FeedCity

When I was a kid we went to a bungalow colony in upstate NY, around where I live now. I was less than 10 years old, so were my friends. We used to do things together that the adults didn't know about. There was an abandoned house we used to hang out in, mostly open to the elements. We also played in a graveyard and talked about what the families whose names were on the headstones were doing. Having dinner maybe? Listening to the Mets on the radio? (No TV in the mountains.) So the thought had occurred to us at that point in life that behind doors there were things happening that we could only imagine. I guess what you learn later is that your imagination is almost certainly wrong.

I know where I was when I really understood this, not because I read it somewhere, or a teach told me about it. I was riding on the 4 train north in the Bronx, where the train runs as an elevated on Jerome Ave. I had ridden this train for three years as a high school student, and never thought about all the six story apartment buildings whose backs faced the train. As you went by, you passed by one family for every two or three windows. A whole set of people with relationships, problems, tragedy, joy, dreams, the whole thing. They don't come from where you come from, inside each house there's a story. You'll never know anything about any of them. I wasn't sad about this.

On the other hand, we can't help but be judgmental. It's programmed into our DNA at a very deep level. You have to form an instant opinion of other animals, any delay could cost your life. Better to assume the worst. Fight or flight. This happens esp if you don't know you're doing it, so don't know to watch out for it. It isn't until their 40s that most people understand that what they see isn't what everyone else sees. You may think you understand, but you don't. There's a moment when you realize hey I don't know everything.

People are too judgmental, which is a shame because in the end, which is coming soon enough for all of us, your opinion of other people doesn’t matter. Sorry if I’m telling you something you don’t already know.

The Computer History Museum: Thomas Knoll, a PhD student in computer vision at the University of Michigan, had written a program in 1987 to display and modify digital images. His brother John, working at the movie visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic, foun...

Apple TV’s press page has stories this month announcing release dates and first looks for a bunch of shows: Imperfect Women (a “psychological thriller”), Beat the Reaper (“dramedy”), a still-untitled Monarch: Legacy of Monsters spinoff, Widow’s Bay (“blends genuine horror with character-driven comedy”), season 2 of the Idris Elba thriller Hijack, and Margo’s Got Money Troubles, a series from David E. Kelley starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman, and Nick Offerman (good cast!).

But not a word about Jessica Chastain’s The Savant, which was supposed to debut in September, was postponed after the Charlie Kirk shooting (against Chastain’s wishes), and has been in “At a later date” scheduling limbo ever since.

Yesterday I wrote: For the last 40 years Apple has only gone through three identity fonts: Garamond → Myriad → San Francisco. DF reader Cameron McKay emailed to observe: “It strikes me that Apple changes CPU architectures (68K → PowerPC → Intel → ARM) more often than i...

Alexander Smith and Claire Cardona, NBC News:

Online tipsters have had a mixed record when it comes to providing information about mass casualty incidents. But Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said this Reddit user “blew the case wide open” after posting about their encounter on Saturday with the suspect.

“I’m being dead serious,” wrote the Reddit user, identified in an affidavit as “John,” three days after the shootings at Brown. “The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental.”

I despise this design pattern, because it’s inherently slower than signing in using an email/password combination that was saved to my passwords app (which is Apple Passwords) and autofilled by my web browser. It’s not just a little slower but *a lot* slower.

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I usually only drink iced coffee, even if it's cold outside, but lately I've been craving a single cup of hot coffee esp when a basketball game is about to come on. I'm one of those old guys who falls asleep watching their favorite team kick NBA ass. So anyway I decided to treat myself to one of those fancy new-fangled Keurig single-cup coffee makers. I'm drinking my first cup. Works as advertised. Took a few tries before it woke up. I am now drinking a fresh cup of hot coffee and thinking now I finally have everything I could possibly ever want.

Apple released all of its OS 26.2 updates a week ago today. A little unusual for Apple to release OS updates on a Friday, but I think they wanted to get these out before Christmas week. And I don’t think it was rushed — for iOS 26.2 at least, there were two release candidate...

Apple, on its Apple Ads site: Search is the way most people find and download apps on the App Store, with nearly 65 percent of downloads happening directly after a search. To help give advertisers more opportunities to drive downloads from search results, Apple Ads will ...

Podcast: What Would Firefox Do?

I learned about a feature in Inoreader that's like a river in my earlier feed readers and in FeedLand Their feature is called HTML clips. Here's a link to an HTML clip I created for my podcast list. Not exactly sure what it's doing, it appears to show news in reverse chronologic order like a timeline, as in a river. Otherwise Inoreader seems to be a mailbox style reader. Thanks to Randy Lauen for the tip.

You have been warned, spoilers follow... The whole thing is the book Carol is writing, about writing a book, inside the book she's writing another book. The book I'm speaking of is the one where it's all about Carol. Everywhere she goes people stop and say hello, and address...

1997: A big tree falls!

1997: When a big tree falls, sunlight shines on smaller plants and they get a chance to grow.

Billy Crystal: "There is a line from one of Rob’s favorite films, It’s a Wonderful Life, 'Each man’s life touches so many other lives, and when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?' You have no idea.