I’ve been seeing articles, videos and ads for a certain pocket-sized e-reader for the past few days all over my feeds that have got me wanting one more than anything. I like the idea of reducing my phone screen time and reading more, and this device looks like the perfect solution to that problem. I even have it in my cart in Amazon. But as much as I want it, I am resisting the urge to buy it, because I don’t need it. While I want to reduce my screen time, I think a more practical approach is…
A-ha, all the things I could do if I had a little money...
The history of transit ridership in the US is what it is: But it matters enormously how we talk about it. Many US transit agencies will be facing the voters in the next two years, seeking new funding to plug their structural deficits and forestall destructive service cuts. Many agencies are already involved in fights for more funding in their state legislatures, sometimes winning, as in Illinois, but often losing, as in Pennsylvania and Oregon. Most of the voters or legislators in these debates…
Newport Street Newport Street Oxford Street Market Street Victoria Square Summer in Bolton seems so foreign that I think I prefer rainy days in the town centre. Most people have decided the sunshine will last all day and have dressed accordingly.
AUDACIOUS BOOKCLUB HAPPENINGSOur June bookclub selection is John of John by Douglas Stuart. We will be in conversation with Douglas on June 24th at 8 pm EST/5 pm PST. Registration is open. For newcomers, there is a bookclub FAQ if you have questions about how it all works. And this is what we will be reading for the rest of the year. We’re partnering with the lovely people at Allstora for the Audacious Book Club. Now, you can sign up to have the monthly selections delivered to your doorstep…
Paresh Dave and Lauren Goode, Wired: Meta left potentially sensitive information collected from employee laptops accessible to anyone inside the company, according to an internal security notice seen by WIRED and three current employees familiar with the issue. The data, which was collected as part of a divisive initiative to train artificial intelligence models, is believed to include keystrokes, mouseclicks, and content displayed on the computer screens of Meta’s US employees. Katie Paul and…
Britain’s capital is often the location of the UK’s hottest weather but a look back to 1911 shows it is often elsewhere the mercury is highest. The highest temperature record has been broken three times in my lifetime. Before the first occasion in August 1990 you’d often see press articles speculating: “Will the UK ever break 100 Fahrenheit? Polo advert for the heatwave that coincided with the Queen Mother’s 90th birthday in 1990 Though 100F was recorded at Greenwich in August 1911 the…
I'm BackA former colleague once told me, "When you see a swimming pool, you don't dip your toe in. You do a cannonball." When I rediscovered blogging a few years ago, I started accumulating domains like bad habits. I went five hundred straight days writing three blog posts every 24 hours, and a good chunk of that was before I finally retired from my job at the university where I worked. Every day was a blank sheet of paper, and I always figured out a way to fill it. The secret to maintaining…
She may well be correct, but let's have some context. I live on the outskirts of a small village, which has one road in. There's no out unless you want to drive into the sea, so you turn around and come back the way you came to leave the village. My house is off this road, and my driveway is just over 500 feet (155 metres) long. At the end of this are two houses -- my own and an elderly couple. Bin day is a Tuesday morning. I trundle the wheelie-bins down on a Monday evening; they are emptied…
Employers will often choose to provide paid sick leave to some of their employees. About 15 years ago, neither the US federal government nor state governments required paid sick leave, but about 63% of US employees worked in jobs that had at least paid short-term sick leave. Since then, 18 US states and lots of cities and counties have started requiring paid sick leave, and by 2023, about 77% of US employees had jobs with at least short-term paid sick leave. Stefan, Pichler Christopher Prinz,…
The Knicks won! It’s old news by now, but I’m still riding the high of the Knicks winning the NBA Championship. The last time they won, I wasn’t alive, and the last time they even came close was twenty-seven years ago. This is truly a historic and exciting win. We moved to New York when I was really young, but those early years were formative in my sports fandom. The Mets (who won the Series when we were there in 1986) were my first love; my love of the Knicks came soon after. Even after we had…
Hey look! I thought I’d do this up again as it’s truly wonderful stuff. I think it’s a wee bit different this time around but we shall see. Shall we? Vecorn Singapore Laksa Soup Noodles – Singapore Detail of the packaging (click to enlarge). Contains achovy and shrimp. To prepare, boil 360-400ml water and add in soup base sachets. Once at a boil, add in noodle block and cook 3 minutes. Finally, stir and enjoy! A single pack from the multipack. Detail of the packaging (click to enlarge). An…
Hyde and Kev wrote about their dislike for summarize-option provided by LLM agents in almost all popular software and search engines. I completely agree with them. Although, their focus is on online writing and privacy, I see the same problem when reading a scientific article. This morning, I was attending a scientific talk where the presenter was showing his article in Adobe Reader, and Adobe, annoyingly, kept showing a pop-up at bottom to summarize the article. What the heck. I don't…
Link: Texas anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism charges sentenced to at least 50 years in prison, by Sam Levine in The GuardianThis is an outrageous litmus test for the freedom to protest in America:“A group of Texas protesters convicted of terrorism charges received unusually harsh sentences of at least 50 years in prison on Tuesday in a closely watched case that was widely seen as a test case of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent.”Let’s be clear: a few of the…
I fear that I might like being a mentor a bit too much. Can I make this a full time job? Being a coach for young professionals in tech?
