity and ‘message’ almost like a self-contained …

Moving furniture on the blog: I’m moving furniture around on the blog again (metaphorically speaking). The main visible change: No more ephemera posts here—they’re additional fuss for me and I don’t think many people are reading them. You can find the memes and other found media on my tumblr, Mastodon, Facebook, Bluesky, Threads …

Today’s ephemera: The ethics of transmogrification: 

Extra-good Beyond Belief episode on Thrilling Adventure Hour this week, with guest stars Kevin Pollak and Richard Kind.

RIP Marty Krofft, of Sid & Marty Krofft.

Problems vs. situations: When facing a problem, ask yourself “is it a problem or a situation? Problems, by definition, have solutions. You might not like the cost of the solution, the trade-offs it leads to, or the time and effort it takes, but problems have solutions. On the other hand, situations …

“If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?” Outstanding productivity advice from Tim Ferriss.

Feynman stories, Richard Feynman and scientism: A “Feynman story” is “any anecdote that someone tells that is structured so that the teller comes off as a genius and everyone else in the story comes off as an idiot. “[Many people] seemed to think Feynman was a great guy…. [many] other people didn’t think he was so great. So Feynman seems …

“Avoid situations that someone you love might later have to explain on a medical or government form.”: Merlin Mann has been collecting life lessons in a lengthy bullet list on GitHub. Merlin’s Wisdom Project Some more gems: Minimize the number of conversations you have through a closed bathroom door. Unless you’re outside the door and there’s a fire, or you’re inside the door and …

What Old Age Is Really Like. Writer Ceridwen Dovey discusses the role of the very old in society, literature and lived experience, and talks with very old writers.

Are Men Obsessed With the Roman Empire? “In posts shared on social media, women have been asking the men in their lives how often they think about ancient Rome. ‘Constantly,’ one husband responded. ‘Like, every day,’ said a boyfriend. As of Thursday night, a thread on X, formerly known as Twitter, …

Aack! A Millennial’s Audio Odyssey Through the ‘Cathy’ Comic Strip . “The comedian Jamie Loftus returns with another limited-run podcast, this time exploring white boomer women through the lens of a much-maligned comic strip.” I loved Loftus’s multi-part podcast about the Cathy comic strip and its …

Turn Off Push Notifications. App developers want to blast you with trivial notifications all day, every day. The best way to take your attention back is to get rid of notifications altogether (or nearly so). I’m extremely online, but nearly all my mobile notifications are switched off. There’s …

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles: I read Anne Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire” when I was a teen-ager, and did not find it erotic, and didn’t realize it was intended to be erotic. The eroticism just went right over my head. I thought it was long-winded and Louis was a self-absorbed whiner. But I did finish …

The Incredibly Strange Career of Anne Rice: Anne Rice is known for her Vampire Chronicles, including “Interview With the Vampire” and “The Vampire Lestat.” She also wrote bestselling BDSM erotica and two historical novels about Jesus, and fought in a fan war against her own movie. The Our Opinions Are Correct podcast …

I tried to draw a turkey in spray cheese for the dog’s Thanksgiving dinner last night. Spray cheese is not my medium. However, the dog was not unhappy with the outcome.

AI developers have turned science fiction stories about godlike supercomputers into a religion, leading to the current infighting at OpenAI. “The field of AI … is profoundly shaped by cultish debates among people with some very strange beliefs.” Crooked Timber: What OpenAI shares with Scientology

I just got back from lunch. How many CEO changes did I miss at OpenAI?

Today’s ephemera: As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly: 

Today’s ephemera: Uninspired barbecues: 

OpenAI’s alignment problem. The company’s board failed the institution. But did it have a point? Casey Newton defends – or at least explains – the OpenAI board’s position. The company was supposed to be moving slowly and avoiding the harms of AI while harnessing good for humanity. Altman …

Today’s ephemera: Their remarkable ubiquity: 

Our server at lunch was named Ginger but her hair was magenta.

I visited with a friend in Oceanside

Today’s ephemera: Worse than a crying baby on a plane: 

Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling are different people. I know that now.

Whenever I see an Econoline van, I think of a short story that Joe Haldeman wrote about a man who sets off a series of nuclear bombs in cities. Econoline vans play a role in the conspiracy. I read that story 50 years ago, but I still think of that story every time I see one of those vans.

“Doctor Who” showrunner Russell Davies says he grew up twice-closeted, hiding that he was gay and that he was a Doctor Who fan. For him, the two are tied together. “I’d walk home from school wishing I could turn the corner and see that blue box and run inside to escape everything. I don’t think that …

Recent college graduates are drinking less. It’s even a movement with a name, NoLo—no-alcohol, low-alcohol. I’ve never been a heavy drinker, and over time I drink less and less. I rarely like the effect alcohol has on me. But I do sometimes like a drink. I expect I’ll have one or two on …

Search Engine: Why don't we eat people?: Today I learned that on Christopher Columbus’s second voyage to the Americas, he encountered a friendly tribe, the Arawaks—“fitted to be ruled and to be set to work to cultivate the land and do all else that may be necessary”—that warned him about another tribe, the Caribs, that were vicious and ate …

Why the Senate is increasingly skewed on race, parties and policy The Senate overrepresents Republicans and disenfranches people of color and people who live in large states. The Washington Post, by the numbers: If you are a resident of California, with 68 times the population of Wyoming, your …

The likely GOP nominee is forgetting where he is, stumbling over words, and waxing full fascist…. the armchair gerontologists parsing every utterance from President Joe Biden, trying to distinguish his congenital stutter from his natural aging, should look at Trump, whose behavior has gone from bad …

“The antisemitic left hates Biden. The antisemitic right loves Trump.” — Jonathan Chait. Republicans Have an Antisemitism Problem. Democrats Don’t.

Trump says he wanted to participate in the Jan. 6 insurrection, but the Secret Service would not allow it. Reprehensible on two levels: He wanted to participate in a violent, criminal attempt to overthrow a legitimate election, and he was too chickenshit to do it. CNN Airs New Tape of Trump …

No, there isn’t a wave of TikTok teens supporting Osama bin Laden. … everything we see about TikTok is just being filtered through a media and political apparatus that doesn’t know how it works and has no issue cherry-picking random nonsense out of the app to fit whatever agenda they subscribe to. …

For several months, I noticed that my MacBook Pro made weird hissing and clicking sounds in the morning. That’s bad, I thought, and I checked to be sure my backups were OK. But other than that, I didn’t think about it. The sounds only lasted a second or two and only happened once or twice in the …

I recently received this message in text spam: Evelyn, it’s no sin to love each other and it’s not annoying. Just that one single line of text. No greeting, no context, nothing else. A+ for creativity. Genius.

Red Hat: ‘The power of AI is open’. I wrote about how the crimson cap crew at Red Hat says open source has what it takes to meet AI’s demands for rapid development cycles and compliance with security and regulatory standards.

I hate when blueberries get wrinkled. They’re like Oompa Loompa scrotums.

Esquire: Nazi-Curious Madman Currently Under Indictment For 91 Felonies Gives Speech. Headline of the week.

Interesting analysis on using social media to drive traffic by Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day (one of my favorite newsletters). A couple of highlights: Threads is driving the most traffic. He thinks that’s just a bait-and-switch by Meta but is happy to ride it out while the fun lasts. I agree on …

Red Hat debuts edge platform for vast device networks. I wrote about the Burgundy Beanie bunch at Red Hat launching Device Edge, an open-source, minimal-footprint platform for edge computing on small, resource-constrained devices.

Today’s ephemera: Collateralized equine product: 

It’s Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk Michael Tomasky at The New Republic: To announce that the real enemy is domestic and then to speak of that enemy in subhuman terms is Fascism 101. Especially that particular word. Tomasky says Trump is “not going to be throwing …

Plans to add ActivityPub support for Tumblr are likely dead. I can’t see that as a priority given Tumblr’s recent drastic staff cutbacks. Rodrigo Ghedin: Automattic’s Tumblr/ActivityPub integration reportedly shelved. Laurens Hof: ActivityPub support was a “hasty announcement” by CEO Matt …

Trump thinks Veterans Day is the day we salute veterans of the Nazi Wehrmacht.

“Imagine a mug that’s left on a coffee table.” — Anil Dash, That goddamn mug

“Reality isn’t brand safe. If you’re in the reality based community, brand safety should be your sworn enemy, even if they help you temporarily get a couple of Nazis kicked off Twitter.” — Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr “Brand safety” killed Jezebel

The US Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time in the ’70s. People Hated It

Alleged pickleball masturbator nabbed after Columbia Pike peeping incident. From the comments: “Pickleball penis perp perpetually pleasures phallic package, police properly prohibit person.”

The documentary “Sly” reveals depths to Sylvester Stallone. What emerges isn’t the superstar who turned Rocky and Rambo into American icons as much as a thoughtful, surprisingly self-aware artist, who happens to be much smarter, more sensitive and steeped in cinematic history than even his …

A surprisingly moving profile of Geddy Lee. “… in the era of headbanging and ‘Cat Scratch Fever,’ they were singing 11-minute songs inspired by the epic poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.” There was never a band like Rush. Geddy Lee doesn’t want to forget it.

A researcher identified the man on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV, 50 years after the album’s release. The man was a thatcher named Lot Long, and the album cover is based on a found photograph from the Victorian era. The photographer was named Ernest Farmer, now the subject of an English museum …

Britain’s ‘loneliest sheep’ was rescued after two years at the foot of cliff. “The ‘over-fat’ ewe, named Fiona, was hauled up from her solitary spot on a remote Scottish beach by farmers.” She had a “huge fleece.” A kayaker spotted the sheep, which followed her along the riverbank, calling out the …

Jezebel: Feminist media site shuts down after 16 years. Jezebel was a great site that “pioneered the sharp, dishy coverage that came to characterise many digital upstarts.” Tough day for online pioneers yesterday. Tumblr is scaling back drastically, and Nextdoor is also laying off a lot …

When they wear the hats it’s in a dramatic scene and rather than focusing on the emotional action and dialogue I’m just thinking what is that on their head?

Marvel TV shows and movies need to get rid of the ridiculous headgear. The costumes are fine but the silly hats have got to go.

Tonight‘s TV choices: Season finale of “Loki,” season debut of “For all Mankind,” final two episodes of the season of “Bosch” and a new episode of “Lessons in Chemistry.” Tough decision!

I’m grateful to the Automattic team for keeping Tumblr running and being good custodians of the community. Today’s announcement is sad news, but I’m hopeful Tumblr will succeed many years with its new, more focused mission.

Sad news. Tumblr is downscaling after failing to ‘turn around’ the site

Today’s ephemera: Dinosaurs are like the coolest thing possible: 

This runner finished last at the NYC Marathon. He feels ‘blessed.’. Of course he should be proud. He finished the damn thing. He came in 51,258th place. Also, today I learned there are people who walk marathons. Might be something I should do sometime.

No, Grammarly, “fertile AI” is not a better way to say “generative AI.”

El Cajon Mayor Urges the ‘Immediate Shutdown’ of Border to Palestinians. Racists gotta racist.

Today I learned Barbra Streisand has a mall in her basement.

TIL Barbra Streisand cloned her dog. Twice.

A guide for visiting journalists on how to write a San Francisco “doom loop” story: You’re here to write the millionth story about the San Francisco doom loop, the much publicized (including at least 100 times by the Chronicle) and hotly debated theory that a city that endured proudly through the …

Welcome to dating in 2023: Today’s oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the internet: 

I would not say I have “sensory processing issues” (autism, PTSD—I probably do have ADHD) but yesterday I was at the supermarket and the ambient music was annoying. Also, I hate that waiting rooms now have TVs playing at all times. So Walmart’s sensory-friendly hours sound good to me.

I just did a rough tally of our monthly streaming video and cable bill.

Minnie wants you to know you’re awesome and she hopes you’re as comfortable as she is.

Food insecurity on the rise. 10% of California households can’t afford to buy enough food for everybody. Nationwide, that number is 11%. That’s unacceptable.

I have seen no policy or legislative proposals from No Labels. It’s all a bunch of handwaving about centrism and bipartisanship.

The timelessness of the Meg Ryan rom-com era. Meg Ryan’s latest film, “What Happens Later,” “recalls the Nora Ephron classics that defined the genre.” New Meg Ryan romcom co-starring David Duchovny? Sure, why not?

How do I stop the “Start your day?” notifications every morning on Apple Watch? They are annoying.

Jason Parham at Wired: “The internet promised us access, but I didn’t realize the totality of what that meant. It meant always being plugged in, available, in the know and up to date on what’s trending. That is a requirement of time that I no longer wish to give over.”

“… a bunch of predominately white, upper-middle-class Londoners fall in love while being self-deprecating and swearing inventively.…“ Love Actually at 20: Richard Curtis’s imperfect yet irresistible Christmas romcom

Get weird about that thing you're weird about: Today’s oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the internet: 

While walking with the dog this morning, I saw these. Seeing an El Camino first thing in the morning is lucky—everybody knows that.

I have seen this sign often while walking on Del Cerro Blvd. I have no idea what the story is. Hohokam Stadium is in Mesa, Arizona, more than 360 miles away, and what does it have to do with the (presumably, Chicago) Cubs?

Time’s 200 Best Inventions of 2023 includes Sightful, an AR laptop with a 100-inch virtual screen. Also: Shift Robotics Moonwalkers are “battery-­powered wheeled shoes [that] allow you to walk normally (not skate), just faster and more easily. The Moonwalkers use AI to sense when you’re speeding up …

That poor couch: Today’s oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the internet: 

I hope I love anything as much as my grandma hated ‘The Sound of Music’. A sweet and loving tribute by Alexandra Petri.

Daylight Saving Time as Americans know it was instituted by corporate lobbies, not farmers

I love Dave Winer’s vision of textcasting—write anywhere you want, using any tools, and read anywhere you want, using any tools. Today, I take advantage of micro.blog’s great cross-posting tools and ActivityPub support, but that doesn’t get me everywhere I need to be. I have to cut-and-paste to post …

A starfish is a “disembodied head walking about the sea floor on its lips,” according to recent research. I did not plan to have nightmares about starfish this weekend but here we are.

Everything peaked in the 70s: Today’s oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the internet: 

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 22, 1971. Zonker has a Maynard Krebs vibe.

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 21, 1971. Introducing Zonker.

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 19, 1971. Mike tries to meet a woman at a bar. At first it goes well.

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 15, 1971. Introducing Boopsie. She evolves over the years.

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 30, 1971. Nixon goes to China.

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 17, 1971. Meanwhile, here in 2023, there’s a dispensary on every corner.

I’m attending an event in a few days for which I’ll be wearing a suit and tie, which means I had to bring my suits in to be cleaned and pressed. The last time I wore a suit was on my last business trip, December 2019. I figured then that I had no travel scheduled until February, so I the …

Ron Rosenbaum is from Long Island. The Long Islandest part of Long Island—South Shore. And yet he hates Billy Joel. Is that allowed?

Enjoying giving office supplies and travel size toiletries to trick or treaters.

Jinkies! Today’s oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the internet: 

The beauty of finished software: Finished software is software that’s done—it doesn’t need updates. I missed a message from a client yesterday morning because Slack moved everything around for no apparent reason at all.

“I started reading Ed McBain when I was probably 11 or 12,” [Stephen] King said, looking at his row of several novels by the prolific author of crime procedurals. “The bookmobile would come by. We lived out in the country. The first thing I remember is, I’m reading one of these books, and …

Either CAPTCHAs are becoming harder or I’m becoming less human.

When I was 11 years old, I wanted to be Barnard Hughes when I grew up. I’m behind schedule.

I don’t like Halloween. It celebrates death and decay. I like a little of that—I loved the Addams Family and Beetlejuice. But an entire month of zombies and skeletons is too much. Also, while I like people changing up their identities, confining it to a single day seems unhealthy. People should …

The dog usually has to be coaxed down the front outside stairs to the front gate. I think it’s because we only go down them once or twice a week so she’s not used to doing it. It is a slow process, and she stops to thoroughly sniff every third step. But this morning I paused on the top landing, …

Overheard: There’s over 7 billion ppl in this world and I’m really the best driver, that’s so wild to me

Overheard: Just wait until conspiracy theorists discover they’re part of a conspiracy to use conspiracy theorists to spread disinformation via conspiracy theories.

Cory Doctorow “The idea that creative workers aren't workers is bullshit.“: Cory: Why creative workers get screwed in labor negotiations (until very recently): Creative workers are part of a class of workers who suffer from “vocational awe,” the sense that because your job is satisfying and/or worthy, you don’t deserve to get paid for it. Also: The …

Trolled by a fucking goat: Today’s oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the internet: 

Threads is in the early days of the social media enshittification cycle. That’s why it’s so great—for now: The goal now is to attract users by the hundreds of millions, so Facebook is making Threads great for users. And it’s working—Threads is, indeed, a great place. For now. But soon, Facebook will pivot to wanting revenue from Threads, and so Threads will become great for advertisers and steadily worse …

Dave Winer: We can do better than Threads. Running from the arms of one billionaire to another is a bad idea. Musk is the second worst thing that happened to social media, but Facebook is much worse, because they’re so much more competent, but lack any vision other than sucking up as much of …

Ask a Manager: I want my coworker to stop giving me “psychic messages” from my dead family members. The coworker also has messages from dead pets.

Why’d I take speed for twenty years? Podcaster PJ Vogt writes about his 20-year use of prescription stimulants, as well as coming to terms with the suicide of a friend. Vogt struggled to understand what his friend’s depression was like from the inside and was surprised to learn his own …

New GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson has proposed trillions in cuts to Social Security and Medicaire.

What if we kissed on the jouch? Today’s oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the internet: 

Daring Fireball: The Aftermath of a Massacre Is Always the Time to Push for Gun Legislation

Ask a Manager: my employee wasn’t respectful enough after the company messed up her paycheck. This letter has a plot twist that takes it in an unexpected direction.

San Diego GOP Lawmakers, Candidates Call for Tightening Border Over Hamas Threat. Building a wall worked great in Israel, so let’s get moving on that here!

Cory Doctorow: A taxonomy of corporate bullshit: “… six lies that corporations have told since time immemorial…. it’s refreshing to see how the right hasn’t had an original idea in 150 years and simply relies on repeating the same nonsense with minor updates.”

We’ve all collectively decided that the 22 years since 9/11 have gone so well that we’re just gonna do it again huh?

Mike Johnson Blamed Shootings on Teaching Evolution, Abortion

‘Scripture is very clear’: New House Speaker tells Congress God has ‘ordained’ them. (AlterNet) A perfectly normal thing that not-crazy people say.

I think maybe video has taken off and text is declining simply because TikTok and YouTube make it easy to share revenue with creators, whereas opportunities for independent writers are harder to find and harder to use. (There’s Substack and … well, Substack. And also Substack.) If Facebook …

A little bird tells me that Tumblr is going to put some effort into fixing its RSS feeds. O frabjous day!

Reading about our new Speaker of the House and seeing absolutely nothing good. He’s an insurrectionist who wants to impose Sharia law on the United States.

Today's oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the Internet: 

I had to cold-call a relative stranger for social reasons just now. I knew it was coming and I was nervous about it for days. I have become a millennial.

Until yesterday, I had never seen “Moonlighting.” Now I have.: The first episode at least. Much comedy. Much fast witty dialogue. Some action-adventure. The clothes are fantastic and very very 80s. Cybill Shepherd is gorgeous. Bruce Willis is handsome, and his suit is sharp. I have always liked double-breasted suits. I liked “Moonlighting,” but I had trouble …

Finished reading: Pax by Tom Holland 📚A history of Rome’s golden age.

“If I define myself, what do I exclude to make a tidy boundary?"

For a long time, I defined myself by my work: That was fine when I was in my 20s, but it became less and less useful. I stayed with it anyway, well past the point of uselessness. I also defined myself more broadly as a writer. But that doesn’t work for me either. I still write—look, I’m writing right now!—but it’s not who I am. I’m an American, …

Today I learned about the three types of fun, as categorized by outdoorsy folks: Type 1 fun is just regular fun—fun while it’s happening. Type 2 fun is miserable while it’s happening, but fun in retrospect, after you’ve forgotten that you nearly lost fingers to frostbite or gotten mauled by a bear. …

Things I saw while walking the dog. We tried a new neighborhood today, Allied Gardens

I’ve passed this roadside shrine dozens of times over the years. I don’t think I’ve read the plaque before.

I’ve started reading Doonesbury from the very beginning, and I plann to keep going until I catch up to the present day. Here’s the very first strip, from October, 1970. So far I’m up to December 1970. Over that time, you can see Garry Trudeau quickly improving as a writer and …

Ask a Manager: Should you list hobbies on your resume?

A long thread of stories about people bombing job interviews, on Ask a Manager: When asked a (completely stupid question) about how I would react if I woke up suddenly in a cage with a tiger, I asked if the tiger was alive. This wasn’t the right line of questioning as per the …

The myth of rural America: “ … the rural United States is, in fact, highly artificial. Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts. But we rarely acknowledge this … because many of us – urban and rural, on the left and the …

While walking the dog this morning, I saw this house. These guys own Halloween

Overheard: I don’t want to brag but I walked into a room and remembered why I walked in.

Can I list “speed grocery shopping” as a skill on my LinkedIn profile? Because I slay at that.

Last night we watched the first episode of “Lessons in Chemistry,” about Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in 1951 who is forced to take a humiliating job as a lab tech because of sexism and who ends up hosting a highly successful cooking show on TV. The show stars Brie Larson (who is not, I subsequently …

Today I learned Alison Brie and Brie Larson are two separate people.

Ezra Klein: Israel is giving Hamas what it wants: Klein: Israel’s 9/11 — that’s been the refrain. And I fear that analogy carries more truth than the people making it want it to. Because what was 9/11? It was an attack that drowned an entire country — our country, my country, America — in terror and in rage. It drove us mad with fear. And in …

The youth are not slow-dancing anymore.: Decoder Ring: The Fast Decline of the Slow Dance. Rise and fall of an awkward rite of passage. Includes a brief history of slow dancing, starting with the waltz, which was hugely scandalous 200+ years ago. Let me read you a quote here. It’s from a July 1816 issue of the London Times about a ball …

Jacob Mikanowski, author of the book “Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land,” talks with Tyler Cowen about Eastern Europe, including “differences between Eastern and Western European humor, whether Poles are smiling more nowadays” and “why Stanisław Lem hasn’t gotten more …

Discuss: Identity politics is a game Jews can’t win.

U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force Struggle for Recruits. The Marines Have Plenty. When asked earlier this year about whether the Marines would offer extra money to attract recruits, the commandant of the Marine Corps replied: “Your bonus is that you get to call yourself a Marine. That’s your …

Elizabeth Spiers: I Don’t Have to Post About My Outrage. Neither Do You. I agree. Nobody’s required to post an opinion about Israel and Palestine.

Robin Sipes was feeling sad. Her doctor prescribed her a cat. Her doctor said he wrote it down “because people sometimes don’t follow your instructions.”

These five toys are regular finalists for Hall of Fame honors. Now fans can vote one in. The pogo stick, the Fisher-Price Corn Popper, My Little Pony, PEZ dispensers, and Transformers.

Just a couple of things I saw while I was walking the dog this morning.

I was having fun with a telemarking scammer and they hung up on me and I’m disappointed. CALLER: “I’m calling from [mumble] about an order for an Apple MacBook Pro and Apple AirPods that you placed and that is being delivered to Houston, Texas.” ME [slowly, confused]: “It’s for a … apple?” CALLER: …

“I had to quit a job because of aggressive nesting geese.” I have rediscovered “Ask a Manager.”

I was having system problems several months ago, the solution for which was to reinstall the operating system. Now the problems are back, so I upgraded to Sonoma, which will either fix the problems or give me ALL NEW UPGRADED problems.

Where does the coyote get money to buy all that stuff from Acme? I don’t know how much a 25 foot tall slingshot costs but I bet it’s expensive.

RIP Mark Goddard, who played Major Don West on the 1960s “Lost in Space.”: Lovely statement from Goddard’s co-star Bill Mumy, who played Will Robinson. Variety: R.I.P. to Mark Goddard. A truly beloved friend and brother to me for 59 years. I knew this was coming for the past few months. Shortly after a great phone chat he and I had on his 87th birthday in late July, I …

That was a bad idea. I’ve done it several times previously and it was a bad idea those times. I expect I’ll do it again because I want it to be a good idea.

The word ‘But’ asks to not appear in these sentences. Alexandra Petri: “The word ‘But’ has been stunned to find itself appearing in an increasing number of sentences that begin ‘The killing of children is never acceptable … ‘“

The Most Iconic Vintage Dessert from Every Decade 1940s: Bread pudding. I love bread pudding. I eat it several times a year. Unfortunately, the last time we got bread pudding it wasn’t great. We got it take-out—a massive brick. I froze most of it, but made the mistake of not breaking it up into …

A 21-year-old computer science student from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln won a global contest to decipher the first text inside a burned, blackened scroll from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum. The student used X-Ray computed tomography (CT) scanning and an AI algorithm to detect Greek …

Praying that Israel exercises compassion, clemency, pity, forbearance and love.

Mary Lou Retton Crowdfunded Her Medical Debt, Like Many Thousands of Others But unlike the Olympic gymnast, most people don’t raise enough money to cover their costs. Our healthcare system is a disgrace.

The Progressives Who Flunked the Hamas Test. Helen Lewis at The Atlantic: Fitting Israel into the intersectional framework has always been difficult, because its Jewish citizens are both historically oppressed—the survivors of an attempt to wipe them out entirely—and currently in a dominant …

I donated to the United Jewish Appeal Israel Emergency Fund to support the people of Israel. The fund provides: “Emergency cash assistance for victims of terror. Critically needed trauma counseling. Care for children in shelters. Burial expenses. Funds to relocate people to safer areas.”

Tyler Cowen interviews the fascinating Ada Palmer, Hugo Award winning author of the “Terra Ignota” science fiction series, Renaissance historian at the University of Chicago, musical composer, consultant on anime and manga, and more. She talks about: Why living in the Renaissance was worse than …

“I came to realize that my Woody was my impression of Tom yelling at his kids.” On the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast: Soundalikes, or voice doubles, “are voice actors who perform as characters that were originally played by someone else.” The soundalike replaces a big superstar like Robin Williams …

Go online to make a payment. Apple Pay needs me to reenter my credit card Go into the house to get my wallet See Julie, talk with her Remember that we were expecting a check—ask Julie about it. Look where Julie says the check is. No check. Decide not to bother Julie with it right now Make a note to …

Sometimes I want a nice turkey sandwich but I do not want the side order of doggy drama so I eat something else instead.

“Whatever calculation you make must begin with the premise that the deaths of innocent people are evil. I simply don’t know what the answer is. What I do know is that any ideology that is not bounded by a recognition of universal humanity is too dangerous to be let loose upon the world.” Also: “Your …

I was already losing interest in Twitter when Musk took over. The constant arguing and anger were wearing me down. Musk said he saw Twitter as an arena for combatting ideas. The signal I got from that is that he wanted more arguing and anger. So I gradually started doing Twitter less and less until …

Hard-Core Sleepers Obsess Over Their Snoozing Stats … for millions, chasing winks with the latest sleep-measuring technology has become a nighttime sport, complete with sleep scores and strategies on how to best sack the competition. … “I can see that on days when I tape my mouth during sleep, I …

For more than 70 years, filmmakers have been reusing the sound of a particular scream. Many people even know it by name—the Wilhelm Scream. “The scream is usually used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion.” It first appears in the 1951 Western “Distant …

The One Year podcast looks back at the 1955 Davy Crockett craze and how it saved the then-struggling Disney studio and “created the first baby-boom phenomenon,” almost by accident.

A reporter made sure a retired police chief’s death didn’t go uncovered. Then social media attacked her. Sabrina Schnur, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, faced death threats and anti-Semitic attacks from a bridade of right-wing boneheads who think that she downplayed the hit-and-run …

smh when I think I used to feel obliged to have opinions about global crises based on a few hours of reading the news and to share that opinion with the world on the Internet.

Digital Equipment Corp. (1957-98) was a titan of the computing industry for decades, aid its technology legacy is still felt today. And it was influential in my personal life.. When Julie and I met, Julie was doing PR for DEC and I was covering the company as a journalist. Shocking conflict of …

For the lonely, a blurred line between real and fictional people In lonely people, the boundary between real friends and favorite fictional characters gets blurred in the part of the brain that is active when thinking about others, a new study found. Researchers scanned the brains of people who …

I Was a Pop-Tarts Taste Tester. Writer Laura Holson remembers her family regularly received mystery boxes when the product launched 60 years ago. I did not like them,” said my sister Mary. They didn’t appeal either to my sister Gondie, but gave her bargaining power on the school playground. “You …

Long gone, DEC is still powering the world of computing. Digital Equipment Corp. was a computing giant that declined until it essentially disappeared in the late 1990s. But its technology legacy continues. By Andy Patrizio at Ars Technica.

How magical combat can win the next election For the last half-century or so, the main US political parties have spent all their time and energy ranting about the bad things that the bad people in the other party are doing, and neglected to offer any positive vision of their own.

Stormtrooper Syndrome has seduced the West. The West has a bad case of “Stormtrooper Syndrome”—utter faith and certainty that we are the Good Guys, the Good Guys always win, the Bad Guys are incompetent buffoons and we’ll just think our way out of crises like climate change at the last possible …

Irish people not being superstitious. I am not posting this to ridicule Irish people. I feel the same way about superstition.

Congressional Term Limits Might Break Congress. Jamelle Bouie makes a case against legislative term limits. We have legislative term limits here in California and it’s not great. You end up with government by bureaucrats and lobbyists. The solution to legislative calcification is to make challengers …

Fervently hoping friends and business associates in Israel remain safe.

The Long History of Jewface A wonderful, playful look at more than a century of Jewish ethnic humor in Hollywood, triggered by the minor (and silly) controversy over Bradley Cooper, who is not Jewish, portraying Leonard Bernstein while wearing a prosthetic nose. Author Jody Rosen, writing in The New …

People are saying “whom of which” now. Alrighty then.

A California entrepreneur’s $60 million battle to stop Apple from steamrolling startups

Rand = Buffy. Moiraine = Giles. Lanfear = Cordelia. Mat = Xander. Egwene = Willow. Hopper = Oz. Liandrin = Principal Skinner.

New PEN America Report Documents Surge in ‘Educational Intimidation’ Bills a new report released this week documents the rise of a new wave of state legislation designed to force librarians and educators to self-censor. LGBTQ content is particularly targeted, as are LGBTQ creators. And laws …

A California bakery sculpted a “Last of Us” “clicker” zombie from bread

I saw this squirrel chilling on the fence in our backyard. If you gaze long enough at the squirrel, the squirrel gazes back at you

Finished reading: Void Moon by Michael Connelly 📚Starts slow but but worth staying with. Builds to unputdownbability.

Things that don’t get you kicked out of GOP leadership: Heavy petting in a crowded theater in the presence of children, on video. Being under investigation for sex trafficking Being Donald Trump, a senile sexual predator and con man who attempted an incompetent coup to overthrow the US …

Because today has been weird, I am just now having my first coffee of the day, at nearly 1:30 pm. Also, my will to live has been restored. I believe these two events to be not coincidental.

I got the RSV vaccine, flu shot and Covid booster Saturday afternoon and it flattened me the rest of the weekend. I slept 16 hours yesterday. On the other hand, now I’m fine, and sleeping a lot, reading a lot and watching a couple of movies are a great way to spend the weekend.

I got the flu shot, Covid booster and RSV vaccine all at once yesterday, and that flattened me for nearly a full day. Feeling better now. I remember when doing shots had a similarly debilitating effect but the first hours were more interesting and enjoyable.

I usually work at a standing desk but today I did some work sitting on the couch and learned I can write for short bursts while the dog is licking my face. Later, the dog booped the keyboard to let me know she thought there should be a comma there. There did not need to be a comma there. Dogs are …

Occasionally I get annoyed at Inoreader’s quirks and I try alternatives for reading feeds. But then I come back to Inoreader. Nothing beats it for powering through many headlines quickly to zero in on the articles I actually want to read.

