2023

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 get a little more sleep now.

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 tattoo in Manila done by a drunken tattoo artist with a dirty needle that would give me hepatitis.

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 swimming.” And that was when I realized that I had become a boring person.

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 know. Later, it becomes clear this other race is far advanced of humans, with great psychic powers. Asking them about electricity and such is like asking us about the best kind of wood to rub together to start a fire—something our distant ancestors knew but almost nobody today does.

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 opened the magazine, and my eye fell on the face of a shocked-looking, open-mouthed boy with the headline, “Did you say JOCK ITCH?

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 excellent. As for the fifth season: As I recall, the series was initially supposed to go five seasons, but the showrunner, J.

‘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 didn’t concern himself with looking back. Instead, he wrote, and in the process irrevocably altered American detective fiction, forging a link between classic depictions and more contemporary approaches to the form.

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. Beatlemania rather than the Beatles. A good writer will occasionally surprise you—write something completely unlike them. But a writer hired to write like someone else will, if they do a good job, never surprise you.

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 Me.” He also played the accordion as a boy. I think every Jewish and Italian boy cannot get out of Brooklyn, N.

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 bar stools, a curved sofa and other modern décor to furnish a newly built home he’ll never live in. That is because the dwelling is so small it is better suited for a resident the size of a mouse.

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. Twenty years later a rough, corpulent butcher from Australia named Arthur Orton arrived in Europe and declared himself to be the long lost heir. The trial that ensued captivated the public….

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 mark." Podcast host Eric Molinsky says the source of regeneration’s narrative power may be that we all change over time and when we look back on our past selves they seem like other people.

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 themselves, or elaborate on whatever point I’m repeating back.

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 was one part of that, but so were the Boring Company, ride-hailing services, and self-driving cars. The Hyperloop’s failure provides a lesson we’re learning far too late: that Silicon Valley won’t deliver us a better world if they can’t find some way to profit off it.

“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 utility is an inverted U. Ferraris sit in garages; Hondas get driven. The Middle Ground Fallacy: Falsely assuming that splitting the difference between two polar opposite views is a healthy compromise.

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.

“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 is trying to change its culture. I’m reminded of Cory Doctorow’s observation that Google only ever built 1-1/2 products—search and I forget what else. It bought its ad business, which was like Jed Clampett luckily striking oil in his backyard.

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 includes a personal favorite of mine: “Time After Time” (1979), starring Malcolm McDowell as time-traveling H.G. Wells, Mary Steenburgen as his plucky feminist 1970s galpal and David Warner as Jack the Ripper.

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 and former business partner, Jacob Marley, sports a fully Jewish moniker – his first name one of the Jewish forefathers, and his Hebrew family name meaning “It is bitter to me.

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, advises him to take a weekend to relax in someplace warm, and he does so—and disappears.

“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 to something useful in work or life isn’t the main point, although they often do. More importantly, as various monks and philosophers say, the greatest happiness for humans is to live in the moment.

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 the shape, your final click should be on the starting point. You can customize with the fill tool—if you do, then when you close the shape, you’ll automatically get a color fill.

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 products of the 20th Century, as important as the Model T. The System/360 introduced computing architecture that ran across a line of computers—some bigger and more powerful, and others smaller, meaning users could re-use their software between different models in a line.

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 treat the data center itself as one massive warehouse-scale computer,” Barroso said. Barroso was one of those immigrants that Republicans say are vermin polluting America’s blood.

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 of travel or the belief that everyday rules do not apply to vacations, much like calories don’t count on holiday and foreign currencies aren’t real money.

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 profits to $9.9B in its most recent quarter.

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 “Paul Blart, Mall Cop.” The way I remember it (it’s been a few years), Paul Blart is a hero–and he was a hero all along: Courageous, loyal, and ingenious.

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 tablets. My earliest memory of using a clipboard manager was the late 1980s. 35+ years later, a clipboard manager should be standard on the Mac, iPad and iPhone.

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 that control to protect murderous, brutal cops. Bodycams could be a source of accountability for cops, but for that to be true, control over bodycams would have to vest with institutions that want to improve policing.

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. I also saw another gentleman, sinewy build, with leathery skin, wearing plaid shorts, a sweatshirt, a leather tyrolean hat and a small knapsack on his back.

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 tonsure.

“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 Mastodon. At least for now.

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 something too athletic, and then cut back to him when the athletic thing was complete.

“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 President. Not great, but pretty good. However, let’s not kid ourselves: If Hunter Biden came from a different family, he’d be doing prison time by now.

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 Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania if you’re threatening Jews.

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 after Friday I decided to give Reddit another try, and I find I like the discussion there. And call me a sucker but I like watching the karma points rack up.

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 were able to lucid dream at will? Would it be like the movie “Inception?”

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 Israeli Victims: Solidarity for victims of sexual assault should trump other politics.

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) who points out the difference between “Internet problems” and “platform problems.” “Internet problems” arise from the fact that we live in a world where evil exists, and will inevitably find its way onto the Internet.

“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 records are introduced. Ukrainian defenders print out giant 1:1 life-size aerial photographs of damaged airfields. Once the site is repaired, they hang the images over the sites so they look damaged and not worth attacking again.

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 fediverse evolves.

“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 you on a weekend,” she said. “But your tests just came back and your blood sugar levels are alarming.

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 different—and mostly incomprehensible—to humans and the other complex life forms that inhabit Earth.

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 where guys with guns break the door into a room decorated with cut-out newspaper headlines. … Movies that dads like.

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 pay for life-saving medical care that their health insurance won’t cover. I watched as people on social media claimed it was “pro-labor” to tip a person for ringing up your order at a food or coffee chain rather than demanding the multi-millionaire (or billionaire) owner of that company pay their employees a living wage (as is the norm in Europe, where tipping is not expected and the owners of the restaurants and stores are typically not among the uber-wealthy).

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? Or a candidate who you should consider supporting? They are famous, sure, but they are more than that: They are _your town’s _famous person, someone with local credibility because they know what it’s like to grow up where you did.

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. It’s always more fun to be obnoxious,” she said.

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. “My dear beloved husband I will celebrate that this letter has reach[ed] your hands and finds you with the perfect health that I wish for myself," [writes Francisca Muñoz in Seville to her husband, Miguel Atocha, in Mexico on 22 January 1747/].

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 described the “vitamin shots” as “instant euphoria.” Messy Nessy Chic quotes Capote: You feel like Superman. You’re flying. Ideas come at the speed of light. You go seventy-two hours straight without so much as a coffee break.

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 to prepare for that day. Cory Doctorow: This “AI debate” is pretty stupid, proceeding as it does from the foregone conclusion that adding compute power and data to the next-word-predictor program will eventually create a conscious being, which will then inevitably become a superbeing.

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 carrier had a black cat in it, for reasons unknown.”

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 the outside world previously—a Victorian English adventurer—and it went badly for them, tragically and unsurprisingly. Why Uncontacted Tribes Want to Stay Uncontacted

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 public relations department.” Clive Thompson on the Age of Microcelebrity: Why Everyone’s a Little Brad Pitt | WIRED Microcelebrities were still uncommon back then, but now everybody who’s active on social media is a microcelebrity, even if it’s just posting family photos to instagram.

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 and my newsletter.

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 don’t. Situations are simply things we need to live with.” Excellent life advice from Seth Godin. Working with problems

“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 like a standard case of a guy who was nice to some people and a jerk to others.

“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 you’re out of toilet paper. Otherwise, have a little dignity, and wait for the door to open. Your refrigerator is not a library or a hope chest.

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, went on like this for MDCLXXIX messages.”

