Finished reading: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Fascinating and at times brilliant. I never quite got over being creeped out by the spiders, though. 📚

Congrats to the USA women’s team at FIBA! Forgot the game was a little early, now watching the highlights. 🏀

Added a new page in Micro.blog on the web today to highlight The New York Times best sellers. We usually avoid popularity contests, but this one feels right, like a shelf you’d see in a bookstore. I want to add more collections later, like nominees for the Booker Prize, Hugo Awards, and others.

Since enabling Threads cross-posting for my own blog yesterday, I’ve already found and fixed two bugs in Micro.blog’s Threads support. Little things that maybe a user would overlook and not bother to report. Just a reminder of the value of dogfooding.

I don’t think I’ve shown off the author books sheet in our book blogging app Epilogue. Here’s a very short video of how it looks.

I understand Apple wanting to get through the iOS 27 final releases before giving us a new Xcode to play with Duo sizing, but it’s still a bit of a letdown. Developers want to play with the new shiny things.

Wow, this Longhorns game getting interesting late. 🏈

Spent a little time poking around on Tumblr because I needed to grab an export file to test. The new-ish communities feature is interesting.

As I mentioned on the latest episode of Core Intuition, I’ve been running the iOS 27 betas, but I very rarely use Siri AI. Curious if anyone using Siri AI would like integration with the Micro.blog app? I haven’t prioritized working on this because I’m not sure what would be useful, if anything.

When it comes to OpenAI vs. Anthropic this year, I’ve been all in on Codex. After a chaotic couple of years for OpenAI in 2024 and 2025, this year has been solid. I think OpenAI is in the best position to bring the potential good from AI to the most people. But this is a goo...

Micro.blog was founded on the idea that more people should have their own domain name, and yet the UI to actually do that has been clunky for years. I’m working on improving that, starting today with a little “Edit Domain” button to help walk people through the change.

Congrats to John Brayton on releasing a big update for his feed reader Unread. Works on all Apple platforms, even syncs with Micro.blog’s Inkwell.

The communities that I feel the most connecting to on Mastodon have been going through a rocky few weeks. Federico Viticci back on X. Marco Arment taking a break. Everything with Omarchy and 1Password.

I usually avoid Meta, but maybe I need to cross-post to Threads for a bit. Change of pace. POSSE.

Words matter. It’s not enough to be right. If you twist the truth to get your way, it undermines everything. Lies tend to snowball.

Pushed a new Mac release for Inkwell. Release notes here, just a handful of improvements.

A reminder that we offer completely free blog hosting on Micro.blog for nurses and teachers. There’s a link on our discounts help page.

Realizing that the vertical toolbars / tab bars in the iPhone Duo will mean more buttons going icon-only, losing their labels. Better use of screen space, but maybe a step back for clarity and accessibility.

John Gruber, in a blog post about Apple Pencil confusion with the Duo:

The easiest way to think about it isn’t to compare which devices support which features (like pressure sensitivity, or double-tapping) — it’s just to think about which devices can even pair with which Pencil models.

Too bad it’s so complicated, because the Pencil really is great, even the original one.

Wired reported that OpenAI asked members of Congress if a coordinated AI slowdown would be legal:

Substantive coordination on safety between AI labs may risk running afoul of antitrust law, the people say, which poses a significant obstacle to bringing major tech giants on board with the effort.

The first new episode of Core Intuition this year is out, episode 27.1. We talk about the Apple event, of course, with specific focus on the Duo and Siri Recap.

Incredible that it has been 25 years since 9/11. Thinking of everyone in NY especially. We were far away, but I’ll never forget how it felt that morning, not sure what would happen next, worried about our daughters who were babies, like the stability we had grown accustomed to had just shattered.

Daniel Jalkut and I have figured out how to record audio again. New bonus episode of Core Int dropping soon.

Great to have Jimmy Kimmel back on the air after summer break. His interview on YouTube with James Talarico is excellent. Starting to think Talarico is actually going to win. He has the perfect message for this moment. 🇺🇸

Watched: The Librarians. Really good, covering the book bans in Texas and elsewhere. Lots of stories about what it felt like at school board meetings and in libraries. 📺

Took a walk the long way around the block from the coffee shop. Austin skyline down the rail line near 5th.

At the grocery store this week, I walked by someone who was having trouble figuring out the label of a specific item. He flagged me down. There was a language barrier, but it’s kind of heartwarming how much you can communicate just by smiling, pointing, thumbs-up, and insert...

Quick video demo of the new photos picker in Micro.blog for Mac. Much faster to grab a photo from your library in Photos.app.

Ben Thompson in today’s daily update about AI on the Apple Watch:

It does appear that Apple has taken care with this feature, including not making raw transcripts available, even to the Apple Watch owner, but this is an area where I wish the company wasn’t early.

Good perspective from Dave Winer about the news that Matt Mullenweg is on leave from Automattic:

I didn’t want to be the CEO of a tech company, and I expect that being the CEO wasn’t really a good fit for Matt either. A CEO’s job is very different from being a developer and idea guy which Matt clearly sees himself as. Something has got to give, either you’re a good CEO and the product languishes, or you focus on the product, and the company is unmanaged.

This applies to Micro.blog too. I’m not a good CEO and not a good boss. I try to make the web a little better by helping people blog.

Listening to Hillary Clinton on the news this morning. It’s always like a glimpse into what might’ve been. She actually knows things. Thoughtful, measured. 🇺🇸