FeedCity

Working in Android and Google Play a bunch this week. It’s just similar enough to the Apple ecosystem to feel like I know what I’m doing, even when I get lost in the weeds of compiler errors and dependencies changing out from under me.

[Emily Peck at Axios] "70% of Americans said they approved of unions, per Gallup's most recent poll, conducted in August." This represents a giant change in American society: labor unions haven't been this popular since 1967. But at the same time, union memb...

Some things I’ve learned about me and writing recently: I’m impossibly distractible. It’s a learned behavior: I check all my social networks, take a look at my email, fall down Wikipedia rabbit holes. Writing on the iPad seems to help me a lot. Those things are there too,...

Note to the Harris campaign: This Google search should return a complete list of your ads. Or a pointer to a site with a complete list of your ads. I want to make sure everyone who follows me sees every one of them! Let us help you help us.

We’ve got a new minor update to Epilogue for iOS ready. This release focuses on the context menu in the book details screen. Many people didn’t know the menu was there. Now there’s an ellipsis button to make it more discoverable, plus a couple other additions to the menu.

If you’re reading these HTML element guides alphabetically, you will have already read about <article> and learned what a sectioning element is. If you’re embracing chaos and reading these element guides in a random order, then I salute you and wish you the best of luc...

Jack Smith knows what he’s doing. January 6th indictment reworked to accommodate the Supreme Court’s ruling:

Prosecutors have not dropped any of the four charges that they initially brought against the former president. However, the newly retooled indictment has carved out some of Trump’s alleged conduct, including allegations about the attempts to use the Justice Department to promote his false claims of election fraud.

Submitted on app update to Apple and now feel kind of in limbo, like I can’t do anything else until they approve it. Checking email… reload, reload. It’s not even a major update.

Claude’s Artifacts feature is really well done. I asked it to create a web page with various info, and it previews the page right next to the chat, with a toggle to go from HTML to rendered. ChatGPT is still my go-to AI helper but this is impressive.

Very insightful Greg Sargent interview with James Carville. Two take-aways for Democrats. 1. Avoid NPR politics. 2. Appeal to college-educated white men. Most of them vote Republican, but with Walz on the ticket, they have a special ambassador, he represents that straight-talking country folk are part of the Democratic coalition. It's still true that white voters are the majority. Get a small number to vote Democratic could be enough to win the election. It never is about policy. It's about whether you are like them. That's what it means to avoid NPR politics. And btw, imho -- getting the press to like you might not be good. I wonder if the Dems would ever have the courage to sever itself from the journos. Imagine Harris saying "If the press says we're bad you know that means we're good." She could say that in her big interview. 😀

Good news from The Verge, the Biden administration is providing $521 million to states to expand EV charging. Houston’s getting a bunch of cash. Also interesting: grants for tribes in Washington and Florida to install charging stations on reservations. But not New Mexico? I-40 could use something.

Doug Jones has a roundup of several XOXO blog posts.

Trust.

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Rainy morning at Lazarus on Airport. The sun is starting to come out now and I want the rain back. ☕️

Craig Hockenberry’s slop is good pairs well with John Gruber’s post I linked to yesterday about trusting sources in a web filled with AI-generated content. Craig:

Search engines you can’t trust because they are cesspools of slop is hard to imagine. But that end feels inevitable at this point. We will need a new web.

We’re going to see more and more Google alternatives, maybe some paid like Kagi. And some will even need to use AI just to get rid of all the AI-generated content. 🤪

A small, probably unfair, book rant… When I start a fantasy book and discover it’s written in first person, I groan a little. It takes a unique story or very good author to pull it off. (Thinking of Robin Hobb.) Even great books would be a little better in third person, with multiple perspectives. 📚

[Heather Bryant] Arguing that it's harder to just be a human online, Heather Bryant has published an online participation disclaimer: "The following disclaimer applies to participation in discourse as it relates to my individual experience as a human being i...

[tante] Tante responds to Amazon's claim that using its internal AI for coding saved 4500 person years of work: "Amazon wants to present themselves as AI company and platform. So of course their promises of gains are always advertising for their platform and...

The reason I asked if NYT reporters sign NDAs with the NYT, then when a reporter leaves the NYT they can write a book about WTF happened at the NYT, and it would be an instant best seller imho.

I know a kitten who'd like to be EIC of the NYT.