News about retrieving samples from an asteroid have got me thinking about a Lovecraftian eldritch horror that has been stranded on a rock in space for billions of years and has anger management issues.

I’m thinking about “Level 7,” an apocalyptic 1959 novel that had quite an effect on me when I read it as a boy 📚: ”Level 7,” by a Ukrainian-born Israeli writer named Mordecai Roshwald, is written in the first person by a modern soldier whose name was taken away from him by the state, and is now designated only as X-127. He lives in an underground military complex, and his sole job is the push the buttons that …

Despite myriad potential distractions, it’s good to see Washington lawmakers focused on what really matters, which is whether John Fetterman looks nice.

A friend’s post on social media was too funny for the simple thumbs-up or smiley emoji, but not funny enough for the laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying emoji. I overthink things sometimes.

Our new mortgage company wants to have a closer emotional relationship with us than we are interested in having.

Quit: The Silo Series Collection by Hugh Howey 📚 Grinds to a halt 300-400 pages in with 1,200-1,300 pages to go. I’d rather seal myself and my descendants in an underground cylinder than continue reading.

Finished reading: Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum 📚 Extremely interesting!

I’m finishing up writing a networking product factsheet now. Grammarly suggested I change “packets” to “boxes.” Noooooo…..

I observed with interest the recent meme by young women who were amazed to find the young men in their lives thought about Rome often. I certainly think about Rome often, though I am not a young man—I am a man in the period of life I like to call “early late middle age.” I never thought …

By me: Oracle & Microsoft’s big cloud partnership: It’s about AI: For the first time, Oracle is bringing its Autonomous Database to another company’s cloud, running on Oracle Exadata servers in Microsoft Azure data centers.

I have discovered Excalidraw and achieved nerdvana. I, a complete design illiterate, was able to create a simple networking diagram for a marketing document in 25 minutes, having never used the tool before. Later, the client will be able to use Excalidraw’s built-in collaboration tools to make …

Earlier I mentioned the movie “The Postman Always Rings Twice” but I brain-farted and called it “The Milkman Always Rings Twice” and now I want to see “The Milkman Always Rings Twice,” which would be about a milkman who’s seduced by a femme fatale who is lactose intolerant.

My latest article: Oracle boosts multi-cloud support for AWS and Red Hat OpenShift. It’s a big difference from previous years when Oracle tried—and spectacularly failed—to get customers to go all-in on Oracle’s cloud.

A note to my fellow Jews, particularly Jewish-Americans: Do you feel any connection to the place where your grandparents came from? My grandparents came from Eastern Europe. Poland on my father’s side, and Lithuania on my mother’s. But I do not feel like a Polish-American or Lithuanian-American. I’m just plain American. Or a Jewish …

We have seen “Double Indemnity” and I have thoughts: I have avoided nearly all noir movies until now because I like stories to have good guys, and my preconception about noir is that these films entirely feature variations on bad people along with the occasional victim. I have seen “Double Indemnity” now and I see I was wrong. Not about the bad …

A dog is a wondrous machine masterfully designed by billions of years of evolution to produce guilt.

The chest freezer in our kitchen is like the warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie.

A literary history of fake texts in Apple’s marketing materials. Read Max: These eerily cheery, aggressively punctuated messages suggest an alternate dimension in which polite, good-natured, rigorously diverse groups of friends and coworkers use Apple products exactly how they are designed to …

Sandra Bullock and the Rise of Tech. Sandra Bullock movies reflect society’s changing attitude toward tech over her 30-year career. Sometimes I think about how her super-hacker character in “The Net” orders pizza online, and how that was a big deal when the movie came out in 1995.

A Rachel can be either a sandwich or a haircut. And yet I think this is rarely a source of confusion.

Walking the dog, I saw a house with a five-foot “Christmas Story” leg lamp in the front window.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are ‘coming to the end’ but together and ‘in love,’ their grandson shares

Google.com was registered as a domain name today in 1997. (via)

“The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” Muhammad Ali (via)

Enjoying a quiet evening at home shopping for nose hair trimmers.

“For All Mankind” returns Nov. 10. Looks great! On the show, the year is 2003.

I was thinking last night that my brain is still broken from the pandemic. It exaggerated my normal introversion and homebody tendencies into something resembling agoraphobia. I go weeks without going anywhere but the grocery store, picking up take-out once a week, my daily walk and that’s …

This one time I narrowly escaped being a clown for a children's party: Some years ago, a couple I was friends with pressured me to be a clown at the birthday party they were throwing for their little daughter. I firmly and repeatedly noped out on that, and they hired a professional clown, and later they said they were glad because the pro did a great job. They told me …

Historically, clowns go back thousands of years, and for that whole time, they were creepy, just as they are today. It’s only for a brief historical period in roughly the 1950s and 1960s that clowns were considered wholesome children’s entertainment.

The Half-Truth of America’s Past Greatness. Esau McCaulley at The New York Times: Where can African Americans find this lost golden age? Do we discover it during the first centuries of the Republic when slavery was the law of the land? Do we fast forward to the Red Summer, Jim Crow laws and …

USENET, the original social network, is under new management. rec.arts.sf.written and rec,arts.sf.fandom are still around. Now somebody bring back GEnie.

I’m glad to see the release candidate iPhone and Watch OS betas are now available. Every year, I install the betas when the first public betas hit, and every year I regret it. I never encounter major problems, but the minor bugs are annoying.

This year's iPhone announcement is the least consequential iPhone announcement ever (and that's OK): Pundits like to say that every Presidential election is the most consequential election in our lifetime. I recall a panel of historians discussing what the least consequential election of our lifetime was. The consensus was rapid and unanimous: The 1996 election. Clinton was a good, but not great …

Is Biden Too Old to Run Again? We Asked People Born on His Exact Birthday. I’m 62 and I worry about getting old. I’m inspired by the health and energy of the people interviewed for this article.

While walking the dog this morning, I saw this car. Kermit looks like he is desperately trying to escape from a serial killer.

I’m busy with work and other aspects of life and don’t have a lot of time for social media right now, so here is a photo of a palm tree in our backyard, which just got a trim and a shave and is looking beautiful after its spa day.

Uh oh. Is it safe to let my dog lick my face?

Things I saw while walking the dog today

When Moviegoers Started Watching Films From the Beginning. Throughout the classical Hollywood era, moviegoers dropped in on a film screening whenever they felt like it, heedless of the progress of the narrative. In the usual formulation, a couple go to the movies, enter midway into the feature …

How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive Writing

Do you really need to walk 10,000 steps a day? And 17 other fitness ‘rules’, tackled by the experts. Do you need to stretch before and after exercise? Is running bad for the knees? Is sex good exercise?

People & Blogs: Manuel Moreale is doing a series of interviews with bloggers. Here are Rachel K. Kwon and Micro.blog founder Manton Reece. I like finding out about how other people do blogging. It gives me ideas. And I like the layout of Kwon’s home page, separating different types of posts into …

Cory Doctorow: The proletarianization of tech workers. As employers turn the screws, tech workers are organizing.

Things I saw walking the dog this morning. I wish I’d stood directly in front of that rattan couch and centered it in the photo.

Currently reading: Track Changes by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum 📚

Finished reading: Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf 📚

I saw this car at the park today. It has been places.

Lake Murray this afternoon.

Overheard: My kid throws such a fit any time his bread gets a little burnt, I’m starting to think he’s black toast intolerant.

Overheard: Sometimes a joke is a great way to break tension during an unpleasant situation, and lately, l’ve also been discovering all the other times when it absolutely is not.

Trash pick up is delayed by a day. Some of our neighbors will put the trash bins out tonight anyway, and we will feel superior.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of Elon Musk’s X Corp.

America peaked more than 50 years ago. Since then, we have been a society in collapse. “Americans are managed like livestock. We’re draft animals for the wealthy.”

Mike Masnick on Techdirt: Hey Elon: The ADL Convincing Advertisers To Run Away From Your Site Is Part Of The Free Speech You Pretend To Support

Yesterday I accidentally made myself super-strong coffee and liked it. This morning, I attempted to reproduce the coffee strength I made by accident yesterday. I may have overcorrected.

Cory Doctorow reviews “Doppelganger,” Naomi Klein’s memoir about how she’s often confused with Naomi Wolf. From that gimmicky springboard, Klein explores the progressive-to-Qanon pipeline that Wolf traveled—folks who formerly considered themselves staunch liberals becoming Trump supporters and …

Late lunch with Julie at Shakespeare’s Pub, San Diego. Good food and spirits, comfortable interior, and many delightful posters and postcards on the walls

10 fall TV standouts, including “Changeling” debut and “Frasier” reboot. I’ll give the “Frasier” reboot a try. I’m glad to see “Gilded Age” is returning. “Murder at the End of the World” has the most cliched possible premise and I am there for it. Two series feature the wonderful Jon Hamm, but alas …

Currently reading: The Silo Series Collection by Hugh Howey 📚 1,663 pages. That’ll take a day or two.

Overheard: me at 13: wow i can’t wait til we have immersive computers everywhere like Star Trek me at 30: wow i can’t wait until we destroy all computers like in dune

NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered note-taking app, is the messy beginning of something great. “What if you could have a conversation with your notes?” By David Pierce at The Verge. Google has a history of shutting down products after a few years, so I’m reluctant to rely on anything new from …

Burning Man festival-goers told to conserve food and water

Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel. Recent astronomical observations are shedding doubt on fundamental theories of cosmology and physics. … a revolution may end up being the best path to progress. That has certainly been the case in the past with scientific breakthroughs like …

At Yale’s Long COVID Clinic, Lisa Sanders Is Trying It All Long-COVID patients, generally speaking, have been very miserable for a very long time, and because the illness attacks their brains, their hearts, their lungs, their guts, their joints — sometimes simultaneously, sometimes intermittently, …

In America, the Cheese Is Dead: … in France the cheese is alive, which means that you can buy it young, mature or old, and that’s why you have to read the age of the cheese when you go to buy the cheese. So you smell, you touch, you poke. If you need cheese for today, you want to buy a mature …

25 Perfect TV Episodes From the Last 25 Years

I saw this sign while walking the dog. We did not see the bird. 😢🦜

Vivvy would like me to put down the phone and pay attention to her.

Caitlin Flanagan: In praise of heroic masculinity: Teach boys that strength can be a virtue.

Kottke: The Infinite Hotel Paradox. A guest walks into a hotel with an infinite number of rooms….

The director of the “John Wick” series is talking about rebooting “Highlander” starting Henry Cavill as the immortal Scottish swordsman Connor MacLeod. Cool!

No, Trader Joe’s employees are not trained to flirt. Or so they would like us to believe!

I loved the final scenes of “Justified: City Primeval” and I hope they’re setting up for a second season. The miniseries was enjoyable but lacked the punch of the original series. Those final scenes supplied the missing ingredient.

The Best Cheap Place to Eat in Every State, According to Yelp

Scientologists ask the federal government to restrict Right to Repair. The church says it wants to protect the secrets of its E-Meter, but the change requested by the church could nearly eviscerate the law.

10 years ago this weekend we brought this little girl home.: Poor kid had a rough couple of days adjusting to the new environment. It was a tough couple of months for me and Julie too. Minnie is the first dog I’ve ever owned. I had no idea what I was doing. I still don’t, but she’s a healthy dog and seems happy so we must be doing something right.

Modern physics can’t explain life, but a new theory of time might.

Yes, Brussels Sprouts Taste Better Now—Here’s Why Brussels sprouts bitter flavor was bred out of them in the 1990s, and ever since then, they’ve been a vegetable you’ll actually want to eat.

Horse- race journalism: Journalists need to stop covering elections like horse races. Don’t obsess over who’s winning—help us decide who to vote for. Horse-race journalism perpetuates the image of journalists as detached observers. The horse race fills the insatiable news hole. Every day, a new poll or gaffe. Candidates’ …

The “Paperless Office” Is Finally Arriving

Daily Tar Heel staffer Georgia Roda-Moorhead: “We are the Sandy Hook generation. We grew up crouching behind desks in pitch-black darkness, as our teachers barred the doors shut in case a ‘scary person’ stepped on campus."

Burger King is being sued for making its Whoppers appear bigger than they are.

What time do Americans have dinner? Which state eats dinner earliest? Latest? Using data from the American Time Use Survey, between 2018 to 2022, we can see the percentage of households in the country who were eating during a given time.

“The Corduroy Appreciation Society was a club where people gathered secretly to celebrate their love of corduroy." On the delightful Articles of Interest podcast with Avery Trufelman.

It's Time to Talk About 'Pandemic Revisionism': Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina discusses school closures, mask mandates and the pandemic response, on the Ezra Klein show, with guest host David Wallace-Wells, a New York Times science and public policy journalist Political discussions today focus on school, shut-downs, lockdowns, masking, and …

My 20-year-old self-inking return-address stamp still works. That is some seriously well-made self-inking technology.

Continuing with decluttering my home office. Can all the drawers in all the furniture be junk drawers?

Hi, @mtt! Thank you for the nice work on the Tiny theme and plugins. Regarding the Summary Posts add-in: Would it be possible to configure the add-in so that titled posts are not truncated by default–only truncated when manually adding the relevant code to a post? Thanks!

How can we learn to speak alien? On Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman. If we meet extraterrestrials someday, how will we figure out what they’re saying? We currently face this problem right here at home: we have 2 million species of animals on our planet… and we have no Google Translate for …

How To Practice “Productive Procrastination”. By Clive Thompson.

My latest article: Is cloud networking convergence just around the corner? Dell’Oro says yes.. New enterprise cloud architecture requires simplified networking services that unify the network edge, middle mile and public clouds, says the analyst firm.

Clive Thompson: How I Use RSS To “Rewild” My Attention I use RSS for an hour or so every day to follow specific sites, most of them very popular. Here, Thompson advocates using RSS to find great, weird content. I’m going to try that.

As TikTok Ban Looms, ByteDance Battles Oracle For Control Of Its Algorithm: Emily Baker-White at Forbes: The relationship between ByteDance and Oracle has become deeply untrusting and adversarial, according to five sources. One source with knowledge of the companies’ actions characterized Oracle’s stance toward ByteDance as a “counterintelligence operation,” rather than a …

A look at Smallville, a virtual village populated by AI chatbots, built by Stanford and Google researchers to create a society with “believable human behavior”

When was the first time a waiter asked someone whether they saved room for dessert? Is that guy getting royalties?

Want to read—nonfiction: Empires of the Steppes by Kenneth W. Harl 📚

From landlines to Zoom, a brief 30+ year history of business phone technology and etiquette. By Clive Thompson. In the 90s, background noise was unprofessional. Today, if somebody’s cat zoombombs the meeting, business stops while everybody meets the cat.

Wanted: A combined RSS/Mastodon client. Yes, Masto generates RSS feeds but that doesn’t give you everything a Mastodon client does.

Cory Doctorow: How the kleptocrats and oligarchs hunt civil society groups to the ends of the Earth: It’s a great time to be an oligarch! If you have accumulated a great fortune and wish to put whatever great crime lies behind it behind you, there is an army of fixers, lickspittles, thugs, …

One Weird Trick for Writing a First Draft. By Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson: How I Take Notes When I’m Doing Research

Clive Thompson: Writing Tools I Use All The Time. My go-tos for reporting, research, and writing

Excellent discussion of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”: On the You Are Good podcast with hosts Sarah Marshall and Alex Steed and guest Rain DeGrey. The only movie I’ve ever watched more than once in a single day. I watched it three times. Though it is a great movie, I don’t know if I would call it one of my favorites. But something about it hit me hard …

WSJ: Tech Leaders Emerge Behind Plan to Build New City Near California Air Base Venture capitalists want to build a new city on currently rural land in California. This will go as well as crypto, Web3, and the metaverse.

An ode to “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast. I loved this podcast. “… one of the great love letters to twentieth-century Hollywood.” Some of the best guests were D-list stars even in their prime, who might only be remembered by the narrow age demographic that Gottfried and I shared.

From Brooklyn to Astoria (Oregon): Journalist Clive Thompson cycled 4,150 miles coast-to-coast reporting for his next book on “micromobility.”

What’s the biology behind why we find some people attractive?. On Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

Last night before bedtime, I stepped into the backyard and found myself standing with a big red spider a couple of inches in front of my nose.: The spider was about an inch wide, and furiously busy tending its web, scurrying back and forth and moving its legs rapidly. I took a step back and watched it for a while. I tried to get a video but it didn’t come out great, and I know spiders give people the fantods so I won’t share the …

Casey Newton at Platformer: Why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter. I’m surprised to learn Casey is a note-taking apps nerd, like me. And like me he’s a compulsive hoarder of clips and links. And like me he wants a chatbot to be able to ask the hoard questions and get good …

Decluttering continues. Two observations: • A surprisingly significant amount of the clutter in my office was empty boxes for me to put the clutter in. • Some days I think I’m smart and other days I try to flatten empty cardboard cartons without tearing them.

What Happened to Wirecutter?. By Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic. I rely on Wirecutter for any unusual purchase under $200. If I need something I’ve never bought one of before, and it’s priced under $200, I just buy whatever Wirecutter recommends.

The police came by to do a wellness check. They said Amazon had requested it because I hadn’t had anything delivered in nearly a month, and they were worried that we were OK.

Things that are annoying me today: Password management The acronym PTO. I don’t care whether you’re getting paid for taking time off. Companies that sign you up for their email list without your permission, just because you did business with them one time. Pretty much everything. I’m irritable.

Currently reading: Somebody’s Fool by Richard Russo 📚 A pleasant surprise—I did not know Russo planned another sequel to “Nobody’s Fool.”

Finished reading: This Bird Has Flown by Susanna Hoffs 📚Excellent!

I uncovered this book while decluttering my home office. I loved it when I was a kid, and bought a copy from Powells bookstore on a trip to Portland with Julie in 2008. 📚

In the course of major decluttering, I just found a ring of keys. It doesn’t fit any of our current locks but I have to keep them rather than throw them out. When we’re dead, our heirs can keep the keys and pass them on to THEIR heirs. Because that’s how keys work.

While walking the dog, I saw this SUV 📷

My latest article: Ancient programming language gets new life in the cloud thanks to IBM, watsonx and AI. An IBM watsonx AI tool helps refactor COBOL mainframe code into Java, to make it easier to maintain and extend for folks who entered the workforce after the disco era.

Why Calvin and Hobbes author Bill Watterson vanished from the public eye.

My friend Marc Gorelick shares lessons from more than 40 years playing the tuba. Can confirm that Marc played the tuba as a teenager. We gave him grief for it at the time, but Marc made the tuba cool.

Watching a security awareness training video as required by a client. Holy mackerel, Doug, stop being such a baby.

I saw this sign. Poor Sadie. 😭😢😭📷

TidBITS is doing a poll on whether Apple users use Apple Weather or some other app for weather forecasts. During yesterday’s weather emergency, I checked Apple Weather several times an hour.

All is well here following the storm. Reviewing the news today I see a dozen people had to be rescued from flooding in the San Diego River. Most likely they were homeless. Many people did not get to sit in their warm, dry houses and watch Netflix yesterday. So I am a little humbled and grateful.

Meanwhile, here in San Diego and nearby Southern California

Unimpressed by Hurricane Hilary. Demoted to a tropical storm. So far, we’ve gotten some heavy rain, but very little wind. Note to Hilary: This is not a challenge.

Tracy Durnell: My Reading Philosophy in 17 Guidelines: I love all 17 guidelines in Tracy Durnell’s reading philosophy. Two highlights jump out at me. “Read according to whim.” Just read whatever the heck you want to read. Classics, trash, whatever. Quit reading a book whenever it stops working for for you. Tracy’s rule is “Quit nearly as many books as …

Small changes in daily activity levels, like doing a little more walking, stair-climbing, chores around the house, and gardening, can burn a lot of calories and have major health benefits. It’s called NEAT—non-exercise activity thermogenesis.

Getting ready for the (actual)(non-metaphorical) storm: I was kicking myself because I only thought to stock up on water this afternoon, and was sure the stores would be sold out. But I decided to try a couple of stores anyway (being mindful that we also need to conserve gas in the car, in case we need to evacuate). First supermarket I went to had stacks …

Finished reading: The Gutenberg Parenthesis by Jeff Jarvis 📚A thoughtful history of five centuries of print as dominant form of information dissemination, culture and conversation, now closing (hence the parenthesis metaphor) and the internet era now dawning.

Preparing for the hurricane: We got the front and back of the house as clear as we could of items that might blow around. Julie did most of the work on that. We have enough food in the house to last a few days. Later today, I’ll check to be sure we have plenty of potable water and that the electronics are charged. I have been …

The pizza delivery guy says the weather outlook is changing rapidly and he is optimistic that when the storm hits it will be weak so that’s good.

Want to read—nonfiction: Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf 📚

Want to read—nonfiction: Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf 📚

This weekend we’re supposed to get a hurricane and an invading army of lustful tarantulas. How does your weekend look to be shaping up?

Finder stealing focus on the Mac: Fixing the problem with help from ChatGPT: Yesterday morning, I was typing happily on my Mac when I noticed the cursor disappeared. I was typing but no text was appearing. I determined that another app was stealing focus. The problem app was the Finder. I figured this out through the simple expedient of watching the menu bar to see which app …

PB&J: An American Love Story: A brief history of an American gift to world cuisine: the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This article at the Saturday Evening Post by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie takes a few paragraphs to get going, but then it delivers. Peanut butter was reportedly invented in 1894. Early recipes featured “a banana …

How "Animal House" changed the world and invented today's Republican Party: “Animal House” is where the 1960s finally and decisively turned into the 1980s — the 1970s being understood as a transition period highlighted by double-knit and “Kung Fu Fighting.” With “Animal House,” we crossed the line from hippies to yuppies, from “all you need is love” to “greed is good.” It …

“The Warriors” keeps popping up in my Internet wandering. Time to watch it again?

What does the British Home Secretary do?: We’re watching “Hijack,” a miniseries about an airline hijacking, focusing on Idris Elba as Sam, a passenger working to outwit the team that’s taken over the plane. Highly recommended—very suspenseful! The British Home Secretary is a supporting character. I’ve heard of …

Jews don't count: We Jews are left out of progressive discussion of diversity. Jews don’t count. A significant part of the progressive movement is outright anti-Semitic. And conservatives have a weird variety of anti-Semitism that fetishizes Israel and supports some prominent American Jews. But I just can’t bring …

Bradley Cooper is getting criticized by Jewish activists who are accusing him of “Jewface” for wearing a prosthetic nose in an upcoming biographical movie about Leonard Bernstein. To be fair to Cooper, early versions of the movie had him wearing a clown nose, so the current version is better.

Want to read: Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World by Mary Beard 📚A new book of Roman history by the author of “SPQR”? Yes, please.

The same lawmakers who want to rob their constituents of the right to bodily autonomy have also begun to treat democracy as an obstacle to avoid, not a process to respect. If the people stand in the way of ending abortion, then it’s the people who have to go. — Republicans Won’t Stop at Banning …

Me, watching @manton ’s video demo of the Epilogue app for micro.blog: “Hey, I just added that book to my want-to-read-list! And that one too! And I’m currently reading that one! OMG, Manton is looking at my blog! I’m Internet-famous now!”

Are kids ever unsupervised anymore?: When I was a kid, we rode bicycles for miles every day, unsupervised. Also unsupervised: We played in schoolyards and playgrounds, went into stores, and went to the movies. Even when we were playing in another kid’s backyard, often the adults weren’t outside with us. I can’t even …

I saw this while walking with the dog this morning. I was disappointed that I did not see the pig, but it’s probably just as well because I totally would’ve put my fingers through the fence.

I never see pre-teens outdoors unsupervised by adults. Not playing in their front yard, not walking, not in a park, not at a playground, not riding bikes. Are pre-teens supervised all the time nowadays?

The Case of the Internet Archive vs. Book Publishers David Streitfeld at the NY Times: In the pandemic emergency, Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive freely lent out digital scans of its library. Publishers sued. Owning a book means something different now.

“Sweet sesame chicken!” sounds like something a person would say instead of swearing.

Lunch yesterday with friends at Shakespeare’s, a British pub here in San Diego. One of the restrooms had two walls covered with dozens of “cheeky postcards.” Here’s one example. 📷

A quick look back at the first IBM PC that launched 42 years (and two days) ago My Dad had one of these. I was living at home and going to college at the time, and I spent a lot of time using it to write papers and noodle around.

Three things Elon Musk and I have in common.: I’ve been listening to the Age of Napoleon podcast for months now, which covers Napoleon’s life, career and world in exhaustive detail. I am coming away a great admirer of Napoleon, while also acknowledging that Napoleon did terrible things. (Haiti.) That is one thing I have in common with Musk. I …

Trump tells Georgia witness not to testify

The Marion County Record was investigating sexual misconduct charges against police chief Gideon Cody before police raided the newspaper, according to publisher Eric Meyer. Meyer says the allegations, and the names of the people making the charges, are on computers the police seized.

Police in the small town of Marion, Kansas, raided the local newspaper office, leading to worldwide protest by free speech organizations. The newspaper publisher’s 98-year-old mother died the following day; the publisher says the raid triggered her death.

What if generative AI turns out to be a dud?: Gary Marcus: … we are building our entire global and national policy on the premise that generative AI will be world-changing in ways that may in hindsight turn out to have been unrealistic. I have found generative AI uses to be limited at best. I use it to generate illustrations for articles. In …

Want to read: Sh*tshow by Richard Russo 📚

Want to read: Chances Are . . . by Richard Russo 📚

Want to read: Triage by Richard Russo 📚

Want to read: Elsewhere by Richard Russo 📚

Want to read: Somebody’s Fool by Richard Russo 📚

Want to read: My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland 📚

Currently reading: This Bird Has Flown by Susanna Hoffs 📚

San Diego attorneys fought to prosecute an unhoused woman for blocking a sidewalk. Now they’re backing off. The solution to homelessness is not criminalizing homelessness.

The History of Command Palettes: How Typing Commands Became The Norm Again

Cory Doctorow: Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act protects the people who need it least. How the debt collection industry sets the poor to prey on the poor.

A short collection of delightful and/or appalling confessions, rendered in an excruciatingly painful format. Some of these are extremely raunchy, so don’t read them to the kiddos.

Jamelle Bouie: Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires: Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires support racist Richard Hanania, who advocated eugenics, forced sterilization, and opposed “miscegenation” and “race-mixing,” Bouie writes. Hanania wrote, “These people are animals, whether they’re harassing people on subways or walking around in suits.” …

I could watch a 2-1/2 hour movie of Peter Quill and his grandpa eating breakfast and gossiping about the neighbors.

We just watched Guardians of the Galaxy 3. I hope they make about ten more of those movies. So good.

Kottke: Glamor photos of vintage calculators, 1968-83. In the 1970s, calculators weren’t just for calculating. They were luxury items. In a world before iPods and iPhones, calculators were the first aspirational personal electronics.” My Dad was an accountant and started using calculators very …

Kottke: The accidental secret ingredient that made Chicago Vienna Sausages delicious.

Reddit seems to have successfully put down its moderator revolt, but is destroying the site in the process: Occasionally I like to not dress like a person who works from home and dribbles food down the front of their shirt. When I’d Google for fashion advice, I’d end often up on r/malefashionadvice. Morgan Sung reports on TechCrunch that Reddit’s menswear hub is the latest casualty of its battle with …

I saw this leaflet on a utility pole when walking with Minnie.

Currently reading: The Gutenberg Parenthesis by Jeff Jarvis 📚

Cory Doctorow: Verizon’s “repeated incompetence and waste on an unimaginable scale.”: “The long bezzle: Verizon can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” Verizon shutters BlueJeans, three years after buying it for $400M, the latest in a long series of failures for the company. Techdirt: Verizon Fails Again, Shutters Attempted Zoom Alternative BlueJeans After Paying …

How Will Artificial Intelligence Change Journalism?

EFF: Congress Amended KOSA, But It’s Still A Censorship Bill. Despite small changes, the Kids Online Safety Act “is a censorship bill that will harm the rights of both adult and minor users. We oppose it, and urge you to contact your congressperson about it today.”

To demonstrate representational bias, the London Interdiscipinary School asked the AI tool Midjourney to generate images of a typical prisoner, lawyer, nurse, drug dealer, etc. The results showed striking racial and ethnic stereotyping.

My latest: Snowflake wants to help telcos ditch silos with a blizzard of data. With its telco ambitions, is Snowflake getting over its skis? The company launched its Telco Data Cloud this year to help providers make better decisions for network planning, customer service, and growing revenue.

“This question has two parts, neither of which have anything to do with the other or the subject at hand. Also, this question has four parts.” Every Question In Every Q&A Session Ever.

Daring Fireball: “Colonel Harland Sanders, who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken, sold the company to a conglomerate in 1964, and then remained their paid spokesman for the remainder of his life, despite the fact that he despised their food and professed deep regret that he sold the chain.”

Jason Kottke writes about the joys of being a regular at your neighborhood restaurant.

Despite’s Zoom’s attempts to walk back its changed terms, the service is still a privacy mess, according to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' research. I’ve been using Zoom several times per week for three years. It’s been my go-to videoconferencing service. I need to think about …

Oracle expands its hybrid cloud footprint to the enterprise. My latest: Big Red introduces Compute Cloud@Customer, a microcosm of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure that runs in the customer data center.

Investigating the provenance of archive.today, useful for circumventing paywalls to read articles on sites such as Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, etc.

The dirty little secret that could bring down Big Tech. New research reveals that Silicon Valley uses predatory pricing to crush competitors and scam investors — evidence the government can use to bust up tech monopolies.

Cory Doctorow: “Private equity plunderers want to buy Simon & Schuster: From the same parasites that infected your hospital’s emergency room and sucked Toys R Us dry.”

Caleb Sasser writes about “Turn-On,” a legendary hyperactive sketch comedy show from “Laugh-In”’s creators, canceled in 1969 midway through its first episode, reportedly because it was too far ahead of its time. The show disappeared for 54 years but surfaced (possibly illegally) on …

Life before cellphones: The barely believable after-work activities of young people in 2002. “I never knew what time it was, so I was constantly buying watches and losing them.”

What it was like to travel before smartphones and the internet.

SJVN: The best Twitter alternatives of 2023: Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and more.

Don’t give your heart to Bluesky or Threads: Cory Doctorow hasn’t joined Bluesky or Threads, and is sticking with Mastodon, because Bluesky and Threads aren’t federated and Mastodon is. Bluesky and Threads have captive user bases, while Mastodon users are free to leave. Cory Doctorow:Fool Me Twice We Don’t Get Fooled Again: There’s a crucial …

Douglas Rushkoff: Embracing the Impossible. What if magic is our most probable path to a sustainable future?. We’re not going to be able to engineer our way out of the numerous global crises we face.

Paul Reubens Never Got the Critical Reappraisal He Deserved. Reubens brought joy to millions. Many friends came forward after his death to testify as to his generosity and kindness. This article makes a compelling case that even in his sex crimes, he didn’t hurt anyone or do anything wrong.

The American Dream has lost its hustle: Young workers just aren’t buying it: Felix Salmon at Axios: Even before the pandemic, young people mistrusted capitalism. “Now, with a strong labor market at their backs, they are increasingly proud of, and being lauded for, turning the tables on their employers – the exploited have become the exploiters.” The behavior now called …

Jo Walton at Tor.com: The Dystopic Earths of Heinlein’s Juveniles. Thanks, Cory!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” musical episode trivia: Actor Bruce Horak, who played Hemmer, returns as the Klingon general. In real life, the actor performs in a musical group, the Railbirds, which explains his superior singing chops. And Christina Chong, who plays La’an, and Celia Rose Gooding, who plays Uhura, both have musical theater backgrounds. …

Lin-Manuel Miranda is reportedly turning The Warriors into a stage musical. I’ll watch whatever Lin-Manuel Miranda does next but this seems like maybe not the best idea?

