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Text • John Gruber

Trump Lawyer Argues Trump Can Tear Down Statue of Liberty

talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-can-tear-down-statue-of-liberty-says-trump-lawyer

Josh Marshall: In a hearing today about the president’s bulldozing of the East Wing of the White House and plans to build a vast ballroom, a judge asked if the president could also bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and be subject to no legal challenge. The DOJ lawyer, Yaako...

Dan’s Polaroids
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05.06.2026

A small barrier in tall grass. A bridge over a river in the background. On the other side are dark clouds.
Bad weather approaching.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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micropython-wasm 0.1a2

Release: micropython-wasm 0.1a2

I added a CLI to micropython-wasm (issue #7), inspired by the first draft of the blog entry when I realized it would be a great way to illustrate the Try it yourself section.

Tags: python, sandboxing, webassembly, micropython

The Atlas Obscura Podcast Updates instantly via WebSub
Audio • SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Weekend Road Trip: The Jokes Phone

A pay phone in Washington, D.C tells you jokes and affirmations. 

This episode is part of our Weekend Road Trip Series, where we bring you stories of the strange, incredible, and wondrous places right here in the United States, that you can see from the road. This series was produced in partnership with T-Mobile.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Running Python code in a sandbox with MicroPython and WASM

I've been experimenting with different approaches to running code in a sandbox for several years now, but my latest attempt feels like it might finally have all of the characteristics I've been looking for. I've released it as an alpha package called micropython-wasm, and I'...

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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OpenAI Help: Lockdown Mode

OpenAI Help: Lockdown Mode OpenAI first teased this in February, but now it's live and "rolling out to eligible personal accounts, including Free, Go, Plus, and Pro, and self-serve ChatGPT Business accounts": Lockdown Mode is designed to help prevent the final stage of data...

Rick Beato Updates instantly via WebSub
Video

The End of an Era

In this episode, I reflect on the last 10 years of my YouTube career, and ask the question "What's Next?"

My Beato Club supporters:
Justin Scott
Terence Mark
Jason Murray
Lucienne Kilpatrick
Alexander Young
Jason Wagner
Todd Ladner
Rob Kline
Nicholas Long
Tim Benson
Leonardo Martins da Costa Rodrigues
Eddie Perez
David Solomon
MICHAEL JOYCE
Stephen Stubbs
colin stead
Jonathan Wentworth-Linton
Patrick Payne
MATTHEW KARIS
Matthew Barouch
Shaun Samuels
Danny Kurywchak
Gregory Reedy
Sean Coleman
Alexander Verbitskiy
CL Turner
Jason Pappafotis
John Fulford
Margaret Carno
Robert C
David M Combs
Eric Flatt
Reto Spoerli
Herr Moritz Adam
Monte St. Johns
Jon Beezley
Peter DeVault
Eric Nabstedt
Eric Beggs
Rich Germano
Brian Bloom
Peter Pillitteri
Piush Dahal
Toby Guidry

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Nieman Journalism Lab: Twitter/X Punishes Accounts That Post Links

niemanlab.org/2026/04/do-links-hurt-news-publishers-on-twitter-our-analysis-suggests-yes/

Laura Hazard Owen, writing for Nieman Journalism Lab back in April: I used Claude to help me scrape the 200 most recent tweets from 18 large publishers’ X accounts and track the engagement (likes + comments + retweets) on each. Six of those publishers have paywalls: Bloo...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Elon Musk’s X Is a Freak Show

natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-become-a-freak-show

Nate Silver, back in April, under the headline “Social Media Is Turning Into a Freak Show”, where by “social media” he mostly discusses Twitter/X: But what does that remaining traffic consist of? I recently came across a bubble chart depicting the Twitter accounts that h...

Colossal Valid
Text • Grace Ebert

Tavares Strachan’s First Monograph Surveys an Encyclopedic Practice

Tavares Strachan’s First Monograph Surveys an Encyclopedic PracticeTavares Strachan is one of the leading conceptual artists working today, and his first monograph is out this month from Phaidon.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Tavares Strachan’s First Monograph Surveys an Encyclopedic Practice appeared first on Colossal.

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Checking in on Perplexity

daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/regarding-those-rumors-of-apple-pursuing-an-acquisition-of-perplexity

Yours truly, last August:

I can’t see why Apple would want to get involved with a company like this though. Gurman’s report makes it sound like his sources are inside Apple, but man, this “Apple + Perplexity” thing feels more like something Perplexity would be seeding than one that Apple executives would be leaking.

Perplexity is still occasionally in the news (often not in good ways), but it seems to me they’ve slipped into the “afterthought” tier of AI startups — which is exactly why they started leaning into clownish stunts last year. Everyone who previously suggested Apple should — or even might — buy them has gone silent.

Link: daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/regarding-those-rumors…

Colossal Valid
Text • Grace Ebert

In Los Angeles, 70 Artists Transform a Vacant Hospital

In Los Angeles, 70 Artists Transform a Vacant HospitalDubbed the 'Hospital of Emotions,' the pop-up exhibition converts 80 rooms into surreal installations.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article In Los Angeles, 70 Artists Transform a Vacant Hospital appeared first on Colossal.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Summer Fridays, Open Thread

I’m observing summer Fridays here at KDO again this year, which means I (mostly) won’t be posting here on Fridays. If past years are any guide, this doesn’t actually have too much of an effect on how much I work or post…more of a redistribution of time & effort. But it...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Illustrated break-downs of how common objects work ....

Illustrated break-downs of how common objects work. Currently featuring a mechanical pencil, PEZ dispenser, retractable pen, and Zippo lighter.

Radiolab Updates instantly via WebSub
Audio • WNYC Studios

Oliver Sipple

One morning, Oliver Sipple went out for a walk. A couple hours later, to his own surprise, he saved the life of the President of the United States. In a story we reported back in 2017, we explain how in the days that followed, Sipple’s split-second act of heroism turned into...

xkcd.com Valid
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Planetary Science

The research was overseen by the Institutional Review Board, which is what I named my surfboard.

Daniel Pietzsch Verified Updates instantly via WebSub Supports Webmention Valid
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🎬 No Country for Old Men

letterboxd.com/danielpietzsch/film/no-country-for-old-men/

This review may contain spoilers. Tap or click to view.This is The Big Lebowski, but in serious and suspenseful. It has a narrator, who’s also appearing in the movie, and who doesn’t know if he (still) belongs there. You have people demanding money from a guy who stumbled in...

Longreads Valid
Text • Seyward Darby

The Inside Story of the Athens Music Scene

"How did the college football town spawn the B-52s, R.E.M., and Widespread Panic, to name just a few? The maestros and misfits who led Athens’s rise to one of the world's most influential and improbable music towns tell all."

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Quoting Andreas Kling

We will no longer accept public pull requests. [...]

A substantial patch used to imply substantial effort, and that effort was a reasonable proxy for good faith. That assumption no longer holds. [...]

Whether code was typed by hand is beside the point. What matters is who is responsible for it once it enters the browser. Ladybird is becoming a browser for real users. The people introducing changes to it must be the people who decide those changes belong in the project, and who will answer for the consequences.

— Andreas Kling, Changing How We Develop Ladybird

Tags: ladybird, ai-ethics, open-source, generative-ai, ai, andreas-kling, llms

Longreads Valid
Text • Longreads

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Recommending notable stories by Wyatt Williams, John Leland, Jonathan Weiner, Suzy Hansen, and Max Ufberg.

sorry, this post is only available to Longreads members. To become a member, visit longreads.com/join.