Let me explain — and to start with, no, I'm not thrilled it's starting at $1,049. But I'm also not surprised, and the discourse around it is missing the actual story so badly it's almost impressive.When Valve announced the Steam Machine back in November 2025, the internal target was reportedly around $749. That was the goal. Then RAMageddon happened.DDR5 that was sitting at $80-120 for a 32GB kit at mid-2025 lows is now $300-500. DDR4 — the supposed "cheaper" fallback — went from $55-70 to…
Power Cat 2026-06-23 listening and learning
I'm going to start off by saying I'm aware this will probably be one of my most divisive, controversial posts. I originally was writing it for the Calgary Vegan Society, but they decided it had too much geopolitics and graphic imagery, so take that as a content warning. I am writing this open letter to a specific kind of person, not everyone. I'm writing this to those who consider themselves compassionate, left-leaning, and have a strong distaste for genAI. So if you're reading this, I'm going…
David at Forking Mad asks an intriguing question: If you could be transported back in history to a period of time, when would it be and why? David chose 1850s to 1900s, a time of rapid technological process. Which is extremely fair and very tempting to me also. The recipient of this question, Elena, chose university in the mid 1990s to see the birth of the internet and live without mobile phones. A great answer, how exciting would that be. Elena raises the point that anything pre-1970s would…
Film Sets — Brigitte Lacombe brigittelacombe.combrigittelacombe.com https://www.brigittelacombe.com/film-sets
I’ve been attending IndieWebClub community meets in Bangalore for about nine months now. In every session, there are several fascinating links mentioned. Here are some of them I didn’t know about:aprilcools.clubpainscience.comweb.badges.worldlinks.net, which was apparently the first blog on the Internettogetherletters.comI encourage other members of the community to share web places they discovered during IndieWebClub meets on their blogs. - Jatan on Journal J ☕️ Contact Support Space Thanks…
So keep his fires burning through the night Beacons and gateways for the child of light. Now, with the summer solstice, we have come to midsummer and the traditional Church festival for this beautiful, long-lit solstice season is the Feast of St. John the Baptist, which falls on June 24th, which was midsummer day in the old Roman Calender. Luke tells us that John the Baptist was born about 6 months before Jesus, so this feast falls half way through the year, 6 months before Christmas! The…
I’ve recently seen a small flood of my personal and work emails (and group aliases) getting responses from many other companies’ support emails, as though someone were opening support tickets using my addresses. Is this some weird variant of push bombing? Or maybe someone getting me to train my spam filters to reject support emails so that Ill miss an important one (like “we’ve received your request to transfer your domain name; reply to cancel”) or such?
The old Games Unlimited in Pittsburgh was the game store of our childhood. It’s where we went to buy RPGs, modules, dice, and a whole pile of miniatures. We rummaged through the shelves in the far back and then greedily carried our treasures home on the bus. But now, decades later, they have a new space up the hill, which I got to check out on a quick trip through town. And I have to say, I am jealous. If you live in Pittsburgh, you are lucky to have such a fantastic resource at your…
Toe twins 🐾🦶
Here's Byrne Hobart at The Diff, writing about the existence of a trillionaire: It was inevitable that this would happen. 2% real GDP growth, 3% inflation, a 5% or so equity risk premium, some dispersion among equities, and—critically—being a species with five rather than six or seven fingers on each hand meant that some time this decade or next we'd cross the threshold where a single person is, on a mark-to-market basis, worth a trillion dollars. There's been a lot of discussion about this,…
John Gruber, writing about Apple’s pending price increases: I won a steak dinner from my Dithering cohost Ben Thompson, betting that Apple would not raise the prices on RAM when they introduced the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros in March, largely on the basis that Apple considers the pricing part of the product’s brand. For the same reason, I also do not think they’re going to raise the prices of existing products mid-cycle. I think Cook’s warning is about the fall, starting with the iPhones 18…
I had an idea last night to clean up the Muv activities screen a bit more.My goal has been not simply to rehash a list of activities you can easily find in the Fitness app (and others).The second image is the updated summary view of every way you moved today.