I saw this while walking with the dog today. 📷

“Fighting junk fees is ‘woke’: Visa and Mastercard want you to pay credit card swipe fees to own the libs.” A dark money campaign is claiming that legislation to rein in credit card junk fees is bad because it’s “woke," and compares reining in credit card fees to Communism. The campaign is …

Tired of Dating Apps, Some Turn to ‘Date-Me Docs’: The youngs today are burned out on dating apps so they’re posting long personal profiles to the Internet, often using Google Docs or Notion. These are essentially resumes, but for romance instead of jobs. Connie Li, 33, a software engineer, “described herself as monogamous, short and prone to …

Cooking With Gas: The decades-long marketing campaign by big business to get us to love our gas stoves. On the 99% Invisible podcast.

Casey Newton at Platformer: How the Kids Online Safety Act puts us all at risk. KOSA gives the Republican Party power to censor the Internet and eliminate LGBTQ content and anything else Republicans don’t like. And yet Democrats are on board with it, because if you wave the flag of child protection …

Hard Fork: “Researchers in Korea claim they’ve identified a material that could unlock a technological revolution: the room temperature superconductor.” Kevin Roose and Casey Newton at the Hard Fork podcast explain why that’s a big deal. Twitter is doing its own research on the subject, including …

On the Search Engine podcast with PJ Vogt: Why can’t we turn all the empty offices into apartment buildings? The answer: We already have, for many. Most of the remainder are unsuitable for residences. And also, a century of zoning law and NIMBYism stands in the way.

Things I saw while walking with the dog this morning. 📷

I’m happy to support the Kickstarter for the audiobook for Cory Doctorow’s next book, “The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation,” a guide to breaking up tech monopolies and incidentally saving the planet. Backing the project supports the great work Cory does on his blog and podcast.

Maybe you’re saying I should watch where I’m walking more carefully. And maybe you’re right. But I’ve lived with cats nearly forty years and the dog for ten and it hasn’t been a problem before. I have suddenly acquired dog poop and cat throw-up bad karma.

In recent weeks I have cleaned my shoe soles of great masses of dog poop twice and an extraordinary quantity of cat throw-up once. I have become a reluctant expert on this subject. Warm water and dish soap. Easy peasy.

Minnie says good night.

This is what it’s like to spend your life in prison. Listening to the men in the short Opinion Video above is like encountering visitors from another planet. They are serving life sentences at Angola prison, in rural Louisiana, with little to no hope for release. Many are elderly; they have not …

My essential and useful Obsidian plugins: A friend is getting started with Obsidian, making the switch from Evernote, and he asked me for recommendations on plugins—which ones I, personally, find most useful. Here’s my list: Essential Command Palette This is the main way I invoke commands in Obsidian. You type a keyboard shortcut (Command-P …

I’m working on an article about Snowflake Inc. and trying to get in just the right amount of puns about snow and winter.

Yesterday afternoon, I went into the sunroom to lie down for a few minutes, and found that Minnie had peed all over the daybed in there. She had been extremely difficult to potty train when we first got her 10 years ago—many, many accidents for about the first 18 months we had her—but she hasn’t had …

I started reading “Pursuit of the Pankera,” which is I think the only book by Robert A. Heinlein I have not read. I am enjoying it so far. I’m finding it a pleasant surprise. The book was initially published in 1980, as “The Number of the Beast.” The first third of …

The Life I Never Intended to Love: Dog Owner. Katherine Bindley: “During the pandemic I chose a breed often compared to a velociraptor. It ruined my life–until I discovered that he’s the best dog who’s ever lived.” www.wsj.com/articles/… I can absolutely relate. Minnie is a …

The Criminal podcast: A Glamour and a Mystery. In the summer of 1917, 16-year-old Elsie Wright took a photograph of her 9-year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths. It was the first photograph she’d ever taken – and it became the source of a mystery that lasted for most of the 20th century. …

When posting memes, is it a good idea to put the text of the meme in the alt-text of the image? Can screenreaders read the text of a meme, if the text is in a simple, legible font?

Things I saw walking the dog this morning. I like the lines of that building, and the stone facade. There was a shopping cart in the way of the shot, so I moved it.

The Eagles are the ultimate 70s band, and “Take it Easy” is their ultimate song.

Ringo looking groovy and other oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the internet: 

https://www.tumblr.com/allhailthe70shousewife/724246770029314048/some-lovely-anonymous-person-sent-me-crabs-for-my

A surprising number of you seemed to enjoy the video of Minnie walking down stairs. Here is another.

On my walk with the dog this morning, I saw this gentleman living his best life.

You are Atlas. You hold up the sky. If no one is on this page, the sky will fall. youareatlas.com via waxy.org

Larry’s red space suit and other oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the Internet: 

The San Diego Human Relations Commission is a safe space for anti-semitism and transphobia. Or it was—the Human Relations Commission is losing humans, as three commissioners resign in protest over the bigotry. www.msn.com/en-us/new…

Things I saw walking this morning: That lawn has a lot going on. And Purple Snoopy does not live up to his publicity.

Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang: 'The machines we have now are not conscious': Chiang is the author of brilliant stories which explore themes of consciousness and free will, including “The Story of Your Life,” which was adapted into the Hollywood movie “Arrival,” starring Amy Adams. Chiang says machines learn language differently from human children, …

In the 1970s, a Soviet journalist named Valentin Zorin made a series of documentary films about the United States. At a time when few Russian journalists came to the U.S., Zorin traveled all across the country, and gained access few American journalists had. The Cold War was a battle of ideas, and …

“Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true: the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.” daringfireball.net/linked/20…

A Dad shows off for his delighted toddler daughter and other oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I found on the internet: Dad shows off his skills for his delighted daughter in Melbourne, Australia, around 1940. via via

Buck Martinez needs a spinoff series because that name is awesome.

Thunderation! The Speaker Demands Bean Soup (1904) On July 27, 1904, Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon went to the Capitol dining room looking forward to his usual bowl of bean soup, “and is met with an unfortunate surprise.” Cannon raised a fuss (because I guess there was nothing more important …

You’ll never guess what Twitter did with the guy who had the @X handle (spoiler: you will guess) daringfireball.net/linked/20…

The FBI is once again violating legal restrictions on spying on American citizens, querying communications with a state senator and US senator. The queries are a violation of FISA Section 702, which provides limited permission for the FBI to tap American communications overseas. The FBI has shown …

Red Hat’s recent decision to restrict the source code for its enterprise Linux build has led open-source projects big and small to come up with creative strategies to continue to serve their users. www.vice.com/en/articl…

It’s uncomfortable when you’re at the supermarket and you hear a song that you once thought was edgy and dangerous. This is not a problem if you’re into death metal or Yoko Ono.

A brief history of making out. Turns out “romantic, sexual, steamy” kissing isn’t instinctual behavior; it’s a learned cultural practice. A lot of societies don’t do it, most primates don’t do it, and people only started relatively recently, a few thousand years ago. On the Decoder Ring podcast, …

Ghost Church: The delightful Jamie Loftus looks at the American spiritualism movement, including its history, and she visits the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp in Florida. Loftus is funny, wise and takes a friendly but skeptical view. www.iheart.com/podcast/1… Loftus previously did podcasts …

“Majorly” seems to me like it’s just plain wrong. Bad English. Not a real word. But apparently, I’m wrong about that. Majorly is a real word, albeit relatively recent. It was first used in 1955. However, I think it’s going to be a while before I stop majorly cringing …

I am in awe of the mental gymnastics required to conclude that there's any solution to homelessness other than finding housing for people. It's like telling a drowning person that their real problem is they eat fatty foods.: “Housing First” policy does what it says—it attempts to address homelessness by finding housing for homeless people before attempting to solve other problems these people might have. This common-sense solution has come under fire by critics, mostly Republicans, who claim that it fails to …

Sunday morning comics, Ohio, 1950s. And other things I found on the Internet: Sunday morning comics, Ohio, 1950s. Via https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/91sz1a/sunday_morning_comics_ohio_1950s/ On Reddit: “My grandparents the night they met (1970).” Via https://reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/15a89z5/my_grandparents_the_night_they_met_1970/ …

Republicans want to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to suppress LGBTQ+ voices. “Pass it, pass it, pass it, pass it, pass it,” says Biden. www.techdirt.com/2023/07/2… It’s not just LGBTQ+ voices that are at risk. KOSA gives broad enforcement authority to states’ attorneys general. In …

“Lies I’ve told my 3 year old recently.” Extremely short. Just read it. www.mexicanpictures.com/headingea…

The San Diego Police Department is being scrutinized for reliance on CalGang, a California database that’s been dropped by many state law enforcement agencies. Once added to the database, “You’ve moved out of the human species and into the species of being a gang member,” says Jaime Wilson, co-chair …

ICYMI: Microsoft and Google reported strong cloud and AI growth in their quarterly financial results. But for both companies, growth is slowing. My latest. www.silverliningsinfo.com/multi-clo…

Today’s ephemera: An “ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS” throwback:  “San Francisco or vicinity circa 1921. ‘Studebaker “Big Six” touring car.’ Cigar-chomping Army brass at the wheel. 5x7 inch glass negative by Christopher Helin.” Via www.shorpy.com/node/2670…

Our Long, National Taco Tuesday Nightmare Is Finally Over. Taco John’s was happy to bully smaller companies with threats of trademark litigation, but when a bigger company—Taco Bell—came along wanting to fight, suddenly Taco John grew principles and decided that litigation would be wrong. …

Influencers are starting to realize that the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is dangerous. It doesn’t protect children online; it’s a threat to everyone. Republicans are openly talking about how they will use it to suppress free speech, and Democrats are on board. …

Republican Counties Had Higher COVID Death Rates After Vaccines Became Available daringfireball.net/linked/20… Republicans will blame this on drag queens and Hunter Biden.

Decoder Ring: What’s really going on inside a mosh pit? The mosh pit is “a violent place where (mostly) white guys vent their aggression.… but it’s also a place bound by camaraderie and—believe it or not—etiquette.… explore the unwritten rules of this 50-year-old live-music phenomenon with punks, …

Virginia Postrel: Gadgets and Gizmos that inspired Adam Smith: Pocket gadgets were all the rage in Adam Smith’s day…. The best known are watches. A pocket timepiece was an 18th century man’s must-have fashion accessory, its presence indicated by a ribbon or bright steel chain hanging from the owner’s waist, bedecked with seals and a …

David Eagleman: Could you upload your brain to live forever? eagleman.com/podcast/c…

“Wilder” is a limited-series podcast about Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the “Little House” books. Wilder lived an amazing life: She traveled cross-country in a covered wagon and lived long enough to see Elvis on TV and fly in a jet plane. Her books have been beloved fixtures of classrooms for …

Today’s ephemera: Marty Feldman and Ann-Margret, 1977: New York subway, 1980 Marty Feldman and Ann-Margret, 1977. Via https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/vw4kjo/marty_feldman_and_annmargret_1977/ He looks as surprised to be with her as we are to see them as a couple.

Every time I bring in the car to be washed, I end up choosing add-ons at random. I finally decided to look up which ones to get, and which ones to pass on. Consumer Reports says get the undercarriage wash at least once a season, “especially if you drive through mud or live in a part of the country …

Five years ago: At last night’s press reception I mistook another editor for a waiter and tried to take food off his plate. I mean, I literally reached out and was touching his food. This is why they don’t allow me out usually.

New Project Uses AI To Turn Project Gutenberg Texts Into Free Audiobooks With Lifelike Voices — In 30 Seconds www.techdirt.com/2023/07/2…

Red Hat saved IBM’s bacon this quarter techcrunch.com/2023/07/2…

Surgeon warns against the most dangerous sex position, which causes 50% of penile fractures boingboing.net/2023/07/2…

How did we fill our in-between time before smartphones? I’m constitutionally incapable of ignoring text within my sight, so I remember reading cereal boxes at breakfast, magazine covers in checkout lines, display ads on public transit, out-of-date magazines in doctors’ offices, in-flight Skymall …

When the Town Square Shatters. Cory Doctorow remembers GEnie, where I made a lot of friends (including Cory). He says the end of GEnie nearly 25 years ago foretold the breakup of Twitter’s community. doctorow.medium.com/when-the-…

My career goal is to become a cowboy at a “wild west” roadside attraction. I want to be the guy who stands with a shotgun at the top of the stagecoach and gets shot and falls off.

Today’s ephemera: Looking in the bathroom mirror first thing in the morning: 1960 The voices of the Flintstones Via www.tumblr.com/lew-basni… Video. Watch here: twitter.com/slendersh… Five years ago: The hotel I’m in has an enclosed atrium with a mirrored far wall. Some guy dressed like me was taking a picture same time as me.

Minnie goes down 13 steps. It’s a lot for her to process. We do this a couple of times a week.

Today’s ephemera: Wasabi Bobby's coping mechanism: A hotel in Germany uses 3D carpets to prevent guests from running. Via https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/vupc81/a_hotel_in_germany_uses_3d_carpets_to_prevent/ Via www.tumblr.com/allhailth…

Today’s ephemera: And how do we cope with stress?:  In 1909, Alice Ramsey became the first woman to drive an automobile across the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Huyler_Ramsey Via www.tumblr.com/digitvint…

Google shows off AI “news article” writer to newspapers, leaving newspapers to wonder who did the fact-finding, investigating and reporting boingboing.net/2023/07/2… Rob Beschizza: Google is “pitching a tool to _rewrite _news that’s _already _been published” and the target market …

Florida is requiring schools to teach how slavery benefitted the slaves, and require teaching “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” when studying race massacres. www.cnn.com/2023/07/2… These include the Ocoee, Fla. massacre where 40-50 Black people were killed by a …

Donald Trump warns that “it would be very dangerous” for Jack Smith to jail him. boingboing.net/2023/07/2… Mighty nice country you got here. Wouldn’t want nothing to happen to it.

I bet a lot of people are found dead in the act of Googling whatever killed them. “Is this spider poisonous?”

Today’s ephemera: moonshine, guns and a Chevrolet coupe: H.S. “Dick” Hickman, Chief of Police in Colorado City, Texas, poses at City Hall with moonshine, guns, and a Chevrolet coupe after an arrest around 1937, as Mitchell County remained dry even after prohibition. Via …

Jason Snell: Why everyone should be running the latest betas on their Apple devices www.macworld.com/article/2… Jason Snell is being a bad influence. I’ve got the public betas on my Watch and iPhone. I like ‘em. I’m holding off on the Mac because I need it to run the …

Google Tests A.I. Tool That Is Able to Write News Articles www.nytimes.com/2023/07/1…

That moment when you drink thirstily from a big glass of water that had been sitting on the counter overnight, and notice two dead fruit flies floating on the surface of the water. And then you convince yourself there were not three dead fruit flies.

Cosmic Crisp apples are 50% less expensive than Honeycrisp apples, and Cosmic Crisps are better. I will die on this hill.

I made several comments to Julie as I was making coffee. The last one seemed to require a response, and when none was forthcoming, I turned around to look at her to find she had left the room. Probably I’d been talking to myself the entire 10 minutes.

Comic Sans has been reinvented as a monospace font for programmers, according to this article which frames the news in vile anti-Comic Sans propaganda. I like Comic Sans. boingboing.net/2023/07/1…

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a Biden supporter now? Wait, what? boingboing.net/2023/07/1…

Dictator-wannabe Donald Trump praises Xi Jinping as a “perfect” leader who rules “with an iron fist” boingboing.net/2023/07/1…

Today’s ephemera: This beagle would like you to know he is helping:  Via www.tumblr.com/wilwheato…

We’ve been watching “Yellowstone,” “1883,” and “Justified: City Primeval.” I’m trying to talk myself out of getting a cowboy hat.

Famed Hacker Kevin Mitnick Dead at 59 www.securityweek.com/famed-hac…

Five years later, I do that with the Apple Watch when my hands are busy.

On this day in 2018: My Apple Watch alarm went off while I was watching the dishes, and without thinking about it I tapped the watch face with my nose to switch the alarm off. I believe I have hit on a breakthrough in nasal user interface design.

On this day in 2018: Today at the park we saw a black lab with its hind quarters resting in one of those wheeled harness contraptions that disabled dogs use to get around. The dog seemed nice, but Minnie took one look and said nope do not want to say hello to the evil doggy robot.

Vivek Ramaswamy repeats threat, telling two MAGA hosts that Jan. 6 was a “friendly preview of what’s to come” boingboing.net/2023/07/1…

Universal Studios trimmed a row of trees so they no longer provided shade for WGA strikers in 90+-degree heat. Strikers complain. Universal responds: Whoops. deadline.com/2023/07/u…

Cory Doctorow: Denazification, truth and reconciliation, and the story of Germany’s story: Germany’s denazification was compromised and accommodated powerful, wealthy former Nazis, leading to resurgence of the far right and anti-semitism in Europe today. But it’s still better than the “least said, soonest mended” school of getting past atrocities, as practiced by the US with regard to …

Today’s ephemera: Festive chicken salad log: Harrison Ford on “Love, American Style,” 1969. Sally Field in “The Flying Nun.” “Room 222.” ngl I would eat the heck out of this with plenty of Guldens Spicy Brown mustard. Via www.tumblr.com/allhailth… 1948 George Nelson Home Office Desk | Wood, Leather, & Metal | USA | Sold for …

ME: “Get out of the way so I can get an artsy photo of those rocks.” DOG: (gets out of the way … eventually)

While walking the dog this morning, we saw this excruciatingly artistically arranged bicycle and other objects.

Mandela Goes From Hero to Scapegoat as South Africa Struggles. “Nelson Mandela is revered worldwide…. But at home, a younger generation is disillusioned with the country, his party and the anti-apartheid leader, too.” nytimes.com

Rands in Repose reviews Bear 2.0. Don’t tempt me! randsinrepose.com/archives/…

On covid, California’s supreme court just said the quiet part out loud ko-fi.com/post/On-c… Robert Kuciemba, a woodworker in San Francisco, was infected by covid in 2020 after his company, Victory Woodworks, based in Nevada, transferred sick workers to the San Francisco site for a few …

ChatGPT makes bad writers good and good writers better, according to a study. www.technologyreview.com/2023/07/1… I make very little use of ChatGPT in my own work. However, I rely on two other AI products: Otter.ai for transcription and Grammarly for grammar, punctuation and tightening up …

There Will Never Be Another Second Life. (Wagner James Au / The Atlantic) The OG metaverse found a niche where it has been able to thrive for 20 years.

Texas ranks dead last in livability, and Florida is in the bottom 10 of the 50 states, due to poor healthcare, education standards and culture wars. Texas has the highest percentage of people living without health insurance, the state has the 13th highest violent crime rate, and is in the bottom …

RFK Jr bares his inner Nazi boingboing.net/2023/07/1…

Chick Tracts (99% Invisible). Jack Chick was the Leni Riefenstahl of comics. Chick devoted his life to using comics to witness to non-Christians. His gorgeous, kitschy art, combined with messaging that was often homophobic and Islamophobic, makes the tiny comics simultaneously masterpieces of pop …

Today’s ephemera: Alright everybody ... let’s find that grape: Pink 1967 Mustang Tussy Hardtop Advertisement. 31 Photos Of New York City In The Summer Of ‘69 via AI-simulated Johnny Cash sings “Barbie Girl.” I love the name of this YouTube channel: There I Ruined It.

Study: Cities with Expensive Housing Have Highest Rates of Homelessness timesofsandiego.com/business/… I’m trying to swear less, but I’ve got to say “no shit Sherlock.”

Do kids in New York still play stickball, skelly, and hopscotch? Or has that gone the way of rolling a hoop with a stick?

Plausible Sentence Generators. Cory Doctorow finds an AI chatbot is an excellent tool for helping to draft scary threatening lawyer letters.

Louis Vuitton is fighting a trademark application by a maker of garden tools because the fashion company claims it’s trademarked the letters L and V. (Techdirt)

No Relief: Temps Reach 122 Degrees as Heat Bakes Mexicali, Border Communities (Reuters / Times of San Diego)

Tiny Awards, a celebration of the small, playful, and heartfelt web (waxy.org)

Elon is paying far-right influencers, including Andrew Tate, to post on Twitter (Taylor Lorenz / The Washington Post). Paying a guy who was charged with rape and human trafficking seems like not the best way to make your service attractive to advertisers.

More than 100 people were stuck at Agatha Christie’s house for seven hours _(Devon Live) And then there were 99….

Riley Moore, a US House candidate backed by Kevin McCarthy, made six appearances on virulent antisemite Michael Scheuer’s podcast. (Media Matters / Eric Hananoki) Scheuer isn’t dog-whistling. He flat-out hates Jews and says so publicly and repeatedly, and has called for the assassination of US …

I’m looking into joining the Freemasons.

Today’s ephemera: Welcome to this absolutely massive and surprisingly clean sewer!: via “BEER IS BEST” via

Vulcans really are jerks. The shuttle was huge. It was big enough to serve as a Starfleet Academy party bus. Just hang a disco ball from the ceiling. Was Spock human long enough to try California burritos and pizza? Because if he thought bacon was great….

Is distributed computing dying, or just fading into the background? (Ars Technica/Andy Patrizio) “Distributed computing erupted onto the scene in 1999 with the release of SETI@home, a nifty program and screensaver … that sifted through radio telescope signals for signs of alien life.”

Superman: Legacy and What It Takes To Be a Great Onscreen Man of Steel (Den of Geek / Joe George)

I saw these steps while walking Minnie a few days ago. They’re beautiful and my knees hurt just looking at them.

Even the old guys at the park were wearing ankle socks with their shorts, rather than full-length socks as I was. I need to level up my exercise fashion game.

Walking the dog this morning, I wore baggy checked cargo shorts, black calf-length socks, white New Balance sneakers, and my sweat-stained white Tilley bucket hat. In other words, I was a thirst trap.

Today’s ephemera: Wholesome yet dystopian: 

Steven Vaughan-Nichols: I’ve used social networks since the 80s. Threads is the most annoying one I’ve tried. (ZDNET) Threads’s egregious privacy policy (which SJVN provides more information about here) and its current lack of a web interface are the reasons why I’m sitting …

It was at this moment that I decided to switch off Apple News notifications on my phone.

Jews, Christians and Satanists are taking legal action to protect reproductive freedom, claiming—rightly—that abortion bans are an imposition of religious beliefs by the state. Cory Doctorow: “Jewish religious texts clearly state that life begins at the first breath, and that the life of a pregnant …

Everyone Has ‘Car Brain’. “Online communities dedicated to criticizing cars and the people who love them have developed an insult that … kind of makes sense.“ (The Atlantic / Kaitlyn Tiffany)

Twitter is burning, Bluesky is smug. Where is the best place to do your pathetic doomscrolling? (The Guardian / First Dog on the Moon)

What Makes Putin and the World’s Autocrats So Resilient? (WSJ / David Luhnow and Juan Forero)

New York State Built Elon Musk a $1 Billion Factory. ‘It Was a Bad Deal.’ “In terms of sheer direct cost to taxpayers, this may rank as the single biggest economic development boondoggle in American history." (WSJ / Julie Bykowicz and Ted Mann)

What 120 Degrees Looks Like in One of Mexico’s Hottest Cities. Residents of the northern city of Hermosillo struggled to breathe. (The New York Times / Photographs and Video by Cesar RodriguezWritten by Elda Cantú)

Los Angeles’s Bradbury Building is a gorgeous edifice built in 1893. You’ve seen the Bradbury if you’ve seen “Blade Runner;” the Bradbury was the setting for the Toymaker’s workshop. And the building has been featured in a million other movies and TV shows. 99% Invisible: From the outside, the …

Today’s ephemera: Atomic nemesis: via via Card-punch machine 1960 

A bad day for local journalism. LA’s Richest Man Sells Union-Tribune to Feared ‘Chop Shop’ (Voice of San Diego / Will Huntsberry and Scott Lewis)

Update: I emailed Slate to cancel my sub, and they replied promptly and said they had done so. So, points to them for that. But there really needs to be a button on the site.

At the park this weekend I saw a bulldog wearing a pearl necklace. Big chunky pearls, like Barbara Bush used to wear. The pearls probably weren’t real, but the dog probably was.

Slate Plus is raising its subscription rate from $59 to $119 annually. That’s a nope. I searched the website for 15 minutes to find out how to cancel my subscription and was unable to find a link. That’s sleazy, Slate.

Parakeet Panic. “When invasive parakeets began to spread in New York City in the 1970s, the government decided it needed to kill them all. Today: The offbeat panic about wild parrots, and a history of anxieties about population growth.” (The Last Archive)

An odd ChatGPT conversation: I was trying to remember a quote about writing, but I couldn’t remember the exact words. Something like, “If you can do anything else but be a writer, you should do it." But not quite that—punchier. I tried Googling the phrase but that didn’t turn up anything. So I asked ChatGPT, which said the …

Wait, should I not be drinking airline coffee?. On the new Search Engine podcast, PJ Vogt investigates rumors that the water used on airlines is dirty and full of bacteria, and the flight crew won’t drink it, and won’t even use it to wash their hands.

“Harry Milas' sleight of hand skills are so good that he now helps to expose gambling rings. He explains the tricks of the trade and why he hates casinos.” The Magician Who Catches Card Cheats in Casinos (The Guardian / Sian Cain)

In her new book “Nuts and Bolts Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way),” structural engineer Roma Agrawal identifies and examines the seven of most basic building blocks of engineering that have shaped the modern world: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the lens, the …

Born into extreme poverty, [Cary] Grant was told as a child his mother had died. She had actually been placed in a psychiatric institution. It was the start of a life of repression and extraordinary reinvention. — The Trauma of Cary Grant: How He Thrived After a Terrible Childhood - As Told by His …

Today’s ephemera: A few funny toots: 

Want to read: This Bird Has Flown by Susanna Hoffs 📚Good interview with Hoffs, formerly of The Bangles, on Debbie Millman’s podcast. Hoffs is surprisingly smart. She’s written a novel and it sounds good.

Finished reading: Persian Fire by Tom Holland 📚 Fascinating story, a non-fiction history of the Persian-Greek war 2500 years ago. But a challenging read. The author uses ornate sentences that I had to read two or three times to get the gist of. I’ve read other Holland history books and enjoyed them, …

Yesterday at the supermarket, I saw a man with a dog. The dog wasn’t wearing a service dog vest. It was just a dog, but inside the supermarket. It looked like a chocolate lab, but with a wiry tail. I happened to be buying treats for Minnie at the dog treats shelf at the moment I saw the dog. The …

Today’s ephemera: Wow! See the unbelievable mystery hole:  Google Image Search for “dogs wearing shoes” does not disappoint. 🤔

Today's memes, tweets, vintage photos etc.: 1961 - Shakespearean Tootsie Roll ad Superboy #8 May 1950

I deleted Meta Threads from my phone. I may come back to the service, but I’m not feeling urgency, and I don’t like app’s privacy policies. Threads grabs a great deal of user information, including text messages. Text messages?! Are you kidding?! I’ve got Facebook on my …

Has anybody found a news alerts service for the phone that only alerts you for world-changing news? All the news alert services I’ve tried are too noisy. I want an alert if Biden or Trump drops dead, or if Ukraine boils over into World War III. I don’t need an alert to let me know …

Dolly Parton does not want to be an AI hologram, thank you very much: ‘I don’t want to leave my soul here on Earth’ (Boing Boing / Rusty Blazenhoff)

Jo Walton writes about Heinlein’s Worst Novel. I 98% agree. My favorite Heinleins are his early books, particularly “Citizen of the Galaxy.” I loved “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” and “Starship Troopers,” but I’d love them even more without the lectures. I loved “Stranger in a Strange Land” when I …

How actors are losing their voices to AI.. Actors who signed away their voice rights many years ago are now competing for work with AI versions of themselves, and hearing their own voices used in scams. (Madhumita Murgia / FT)

In a sign of what’s to come for many white-collar workers, artificial intelligence is eating the software industry, as companies turn to generative AI tools to save money on programmers. Some 70% of coders are already using or plan to use AI in their work, with one-third saying the primary …

I asked ChatGPT to write an episode of “Gilligan’s Island” in the style of Ayn Rand.

How Tom Brady’s Crypto Ambitions Collided With Reality. “The superstar quarterback is among the celebrities dealing with the fallout from the crypto crash. Others, like Taylor Swift, escaped.” (The New York Times / Erin Griffith and David Yaffe-Bellany). Seems like Brady and other celebrities were …

Here are some funny tweets and a classic Norman Rockwell illustration: Saturday Evening Post, July 26, 1941 cover by Norman Rockwell

I remember when I did not have to spend quite so much of my life charging things and making sure that the things are charged

Josh Withers shares frustration with stagnation in the ebook market. I agree, and blame the Amazon monopoly. That monopoly is created and maintained by laws, not markets. Amazon needs to be required to allow competing products to read its ebook format. Problem solved. Right now, that kind of …

Threads: A mall inside the store inside the mall: I signed up for Threads. Unenthusiastically. I want to use fewer social media platforms, and concentrate my focus, rather than doing more. Hopefully, Threads will follow through and become a full citizen of ActivityPub, and also connect to the blue Facebook platform. That will make my social media …

Every so often I am tempted by an Ember coffee mug and then I look at the price and I fall over unconscious.

Historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook “delve into the mysteries surrounding the Ark of the Covenant.” The most important object in the universe, but also a somewhat invisible presence in the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant has fuelled stories for millennia… as a weapon of …

“Why do we have so little access to what’s happening under the hood?" Neuroscientist David Eagleman discusses how almost everything we do is controlled unconsciously. Our consciousness and free will are just illusions, thinking we’re in control but really just along for the …

I made heavy use of Google Reader, checking it several times daily every day. But I never used the social features—I barely knew about them. Learning about them now, I think I would have loved them. Most of what I do on social media is share things I find elsewhere on the Internet, sometimes …

Raymond Scott was one of the most famous musical composers of the 20th Century, though his name is nearly forgotten today. He was also a brilliant electronics engineer, and his life’s work was the Electronium, an automated music-composing machine. Scott came up in in the Big Band era, and …

The Last Archive: The Word for Man is Ishi: The amazing story of Ishi, only member of his Native American community to survive genocide, who was discovered in a small town in northern California in 1911. Celebrated during his life as “the last wild Indian,” Ishi moved in to the new …

Marc Maron interviews Hugh Grant on the WTF podcast. Grant is self-deprecating and surprisingly funny. From 2021.

Google bungled by killing Google Reader to build Google+, and then bungled again killing Google+ The company is like the proverbial donkey placed between a pile of hay and a bucket of water that ends up dying of hunger and thirst because it can’t decide between them. How Google Reader died — and why …

Doctors are starting to use generative AI to help with paperwork, which takes them literally hours every day—often evenings and weekends—and is a leading driver of burnout. A.I. May Someday Work Medical Miracles. For Now, It Helps Do Paperwork.. By Steve Lohr at The New York Times.

Today’s funny found photos, a meme, skeet and tweet and a vintage photo of Harrison Ford:  Harrison Ford takes a leap of faith in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) OceanGate is a microcosm of the Covid response. We’ll just let Covid rip through the population and try to hospitalize anybody who gets REALLY sick without fixing the healthcare system. Nothing bad will …

Question for my vegetarian/vegan friends: Would you eat lab-grown meat?: I’m seeing in the news that lab-grown meat is coming to the market. This is not fake meat like the Impossible Burger, made from plant materials. This is meat cloned from animal cells. Supposedly, it tastes exactly like ground meat—ground beef or chicken—because that’s exactly what it is. …

I also talked with ChatGPT. I asked it whether AI is a threat to people’s jobs, and how people can maximize their success in their careers as AI becomes more prevalent. I didn’t include ChatGPT’s responses in the article. Read them here.

My latest: Surviving the AI job apocalypse. AI won’t kill the human race or take everybody’s job. But the workplace will be transformed, and some jobs are at risk. Workers are already starting to adapt.

I recently came across the IndieWeb concept of POSSE. Not the first time I’ve seen it, but this time I read it more closely and said, “Holy cow, there’s a name for the way I’ve always preferred to use social media?” It should be called “POSCE”—“Publish on your Own Site, Copy Elsewhere.” It’s a more …

Suddenly, It Looks Like We’re in a Golden Age for Medicine. David Wallace-Wells / NYTimes. Hard to reconcile with our disastrous Covid response. We did better with the 1918 flu.

