FeedCity

Journalism doesn't come back from the election of 2024, any more than the Republican Party does.

People worry that AI will take over what humans should be doing. It’s more profound than that. Using AI has helped me understand what actually makes us uniquely human. Love, creativity, leadership, fear, individualism, beauty. Let’s lean in to what only we can do and let that drive everything else.

Taking a short break from Threads and Bluesky. Nothing against those services, but I started over-thinking the post length differences. I need to focus on work and blogging first. Because my blog natively uses ActivityPub, Mastodon folks will still see my posts.

In my blog post series for upgrades to my Honda Element, this post is a little different. It’s not an actual change to the car like the posts about CarPlay, the WeBoost, or my bed platform.

It is usually too hot to camp in Texas during the summer. To help beat the heat, I’m currently using a few portable fans and a water-cooled fan, the Evapolar evaCHILL. It doesn’t blow cold air, but it does blow cool-ish air. Every little bit helps. It also draws very little energy, about 10W from my Jackery.

I also swear by these simple fans by Dorobeen. They charge via USB-C and double as batteries that can charge a phone.

I’m still considering a “real” air conditioning unit like the EcoFlow Wave or Zero Breeze, but they are a lot bigger. I don’t think it’s currently worth the trouble.

I got a beautiful new Pixel 9 Pro yesterday. It was amazingly easy to move the data from the old phone to the new one. Just turn both on near each other, and click a couple of dialogs and it works. Haven't used it for anything yet. Will report.

While Micro.blog avoids viral features, making misinformation less likely to spread quickly, we still have a 30-day free trial that content spammers sometimes try to use. Thinking about going paid-only without a trial until after the election, to remove another potential source of problems.

Thursday session

I asked ChatGPT to adapt two images. Grandpa from The Munsters and Ted Cruz, US senator from Texas. The adaptation is pretty nice. Another pair, the logo of Los Pollos Hermanos from Breaking Bad. The adaptation is thoughtful.

Congrats to @rizzi@gloria.social on the release of the new Reeder! It’s a huge redesign, refocusing the app around timelines, viewing conversations, and more. Great integration with Micro.blog too.

“I’d run the risk of losing everything.
Sell all my things, become nomadic.”
— Clairo

My number one use case for AR glasses is when on a road trip and can’t stop to take pictures. Old buildings in forgotten towns, long abandoned, that were once beautiful.

I've never written a review on Amazon even though I shop there regularly. I was about to write a negative review for a product they can't seem to support, that I depend on, but got this message. Weird. I bought the product from the page I wanted to review it on. How else would they determine if I actually purchased the product? They don't say. They do offer to tell me a joke if I rate products I've bought. I've heard the company isn't doing that well now that Bezos has stepped aside. Hopefully this is just a bad set of coincidences.

I got a bit of pushback on what I wrote about The Newsroom yesterday. If you think it was great, you should watch it again. They got everything wrong, imho -- and the storytelling is as simple as Atlas Shrugged. If you loved it in 2012, okay -- but we've all been through hel...

• People only understand things relative to things they already understand
• People only understand things in context
• People rely on patterns and consistency
• People seek to minimize cognitive load
• People have varying levels of expertise and familiarity
• People are goal-oriented
• People often don’t know what they’re looking for
• Information is more useful when it’s actionable

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[Elahe Izadi at The Washington Post] I adore The 19th. It's making big moves, and that's good news for everyone. "What [Emily] Ramshaw and fellow co-founder Amanda Zamora started in January 2020 — a newsroom with just one reporter and no website — has grown ...

Yesterday the Internet Archive lost its appeal in the digital lending case it’s been fighting for the last few years. In March 2020, the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, launched a program called the National Emergency Library, or NEL. Library closure...

Cloudy morning at Brazos Bend State Park, from the observation tower. Unlike any other state park I’ve been to. Didn’t see any alligators.

Wednesday session

Seeing the “luxurious” headline on this review at The Verge for the new reMarkable Paper Pro, I was expecting it to be more expensive than $579. Looks really nice. And it makes sense to go for the high-end. The super low-end is well served by Kindles and paper notebooks.