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 creator, Cathy Guisewhite, though I found the Boomer-bashing infuriating at times.

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 nothing Facebook has to say to me that needs my immediate attention.

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 book. When I was in my 20s, I read “The Vampire Lestat” and loved it. Again: If it was intended to be erotic, I didn’t realize it or even register it.

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 discusses her career and the movie and TV adaptations of her work., including the “Interview With the Vampire” TV series.

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?

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 was running the company as a fast-track start up.

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

I visited with a friend in Oceanside

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 wish has quite gone.” Russell T Davies on secrets, sex and falling for Doctor Who: ‘Something clicked in my head: I love you’

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 Thanksgiving. It’s time for Gen Z to lose the sobriety stigma

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 their enemies. We get the word “cannibalism” from their name. Queen Isabella of Spain said it was OK to treat the Caribs harshly because of their vile barbaric practices.

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 influence in the Senate is paltry.

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 to weird to bizarre. — Has Trump Gone Even Crazier?

“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 Discussing Capitol Trip on Jan. 6

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. — Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day. TikTok teens aren’t stanning Osama bin Laden

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 morning. Recently, I realized the MacBook Pro wasn’t making the noise. It was my insulated coffee carafe, which rests next to the MBP when I’m having coffee at my desk in the morning.

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 both counts. He creates one-minute videos talking about what he’s written and posts them to various places. He takes a screenshot of one good paragraph and posts to X, Threads, etc.

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.

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 anybody in the gas chamber,” but: The Nazis did a lot of things from 1933 to 1941 (when the Final Solution commenced) that would shock Americans today, and Trump and his followers are capable of every one of them: shutting down critical voices in the press; banning books, and even burning some, just to drive the point home; banning opposition organizations or even parties; making political arrests of opponents without telling them the charges; purging university faculties; doing the same with the civil service….

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 Mullenweg, followed by “quick quiet shelving of the project only a few days later.” Tumblr is supported by ads and subscriptions, and interoperability undermines both those business models. Hof: Tumblr and interoperability, revised

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 biggest fans might have known. Both Bruce Springsteen and Stallone “have channeled their inner selves through art to create a third identity, one that exists somewhere between truth and fiction, that has become a potent avatar, especially for their male fans.

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 exhibition. Long lived 1823-1893. Researcher Brian Edwards, who discovered the photo, has been listening to the album since it came out more than 50 years ago.

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 whole time. The kayaker described the experience as “heart-rending.”

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 of people.

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

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 1906 earthquake and fire, AIDS crisis, Zodiac killer, one tech boom-and-bust and the band Starship will be completely undone by … high commercial vacancy rates.

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

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 or slowing down and adjust themselves accordingly, and the wheels lock when you’re taking the stairs.” Using Moonwalkers, you can walk 2.5x faster than your normal gait.

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 on Facebook, for example. Here, blogger Tim Carmody responds to some of Dave’s ideas. … Dave’s right: this worked for podcasts (the phrase “anywhere you get your podcasts!

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.

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 suits in a pile in my closet to be brought to the cleaners.

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.

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 [detectives] Carella and Kling go to interview a woman about some crime. And she’s sitting there in her slip and she’s drunk, and she grabs her breast and squeezes and says, ‘In your eye, copper.

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 change up their identities all the time. This is just me. If you love Halloween, I’m fine with that.

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, because I realized I had not checked my podcast downloads to see what I’d be listening to on our walk.

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 attempt to divide-and-rule “knowledge workers” from “industrial workers” is a transparent bid to shatter solidarity and make it easier to abuse and exploit all workers.

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 for users. Then once all the advertisers and the users are locked in, Threads will become shitty for everybody but Facebook itself.

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 the world into their silo as possible and never doing anything that could possibly benefit anyone else.

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 thinking was a product of depression. I had been like Ahab hunting for Moby Dick, not realizing the boat he’s on is actually a large whale in a boat costume.

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

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 instituted revenue sharing, I could make a significant revenue stream off this—my random thoughts, memes I find elsewhere, photos I take while walking the dog.

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.

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 getting out of my head to just sit and enjoy it. I kept thinking, “Is Bruce Willis supposed to be charming here? He kind of seems like an asshole.

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, Californian, Jewish, white, male, cis-gendered, heterosexual and Julie’s husband. Those things are characteristics.

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. Type 3 fun is just plain not fun, not now and not ever. From comments on Reddit:

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 slowly improving as an artist. Within three or four years he’d be doing detailed drawings and sharp satire about Watergate.

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 interviewer’s surprised expression. When asked to elaborate, I said “If it’s dead, cry but no real panic.

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 right – ‘don’t quite want it to be true.’”

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 learned, the same person as Alison Brie). Elizabeth is determined and humorless and takes up with Calvin Evans, a male chemist, who is also determined and humorless and is the only person who sees her for who she is.

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 response, we shredded our own liberties. We invaded Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. Our response to 9/11 led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

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 given by the Prince Regent: “We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the waltz was introduced at the English court on Friday last.

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 attention in the West.” Could Stanisław Lem be the most underrated sage of the AI age? I remember Lem was celebrated in literary circles in the late 70s or 80s, but we haven’t heard much about him since.

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 bonus.”

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: “Yes, an Apple MacBook Pro—a laptop computer—and Apple AirPods. You will be charged $1,667. Did you place that order.

“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 became aware that I would most likely never see or speak with him again. The last words we exchanged were “I love you.

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 individual portions beforehand, further diminishing the likelihood that I will ever eat that bread pudding. Future archeologists will no doubt wonder at the find.

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 letters on several lines of the rolled-up papyrus. The letters spelled out the word “purple.”

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 position over the Palestinians, as demonstrated by the Netanyahu government’s decision to restrict power and water supplies to Gaza. The simplistic logic of pop intersectionality cannot reconcile this….

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 living in the Middle Ages in Europe. Why she doesn’t want to go back in time. How censorship worked during the Inquisition, and why Enlightenment philosophy and pornography were closely related.

“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 or Julia Roberts for video games, rides, toys, TV shows, etc. This podcast features an interview with Jim Hanks, a successful character actor and soundalike who specializes in playing Woody from “Toy Story” when brother Tom Hanks is unavailable.

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 talk with her later Notice my dirty lunch dishes in the sink Wash them Notice clean dishes from yesterday are still on the drying rack Put them away Pet dog Return to my office See the notification from Apple Pay on my desktop—I need to update my credit card Check my pocket.

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 Moral Equation Must Have Human Beings on Both Sides. Ignoring universal humanity is the path to murder.

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 now I only check it a couple of times a week and I don’t post there.

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 have a 7% higher recovery score…. “

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 Drums.” It appears in the 1954 “A Star Is Born,” “Star Wars,” “Toy Story” and on and on in many, many movies, TV shows and video games.

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 death of retired police chief Andreas Probst, when in fact she was the person who reported that it was a hit-and-run rather than an innocent accident.

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 interest—but she had stopped doing PR for them several weeks before we started dating.

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 were fans of “Game of Thrones” while they thought about various characters in the show and about their real friends. All participants had taken a test measuring loneliness.

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 could eat one Pop-Tart and trade the other for a candy bar,” she said of the two-pack. For my part, I would eat them only if my mother cut the edges off, leaving a ravioli-size square of frosted raspberry jam.

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 moment. This syndrome is exacerbated by elites who never, ever suffer consequences of their actions.

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 more viable. Make incumbents have to work to get re-elected.

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 Yorker notes that much Jewish ethnic humor, particularly at the turn of the 20th Century, gave gentiles an opportunity to ridicule Jewish immigrants, often cruelly.

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 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: 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 government and assassinate the sitting Speaker of the Hous and VP, with 91 felony criminal charges. Things that get you kicked out of your position in the GOP:

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.

