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Behind the counter in a coffee shop I visited last week there was a whiteboard which read [1]: Sunday debate: Custard creams or chocolate bourbons There were dozens of tally marks on the board and counts from a social media poll. The results were: Custard creams: 212Bourbons: 171 I love both biscuits, so if there were a both option I would have voted as such; if I had to pick one, it would be custard creams, though. Otherwise, I might have said fig rolls, a biscuit I had for the first time in ages this week. Fig rolls may not have been an option, but they sure are tasty. [1]: Given I saw the whiteboard on a week day, I assume the debate was going to run for a week, despite the title being "Sunday debate". In any case, any day is a good day to chat about biscuits.

It was my birthday last month. It was low-key. I loved it. I went to the beach. Kite surfers were out in force this afternoon. For my birthday session. I got birthday wishes from AARP. That’s The American Association of Retired Persons. I am not retired. Nowhere close. I am working age still. I am...

Humanoid robot runs a half marathon fast. I’m actually impressed because it just feels like it would fall over at least a few times. But it’s not relevant to human runners… A car can finish a marathon more quickly than a human too! 🤪

Nice story on the Spurs in The New Yorker:

Last season, the team had traded for De’Aaron Fox, an All-Star guard in his prime, which appeared odd to some—wasn’t he too old to be on Wembanyama’s timeline? Now it seemed like a stroke of genius.

Game 1 tonight vs. the Blazers. Excited. Nervous too. 🏀

Sunday session

In which a defense contractor lays its anti-democratic, pro-fascist ideology bare.

A format like RSS needs to be loved.

I'm doing a programming project with Claude and it's great, like a puzzle, finding out what works for me and building something I normally wouldn't have time to maintain, but -- Claude has nothing but time for stuff like that. I'm building it to pass off, a common code structure that we both understand and I know how to evolve because I design my code for evolution. And it's going well. But then I realized it's the same Claude I ask general questions of so I tried this. "I would love to pass off wpIdentity to an open source development organization. The ideal would be the WordPress's community. Is there any precedent for this, one community acquiring a new product?" You can try typing that prompt in yourself and see what you get. One thing I learned is that the Apache Foundation was set up for this. And Claude is pretty firm that WordPress is not set up for that.

A few months ago, some guys from Netscape came out with a way to get AI to pay called Really Simple Licensing or RSL. I was really put off by the way they took the name that everyone knows came from me with no help from anyone. Maybe I could have done something about it, in...

Terry Godier blogs about the growing disconnect between the traditional paid-up-front App Store and all the new features that free with in-app purchase apps get:

Apple offers you no mechanism for what is arguably the most natural transaction in software: paying for major upgrades. The only option is to create a new app listing or to use an IAP. There’s a strong disadvantage to creating a new app listing, namely losing your accumulated reviews and visibility.

It’s a theme that reminds me of Marco Arment’s blog post from 2009, although that post was focused on cheap quick-hit apps.

I walked so much in Europe. Trying to stick with walking more places now that I’m back home. Cars are embedded into every part of life in Texas.

Related, watched a video this morning about high-speed rail progress in California. As a country we should be embarrassed about this. Come on already. 🚂

Talisman Coffee.

After reading The Morrigan I was hungry for more retellings of Irish myths and legends. I tracked down the 1994 novel Finn Mac Cool by Morgan Llywelyn. When I was devouring modern retellings of Greek myths, I commented on an interesting difference in the tellings: The b...

RSD26 Two records I wanted, two that found me. One of them is a children's orchestral album. No regrets. It's been a while since I've done a Record Store Day. I used to not do my homework, show up late, get whatever caught my attention. This year, I went through the catalog in advance and settled on two albums I wanted, leaving room for two wildcards that caught my eye in the rushed ...

This new TED Talk from Peter Steinberger is a great introduction to why OpenClaw exists and what impact it might have. He’s having a lot of fun and I think that excitement rubs off on everyone in the community. 🦞

I really love the band Hospitality. Something dreamy but also arch and ironic but also deeply heartfelt. It’s got all the contradictions that I love so much in artists I encountered once I hit my 30s and 40s. Here’s a song called Friends of Friends: Actually, it’s so good I’ll link to two versions. One...

Panic announced that the Playdate Catalog will no longer accept games that use generative AI for content such as art and dialog. AI for coding is okay, for now, but you can tell Panic isn’t happy about it: For the time being, we will allow Catalog titles that have used AI a...

Last week I released a new toolkit that includes docs for your AI programming partner. Ask it to read the docs, and then tell it about the editor you want. It works with WordPress sites via the wpcom API via the wpIdentity server. A new frontier. ;-)