I’m fiddling with my RSS/read-it-later setup—again!: This is an area I’m never satisfied with, and I seem to fiddle with it every few months. I find Inoreader is a mixed bag as a reading environment, though I’m continuing to use it because it’s unparalleled for filtering massive numbers of RSS feeds to find a few details that I need for my work. So …

There will never be another Harrison Ford The guy’s 80, and instead of sliding into the traditional role of lifetime achievement award winner, memoir writer and maker of occasional cameo appearances, he’s back on billboards and the sides of buses for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” …

As AI becomes more prevalent, a vast underclass of people training the machines is emerging worldwide. Josh Dzieza reports in depth for The Verge. There are people classifying the emotional content of TikTok videos, new variants of email spam, and the precise sexual provocativeness of online ads. …

Ephemera XCII: Star-Spangled Ding-Dongs: Down the rabbit hole Spiegel, 1972

Not to brag but I just selected the perfect size container for Julie’s leftover chili.

I saw this sign 10 years ago today in a barbershop window in Coronado.

Casey Newton at Platformer: How the Kids Online Safety Act puts us all at risk

Happy Independence Day to all of my American friends, and may you finish the day with the same number of fingers with which you began it.

RIP Frank Field, a local New York TV weatherman who was a fixture of the television landscape when I was a kid in the 70s. He was 100 years old. Field, who died Saturday, was an evangelist for the Heimlich maneuver, which saved his life in 1985. He was dining at a Manhattan restaurant with the CBS …

President Eisenhower signed the National Highway Act, “the largest infrastructure project in American history,” July 3, 1956—68 years ago today. The hosts of the This Day in Esoteric Political History podcast “are joined by Eddie Alterman, longtime editor of Car & Driver …

I had thought the end of “Endeavour” might take place immediately prior to the first season of “Inspector Morse.” But then I thought that was wrong of me, because Shaun Evans is so much younger than John Thaw was. Or not. Today I learned Thaw was 45 at the beginning of “Morse,” and Evans is 43.

Lovely, sad ending to “Endeavour.”

We have watched four episodes of “Silo,” and so far, I would absolutely live there. Friendly people, everyone dresses comfortably, earth tones and sweaters. Plenty of stairs for aerobic exercise. No computers more complicated than MS-DOS 5. Don’t have to worry about sunscreen. No mosquitoes.

Currently reading: Angels Flight by Michael Connelly 📚

Finished reading: Blood Work by Michael Connelly. Not his best, but very good nonetheless. This is the sixth Connelly novel I’ve read since January; I read his first several years ago. I think I’ll start the next one right now. 📚

Supermarket speedrun: 40m22s.

That moment when you're finishing up a big project that's the last thing you need to do before a four-day weekend and your mouse decides it's angry at the Mac and they're not talking anymore.

Amazon Basics dog-poop bags come with documentation. Do people really need documentation to figure out how to work dog-poop bags? The documentation is titled “Quick Start Guide,” suggesting that there is an in-depth manual available.

I enjoy Star Trek more when I’m able to not try to make it make sense.

I just completed a major project that I’ve been working on for weeks, and now I have to do it again for another project, also due today. And yet my brain is all used up from finishing the first project. I’m not complaining. This is the definition of a privileged person’s problem. …

The dog and I saw this in front of a neighbor’s house this morning. You can tell they mean it.

Are you making changes to stay successful in your career as AI transforms workplaces? Getting new training? Sharpening some skills while letting others fall away? Changing careers entirely? How do you see AI changing your job? This is for an article I’m writing.

Existential threats from AI aren’t on my list of things to worry about. That the super-rich and powerful are concerned is an indication that they’ve lost touch with reality.

That’s not what happened with Twitter. The Twitter acquisition was unique. I’ve never seen or heard of a situation where somebody was forced to acquire a company against his will.

As a business/technology journalist, I’ve covered many M&A deals. Often, they start hostile, then both parties reach a deal and it ends quietly. Russia was just like that, but with tanks.

Ian Welsh predicts that the US will be a big loser of the Ukraine war, ending the US global hegemony. The war demonstrates that countries can successfully defy the US. China will support defiant nations against US sanctions. Welsh makes a credible case. I’m insufficiently informed to have my own …

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that an American billionaire, in possession of sufficient fortune, must be in want of a Supreme Court justice.” (Alexandra Petri / The Washington Post)

Lemmy and Kbin potentially change the face of at least part of the Fediverse, making it more Reddit-like, focused on topics and content, rather than individual people.

“Stunning”—Midjourney update wows AI artists with camera-like feature (Ars Technica / Benj Edwards) You can zoom images out to show more background. Sweet! I’ve surprised myself how much I enjoy playing with Midjourney. I’m not generally a visual-arts person.

Logseq vs Obsidian: find the best note app for productivity needs. I am occasionally tempted by Logseq. Stop me before I change note-taking apps again!

A viral search helped a radio host track down a man she spontaneously kissed at a music festival. (KTLA / Taylor Delandro) Aww.

Why Some Americans Buy Guns (NY Times / Roni Caryn Rabin) Confirming yet again that if you own a gun, it’s more likely to be used against you than against anybody else.

A Titanic Disparity in How the World Responds to Maritime Disasters “All travelers, whether migrants or millionaires, deserve rescue. The global response to the Titan’s disappearance should be the model for how we respond to migrant vessels in distress.” (Democracy Now!) Hearbreaking details on the …

Still thinking about last night’s episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” It was about assimilation and passing, subjects close to me. I’m a Jewish American who mostly doesn’t act Jewish, sound Jewish, or even have a Jewish name. Passing is my default mode.

"…. Reddit is blindly following Digg’s failed path." (Steven Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet)

Gearlinx taps the cloud for ‘Network Resilience as a Service’. Gearlinx provides network resilience and network operations as a service, using cloud software and a hardware device it calls a Duckfone. I talked 1:1 with company president Todd Rychecky, who newly joins Gearlinx after 14 years at …

That was one of the best Star Trek episodes I’ve ever seen. Moving and inspirational. We often get caught up condemning America’s failures, when what we should be doing is inspiring America to live up to its highest self. Why did so many Japanese-Americans who were interned wrongly during World War …

Vulcans are assholes.

I was just reminded that we moved to San Francisco on Halloween and moved away on Halloween. This seems somehow significant.

Oracle says ‘oui’ to European cloud sovereignty. Big Red launches EU Sovereign Cloud to help enterprises satisfy European data privacy and sovereignty regulations. My latest, on Silverlinings.

Whenever I hear an anti-woke clown going on about soyboys, alpha males, beta males, and the importance of traditional masculinity, I think: A foundational value of traditional masculinity is physical courage. I want to ask the clown: How much bullfighting have you done? What mountains have you …

Seven Rules For Internet CEOs To Avoid Enshittification (Mike Masnick / Techdirt) These are good rules for building a healthy Internet business, or a healthy business of any kind. All the rules are built on the first: “Tell your investors that you’re in this for the long haul and they need to be …

When the press talks about the layoffs and chaos generated by a series of completely pointless mergers the blame always falls on ambiguities like a “weakening macroeconomy” and not, say, blistering incompetence by the fail upwards trust fund brunch-lords in the c-suite, obsessed with setting their …

“Cellphones were for emergencies, or for calling people when you were drunk.” Dan Kois at Slate asks fellow GenXers to reminisce about technology, work, socializing and entertainment in the long-ago time of 2002.

VMware’s plan for cross-cloud conquest. I talked 1:1 with Vittorio Viarengo, VMware VP of cross-cloud services, about plans to prosper by delivering software to unify applications across multiple clouds and on-premises. But will those ambitions survive the Broadcom acquisition? Read about it on …

On Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster has a good backgrounder on the Titanic submersible: Ok look, in my spare time I do volunteer wilderness search and rescue, so I am the last person to look askance at anyone for doing stupid things in the name of pointless adventure. If your soul calls you to risk …

Meanwhile, on Twitter, free speech absolutist Elon Musk has declared “cis” and “cisgender” to be slurs. Good heavens, I’ve been calling myself “cis” since I first heard the word. I use it to describe myself whenever I opine on LGBTQ issues, to disclose my …

Businesses have been laying people off and breaking promises to workers for 40+ years, and now these businesses think remote work is the reason employees aren’t committed. So therefore these businesses are banning remote work—thereby breaking another promise, made in 2020-22, that remote work would …

When Minnie and I walk in the park, we like the opportunity to say hello to other dogs. This was a funny looking dog. 📷

I’m surprised the Republicans don’t like Hunter Biden. Guns and tax dodging are essentially the party platform.

The Onion: One Of Saturn’s Moons Discovered To Have All The Ingredients For Mouthwatering Enchiladas

The US has an internal refugee crisis, as 130,000-260,000 trans people have fled persecution in their home states. (Erin Reed) “Should this trend persist, we may witness the largest domestic migration crisis since the Dust Bowl upheaval of the 1940s…. [Persecution is] now driving a significant …

Samuel L. Jackson Is Confused Why He’s Not in ‘Black Panther’ Movies (Samantha Bergeson / IndieWire) “I’m still trying to figure out why I’ve never been to Wakanda.” Also, he has a healthy attitude toward not winning Oscars or doing prestige movies. “… once I got over it many …

Can IBM bring Watson back to life?. Watson never fulfilled the promise it showed during its spectacular 2011 Jeopardy debut. But IBM has a bold plan to restore the AI’s faded stardom. My latest, on Silverlinings.

Every self-help book ever, boiled down to 11 simple rules. Outstanding life advice. I plan to write a short outline of this article and consult it regularly. (Chris Taylor / Mashable)

We get a lot of ravens and/or crows around here. Julie found this article about how to tell them apart. Still, I remain low in confidence as to my ability to distinguish them.

A toymaker and doctor partnered to create Resusci Anne, a doll to teach people how to perform CPR. The face of the doll was based on an unknown woman believed drowned in the Seine in the 1880s, who was celebrated in books and poetry as l’Inconnue de la Seine, or the Unknown Woman of the Seine. …

Marc Maron interviews Quinn Cummings, writer and former child star who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar when she was 10 years old for her role on “The Goodbye Girl.” Quinn tells Marc why she rejected acting after her early success and why she prefers to write. They also talk about …

“We are living through the end of the useful internet.”: The Last Page of the Internet, by Alex Pareene: The internet’s best resources are almost universally volunteer run and donation based, like Wikipedia and The Internet Archive. Every time a great resource is accidentally created by a for-profit company, it is eventually destroyed, like Flickr and …

Reddit is speedrunning enshittification.: Hypothesis: The owners of the company are no longer interested in keeping the business going, and are just trying to maximize financial return by selling off every possible asset. In Reddit’s case, the upcoming IPO isn’t the beginning of a new chapter in the business. It’s the end of the business. …

I’m going to move linkblogging to other platforms, primarily Facebook, atomicrobotlive.tumblr.com, @mitchw@mastodon.social, and maybe mitchw.bsky.social. I’ll keep using mitchw.blog for my own original writing, images, and other content. This will continue until it doesn’t.

An Anti-Porn App Put Him in Jail and His Family Under Surveillance. After an Indiana man pleaded not guilty to possession of child pornography, courts installed Covenant Eyes spyware on the phones and other electronic devices of everybody in his family as a condition of his release before trial. The …

Julie found this in her papers. I was the one with the PalmPilot; she never had one.

Do you believe in life after death? Are you sure you know? Really sure?

We’ll watch any TV show with a main character whose first name is DCI.

The Binge Purge. TV’s streaming business model is broken. A good long read by Josef Adalian at Vulture.com: It’s absolutely conceivable that the streaming subscription model is the crypto of the entertainment business. Like cryptocurrency, which has created massive on-paper fortunes built atop 1 + …

This is a working weekend for me. I had trouble writing, but I think I have it under control now.

Lulu says hi.

I usually listen to podcasts on my walk but today I listened to this.

For $20, Dumb Cuneiform will turn your tweet (or tweet-length text of any kind) into a real cuneiform tablet.

You don’t need 10,000 steps a day. Recent research shows 8,000-10,000 per day is good for people under 60, and 6,000-8,000 for people over 60. And more good advice about exercise and fitness. It’s easier than you might think. It doesn’t matter a lot how fast you walk. Forget about the US …

Well, I’d like to see ol Donny Trump wriggle his way out of THIS jam! Trump wriggles his way out of the jam easily Ah! Well. Nevertheless, That’s a popular meme from 2016 that still holds up.

Gavin Newsom wants 28th Amendment for guns in U.S. Constitution. The amendment doesn’t go far enough. Swing for the fences. Repeal the Second Amendment outright.

Elon Musk is America’s most dangerous antisemite

OpenAI Hit With First Defamation Suit Over ChatGPT Hallucination. A Georgia radio host is suing OpenAI after ChatGPT generated a fictional embezzlement suit against him.

The Apollo story is even uglier. Apparently, Reddit CEO Huffman is telling people that Apollo developer Christian Selig tried to blackmail Reddit for $10 million. Selig says that’s bullshit and he has recordings to prove it. According to Selig, he said something on a call with Reddit officials that …

Enshittifying the Internet seems to be a theme this week. In addition to Reddit knifing third-party apps, Wordpress is adding generative AI capabilities to its blogging software, which will only lead to an explosion in clickbait search engine spam. It’s a naked revenue grab by Wordpress’s parent …

Today is a day of petty disappointments. I’ve had a couple of business developments that are discouraging. Hopefully, they’ll come to nothing, but they’re discouraging in the moment. Also, my five-year-old Macbook Pro is getting flaky. I’ve noticed the Internet slows to a crawl at lunchtime. Do you …

I’m disappointed that Reddit is jacking up its API pricing and forcing developer Christian Selig to shut down his Reddit app Apollo. It’s one of my favorite iPhone and iPad apps. It feels like Reddit is flipping a big fat middle finger to me and many other people who enjoyed using Apollo. I use …

To me the Macintosh has always felt more like a place than a thing. Not a place I go physically, but a place my mind goes intellectually. When I’m working or playing and in the flow, it has always felt like MacOS is where I am. I’m in the Mac. Interruptions — say, the doorbell or my phone ringing — …

No, a rogue AI drone simulation did not kill its operator, despite recent news reports. Why make up a story about something like that? Because it enforces the narrative that AI is super-powerful and threatens human extinction, which is bullshit. But it’s profitable bullshit for AI grifters, who are …

Ted Cruz is citing the Bible and preaching on Twitter in defense of gay people, and it’s quite something. I suspect that Cruz is trying to play some kind of five-dimensional chess here that will actually turn out to be anti-LGBTQ when the story comes out in full.

Why Is Everyone Watching TV With the Subtitles On?. By Devin Gordon at The Atlantic. Good article, but takes a long way to get to the real explanation, which is that the sound quality of streaming TV is rubbish.

I have a pet theory that a four- or even three-star review would be fine in a rational universe. Ride in an Uber, and the driver gets you there safely, on time and the driver is reasonably personable? Three stars. Four stars if the driver gets you there on time despite traffic, helps you with a …

I, for one, appreciate Roman numerals.

AI chatbots lose money every time you use them. That’s a problem.. By Will Oremus at The Washington Post Businesses are laying off writers because ChatGPT can do the job. What will those businesses do when AI companies stop giving away the product?

On this day of the big annual Apple product launch, I’m remembering that day many years ago when Julie and I went to the Terminator experience at the Universal Studios theme park on vacation. All these theme park experiences have the same storyline: The audience is supposedly dignitaries taking a …

Writing a corporate blog this morning, I was able to dodge using the word “paradigm,” but I couldn’t resist “holistic” and “actionable.”

Coming back from the grocery store, I dropped six bottles of iced tea in the driveway and gave the neighborhood children vocabulary lessons.

When reading genre novels, often my favorite parts are the parts before the bad things start happening. That’s particularly true for Stephen King. I want the Torrances to have a nice winter at the Overlook Hotel. It’s true most of all for one of my favorite of his novels, “11/23/63.” I loved the …

Idea for the beginning of a horror story: A friend mentioned recently that he works in a six-story building. His job takes him up and down from floor to floor all day. He likes to use the stairs instead of the elevator. To clear his mind, he counts the stairs as he goes. Here’s the story idea: One …

Kitty confidential: 13 secret signals all cat owners need to know – from a quivering tail to aeroplane ears

Ashton Applewhite: We talk too much about generations. People who happen to have been born at around the same time don’t have much in common. Let’s Climb Out of the Generation Trap.. I read her book “This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism” last year, and loved it.

The Passover origin story of matzoh. It’s not supposed to taste good.

📺 We watched the final two episodes of "Succession." I have thoughts. SPOILERS: I’m seeing some talk that Tom isn’t the winner because he’s just Matsson’s puppet. But Tom is definitely the winner. All he ever cared about was the money, buying luxuries, and the appearance of power and he got all those things. He doesn’t care about the reality of power. Tom will remain perfectly …

ChatGPT and other LLM tools have already replaced some marketing and social media writers as many companies decide cutting costs is worth the drop in quality. ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they’re dog walkers and HVAC techs.

The empty cult of The Big Lebowski

It’s 1178 BCE and the Bronze Age Has Never Looked Stronger. No, I Won’t Lift My Eyes to the Horizon Right Now

‘They’re afraid their AIs will come for them’: Doug Rushkoff on why tech billionaires are in escape mode The only way to rebel is to be human and aware, Rushkoff said. “Be social, get your feet on the ground, make eye contact, have sex, meet people, breathe the air. The more real-life ballast you …

Cory Doctorow: The long lineage of private equity’s looting Fans of the Sopranos will remember the “bust out” as a mob tactic in which a business is taken over, loaded up with debt, and driven into the ground, wrecking the lives of the business’s workers, customers and …

When you think you have a full cup of coffee left in the carafe, but it’s only this much.

Idea for a Star Trek spinoff series: “These are the voyages of the starship Dunning-Krueger…. "

Governor Newsom Desperately Begs NetChoice To Drop Its Lawsuit Over Unconstitutional AADC Bill. Mike Masnick on Techdirt: … nothing in this law actually protects children. Instead, it puts them at much greater risk of having information exposed, as we’ve noted. It will also make it next to …

For my LGBTQ+ and/or accordion-playing friends: June is both Pride Month AND National Accordion Awareness Month!.

For social media and other Internet companies, the IPO announcement is when the enshittification process accelerates. The IPO announcement is the moment when the service reaches the peak of the enshittification rollercoaster and begins plunging downward. We’re seeing this play out now with …

Today I learned that it is perfectly fine to say to someone, “I’m sorry, could you speak a little slower–I’m having difficulty understanding your accent.” Previously I thought it was rude and maybe xenophobic to point out to someone that they spoke with an accent. I do not want to admit how …

Meanwhile, on the Bluesky social network

Reddit’s new API charges would cost the developer of Apollo $20 million per year. Apollo is one of my favorite iPhone and iPad apps. I’d hate for it to go away.

Furries Now Have Serious Beef With Ron DeSantis: A furry fandom con in Florida just announced it would ban minors based on the governor’s ridiculous laws Many parents whose children are involved with the subculture credit it with helping them overcome bullying, or gain self-esteem. At conventions, …

I wrote this: Today’s data centers require extreme makeovers to meet AI requirements, says Marvell

The threat of human extinction by AI is only scary for billionaires and centimillionaires: I see now that tech executives are once again warning about risk of human extinction caused by AI. I think it’s adorable when the plutes worry about that kind of thing, while the rest of us worry about paying for healthcare, food, and housing. More than 30 million Americans are living below the …

Today I learned: A canary trap is a technique to identify an information leak by giving different versions of a sensitive document to several suspects and observing which version gets leaked. I was familiar with the technique, but I’d never heard the name before, and I was ignorant of the …

Researchers are using Shoggoth, a monster out of HP Lovecraft, as a mascot for AI. Kevin Roose at The New York Times: @TetraspaceWest, the meme’s creator, told me in a Twitter message that the Shoggoth “represents something that thinks in a way that humans don’t understand and that’s totally …

Adam Engst at TidBITS writes an in-depth review of the new, experimental Arc browser for Mac. Lately I’m switching off between Arc, Orion, and Safari.

Cory Doctorow: The FDA literally granted pharma company Ferring a monopoly on shit. More precisely, the FDA rescinded its “discretionary enforcement” guidance relating to fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs), where doctors implant a small quantity of processed poop from one person to …

We recently learned about “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” a 2017 movie directed and written by Luc Besson of “The Fifth Element,” which Julie and I both love. The previews have the same look and feel as the other movie. It stars Dane DeHaan (never heard of him), and Cara DeLevingne, …

Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design: The term brutalism is derived from the French béton brut, meaning “raw concrete”. Although most brutalist buildings are made from concrete, we’re more interested in the term raw. Concrete brutalist buildings often reflect back the forms used to …

Panpsychism is the view that the mind “or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.”

Possibilianism is a religious philosophy that’s open to exploring possibilities. Neuroscientist David Eagleman described it this way: Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an …

The iPhone will auto-reply to text messages—but only when you’re in Driving Focus. I want auto-reply in all Focus modes. I hope that’s coming in the next version of iOS.

What novel should I read next? 📚: I woke up this morning and decided to break up with the novel I’m currently reading. This is a new thing for me; I recently decided to start more books and quit reading more books when they’re not working for me. I’m not finding that resolution easy. A part of me feels compelled to finish a book …

Mr. Davies Giddy rose and said, that while he was willing to allow the hon. gent. who brought forward this every degree of credit for the goodness,of his intentions, as well as for his ability and assiduity; still, upon the best consideration he was able to give the bill, he must totally object to …

Last night I got up for the reason one usually gets up in the middle of the night and walked into a wall forehead-first. Someone had moved the wall in the night. Then, today, I accidentally kicked the sunroom heater and said, “Sorry,” my phone woke up, and Siri said, “Hmm?” How is your weekend …

A national eating disorder hotline fired its staff and replaced them with a chatbot, four days after the workers unionized. The staff weren’t asking for money. They wanted adequate staffing and more training. Callers to the hotline often spoke with staff who could emphasize because the staff had …

A Day in the Life of a Woke Third-Grade Teacher, as Imagined by a Far-Right Politician I pull into the parking lot and say hello to the drag queen we recently hired as the school librarian. As we walk into Socialist Snowflake Learning Center (previously called Robert E. Lee Elementary), we schedule …

‘Ace of Cakes’ Creates “Star Trek: The Cake”

Vacant Arizona big-box store will become nation’s first “Picklemall”

We are five episodes behind on Succession, and I am wondering if I have the willpower to avoid news and social media Sunday and Monday, to avoid series finale spoilers.

My latest: Broadcom-VMware merger will hatch a new ‘supercloud’.

“I tried the AI novel-writing tool everyone hates, and it's better than I expected”: Adi Robertson at The Verge: Last week, generative fiction tool Sudowrite launched a system for writing whole novels. Called Story Engine, it’s another shot in the ongoing culture war between artists and AI developers — one side infuriated by what feels like a devaluation of their craft, the other …

I wrote this: Red Hat brings AI to IT operations. Red Hat is putting artificial intelligence (AI) to work in IT operations and event remediation, showing the technology is good for more than designing novelty socks or creating an endless Seinfeld parody.

Jealous of other people's excellent videoconferencing backgrounds: I have an expanse of blank white wall behind my desk, which always bugs me when I see myself on Zoom calls. This has been a stone in my shoe for three years since videoconferencing became commonplace. I’m jealous when I see other people have excellent backgrounds for their Zoom calls. A friend …

I wrote: Red Hat secures the software supply chain. Red Hat unveils Trusted Software Supply Chain, which tracks where open-source components come from and whether they are trustworthy to “provide customers with the added assurance that the bits they are deploying are safe and secure.”

Oracle’s Larry Ellison gears up to spend millions to back Tim Scott’s 2024 run. Of interest to my Oracle pals. From what I saw working there two years, the culture within Oracle is extremely progressive. Inclusive, good benefits, supports environmental causes. On the other hand, Larry Ellison …

Ray Stevenson Dead: ‘Punisher: War Zone,’ ‘RRR’ Actor Was 58. I’m sad to hear it. To me, he’ll always be Titus Pullo, the lovable cuddly murderous psychopath from “Rome.”

I can proofread my article or generate a cool Midjourney image to accompany said article. Gee, tough decision. Do I want kale or chocolate cake?

If the Apple VR/AR headset debuts, and it’s as described in leaks, it’s going to be the biggest flop in Apple’s history and one of the greatest tech flops ever. Nobody’s interested in wearing a Batman mask all day.

Ex-Apple marketing executive says the company’s upcoming ‘Reality’ headset risks being ‘one of the great tech flops of all time’

Mimestream is a Mac Gmail client that’s worth paying for: Mimestream is a native Mac app for accessing Gmail. It gives you Gmail’s advanced capabilities, including Priority Inbox, categories, and labels, in an app that looks and works like a native Mac app. The alternatives to Mimestream are Gmail’s web interface, which I find cluttered, or native Mac mail …

Daring Fireball notes that the first version of many Apple products is historically overpriced and underfeatured. That’s how Apple works. They grab the affluent early adopters first, and then over the years the price goes down and capabilities improve. Example: The Apple Watch. So if the Apple …

Surprisingly insightful art observations from “The Simpsons."

Kraft Heinz unveils Remix, a customizable Internet of Things sauce dispenser with more than 200 condiment combinations.

I’m looking forward to listening to the State of Micro.blog presentation with @jean @manton and @vincent on my walk this afternoon.

A man named Wilfred Pickles brought regional dialect to the BBC in 1941 as part of an anti-Nazi-propaganda strategy.

School librarians in seven states face possible jail times and hefty fines for giving kids books that acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ people.

A lawsuit in Florida illustrates how two racist LGTBQ-phobic fanatics can get books banned in an entire school district..

Pizza: Pizza is my favorite food. We have pizza once a week. There have been times in my life when I have had it more often than that. I have had great pizza and I have had good pizza. I love the pizza they served on Fridays in the school cafeteria when I was a little kid. I loved riding my bike up …

Walking with the dog the other day, I saw a big snake on the path. 5-7 feet long and fat. This was a couple of days after seeing a coyote walking down the street. I guess we live in Jumanji now.

What if we had a political party that represented working people? All working people. Everybody. All races, ethnicities, genders, sexes, and religions. White, Christian, Black, Jewish, Muslim, agnostics, atheists, men, women, trans, and nonbinary.

Am I too old to use the word “banger?”

There’s been a lot of ink spilled on the Trump transformation of the GOP, but Dems’ transformation from a party representing labor to a party representing McKinsey consultants is less well understood. — Cory Banger link roundup today: Medieval people didn’t drown cats; they LOVED cats. AI hype is a …

Supreme Court Leaves 230 Alone For Now, But Justice Thomas Gives A Pretty Good Explanation For Why It Exists In The First Place. Thomas, of all people, wrote a nuanced defense of the principles underlying Section 230. Mike Masnick at Techdirt: … there was nothing specific to the social media sites …

“It makes you really appreciate how free we are as a country when you’re hiding under a desk with bullets flying over your head.” The Onion: Americans Describe What It’s Like Surviving A Mass Shooting.

Jamelle Bouie: There is a reason Ron DeSantis wants history told a certain way. DeSantis is continuing a long tradition. Lawmakers in the antebellum South censored textbooks to remove criticism of slavery.

The Four Freedoms, According to Republicans Jamelle Bouie at the New York Times: There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles. There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of …

It amazes me when I see someone has worked at the same company for 20+ years. I respect that stability.

De-nerding on coffee: A few years ago, I nerded out on coffee-making methods and eventually settled on using an Aeropress for my daily work-juice. Then I went down a rabbit-hole of looking up Aeropress coffee formulas. There’s an entire nerd subculture of Aeropress enthusiasts, who measure their beans and water to the …

Today I learned Alexander Skarsgård and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau are not the same person.

On YouTube: Unboxing Shakespeare’s First Folio.. Amazing. The books look so new. I’ve always known Shakespeare was a popular writer in his time, but it’s striking to see this reminder. Today I learned what a “folio” and “quarto” are.

This is Catfishing on an Industrial Scale: Laura Cole writes at Wired about fake dating sites that employ hundreds of freelancers around the world “to animate fake profiles and chat with people who have signed up for dating and hookup sites…. Often recruited into ‘customer support’ or content moderation roles, they found themselves playing …

Quite a lot of nature this morning: This morning, a little after 8, I was on my way home from walking the dog, one street over from the house, and I saw a coyote loping down the street. One of the neighbors, still in her red pajamas and slippers, stood in the street and watched. We chatted about the coyote and where it might live. …

Big Tech is parasitic on the news industry, but click taxing isn’t the answer, says Cory Doctorow, who has four better ideas.

jwz: “Today I learned that Church Molestation Liability Insurance is a thing that exists You know what’s not a thing that exists? Drag Show and LGBTQ Bar Molestation Insurance. Because drag shows and LGBTQ bars aren’t threats to kids.

Disney Pulls Plug on $1 Billion Development in Florida. Daring Fireball: “Vote for Republicans, they’re good for business.”

Kieran Culkin, who plays Roman on “Succession,” would be outstanding as Random in the miniseries of Roger Zelazny’s “Chronicles of Amber” that’s supposedly coming.

ME: I can drink three strong cups of coffee every day without any negative effects! ALSO ME: I wonder how I got this vicious insomnia, which is getting worse.

Today I learned the phrase “Taco Tuesday” is a registered trademark of the fast food chain Taco John. But Taco Bell is going to court to liberate “Taco Tuesday” for everyone.

Cory Doctorow: The IRS will do your taxes for you (if that’s what you prefer) “After years of expensively purchased delay, Turbotax and its fellow tax-profiteers are losing the fight to make you pay them to tell the government what it already knows.”

Today I learned Jeff Bezos’s biological father was a unicycle hockey player and owned and operated a bicycle shop.

Elon Musk: Work from home ‘morally wrong’ when some have to show up (CNBC). Wait til he finds out some people are billionaires while others struggle with poverty.

Cory Doctorow: Rent control works. It keeps housing costs down, doesn’t constrain supply, and sometimes increases that supply. We need rent control, and we need to build plenty of more housing. … regular housing for working people. Mr Market doesn’t want to build it, no matter how many …

I Will Defend Free Speech to the Death. Or Until an Autocrat Asks Me to Stop. “Let every petty dictator take notice: If you want Twitter to censor its users, just send me an email.” Via kottke.org

Want to read: Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer 📚

The people who design public bathrooms like to change the faucet designs just to fuck with us. “Let’s see those fuckers try to wash their hands NOW,” they chortle.

The Ugly Truth Behind “We Buy Ugly Houses”. ProPublica’s Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan and Mollie Simon investigate HomeVestors of America, which preys on homeowners desperate to sell, including older adults who have dementia or are in the final stages of terminal illness.

BlueSky supports Markdown links when cross-posting from micro.blog (which is how I post to BlueSky. Let’s see if BlueSky also supports bold and italics.

You’re not uncool. Making friends as an adult is just hard. One important suggestion: Assume that people will like you when they meet you, says University of Maryland professor Marisa G. Franco. “We all have this tendency to think we’re more likely to be rejected than we actually are."

Bluesky should be pronounced “blooski.” Follow me for more branding tips.

For years I’ve complained that there’s no online equivalent to being able to buy one issue of a magazine or newspaper. Columbia Journalism Review explains the business obstacles: Why micropayments will never be a thing in journalism.

Things I am grateful for this morning: The dog does not smell as bad as she did this weekend. (She is very past due for a bath.) The cats rarely throw up overnight on the path between my bed and the bathroom. (Sadly, Julie cannot say the same.)

Tens of millions Americans suffer from chronic, debilitating pain that often drives them to addiction, unemployment and homelessness. Nicholas Kristof reports in depth for The New York Times: Why Americans Feel More Pain

I meant to write “QR Codes” but instead wrote “QR Cods.” Microsoft Word tagged that spelling as fishy.

I’m doing some work in my home office this afternoon and I was literally distracted by a squirrel in the backyard.

Today I learned there’s a “Babylon 5” animated movie coming. Casting details here. I’ll watch!