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 thinking about Rome was remarkable. I’m not sure I should be considered part of the meme because I’m a history buff, and one of the historical periods that interests me is Rome.

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 changes, and then hand off to a designer to polish.

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 American. I suspect this is because my grandparents left those countries to get away from anti-Semitism, and found a welcoming home here. I have had the good fortune to be born in one of the few places and times in history where Jews face very little anti-Semitism.

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 people—although there are one or two good people in this movie, they are not the main characters. However, “Double Indemnity” is not the least bit off-putting.

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 be used, without complaint or error.

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 about it. Yesterday I was looking through some photos I took on business trips and thought: That was me. I used to do that.

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 they asked the clown what was the weirdest event he ever performed at. The clown replied that it was an adult party.

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 “strange fruit” hanging from poplar trees?

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 President. Bob Dole probably would have been a good, but not great President. The 90s would have proceeded exactly as it did.

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 film, sit through to the end of the movie, watch the newsreel, cartoon, and comedy short at the top of the program, and then sit through the feature film until they recognize the scene they walked in on.

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 sections. It’s bothered me for a while that my blogging is mixed-up and spread across Facebook, Micro.blog, Tumblr, Mastodon and Bluesky.

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 embracing right-wing conspiracy theories. Doctorow: Wolf once had a cluster of superficial political and personal similarities to Klein: a feminist author of real literary ability, a Jewish woman, and, of course, a Naomi.

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 neither seems appealing to me.

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 them.

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 Copernicus’s heliocentrism, Darwin’s theory of evolution and Einstein’s relativity. All three of those theories also ended up having enormous cultural influence — threatening our sense of our special place in the cosmos, challenging our intuition that we were fundamentally different than other animals, upending our faith in common sense ideas about the flow of time.

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, and sometimes in a chain reaction — they bounce from specialist to specialist, none of whom has the bandwidth to hear their whole frustrating ordeal together with the expertise to address all of their complaints: the nonspecific pain, the perpetual exhaustion, the bewildering test results, the one-off treatments.

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 cheese. If you want cheese for next week, you buy a young cheese.

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’ stands on the issues, their experience and competence don’t change much over the course of a campaign—they don’t make news—but they are more important.

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 whether the economic stimulus was too big. We’re not discussing the big question of whether we could have prevented 1.1 million deaths in the US alone. Katelyn Jetelina is an epidemiologist and the author of the popular newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist.

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 any of them. We’re not having conversations with (or listening to podcasts by) anyone but ourselves. Join Eagleman and his guest Aza Raskin to see the glimmer of a pathway that might get us to animal translation, and relatively soon.

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 normal customer relationship. Meanwhile, some ByteDance employees wonder if Oracle just wants to run up their bill. The TikTok contract, known internally at Oracle as Project Telesis, has made ByteDance one of Oracle’s most lucrative customers.

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, reputation-launderers, procurers, henchmen, and other enablers who have turnkey solutions for laundering your reputation and keeping the unwashed from building a guillotine outside the gates of your compound.

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 on that particular day.

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

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 answers.

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 I finish.” I finish 90-95% of the books that I start and you know what? I think I should be quitting more books.

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 and stacks of water bottles in front. I bought five gallons.

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 thinking for some time of getting a solar-powered battery for electronics, maybe I’ll order something today and it will arrive in time for next time.

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 jumped to the foreground when the problem came up. This was going on every minute or so.

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 and apple salad served over lettuce with a peanut butter dressing” and “a peanut butter ‘loaf’ recipe involving two cups of chopped olives and a teaspoon of onion juice”

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 seems crazy to say it, but the film’s Deltas — a fraternity of proud, self-defined losers — became role models for a generation obsessed with winning.

“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 that position but realized I had no idea what the home secretary does. My half-assed Internet research tells me the Home Secretary is responsible for British internal security, so they are basically Britain’s top cop.

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 myself to care about Jewface in movies and TV.

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 Abortion, by Jamelle Bouie at the New York Times.

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 remember if the adults were home. And I was, by the standards of my childhood, a sheltered, sedentary, bookish kid. Other kids were having even MORE adventures than I was.

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 also love Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast. So that’s two things I have in common with Elon. Also, like Musk, I have not and never will fight in a cage match with Mark Zuckerberg.

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 the past, I used public domain and Creative Commons images, and those were just as good as AI imagery.

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.” Racists are the natural ally of plutocrats, Bouie says. By supporting an argument that some people are naturally inferior, the plutocrats support the argument that other people are natural elites.

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 early. I remember visiting his office as a boy around 1970 and seeing a desktop calculator. All it did was add, subtract, multiply and divide, and it was the size of a cash register.

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 moderators. If you follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, or Mastodon, you know that I like to share memes and vintage ads and photos, and I used to often find them on Reddit.

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 $400 Million For It: These repeated failures by Verizon would be less of an issue if the company didn’t have such a long history of skimping on essential broadband network upgrades.

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 whether to stay with it.

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 YouTube. Via Waxy

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 difference between federatable and federated. Cory is also on Tumblr, which isn’t federated either, and he doesn’t talk about why he’s there. I suspect his reasons are the same as mine for being on both Tumblr and Facebook: I’ve been on Facebook and Tumblr for years, and made connections on those platforms.

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 “quiet quitting” is nothing new: the phrase “phoning it in” dates back to 1938 “and the novelty then was the phone, not the conduct.

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. Gooding got a Tony nomination for her performance on Broadway in “Jagged Little Pill.” Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Just Pulled Off a Secret Cameo | Den of Geek

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 “literally that stupid,” says Cory Doctorow, who notes that Mastercard and Visa skim 3-5% of every of “every single retail transaction in the entire fucking economy.

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 wearing colorful outfits. She added that she was undoubtedly a cat in a previous life, ‘just one of those weirdo bodega ones that like people.

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 in front of a politician their brain switches off.

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 @iris_IGB, who claims to be Russian, uses a manga character for an avatar, and says they’ve reproduced the experiment in their kitchen.

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 seen the outside world, or their families, for decades. They do not face execution, but they have been sentenced to death all the same, their lives spooling out endlessly on the cellblock and in the cotton fields, then ending in a prison hospice bed.

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 on my Mac) and a little text popup comes up. You start typing and Obsidian auto-suggests possible commands, until you quickly narrow down to what you’re looking for.

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 an accident in years. She has been rock solid. But she broke that record yesterday.

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 “Pankera” is the same as “Number,” and then they go off in different directions. They are two different novels with the same beginning, and many of the same characters throughout.

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 high-energy dog. She’s mellowed now, but in her first few years she ran us ragged. Even today, I walk her for more than 90 minutes a day and she’s ready for more.

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. thisiscriminal.com/episode-2… The girls' photos appeared to show them interacting with fairies: winged humans a few inches tall. Spiritualists worldwide, including Arthur Conan Doyle, were fascinated.

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.

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

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, which leads journalist Madhumita Murgia to talk about how their “five-year-old has taken to inventing little one-line jokes, mostly puns, and testing them out on us. The anecdote makes [Chiang] animated.

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 Zorin saw himself on the front lines. He was on a quest to unmask the United States by spreading doubt, conspiracy theories, and a strange cocktail of truth and misinformation.

“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…

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 going on in 1904). Bean soup has been on the menu every day since—except for one. On the “This Day in Esoteric Political History” podcast, which points out that it’s bonkers to want a hot bowl of soup for lunch in Washington D.

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 its disregard for the law. Moreover, “we live in a globalized world where U.S. persons regularly communicate with people in other countries,” making Section 702 excessively broad even as written, writes Matthew Guariglia at eff.

