FeedCity

Toby Ziegler: "They'll like us when we win."

Interesting thread between Jake and Ted Howard about Frontier.

Jenny Lawson blogging about how easy it is for us to lose our cool right now:

We are not meant to be able to handle this level of constant stress that comes from seeing people being brutalized and hurt. The fury boils over into so many places because it often has nowhere else to go.

Also if you’re ever in San Antonio, Jenny has a wonderful bookstore there called Nowhere Bookshop.

Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters: Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico state court case...

今年人々がオンラインでどのような行動をとるかについての予測と、それに応えるために私たちがどのようにBlueskyを構築しているか、その一部を共有したいと思います。

As we head into 2026, we wanted to share a few predictions about what we think people will do online this year, with a taste of how we're building Bluesky to meet them there.

Kristen Radtke writes at The Verge about her childhood friend Alex Pretti:

There is something destabilizing about having known someone only as a child and then hearing they were gunned down in the street. The person you see in your mind lying in that street is still a child. I’m sure his mother feels that way, too, or she sees him at every age all at once, including those he did not live to see.

Heartbreaking. The world is smaller and more connected than we sometimes realize… Everyone is someone’s friend, son, daughter.

Adam Serwer, reporting from the streets of Minneapolis for The Atlantic, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong” (gift link):

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive — because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Om Malik:

Cook is not stupid. He is not evil. He is trapped. The iron clasp of market expectations has turned him into what he never meant to be: a man who goes to parties at the White House while nurses die.

In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Roy Bland captures a cynical, post-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my conscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of today’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the world. Now it just hopes the world won’t change its stock price.

Amy Jane Gruber:

If I ever meet Tim Cook I’m going to ask him if Mike Tyson enjoyed the movie.

MG Siegler:

Tim Cook is captured. There is simply no other explanation for his actions over the past year or so. But it perhaps culminated this weekend when Cook went to a special private showing of the documentary Melania at the White House. Yes, that Melania. That in and of itself would have probably been fine. I mean, it’s potentially problematic for a host of reasons that I’ll get to, but such is our world right now. Then one shot — a gunshot — turned attending that movie screening into a statement...

While Cook was enjoying his popcorn and champagne with the likes of Mike Tyson, Tony Robbins, and other “VIPs”, it was complete and utter chaos on the streets of Minnesota. Just hours earlier, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by ICE agents. Maybe, just maybe, postpone the movie premiere?

Ben Terris, writing for New York Magazine:

Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had, Trump said, a “heart that couldn’t be stopped” with almost no health conditions to speak of throughout his long life. “He had one problem,” Trump said. “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it?” He pointed to his forehead and looked to his press secretary for the word that escaped him.

“Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt said.

“Like an Alzheimer’s thing,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t have it.”

“Is it something you think about at all?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think about it at all. You know why?” he said. “Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.”

There's been a remarkable leap forward in the ability to orchestrate coding bots, making it possible for ordinary creators to command dozens of AI bots to build software without ever having to directly touch code. The implications of this kind of evolution are potentially ex...

I’m back. Here’s where I’ve been. Most of you should not care, but for those wanting a medical update, here’s the tale.  Two weeks ago, on Sunday, Jan. 11, I lost a test of strength with bedding on laundry day. As I’ve already recounted, My feet flew out from under me; I flew up and […]

The post Back from a brink appeared first on BuzzMachine.

After both Renée Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed by Department of Homeland Security officers in Minneapolis this month, the story from the agency’s secretary, Kristi L. Noem, was that these individuals’ intentions represented acts of domestic terrorism.  Confi...

Every decade brings new promises: this time, we'll finally make software development simple enough that we won't need so many developers. From COBOL to AI, the pattern repeats. Business leaders grow frustrated with slow delivery and high costs. Developers feel misunderstood and undervalued. Understanding why this cycle persists for fifty years reveals what both sides need to know about the nature of software work.

Three mothers, one struggle: Saving their children with schizophrenia.

The post “That’s Somebody’s Son” appeared first on The Atavist Magazine.

From the footer on the project’s website:

Moltbot was formerly known as Clawdbot. Independent project, not affiliated with Anthropic.

Makes sense, to be honest, that Anthropic would object to naming it a homonym for Claude.

One additional followup to my post the other day. In his terrific introduction to ClawdMoltbot, Federico Viticci wrote:

I’ve been playing around with Clawdbot so much, I’ve burned through 180 million tokens on the Anthropic API (yikes), and I’ve had fewer and fewer conversations with the “regular” Claude and ChatGPT apps in the process.

Those tokens aren’t free. I asked Viticci just how much “yikes” cost, and he said around US$560 — using way more input than output tokens.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, the executive director of the Skeptics Society and the author of Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), offers advice for evaluating information and sources and argues that getting to the truth is still possible.

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NetNewsWire 7 is out with a UI update for Liquid Glass. Don’t worry, it fits well on macOS 26 without going too far with the design. All the menu icons are also hidden, which I like.

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about Sam Darnold, fighting ICE, conditioner, and more.

Your letters:

Paul: