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Michael Williams, a friend for a long time and a fellow aficionado of things made well, has a new publication, The Material Review. He recently invited me to chat about my current photography setup, favorite tools, and the under-the-radar brands and objects that have my attention. Here is a link to my short conversation with …

Human beings spend far to much effort feeling better than some people or feeling inferior to others.

This is understandable, I guess, as far as evolution is concerned, up to a point, but I think we've been past that point for a long time now. Now, evolution brought us to a point where in order to survive as a species we have to get over this need to rank people and work together.

So if you feel other people are better than you, get over it. Same thing if you feel better than others. You aren't and they aren't.

Your shit still stinks and as the great Republican philosopher Joni Ernst so eloquently put it, she's going to be dead pretty darned soon and so will you.

It's already June 2! It seems like just yesterday it was June 1!

Good morning and welcome to June. Another month gone, and coincidentally the end of the NBA season. I woke up this morning with the worst hangover ever, and I haven't had a drink in months (never was my vice, I have others). The Knicks lost fair and square to the Indianas la...

Some weeks ago Oliver from Pixel Pioneers asked me: "How did you come up with the idea for your upcoming Pixel Pioneers talk, and what can we expect to take away from it?". This is my answer: Around two years ago I realised that I was feeling a lot of decision paralysis whe...

RSS never had a big corporation acting as a benefactor, but to some extent Harvard did play that role, though it didn't have an ego when it came to this stuff, and it didn't behave like a tech corporation (good thing!), but it was at Harvard that the podcasting bootstrap cent...

Why does Apple invent their own proprietary plugs when everyone else does USB? Even if you don't like to speak ill of Apple, you know why they do it. They want to control who can make add-ons to their products in hardware, just as they do in software. I still buy their products, but I also buy products that use standards, so I can use them on lots of devices. Now, the same thing happens in software from other people and companies. They can choose to use what already exists, or invent their own. Example, I chose MP3 for podcasting, did not invent a new format. If I were to do a social web network, I would use RSS, I wouldn't invent a new format. I want interop. I want to create an open platform, I don't mind making money, but that's not why I do it.

Podcast: The Knicks won game 5.

Thinking (for a moment) of splurging on tickets for Game 7 at the Garden on Monday. I've been following the prices during the playoffs, never seen them this high. There's no guarantee there will be a Game 7, first the Knicks have to win tomorrow in Indiana. Courtside seats go for $27K each.

A somewhat obscure question about how feed readers should handle content:encoded elements in WordPress feeds.

Patrick McGee joins the show to discuss his must-read new book, Apple in China — one of the best books about Apple anyone has ever written.

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Location: The California Theatre, San Jose
Showtime: Tuesday, 10 June 2025, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm)
Special Guest(s): See below
Price: $50

Ever since I started doing these live shows from WWDC, I’ve kept the guest(s) secret, until showtime. I’m still doing that this year. But in recent years the guests have seemed a bit predictable: senior executives from Apple. This year I again extended my usual invitation to Apple, but, for the first time since 2015, they declined.

I think this will make for a fascinating show, but I want to set everyone’s expectations accordingly. I’m invigorated by this. See you at the show, I hope.

Tony Romm and Ana Swanson, reporting for The New York Times (paywall-busting gift link): A panel of federal judges on Wednesday blocked President Trump from imposing some of his steepest tariffs on China and other U.S. trading partners, finding that federal law did not g...

I'm working on something that requires an endless stream of test posts. Sometimes when I start writing I end up something that should be published. Should I edit it? Nah. this shit is hard. when it's done it looks simple. but these piece must fit together. that's why it's s...

BTW, just for fun, a search for Ole and Lena jokes. 😄

Apple Newsroom, yesterday: Apple’s strong antifraud infrastructure helps ensure that malicious developer and customer accounts are swiftly flagged and eliminated. In 2024, Apple terminated more than 146,000 developer accounts over fraud concerns and rejected an additiona...

Hell of a scoop from Mark Gurman, at Bloomberg: The next Apple operating systems will be identified by year, rather than with a version number, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That means the current iOS 18 will give way to “iOS 26,” said the people, who...

My good friend Chris Michel recently photographed George Dyson, thinker, historian, and writer. The topic of “AI” came up, and I found this worth noting. He’s less concerned about the usual apocalyptic fears and more interested in a quieter erosion: that “Good AI,” the kind that works too well, might slowly displace our capacity to …