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David Brooks in The Atlantic starts by echoing what I quoted of his last month, then moves on to history lesson and how we eventually rebuild after Trump. A long, good read:

Humility, prudence, and honesty are not just nice virtues to have—they are practical tools that produce good outcomes. When you replace them with greed, lust, hypocrisy, and dishonesty, terrible things happen.

And:

When the time comes to build a new paradigm, progressives talk about economic redistribution; conservatives talk about cultural and civic repair. History shows that you need both: Recovery from national crisis demands comprehensive reinvention at all levels of society.

Watched the first season of The Rehearsal and it blew my mind a little. Hilarious and insane. 📺

Great story about Bluesky and Jay Graber in The New Yorker. I love this bit:

Then, in December, 2019, she saw a tweet thread from Jack Dorsey about a decentralized social-media project he was launching—Bluesky. Graber told me that she felt a degree of so-called nominative determinism, pulled toward the project because it shared her name. “If fate doesn’t exist, then we must create it,” she said.

I don’t delete my blog posts… even when it would be easier for me if I did. For longer posts I might add a note at the end to correct something, but most of the time I let it stand, or hope that replies on the post are enough clarification. The blog as a whole is the work.

Of all the harm I was expecting from Trump’s second term, I did not expect a market crash this soon. We basically put everything we had into the house down payment when we moved this year. I’m sure there are people who had savings and investments ready for a similar move who are now facing disaster.

Tobias Lütke, in a memo to employees at Shopify, re-posted on Twitter / X: Using Al effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. It’s a tool of all trades today, and will only grow in importance. Frankly, I don’t think it’s feasible to opt out of lea...

The Minecraft movie was a lot of fun. 🍿

Amazing story on CNN around veteran Joe Harris, who died at age 108, serving in World War II in an elite force of Black paratroopers:

As the US Army was training the Triple Nickles to disarm bombs, the men were also being taught by the US Forest Service to become the first military smokejumpers.

More history at the National Museum of the US Army.

19 miles out from Lampasas.

In today’s post, Seth Godin captures something that I’ve been thinking about but have had trouble communicating well:

When someone makes an obvious mistake, it’s tempting to label them with a term that’s dismissive or even hurtful. A label is permanent, a noun, a way to sort and divide.

Labels have a dehumanizing effect.

Rolled out some Micro.blog improvements to uploads on the web today. For example, if AI is enabled there are auto-generated accessibility descriptions for photos, and now you can edit the description without first needing to use it in a post. Plus some more UI tweaks for uploads.

My son has had the worst luck with his car. A few weeks ago, broke down driving back from Arizona… after having it checked out at a mechanic. New radiator and other work in New Mexico. Now today, a similar problem out in the Texas hill country.

All the broken pecan shells are in one spot under the tree. Must be some happy squirrels living here.

Went looking for an old tweet and then got lost in the archive. I have all my tweets (mostly 2006-2012) on my blog and it’s like a snapshot of a different life. Still me, but so many things change.

This week’s ATP has a members-only special segment about vibe coding. One snippet from John Siracusa, encapsulating much of the conversation: As programming tools have gotten better, the demand for programmers has gone up, not down. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he ga...

John Gruber blogging about whether the tariffs will impact Apple:

It’s under-remarked upon, but Apple, to a point of almost obstinance, considers pricing part of the brand for its products. They tend not to raise or lower prices with the ebbs and flows of the world economy or even the obvious constraints of simple supply and demand.

I appreciate this about Apple. Prices send a message and consistency is part of that. (Also why Micro.blog’s standard subscription has never changed from $5.)

While I’m commenting on YouTube videos today, I love that half of Casey Neistat’s video about the Switch 2 is actually about the New York subway.

Nice 9-minute edit by The Verge of the Copilot event, including a protester interrupting the presentation. I get that AI is divisive but it does actual harm to scream at another human in this way. So much outrage now is funneled into attacks when for many topics it’s not even clear what is right.

Greg Morris has been doing great work on Micro Social, and he’s got a buy me a coffee page! ☕️ Perfect way to support an indie app and help grow the Micro.blog ecosystem.

It’s all fun and games with the global economy until your tariffs start interrupting Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders. 🤪

How to people feel about web apps that take over common keyboard shortcuts like command-S? We’ve added a handful of keyboard shortcuts to Micro.blog on the web, and I really like it, so I’d like to add a couple more.

So many great lines in this piece by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic:

By the numbers, the tariffs are less an expression of economic theory and more a Dadaist art piece about the meaninglessness of expertise.

Who knew Bill Gates was such a good blogger? Love this story of Altair BASIC in a quirky, unique design with animating text.

Apple stock getting destroyed today. I feel for small investors who are caught up in this. But also maybe a lesson for Tim Cook and his $1 million donation to the inauguration.

Trump is reckless. You might think you’ll benefit by supporting him, but really you’re just empowering him.

Today’s update to the Mac app addresses a few things related to managing uploads. It’s now easier to upload a new photo, or start a new post from an already-uploaded photo.

These screenshots highlight a couple of the new items:

There are also some bug fixes and little improvements that make using the app nicer.

Had a dream where one of my notebooks had special AI pages. I could write questions on them with ink and answers would appear. Too much ChatGPT on the brain. Also, the future will be just as much The Diamond Age as it will be Her.

Haven’t had coffee or left the house in a couple days after being sick, and those are two of my favorite things to do. Finally outdoors again. The gloomy weather isn’t helping… Need some sun.

The latest update to Micro Social adds location check-ins for Micro.blog. Very interesting! There’s so much potential here that we haven’t had time to follow through on, so great to see another app pick up the slack.

Excited for the Nintendo Switch 2. The kids have our old Switches, so I had picked up a Lite mostly for travel and miss having something that can connect to the TV.

Rest in peace, Val Kilmer. Glad he was able to reprise his role from Top Gun, in a way getting the thanks and goodbye he deserved before he passed. His part in Heat will always be my favorite.