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, hosted by Willa Paskin and produced by Paskin and Katie Shepherd. slate.com/podcasts/… This podcast pairs nicely with this week’s episode of Savage Lovecast, where host Dan Savage talks about primate masturbation with evolutionary biologist Dr.

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 about joining Mensa for a year and the comic strip Cathy. Her podcast about Nabokov’s “Lolita” discusses how nearly 70 years of critics and filmmakers completely miss the point of the novel by portraying Humbert Humbert as a victim of a seductress.

“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 every time I see or hear it.

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 address the real causes of homelessness: Mental health and drug abuse. (And then the Republicans don’t want to do anything about mental health or drug abuse either.

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 blue states, that could mean suppression of conservative views.

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 of San Diego’s Commission on Gang Prevention and Intervention and the mother of a young man who was added to the database in 2017.

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…

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. www.techdirt.com/2023/07/2…

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. www.techdirt.com/2023/07/2…

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, concertgoers, and a heavy-metal physicist.” Hosted by Willa Paskin and produced by Paskin and Katie Shepherd. slate.com/podcasts/…

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 watch key. … … At a coffeehouse, a gentleman might pull out a silver nutmeg grater to add spice to his drink or a pocket globe to make a geographical point.

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 generations. But the books are also criticized for their outright racism, and at least one Native American scholar says they should only be taught in context.

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 where roads are salted in winter.” Wheel cleaning is good, but spray-on wax is purely cosmetic.

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 catalogs, and posted signs (however irrelevant) of all types. tidbits.com/2023/07/2…

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.

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-…

Minnie goes down 13 steps. It’s a lot for her to process. We do this a couple of times a week.

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 is the publishers who originally paid for creating that news.

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 mob of more than 250 whites, to prevent the victims from voting in an election. And the Tulsa, Okla., massacre, when white mobs killed up to 300 Black people.

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?”

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 business and holding off on my iPads because, well, I haven’t seen a reason to upgrade those.

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…

We’ve been watching “Yellowstone,” “1883,” and “Justified: City Primeval.” I’m trying to talk myself out of getting a cowboy hat.

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 slavery and genocide of indigenous peoples. These themes are a focus of Cory’s upcoming novel, “The Lost Cause.” pluralistic.net/2023/07/1…

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 $6,000 at auction. Via midcenturymodernfreak.tumblr.com/post/5578…

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 months. Nate Bear writes: Through the proceedings of the case it turns out that the employer knew some employees might be sick but they transferred them anyway and ignored a San Francisco ordinance in place at the time to quarantine suspected covid cases.

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 verbiage.

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 third of US states for licensed childcare facilities per capita. And Texas is targeting LGBTQ residents for persecution and restricting voting and reproductive rights.

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 culture and terrible hate speech.

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 political leaders, including Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Via Boing Boing

I’m looking into joining the Freemasons.

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.

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 Threads out. For now at least; I may change my mind at any moment. I expect I’ll wait until micro.blog supports Threads cross-posting. Either that, or wait until Threads supports ActivityPub, and then I’ll merge my Mastodon, Micro.

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 person takes precedence over the life of the fetus in their uterus.” The “religious liberty” angle for overturning the overturning of Dobbs

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 Bradbury just looks like a brick office building at the corner of 3rd and Broadway, downtown. It seems unremarkable, but the magic happens when you step inside.

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 exact phrase is, “If you can do anything else but write, do it,” and attributed it to Elie Wiesel.

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 magnet, the string, and the pump. — Nuts and Bolts [99% Invisible]

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 Daughter. (The Guardian / Emma Brooks) Grant was determined to give his only child, a daughter, born when he was 62, the good upbringing he never had.

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, and did not find them quite so difficult.

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 supermarket dog sniffed the shelves with great interest, then turned away.

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 phone. That’s bad enough.

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 somebody got murdered 15 miles away, or the Walmart killer got sentenced or—true alert I got from CNN yesterday—how to not get bedbugs from hotel beds.

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 was 13 years old, but it ages badly. And “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls” and “To Sail Beyond the Sunset” are just plain bad.

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 reason they do so is because it makes them more productive, according to survey by Stack Overflow. What Will AI Do to Your Job?

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 both victimizers and victims, as is so often the case with people in pyramid schemes at any level. They’re not entirely guilty but they’re not innocent victims either.

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 compatiblity is outright illegal.

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 activity simpler. Even better: Everybody needs to wake up and realize that we don’t need a platform to serve as the internet town square.

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 mass destruction, an elaborate filling cabinet for sacred laws, or as the very location where God and man meet. The Rest is History: Raiders of the Lost Ark

“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 ride. I’ve seen the metaphor elsewhere comparing consciousness and free will to a toddler riding in a car with one of those child-safety seats that has a toy dashboard and steering wheel built in.

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 commenting on them. I’ve never found a platform where that kind of behavior was a perfect fit.

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 later worked with Berry Gordy, who founded the Motown record later. Scott’s music appears in Looney Tunes, Ren & Stimpy, and the SImpsons cartoons.

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 Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became a living exhibit. But he also took control of his own life, moving around the community, attending vaudeville shows, and giving newspaper interviews.

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 the web misses it more than ever. By David Pierce at The Verge Ten years after its untimely death, the team that built the much-beloved feed reader reflects on what went wrong and what could have been.

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.

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. Would you eat it?

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 understandable explanation of the concept. Though understandability isn’t a great strength for the IndieWeb movement.

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 I’m experimenting with moving more over to newsletters, and then comes the question of what’s the ideal tool for reading newsletters.

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.” Meanwhile his roles in “1923” and “Shrinking” could very well deliver not only his first Emmy nomination but his second as well.

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. Others are looking at credit-card transactions and figuring out what sort of purchase they relate to or checking e-commerce recommendations and deciding whether that shirt is really something you might like after buying that other shirt.

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 sportscaster Warner Wolf when a piece of roast beef became lodged in Dr.

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 magazine, to discuss how the highway network reshaped the country and changed car culture.” This Day in Esoteric Political History: “The Great American Road Trip”

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. My work is in demand. But— Oh, who am I kidding? I am absolutely complaining.

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 opinion. Welsh’s article went up yesterday, before the latest shenanigans. Yes, the war is going badly for Russia, and was even when Welsh posted.

“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 recent tragedy in which 700 people died when the refugee ship Adriana sank off the coast of Greece, under the watch of the Greek Coast Guard.

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 competitor Opengear. Read about it at Silverlinings. Thanks to Diana Goovaerts, who contributed to this story.

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 II go on to live as patriots?

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 climbed? What’s your military combat record? I like a latte now and then, a beverage that wingnuts denounce fervently, enjoyment of which is a sure marker of beta males.

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 too.” Also: Treat the users as the cherished asset that make your site useful and valuable. Users are not products that should be exploited and used up.

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 brands on fire just for a tax break and a fat bonus. — Warner Bros Discovery Merger Gets Dumber As Layoffs Continue And Company Licenses Streaming Content To… Netflix.

“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 Silverlinings—and read to the end for links to Viarengo’s music videos.

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 death on a mountain in Maine, I will do my best to reach you in time, and if it calls you to die in a carbon fiber and titanium can at the bottom of the Atlantic, I will salute you and hope for your sake it was a hull breach, comrade.

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 perspective. This comes up more often than you might expect, because opining about things is what I do.

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 be forever.

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 migration within the United States of not just transgender individuals, but also the broader LGBTQ+ community, their families, and their allies.”

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 years ago, it wasn’t a big deal for me.”

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. On the Criminal podcast: “The Unknown Woman.".