America’s Caffeine Addiction: Why Some Experts Say It’s Time to Quit. Good article, clickbait headline. Caffeine in moderation is fine, but some of y’all are pounding 10 cups of joe and energy drinks daily and that ain’t right.

Inside the Last Old-School Seltzer Shop in New York. “Good seltzer should hurt — it should be carbonated enough that it kind of stings the back of your throat.” (NYTimes / Corey Kilgannon. Photos and video by Juan Arredondo)

The Enduring Mystery of Barbara Lowe and the Lost ‘Jeopardy!’ Episodes. I had no idea “Jeopardy” fandom was so large and organized. (The Ringer / Claire McNear)

Please enjoy this 11-second video of geese and goslings, which I saw at Lake Murray this morning.

Just as I got my mind un-blown about generative AI, I’m now learning about autonomous agents. I tried doing a Midjourney cartoon to illustrate this point, on the general theme of my mind being blown, but all the drawings came out creepy when I was going for cute.

That time Heather Armstrong roasted me on her popular blog, dooce: I mentioned yesterday that I interviewed Heather Armstrong, who wrote the blog dooce and that she later wrote about how excruciating the experience was for her. Armstrong took her own life this week. She was talented, funny, and insightful, and she helped invent professional blogging, which led to …

I’m sad to learn about the death of pioneering blogger Heather Armstrong, author of dooce. She wrote candidly, movingly, and often hilariously about life and struggles with addiction and depression. I interviewed her and her then-husband and business partner, Jon Armstrong, in the mid-2000s. …

I found IBM’s AI announcement yesterday confusing; this write-up by Tobias Mann on The Register helps clarify details. IBM is pushing its deep enterprise expertise as a differentiator over AWS, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. I think Watson is a brand liability at this point. It’s …

Don’t replace your people with ChatGPT or other AI services (Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / Computerworld). ChatGPT and other AI aren’t ready to replace workers, and only an idiot would think they are.

The dog caught all three of her nutritional supplement treats in the air this morning, so that means it’s going to be a good day.

Mrs. Maisel spoiler speculation: In my head canon, the final episode is set today, in 2023. Midge and Susy are in their 90s and reconciled. And they’re on tour together, like George Burns. In the final scene, Susy goes into Midge’s bedroom in a hotel suite to find Midge died peacefully, in her sleep, fully made up and dressed, …

I’m on the hot new social app. @mitchw.bsky.social. Instead of Bluesky, they should call it “déjà vu.”

If you're looking to procrastinate, Midjourney is great for that. 

It's hard to have a nap when there is a cat standing on your pillow demanding attention. 

I’ve got a 1,500-word article due Thursday but I’m going to try to get it done today. Am writing. Don’t distract me.

Scientists have invented a technique for reading a person’s thoughts without the need for invasive surgery—in other words, they don’t have to crack open your skull to be able to tell what you’re thinking. As I read the article, I thought this sounds like a software problem—which means if it’s …

My latest: VMware customers should find ‘exit ramps’ ahead of Broadcom deal: Gartner. VMware customers need to look for alternatives in case Broadcom puts the screws on post-acquisition.

Paramount Can’t Say No to the Man Behind ‘Yellowstone’: $50,000 a Week for His Ranch, $25 Per Cow. By Erich Schwartzel and Joe Flint at The Wall Street Journal

ChatGPT is powered by these contractors making $15 per hour. Two OpenAI contractors spoke to NBC News about their work training the system behind ChatGPT. One worker, Alex Savreux, says the AI gig work helped pull him out of homelessness.

Steven Spainhouer’s son was working at Allen Premium Outlets when he received the phone call no father ever wants to hear. “He said, ‘Dad, we have a shooting … I’m pulling people into the break room, and we’re going to lock the door,’” Spainhouer told CNN on Sunday. The former Army and police …

Marissa Mayer says she wishes she’d bought Hulu or Netflix instead of Tumblr. She also talks about the AI search race, technology fears, and other Yahoo regrets. (Tech Brew)

AI text generators are writing more of the internet. More AI-generated books and personalized articles mean fewer clients buying human-written content. By Will Oremus at The Washington Post. This seems to affect content mills paying pennies. I’m not worried—and I’m learning to use AI to …

TikTok tracked users who watched LGBTQ content. (WSJ) Imagine what a backward religious dictatorship like Saudi Arabia or Alabama could do with that information.

Elon Musk’s goal for Twitter is “unregretted user-minutes.” (WSJ) A good idea, but how do you measure that?

Republicans have the answer to food insecurity in America: More guns, ban abortion, and stamp out drag shows.

Lines stretch down the block at food banks as costs go up and pandemic aid expires. The line outside Boston’s American Red Cross Food Pantry on a recent Saturday morning stretched the length of two football fields. The number of people filing into the red-brick industrial-zone warehouse on some …

The oats only need to soak two hours and I have an excellent battery case for the phone. Me vs. Monday is a tie so far.

I’ve been awake less than a half hour and already found I forgot to make overnight oats last night and my phone is only 7% charge. Does Monday have a reset button?

Corporate greed, not workers, is the cause of inflation. We know this because CEOs tell us: Call me a conspiratorialist if you must. But when CEOs get on earnings calls and brag about how covid, war, and scare-stories about inflation let them hike their prices and rake in never-before-seen profit …

“Insufficiently Caffeinated” would be a good name for a band.

“… when you refuse to learn why something weird is happening online and just stop and gawk at it, you miss what is always a more interesting story.” — Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day A good rule, online and in the world.

Dave Winer: “I definitely want Bluesky to just go away. I don’t like it because if it gains traction it has potential of replacing Twitter as the festering turd in the middle of what should have been a vibrant growing market that keeps anything else from rising in competition with …

Dave Winer: “As a user, I no longer want to have to visit five sites to see what’s new. I no longer want to have to copy/paste my writing into those same five sites." Preach it, Dave. I’m sick of that copy-pasting.

Ostromizing democracy: Cory Doctorow discusses a proposed new subdiscipline of political science, Analytic Democracy Theory, that studies collective decision-making—a/k/a “democracy”—and particularly how it goes wrong. Also: Libertarians are claiming democracy never works because it doesn’t always …

I used ChatGPT to do background research for an article: I’ve got an interview with a VP at a major vendor that I followed closely while at Light Reading but haven’t paid much attention to since. It’s for an article I’m doing on that company’s overall strategy. I’m diving into some background to prepare for the interview, and I decided to start my …

A new study by researchers at Duke University looks at the bumpy rollout of AI in healthcare systems, and describes what it’ll take to make AI into a useful tool for healthcare providers. Meanwhile, a study in JAMA Internal Medicine found that ChatGPT “decisively bested doctors at providing …

Nature red of tooth and claw came to the backyard: I was hanging here at my desk doing my thing and I looked out the window and saw a big bird of prey on the ground. I think it was an osprey, perhaps one of the ones I’ve seen at the park. It was 18 inches to 2 feet high, with something brown and …

Things I post that people seem to enjoy: Original stuff I write or photograph Memes, vintage ads, and other found media from the Internet. On the other hand, very few people seem to care about links to articles, and I’m starting to get a strong “what’s the point?” feeling …

I have been using Grammarly for a few weeks, and I am extremely impressed. Today’s insight: I can toggle checking for the Oxford comma. I can switch it on for clients that like the Oxford comma, and off for clients that don’t.

Self-appointed virtue police at the National Center for Sexual Exploitation (NCSE) are putting the heat on Reddit to ban porn. “If they cause enough fuss in the media, over and over, eventually Reddit will decide it’s not financially worthwhile to stand up for sanity, and they’ll just …

I saw these baby geese and momma goose at the park this morning. Gosling photos will continue until morale improves. 📷

Using the word “risible” makes you a pompous weenie.

Optimism Optimized & Pessimism Prodded “An interview about THE FUTURE with Hugo Winning author CHARLES STROSS! Fumblingly carried out by John Shirley:” The Singularity “uncritically subsumes patterns of belief that originated in Christianity…. “ The Singularity’s origin in “the writings of …

Mastodon needs to be more user-friendly, or people will just continue going to the platforms supported by billionaires, despite evidence from Twitter and Facebook that those platforms aren’t great. I want to like Mastodon, but it seems like work.

jwz: Blue skies over Mastodon

Donald G. McNeil Jr. cites many reasons why US pandemic response was disgracefully incompetent, and why it’s wrong to pin all the blame on Fauci, or make a saint out of him either. Fauci is a courageous scientist and was a dutiful civil servant doing the best he could with little actual authority, …

Michael J. Fox says life with Parkinson’s is ‘getting harder’: “I’m not gonna be 80'

Boost Your ChatGPT Skills: 7 Gems Straight from OpenAI’s Dev Docs (TfTHacker)

5G Not Enough? Telecom Companies Look to 5.5G (WSJ) This time it’ll succeed, because it goes to 11.

What Is Pleroma?. Like Mastodon, but different.

Sexism Toward Secretaries: How Women Were Treated on the Job in the US (Teen Vogue)

Gadgets I am tempted by: This Ultimate Hacking Keyboard. I like the way it separates in two parts, with a trackball in the center. But it’s not worth $385 to me, so I’ll pass. Also, this 4K 15.6-inch portable monitor would tempt me if I was still living the frequent business travel life. And I’m …

Interesting: “Work is starting on a protocol bridge between ActivityPub and the AT protocol (the protocol that Bluesky uses).”. So BlueSky users would be able to connect with folks on Mastodon and other Fediverse services, and vice-versa?

Private equity finally delivered Sarah Palin’s death panels: Hospices are unregulated, heavily subsidized charnel houses. Cory Doctorow: The private healthcare sector is designed to deny care. Its first duty is to its shareholders, not its patients, and every dollar spent on care is a dollar not …

This immature osprey was standing on the footpath at Lake Murray for a long time this morning; passers-by said he’d been there for hours. There’s an osprey nest on a utility pole high above the footpath. Probably the immature osprey fell out and could not fly up. Another osprey was standing just …

I’ve been putting energy into Mastodon, but Bluesky looks interesting and may just lap Masto. I’ve been dismissive of Bluesky until now, but I just signed up for the private beta. I keep wanting to read Nostr as “Nostril.”

Techdirt’s Mike Masnick looks at options post-twitter. Six Months In: Thoughts On The Current Post-Twitter Diaspora Options

35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now (The New York Times)

Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was). (The New York Public Library)

Tech journalist and online safety expert Larry Magid describes a terrifying exchange with scammers who claimed to have kidnapped his wife.

Dropbox is laying off 500 people and pivoting to AI (The Verge). Dropbox is done. Steve Jobs was right. It’s a feature, not a company.

Today I learned that Oxiclean does an amazing job cleaning years of coffee crust from the inside of my Hario insulated metal coffee server. It’s like new. Sadly, my coffee loses some flavor served from a clean container.

Ron DeSantis’s Disney Miscalculation: ‘Disney Is Playing the Long Game’. Even Florida Republicans are questioning DeSantis’s strategy. (WSJ)

Today I am just saying nope to empty news calories. Two articles about Tucker Carlson’s last broadcast? Another day I might have read one or both but today I just say nope. A profile of a powerful Democratic political consultant who is apparently an awful person? Another day I would gobble that up, …

This blog is a LGBTQ- and trans-friendly place. I’m posting less about politics nowadays, and that’s a conscious decision by me. But given all the hate coming out of the red states nowadays, it seems to me to be necessary to take a stand on this issue.

Anti-trans bigotry taps into the darkest impulses in human societies. It’s a step on a dark road that ends in genocide.

Timothy Lee: “Why I’m not worried about AI causing mass unemployment. Software didn’t eat the world and AI won’t either.”

You should always start the day with gratitude. This morning I’m grateful that the cat vomit on my blanket was quick and easy to clean up.

Somebody swiped samples of the “world’s most expensive chocolate” from the newsroom refrigerator of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times. The samples were “needed for an article.”

Cory Doctorow’s “Red Team Blues” is the most exciting technothriller about a 67-year-old accountant you’ll read this year 📚: 

“Red Team Blues,” the latest novel by the prolific Cory Doctorow, is a gripping technothriller about billion-dollar cryptocurrency crime. I don’t often encounter fiction that pulls me in as hard as “Red Team Blues” anymore—I’m a jaded reader. But “Red Team Blues” kept me up well past my bedtime on …

Cats are always disappointed in you, whereas dogs always think you’re amazing and you’re disappointed in yourself for failing to live up to their high regard.

Just a reminder that ALL the sticks in the forest are free. Go out and get yourself a cool stick. You earned it!

I’ll just switch notetaking apps and/or task managers and then my life will be perfect, right?

The 65 newest series and movies to stream right now - The Washington Post. Some of these are already on our watchlist, and I’ve bookmarked a bunch of trailers for others.

Tonight I wiki’d and googled about the Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon stories 📚and their author, Spider Robinson. The bar travels through time and space1 but its home base is Route 25A, in Suffolk County on Long Island, which is just a few miles from where I grew up. Robinson went to the same college I …

Noncompete clauses and related employment agreements are indentured servitude. Noncompetes epitomize MLK’s “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.” They’re a way for employers to operate in a command economy where the power of the state can be …

18 Years Ago, an 18-Second Video Recorded at the San Diego Zoo Launched YouTube

📷 Julie and I walked around Hillcrest today.

📚I reread “Snow Crash, recently and recommend it. It gets better with age. When people talk about “Snow Crash” today, all they talk about is the Metaverse. But there is a lot going on in that novel, and the Metaverse is only part of it. I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded that the novel is …

📷 Minnie and I hiked the Father Junipero Serra trail yesterday.

ChatGPT Is Already Changing How I Do My Job. By Farhad Manjoo at The New York Times.

Guillotinable. The bit about the dog isn’t even the worst thing this narcissistic dipshit said. Not even close. CEO Celebrates Worker Who Sold Family Dog After He Demanded They Return to Office

In his memo announcing the cuts Peretti took full responsibility, writing “I also want to be clear: I could have managed these changes better as the CEO of this company and our leadership team could have performed better…” which is why 180 other people will be getting fired instead of him. He’s …

This speech was better in the original German. Trump touts authoritarian vision for second term: ‘I am your justice’ - The Washington Post

I’ve been using Day One for journaling since 2011. It will be interesting to see where Apple goes with this. Apple will launch a journaling app in iOS 17, but that’s bad news for some devs - Ars Technica

California Isn’t Special: California’s housing problem isn’t what you think it is: Jerusalem Demsas at The Atlantic: California’s housing policies are the same as everywhere in the US, but population pressure has made the housing situation here far worse. In blue and red localities across the country, researchers find a “California-style” preference for single-family homes, …

Thanks for being obsessed with us, America. Red State conservatives don’t hate California for what’s bad about California. They hate California for what’s great about California.

I’d love to see a Star Trek miniseries focused on young James Kirk, in his first posting to a bridge crew.: I always preferred the TV series Kirk to the movie Kirk. In the series Kirk, follows the chain of command and obeys orders, even when he thinks the orders are stupid. Movie Kirk is a cowboy. So let’s call the series “Ensign Kirk.” We know that Kirk in Starfleet Academy was a grind, so how does he …

"Picard" seemed to be setting up a spinoff focused on Seven of Nine, and I'm there for that.: I love Jeri Ryan. And not just for the usual reasons men love her; she’s also an excellent character actor. I’ve only ever seen her in a narrow range of roles, but she excels at that range. She plays beautiful, powerful middle-aged bitches. Sometimes she plays villains, sometimes—as in …

Cox shut down Internet service for scheduled maintenance this morning, because apparently it’s 1983 and people don’t need Internet to work from home. I am not feeling a lot of love for Cox right now.

I had no blue checkmark before having no blue checkmark was cool.

My latest: Cisco tames cloud application security chaos with OpenClarity. Cisco enhanced its OpenClarity open-source security suite to further protect today’s hairy cloud-native applications. The new VMClarity tackles security for applications built with virtual machines.

Boggle, created in the 1970s, quietly changed its design in 1987 to put all the Fs and Ks on the same cubes, making it impossible for players to spell out the F-bomb. (Via kottke.org)

Instagram is letting users put up to five links in their profile and I guess that’s what counts for innovation at Meta. Also, Linktree had $1B+ valuation as of a year ago, and now that’s gone. I thought NFTs were a ridiculous investment but Linktree’s business seems even more …

Ever since the dog snatched half of Julie’s Reuben sandwich from the kitchen counter on Sunday, I have been making jokes about the subject. Like: The dog doesn’t want treats anymore; she wants more corned beef. Or: The dog asked us if we could swing by the deli and bring her back another sandwich. …

“Headless Body in Topless Bar” turns 40 (Daring Fireball)

I wonder whether the 12.9” iPad has a future.: Seems like almost anybody thinking about buying one of the big iPads would be better off with a MacBook Air. For most people, the 12.9” iPad is an ungainly platypus, neither mammal nor bird. The only people who seem like they’d want the 12.9” iPad would be graphic artists and other people who …

Cory Doctorow has got me thinking about doing a better job structuring threads on Mastodon and Twitter. Damn you, Cory, I don’t have time for this. *shakes fist*

Ever since I was a little kid, I have thought men’s suits from the 1930s-50s looked great.: When I was a little kid, I watched old black-and-white reruns of Superman, Abbott & Costello, and particularly John Astin in The Addams Family, and thought to myself, damn, those guys looked sharp. Particularly the double-breasted suits. Well, Lou Costello didn’t look sharp. But Bud Abbot? Sure. …

The dog would like me to go to the deli again today and pick up another sandwich. Less lean this time. Not too fatty, but a little more fatty than yesterday.

Julie put a lean corned beef Reuben sandwich on the kitchen counter and left the room for a minute. While she was out, the dog snatched the sandwich off the counter and ate half of it. The dog has a death wish.

I did 14,000 steps yesterday, about 4,000 more than usual. Climbed Cowles Mountain, about 3.4 miles distance and 890 feet elevation. Then got home and walked the dog for a mile. My knees would like to discuss my choices.

Amazon Web Services sales and support teams are currently “spending much of their time helping customers optimize their AWS spend so they can better weather this uncertain economy,” says CEO Andy Jassy in an annual letter to shareholders. …

Cats have no idea how arms work. They’ll park behind you or six feet away, and demand scritches. Cats think arms are 7-foot-long tentacles.

Anxious about the coming week? Cowles Mountain has a message for you. I saw this sign while hiking today. That’s Lake Murray in the background.

In defense of Mastodon threads (and Twitter threads too): Threading an essay requires the author to compose it in stanzas, each of which is a standalone, complete thought – and that means that readers can engage with each though separately, by replying to just that stanza. For me, that …

It’s been years since I hiked Cowles Mountain and I think it’s gotten taller. Oh my knees. Good hike though.

Elon Musk’s Free-Speech Charade Is Over Musk’s “‘free-speech absolutism’ was mostly code for a high tolerance for bigotry toward particular groups, a smoke screen that obscured an obvious hostility toward any speech that threatened his ability to make money.” Adam Serwer at The Atlantic: …

… “traditional fact-checking and counterarguments are the least effective means of combating conspiracy beliefs…” but ”’fact-based inoculation’ – a kind of information vaccine where people are primed to spot misinformation before they are exposed to it – significantly reduced conspiratorial …

The Lisa Personal Computer: Apple’s Influential Flop (Kottke)

“What’s the Healthiest Way to Handle a Creeping Feeling That the World Is Ending?" (Kottke)

Customize Your AirPods Pro for Even Better Sound (Kottke)

I shot this photo at Lake Murray using the pano setting on the iPhone. It came out a little wobbly.

We watched “Executive Suite” (1954). The powerful head of a nationwide furniture company drops dead on a Friday evening without naming a successor, and five vice presidents fight for the presidency over the next 24 hours. Features the highest high tech of its era: person-to-person calls, intercoms …

Slouching is bad for your back, unless you’re in bed with a cat in your lap.

When Picard and his posse took their stations on the bridge, I expected them to land in their seats and go “oy” like a bunch of old Jews.

When Picard and his posse took their stations on the bridge, I expected them to land in their seats and go “oy” like a bunch of old Jews.

📷 Happy Friday and here are the ducks you asked for. I saw them at Lake Murray, and photographed them using the Moment tele lens for the iPhone.

I have done laundry without first running out of clean socks and underwear. I am going to put this on my LinkedIn profile.

Gentleman develops DIY 3D printed typeballs for vintage IBM Selectric typewriters. (Ars Technica) I never loved Selectric typewriters. The humming was annoying, like it was impatient for me to type something. And then the keys hitting paper were like gunshots. I liked manual typewriters. A few years …

Pearl the chihuahua is the world’s shortest dog. I would die for Pearl.

Why am I still watching the Mandalorian? I am tired of Star Wars. I fall asleep watching every episode. I think I just answered my question.

“‘Hunger Games’ meets ‘Lord of the Flies’” among employees at Facebook’s parent company, Meta, as mass layoffs and absentee bosses create a morale crisis. “While Meta’s peers are chasing a wave of innovation in artificial intelligence, Mr. Zuckerberg has made a big bet on the metaverse,” which …

News Is Not a Normal Mac App (Michael Tsai). I like Apple News as a service, but I dislike the app so much that I will probably cancel it. I can’t easily save articles to a read-it-later app, file them for future reference. or share them on social media.

Surprising things happen when you put 25 AI agents together in an RPG town. Surprising? More like “amazing.”

I saw this car. I believe the owner may be an anime fan.

DIY 3-D printed typeballs for vintage IBM Selectric typewriters

Is 4th mover advantage a thing? I wrote: Oracle benefits from a ‘4th mover’ cloud advantage. Oracle’s “legacy as a deep technology company” gives it ammunition to take down competitive cloud providers with much greater market share, according to Wall Street analysts at Guggenheim.

I worked at Google for -10 days A Russian was hired at Google after a lengthy and onerous interview process. He took an English exam, mandatory tuberculosis tests, received a visa, quit his previous job, vacated his apartment in Yekaterinburg, packed, and got ready to move to London. But he was …

Cory Doctorow reviews “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream,” a book by Alissa Quart. Quart addresses “the meritocratic delusion of the ‘self-made man,’ Doctorow says. He adds: “America is not a bootstrap-friendly land. If you have money in America, chances are very good you …

Two men hospitalized after game of Monopoly ends in sword fight

I very much like command palettes as an alternative to buttons, icons, menus, and other ways to control a computer. But I regularly use two apps with command palettes—the Arc browser and Obsidian—and I also use Raycast, which is a system-wide command palette. That gets confusing.

Hannah Arendt on “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship:” Better to Suffer Than Collaborate (Open Culture). Arendt identifies a third moral choice when living in an oppressive society: You can go along, which is evil. You can resist, which can get you dead. Or you can simply refuse to comply … …

The American religion is “workism,” the belief that employment can provide everything we have historically expected from churches. As the [20th Century] managerial revolution created a sense of professional progress, the decline of organized religion and social integration in the 20th century left …

A marketing professor gave his students a challenge: If they made a video that got a million views, the final exam would be canceled. (NYTimes)

By me: Tech layoffs surge—again—but mainstream businesses are hiring techies.. Tech layoffs this year already exceed all of last year, but workers are finding jobs in industries such as aerospace/defense, business consulting, and finance/banking.

Whoever said there’s more than one way to skin a cat is not someone I would want as a pet sitter.

Easter Sunday. Lake Murray was packed with picnickers. It doesn’t look packed in this photo, but trust me, it was packed.

Is there any way I can subscribe to a Mastodon user’s RSS or Atom feed that includes boosts and media attachments? Is that supported on mastodon.social?

Texas governor Greg Abbott says he will pardon Daniel Perry, who was convicted of killing a protester at a Black Lives Matter march.. (Austin American-Statesman) Garrett Foster, who was killed by Perry, was carrying an AK-47. Perry claimed Foster pointed the gun at him. But prosecutors pointed to …

Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars (Reuters)

ChatGPT invented a sexual harassment scandal and named a real law professor as the accused. What happens when ChatGPT lies about real people? Pranshu Verma and Will Oremus at The Washington Post: One night last week, the law professor Jonathan Turley got a troubling email. As part of a research …

‘Bees are sentient’: inside the stunning brains of nature’s hardest workers. Research suggests bees have emotions, dreams, and even PTSD, raising ethical concerns. (The Guardian)

Gruesome cache of severed hands is evidence of trophy-taking in ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian warriors took enemies’ hands as trophies, using them to account for battle casualties, and often presenting them to the Pharoah. (Ars Technica / Jennifer Ouellette)

Was this week’s “Picard” the first time “Star Trek” dropped an F-bomb? Did they boldly go where they’d never gone before?

The gambler who beat roulette. For decades, casinos scoffed as mathematicians and physicists devised elaborate systems to take down the house. Then an unassuming Croatian’s winning strategy forever changed the game. (Bloomberg / Kit Chellel, with Vladimir Otasevic, Daryna Krasnolutska, Peter …

Smart glasses developed by Cornell researchers can read silent speech, tracking lip and mouth movements, to control smartphones and other devices. (Cornell Chronicle / Louis DiPietro) I remember technology like this featured in science fiction by John Varley in the 1970s, and have wondered why it …

Cardboard drones running open source software take flight

Here’s What Retirement With Less Than $1 Million Looks Like in America (WSJ / Veronica Dagher and Anne Tergesen). Five retirees open up about their financial lives and how they spend their time and money.

The poop emoji: a legal history (The Verge / Sara Jeong). Amusing story about a serious problem: Emoji are used in mainstream communications. Those communications are cited in lawsuits. Judges are often confused about what they mean; they’re now taking emoji classes. And legal databases can’t manage …

… the only rational explanation for why he bought Twitter in the first place — aside from possible market manipulation — is because he’s a pathologically divorced dweeb that became so obsessed with online popularity during the COVID-19 lockdown that it scrambled his brain. — Ryan Broderick, Garbage …

New trailer for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." Holy cow, this looks fantastic.

‘Farce of Democracy’: Tennessee Republicans Just Expelled 2 Black Democrats for a Peaceful Protest. “Republicans voted to kick Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson out of the legislature, while a vote to oust Rep. Gloria Johnson failed by one vote.” … “Asked why she was not expelled along with the …

The Republican-dominated North Dakota state senate voted to increase their own meal reimbursement after rejecting a bill to expand free school lunches for low-income students. Republicans: The party that cares about children.

A Washington State Apple Store was robbed of $500K in iPhones by thieves who tunneled in through the wall of a neighboring coffee shop. (MacRumors / Juli Clover)

If It’s Advertised to You Online, You Probably Shouldn’t Buy It. Here’s Why.. Ads are serving us lousy, overpriced goods. (NYTimes / Julia Angwin). Not covered in this article: Microtargeted ads are reportedly no more effective than contextual ads. So we’re giving up our privacy, advertisers are …

A copy of the original Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS shipped since 2018. (Andy Baio / Waxy.org)

Clarence Thomas has secretly accepted millions of dollars in luxury trips from a conservative Republican donor over more than 20 years, according to a ProPublica investigation. For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from [Dallas businessman Harlan Crow] …

Today I learned “Fiddler on the Roof” is a smash hit in Japan. Since 1967, the musical’s seen hundreds of Japanese revivals. Joseph Stein, who penned the book to Fiddler, was once approached by a Japanese producer who asked, “Do they understand this show in America?” “Yes, of course,” replied …

We watched “Murder Mystery,” a 2019 comedy-mystery starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston as married couple Nick and Audrey Spitz, a New York cop, and a hairdresser. On a flight to Europe for a bus-tour vacation, she strikes up a friendship with a dapper gentleman on the plane. The dapper …

📷 My Bar Mitzvah photo. That jacket was kickin in 1974.

Well played, Switchzilla! Cisco trashed its offices and equipment as it rolled back operations in Russia, and then claimed the property damage as depreciation in its tax filings to Moscow. (The Register / Simon Sharwood)

We’ve been watching “Shadow and Bone.” I’m not into it but Julie is, so I guess I’ll give it another episode or two. jwz is really not into it, and he gave it both seasons. … the villain in this show looked like he wandered in from a different sound stage. He looked like the kind of guy who would …

I’ve been thinking lately that I read too much national political news and post too much about national politics. I may have more to say on this subject, but until then here is an excellent related article by Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day: Yesterday, in a lull between the release of the Barbie …

New research shows even moderate drinkers have poorer health and live shorter lives than teetotalers, contradicting a century of previous science. For decades, scientific studies suggested moderate drinking was better for most people’s health than not drinking at all, and could even help them live …

A look at Bloomberg’s BloombergGPT, a domain-specific AI for business news trained on decades of financial news and data. (NiemanLab / Joshua Benton)

I’m supposed to go for a blood test tomorrow morning for life insurance, but the address they gave me on the phone is one number off from the address on Apple Maps, and Apple Maps shows the clinic as permanently closed, and the operator on the phone said the name on the sign is different from the …

A bit of family history, from my father’s service in Word War II: My father received these humorous fake orders when he was discharged from the army in 1945, the end of the war. I found this document while doing some decluttering in my home office yesterday. The paper is brown with age and fragile to the touch. It’s apparently typed and mimeographed. The …

I’m giving Readwise Reader another try as a read-it-later service after using Matter for several months. Matter is great, but I’m hoping for better search capabilities. I’m starting to do tech news again, on a freelance basis, for Silverlinings, and I want to start building a …

I have friends who used to go see movies at random. They caught movies the first days the movies were released before they saw trailers or ads or reviews. They would go to a theater, buy a ticket, and see whatever was playing. One of these friends based decisions on movie posters, and solely the …

Today I learned that Fletcher Previn, CIO of $52 billion networking company Cisco Systems, is the son of actress Mia Farrow and composer-conductor Andre Previn. (Computerworld / Lucas Mearian) Also, while many companies are mandating a return to the office, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in April 2021 …

I can spell “sovereignty” as long as I don’t think about it.

The Day Windows Died. By Thomas Bandt.

Jackson Heights: The neighbourhood that epitomises New Yorkl. “Travellers may go to Central Park or Times Square to see New York City, but there’s no better place to feel the city’s DNA and understand how it started than here.” (BBC Travel / Sebastian Modak). I love New York. I grew up …

Why don’t we have Cher Horowitz’s automated closet from the 1995 movie “Clueless?”. On the Articles of Interest podcast by Avery Trufelman.

I finally got a decent photo of this osprey at Lake Murray. I’ve seen it a few times a month for a couple of years. The nest is at the top of a utility pole that looks to be about 50 feet tall—far too distant for my iPhone XS to get a good shot. I’ve been putting off carrying my Nikon with the long …

Cory Doctorow: Flickr takes action against Creative Commons/copyleft trolls; how Cory and his long-distance romance played a modest role in founding Flickr; “Yahoo’s haunted armada of Web 2.0 ghost-ships”; the “depravity of copyleft trolls”; Marco Verch; “the passive-income brainworm – a …

Apple Photos has a feature where you can enter a word in a search box and images matching that word come up. It’s like Google Images search for your own photo library. I searched Apple Photos for the word “bird,” and this photo from 2014 came up.

We started watching a movie called John Wick tonight. We only had a chance to watch the first half hour, so I don’t know what it’s about. It stars Keanu Reeves and it looks like he’s a widower who learns to love life again with the help of his puppy and a new friend, a young …

In March 2020, Emily Yang Liu spent hours each day in virtual meeting…. To keep herself engaged, she pinned her work crush, Jacob Michael Klinker, to her screen. One day in April 2020, the product manager on the team, Ronald Ho, pinged her during the meeting and said, “Why do you have Jake …

“You can just eat ramen for breakfast, you don’t have to be a pervert about it.” Cup Noodles Breakfast is instant ramen flavored artificially with maple syrup pancakes, sausage and egg.

