In a decadent failing empire, the chief concerns of these chuckleheads: someone is paying less than retail for the thing I am currently paying full retail for; a minority is accessing government benefits they don't deserve; something is preventing me from driving 20% over the posted speed limit.

We must all now buy the Bluesky book (which looks fantastic, btw!)

A frustrating part of that otherwise excellent profile is how it treats people like Swisher and “legendary programmer” Paul Graham as somehow outside the game and not critical players.

Updated this post so it plays the '80s music if you click on the section headings.

Having grown up in the south, the absolute certainty I had knowing the denomination of this church may well be the closest I’ll come to religious conviction.

(Posted while literally waiting to get in the back door because the robot vacuum was doing its thing)

Probably fine we spent the last decade and a half connecting a bunch of hastily built jank — a project so serious the best name we could come up with was Internet of Things — that now controls everything from light switches to critical medical devices.

Infuriating, though also probably ultimately Correct, that J Press makes a needlepoint UVA cap but not a UNC once.

Join the Grain Social beta Available on iOS

What if Flickr never got acquired and went on to figure out mobile is how I might describe @grain.social

You log in with your Bluesky (or other atproto) account. It's beautiful on the web and the latest iOS beta is outstanding.

testflight.apple.com/join/ju9eXf6m

I dunno, I'm willing to give it a shot

And the oligarchs simply can not have that

The media told us, based on the amount of coverage they devoted to it, that the number one military-related issue of the 2024 campaign was whether Tim Walz retiring from the National Guard after 21 years was too soon or not.

Trump absolutely losing it needs to be our giant psychic squid moment as a global society

A photo of earthset from the NASA Artemis crew.

A photo of the total solar eclipse from the NASA Artemis crew.

Whiplash waking up to these photos alongside what the President has been saying. Hard to find words to describe the feeling of seeing these photos. I can't imagine what it was like for the crew to see it with their own eyes. Wow.

Ah yes fascism, famously an intellectual project not one that relies almost entirely on an appeal to aesthetics one moment there’s a Walter Benjamin on the line.

A few have suggested that some aspects of this mission--joy, international teamwork, diversity--are being played up to stick it to the hateful attitude of the administration. But I don't think it's that. I think it's just that those things are essential to and inseparable from a mission like this.

My cutting board littered with does-not-occur-in-nature pink plastic egg shell pieces.

Most nights I'm excited to start my shift as short order cook and discover a new random bit of detritus left in the kitchen that will be somewhere between mildly annoying and outright poisonous.

Not the head of product at the bad site complaining that a feature that he uses all the time is being used against him in a dishonest way.

Gee, I wonder who has the data and capability to improve such a feature. 🤔

Let me take a moment to talk about why it’s so awesome seeing the growth of publishing tools built on AT Protocol, the same open technology powering Bluesky. It’s about ownership, control, and future-proofing your publishing, whether it’s your blog, your newsletter, or just your homepage. 🧵

BLUESKY IS DYING!

Wait, no not like that.

(Should be sorted)

🧵 Democracy feels like it's in a rough state at the moment across the globe, and we hear various explanations, like polarisation, extremism, disinformation, and loss of trust. But what if those explanations are mainly symptoms and we've been trying to treat them rather than the underlying causes?

I'm all for dunking on Nate as often as possible, a relevant question: why are actual journalists and news orgs still on X? A question I might also ask of orgs that compete with Musk's hydra (NASA, car companies, AI companies) and also anyone who isn't a rightwing grift-peddling influencer.

Substack exists because Marc Andreessen wants a safe space for his fellow ideologues to launder their very bad opinions among reputable takes.

Leaflet, Pckt, and Offprint exist because the people building them love building a better web.

I believe James when he says he wants Bluesky to thrive, one way to help would be to move off of centralized, VC-backed ideological projects like substack and on to longform apps built on the same protocol as Bluesky. @leaflet.pub, @pckt.blog, and @offprint.app are all excellent.

Depluralize a movie

Dial M for Crow

The back of a Subaru Forester absolutely jammed with two rows of LPs and a crate with a bunch of 45s.

My dad, who’s now hard of hearing, offered me his vinyl collection, which dates back to his youth in London in the 50s and through his arrival in San Francisco in the 60s and beyond. His one condition: I had to take them all.

Challenge accepted!!!

Everything we’ve always known about the guy and lived through for past decade tells us he absolutely wants to be the only other president to order a nuclear strike, and if we make it through this week without that happening it’ll be a minor miracle.

Something I've come to believe after a lot of cooking is that it is almost impossible to make tastier food than what you get using a staple food and adding fat and salt. Like the entire edifice of culinary wizardry is built on the lie that you wouldn't rather have some fries.