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 homeschooling, avoiding marriage and how Quinn became a patent-holding inventor. Cummings reminds me of those people who used to appear on talk shows in the 1970s for no other reason than because they were great at talking.

“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 Google Reader. Reddit could be what Usenet was supposed to be, a hub of internet-wide discussion on every topic imaginable, if it wasn’t also a private company forced to come up with a credible plan to make hosting discussions sound in any way like a profitable venture.

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. The most valuable part of Reddit is its fat corpus of content, built by volunteers over many years, suddenly made valuable for training AI.

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 man went to jail after the software reported someone using his wife’s phone went to Pornhub. She says it never happened—it’s a bug in the software—and tests of the software confirm that’s very possible.

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 + 1 = 3 arithmetic, streaming TV has always seemed too good to be true but seduced a lot of smart people anyway.” Also, about a TV adaptation of “Field of Dreams” by Mike Schur, who created “The Good Place:”

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 government’s guidelines of “at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity” per week.

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 the officials initially took as blackmail. He said it was nothing of the kind, and explained himself, and the Reddit officials apologized—five times.

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 company, Automattic, at the expense of making the Internet vastly less usable for the rest of us. I thought Automattic was better than that.

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 know what I like to do at lunch? Read things on the Internet. Do you know what I don’t like doing at lunch?

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 Apollo to find about half of the memes, vintage ads, vintage photos, and other found media that I post regularly to Facebook and Tumblr.

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 — are momentarily disorienting when I’m in the flow on the Mac, because I’m pulled out of that world and into the physical one.

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 literally the same people who were peddling crytop/blockchain grift untill last year. Cory Doctorow: If the problem with “AI” (neither “artificial,” nor “intelligent”) is that it is about to become self-aware and convert the entire solar system to paperclips, then we need a moonshot to save our species from these garish harms.

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 massive amount of luggage, or you have a fascinating conversation. Save the five-star reviews if you have a cardiac event and the driver restarts your heart.

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 VIP tour of some science-fiction location. And Something Goes Terribly Wrong, and the special effects start going off around you.

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 story of a rootless man from 2010 Maine who finds community and love in 1960 Texas. I was far less interested in the hunt to stop Lee Harvey Oswald.

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 day, the count changes. Stephen King, if you’re reading this—no charge.

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 loyal to Matsson—until the moment Tom sees it as advantageous to throw his loyalty to someone else.

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 have, the less this brittle, ideological, abstracted, social media-mediated universe bears upon your daily existence.”

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 suppliers. When the mafia does this, we call it a bust out; when Wall Street does it, we call it “private equity.”

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 impossible for children to research important information regarding mental health, or to find out the information they need to help them deal with things like eating disorders, since it will drive basically all of that content offline

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 Reddit.

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 long I have struggled with this delusion and failed to arrive at the simple solution.

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, [a furry convention organizer] says, “there will be parents crying in a corner because they don’t see their kids so happy every day.

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 poverty line. And 40% of Americans were having difficulty paying for normal household expenses.. That’s scary. AI is only scary to the extent that it will be an excuse to put more people out of work.

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 technique’s history. This Wikipedia article gives 40 years of history. I expect the canary trap is much older than that–thousands and thousands of years.

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 different from the way that humans think.” Attempts to train AI to be more human-like are like putting a smiley face or human mask on Shoggoth.

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 another, which turns out to be a powerful, safe treatment for serious and potentially fatal intestinal infection. The FDA ruling makes it illegal for doctors to source their poop from Openbiome, a nonprofit that coordinates between doctors, patients, and donors to provide safe FMTs.

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, who appeared in “Carnival Row”—we enjoyed the first season of that—along with a hell of a supporting cast: Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Rutger Hauer and John Goodman.

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 make them, and their overall design tends to adhere to the concept of truth to materials. … A website that embraces Brutalist Web Design is raw in its focus on content, and prioritization of the website visitor.

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 uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true.

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 once I start, as if failure to complete was wasteful, like not eating all the food on my plate.

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 its principle, as conceiving it to be more pregnant with mischief than advantage to those for Whose advantage it was intended, and for the country in general.

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 going?

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 their own personal experience with eating disorders. The chatbot isn’t even AI. It’s just a scripted bot. Via jwz, who says: “Perfectly normal, non-dystopian timeline.

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 a time for her to visit my class and expose my students to sexually explicit material.

‘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 insisting that it’s a tool for unlocking creativity and breaking writer’s block. Neither answered the question I was really curious about: does it work?

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 suggested I just get a couple of guitars and put them behind me. “But I don’t play guitar,” I said.

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 himself is very conservative. He supported Trump and now this. An odd juxtaposition.

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 apps, which look and work like Mac apps should but don’t give you all of Gmail’s capabilities. Mimestream has been in beta and free to use for years.

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 headset is overpriced and underfeatured, that’s no reason to declare it dead on arrival.

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 Larkfield Road with my friends, and getting a slice of pizza at the place on that road.

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 scam to allow bosses to “fire all our asses and replace us with shell-scripts.” And more.

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 that was deliberately designed to aid terrorists.

“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 business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit. There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.

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 gram, use a thermometer to measure the weater temperature, and time their brew to the second. They even count the number of strokes they use to stir the coffee before serving.

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 roles in sophisticated operations set up to tease subscription money from lonely hearts looking for connections online.” These reps, who often work for pennies from developing countries, roleplay as women with incredibly detailed—and fictional—biographies and profiles, messaging men on online dating sites.

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. That coyote has been around lately; I recognize it. I’m pretty sure that a coyote won’t attack a full-sized adult person.

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 “incentives” we dangle. Maybe it’s time we just did stuff instead of building elaborate Rube Goldberg machines in the hopes of luring the market’s animal sentiments into doing it for us.

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 today’s social media influencers and indie journalists. I was not offended by the piece Armstrong wrote after I interviewed her in 2006. I thought it was a fair rap.

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. The interview went badly and she wrote about the experience—hilariously—on her blog. I can’t currently find the article I wrote as a result of the interview or her blog post.

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 2011’s hot technology—not 2023’s—and has the scent of overreach and failure on it.

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, lying in bed with her will and funeral instructions under the pillow. Then cut to flashback to the Gaslight Club.

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 cutting edge today, it’ll be in iPhones tomorrow. But then I read: The participants in the study ran through all these tests while inside an fMRI machine, which is a clunky and immobile piece of laboratory equipment.

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 officer raced to the scene, called 911 and “started counting the bodies on the ground … one, two, three, five, six, seven bodies.

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 make myself a more effective writer.

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 days now exceeds the worst periods of the pandemic economic crisis and in April it had the second highest monthly traffic since it opened in 1982, according to David Andre, the director.

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 margins, I think it’s reasonable to blame inflation on greed, not on workers getting a couple of relief checks during the lockdown.

“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 it."

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 work. And the myth of the Tragedy of the Commons and other anti-democratic misconceptions.

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 research with ChatGPT. I asked: “What are some questions I can ask COMPANY-NAME about its overall strategy.” (I used the company name, which I’m redacting here.

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 high-quality, empathic answers to medical questions people posed on the subreddit r/AskDocs.” The responses were judged by a panel of three physicians with relevant medical expertise.

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 lumpy at its feet, which I took to be dinner.

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 about my doing that kind of thing. I started linkblogging 15 or so years ago, when social media was very different and my boosting the signal–even in a small way–seemed to matter.

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 nuke porn out of convenience,” a moderator for … a 3-million subscriber community for adult content, told Motherboard. Like many adult subreddits, posts focused on a specific fetish come from both adult performers promoting their work, and other users who are reposting adult content they lifted from other sites without permission.