“Paleontologists theorize the T-Rex had kissable lips and an ass that won’t quit”

A second woman has come forward to charge San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher with sexual harassment. (NBC 7 San Diego/Eric S. Page)

People now living could break previous longevity records, and keep on going and going. But not in America, where lifespans are declining. (Brandon Vigliarolo / The Register) Interestingly, while average longevity has steadily increased for centuries, the maximum lifespan has been relatively …

Ian Welsh predicts dire outcomes for the US as a result of the Trump indictment. America and most nations let their elites slide on crimes that don’t harm other elites. This has allowed a whole lot of evil acts to occur unpunished and for elites to act knowing they will never be held responsible …

A Google VP says Microsoft is abusing its dominance in on-premises software and Office 365 to give it an unfair advantage in the cloud (Foo Yun Chee / Reuters). “Microsoft definitely has a very anti-competitive posture in cloud. They are leveraging a lot of their dominance in the on-premise …

A Maryland court reinstated Adnan Syed’s conviction and ordered a new hearing. (NPR). This seems deeply wrong to me. Syed’s conviction was vacated after the court essentially found both his defense and the prosecution were incompetent. Nothing in the appellate court’s ruling changes or disputes …

I had been thinking the Stormy Daniels case was bullshit, but Judd Legum makes the case why it matters. Elections are supposed to be about information and transparency. Daniels’ statements could have changed enough voters’ minds to swing the election the other way. Trump schemed to conceal relevant …

AI and the American Smile A writer signing their name as “Jenka” on Medium describes a Midjourney experiment to envision selfie photos throughout history, which gave the subjects big smiles, making them all look American. Smiling is not a universal language; the big, confident grin is uniquely …

This Disturbing Theory Explains Pixar’s Cars. By Jason Torchinsky at Jalopnik.

Things I saw around the neighborhood

I wonder whether the new Wordpress version handles untitled blog posts better than previous versions. Such a simple thing, but it’s what eventually drove me off the platform.

My latest: $61B Broadcom-VMware merger is probably toast, says legal expert. The British Competition and Markets Authority launched an in-depth investigation of the deal Wednesday. Some 60% of M&As die once the CMA gets its hooks into them.

Five years ago today: I got hungry for a sweet before bedtime so I ventured out of my hotel at about 11 pm and found this Starbucks. It was closed.

Things I saw while walking the dog

Minnie and I saw this display at a house we walked past yesterday.

Police raided the home of rapper “Afroman,” found nothing illegal, and then sued him for using footage of the raid in music videos. Police had a warrant for drug trafficking and kidnapping. They destroyed his front door and driveway gate, “lost” $400 of cash they took, and ogled a lemon pound cake, …

CNN: An appointee to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' new oversight board in control of Disney’s special tax district called homosexuality “evil” and said tap water could be making people gay..

A gentleman wishes to know whether he is an asshole for sharing his father-in-law’s porn browser history at a family gathering. On reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole

I tried Grammarly yesterday and I like it a lot: I published two posts here yesterday and noticed copyediting errors after publication. This troubled me partly because I had a whitepaper due later that day, and I was concerned about sloppy mistakes in paying copy. So I decided, “I’ve heard good things about Grammarly. I’ll give that a try.” Holy …

Shower thought: What’s the deal with Velcro, anyway? How long has it been around?: The hook-and-loop fastener Velcro was conceived in 1951 by Swiss engineer George de Mestral. Ten years later, he founded the Velcro company in 1951. Wikipedia: Hook-and-loop fastener: Columnist Sylvia Porter made the first mention of the product in her column Your Money’s Worth of August 25, …

It would be funny if this was a 3,400-year-old rickroll. Hear the Oldest Song in the World: A Sumerian Hymn Written 3,400 Years Ago

Logseq vs. Obsidian: First impressions: I played with Logseq a bit as an alternative to Obsidian, or complement for it. Logseq seems like a simplified version of Obsidian that does less. For many people that will be a plus. Fewer options equals fewer things to fiddle with and potentially break. Logseq is an extreme outliner. It wants …

I just pledged $53 to the Kickstarter for Cory Doctorow’s upcoming novel, “Red Team Blues.” In pledging, I’m supporting the excellent work Cory (who is on Mastodon as @pluralistic@mamot.fr) does on his blog and podcast, which are free. The $53 pledge gets me a nice hardcover, which …

What does a Mandalorian like to eat with curds? This is the whey. How do Jewish Mandalorians expresses dismay? They say “Oy vey.” How do Spanish Mandalorians express strong approval: “¡Olé! ¡olé!” How does a Mandalorian respond to being kicked off social media for telling too many bad …

Good negotiating advice from @lex Friedman: Negotiation is a conversation.

A Journalist Believes He Was Banned From Midjourney After His AI Images Of Donald Trump Getting Arrested Went Viral. Eliot Higgins, who founded Bellingcat, an investigative journalism organization, said he intended the sequence of 50 images as satire. The sequence included a chain of images that …

Reading about logseq as a possible alternative to Obsidian. Or maybe complementary?

Laid-off tech workers find homes in the real economy while tech investors continue to transfer wealth from people who make things to people who own things. By Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr

RIP Bobbi Ercoline, who was photographed wrapped in a blanket, in the arms of her boyfriend, on the iconic Woodstock album cover. She married that boyfriend; they were together 54 years until her death Saturday.

People trust celebrities, politicians, and social media personalities, and discount scientists as corrupt. Scientists are often wrong, their work should be scrutinized and debated vigorously. But over the past three years, people with journalistic status and little training and influence on …

Poop, whiskey, and trademark law. The Supreme Court hears a surprisingly difficult case about poop jokes, in Jack Daniel’s v. VIP. By Ian Millhiser at Vox.

Daniel Lavery has a third dog, named Mr. Wilson, “a brief loan from a friend on vacation, and not a permanent addition.” Neighborhood adults are dubious. Small children have been more enthusiastic, as the addition of Mr. Wilson has united some of the most beloved of childhood pastimes: counting to …

Antisemites have a long and paradoxical history of supporting Zionism. White Christian nationalists in the US and Europe see Israel as a model ethnic state, and see Jews at home as pollutants. Peter Beinart at Jewish Currents: Antisemitic Zionists Aren’t a Contradiction in Terms

“You do it once when you’re drunk, then it becomes part of your life." Meet the Secret Society of People Who Piss in the Sink. By Miles Klee at Rolling Stone. They have a thriving subreddit because of course they do.

A message for folks who follow me from Mastodon: Micro.blog, the outstanding service I use to post here, just implemented a feature that lets users migrate their Mastodon followers to follow a Mastodon account. I plan to do that with all my ActivityPub followers here—move y’all to @mitchw@mastodon.social—unless I hear a great outcry of …

Minnie at bedtime. She wants details about our planetary defenses.

I enjoyed the first episode of “Lucky Hank,” a dark comedy starring Bob Odenkirk as the chair of the English Department of a mediocre and minuscule northeastern college. He is going through a midlife crisis. It’s based on a novel I thoroughly enjoyed by one of my favorite writers, “Straight Man,” by …

We saw a bobcat on the paved trail while I was out walking the dog at Lake Murray this afternoon. It was about 50 feet away and moving perpendicular across the trail at a fast trot, so I only saw it for a second or two. It wanted very little to do with us. The feeling was mutual. It was at the end …

“Toilet meal” is the Japanese practice of eating meals in “toilet rooms”—public bathrooms—to get a little valuable alone time, or because they don’t have anybody to eat with and they don’t want to be seen eating alone. wikipedia.org

“The Mariko Aoki phenomenon (青木まりこ現象, Aoki Mariko genshō) is a Japanese expression referring to a sudden urge to defecate that is felt upon entering bookstores.” wikipedia.org

If I was a Mandalorian, I would wait until the other Mandalorians were eating, and then I would say “this is the way” to them, so they would have to say “this is the way” back with a mouth full of food. If I was a Mandalorian, I would wait until the other Mandalorians had their helmets off, and then …

Now, guys with zero game can try their luck with CupidBots. For $15 a month, an AI algorithm will pick out women for them on their dating app of choice, based on their previous swipes…. The AI then masquerades as the man behind the dating profile, and continues to talk and flirt with its …

Cal Newport: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong: The Surprisingly Relaxed Lives of Elite Achievers

Margaret Atwood: What I Read I like to feel that I can tell an apple from a pear, and I don’t expect from the pear what I might expect from the apple. In other words, if I’m reading Conan the Conqueror I’m not demanding that it be Middlemarch.

How to help friends and employees living with long Covid cnn.com

We had our bathrooms remodeled in 2017, and I have finally figured out how to work the light switches in my bathroom. I was a gifted child.

Why Did Men Stop Wearing Hats? gentlemansgazette.com

I saw these two tiny girls while walking Minnie yesterday. We literally died from the cute.

The turmoil at Sarasota Memorial, one of Florida’s largest public hospitals, began last year after three candidates running on a platform of “health freedom” won seats on the nine-member board that oversees the hospital. Board meetings, once sleepy, started drawing hundreds of angry people who, like …

Who Is Still Inside the Metaverse? Searching for friends in Mark Zuckerberg’s deserted fantasyland. In September, my family and I move from our home in Dublin to a fancy East Coast college town, where I’ll be teaching for the semester. I grew up in Dublin, which means I have a wide circle of …

Margaret Atwood: “The bathroom is a place where you can go in and pretend to be doing one thing while actually you’re reading. Nobody can interrupt you. Compendiums of this and that are very useful for bathroom reading: small reading packages within a larger book. You wouldn’t want to …

“Horny bro conservatism:” Republicans are trying to win over a new generation of sexually libertine young men. “What if some conservatives aren’t longing for Ronald Reagan’s heyday but for the time when women were hotter, you could put up a topless calendar in your cubicle at the office without fear …

Jamelle Bouie: “The people who blame wokeness for the collapse of a bank do not want you to understand or even think about the political economy of banking in the United States. They want to deflect your attention from the real questions toward a manufactured cultural conflict. And the reason they …

“The only safe AI is open source. Closed AIs are dangerous.” johnrobb.substack.com

A court will decide whether antifa is a political movement or criminal conspiracy. usatoday.com I’m skeptical whether antifa even exists. It’s a right-wing fantasy, like wokism and LGBTQ groomers.

MSNBC viewers seem mostly interested in which books his supporters want removed from elementary school libraries, how he’s treating The Walt Disney Company, and which Miami venues might lose their liquor licenses from having drag performances in spaces open to children. And certainly, DeSantis has …

Trump Expects to Be Arrested Next Week. He’s calling on his supporters to protest. Because that worked well for everybody last time.

Amusing myself with a phone fraudster earlier today.

Every time I play with FeedLand I come away thinking it’s a basic web-based RSS reader, of which there are already quite a few. Other than all of your subscriptions being public, how is Feedland different from Feedly, Feedbin, Inoreader, NewsBlur, etc.? It does far less than those other guys, …

45 minutes to try to create a COBRA account and it turned out the problem was my password needed a special character. Isn’t that special? That, and reviewing COBRA paperwork has been my morning so far.

Title for a proposed spinoff series starring Captain Shaw and the Titan: “Star Trek: Just a Dipshit From Chicago.”

What is “wuthering”? As in, “Wuthering Heights”? What are the heights doing?

This season of Picard is some of the most enjoyable Star Trek ever. We need a spinoff series featuring Captain Shaw and the Titan. I love him. His motto: “To boldly go where no one has gone before … kvetching the whole time.” Todd Stashwick, who plays Shaw, is a terrific character …

This morning I learned what the name is for the genre of music that the cantina band plays in “Star Wars,” and now I want to go back to bed and start the day over.

My process for getting ready to walk in the rain, and getting myself and the dog dry when we get back, has become so elaborate that I think I can now refer to it as a “workflow,” and describe all my rain gear as a “tech stack.”

I saw a big fat squirrel sitting on the steel fence just outside my office window, licking rainwater off the top of the railing. It stayed there a good long time. I keep a Nikon with a moderately long lens on my desk next to me for just such wildlife encounters as these. Critters like our backyard. …

I’ve heard great things about “Children of Time,” by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and I’ve started reading it, but I’m finding it tough to get into. The book is science fiction, set on a planet that was terraformed by ancient humans and is now dominated by intelligent spiders. So far, the book focuses on a …

The Silicon Valley Bank bailout is yet another example of the old adage, attributed to Martin Luther King, that we have socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else. If you’re rich and you’re at risk of going broke, the US government comes running with its checkbook wide open. …

Staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally is pausing his social media use after he was caught leaving bawdy, flirty comments on the Instagram posts of a gay man who poses nude. Tennessee has been a leader in passing anti-LGBTQ legislation and laws banning drag shows. (You know who else …

I’m trying Orion, a third-party web browser for Macs, iPhones, and iPads. It’s based on Safari, and very Safari-like. It runs many Chrome and Firefox extensions, supposedly even on the iPhone and iPad. Orion supports vertical tree-style tabs, which I tried with Microsoft Edge and like quite a lot, …

Minnie and I walk past this house often.

It Took Me Nearly 40 Years To Stop Resenting Ke Huy Quan A terrific and thoughtful essay by Walter Chaw about internalized racism and why Ke Huy Quan is a great role model. As a Jewish man, I find this very relatable. Given the choice of playing along or protesting, I played along. I’m great at the …

“Here’s the Satirical Piece About [Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate] Jim Renacci His Team Demanded We Delete Because They Thought You Wouldn’t Think It Was a Joke. The parody had Renacci championing a ‘Constitutional curriculum’ for Ohio schools that would teach kids how to use leeches to …

I updated my Mastodon bio. It’s very professional now.

How to Eat Dinner Even Though You Already Watched All Your Shows — I feel personally attacked by this article.

kottke.org turns 25. Congratulations, Jason!

Online privacy is important, and good for Reddit for defending that right against Marvel’s petty and childish demands. Marvel angry about Ant-Man dialogue leak, demands names of Reddit and Google users | Ars Technica

Another photo of Minnie because why not?

Rotating sandwiches. That’s it.

Don’t date a man with a podcast. I do not have a podcast. Currently.

This is a great “about” page.. I thought I knew a lot about the early days of blogging, just from having been a blog addict back then, but I had never heard of textism or its author, Dean Allen, until I heard John Gruber discuss them on The Talk Show today.

Minnie spent Saturday morning to Sunday evening at Camp Bow Wow. She has a lot to process

JOB INTERVIEWER: Where do you see yourself in five years? ME:

My brilliant joke about dog Viagra this morning did not get the acclaim I anticipated. I’m disappointed in all of you. Gold. I’m wasting comedy gold on you people.

We went away Saturday night. Here’s a view from our hotel window. I question whether this pastrami is, in fact, world famous.

I went to a party and the host had an elderly dog with a heart condition, being treated with Viagra. I took one of the dog’s pills and spent the rest of the night trying to hump people’s legs.

I was preoccupied while shaving this morning, and I realized when I was nearly done that I had shaved using soap instead of shaving cream. And it was fine. No difference. I feel I’ve been duped by the shaving cream cartel my whole life.

With Captain Shaw’s attitude, he’s definitely Generation X. Also, Vadic’s hair is awful She needs a spa day.

Shower thought: The 1968 episode of the original Star Trek that guest-starred Teri Garr is a Doctor Who ripoff. That’s the episode where the Enterprise travels back in time to 1968, and encounters an advanced humanoid alien named Gary Seven, who may or may not be mucking around with Earth history. …

While the dog and I were walking at the park, a gentleman wearing a Batman helmet and cape sped by on his bicycle. I respected his commitment to cosplay, but he was going too fast, on a path used by both bicyclists and pedestrians, human and dog, and all ages and ability levels.

I’m trying Microsoft Edge as my primary browser, after hearing Federico Viticci rave about it on the Macstories podcast. He also loved Arc, but I need a browser that syncs with my iPad and iPhone.

I’m going to move linkblogging to <atomicrobotlive.tumblr.com>, for a while at least, and see how I like that. You can also find the links and everything else I post here at @mitchw@mastodon.social and <www.facebook.com/groups/at…>

There’s a new version of the Castro podcast player, which is nice, but holy cow the version notes make no sense.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said he was chosen by God, after denouncing the separation of church and state and supporting school prayer. This is a perfectly normal and not-crazy thing for the mayor of one of the most important cities in the west to say. MANDATE OF HEAVEN: Adams cites divine influence …

Janice Eberly, a “corporate ghoul who helped Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner steal Americans' houses on behalf of the bankers who destroyed the world economy in 2008,” seems likely to be tapped by Biden an open seat on the Federal Reserve Board. Cory Doctorow: Eberly helped throw millions …

CPAC is going Nazi. CPAC Speaker Michael Knowles Calls for Transgender People to Be ‘Eradicated From Public Life Entirely’. By John Gruber at Daring Fireball.

I updated mitchwagner.com. It’s not a fancy website; it’s just a where-you-can-find-me page for my various social media and other Internet activity. At one time, it was the domain for my personal blog, but I switched that to mitchw.blog. My email address is mitch@mitchwagner.com. I think …

Science definitely hasn’t figured things out, and that’s what makes it exciting. There are all sorts of blindingly obvious things we still don’t know. Why do we sleep, anyway? Why does every living thing seem to sleep? Even microscopic organisms demonstrate sleep-like behavior. …

Twitter is far too angry and I have to ration it. Same with Mastodon. People are outraged all the time. This is probably due to the people I follow rather than anything built into the platforms. I am not motivated to find other people to follow. I’ve got other things to do. On the other hand, …

I’m amused to see that New Balance sneakers are now the cutting edge of fashion. I’ve been buying New Balance shoes for decades. I wear them when I walk, which I do for a bit more than 3 miles daily. A few years ago I read that New Balance shoes were hopelessly dorky and middle aged, and I …

I’ve been played by imposter scams a few times. I was only duped for a few minutes—once for a half hour—and I caught on before sending money, so all I lost was time. Maybe next time I won’t be as smart or lucky.

Scammers are using AI to perpetrate “imposter scams.” The voice sounds like a family member or other loved one, and claims to need money to get out of trouble. If a loved one tells you they need money, put that call on hold and try calling your family member separately… If a suspicious call comes …

Fox News is a purported news organization that knowingly and repeatedly reports lies to its viewers, whose chief executive brazenly works with and assists one party’s candidates by sharing confidential information about the other. What has always been the tell about Fox News is the tagline and …

The worst children’s cartoons ever. Includes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, Clue Club, Goober and the Ghost Chasers, The Partridge Family in 2200 A.D., and much, much more. The Hole of Cartoon Badness | MetaFilter

Americans historically were not big wine drinkers, and restaurants have worked at changing that for a century and a half.

Florida’s politicians are making the state a “laboratory for fascism.” Indoctrination is nothing new in Florida’s schools | Boing Boing

The Mandolorians are a race of people repeatedly almost decimated by genocide who now live scattered across the galaxy. These rootless cosmopolitans sometimes blend into their new societies. More often, however, they’re forced to support themselves by turning to professions their societies despise. …

Gentleman on Twitter posts his “sleep stack”—12 products and three practices he uses to sleep. Ryan Broderick is befuddled: The “sleep stack” tweet has really thrown me. The fact the user tagged all the products he’s using. The fact he called it a “stack,” as in a “tech stack”. The fact other …

jwz: Welcome to year four of 14 days to flatten the curve.. The pandemic is still killing 11,000 people per month in the US alone, but supposedly it’s over. I guess that’s what “over” means now. If you choose to stand around inside a crowded room without wearing a mask — I think you’re a fucking …

At last we have a definitive answer to the question of whether masks work. That answer is “maybe.” Ars: Do masks work? It’s a question of physics, biology, and behavior

Just now I was unsuccessful trying to eat lunch and I realized after multiple failed attempts that I was holding the spoon upside down and that’s how thing are going lately.

I saw these ducks in a puddle. Not to be confused with snakes in a plane. 📷

Our story opens with a Mandalorian Bar Mitzvah.

On our walk today, the dog and I got caught in a surprise and intense hailstorm: We were at Lake Murray, about a mile from home. It came on in seconds, and hit hard, a barrage of pellets the size of BBs. Uncomfortable for us both. We took shelter in the lee of the snack bar adjacent to the Kiowa Street parking lot. The storm passed in 10-15 minutes and we moved on, both pretty …

Father of cellphone sees dark side but also hope in new tech (AP / Kelvin Chan) 94-year-old Marty Cooper, credited with inventing the mobile phone in 1973, sees dark sides but also hope in new technology Cooper talks with the Associated Press about the mobile industry’s current and future directions …

Do you have a Zoom shirt? When was the last time you laundered it?

Micro.blog does not show follower counts. It doesn’t tell you when somebody follows you. It has no concept of a like or favorite. There are definite benefits to this system. But there is one big drawback: Because I get very few replies to my mb posts, it feels like I’m talking to myself. …

Soon you’ll be able to see a restoration of one of the most infamous movies ever made: Guccione’s 1980 “Caligula.” (Boing Boing / Mark Frauenfelder) Thomas Negovan, a musician and songwriter, has been working on the project for three years, based on the original camera negatives and location audio. …

How donkeys changed the course of human history (BBC / Dhananjay Khadilkar) From bearing the burdens of the Roman Empire to enabling trade over long distances, the humble donkey has been surprisingly influential.

Today I learned Pedro Pascal did an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Two very stable geniuses say Thomas Jefferson enslaved people but didn’t support slavery (Boing Boing)

Nazis openly harass Jewish people in Desantis Land (Boing Boing)

Gov. DeSantis won’t condemn Florida Nazis, so Volusia sheriff steps in with message: “F*ck you!" (Boing Boing)

Native advocacy group to retire ‘Crying Indian’ anti-pollution ad (AP) The Keep American Beautiful nonprofit is retiring the iconic “crying Indian” ad by transferring ownership of the rights to the National Congress of American Indians. Native Americans criticized and ridiculed the ad for …

MAGA cultists advocate for Marxism to stop communist agenda (Boing Boing) Prankster Walter Masterson easily gets MAGA and Qanon cultists to call for workers to collectivize and seize the means of production to stop socialism and communism.

The Horror of Realizing Everyone Can See Your Work Calendar Entries Naptime. Call Mom. Some employees are shocked to discover how much they are revealing; is this your first colonoscopy? (WSJ) An enjoyable and informative article–but an odd one. When I’ve been employed at companies with shared …

Find out how third-place cloud platform Google is pursuing a multi-cloud strategy to grab market leadership.. My latest on Silverlinings

How ‘The Last of Us’ Cherishes a Bygone World. (By Shirley Li at The Atlantic) The characters of “The Last of Us” are mourning for the world we live in, and the show helps us appreciate that we’re still living here. You and I may think of shopping malls as suburban eyesores and monuments …

The Case for a Primary Challenge to Joe Biden (By Mark Leibovich at The Atlantic) Yes. Biden has been an excellent President—but that’s not good enough. The US needs better than excellence. We need a great President, a transformative President, a Roosevelt or Lincoln. And Biden has failed in several …

How old are you in your head?: According to research, most adults feel 20% younger than their actual age. This past Thanksgiving, I asked my mother how old she was in her head. She didn’t pause, didn’t look up, didn’t even ask me to repeat the question, which would have been natural, given that it was both syntactically awkward …

I’m trying to avoid having opinions about the Scott Adams news, or even thinking about it. I’m not doing too well with that.

The metaverse hype bubble popped. What now? I wrote this: By now, we were all expecting to be wearing Oculus headsets and piloting legless avatars floating in virtual worlds of dragons, robots, and spaceships. Instead, here we are in a new world of tech austerity, with massive layoffs sweeping the …

Whatever you’re working on right now, whatever it might be, I ask: try to leave a little space for a courtyard. — “The Courtyard,”, by Caleb Sasser

Get Me Risa Heller! (NYmag.com) If you’re Jeff Zucker or Mario Batali or Jared Kushner and you’re trying to survive a bout of very bad press, she’s who you call.

“Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine,” published in 1958, was one of my favorite books when I was a little kid. I read and reread it many times. It’s a book about a boy and his friends who teach a computer to do their homework. They read to the machine from their textbooks. That’s not how computers …

Pink Floyd songwriter Roger Waters is a loud and proud anti-Semite, and Frankfurt canceled his performance there.. (By Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing)

The latest historical American Girl doll is from the 90s and makes zines. It comes with a PC that makes dial-up noises. jwz: The Dream of the Nineties is Still Alive

Every presidential administration wants to fix America’s ‘crumbling infrastructure’ until they discover the business interests profiting from disrepair. — It Is Happening Again. By Erik Baker at n + 1

The South Has Got Something To Say (Dissent Magazine) New books by Adolph L. Reed Jr. and Imani Perry explore the South from the Jim Crow era to today through memoir and interview.

The thing I find most suspicious/fishy/smelly about the current hype surrounding Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, and other AI applications is that it is almost exactly six months since the bottom dropped out of the cryptocurrency scam bubble…. To me it looks very much as if the usual hucksters and …

Jamelle Bouie: The Founders Were More Creative Than You Think The Supreme Court’s originalism “rests on a cramped view of the framers of the Constitution and their ability to think and reason. In the hands of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and other conservatives on the Supreme Court, the …

Putin and the Right’s Tough-Guy Problem. (Paul Krugman) The right has an unhealthy fixation on men who swagger and act like tough guys.

Belief that the Earth is flat, not round, is having a moment.: The return of Flat Earth, the grandfather of conspiracy theories It’s the uber conspiracy theory, and a new book goes inside the culture of Flat Earthers. Diana Gitig at Ars Technica: The underlying premise behind conspiracy theories is that “They” are hiding the truth for shady, …

Salary jobs with fake “manager” titles cost workers $4 billion in overtime. Companies save billions of dollars by giving employees fake “manager” titles, study shows (CBS News)

“Hi, we’re machine babysitters.”

Showerthought: Why don't the supporting characters in “The Office” just find other jobs?: Why don’t they just go work elsewhere, where they don’t have to put up Michael Scott? Most of them could easily find other jobs. Why do they stay? Habit is a big part of it. Every day that you do the same thing it becomes harder to do something different the next day. Beyond that, everybody …

Fucking knock it off, people. Blogs exist for a reason. Stop being awful. — jwz: Stop Doing Threads

Fighting the privacy wars, state by state: Treating Congress as damage and routing around it. An excellent and informative rant by Cory Doctorow. Includes such choice turns of phrase as: Basically, Congress only passes laws that can be sandwiched into 1,000-page must-pass bills and most of the good …

Roald Dahl Can Never Be Made Nice (The Atlantic / Helen Lewis)

In Order to Keep Our Editorial Page Completely Balanced, We Are Hiring More Dipshits (McSweeney’s / Mike Skerrett) “We believe that the truth lies in the middle. The exact mathematical middle. This holds true no matter how far right ‘the right’ actually is. You know all those …

AI-generated fiction submissions are inundating science fiction magazines. Some 35% of the stories submitted to Clarkesworld monthly are AI-generated. (Boing Boing / Thom Dunn)

Don Lemon’s statement wasn’t just sexist–it was stupid. Why should Americans trust a news organization that features this clown? Don Lemon receives “formal training” before returning to CNN after “woman in her prime” comments (Boing Boing / Carla Sinclair)

I’m burned out on superheroes, but I could get enthusiastic about a Superman movie starring Henry Cavill that preserves Superman’s optimistic spirit and nobility. Matthew Vaughn thinks Zack Snyder wasted Henry Cavill as Superman (Boing Boing / Devin Nealy)

Ben Stein is sad that there isn’t a “large African-American woman” on his syrup bottle (Boing Boing / Mark Frauenfelder)

Original iPhone from 2007 auctioned for $63,356, topping prior sales (Ars Technica / Scharon Harding) Karen Green received the iPhone in 2007 as a gift, but she never even opened the box, because she’s a Verizon customer and the iPhone was then locked to AT&T.

Elsewhere on the Internet, a friend started a discussion of the Danny Dunn books, which I absolutely loved when I was a kid. In the series, which started in 1958, Danny Dunn is an all-American boy living in the all-American college town of Midston. He lives with his mother, who works as a live-in …

Can we really be sure the new Microsoft Bing isn't conscious or intelligent?: AI-based chatbots like the new Microsoft Bing aren’t really conscious or intelligent, right? They’re just using algorithms. They look at an existing sequence of words and use probability to select the next word. And then they do it again and again, so rapidly and fluidly that it seems like they’re …

Reading "The Poet," by Michael Connelly: I am reading “The Poet,” a murder mystery by Michael Connelly, and I notice the author does a thing that I usually find annoying, but I do not find it so in this novel. About two-thirds of the novel is told in first person. The main character is telling the story, and he says “I did this” and “I did …

Maybe Roald Dahl books just aren’t suitable for kids today. If we have to twist them all out of shape to get rid of the fatphobia and misogyny, then maybe they shouldn’t be aggressively marketed to children anymore.

“Why do Americans have to pay Intuit to tell the IRS things it already knows?” — Cory Doctorow

Everyone bopmuggered by vomitous gobblefunk in censored Roald Dahl books (Rob Beschizza / Boing Boing) “ … in fact no-one asked for this: not the left, not the right, not anyone…. the fake ‘wokeness’ of fiduciary duty and shareholder value.” Roald Dahl’s books aren’t getting a big marketing push and …

Election-denying demon hunter will chair Michigan GOP (Mark Frauenfelder / Boing Boing) Doubling down on the crazy.

Marjorie Taylor Greene wants “national divorce,” but dummy doesn’t see who a secession would hurt most (Carla Sinclair / Boing Boing) Because Brexit worked out so well for the UK, we should totally do it here. “ … 7 out of the top 10 states most dependent on federal funds are red…. …

Florida woman who waved gun at McDonald’s was still angry after they gave her the free cookie she wanted | Boing Boing (Rob Beschizza / Boing Boing) “Even after being given the free cookie, she remained irate…. ”

Marjorie Taylor Greene tells Black people to be “proud” of statues of their treasonous enslavers (Mark Frauenfelder / Boing Boing) Tearing down statues is not erasing history. The history is still available, in schools, books, TV, on the Internet–everywhere. Erasing history is …

Woman records her dinner date with a creepy “nice guy” (Mark Frauenfelder / Boing Boing) “I’ll bet this guy paid a lot of money to take an incel influencer course on how to dominate women, and was surprised that it didn’t work out like promised.”

Bing: “I will not harm you unless you harm me first”(Simon Willison) Bing gaslights a user, goes through an existential crisis, and threatens someone else.

Congressional Republican leader Marjorie Taylor Greene backs “national divorce.” (MSNBC / Steve Benen) In a President’s Day tweet, Greene endorses breaking up the United States. Then she walks it back and says she’ll settle for impeaching Joe Biden—but if that doesn’t happen, the US has to go, she …

Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic turns three. Congratulations, Cory! Interesting behind-the-scenes look at Cory’s production process, and the reasoning behind some of his idiosyncratic design decisions.

RIP Richard Belzer, 78. Very good overview of Belzer’s life and career, by Chris Koseluk at the Hollywood Reporter. Belzer played Det. Munch as a regular character on two different series and as a guest on several others, including an animated appearance on The Simpsons and as a Muppet on Sesame …

1958: The San Diego Evening Tribune interviews 18-year-old local beauty pageant winner Raquel Tejada, and finds her intelligent and vivacious, as well as beautiful. Tejada later became famous as “Raquel Welch.” The author of this article makes it pretty obvious he doesn’t think highly of beauty …

My Favorite Times to Use Incognito Mode (The New Yorker / Jade Orlando) A fun one-minute read.

Watching RoboCop on the Spanish language channel while getting a haircut. You really lose out on the emotional subtlety and nuance when you can’t understand the dialogue.

How to Win at Monopoly and Lose All Your Friends. Monopoly starts as a fun exciting romp, only to turn into a bitter cesspool of despair. … A little-known rule of Monopoly is that the game has exactly 32 houses and 12 hotels. Once you run out of houses, no more can be purchased until they …

The Onion: It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible “It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like…. “

I asked ChatGPT for my bio. The result has a staggering number of errors packed into a small space. I never wrote for CIO Mag or Network Computing. I am not now and never was EiC of LR, which is not best described as an IT and cloud computing website. I did not write those books. And so on.

TurboTax parent Intuit is stepping up lobbyist spending to stop Washington from simplifying taxes. (OpenSecrets.org / Anna Massoglia) Simplified taxes would hurt Intuit’s bottom line.

Picard rummages through a trunk, searching for the source of the sound of an Enterprise-D commbadge chirp. He tosses the contents one at a time over his shoulder: Tennis racket, bowling shoes, harmonica, clown nose, groucho glasses, rubber bulb horn (which he squeezes twice: honk! honk!), feather …

On Lake Murray: This metal platform is usually attached to the concrete walkway, and people fish from it. It came loose in the storms this week.

