Really respect Anil Dash trying to have a nuanced conversation about AI on Bluesky, surrounded by many AI skeptics. This thread is one place to start, but there are many other posts:

At what point are folks going to try literally any other tactic than condescending rants?

Sadly, AI is so divisive, debate is counter-productive right now. Meanwhile, all the AI researchers are still on Twitter / X, and they’re not going to move to more open platforms where they would just be criticized. So we’re back to information bubbles.

Got a lot done over the weekend and today, heading into the distractions of iPhone event day tomorrow. Lots of little improvements in Micro.blog, plus a new Mac app update which I recorded a quick walk-through for.

Love this post Irrational Dedication, via Duncan Davidson:

Every single thing we see, someone had to will it into existence against the entropy of the universe and the indifference of everyone else. That’s what the entire built world is.

Steve Troughton-Smith on Mastodon:

I know Apple has got used to making its share of Microsoft-scale screwups lately, but taking the two best UI frameworks ever made, UIKit and AppKit, and throwing them under the bus for something designed to build watch apps really does take the cake.

These frameworks were so good. Still are! I’ll never fully understand why there couldn’t have been a universal layer for iOS and macOS plus some existing AppKit and UIKit pieces for platform-specific features. Oh well, that ship sailed years ago now.

Stumbled on Freaky Tales while browsing HBO and it’s wild. 1980s Oakland, basketball, punk rock, animation… It is surprisingly violent but also amazing. 🍿

Marco Arment on Mastodon:

As we head into iPhone-event week, let’s celebrate the hard work by all of the people who made these products happen.

And let’s not forget the shameless Trump-suckass CEO at the top, who constantly gives the middle finger to everyone in his own company…

🇺🇸

Ryan Barrett blogging about how our symptom-based healthcare isn’t good enough:

…for lots of diseases, even critical ones like cancer, where catching them early can make all the difference, most of the time we’re still waiting until someone shows up in clinic, coughing up blood and complaining that their side hurts…

We’re taking an even worse step back right now in the United States, but it’s temporary, fixable in 2026 and 2028. I still feel good that our grandchildren will have much better care and healthier lives.

Micro.blog 3.7 for Mac is out, and I recorded a quick 2-minute YouTube video to show a few things in the interface around books and notes.

Of course I only notice the UI glitches while I’m recording a screencast demo. Will have to tweak a couple things for the next bug fix update.

With the acquisition by Atlassian, there’s a lot of talk about whether this is bad for Dia and Arc. But one thing I’m sure about: this is good for Atlassian. The Browser Company has a great attention to detail and thoughtful design that could benefit Atlassian’s culture.

Working on Mac code continues to be a kind of escape from closed mobile platforms. Still fun after all these years. I wrapped up a Micro.blog update today, will release it tomorrow.

In AppKit, for some reason I always forget about content hugging priority. I usually fiddle with the constraint’s priority first, scratching my head why it’s not working. (Nope, never heard of SwiftUI…) 🤪

From the statement on better discourse between the ActivityPub and AT Protocol communities:

We do not build a better open social web for everyone by fighting and arguing about protocol superiority. That is not how we achieve a better open social web. Instead, we must work together, cross-pollinate and share ideas, and participate within each other’s communities with respect and mutual understanding.

Co-signing. This came out of the Social Web Community Group meeting yesterday, which I wish I was participating in more often.

Finished reading: The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown 📚

I think everyone is floored by this $1.5 billion settlement. Anthropic essentially won on fair use, so I just assumed the pirated books settlement was going to be a little more low-key than this. Hope the authors see most of the money. Never a dull moment in AI land!

Sarah Perez reporting on a Common Sense Media assessment of Gemini:

Common Sense also said that Gemini’s products for kids and teens ignored how younger users needed different guidance and information than older ones. As a result, both were labeled as “High Risk” in the overall rating, despite the filters added for safety.

This is part of what is probably a major shift underway at AI companies to worry less about helping create biological weapons and more about kids and psychological safety. Maybe futurists think too much about the sci-fi inevitabilities and not enough about today.

This is great. James Dempsey’s Liquid Glass song:

I made the lyrics as intelligible… as Liquid Glass controls are legible. Come on everyone, sing along! You don’t know the words, but neither do I. 🎶

Kagi News looks good! First they define the problem:

Driven by relentless ad monetization, news has become mental junk food - an endless stream of clickbait that destroys our ability to think deeply and clearly.

I’ve only watched a few clips of last night’s dinner with tech execs at the White House. Is it possible to accept the invitation and not grovel? This is my first draft at a comment: It is great to be here with so many leaders in the industry. <nodding to others around th...

Texas is adding state parks faster than I can visit them. Bear Creek:

Not only does the site provide access to the Frio River, Spring Creek, as well as its namesake Bear Creek, but there are several streams, canyons and ridges providing an idyllic background for hikers.

🏕️

There have been a lot of improvements to Micro.blog lately. If you don’t follow the @news account closely, you can also subscribe to the weekly email of posts from news.micro.blog, delivered every Monday.

Dusting off a little of the queued up work for JSON Feed. Thanks to Daniel Pietzsch, the JSON Feed Validator now has a JSON API, if any apps need to hook into validating JSON Feeds using it. There’s a new format=json URL parameter.

Seeing this sign after parking my car… Not so much worried as I am curious how bad it must be to order a custom sign for this.

Ever since first adding book reading to Micro.blog, I’ve tried to avoid recreating my own book database. So we lean on Google Books, Open Library, Goodreads, and even (for a while) paying for metadata. I think that approach has run its course. Going to add our own book curation and cover tools.

I know I go on and on too much about AI sometimes, but… OpenAI’s Codex continues to amaze me. You can have it just watch a GitHub repo for pull requests, then automatically check the new code and add a comment if anything looks wrong. 🤯 Great for a tiny team with not enough eyeballs on things.

As a VC-backed company, perhaps The Browser Company was always going to need to sell. My initial reaction is Atlassian seems a weird fit. But maybe not? From The Verge:

Miller is clear, even forceful, that Dia is not about to become just a wrapper for Atlassian apps, or shift to thinking primarily about IT managers and enterprise features. Dia is still for individual users. It’s just that now, it’s primarily for individual users at work.

I’m really enjoying Dia. I’ll probably keep using it unless or until it gets worse.

Kind of odd if someone has a link to schedule a meeting on their website, but they don’t share an email address or any other contact info. Is email a lost art? It still works. Simple, everywhere.

If you’re on the iOS 26 beta and use Micro.blog, you may want to try switching to our TestFlight beta. It is updated with very minimal Liquid Glass support. Nothing drastic, most of the app is going to stay flat and non-squishy.

Sounds like things are moving forward on a possible Gemini-powered Siri. Mark Gurman reports on an agreement between Google and Apple for testing, and a bunch more about Apple’s plans and new Siri architecture:

Apple is rebuilding Siri around three core components: a planner, the search systems for the web and devices, and a summarizer. The planner interprets voice or text input and decides how to respond; the search system scans the web or user data; and the summarizer pulls it all together into an answer.

Thought about burning an expedited review request with Apple. It has been many years since I asked for one. But also, reviews are consistently 24 hours, so don’t want to risk making things worse than just waiting.