IndieWeb
Jenny Lawson blogging about how easy it is for us to lose our cool right now:
We are not meant to be able to handle this level of constant stress that comes from seeing people being brutalized and hurt. The fury boils over into so many places because it often has nowhere else to go.
Also if you’re ever in San Antonio, Jenny has a wonderful bookstore there called Nowhere Bookshop.
Kristen Radtke writes at The Verge about her childhood friend Alex Pretti:
There is something destabilizing about having known someone only as a child and then hearing they were gunned down in the street. The person you see in your mind lying in that street is still a child. I’m sure his mother feels that way, too, or she sees him at every age all at once, including those he did not live to see.
Heartbreaking. The world is smaller and more connected than we sometimes realize… Everyone is someone’s friend, son, daughter.
NetNewsWire 7 is out with a UI update for Liquid Glass. Don’t worry, it fits well on macOS 26 without going too far with the design. All the menu icons are also hidden, which I like.
Growing the Open Social Web, an un-workshop from the FediForum folks with a new format:
Prior to the un-workshop, we invite participants to submit a short post or position paper that summarizes their own perspectives on the subject. […] In advance of the event, we distribute a (lightly curated) set of these position papers to other participants of the un-workshop for preparation.
I like this. I’m traveling that day so might miss it, but maybe some Micro.blog people would like to participate.
Bethany blogging about a GoFundMe in Minneapolis:
Many people have not been able to work for the past month or more, either because they are personally afraid to leave their homes, or their workplaces have closed (out of caution or because too many employees have been taken to continue operating), or because a wage-earner in their household has been taken. If you’re looking for a very specific, focused place to give, please consider this GoFundMe which is to give rent relief to some of these families in the Twin Cities, primarily South Minneapolis.
I’ve been working on a few blog post drafts that I can’t seem to finish. Sometimes editing makes a post better and sometimes worse. This is part of the appeal of microblogging… Less chance of overthinking simple ideas.
Another good Jimmy Kimmel show last night. It says something about the time we are living in when a comedy monologue does not even attempt to be funny for like 10 minutes.
Dave Rupert is swearing off APIs, frustrated with building on someone else’s platform:
That’s a hard stance, but I need a backstop at the idea phase to prevent me from wasting limited life force. If I don’t have the data, or can’t generate the data, or it’s not an open protocol… it’s not worth building or even thinking about.
I think some platforms are safe to build on. They should be permission-less and ad-free. (One of his abandoned apps is a historical marker app, which I’ve wanted to build for a long time too.)
I was tinkering around with Clawdbot but it’s a little overwhelming. What do you use an app for when it can do everything? Started to get worried that I was opening up a huge security risk, so decided to scrap it. Will watch how these tools evolve.
Mark Gurman pulls together a bunch of Siri AI news for Bloomberg:
The company has been planning an announcement of the new Siri in the second half of February, when it will give demonstrations of the functionality.
Also more details about cloud-based models. On-device just isn’t good enough yet.
This site Bugs Apple Loves might be a little unfair, but the iCloud photos part is good:
You took some photos. iCloud says ‘Uploading 847 items’. You wait. Next day: ‘Uploading 847 items’. Week later: ‘Uploading 847 items’. Is it stuck? Is it working? Is there an error? There’s no progress bar. No ETA.
In my experience, Apple tries to optimize when it syncs based on battery life or network or some other hidden criteria. In practice this just makes photo sync slow and unreliable.
Gonna try to watch all the Oscar nominations this year. Over the weekend caught up on Bugonia (what the heck?) and The Smashing Machine (not much plot, but really liked the characters). 🍿
More winter storm prep today. Groceries. Went to my mom’s house too to wrap pipes, drip facets, turn the heat up. 😞 I’m sure this is all a foreign concept for folks in the north… Here in central Texas our infrastructure is just not ready for crazy cold. ❄️
Watched: Disneyland Handcrafted. Some great early construction footage. 🍿
For Micro.blog this year, we want to highlight more long-form blog posts. The kind of posts that are worth setting aside a few minutes to read, not just a quick skim. Ever come across a post you love? Drop the URL in this new slow reads submission form. 🐢
The first time I saw a Waymo, I just about lost my mind, laughing. “There’s no one driving that car!” Now they’re everywhere and it’s normal. When I see one now, I just think, “There’s a safe car that is unlikely to run over a pedestrian.”
Good analysis from Laurens Hofs on ICE getting a verified badge on Bluesky and the resulting fallout. It underscores some confusion in the fediverse about what Bluesky is:
When fediverse users say they don’t want to be bridged to Bluesky, they’re applying an ActivityPub mental model to ATProto infrastructure. In one sense this is a bit of a category error, the bridge connects to networking infrastructure, not the application.
He doesn’t let Bluesky off the hook either, though. Good points on how ICE presence alone (without any posts) is a fear tactic.
I’m still excited for the Pebble Index ring because of the focus on extensibility, but I cancelled my pre-order. I kept asking myself: will I ever actually wear this thing? Nope.
Meanwhile I’ve been plotting to hack a iPod Mini into a voice recorder, ripping out the guts. Might be beyond my skills.
Rainy, misty morning in Austin. This weekend is going to be cold, with ice and maybe snow. Hopefully we’re ready for it. I’ve been mostly worried about the new tree we planted. Added new mulch to protect the roots. Going with sheets and plastic over it. 🌳
Getting the sense that what’s happening in Minnesota is about to reach a tipping point, or maybe already has, where it becomes so clearly unacceptable to everyone regardless of political party that there will be new pressure for change. This is not sustainable. 🇺🇸
Watched some of the Jack Smith hearing during lunch. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? We screwed up, took too long to bring charges. But I’d put Jack Smith in charge again if there was a way to run it back in 2029, even unlikely, given the statute of limitations. 🇺🇸
Listening to the Open AI podcast, of course it’s marketing, but something that Vinod Khosla said struck me. Essentially the AI bubble is in the stock market, not in real use. Some companies will fail, but usage is not going to go down, just as the internet kept growing through the dot-com bubble.
I usually give AI little coding tasks. Go off and fix this one thing, make this small tweak, add this one feature that I will review. Today I had it help with something bigger. I iterated on the plan, then it worked for 30 minutes. Pretty incredible.
Good discussion about the future of AI in this interview from Davos with Demis Hassabis and Dario Amodei. Although they ended on a sort of cliffhanger right as Demis started talking about the likelihood of extraterrestrial life, which now I’m curious about.
Watched: The House. An anthology in three parts about the same house, directed and animated by different teams. The style and tone from first to second part was jarring. At times beautiful, at times bonkers and creepy. 🍿
Travis Knight in the press release for Laika’s next stop-motion feature, Wildwood:
Our movie is a celebration of artistry over algorithms, and of the belief that films made by hand, with enormous care, can still feel bold, surprising, dangerous, and alive.
I’m really looking forward to this.
Powerful email shared by Brent Simmons from family members in Minnesota.
This is a great extended ad for the new Volvo EX60. You can acknowledge the old hassle when you think you’ve solved it. 500-mile range.