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 the Russian Orthodox theologian Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov in the late 19th century…. “ “… it looks from where I’m standing as if many self-avowed atheists and rationalists are actually replacing the religion they rejected with an elaborate framework of beliefs that are structurally indistinguishable from it.

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, trying to mitigate an ongoing disaster. He was also the only powerful medical official with the stones to contradict Trump.

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 STILL tempted, because I’ve been using laptop+external display for my desktop setup for most of the past 25+ years.

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 available for dividends. … Medicare pays private hospices $203-$1,462 per day to take care of dying old people – seniors that a doctor has certified to have less than six months left.

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 outside the nest, high above, watching. In the video, you can hear the immature bird call out plaintively.

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, but today? Nope. I hope I can keep this 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 more than one night, and I staggered around bleary-eyed at work the next day. I should send Cory a bill.

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 did, State University of New York at Stony Brook. Then I wiki’d my home town, Huntington Township on Long Island, and was surprised to learn about many notable people who came from there, all of which I immediately forgot, because it is late and I am tired.

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 mobilized against uppity workers who dare to seek a better deal…. “ — Cory Doctorow, How workers get trapped by “bondage fees”

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 satire. It’s funny. People talk so seriously about the book that I had forgotten. I laughed out loud at the payoff to the joke about the dog.

📷 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 learned so much, and going forward he’ll bring a new spirit of collaboration and humility to the AI garbage he replaces them with.

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, hostility to density and renters, a tendency to segregate types of development (industrial, commercial, and residential), and a default toward delaying or blocking the construction of new homes, whether affordable or market-rate.

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 transform from that to the swashbuckling youngest Captain of a Constitution-class starship in Starfleet history?

"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 the case of Seven of Nine on Picard—tough heroes who don’t take shit or suffer fools.

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 ridiculous.

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. Julie says she’s sick of these jokes, but I know she doesn’t mean it, so I will keep them coming.

“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 really, really need that big display and touchscreen and Pencil support. The 12.9” iPad is too big and heavy to be as portable as the smaller iPads.

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. A good suit made even Abbott look good. That feeling continues to this day. We’ve been watching a few 1930s-50s movies, including the first couple of Thin Man movies (1930s), “My Man Godfrey” (1936), and just this weekend, “Executive Suite” (1954).

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. https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/amazon_annual_shareholder_letter_aws/ AWS customers are “not cost-cutting as much as cost-optimizing so they can take their resources and apply them to emerging and inventive new customer experiences they’re planning,” Jassy said. (This is pretty much what we’d expect Amazon to say.

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 stanza-by-stanza discussion – a kind of pro-fisking structural affordance – is the most interesting and powerful innovation of the social media thread.

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: Conservatives built an entire body of jurisprudence around the First Amendment’s protection of corporate speech when large corporations were reliably funding Republican causes and campaigns…. But once some corporate actors decided it was in their financial interests to make decisions that the GOP disliked, conservative lawyers then turned around and argued that speech was no longer protected if it was used for purposes they opposed.

… “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 thinking…. “ Conspiracy theories: How Cranky Uncle aims to inoculate people against anti-scientific thought (The Sydney Morning Herald)

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 and telegrams. Pretty good movie.

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 ago, hipsters started using manual typewriters, and I get it.

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 nobody wants—at least not in the form Zuck imagines it. Also, while Zuckerberg is encouraging rank-and-file employees to return to the office, he’s on parental leave, and top executives have fled California for locations including Tel Aviv, London, and New York.

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 terminated ten days before he started work, following layoffs and a hiring freeze at Google. As for what to do next, I am not entirely sure yet.

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 inherited it.” … as Abigail Disney has described, in a rare glimpse behind the scenes of American oligarchs’ “family offices,” American wealth is now dynastic, perpetuating itself and growing thanks to a whole Versailles’ worth of courtiers: money managers, lawyers, and overpaid babysitters who can keep even the most Habsburg jawed nepobaby in turnip-sized million-dollar watches and performance automobiles and organ replacements for their whole, interminable lives:

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 … which can also get you dead. Also: “It was precisely the members of respectable society,” Arendt writes, “who had not been touched by the intellectual and moral upheaval in the early stages of the Nazi period, who were the first to yield.

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 many Americans bereft of any sense of spiritual progress. For some, work rose to fill the void. Many highly educated workers in the white-collar economy feel that their job cannot be ‘just a job’ and that their career cannot be “just a career”: Their job must be their calling.

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 social media posts that they said pointed to Perry instigating events.

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 study, a fellow lawyer in California had asked the AI chatbot ChatGPT to generate a list of legal scholars who had sexually harassed someone.

‘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 Laca and Misha Savic)

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 doesn’t exist in real life.

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 them.

… 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 Day, “There’s always some idiot ruining your favorite website.”

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 other two Democrats, Johnson told CNN: ‘I think it’s pretty clear. I’m a 60-year-old white woman, and they are two young black men.

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 paying a premium, and the advertisers aren’t even making more money than they’d make if they just advertised their refrigerators against people searching Google for the word “refrigerator.

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] without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet.

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 Stein, “we wrote it for America. Why do you ask?” “Because,” the producer said, “it’s so Japanese.” — 12 Things You Might Not Know About ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ (Mental Floss / Mark Mancini)

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 gentleman spontaneously invites the New Yorkers to join him for a celebration on his billionaire uncle’s yacht. On the yacht, someone is murdered, and the Spitzes are the prime suspects.

📷 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 be trying to shut down the rec center to build a condo, not an evil wizard.

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 movie trailer and the second Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse trailer, former President Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned.

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 longer. A new analysis of more than 40 years of research has concluded that many of those studies were flawed and that the opposite is true.

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 name of the clinic. So now I’m wondering whether I’m going to get my blood taken by a couple of meth-heads in back of a 7-Eleven parking lot.

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 document is written in the style of a military memo, instructing the men how to behave when they get back home to civilian life.

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 clippings library.

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 posters. Another would drive to the multiplex and see the next movie that was playing after he got out of the car.

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 that the company is committed to remote work indefinitely, and they’re standing by that. “Our policy around hybrid work is that we want the office to be a magnet and not a mandate,” says Previn.

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 on Long Island, about 50 miles from Jackson Heights. haven’t been back in far too long.

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 lens on my daily long walk with the dog, because it seems like a lot to carry.

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 parasitic, end-stage capitalist hustle.”

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 Russian immigrant who shares a love of classic cars. I’m sure this movie will be heartwarming and in no way violent.

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 pinned to your screen?” It turns out that Ms. Liu, 36, had a large mirror behind her, and people in the meetings could see the reflection of her laptop – and Mr.

“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 unchanged since the 1700s. In other words, most people are living longer, but the longest-lived people today are about the same age as the longest-lived people 200+ years ago.

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 for their actions. This goes beyond political acts, notice how somehow almost none of the people who took advantage of Jeffrey Epstein’s smorgasboard of underaged teenaged girls has been charged with a crime.

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 business as well as Office 365 and Windows to tie Azure and the rest of cloud services and make it hard for customers to have a choice,” Vice President Amit Zavery told Reuters.

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 that. Hae Min Lee’s family’s rights were violated—but how does reversing the vacation of Syed’s conviction fix that? It just adds another wrong to the previous litany of abuse.

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 information from the voting public in the days before the election, engaged in an elaborate coverup, and then lied about his involvement.

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 American, Jenka says. Eastern Europeans see someone who smiles all the time as foolish or dishonest. Jenka quotes French-American journalist Camille Baker, who writes about a woman Baker calls “Sofiya:”

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, according to a report by Ashley Belanger on Ars Technica. Afroman later released songs and music videos about the incident, entitled “Lemon Pound Cake” and “Will You Help Me Repair My Door.