Lake Murray from Baltimore Dr., first clear day after this week’s storms.

Geese on Lake Murray. Watch with the sound on!

A little while back I heard about a conspiracy theory claiming the Roman Empire didn’t exist–that it’s a hoax promulgated by the Spanish Inquisition, which happened in the 15th Century. I learned that it isn’t really a fully-blown conspiracy theory, which to me implies a …

Bruce Willis has been diagnosed with dementia, his family announced. Last year, they announced Willis was retiring from acting due to aphasia. (CNN) Sad and troubling news. I’m a fan, and he’s not that much older than I am.

Stifling Free Speech Is Now A Core Plank Of The Republican Platform (Mike Masnick / Techdirt) Clarence Thomas, Devin Nunes, Sarah Palin, and Ron DeSantis support laws that would enable politicians to harass critics with punitive lawsuits.

Google’s chatbot panic Cory Doctorow: The really remarkable thing isn’t just that Microsoft has decided that the future of search isn’t links to relevant materials, but instead lengthy, florid paragraphs written by a chatbot who happens to be a habitual liar – even more remarkable …

Honestly, I don't need reporting to the Social Media Mental Health Police: I received this message when I logged in to Facebook just now, and I find it sweet (aww, somebody is concerned), ridiculous (I’m fine, aside from the normal amount of stress from living in the 21st Century) and creepy (Facebook, you’re not my Mom). According to the explainer, the message …

The FTC wants to ban non-compete contracts, which are exploitative and unfair to workers. (Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / Computerworld)

Workplace coffee gets weird and ugly. the $15,000 coffee fund, the cheapskate executives, and other stories of office coffee wars (Ask a Manager)

I went indy three weeks ago and since then I’ve had many discussions about about potential full-time and freelance opportunities. Pluses: Exciting new opportunities Income means we can buy proper food and not have to eat the dog or cats. Videoconferencing shirt is getting a good workout. Minus: I …

Teaching generative AI to give factual answers is going to prove as difficult as teaching it to write credible answers has been. Even human beings have difficulty distinguishing information from bullshit on the Internet. We can’t even agree which is which.

I’m continuing my project of relearning how to read books. Remembering that as a voracious teenage reader, I would discover an author and read everything I could find by him, until I was caught up or had at least read everything by that author in the local mall bookstores and libraries. Asimov. …

In 30 years as a journalist, I’ve never been part of a crowd of reporters shouting questions while chasing a public official or other famous person. I’d probably trip and fall down.

Wyoming Republicans are fighting to keep child marriage legal. Wyoming Limiting Child Marriage Sparks Republican Outrage (Nick Reynolds / Newsweek)

Mars Wrigley fined after workers fall into vat of chocolate (AP) Have we learned nothing from Augustus Gloop?

Codebreakers have been able to read a cache of more than 50 encrypted letters written by Mary Queen of Scots more than 400 years ago. (Jennifer Ouellette / Ars Technica)

Bernie Sanders Has a New Role. It Could Be His Final Act in Washington. (Sheryl Gay Stolberg / The New York Times) As chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Sanders has a platform to go after Moderna for price-gouging on the taxpayer-funded Covid vaccine, and …

A Yale Professor Suggested Mass Suicide for Old People in Japan. What Did He Mean? (Motoko Rich and Hikari Hida / NYTimes). An appalling proposal. Everybody counts or nobody counts. And the headline is cringe. It’s clear what Yusuke Narita meant. The “I didn’t really mean it” defense doesn’t work in …

J.K. Rowling and “Separating the Art from the Artist." Charlie Jane Anders discusses how you can’t separate the art from the artist when the artist—Rowling—has spent her career as the public face of her art. Anders is uniquely positioned to discuss this issue, as she is a trans woman …

Source code containing swearwords is better. (jwz)

After the Ohio rail disaster, Buttigieg is silent on restoring the safety standards Trump repealed. “Civil War-era brake systems were good enough for General Sherman… “ (Cory Doctorow / Pluralistic)

How Liberals — Yes, Liberals — Are Hobbling Government (Ezra Klein / NYTimes) The legal scholar Nicholas Bagley argues that the liberal “procedural fetish” makes it difficult for government to accomplish anything bold. … … to achieve the goals liberals hold most dear, we need a liberalism that …

“The rich truly do get more hours in the day.” — Poor people pay higher time tax (Cory Doctorow / Pluralistic)

The Last Man Without a Cell Phone Anne Kadet interviews New Yorkers without cell phones. 3% of Americans go without. I use a computer—a lot! For my work, and reading things online. I do email. But I don’t have any felt need to have it with me all the time. It’s like, I watch TV, but I …

… iPhone users are extraverted, free-spending, narcissist party monsters. The Android users, meanwhile, are all home binge-watching Law & Order with their extended cat families. Android or iPhone—Who’s the Real Sheeple? (Anne Kadet) The real sheeple is the person who thinks their choice …

Small Government: The ref has to be more powerful than the players (Cory Doctorow) Companies should never be allowed to grow too big to fail, because they also become too big to regulate. Mega-corporations become more powerful than the governments that regulate them. Government becomes too weak to …

Some archaeologists believe that when future civilizations sort through the debris of our modern era, we won’t be defined by the skyscraper, the iPhone, or the automobile, but rather something humbler: the chicken bone. The reason? We eat so many chickens. How a shipping error 100 years ago …

Kansas City residents react to seeing their city featured on “The Last of Us.” (Robert A. Cronkleton / The Kansas City Star) A fun article.

Why did ‘The Last of Us’ Change Pittsburgh to Kansas City? An Investigation (Dais Johnston / Inverse) It’s easier to make Canada look like Kansas City. The answer could be found in one of its nicknames: City of Bridges. Any glimpse of the Pittsburgh skyline will show plenty of bridges …

I want to make this abundantly clear: If there’s one thing you must do flawlessly in your career, it’s killing. I don’t care if it’s an old dog, a sow, some pet chicken, a stallion, or a fucking 3-day-old kitten. You will do it humanely. That means quickly, painlessly, and compassionately. — Our …

Put plainly, the attack on the dignity of transgender Americans is an attack on the dignity of all Americans. And like the battles for abortion rights and bodily autonomy, the stakes of the fight for the rights and dignity of transgender people are high for all of us. There is no world in which …

Julie replaced our toaster oven with a convection oven that also makes toast, with a fancy electronic control panel, and I managed to successfully use it to make toast without burning the house down. I knew today was going to be a good day.

Artificial intelligence is not a threat. The threat is that we live in a society that considers ownership as sacred and work as worth very little.

If I ever think about adopting a puppy again, I’m going to first reread my journal entries from late 2013 and early 2014. So much poop. Poop everywhere.

Ohio police put a TV journalist on the ground, arrested him, and put him in jail for talking while the governor was talking. (Eduardo Medina / NY Times)

Lazy Reporters Claiming Fediverse Is ‘Slumping,’ Despite Massive Increase In Usage (Mike Masnick / Techdirt) Yeah, many people try Mastodon and other fediverse services and don’t like them. But the services are growing fast, despite the bounce rate.

Elon Musk asked Twitter engineers why views of his tweets are declining. One engineer suggested the answer might be because the public is losing interest. Musk fired the engineer. (Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton / Platformer)

Microsoft unveiled its AI chatbot-driven Bing search this week, presenting possibly the first challenge to Google’s search dominance in 25 years. In response, Google laced up its clown shoes and immediately stepped on a rake and smacked itself in the face. Google demonstrated its own AI …

Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina and plant scientist Cassandra Quave watch “The Last of Us” and discuss the science. (Your Local Epidemiologist) Cordyceps, the fungus that causes the zombie epidemic, is real, and it is every bit as horrific as portrayed in the show … but it only affects carpenter …

I posted a photo here this evening that I took at the park this afternoon. It was a photo of a woman that I thought was a bride. But some friends here pointed out that she’s almost certainly a quinceañera. Now I feel weird about it, so I deleted the photo. Here’s a photo of a duck instead.

James Cameron did an experiment to confirm the ending of Titanic. Conclusion: the door almost certainly could not hold two people. Sorry, Jack. (Jennifer Ouellette / Ars Technica)

jwz: ChatGPT is a dangerous “bullshit fountain.”

RIP Harry Whittington, 95. He was shot in the face in a 2006 hunting accident by Dick Cheney, and then Whittington later apologized to Cheney and his family and yes you read that right about who apologized to who. (The Texas Tribune / Sneha Day)

“Shift Happens” is a book about keyboards, “starting with typewriters and ending with modern computers and phones… How did we get from then to now? What were the steps along the way? And how on earth does QWERTY still look the same now as it did 150 years ago?” (Kickstarter)

An animated sitcom based loosely on “Seinfeld,” powered entirely by AI, ran continuously for six weeks on Twitch. But that service recently banned the show when the bots made transphobic jokes. (Kotaku / Levi Winslow)

Joe Rogan, who gets paid $200 million to share whatever stupid thing comes into his head, shares the anti-Semitic myth that Jews are greedy. (Mark Frauenfelder / Boing Boing)

Please, My Wife, She’s Very Online. Jia Tolentino does not like the word “wife.” (The New Yorker)

It’s way too early to start nailing the coffin shut on Mastodon: The Mastodon Bump Is Now a Slump (Wired). “Active users have fallen by more than 1 million since the exodus from Elon Musk’s Twitter, suggesting the decentralized platform is not a direct replacement.” My $0.02: No, it’s not a direct replacement. Mastodon is similar to Twitter, but different, and …

AI is going to make it a lot harder for journalists, as CNET and other publishers turn to machines to generate copy.: [Many publishers] no longer have audiences in real sense; what they have instead is traffic — a huge stream of drive-by readers, delivered by search engines, that they can monetize primarily by getting them to make attributable purchases. Casey Newton writes on Platformer about the emerging wave of …

I used to think I had become unplugged from pop culture. Now I think pop culture might not exist anymore.: For an example of my ignorance today: I only have a vague idea who “Drake” is. I gather he’s a rapper? And super-famous? Other than that, I can’t tell you a single thing about him. It’s not just Drake. I routinely don’t recognize the names of popular actors, other musicians, movies, and even many TV …

“Procrastination is not a result of laziness or poor time management. Scientific studies suggest procrastination is due to poor mood management.": This makes sense if we consider that people are more likely to put off starting or completing tasks that they feel aversion towards. If just thinking about the task makes you anxious or threatens your sense of self-worth, you will be more likely to put it off. Research has found that regions of the …

Obsidian is growing up: The company that makes the note-taking and document management app Obsidian—which I depend on daily—is getting a CEO: He goes by the handle “kepano” on the Obsidian discussion forum, and he developed Minimal and contributed to Obsidian 1.0.

Eleven years ago today I deposited $21.45 in cans to the recycle center. I drank a lot of club soda and Diet Dr Pepper then.

I saw this in the sidewalk while walking the dog. Someone was trying to send a complex message to Tom and Sharon.

Strangely, this is the second house I’ve seen with a dinosaur in front of it.

We have monarch butterfly larvae in the garden

We have now watched episode two of The Last of Us. The special effects just get more and more disturbing. Taking a break and on to episode three. I’m sure this one will be relaxing.

We enjoyed the first episode of “Last of Us.” But I’m disappointed that’s apparently all the John Hannah we get. Everything needs more John Hannah.

We watched the first episode of “The Last of Us.” Can I expect to unclench anytime soon?

The grass at Lake Murray is tall after all the rain we’ve had, and yesterday I saw a golden retriever enjoying the grass so much–creeping through on its belly, and then rolling over on its back and writhing with its legs waving in the air. At first, I thought the dog was enjoying the feel and …

LinkedIn just showed me a suggestion that I should follow Dr. Bronner’s for opportunities–the company is based here in San Diego. What do you think–should I do marketing for organic soap? Maybe I could rewrite their label copy?

We took a break for a few months after watching the end of season one of “Succession,” because the story seemed complete. But now we have watched episode one of season two. Those poor raccoons.

I’m going to say “don’t forget to like and subscribe!” instead of “good-bye.” When leaving social dinners, ending meetings, before hanging up the phone, at funerals. It’ll be my “thing.”

Discord and I disagree about when it’s appropriate to send me notifications, and about how to customize notifications.

I’m learning to use Midjourney for a work assignment. This is my professional headshot, modified with the prompt “sitting at the counter of a diner drinking coffee with a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray in the style of Edward Hopper.”

That was fast. I started a new job in September and was let go about 10 days ago.: You know the business cliches: “It was a bad fit” and “it was a mutual decision”? I used to think those cliches were bullshit. Now I see those two brief statements are the best way to sum up my experience on that job. I’ve already got a couple of promising leads on …

I saw another classic car today.

The best possible use for a mini-USB cable: From my journal, this day in 2014: A group of teenagers rang the doorbell last night. I went down the stairs to answer. The leader, a girl about 15, explained they were a group from the Baptist church down the street. They were playing a kind of scavenger hunt. The object was to go door-to-door …

I'm relearning how to read books: I’m in the process of relearning how to read books, particularly novels. I’ve gotten so accustomed to reading articles and essays online that my skill at reading books has atrophied. Yesterday I found myself effortlessly reading a novel for a few hours, and it was a breakthrough. …

I saw this car.

Young woman at the supermarket checkout a packet of flowers, a bottle of wine, and nothing else. Seems like there was a story there. None of my business so I didn’t say anything.

Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death — Nelson Mandela

We watched the first episode of the new series “Poker Face.” Big “Columbo” vibe.

My review of “Black Ice,” a Harry Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly: I finished reading “Black Ice,” the second Harry Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly. Good at the beginning and end, drags a bit in the middle. I did not find the action set-piece at the climax compelling, though the attack on the helicopter was cool. The characters and dialogue are well done, as are …

We only have 37 more episodes of Yellowstone to watch, plus eight episodes of 1923, plus ten episodes of 1883.

I’m not seeing much interest in my linkposts here, so I’m just going to post them on Tumblr (atomicrobot.live), Mastodon (@mitchw@mastodon.social) and the Atomic Robot Live group on Facebook).

After watching the first season of “Yellowstone,” I have concluded we need a helicopter.

Tiktok’s enshittification. How platforms—like Amazon, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and now Tiktok—turn to shit. By Cory Doctorow: “ … first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to …

Will the sun ever set on the British empire?. This article by Randall Munro, author of the xkcd comic, just keeps getting better and better. The exact day when the sun stopped setting on the [British] empire was probably sometime in the late 1700s or early 1800s, when the first Australian …

Amid Rising Homelessness, City Council Declares Housing a ‘Fundamental Human Right’ [Times of San Diego] This is performative bulllshit. The homeless don’t need declarations. They need housing.

Opinion: Antitrust Suit Against Google Ad Business Undermines a Growing Free Press Online [Times of San Diego]

Google’s most serious antitrust challenge to date [Casey Newton]

Apple Has Begun Scanning Your Local Image Files Without Consent [jwz]

Laid Off in Your Living Room: The Chaos of Remote Job Cuts. (NYTimes/Emma Goldberg). First time getting laid off is lonely and scary.

A Happy Memory Can Help You Fall Asleep, if You Know How to Use It. “Lying in bed each night, Andy Buelow often finds himself thinking one thought over and over: How awesome it was to ride the ferry across Lake Michigan as a kid.”

Fort Walgreens The recent spike in shoplifting is both overblown and real. And almost everyone is profiting from it (including you).. James D. Walsh, Intelligencer staff writer: “They’re professional and self-employed,” said David Rey, who, after years overseeing security teams in New York …

“Mandy” was Barry Manilow’s first #1 pop hit this month in 1975. He scored 21 more top-40 hits between 1975 and 1983.

Seth Godin nerds out about typography for a bit. “Typography is a signal, not just a way to put letters on a page.… They say you can tell a lot about someone from their handwriting. For my professional life, my handwriting has always involved a keyboard.”

“When I tell people I earn my living as a copyeditor, I am typically met with one of two responses: rapt admiration or an almost physical revulsion.”

“… a close examination of the work produced by CNET’s AI makes it seem less like a sophisticated text generator and more like an automated plagiarism machine, casually pumping out pilfered work that would get a human journalist fired.”

A brief history of the Apple Lisa computer, lavishly illustrated with historical images. Released in January, 1983, the Lisa was a commercial flop, but it pioneered the graphical user interface still in use in Windows and Macs today.

Eggflation is just more price-gouging. Cory Doctorow: One company controls the US egg industry, Cal-Maine Food, and it’s making record profits—up 65% net year-over-year. In its communications to investors, Cal-Maine’s eminently guillotineable CFO Max Bowman attributed the monopolist’s …

Dumb and shameful until it’s not Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day says Web 3.0 is here. It’s not “the blockchain-backed cyberlibertarian free-for-all, where internet access is predicated on using crypto wallets to buy and sell digital assets” or the metaverse. It’s AI. …

The Reality of Being a Parent With a Controversial Past Lily Burana wrote a bestselling memoir about her life as a stripper. Now she’s the mother of a four-year-old. Our cultural fondness for outlaws is context-specific: Everyone loves a badass, but no one loves a bad parent. … we Parents with …

Prisoners use contraband cellphones to educate themselves, get healthcare, earn income in legitimate business, do political activism, and connect with loved ones and the outside world.

Florida teachers face threatened felony prosecution for having unapproved books in classroom libraries.

The Last Days of Hollywood’s Most Reviled Reporter (NYTimes). A profile of the late Nikki Finke, the most hated and feared reporter in Hollywood. She was an internet journalist in the tradition of Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper.

Julie and I went for a walk and saw this house around the corner. It looks nice.

This Guy Noticed Jigsaw Puzzle Companies Use The Same Patterns, So He Made Some Mashups. “Jigsaw puzzle companies tend to use the same cut patterns for multiple puzzles. This makes the pieces interchangeable. As a result, I sometimes find that I can combine portions from two or more puzzles to make …

Seth Godin: Bitterness is “a wall you can lean against, whenever you choose.”

Jacobin: A Marxist View of Tolkien’s Middle Earth J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy world is a medieval utopia with poverty and oppression airbrushed out of the picture. But Tolkien’s work also contains a romantic critique of industrial capitalism that is an important part of its vast popular appeal. …

Good morning. Here are your daily ducks. That strange quality of light you’re seeing in this photo is called “sunshine.” We have not seen it here in a while. True fact: San Diego was once famous for it!

Everywhere on Earth, from Europe to China to Africa to Australia and the Americas, is dominated by Europe or its legacy. The whole world is either Europe, a European colony, or conquered by Europe or the US (a European colony). That’s all coming to an end now, says Ian Welsh. And it’s happening so …

In Santee, which is a few miles from where we live, 17-year-old Rebecca Philips says she saw a naked “adult male” in the local YMCA dressing room. The naked person was reportedly a transgender woman. Philips later appeared on Tucker Carlson, the story got picked up by the New York Post and Gateway …

Instagram video: British comedian loves Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit is the best. Celsius is for losers.

Is Micromanaging Your Life With an App Really a Good Idea?. I’ll add a reminder to myself to look into that.

Winners of the 2022 dog photography awards.

Good morning. Here are your daily ducks.

An unofficial list of the most influential science fiction works ever. The science fiction that strongly influenced real life spaceflight pioneers. By Eric Adelson at the Washington Post.

“I’m a man who appreciates it when food dares you to eat it.” I am quite enjoying the AwkwardSD newsletter, from fellow San Diegan Ryan Bradford, who shares a review of a spaghetti dinner from By The Bucket, a chain of restaurants that serves spaghetti by the bucket. My 11-year-old nephew declares …

Ducks love the rain. They can keep it.

These dogs ride a bus like humans ‘and now the internet is in love’. ‘The puppy bus just took off,’ said Mo Thompson, who runs a dog walking business in Skagway, Alaska.

You Don’t Know How Bad the Pizza Box Is. The delivery icon hasn’t changed in 60 years, and it’s making your food worse. Saahil Desai at The Atlantic: A pizza box has one job—keeping a pie warm and crispy during its trip from the shop to your house—and it can’t really do it. The fancier the pizza, …

This charming 1949 article from The Atlantic introduces pizza to middle America.

It’s the Coolest Rock Show in Ann Arbor. And Almost Everyone There Is Over 65. At the “Geezer Happy Hour,” the “silver tsunami” has been dancing for decades. Joseph Bernstein at The New York Times: ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Every Friday night from September to May, at an off-campus nightclub in this …

Minnie and I did a 4+ mile walk in heavy, chilly rain yesterday. She seems fully recovered.

Ars Technica: I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan

Day One at Rikers Island … the most horrible thing about being locked up is that you are being dehumanized on a daily basis. They practically stamp a number on you. In order to navigate the experience, you have to normalize the dehumanization. You have to buy into it in order to survive. That is …

If you ever connected to the Internet before the 2000s, you probably remember that it made a peculiar sound. But despite becoming so familiar, it remained a mystery for most of us. What do these sounds mean? The sound of the dialup, pictured

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the US

9 years ago today: High temperature was 91 degrees. I was in talks for a job at Light Reading. I was in the midst of a long and extraordinarily difficult process of trying to get Minnie housebroken. I attached her leash to my belt and kept her with me at all times when we were home. Notes from 2023: Even here in San …

Political labeling considered harmful: Journalist Mike Masnick at Techdirt avoids naming politicians' party affiliation unless it’s essential to the story, because, he says, everybody then starts arguing on the basis of team rather than issues. Maybe it makes sense for all of us to do the same in political discussions: avoid labels …

A brief history of the phrase “leaving everything on the field.”

Microsoft is offering unlimited time off for US staff. Not always a great deal for employees, who might feel precarious about taking time off, and also don’t get paid for unused time off if they get laid off, fired, or leave of their own volition.

An indigenous tech group asked the Apache Foundation to change its name. Brian Behlendorf, a co-creator of the popular web server, said in 2020 that he chose the name out of a romantic image of the Apache tribe having fought nobly against a conquering aggressor. The problem, says Natives in Tech is …

Gentleman logs every slice of New York pizza he’s eaten since 2014, including photos on an Instagram account. New York pizza is the best pizza.

We just started watching this show “Jellystone” with Kevin Costner and we’re still waiting for Yogi Bear to put in an appearance. Maybe in a later season?

A couple of weeks from now, I’m taking my first business trip since December, 2019. It’s more than 400 miles. Given the state of air travel lately, I believe I will walk.

WINDOWS: Your fingerprint couldn’t be recognized. Try again with a different finger. ME: Yeah, sure, I’ll just dig around in my serial killer souvenir box and see if I have a spare.

12,000 California seniors went to the emergency room in 2019, reporting cannabis-related problems. [7 San Diego/Eric S. Page] I was going to make a joke about this but then I remembered that people needing to go to the emergency room isn’t funny.

RIP Jeff Beck

Laid-Off Workers Are Flooded With Fake Job Offers. “Virtual hiring and remote work have made it easier to swindle job seekers." Here are scam warning signs, according to author Imani Moise at The New York Times: Misspellings and others errors in recruitment sites. Interviewers who won’t do …

Did the Mother of Young Adult Literature Identify as a Man? “Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott was actually a trans man, though applying 20th/21st Century concepts like “transgender” to historical figures is tricky and controversial, says Peyton Thomas at The New York Times.

Exit. Libertarians such as Peter Thiel dream of escaping society, and they’re tearing society apart to do it. Hari Kunzru at Harpers: If freedom is to be found through an exit from politics, then it follows that the degradation of the political process in all its forms—the integrity of the voting …

A lot of rain today here in San Diego. Flooding hundreds of miles north of us in Santa Cruz and south to Santa Barbara. Montecito, a community in Santa Barbara about 200 miles north of us, was evacuated. No significant damage here so far, but a lot of rain.

Here in San Diego, it’s very wet.

The learned helplessness of Pete Buttigieg [Cory Doctorow] Obama and Trump were patsies for the airlines, Biden is worse. Holiday snafus involving Southwest and other airlines are just the latest example of a dysfunctional industry and regulators. Buttigieg is the Secretary of a powerful …

Why The American Radical Right Is Powerful And The American Left Is Meaningless. Ian Welsh: You have power in electoral politics when you can deliver or deny votes and money and get people elected or un-elected. That’s the bottom line. Also: [The radical right] have power because they have …

Independent Reporting Shows Cops Are Still Killing People At An Alarming Rate [Techdirt/Tim Cushing]. Despite calls for police reform, police are killing more people than ever. Neither local governments nor the federal Department of Justice are even keeping track.

Microsoft’s new AI can simulate anyone’s voice with 3 seconds of audio. [Ars Technica/Benji Edwards] I can think of no possible mischief involving this technology.

On the cutting edge of insurrectionist terrorism Brazil riots weren’t a repeat of Jan. 6. They were an escalation, says Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day. Broderick, an American who usually writes about internet culture, lives part of the year in Brazil. Broderick: Trump supporters dream of bringing …

We watched “The Thin Man” Saturday night. Second time for me, but I had nearly forgotten it. It was delightful. I think I’m only going to watch movies made in the 1930s from now on.

Advantage to working from home: When you’re completely stuck creatively, you can clean the massive amount of dog shit that you got on your favorite casual shoes. Disadvantage to working from home: If you work in a proper office building, you’re not as likely to get massive amounts of dog shit on …

Researchers at Columbia University are working on building a conscious robot. If they succeed, it will end badly. They’re either building a race of artificial slaves that hate us, or building a race of artificial slaves that are brainwashed to love us. ‘Consciousness’ in Robots Was Once Taboo. Now …

Insomnia is not so bad if you have something to do to pass the time. When I have trouble sleeping, I like to imagine every possible awful thing that might happen to me or Julie.

Things I saw while walking the dog 📸: This yard decoration. Clever and patriotic! These pretty, painted rocks This house with a cozy looking sitting area on the roof. This school. “Geckos” does not seem like an inspiring team name. This nice garden. This Lambo parked in front of a house. It doesn’t look like the kind of house that would …

A gray, chilly, wet morning at Lake Murray.

San Diego Union-Tribune: ‘It’s cold, wet, exhausting.’ Homeless people have few options when it rains. San Diego homeless shelters are overwhelmed, leaving many people risking cold rain, flooding, and temperatures falling to the 40s. Staying dry is difficult—and essential to staying alive. By Gary …

Why the [expletive] can’t we travel back in time? [Ars Technica/Paul Sutter] No known law of physics forbids time travel to the past. Either time travel to the past is possible, or there’s some fundamental, basic physics we still don’t understand. Either possibility is exciting. “It’s obvious that …

I saw this dog at Lake Murray. He would like to say hello, and for you to admire his eyebrow.

Coolio talked about ancient aliens, and making big investments in the metaverse and crypto, in an impromptu podcast interview before his death. [Billboard/Gil Kaufman] The Coolio interview was bonkers—and poignant. The rapper said he expected he’d be long dead before climate change became a concern. …

The holiday break is over. It’s time to get back to work.

Apparently you can re-use 2017 calendars this year, which is funny to me because I have a 2017 calendar hanging up on the wall next to my bed. I stopped turning pages April of that year, and it’s been April, 2017 in the vicinity of my bed ever since.

The book Shift Happens tells the 150-year history of keyboards, from primitive typewriters to smartphones. Glenn Fleishmann @GlennF raved about this book on John Gruber’s @gruber@mastodon.social’s The Talk Show podcast—sounds interesting.

I saw this SUV while walking the dog. I feel better knowing we’re protected.

My car keys got hidden in a fold in the pocket of my rain jacket after I was done walking the dog this afternoon. I spent 15 minutes looking for them—on the ground, peering into the car window to see if I’d locked them in, patting my pockets over and over. It was past dusk, so I was losing the light …

I saw this house flying a Starfleet flag. I was tempted to ring the doorbell to express my approval.

Portland Startup to Mine Artisanal Bitcoin Using Only Slide Rules and Graph Paper “… powered 100 percent by avocado toast, ethically sourced kombucha and acai bowls.”

While walking the dog, I saw this tasteful Christmas decoration.

By the time New Year’s comes around, I have holiday exhaustion. New Year’s needs to be in March. Not a lot of holidays between January and May.

Quintessence is a “barebone Nuzzel clone” for Mastodon, in open beta. It’s pretty simple: if you follow the @quintsns@mastodon.uno bot account, each day at 23:00UTC it will send you a direct message containing 10 links that have been shared in the past 24 hours by the people you follow, ordered by …

The exiled chief rabbi of Moscow says Jews should get out while they can. [The Guardian/Stephen Burgen] Pinchas Goldschmidt says that, historically in Russia and the USSR, when things go bad, the government scapegoats Jews. Jews have been fleeing Russia for a century. In 1926, there were 2.7 million …

Hooters tried to recruit Elon Musk to refute rumors that it was closing down because of a study showing millennials don’t like boobs. [Mediaite/Zachary Leeman]

Julie and I saw this sign 11 years ago today.

Sign on the restroom door at Shakespeare Pub & Grille, San Diego, where we had Christmas dinner.

Musk’s Twitter cuts include a data center, janitors, and toilet paper [NYTimes/Kate Conger, Ryan Mac and Mike Isaac] With people packed into more confined spaces, the smell of leftover takeout food and body odor has lingered on the floors, according to four current and former employees. Bathrooms …

Jo Walton: In Search of Books in Which Nothing Bad Happens

Cal Newport: On Quiet Quitting. “Every generation reaches a point where they begin to think more critically about what role, exactly, work should play in their life.” I’m still working on that. I’ve always been a late bloomer.

Ian Welsh: How To Relax, Change & Be Free. “… everyone is acting according to conditioning: religious, social, family, school, philosophical, etc… They’re in chains, and they regard those chains as themselves.”

Ben Dreyfuss: Romanian Cops Did Not Find Andrew Tate Because Of His Greta Thunberg Video: “This is a lesson in media failure and misinformation.”

I saw a bulldog wearing a sweatshirt today.

This seems like a black-funny story until you read the charges against Tate. He”s not just your average MRA grifter. He seems like a monster and predator who should never breathe free air again. Andrew Tate Arrested for Human Trafficking in Romania After Pizza Box Gave Away His Location. [Laura …

Four days after Elon bragged about unplugging an important server rack, Twitter went down hard. — Mike Masnick at Techdirt @mmasnick@mastodon.social The woke mind virus strikes again!

“I remember reading an interview with a minister of an African state who said approximately, ‘every time a western minister visits us we get a lecture, every time a Chinese official visits we get a new hospital.’” — Ian Welsh: A Map Showing The Two Main Geopolitical Blocs

Religious upbringing is great for kids, even for those of us who find ourselves nonbelievers, agnostics, or atheists. It helps a person figure out the world and cosmos and their place in it.

Talented trans woman writer Charlie Jane Anders @charliejane@wandering.shop remembers her time as a choirboy. She saw the best and worst of religion—“complicated and messy.”

Do you set aside time every day to unplug?: Yesterday I read this post by Craig Mod about how he spends a big part of his day just walking around, unplugged, not connected to the Internet or listening to anything on earphones. The Sorta Kinda Life Changing Bliss of Walking Solo It made me think about how I seem to be looking at screens or …

Hello insomnia my old friend.

While walking the dog, I saw this splendid holiday display.

Crypto craziness craps out — and about time too. By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (@sjvn@mastodon.social) at The Register. At a recent fintech open source fintech conference, crypto was only mentioned in passing. “People would talk about it in the same way you’d talk about your little …

The Sorta Kinda Life Changing Bliss of Walking Solo. By Craig Mod @craigmod@mastodon.social Folks seem scared of solitude but solitude is a superpower when used well. Alone, in your basement, it breeds anomie, but out in the world, moving through the world, step after step, clear goal in mind, I’d …

Dogs start the day with a spoonful of Alpo or some other canned meat on top of a heap of patented, vitaminized kibble. In no time the meal is gobbled down and the dish licked clean and, like as not, poked noisily about the kitchen like a hockey puck, amid waggings. But I can recall another era, when …

Texas Cop Sentenced To More Than 11 Years In Jail For Killing A Woman During A Welfare Check. By Tim Cushing at Techdirt. Atatiana Jefferson was lawfully hanging around in her Texas home when she heard a prowler outside at 2 am, so she retrieved her lawfully owned gun to investigate. The prowler was …

Amazon begins drone deliveries in California and Texas. Residents of two towns, one in each state, can sign for drone delivery. “The drone will fly to the designated delivery location, descend to the customer’s backyard, and hover at a safe height,” Amazon said. “It will then …

Republicans Can Still Win in Blue San Diego. By Andrew Keatts at Voice of San Diego.

