This Is My Last

Anthony Gottlieb, Literary Review: Not only are some governments waking up to their dangers, but nearly half of the first generation of Americans to grow up with smartphones told pollsters that they wished TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter/X had never been invented. The younger zombies are revolting, or at least saying that they want to. ~ Link: Zombie iPocalypse, Anthony Gottlieb, Literary Review

After a summer of betas, all the new and improved Apple OSes for the new year have been released. No, you don't have to rush to upgrade all your Apple devices. But if your device can be upgraded, you will eventually want to upgrade. It could be a newer version of an app that you use regularly requires the new OS. Or maybe your device has stopped receiving security updates. So, do plan to find a day in your life where you can afford to not use your device. Do add in some buffer time to factor in…

"An invitation, a citation, a gift, a shortcut, a connection." Here are some. An Ode to Links, by Jim Nielsen When Your Town Needs a Bookstore... Why Not Open One Yourself?, by Rachel Pastan, Literary Hub Revelatory Life, by Oliver Rice BistroMaxxing, by Lavender Au, Vittles

I am not a superhero comics reader, and I am not familiar with the genre. But I do watch many of the recent (recent? the first Iron Man that started off the long run of superhero movies was 18 years ago.) MCU movies. The strength of all these Marvel movies is that they are all set in the same universe, allowing characters and story lines to interact each other. Unfortunately, the weakness of all these Marvel movies is also that they are all set in the same universe, which probably contributed…

I still have a box of old cables, accumulated from a lifetime of buying stuff. I seldom go look in the box, but if I recall correctly, the majority are lightning cables with USB-A connectors. And if I am not wrong in my memory, the next major category of things in that box are power adapters with USB-A ports. I still have stuff that uses lightning connectors. Off the top of my head: keyboard, trackpad, TV remote, and an iPad that is still running fine, but no longer gets OS upgrades. It is…

3.57am It's getting more common, me waking up in the middle of the night and not able to get back to sleep. I am no Tim Cook: I don't get up at 4am to answer emails. Firstly, I don't have a team of personal assistants to bring me interesting emails that I need to respond. Secondly, I don't get any interesting emails in the first place. So, when I do wake up at 4am, I have a decision to make. I can continue lying in my bed, with my eyes closed, and try to get back to sleep. 'Try' is the keyword…

What is roman à clef, and why does it matter? Colton Valentine: Before declaring a novel brutal or ugly, we should say a bit more about what it is. ~ Links: Why Genre Matters, by Colton Valentine, The Drift The Controversy Over Rachel Cusk’s Life of M Misses The Point, by Liz Evans, The Conversation

There is a movie trope where two person are gossiping about someone else in a toilet. And when they left, the camera zooms in to a stall, the door opens, and there you see the shocked expression of the gossipee. Never gossip about anyone in a toilet before checking there are nobody listening in the stalls. With the new Apple Watch, someone may also be… not recording, but transcribing every word that you utter. All day long (Siri Recap), or the last 15 seconds (Live Rewind). You cannot check the…

John Ternus, the new CEO of Apple, didn't introduce the new iPhone Duo as two devices in one. "A wide-screen iPhone mini. A new iPad nano. Are you getting it yet?" (Thank goodness he did not.) And as Dan Moren explains, it is probably intentional that Apple isn't selling half of the iPhone Duo as an iPad: This distinction also allows it the freedom to do things that the iPad doesn’t. Like the clever ability to pin a video to the top of the screen in portrait. Or being able to fold it and put it…

Aaron Horwath: But perhaps the most powerful action of all is simply to maintain an awareness (and remind others) that Workism is a spectacle. For most employees, we owe it to each other to remind one another that this work is not, in the grand scheme of things, all that important. It is illusory. No one has ever died over a spreadsheet. The world does not wait with bated breath for product launches. A marketing campaign will not change the world. Almost no one will remember all the work we do.…

I listen to a lot of BBC podcasts. I don't listen to all the episodes, but I do listen to a fair number of them. They are great. I am not sure exactly how these podcasts are funded -- license fee? government grants via British taxpayers? advertisements? -- but, thank you, Britons. I do know that for me, in particular, it is likely advertisement plays a very small or even non-existent role in the funding. Because even though there is an announcement at the start of every episode that there will…

Do you want some reading pleasures? Your Perception Of Time Is, In Fact, Warped, by Mike Mariani, Noema What Peatlands Can Teach Us About Time, by Jennifer de Mooy, Water, Carbon, Times (Excerpted by Literary Hub) The Cultural Significance of the French School Canteen, by Muriel Zagha, Engelsberg Ideas

Do you want an iPhone Duo? The iPhone Duo is one device in one of your pocket. You have the flexibility of either using the small screen or the big screen, all day long. You have one big (logical) battery that you can use the electrons whichever way you fancy all day. There is no need to wait for data to sync across different devices. And we all know there isn't a button to force iCloud to do its job. Apple doesn't sell iPhone minis anymore, So if you really want a small screen, you'll want the…

If you are curious about the rumored foldable iPhone -- how does iOS evolve into a duo-screen user-interface, is the foldable display any different from the recent models from Samsung and Xiaomi and Huawei, or how high the price Apple think it can charge, here's the livestream of Apple's Surprise and Shine event over at YouTube. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. Tim Cook announced the iPhone X. It's now John Ternus' turn. ~ Link: Apple Event - September 9, by Apple, YouTube