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 cow! It’s fantastic! Also, humbling. Grammarly flagged 95 suggestions in a 2,200-word whitepaper. It suggested replacing the first three words of the whitepaper with a single word.

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, 1958, writing, “It is with understandable enthusiasm that I give you today an exclusive report on this news: A ‘zipperless zipper’ has been invented – finally.

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 everything you do to be an outline. Obsidian supports outlining, but Logseq is more opinionated and more powerful as an outliner.

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 I might donate to the local library, because I’m an ebook guy. Backers at that level also get an audiobook, and an ebook too.

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 jokes? “I could do this all day.”

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 showed Trump breaking out of prison and going to McDonald’s, writes Chris Stokel-Walker for Buzzfeed News Seems to me to be a bad idea for a journalist to do anything to jeopardize their credibility.

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 infectious disease are shaping public debate. And “scientists and public health experts are often cast as not to be trusted, captured by vested interests, lacking common sense, and out of touch with what most Americans think and believe.

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 three, noticing a new thing, more dog, informing their parents that something about the daily environment is now different than it was yesterday, and pointing.

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 “no no please no!” If you’re following me from Mastodon, you’ll see longer and better formatted post excerpts, and you’ll see my boosts, which you currently do not see here.

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 Richard Russo. Julie hated the episode. We are negotiating whether she is required by our marriage bylaws to give the show one episode more or two before she nopes out.

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 of our walk. Minnie was very alert until we got to the car a few minutes later.

“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 fill their helmets with cottage cheese. I would be an unpopular Mandalorian.

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 unsuspecting target, until the woman agrees to a date or to share their number. At that point, the app sends a notification to the user telling them about the date it just secured for them.

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 the new members, denounced the hospital’s treatment protocols for Covid-19. An internal review last month found that Sarasota Memorial did far better than some of its competitors in saving Covid patients’ lives.

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 friends to draw on whenever I’m let out of the house. The street where I live is friendly: If I want to borrow a spatula or I need someone to look after my cat, I have only to ask.

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 read War and Peace in there. You’d never come out. They’d probably call the police and get the door broken down.” wikipedia.

“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 of reprisal from some mean H.R. lady, and nobody told you what to do?” — Jane Coaston: The Debate Hugh Hefner Won and William Buckley Lost nytimes.

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 want to do this is to obscure the extent to which they and their allies are complicit in — or responsible for — creating an environment in which banks collapse for lack of appropriate regulation.

“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 put a lot of energy into stirring up those and other culture wars. But he’s also raised teacher pay, cut tolls on highways, and spent money on Everglades restoration.

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, which means it’s simpler. And sometimes simplicity is itself a feature. Is that the appeal?

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 actor; I’ve had my eye on him since he played the villain on a series called “The Riches,” that aired briefly 2007-8, starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver.

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. But I had put stuff in front of the camera since the last time I used it, and couldn’t get the camera free before the squirrel scampered off.

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 bunch of uninspiring humans doing uninteresting things. Where are the spiders, Adrian? I’m here for the spiders!

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. If you’re struggling with medical debt, or you’re homeless because you can’t afford to pay for housing, or you’re a college grad who’s struggling to pay off their student loan: Fuck you.

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 led the world in that kind of thing? The Nazis.) McNally told ABC affiliate WKRN in a statement that he has “long been active on social media” and engaged with constituents via posts, comments and messages.

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, even though they can be a little confusing. Very nice!

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 Asian accent as minstrelry. When I do it for my white friends even today, it never fails to bring a laugh.

“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 treat dysentery, among other things.”

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. And now I want to see an episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” featuring the Doctor, played by Matt Smith, and Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald.

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 in election [WCBS Newsradio 880, New York]

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 of Americans into the street in order to reward reckless banks, already wildly profitable banks, with even more profit. …

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 people expect something to be at mitchwagner.com, and now there is.

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. Theory says time travel should be possible. In fact, theory says there’s no difference between the past, present, and future. Obviously that’s not the case. What’s up with that?

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 find Facebook to be mostly a positive place, and I like it. This is completely the opposite of the common wisdom among the extremely online millennials who I follow.

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 have to admit I felt self-conscious about that. But now New Balance shoes are hip and trendy and I can wear them proudly.

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 from a family member’s number, understand that too can be spoofed. Never pay people in gift cards, because those are hard to trace….

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 motto: fair and balanced. The operation’s very branding is an aggressive bit of trolling. An unabashedly partisan and ideological operation selling itself under the heading of “fair and balanced.

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. — Is The Mandalorian a Space Jew?, by Nathan Abrams on JewThink. Abrams is quoting Charlotte Gartenberg in The Tablet. Harrison Ford is Jewish? If I knew that, I forgot.

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 people in the replies are sharing their own “sleep stacks” as if this is totally normal. I think there’s a growing subset of people — especially in America — that want to both optimize and also commodify every part of their lives.

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 idiot. Turns out, nearly every person I know is a fucking idiot. I do not claim to be smarter than anybody else about this.

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 wet. I hadn’t worn rain gear, because the forecast called for rain in the morning but not the afternoon.

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 and challenges. As for his own phone use, Cooper says he checks email and does online searches for information to settle dinner table arguments.

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. On Facebook and Tumblr, I get a lot of likes. On Mastodon, I get fewer, but I get ‘em.

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. He wants to create a movie that conforms to the original vision and Gore Vidal script. “Caligula” was filmed in 1976 as a big-budget indy movie, with an impressive cast including Malcomlm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, and Helen Mirren, and budget twice the size of Star Wars.

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 perpetuating stereotypes. The actor in the ad, Iron Eyes Cody, wasn’t even an Indian. He was Italian-American.

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 calendar servers, I have always assumed the details of my corporate calendar were open to my colleagues. If there’s an event I don’t want my colleagues to know the details about, I don’t put it on the calendar.

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 to kitsch, but that’s because we take them for granted. Fans were over the moon for the third episode, featuring Nick Offerman.

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 ways as President. He has done a terrible job at Covid. And has not done enough to break up the domination of big business in our national lives.

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 and a little odd. We were in my brother’s dining room, setting the table. My mother folded another napkin.

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 industry. So the metaverse is dead, right? Wrong. The hype bubble has collapsed. But the metaverse is growing.

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 actually worked …until recently, when voice recognition and machine learning has caught up to 65-year-old kiddie sci-fi.

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 grifters are now chasing the sweet VC/private equity money…. — Charles Stross, Place your bets

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 founding fathers are small-minded and provincial, unable to think beyond the narrowest possible interpretation of the words they wrote.”

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, nefarious purposes. But you—because you are so perspicacious, smart, special, or have access to privileged information—can see things as they really are. “They” can be the government, Russia, China, aliens, Democrats, Republicans, the CIA, the FBI, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and/or obviously, more often than not, the Jews.

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 has individual reasons. Pam stays in the Scranton reception desk for the same reason she doesn’t dump Roy.

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 stuff that gets through only does so because some bought-and-paid-for Congressjerks are too busy complaining about “woke librarians” to read the bills before they come up for a vote.

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 things that John McCain said in 2008? Sorry, liberals: that’s left-wing now.”

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 housekeeper for Professor Bullfinch, a scientist at the local university and is a grandfather-figure to Danny. The boy hero and his young pals have adventures with the inventions Prof.

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 talking, but they’re not. But to leave it there seems overly simplistic. Because there’s still something amazing and (metaphorically speaking) magical going on in the interaction between a person and the Bing chatbot.

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 that.” But the main character’s chapters are interwoven with chapters from the point-of-view of another character, and those chapters are written in third person.

