FeedCity

If you’re new around here, hi! I’m Om, and this is my occasional letter where I share what’s on my mind, my latest writings, articles worth reading from around the web, my recommendations, and some of my photography. Holidays often signal the looming end of the year. They give all of us a reason to pause, slowdown, reflect, and spend time with people we appreciate. In our increasingly fast, networked world, it’s hard to overstate the need to lower life’s tempo. For …

Sarah Kendzior is a political writer who I greatly admire. Her frustration sounds a lot like mine. I wrote in 2017 that the bankers in tech should watch out because Twitter had just elected a president, and its market capitalization was so low that it was bound to get bought...

I hope you and your families are having a wonderful holiday break, and taking the opportunity to recharge. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. December 25, 2025. San Francisco

Terrific interaction design from The New York Times. Not so terrific interior design from the president.

Just realized I'm like a Black Lab. I always have to have a ball to chase, and really like it if someone says I'm a good boy. I think it really is that simple. Maybe it's different for other men, but I think a lot of us are just that simple.

It is Christmas Day, and last night the emails did not go out. I think I know what the problem is and if it's correct the emails should go out very shortly. Lucky that it's Christmas themed! Ho ho ho.

I asked ChatGPT to put together a subscription list of student newspapers at American universities. Added it to lists.opml.org.

Joni Mitchell wrote a sad and lovely Christmas song.

Special guest Quinn Nelson returns for a two-topic holiday spectacular: the iPad in the wake of iPadOS 26, and Apple’s executive changes as Tim Cook seemingly nears the end of his time as CEO.

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Smart, fair video from Quinn Nelson on the gap that remains between iPadOS 26 and desktop OSes. I think it’s right that there is a gap there. Apple has the Macintosh, the best desktop/workstation platform in the industry. So whatever the ideal is for iPadOS, it ought to fall short of MacOS in terms of technical capabilities, and instead offer a degree of simplicity and can’t-screw-it-up-edness that the Mac can’t match. But, some of the limitations that remain in iPadOS are just frustrating. iPadOS 26 is a huge leap forward, and I think sets the stage for Apple to address those limitations.

Another great video from Quinn Nelson. If your dumb cousin who knows you’re an Apple nerd approaches you on Christmas and says “Hey what’s going on at Apple, Bloomberg says it’s rats leaving a sinking ship over there?” and you don’t feel like explaining, just tell him to watch this video. Just the perfect explanation.

I got a Kuerig single cup coffee maker and it's perfect. Exactly what I needed. The coffee is great and hot, and one cup is what I usually want. So now I can have a cup of hot coffee when I'm up late and want to stay up for a while longer. Or if I have to be extra sharp for some development project I've been putting off.

This time of year every day feels like Saturday. I love it. Why can't we always live like this?

From a 2023 report at The Verge:

Sony highly confidential information about its PlayStation business has just been revealed by mistake. As part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing, Sony supplied a document from PlayStation chief Jim Ryan that includes redacted details on the margins Sony shares with publishers, its Call of Duty revenues, and even the cost of developing some of its games.

It looks like someone redacted the documents with a black Sharpie — but when you scan them in, it’s easy to see some of the redactions. Oops.

This is sort of the exception that proves the rule regarding redactions. If you redact a document digitally, you have to know what to look for (e.g. metadata) to be certain you’ve redacted everything you want to redact. If you redact a document on paper, you can just look at it, with good light and sharp eyes.

Splendid essay by Bilge Ebiri for The Yale Review, a meditation both on the films of Terrence Malick and several filmmakers he’s deeply influenced.

Christopher Goffard, reporting for the Los Angeles Times (News+ link): When police questioned Marvin Margolis following the murder of Elizabeth Short — who became known as the Black Dahlia — he lied about how well he had known her. The 22-year-old Short had been found mu...

CNN media analyst Brian Stelter, on Bluesky: As “60 Minutes” finalized its “Inside CECOT” report last Thursday, CBS sent the White House a request for comment. A WH spokesperson responded within a few hours. The quote was not included in the “60” report — so, judge for y...

Sometimes you think of things 22 years too late, like this time. I wish I had thought of meeting with the Harvard Crimson people in 2003 and made the same offer to them that I had made to NYT the year before, ie we should offer blogs to everyone on staff, and anyone they quote, or basically anyone they want to be writing on the web, which was still a new thing -- and we'd host them alongside the ones we were hosting at the law school. Had we done that there would be a scholarly and intellectual equivalent to Facebook which was also booting up on the same campus at the same time as blogging and podcasting. Love and intellect, that's a good combination for young super-achievers.

Everyone who works with official PDFs in any capacity should know that if you start with a PDF containing text you want to redact, and you just place black bars atop that text and resave the file, the original text is all still there in the new PDF file. It’s the digital equ...