Matthew Buckley Smith: Within the play’s first few scenes, we are introduced to Macbeth by other characters who speak enthusiastically about his incomparable virtue, but we’ve scarcely met the man himself before he starts to contemplate the murder of his king and benefactor. ~ Link: Macbeth and His Problems, by Matthew Buckley Smith, Portico

Lex Friedman: [T]he streak optimizes for the minimum. It doesn’t care whether you did a good lesson or a good workout; it cares whether you did any lesson or a workout. Over enough days, you learn to feed it the minimum, and the minimum becomes the habit. ...hi, this is ava: I don’t think my efforts were wasted because I took a break. Many things, even hobbies and good habits, don’t need to be done daily. No app or whatever should punish me for taking a day off. I do have three streaks…

There are many reasons why one might want to switch to Apple Passwords for password management. Apple's password manager is 'free' as it is part of the operating systems -- iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS. One may also no longer enjoy any particular third-party password manager, or worse. Here's Ricky Mondello's guide to switching password managers in 2026. (And, you can trust this guide. If you have read the linked article's 'Important Note' right at the top, you will know I can't tell you…

Just finished reading: The Universe Speaks in Numbers, by Graham Farmelo. No, I will not pretend I understand every single chapter, every single sentence, even though this book is targeted at, if I am not wrong, laypersons and non-experts. It is a very interesting read on the intersection of physics and mathematics, especially in the recent decades of standard models and string theory.

Another week. Another set of links for your reading pleasure. 40 Years Later, 'The Baby-Sitters Club' Is Still Helping Readers See Themselves, by Barrie Hardymon, Samantha Balaban, NPR She Wrote Me a Letter, by Paul Delany, Los Angeles Review of Books Tasting My Mother’s Japan, by Hana Loftus, Vittles

Clara Collier: What is really being suggested here is less a continuation of modern work than a return to a much older cultural understanding of labor. Imas makes this point directly: “Before industrialization, it was difficult to separate a product from the person who made it … Economic transactions had a distinct social component that was innately linked to the consumption experience.” Relatedly, before industrialization, there was very little sense that working, in itself, could be dignified…

I always thought that food in advertisements are typically not the actual food, and may in fact be inedible. The objective is to make the food look good in photographs and videos, not to make it taste good. That juicy and succulent and savory hamburger you see in the commercial is probably not fit to be eaten. There are professional photographers that know how all the tricks and techniques in creating attractive food in advertisements. And then, there is food created by AI. ~ Links: Uncanny and…

If information can flow backwards in time, and someone told the younger me that my main source of entertainment in the year twenty twenty-six is a bunch of audio programmes where nothing happens except people talk to to people on microphones, the younger me will be very surprised. Just like books where I know I will never finish reading all of them that I want to read, so too are podcasts. Recently, I've just unfollowed one tech podcast that I am no longer interested in listening, but I've…

The Ig Nobel honors achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think". This year's winners include Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior. ~ Links: Meet the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize winners, by Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica The 36th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony (2026) FULL…

Seriously, is time even real? ~ Link: Is Time Even Real? Does It Even Flow?, by Jim Al-Khalili, excerpted by Literary Hub from On Time: The Physics That Makes the Universe Tick

Apple Pay Express is the feature of Apple Pay where you can pay for your commute by just holding your iPhone or Apple Watch to the card reader. There's no need to unlock your phone or watch, and the payment will just go through. And this feature is finally here in Singapore, where I live. Okay, here in some public transportation. This feature is only available for payment for subway trains (known locally as MRT) across the country, and light rails (or LRT), available in three towns. Many…

The only pinball machine that I really played was the one bundled with Microsoft's Windows, Space Cadet. If I remembered correctly, I got pretty good at it, after spending many lunch hours with it. But playing pinball on a computer is different from playing on a physical pinball machine, according to Mike Monteiro: Pinball games grow old with you. They change as you change. The rubber rings around the flippers hardens, snaps, and gets replaced by another set of rubber rings, and suddenly the…

The best kind of meetings is when… there is only one chair for one person, which is you, to sit, you can just reach out your hands and touch a tree, you may hear bird songs, if you are lucky enough. ~ Link: Found a sweet new meeting room., by Ray Grasso, Grizzlebit

Andy Ihnatko, on Google and Apple changing names on their maps: But as the world’s go-to resource for map and route info, they still have a lot of responsibility. I would argue that part of this responsibility is to not fancy themselves as qualified arbiters of geopolitical disputes. Google lacks the required expertise and the impartiality. Would you really want a $4 trillion corporate entity — beholden to shareholders and self-interest, not to academic rigor or to the people directly affected…

It’s a new month. Time for some reading of old links from last month. There’s No Place Like Group Chats, by Hanif Abdurraqib, New Yorker Saved by the Norton, by Mark Bauerlein, Portico The Singapore Strategies, by Peter A Coclanis, Aeon

If you haven’t heard, there is a new CEO over at Apple. It wasn’t ever helpful before, but perhaps it’s time to really retire the question: what would Steve Jobs do. (And I don’t think “What would Tim Cook do” will ever be a frequently-asked-question.) Perhaps Tim Cook can now remove that 4am alarm on his Clock app, and just let the sunshine wakes him everyday. Or maybe he can still wake up early in the morning, but go for a longer walk outside and don’t bother reading emails on his iPad if…