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 require teachers to out LGBTQ kids to their parents.

The Republican Party believes it’s the role of government to police sexual purity. That’s wrong.

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:

Things that get you kicked out of your position in the GOP:

If the Democrats can sign on six moderate Republicans, the Democrats can pick the next speaker. It’s a long shot, sure, but in today’s political climate I’m not ruling anything out.

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 bad at punctuation.

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 launch the missiles in the event of nuclear war. X-127’s nation, and that nation’s enemy, are intentionally left unidentified.

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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…..