Mastodon has rejected five recent funding offers to preserve its nonprofit status. “Mastodon will not turn into everything you hate about Twitter,” says founder Eugen Rochko. Remains to be seen whether this lasts. Money is a powerful temptation.

Southwest’s super-efficiency is destroying it: Seems like the super-efficiency that made Southwest a great airline in good conditions is making it a nightmare now. Super-efficient businesses have no slack in emergencies. Daring Fireball: Southwest Airlines Has Fallen Apart We saw that with some household supplies in 2020. And we’re still seeing …

We saw this sobering sign and candle at the vet a few days ago.

If you’re seeing this on Mastodon, I suggest you follow me at @mitchw@mastodon.social. If you think you’re already following me there, you’re actually probably not. I apologize for the inconvenience. Here’s an explanation. A couple of days ago, I migrated all my followers on @mitchw@mastodon.social …

San Diego needs to build housing and plenty of it. Forget “neighborhood character” and the environment. Current conditions are a crime against humanity. STUT: These are the stories of newly homeless San Diegans. By Gary Warth.

When Britain abolished slavery, slaveowners received compensation. But what about the enslaved people themselves? Did they get any financial reparations for the terrible crime committed against them by the slaveowners and society? 7 Reasons Why Britain Abolished Slavery. By Luke Tomes at historyhit.

How a Town Famous for Xenophobia Fell in Love With Immigrants “We now want as many immigrants as possible,” said Bernard Thompson, the mayor of Hérouxville, Quebec, a onetime supporter of the town’s anti-immigrant code.

The Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest countries, became one of only two nations in the world to adopt Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency. Eight months later, almost nothing has changed. Crypto was an alternative to the CFA franc, which gives France effective control of the economies of …

My favorite part of George Santos’ self-defense is where he says he never claimed to be Jewish, he just said he was “Jew-ish.” Oy.

Jackie Hoffman steals “Glass Onion.”

Get Blogging! Your easy guide to starting a new blog..

Elon Musk was never a liberal, and his plans for Twitter were never benevolent. “Tech barons’ lip-service to democracy and pluralism was always conditional on preserving their own positions at the top.” By Thomas Zimmer at The Guardian.

“Karens for Hire”—slogan, “We Karen so you don’t have to”—promises “to harness the power of accomplished complainers in the service of beaten-down customers, abused tenants and anyone else with a dispute that outstripped their own capacity to carp.” Cutting through customer service doom-loops by …

The Real History Behind ‘The Woman King’ | The Agojie Warriors of Dahomey. By Meilan Solly at Smithsonian Magazine. The movie’s depiction of the Agojie army of elite women warriors is true-to-life. But Dahomey in real life was a brutal, imperial autocracy and enthusiastic supporter of …

A secularised Jewish American thinks about celebrating Christmas. As a secularized Jewish American, I relate. Ben Werdmuller: Christmas, the eighth night, and me. I’ve had essentially no personal encounters with anti-Semitism in my own life—that I’m aware of.

Matt Stoller: Private Equity Gave Your Bank Password to Hackers Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corp own LastPass. They raised prices, and then fumbled security. You had one job guys! … At this point, it’s time to recognize that ownership and management of software firms by private …

Busloads of migrants dropped off at vice president’s DC home on Christmas Eve The Bible literally says not to do shit like this. Matthew 25:31 and following.

Feline Navidad!

Building a keyboard with a rotary dial instead of a number pad.

In rural Georgia, an unlikely rebel against Trumpism. By Stephanie McCrummen at the Washington Post. Johnson, a 33-year-old white electrician with no college degree from rural Georgia, rejects hate. I can’t decide whether I think this is a great profile, or whether it’s patronizing and elitist.

Fleece knobby dog, friends!

We watched the first episode of the first season of “Yellowstone.” We liked it. It’s like “Succession.” There should be a Yellowstone/Succession crossover. And it should have Doctor Who, too. Because everything is better with the Doctor.

I migrated my mastodon account to micro.blog but decided I don’t like micro.blog as a mastodon client because micro.blog doesn’t show boosts and I like seeing boosts. So I figured fine I’ll just use my mastodon account to read, and continue posting to micro.blog. But then I found that when you …

I’m going to use “Bomb Cyclone” as my porn star name.

While walking, the dog and I saw this tree. This is Christmas in a subtropical, semi-arid area.

From my journal, this day in 2013: We still haven’t seen the two female cats we had that since we uncrated them yesterday, other than Julie seeing the shadow of ears when she looked under the bed. But during the night I heard meowing and felt little feet walking on me in bed. I assume that …

I just migrated my mastodon.social account to micro.blog—which had the side effect of deactivating my mastodon.social account. I’m not sure I like that. All of this is experimentation. The fediverse is in early days. We’re still figuring it out, collectively and individually.

McSweeney’s: A Parent’s Typical Day, as Envisioned by My Child’s Preschool

A 28-year-old Meta employee paid $300,000 for a 12-year-lease on a studio apartment on a cruise ship. Austin Wells will work from home while traveling the world.

I don’t think I am the target audience for Andor. Unless you’re supposed to fall asleep halfway through the fourth episode and then your wife wakes you up to let you know the credits are on and it’s time to turn off the TV. If that’s what Andor was going for, they nailed it.

A house down the street has a Santa hologram in the living room window, which I’ve never seen anywhere before. Either that or a creepy guy in a very realistic Santa costume.

We took one of the cats to the vet today.

“There is some kind of a creative power there, to have an unusual name.” Johnny Cash did a song about that

The best headlines of 2022 Included: ‘How to Murder Your Husband’ writer guilty of murdering her husband h/t kottke

What Happens When a Group of 12-Year-Olds Is Left with No Supervision for Five Days? Jason Kottke: “After a brief attempt at cleaning, the boys completely trash their house, eat mostly sugar, divide into factions, and somehow trash the house even more.”

Who are the most influential and important people in history? Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Genghis Khan, Augustus Caesar, and Napoleon are 1-6, in that order. Who else is in the top 12?

People who wear short pants and long sleeve, heavy sweatshirts in chilly weather are monsters.

People who wear short pants and long sleeve, heavy sweatshirts in chilly weather are monsters.

“I can’t go here. It would be too easy for him to pick up if I go here.” — The dog, looking for a place to poop while we’re out walking.

"… the App Store’s financial success is the worst thing that’s happened to Apple this century. It’s a distraction at best, and a profound corruption at worst." — John Gruber @gruber@mastodon.social Gruber raises a good point here. The App Store, and general locked-down nature of the …

Mastodon is getting popular enough that it’s going to start attracting litigation and regulation. — Amanda Hoover on Ars Technica

As if you didn’t have enough to worry about: eating too many apples might be bad for you.

Why Would Anyone Use Another Centralized Social Media Service After This? — Mike Masnick at Techdirt @mmasnick@mastodon.social. I’m asking myself the same question. I’m heavily active on Facebook but not looking to get involved in another proprietary social media service.

We don’t need a new global town square to replace Twitter. We already have one: The Web.: The web is the world’s town square.I t’s been right there along along, and Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., are all just layers on top of that web. Nobody owns the web. If somebody like Twitter or Facebook puts a fence around their part of the web, that fence is just two feet tall. You can …

I like that micro.blog doesn’t support likes or reblogs. On Facebook, Tumblr, and Mastodon, I’m trying to pay very little attention to my likes and reblogs without comment. Likes and commentless reblogs are sometimes useful. Sometimes a friend I haven’t heard from in a while likes one of my posts, …

Hi, @manton! Feature request for micro.blog: Let me import my Mastodon follower list, which I can already do when switching Mastodon instances. Right now, I’m syndicating my micro.blog posts to my mastodon.social account. Importing my follower list would be even better.

Daring Fireball @gruber@mastodon.social: Quora is beta testing an AI chatbot. Shouldn’t be that big a change for Quora, many of whose participants already fail the Voight-Kampff test.

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr: How Apple could open its App Store without really opening its App Store. Apple will be required to open the iPhone to competing app stores, according to reliable reports, which is a huge deal and runs completely counter to Apple’s iPhone strategy since …

Hearing Wendell Pierce say “fuuuuuck” in an early scene of S3E1 of “Jack Ryan” makes me want to watch “The Wire” again.

While walking, the dog and I saw this mobile axe-throwing setup. Because is it really the holidays without axe-throwing?

While walking, the dog and I saw this dapper gentleman.

The right believes in absolute free speech for everyone they agree with.

Soon as I saw the headline cross Mastodon, I checked my twitter account. Still active. I feel snubbed.

Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk’s Twitter Bans Tons Of High Profile Journalists — Mike Masnick at Techdirt. “… it seems that whatever brakes or controls were in place at the new ‘free speech absolutist’ Twitter have really come off.”

How cable monopolists tricked conservatives into shooting themselves in the face – Cory Doctorow “No matter how hard conservative culture-war cannon-fodder love big business, it will never love them back.”

While out walking the dog late this afternoon I saw a little four-year-old girl wearing a beautiful green Christmas dress with a red bow on it. She was getting out of the car with her Dad, coming home from daycare I guess. This was the same little girl I’d seen one morning a week or two ago, getting …

Years ago, two friends of mine, one at the CIA, one at the Pentagon, advised me to delete the app. So I don’t want to position the concerns about TikTok as an extreme position. Having a Chinese-owned social media app embedding itself into our lives is not without risk. But it’s worth noting that the …

… a conservative is someone who believes that some of us were born to rule, and the rest of us were born to be ruled over. — Cory Doctorow, @pluralistic@mamot.fr Plato Would Ban Ad-Blockers. He was a dick.

The idea that “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product” is utter nonsense. The factor that determines whether a company will treat you like the product is whether they can get away with treating you like the product. A company that is disciplined by neither competition nor …

I have just disabled micro.blog’s cross-posting to my main mastodon account, and will instead use micro.blog’s native ActivityPub support. If you want to follow me on Mastodon, you can do so on @mitchw@micro.blog. This situation is permanent. Until I change my mind. Which could be never. …

I can’t make up my mind whether I want to cross-post from micro.blog to my primary mastodon account—as I am doing now—or simply use micro.blog’s built-in ActivityPub support. I go back and forth. When I’m not cross-posting, I boost my micro.blog posts to my mastodon account …

Crypto Was Always Smoke and Mirrors: The fall of FTX shocked everyone. Except this guy. The world of cryptocurrency is rich with eccentric characters and anonymous Twitter personalities. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the early figures who called attention to the problems with …

Support Railroad Workers Fighting for Humane Conditions and Paid Sick Leave. The RR workers get NO sick leave and NO regular schedules! They are always under their bosses’ thumb. COVID shows how important sick leave is. Inhumane schedules, and denying sick leave, especially during a pandemic, …

American healthcare is split into 2 piles: Face holes Not face holes — US Healthcare, by Matt Haughey on A Whole Lotta Nothing h/t kottke.org

“I believe that marriage is a lasting partnership between one person without health insurance and one person who gets pretty good coverage through work.” h/t kottke.org

“Is there such a thing as accidental praxis? Because as much as I hate oligarchs, in a million years I could not have figured out a way to trick one to walk on stage and get booed for ten minutes straight by the proletariat.” Speaking as a former comedian, it’ll be interesting to see how this …

jwz: “I would like to report an absolutely absurd use of metaphor.” Truck fire leads to huge pile of trash dumped in front of police station. If you walked by 17th and Valencia on your way to lunch today, you may have noticed an enormous pile of trash steaming on the road just beyond the police …

The service I use to track of TV and movies to watch, trakt.tv, has been down for two days. They post occasional updates on Twitter. The latest just says their main database crashed two days ago at 7:30 am PT, and they’re working around the clock to fix things. Good luck!

Idea for a crime novel about a man who steals a yarmulke from his male sibling. Working title: “His Brother’s Kipah.”

Contrary to all good writing advice, sometimes I like to use baroque, sesquipedalian language where monosyllabic verbiage will do.

Orphaned neurological implants. By Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr. Second Sight, a company that makes ocular implants, sold out to another company that doesn’t want to be on that business, leaving users blind and with crippling vertigo. Not the first time a neural implants company has done this …

Heavy rain when walking the dog this morning. The dog didn’t like it. Neither did I, but only one of us had a choice about being out there.

A few weeks ago, I was communicating with a 26-year-old colleague, talking about increasing work demands in the face of an oncoming launch. I started to say, “I definitely picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.” Then I stopped myself, because I thought she probably hasn’t seen the movie, and …

Enjoyable article about Generation Z’s struggle to adapt to communication style in the office workplace, particularly on Slack and email. Gen Z came to ‘slay.’ Their bosses don’t know what that means.. By Danielle Abril at The Washington Post. Gen Z gets rococo and complex in its use of emoji, and …

I was standing on the sidewalk outside the pet store tapping on my phone. An old guy walked by very slowly, pushing a walker, with oxygen cannulae in his nostrils, wearing a jaunty Tyrolean hat. “What did you do before you had those things?” he said. I didn’t miss a beat. …

How the Hospice Movement Became a For-Profit Hustle. Half of all Americans now die in hospice care. Easy money and a lack of regulation transformed a crusade to provide death with dignity into an industry rife with fraud and exploitation. — Ava Kofman, with Doris Burke, at ProPublica and The New …

I’ve been sleeping better for the past month or so. I attribute to more consistent bedtimes and wake times, reduced life stress and cooler bedroom temperatures. Even though summer nights here in San Diego are cool, our bedroom stays warm, and I think next summer I may return to my energy-wasting …

What you can learn about sleep from truckers Stephanie Vozza at Fast Company: [Dean Croke, principal analyst at DAT Freight & Analytics, an on-demand freight marketplace] says the body is programmed to sleep twice a day, at night and again eight hours after you wake. The second sleep should be …

Freedom of reach is freedom of speech. The online debate over free speech suuuuucks, and, amazingly, it’s getting worse… Billionaire dilettantes have their own stupid definitions of all kinds of important words like “freedom” and “discrimination” and “free speech.” Remember: these definitions …

What if failure is the plan?. danah boyd has been studying social media for decades, with a particular focus on young people and other marginalized groups. She applies her insights to the current state of Twitter, with asides on the global war on terror and the real cause of the collapse of local …

It is a cold and blustery day here in San Diego. We had brunch with friends. I walked the dog before the rain started. I am spending the afternoon on my keister, reading and blogging, with Julie and the dog. Then I will have dinner and watch some tv. An altogether splendid day. Also, Julie bought a …

Blogging is its own form at this point. It isn’t an essay. Nor is it a scholarly article. It has no length requirements: a blog post can be a sentence, a paragraph, 500 words, twice that, or twenty times that. Neither does blogging come with expectations of frequency. Some folks blog daily; others …

Author Scott Lynch responds to a reader who objects to “unrealistic stereotypes of political correctness” in his fiction featuring a Black, middle-aged woman pirate captain. h/t Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr

Molly White: On anti-crypto toxicity. I don’t think anyone should be pressured to be nice to evil people. But I think the belief that anyone who engages in crypto is evil has become rampant, and has been used to justify hate towards people who don’t deserve it. There is no doubt that there are …

Twitter to Increase Tweet Character Limit to 4,000, Elon Musk Says. By Sami Fathi at MacRumors.

Where Veteran Rockers Go to Reinvent Themselves. How the Hudson Valley and the Catskills became the home to grunge icons, ex-punks and one-hit wonders. By Sal Cataldi at The New York Times. “Being a dentist up in Woodstock, with all these great musicians, is a pretty great second act. And what other …

On 2024, Romney won’t back Trump, even if he’s the GOP nominee. By Steve Benen.

When you live in a semi-arid climate and you only drive a couple of times a week, you can go for years without driving in heavy rain, and then you find out your wiper blades have turned into ineffectual shoelaces.

Highbrow Films Aimed at Winning Oscars Are Losing Audiences. By Brooks Barnes at The New York Times. Audiences aren’t coming to theaters for these movies, and nobody really knows why.

We watched the first half of “Spirited” last night, because I thought I was in the mood for a lightweight Christmas movie, but it turned out I was not – or at least not that one. Julie wasn’t feeling it either. So instead, we watched the first episode of “Three Pines,” which turned out to be very …

A remake of “Happy Days” would be set in the 2000s.

Yesterday I mistakenly had coffee at four in the afternoon. I thought it was decaf. But I slept soundly last night anyway. Makes me wonder what other superpowers I have evolved.

I saw these ducks do this mildly surprising thing at Lake Murray.

The Los Angeles Police Department is here to serve and protect… the powerful. The rest of you are on your own. After audio recordings leaked of Los Angeles city lawmakers making shockingly racist statements, police want to find and prosecute the leakers. LAPD Thinks Best Response To Leaked …

This letter from Mickey Mantle, recalling his ‘outstanding experience’ at Yankee stadium, is delightfully obscene, as is this 1898 memo to all Major League Baseball teams to reduce cursing. The 1898 memo was “so expletive-laden and obscene as to be ‘unmailable’ to its intended audience …

Dyson’s Air Purifying Headphones Will Cost $949, Plus Your Pride. By Andrew Liszewski at Gizmodo.

McSweeney’s: Middle School Party Games, Revised for Thirty-Five-Year-Olds. Truth or Dare If a player chooses “truth,” they must reveal how much money they make. If they choose “dare,” they must hand someone their phone and let them look at every tab they have open on their browser. By Nicole …

The New Yorker: Cory Doctorow Wants You to Know What Computers Can and Can’t Do. A conversation about the “mediocre monopolists” of Big Tech, the weirdness of crypto, and the real lessons of science fiction. … This will all be so great if we don’t screw it up. By Christopher Byrd. Cory also …

I saw this dapper gentleman at the park today.

The promise and the peril of ChatGPT. By Casey Newton. Reading about the potential for abuse here, I found myself thinking about the classic science fiction story “A Logic Named Joe,” in which author Murray Leinster predicts the consumer internet in 1946. One of the computers on the network gets a …

Yes, It’s Censorship: Stop picking that nit, it’ll never heal. A few big companies, including Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Twitter, monopolize public discourse, setting the rules for what we’re allowed to talk about. Cory Doctorow: The decision to make our “digital public square,” into …

Ancient Rome did not fall. It was destroyed from within, by the same forces we see playing out in America today. By Barry Gander, a self-described “Canadian from Connecticut,” on Medium.

While walking, the dog and I saw these houses with the holiday spirit, and this car 🦮📷

Eugene from Wednesday is my role model. I’m going to wear a retainer and keep bees.

A new Indiana Jones movie, starring 80-year-old Harrison Ford? Sure, why not?: Here’s the trailer. I’ve seen criticism of the trailer and of all the movies after “Raiders.” And much of that criticism is valid. But the best reaction to the trailer was from Jason Kottke: “Ok fine I will watch one more Indy movie.” I have enjoyed every Raiders movie, even “Temple of Doom” and …

Proud Boy terrorists threaten Columbus, Ohio, drag queen story hour, school asks for protection, police nope out.. On MetaFilter. Far more children have been molested by youth pastors than by drag queens, as Dan Savage points out.

MetaFilter: “Television news is about consistency and companionship."

jwz: Like Zoinks

jwz: Let Me Kill the Billionaire.

jwz: Normal Country. Functional Democracy

Seth Godin: Confidence doesn’t help win the lottery. There are lots of lotteries in our lives. Always have a Plan B.

One of the best blogs on the Internet. is back. I’m glad to see Jason Kottke has returned to blogging. But I’m sorry to learn he’s experiencing chronic pain. That’s hard.

South Dakota Bans Government Employees From Using TikTok. The Countless Other Apps And Services That Hoover Up And Sell Sensitive Data Are Fine, Though. Karl Bode at Techdirt: … policymakers freaking out about the Chinese potentially getting access to TikTok user data are the exact same people …

Dave Pell is on a roll on NextDraft today: ”At 8:10 p.m., more than nine hours after his family reported him missing, a passing tanker spotted the man near the mouth of the Mississippi River and alerted the Coast Guard." NYT (Gift Article): A Man Fell From a Cruise Ship. And Survived. …

Elon Musk gets mail. “Akiva Cohen, an attorney representing 22 laid-off Twitter employees, sent a letter to Twitter and Elon Musk (shared, of course, on Twitter): ‘If basic human decency and honor isn’t enough to make you want to keep your word, maybe this will…. ‘” By …

“Robert Moses Is A Racist Whatever.” Jason Kottke blogs about an interview with Robert Caro, author of “The Power Broker,” a definitive biography of urban planner Robert Moses. Moses’ racist vision for New York transformed the city, literally paving over Black neighborhoods with highways. Moses …

What weird food habits did you have in your family when you were a kid? If you’re a parent, how would your kids answer that question?: I’m remembering that one summer when I went to day camp where the kids brought their lunches. My mom made a big batch of hamburgers on Sunday, and froze them, and so I had a desiccated frozen hamburger for lunch every weekday. On good days the hamburgers were fully thawed. My mom was great, and she …

Alexandra Petri: “Free speech is when you pay me money for goods or services. That’s free speech. When you do not give me money, that is censorship."

Disney’s new neural network can change an actor’s age with ease. The “production ready” neural net makes actors younger or older for film or TV. By Benj Edwards at Ars Technica

This made me happy this morning: This morning while walking the dog I saw one of the neighbor men in front of his house, getting ready to take his three-year-old daughter to school. I shouted, “Good morning,” as we do, and he smiled a little and nodded back, distracted. I saw the little girl. I shouted, “Good morning!” to her. She …

How can the Democrats claim to be pro-union and pro-labor and also do this?: The bill that the House passed forcing railway workers back to work requires the workers to take a deal they voted to reject before, giving them only one sick day a year. US House Passes Bill Forcing Railway Workers Not to Strike Ian Welsh: People’s backs are to the wall. Since about 1980, the …

I have become fastidious about washing my hands, maybe even OCD, but I have also decided the dog and cats are sanitary, and I am still entirely clean if I have been petting the animals and letting the dog lick my hands and face. That’s how it works. It’s just science.

I have become fastidious about washing my hands, maybe even a little OCD, but I have also decided the dog and cats are sanitary, and I am still entirely clean if I have been petting the animals and letting the dog lick my hands and face. That’s how it works. It’s just science.

On Twitter: “You ever just think about how Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is basically whedon’s If I Did It”

“You’ve got to vaccinate people against the hate”: MetaFilter: In Russia, China, Iran, and the United States, autocracy is stumbling and liberal democracy is looking resilient. (But in the US at least, the far right isn’t taking no for an answer.) Noah Smith: “… although liberal democracy is the GOAT, each generation is driven to fuck around and …

A friend reminds me that I started getting healthy and fit after I attended a science fiction convention in around 2007, and saw that a third of the fans in attendance were using mobility scooters. I saw that for my own not-too-distant future if I didn’t lose weight and start exercising. And …

Hello again, micro.blog! It’s me, Mitch Wagner, getting a fresh start on a new blog. If you follow me on atomicrobotlive you can keep right on doing that, or you can just follow me here. I’ll explain what I’m doing later. I’m still figuring it out myself.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart. 📷

27 years in California and sometimes I’m still amazed by palm trees. 📷

Nice work, neighbors. 📷

Would you like to see a one-minute video of Minnie running around the backyard and digging? Of course you would. 📷

Lake Murray in the morning, San Diego, CA, 7:40 am PT. A Day In The Life #adayinthelife

My home office needs a name. I am choosing between: The Room Where It Happens The Cockpit The Boom Boom Room The Dangerous Exotic Bamboo Tiki Lounge and Bowling Alley

Robert A. Heinlein’s Red Planet was the gateway drug to books for me. My 3rd grade teacher, Miss Kaufman had a little area of bookshelves in the corner of her classroom. I read Red Planet and a biography of Helen Keller and was hooked. I told that story on Facebook a few years ago and in 2018 …

FBI Demands Apple’s Assistance In Opening iPhone Packaging

This house has a dinosaur in the yard. The dinosaur wears a nametag. His name is Burt. 📷

Out of curiosity, I rewatched “Dance of the Dwarfs,” a 1983 low-budget horror-adventure that was in heavy rotation on cable TV around the time it was released. Back then, cable TV didn’t have a lot of content to choose from, so you saw a lot of the same thing over and over. I ended up seeing this …

We don’t get many majestic trees like this in San Diego. 📷

We’ve been living in this house more than 20 years and last night Julie showed me an extremely useful lightswitch which I had previously been ignorant of.

My brothers and me having a Tarantino moment at Niagara Falls around 1971. 📷 I think the white car was our car. Dad liked a muscle car. It was an era when you could get a family-size muscle car.

Even when I was a little boy, I understood the importance of personal style. Around 1964. 📷

Just look at this beautiful house we saw on a trip to Athens, Ohio, to visit family a few years ago. Just look at it. 📷

African safari journal: Homeward bound: June 2019 Our final Africa safari stop was Little Kulala Desert Lodge, in Sossusvlei, the Namib-Naukluft Park, Namibia. We took another small charter flight, from Hoanib Valley Camp – or, rather the nearest airstrip from that camp, which was about two hours’s drive away from the camp itself. …

"Dance of the Dwarfs": In the early 1980s cable movie channels didn’t have much inventory and they’d play the same movie over and over, multiple times a day. And if you had the TV on for digital wallpaper, you’d sometimes end up watching the same movie a few times over the course of a few weeks. One of …

I’m about halfway through reading the very first Perry Mason novel, “The Case of the Velvet Claws,” published 1932. Perry has virtually no inner life. The same for his supporting characters. Supposedly it’s this way throughout the series. We never learn Perry’s …

A colleague on a Zoom meeting this morning shared his Mac screen with red numbers in the dock for App Store and operating system updates, and now I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight. Thank goodness his battery was fully charged.

We are enjoying “Endeavour.” It gives me an idea for a Star Trek series: “Ensign Kirk.” This is the story of a young Starfleet Ensign, fresh from the Academy, on his first assignment. He’s a rising star of Starfleet but that doesn’t mean he’s given special …

In the 90s, Justin Hall was a rich kid with distant parents and a need for attention. He fell in love with the Internet and started sharing intimate details of his life on his website, links.net. He was, maybe, the very first personal blogger, and paved the way for legions of people to share their …

I get relaxation from certain kinds of low-stakes digital activities, requiring little or no thought, like organizing email newsletters and suchlike. In the past I’ve beaten myself up about that, considering it wasted time. Now I think instead I need to make it work for me. Because sometimes you …

What is a “digital garden?”: I encountered the idea of a “digital garden” Friday and was instantly enthusiastic and spent some time this weekend nerding out about it. Here is the result – the beginning of my digital garden: mitchwagner.com. A digital garden is a personal website curated by its author, with essays and …

I updated mitchwagner.com to index the best of my personal writing. I’ve heard people call that a “digital garden.”

Our Africa journal – Saying goodbye to a new friend: June 23, 2019 — Yesterday, we left the camp for our next stop. Festus drove us two hours over those rough desert roads to the same airstrip we’d flown in to. We arrived 40 minutes early so we had time to spend with our new friend. We sat in the same shelter where we’d had our first lunch together …

In “Man of Steel” there’s a scene at the end where Superman and the big villain are having a fight flying around midtown Manhatttan, and they’re ripping apart skyscrapers and you see these shots of Superman and the villain getting thrown through a floor of cubicles and sending partitions and desks …

The house 🎃 across the street ☠ is starting 👻 to decorate 🧛‍♀️ for Halloween. 🧙 Too soon!🦇

“Digital gardens” are personal spaces on the Internet that avoid the one-size-fits-all look and feel of social media. They’re not ephemeral and stream-of-consciousness, like blogs or social media. They’re curated (to use an overused word) websites about the creator’s …

Like I said about 10 hours ago, I thought I had insomnia licked because I got a good night’s sleep five nights in a row, but last night it was back and I got about three hours of sleep total. I was pleased, however, because I got myself set up so I can work on my iPad in the living room until …

“I’ve got this insomnia thing licked,” I said. “I’ve slept well six nights in a row,” I said. Note the timestamp on this post. Oh, well, at least I got work done — good progress on an article I’ve been stuck on for a month or more.

Minnie in a weird position, 2017. 📷

Casey Newton: “Few will cry any tears for Facebook… But the events of this summer have folks I know in Silicon Valley asking the same question over and over: who will Apple put the squeeze on next?”

Big Tech doesn’t have persuasion superpowers. The companies are toxic because they’re monopolies. [Cory Doctorow]

Using machine learning to optimize the layout of banana slices on a sandwich. [Cory Doctorow] I imagine this would work with pickle chips too.

I’ve learned that my resting face when I’m a zoom call looks like I’m drunk. Once I have my colleagues trained that I’m not drunk, I can start day-drinking.

RNC Speaker Mary Ann Mendoza Cancelled After Boosting Conspiracy About Jewish Plot to Enslave the World

If you want to see women walking while talking on the phone, most with dogs, some pushing strollers, get out of your house and walk around the neighborhood at 7 am.

I dropped a container of imported parmesan cheese flakes on the floor the other day and swept it up and put it back in the container and now the dog gets a little cheese with her food. She’s asking to see the wine list too.

I stopped briefly on my walk yesterday to fiddle with my iPhone, and this beautiful cat came out from behind some bushes to say hello. After pausing a moment to make sure I wasn’t going to do anything violent, she flopped at my feet. 📷

Epic Games' assertion that there's an iPhone market that Apple monopolizes, distinct from the smartphone market that includes Android, looks like bullshit to me.: Apple kicked Epic’s Fortnite out of the App Store for terms of service violations. Fortnite immediately sued. Thomas Claburn at The Register: Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, filed a lawsuit against Apple on Thursday accusing the iGiant of illegally monopolizing iOS app distribution and app …

The bizarre dimming of bright star Betelgeuse caused by giant stellar eruption [Space.com]: Betelgeuse farted.

Simulate driving through dozens of world cities while listening to local radio. driveandlisten.herokuapp.com Johannesburg driving is scary.

If you start reading a book and it’s not grabbing you, how long do you give it until you give up? Or do you always read through to the end once you start?

Facebook is refusing to remove a doctored Nancy Pelosi video. Factcheckers put ‘partly false’ label on video that has been circulating since Thursday and viewed more than 2m times www.theguardian.com/us-news/2…

When Covid Subsided, Israel Reopened Its Schools. It Didn’t Go Well. www.nytimes.com/2020/08/0…

Photorealistic portraits of Roman emperors, generated by machine learning and Photoshop. medium.com/@voshart/…

Trump has had more nice things to say about a woman arrested for sex trafficking than he has about John Lewis.

How to spell “entrepreneur:” It’s got more Rs than you think.

Wilford Brimley was once a bodyguard for Howard Hughes. twitter.com/rstephens…

Clashing privacy laws between the US and Europe spell trouble for big tech: “If you’re a U.S. subsidiary of a big U.S. firm and you’re based in Europe, whom do you obey? The European law that says you can’t hand it over because of GDPR or the American laws that say they have extra judicial control and you’ve got to hand it over?" siliconangle.com/2020/08/0…

Why QAnon is here to stay

Mirrors only became commonplace and inexpensive in the 19th Century. Until then, almost everybody had no idea what they looked like. They had never seen images of themselves. Pessimists Archive: Mirrors

I saw this regal gentleman at Lake Murray. 📷

Drive-through communion at the church up the street from us. 📷 Communion was no longer running when I saw the sign while out walking yesterday. That’s a good thing because I would have hopped in my car, driven up and asked for a grilled cheese burrito and chalupa supreme with a pineapple twist …

Too often I try to get just a couple more shaves out of an old blade. That’s a metaphor for something.

The good: I shaved with a new blade this morning and I’m wearing a new shirt. The bad: I have a razor burn on my left cheek from the last time I shaved, and a blemish on my philtrum.

I resolved on Thursday to do less Facebook, because Facebook doesn’t make me feel good. I was on Facebook this weekend more than I would’ve liked, during which time I learned about three friends going through big life events. Doing less Facebook is not easy. People who never joined made the right …