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Title sequence design

My friend Austin Kleon has four notebooks, but I have only three: a planner, a journal, and a movie notebook. Whenever I watch a movie I write some brief thoughts on it. I started this practice just a few years ago, and I am now getting to the end of my second notebook. I love looking back through what I’ve seen and how I have responded — especially when I re-watch films, which I often do. 

Why Noah Smith is very wrong about John Maynard Keynes. 

Hartley Charlton: To use the feature, users must turn the device off, then hold the side button to power it on. The Apple logo appears as it would during a normal boot, but holding the button for an extended duration brings up a progress bar, and the device then launches into the new recovery environment […]

Ryan Christoffel: Today following iOS 27 beta 2’s arrival, Aaron Perris discovered that the update adds at least two key RCS improvements: Proper reaction support, so no more “Aaron loved an image” messages In-line replies Previously: iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5

SwiftData updates: Section your query results by creating your query with a macro that takes a sectionBy parameter, as listed on the Additional query macros page. Use types that conform to Codable in a model, including types you don’t control directly, by using the codable option for Schema.Attribute. Receive real-time updates to models that match […]

CrashReportExtension: The Crash Report Extension framework allows you to perform analysis and produce a report when your app crashes. Your crash-handling code executes out-of-process, rather than from a signal handler or other in-process techniques. You implement your handler by writing an app extension that conforms to the CrashReporterExtension protocol. The system calls your processCrashReport(process:) method […]

Paresh Dave and Lauren Goode, Wired: Meta left potentially sensitive information collected from employee laptops accessible to anyone inside the company, according to an internal security notice seen by WIRED and three current employees familiar with the issue. The data, which was collected as part of a divisive initiative to train artificial intelligence models, is […]⌥ Permalink

Eno, 1995:

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8bit — all these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.

It’s the sound of failure: so much of modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

The absolute definition of being “in the pocket” is Al McKay’s rhythm guitar on “That’s the Way of the World.” 

Jason Snell returns to the show for a look back at WWDC 2026, and a look ahead to Designed in California, his and Myke Hurley’s upcoming 50-episode Apple history podcast.

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I took a screen shot of this post, gave it to Claude, asked it to write a short paragraph summary. Then I asked it to rewrite with using no more than 300 chars, the limit on Bluesky. Now I can post the summary there, but I won't, at the moment of truth I had to disclose this wasn't written by me, and it was 290 chars and there wasn't enough room for that. And here's a screen shot of the conversation with Claude.

There was a long discussion last night on Bluesky about whether twitter-like apps should show blog posts in addition to tweet-size things. Should it have a character limit, allow titles, links, bold, italic, editing, enclosures, markdown, etc? This is a permathread, it's bee...

Feel free to play Guess the Location of this old photo (taken by me) if you want.

The love of humanity is a thing supposed to be professed only by vulgar and officious philanthropists, or by saints of a superhuman detachment and universality. As a matter of fact, love of humanity is the commonest and most natural of the feelings of a fresh nature, and al...

“Artificial in- telligence”? “Machine learning”? I say: daikaiju.

I’ve said most of what I have to say about machine learning, and there are plenty of other people doing the heavy lifting on that topic. Mike Sacasas had a typically wise and incisive post the other day, and The New Atlantis is hosting a council on AI ethics. I’d prefer to make this site a cabinet of curiosities. And when I do comment on AI it will be in the form of haiku, or, as I prefer to style the word, haiku.

Cynthia Khoo, writing for the Institute for Research on Public Policy’s Policy Options: If Bill C-22 passes as is, it could put in place one piece of a bigger cross-border law enforcement data-sharing system, as envisioned in the CLOUD Act and other international data-sharing treaties. Once completed, this system could further expose Canadian residents and […]⌥ Permalink

While I am criticizing the New York Times’ odd framing choices, here is a more substantial critique from Alejandra Caraballo: Over the last several years it has become readily apparent that there has been a shift in the editorial framing and focus of the New York Times when it regards issues relating to transgender people. […]⌥ Permalink