“Venus Williams is making history in her return to the U.S. Open later this month as the oldest singles player to take the court in more than 40 years.” Go Venus!
Bloomberg: ‘Trump Administration Said to Discuss Taking Stake in Intel’
Bloomberg:
The Trump administration is in talks with Intel Corp. to have the
US government take a stake in the beleaguered chipmaker, according
to people familiar with the plan, in the latest sign of the White
House’s willingness to blur the lines between state and indus...
Nice Pitch From Dieter Bohn for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
Dieter Bohn left The Verge to work for Google on their “Platforms & Ecosystems” team. He hasn’t had much of a visible presence since, or least not one that I’ve noticed. But this 90-second video he made showing off the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is nice. It’s a better pitch for the device than anything I’ve seen from Samsung itself, and it’s a good pitch for Google Gemini too.
The Wall Street Journal Marches Toward Pravda With American Characteristics
Greg Ip, chief economics commentator for The Wall Street Journal, under the euphemistic headline “The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics”:
A generation ago conventional wisdom held that as China
liberalized, its economy would come to resem...
Max Cooper, Repetition
This music video, directed by Kevin McGloughlin for Max Cooper’s song Repetition, features remixed fractal-like forms from the constructed world (roads, skyscrapers, wind turbines, etc.) interspersed with scenes from nature. Totally mesmerizing. (You’ve got a give it a minute to get going though, especially if you’re not a fan of gradual repetitive music. I was in a trance by the end. 😵💫)
Tags: Kevin McGloughlin · Max Cooper · mesmerizing · music · video
Kieran Healy recently became a US citizen. “I know the nationalities of...
Kieran Healy recently became a US citizen. “I know the nationalities of my fellow oath-takers because of the next stage of the ceremony. This was the Roll Call of Nations. I did not know this was going to happen.”
★ Apple Issues a Workaround for the Blood Oxygen Sensor Ban for U.S. Apple Watches
Apple Newsroom this morning, “An Update on Blood Oxygen for Apple Watch in the U.S.”:
Apple will introduce a redesigned Blood Oxygen feature for
some Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2
users through an iPhone and Apple Watch software update coming
l...
Building a Watch From Scratch in a Brooklyn Basement
Giles Clement tends to go a little overboard with his hobbies. During the pandemic, he taught himself to repair old watches and then decided to try building one himself. Taylor Scott Mason made a short documentary about Clement and his effort to build a watch from scratch in...
Quoting Cory Doctorow
NERD HARDER! is the answer every time a politician gets a technological idée-fixe about how to solve a social problem by creating a technology that can't exist. It's the answer that EU politicians who backed the catastrophic proposal to require copyright filters for all use...
652: You Have 24 Hours to Comply
Pre-Show: Marco and Casey’s no-good, very bad days.
Follow-up:
Casey didn’t read the fine print on Express Replacement 🤦🏻♂️
Short Pump
John cycled his mouse again
AppleCare One
Moving a device on a payment plan (via “Clark Griswold” and Anonymous)
Tina’s iPhone
Tin...
Michael Chabon on the time he tried to get hired to write...
Michael Chabon on the time he tried to get hired to write the script for a Fantastic Four movie (in 1995). “What are you doing here? I mean, you’re, like, a serious writer.”
Introducing Gemma 3 270M: The compact model for hyper-efficient AI
Introducing Gemma 3 270M: The compact model for hyper-efficient AI
New from Google:
Gemma 3 270M, a compact, 270-million parameter model designed from the ground up for task-specific fine-tuning with strong instruction-following and text structuring capabilities already tra...
Generous Media
In the latest issue of his monthly newsletter, Robin Sloan shared a quick reflection on why the Criterion closet interviews are so effective, entertaining, and worth participating in for celebrities (emphasis mine):
Let’s think about the format that is the Criterion clos...
From the inbox: “ldial is a website for listening to a curated...
From the inbox: “ldial is a website for listening to a curated list of community radio stations from across the US. I took efforts to make it super fast. To me, the random button feels like magic.”
“If you want to fight for what’s right in this moment, and...
“If you want to fight for what’s right in this moment, and forge politics that exist in opposition to what Trump represents, you must protect anyone chased by the fascists.”
Radiohead: Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009)
Radiohead dropped a surprise album yesterday, a live album of songs from Hail to the Thief. You can find the album on various streaming platforms, including Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music. The band’s lead singer Thom Yorke says of the album:
In the process of thinkin...
“Competitive authoritarianism [can be seen as] a prevalent form of government throughout...
“Competitive authoritarianism [can be seen as] a prevalent form of government throughout American history — one which we have only tentatively started to move away from in recent decades.” Interesting historical context.
On the disorienting thrill & agony of picking up a new sport...
On the disorienting thrill & agony of picking up a new sport (or relearning an old one) in midlife. “Falling as an adult means calling friends and family to tell them ‘I had a fall.’”
February 2024
Mondo Bizarr, two concerts, Kunstakademie Rundgang and carneval. (23 photos)
The Annals of Oligarchy, Defense Department Edition
reuters.com/world/us/how-unraveling-two-pentagon-projects-may-result-costly-do-over-2025-08-13/
Alexandra Alper, reporting for Reuters:
Donald Trump’s Navy and Air Force are poised to cancel two nearly
complete software projects that took 12 years and well over $800
million combined to develop, work initially aimed at overhauling
antiquated human resources systems....