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 extensive revisions for political reasons. It’s happening because a corporation thinks it can make a lot of money, and is twisting itself into knots to make that happen.

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 putting up statutes to people who fought a war against America to protect their right to own slaves, and pretending those men were heroes.

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 says. Elected political leaders should support the United States continuing to exist. That’s a pretty low bar. But the Republican Party can’t clear it.

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 Street. Belzer’s last words were “Fuck you, motherfuckers,” which is very much in character.

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 pageant winners, but is impressed with young Raquel’s brains and charm, as well as her beauty. Note the sidebar explaining how to pronounce the beauty pageant winner’s name.

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 re-enter the supply by being sold or upgraded to hotels. … The core of this strategy is to buy up as many houses as possible before anyone realizes what you’re doing, and DO NOT UPGRADE TO HOTELS to prevent people from improving their own properties.

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 boa. He unscrews the lid from a canister labeled “cocktail peanuts” and rubber snakes spring out…..

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 movement. It’s just this one popular TikToker, who goes by the handle @momllennial_, and she also has claimed that Alexander the Great was a woman, and Jesus Christ’s name can be translated as “clitoris healer.

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 is that Google agrees. Also: Every successful Google product except search and gmail is an acquisition: mobile, ad-tech, videos, server management, docs, calendaring, maps, you name it.

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 comes up when someone has flagged one of my posts as concerning, involving self-harm or suicidal thoughts. None of which I am remotely having or sharing.

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 have to shave every day.

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. Clarke. Heinlein. Ellison. Niven. Joe Haldeman. I am adopting that strategy now, starting with Michael Connelly. He’s written about 40 books.

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 Amazon and Starbucks for union-busting.

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 5th grade and it doesn’t work at Yale either.

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 science fiction and fantasy writer with a large public presence. I’m a fan.

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 builds. A liberalism that builds everything from multifamily housing and mass transit systems to transmission lines and solar farms. And we need a liberalism that can build it all quickly, cheaply and effectively.

“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 don’t feel like I need to carry it around with me all day.

… 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 between Android and iPhone defines them.

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 even enforce contracts, the one function that even extreme libertarians agree that government needs to do. … even if governments do nothing but enforce contracts, they still have to be bigger and more powerful than the largest companies and cartels.

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 launched the $30 billion chicken industry (Kenny Torrella / Vox)

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 along the three rivers surrounding it. Kansas City is also on a river, but the heart of downtown — the part of the city we see in The Last of Us — is more inland, meaning the grim, dry cityscapes we see in the show are more suitable for Kansas City.

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 Business Is Killing: I never understood why veterinarians are at such a high risk of suicide.

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 their freedom is suppressed and yours is sustained. — Jamelle Bouie, There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America

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 chatbot-driven search which (a) isn’t available to the public and (b) prominently and spectacularly answered a question incorrectly. I wrote this: Oops! Google’s new AI tool Bard showcases artificial stupidity

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 ants. The fungus hasn’t significantly evolved in hundreds of millions of years, not even to affect other types of ants. We will not have mushroom heads running at exorbitant speeds trying to kill us any time soon.

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 the differences will become more pronounced over time. The article notes that traffic went from 380,000 users late last year to 1.

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 AI and how it will disrupt search and publishing. Many publishers already operate like spam operations and the time may be running out for them to be able to convert human journalists’ output into Google search results and then sales, Newton says.

“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 brain linked to threat detection and emotion regulation are different in people who chronically procrastinate compared to those who don’t procrastinate frequently.

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 smell of the grass, but it seems equally likely it found a carcass or a nice pile of poop to roll around in and cover itself with the smell.

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 full-time jobs, one ongoing freelance assignment, and am looking for more. I posted the following to LinkedIn this morning:

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 looking to trade an object for another object. Did we have anything better than a keychain?

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. That’s how I would often spend a day as a teenager, but I’ve lost the knack for it. The novel, by the way, was “Concrete Blonde,” the third Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly.

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 the LA locations. I would have liked the book more if I’d cared about the murder victims. But I didn’t, and neither did any of the characters.

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 claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

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 territories were added…. Every night, around midnight GMT, the sun sets on the Cayman Islands, and doesn’t rise over the British Indian Ocean territory until after 1am.

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 department stores, published Larceny on 34th Street: An In-Depth Look at Professional Shoplifting in One of the World’s Largest Stores. “Just like what we do for a living — going to work — they pay their bills and rent and raise their children off the proceeds that they get from shoplifting.

“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 good fortune to “significantly higher selling prices” and “our ability to adapt to inflationary market pressures.”

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. Now, you might say, “Ryan, A.I. is completely overhyped. Generative-A.I. art tools can’t even figure out how many fingers people have. There are all kinds of legal and ethical problems around this technology.

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 Pasts plead for the clemency of kindness, for assumptions of our inherent normalcy. After all, we wrestle our kids’ pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.

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 a surreal picture that the publisher never imagined.”

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. Also: race, gender, and sex in Middle Earth.

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 fast we can see it. The Death Throes Of The World Europe Made: [Conflict with China] is about whether a non-European power will be allowed to remake the world Europe made.

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 Pundit, and now a local right-wing wannabe-demagogue is claiming Antifa is going to target the community for violence and their people will “send them [effing] packing.

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 it’s “not bad!” and I agree. I’ve spent more money on grosser things in my life…. Overall, we’re vaguely satisfied with the food and lowkey happy that it didn’t kill us.

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, the worse the results: A slab of overbaked Domino’s will probably be at least semi-close to whatever its version of perfect is by the time it reaches your door, but a pizza with fresh mozzarella cooked at upwards of 900 degrees?

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 thriving college town, a group of die-hard music fans gathers to dance to some of the most devoted live bands in southeast Michigan.

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 the most horrible thing about being locked up. You’re never the same person again. Once you internalize it, you project it outward.

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 Diego, a high of 91 is noteworthy. Here in 2023, we’re in the middle of days of chilly weather and heavy rain.

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 like Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, progressive, MAGA, lefist, and so on. It’s just a lot of tribalism and name-calling. Clearly, you often have to use 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 that there isn’t just one Apache tribe, there are eight. And they’re not extinct—they’re still around. Notably, a stereotypical “pure, reverent, and simple” depiction (i.

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 video or even phone calls—they insist on text chat. Employers who want you to pay upfront for computers and other equipment, and promise reimbursement.

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 system, standards in public life, trust in institutions, the peaceful transfer of power—is a worthy project. If Thiel, the elite Stanford technocrat, is funding disruptive populists in American elections, it’s not necessarily because he believes in the wisdom of their policy prescriptions.

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 administrative agency, and as such, he has broad powers. Neither he nor his predecessors have had the courage to wield that power, all of them evincing a kind of learned helplessness in the face of industry lobbying.

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 solidarity and they expect and get results from their representatives. The American left refuses to use power when it has it, and its members just want performative leftism from the likes of AOC.

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 America back to a vague fictitious past, some combination of the Reaganite 80s and a 1950s America that only existed in magazine ads.

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 your favorite casual shoes. I used a stiff brush, a worn-out toothbrush, and a thin stick. Wet down the brush with warm water, scrub with dish soap, put on the shoes and walk around in the grass for a bit, then take off the shoes and repeat.

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 It’s the Last Word. [NYTimes/Oliver Whang]

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 have a Lambo in front. These cars. WTF do these bumper stickers mean? This tree. These cars. Two different cars, not parked close together.

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 Warth.

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 the Universe is telling us something important… we just don’t know what it’s saying.”

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. Then he died a month later. I expect climate change to be a concern long before I’m dead, and I’m only a year older than Coolio.

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 fast. I didn’t have a proper flashlight, just my phone.

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.”