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It’s not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not. – Thich Nhat Hanh Big Log, pictured above, arrived on Manzanita Beach in January. It was an impressive presence at 32 ft. long and 2.5 ft. in diameter. Winter storms eventually pushed Big Log up next to the dunes in March. Recently, the sand level has shifted. I have been away from the beach most of the summer, so I notice it during my brief visits home. Now Big Log is practically buried in new sand drifts. (below right) The same thing is happening to Biggish Log (only 25 ft. long), which arrived in May and hasn’t moved much. It’s driftwood. I know that impermanence is suggested right there in the name. But I’ll always be a little sad when familiar things change. Or disappear altogether. Metaphor Monday #33

Emanuel Maiberg and Joseph Cox, reporting again for 404 Media: Despite Tea’s initial statement that “the incident involved a legacy data storage system containing information from over two years ago,” the second issue impacting a separate database is much more recent, af...

Listened to a segment on today's Brian Lehrer podcast about how to keep the good feelings from a vacation when you get back home. Here's my idea. Before you leave make a list of the things you like about being on vacation. Take it home, put it somewhere you can find it when you're feeling down and want that feeling back. Pick one of the things on the list and do it. Your subconscious will tune into it as an act of self-love and give you some of the body chemistry that you felt when you were hanging out at the beach or hiking the Applachian Trail. A similar idea in a Bruce Sterling talk in 2009.

One of the best indie weather apps just got a major overhaul for 2025, and it’s worth checking out.

Hello Weather is well known for its simple, friendly design, but the new update rounds it out with more depth and customization.

You’ll get beautiful new visuals for wind, UV, future forecasts, and more, all powered by the finest data on Earth. With its excellent widgets, Watch app, and notifications, you’ll always stay up to date.

Hello Weather also respects your privacy, with no tracking or ads in sight. It’s a customer-focused app, made with care.

Download Hello Weather and start a 7-day free trial.

From this paywalled report at Punchbowl News, as quoted by Taegan Goddard at Political Wire: “The Senate GOP campaign arm is warning that Apple’s new iOS update could cost them $25 million in fundraising revenue, as well as priceless GOTV opportunities,” Punchbowl News r...

Galicia, July 2025.

From the video Mountains, fog and rain: a beautiful day of photography.

Adam Aaronson: The International Bartenders Association, or IBA, maintains a list of official cocktails, ones they deem to be “the most requested recipes” at bars all around the world. It’s the closest thing the bartending industry has to a canonical list of cocktails, a...

Everything in ChatGPT is so nice. I just asked it about a random plant I got as a gift, and it gave me a beautiful one pager with everything I would have had to spend time searching for all right there, beautifully laid out, and all the fine UI touches you might think of already in. It's studying us and learning, and picking out the good stuff, at least so far. The web was like this too in the beginning, mind-exploding inventions every day. We called them mind bombs. The journalists and social media influencers all just complain, while there is a revolution happening, progress that had slowed to a snail pace, or very often went in reverse, is now coming at breakneck speed. This is as transformative innovation as there has ever been, not that I have much perspective on those that happened before I was invented, but it's as big as the Beatles, the PC, web, mobile.

Why I need WordLand. I’m primarily a writer, my podcasts reflect that, so most of the work I do on each podcast is in writing the show notes. I have a template the writing and audio flow through. Here's an example of a page rendered through that template. We’re doing similar things with WordPress using themes. The idea of WordLand is to do all the block-oriented work once, then flow my writing through it, far away from the heavy lifting. It’s always how I’ve done my blogging tools. I understand WordPress so far has a steady workflow thru the block editor, but their are workflows for designers and writers. WordLand is the flow for writers.

One of my favorite features in the newest version of Bingeworthy is that it can generate a ChatGPT review of a program. Screen shot. I wouldn't have opened this up before because of that would let in the weirdness of the internets. This way we can find out what people thought, as sanitized by ChatGPT. BTW do you think the root of sanitized is sane? As the root of ignorant is ignore? Of course Our Friend has the answer. One is and the other isn't.

I wasn't planning on this, but there was a report that there was a problem with BingeWorthy, and I looked into it and was able to fix it.

When I added a feature that lets you ask ChatGPT to review the program you're looking at, I broke the ability to add a new program to the database. It took about 15 minutes to track down and verify and fix -- and now that very important function works again.

As long as I was in there working around, I updated the Bingeworthy RSS feed to only report program additions. The other events it was reporting just weren't as interesting.

I also added that feed to my blogroll on scripting.com.

I'd say it works a lot better now.

If you had asked a mathematician for advice on the Supreme Court ruling that money is speech, it was a totally foreseeable outcome that money would overwhelm speech, that the only speech would be money. We're right there now.

No blogging this Saturday, enjoyed goofing off for a change. 😄

Dominic Preston, writing at The Verge, regarding Android fans’ bristling at ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron’s claims that an Android (or web) version of ICEBlock couldn’t provide the same level of privacy as the iOS version: Aaron told The Verge ICEBlock is built around ...

Carlos Greaves, writing for McSweeney’s:

“The president remained steadfast in his novel interpretation of constitutional law.”

“Faced with the choice between clinging to the letter of the law and marching to the beat of his own legal drum, the president chose the latter.”

My thanks to Drata for sponsoring this week at DF to promote SafeBase. SafeBase eliminates the friction of inbound security reviews. It helps you automate inbound requests, use AI to answer questionnaires, and share your security posture proactively — all through a centralized Trust Center.

Back in 2021 a young engineering student named Ken Pillonel modified his own iPhone X to replace the Lightning port with USB-C, which became a small viral sensation. He’s back at it, with a far more ambitious project: iPhone cases with USB-C ports for the last five or so years of models with Lightning ports. He’s produced three batches of cases so far, but is currently sold out.

Even if you’re not interested in buying one of these cases, Pillonel’s video documenting how he brought the concept to fruition is quite clever and fun.

Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis, reporting for Reuters: Those customers for the company’s so-called 14A manufacturing process are crucial to the success of the technology — so much so that if it fails to secure a big one, it could shut down its cutting-edge manufacturi...

Emma Roth, The Verge: Google will officially deprecate links generated with its URL shortening tool next month. On August 25th, 2025, all links in the https://goo.gl/* format will no longer work and return a 404 error message. Google shut down its URL shortener in 2019,...

To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a memo is not just a memo. That’s why we have to read between the lines of Satya Nadella’s 1,150-word memo. Microsoft’s chairman and CEO, in his message, tried to rationalize the 9,000-employee layoff. I was interested in how he was positioning the AI-based disruption in the software industry. This memo is not just about Microsoft. In a way, it’s a weather forecast for the rest of …