It is weird that, when I recently saw the name "Clean Living Weekly" (some sort of cleaning-products news), I initially somehow parsed it as "Clean Living Whisky"? 🥃🤨

I suppose I understand why X's Community Notes feature uses aliases for its contributors, although I have trouble fathoming why the aliases have to be so... weird.

I didn't realize that upgrading my #IntelliJ IDEA install from 2024.1.3 to 2025.3.3 (on MacOS v15.7.4) would eliminate the ability to open multiple projects in separate windows. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Most distressing, until I found how to "fix" that via stackoverflow.com/a/78942958/4.... ⚙️

Seems that all these many smart ring manufacturers have a very different concept of "sleek" than I do. ⭕

Step 1: Enter email address into online sign-up form.
Step 2: Submit form. Response: "We sent a verification code to your email address. This code expires in 10 minutes."
Step 3: Open email when it arrives 40 minutes later.
Go to Step 2. 🤦🏻‍♂️
Why does this story seem so common?

Finally, a use for "smart" #eyeglasses that I can appreciate: normal-looking vision-correction glasses that dynamically autofocus themselves based on where the wearer is looking. edition.cnn.com/science/auto.... Still very early first-gen, but... 👓

Turns out Google Gemini is pretty good at helping me figure out what some of the more obscurely labelled charges on my credit card statement are. 🤖💳✔️ #LLM #AI

Listening to my wife argue with PayPal's #LLM / #AI powered automated customer service about being able to speak to a human. 🙄

Does #Microsoft #Outlook 16.106 on MacOS 15.7.3, when changing "Settings > Appearance" to a new color-theme, really have to change the display of hyperlinks in all received emails to match the theme's color? 🟢 It's... weird. 😵‍💫 @microsoftoutlook.bsky.social

Do the descriptions of the two main characters in the upcoming Wild Card TV series(not to be confused with the very different book series by the same name)— share.google/U0fJcFZtseXK... —sound just a little like #Mistborn's Wax and Wayne? 🤔 Maybe? No? Okay, nevermind.

Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment And a plea to think seriously about climate change without getting distracted

Andy Masley's post on environmental effects of individuals' use of #ChatGPT (and #LLM #AI in general)—and some common misunderstandings thereof—is rather long but an easy read and both fascinating and eye-opening. andymasley.substack.com/p/individual... 📰 #Claude #Copilot #Gemini 🤖

I've read just a few 1000+-page novels, and so far they've each been worth it, but... 📚
Storm it, @BrandonSanderson.com, what in Kelek's name did you get me into this time, you cremling?! 😉
😯📘 #TheWayOfKings #StormlightArchive

I'm suddenly glad that the new #computer #RAM I just installed I bought some time ago. 🖥️
Where it can be found, it now lists for twice the price I paid. 😯
This "RAM shortage"—reportedly driven by massively increased demand from #AI heavy data centers?—is kinda crazy. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Over the last few days, #MicrosoftCopilot was shockingly integral to reviving my #computer: old #motherboard failed, wrong new-CPU power cable, "not optimized" new-RAM install, faulty new PSU, new-BIOS boot mode blind to old Windows install, etc. 🤖 I'd've taken so much longer on my own. 😌

Does Amazon.com really simply no longer support sorting products by average customer rating?
(Or does #Amazon just hide that highly useful feature really well now?) 😕

Who else still cringes when hearing how "super-excited" someone is? 😬 #Hyperbole #SemanticBleaching
x.com/Thogek/statu...

A highlight of a recent jaunt to #Iowa was some of the #restaurants we found there: Texas Roadhouse (West Des Moines), Red Robin (West Des Moines), Maria's Mexican Food (Clive), and Eggs and Jam (West Des Moines) were all seriously good (in very different ways). 🍽️🤤

I'd forgotten just how mind-numbing the prolonged droning rumble of aircraft engines (and their cooling systems, etc.) in a typical commercial passenger airplane can be over a few hours. 😵

The lack of @atlassian.bsky.social Confluence Cloud's support to float a content-block (info, TOC, arbitrary div) to one side (such that ensuing inline content wraps around it), after all this time, still frustrates users who want to format content for easier UX. jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFC... 😞

What kinds of new strange-attractor phenomenon will arise out of (for example) #resumes written by #AI/#LLM to optimize for the expectations of #recruiters and #hirers using AI/LLMs to derive #interview questions from resumes? 🤔

The Unicode Chronicles — Chapter 4 The Variable That Spoke in Tongues

This madcap "Unicode Chronicles" episode sounds like just the kind of nightmare many big-tech-company software developers probably dream (if not directly experience), these days. juliadiez.substack.com/p/the-unicod... 😱🤖🤷 #Localization #i18n #TooReal

The Excess Markup Fee Explained From Sept 1, Redbubble will charge an Excess Markup Fee on product markups over 20% for Standard and Premium accounts.

#Redbubble seems set on driving many of its small-shop artists away from its platform.
Many raised markups after Apr 2023 to partially make up for new "shop fees" that cut earnings in half. 🚫
Now Redbubble attacks higher-markup items with more fees. blog.redbubble.com/2025/08/exce... 🚫
Why bother?

Does anyone else—especially any working in a remote-from-home environment—print a day's Outlook calendar to paper to tape to the office/room door so others in the house can see when to avoid interrupting? (Or maybe there's a neater way to do that?)

GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation GitHub will be part of Microsoft’s AI engineering team

Wonder what #GitHub (the company) being fully absorbed into #Microsoft (after operating as a distinct subsidiary for several years) will change about how GitHub (the product) works and evolves. www.theverge.com/news/757461/... 🤔

The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations “In recent months, a curious fixation has emerged in corners of academia: the em dash. More specifically, the apparent moral panic around how it is...

Wonderfully cheeky response to the increasingly common lazy-minded presumption that any and all writings containing an em-dash (which has been used by many human writers for centuries) must have been generated by an #AI/LLM. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the... 🤣 #emdash

Microsoft Staff Told to Use AI More at Work: Report | Entrepreneur A new report from Business Insider claims that Microsoft is considering formal metrics for evaluating how much employees use AI during the workday.

Seems odd to base #software engineers' performance reviews and promotions based more on the method of developing #code ("thou shalt use generative #AI") than on the results. www.entrepreneur.com/business-new..., fortune.com/2025/07/18/a.... Might make for an odd incentive factor, too. 🤔 #metrics

Is there a known reason why Medium's sign-in and sign-up (medium.com/m/signin) with email user-experiences both claim to send a sign-in link to the entered email address, but don't? 😕

Amazon.com | Prime Day 2025 Prime Day is Amazon's annual deal event on July 8-11, 2025, exclusively for Prime members, featuring four days of epic deals on top brands. Don’t miss out on Prime Day 2025 deals at Amazon.com. Enjoy ...

This Prime Day might be a good time for some of us—such as those with frequent #remote video meetings—pick up some extra (or replacement) #headphones and #earbuds. amzn.to/44jaqlO 🎧

I used the Unihertz Titan 2 for a week, and I don't want to go back If you've missed your BlackBerry the last few years, Unihertz has a solution for you with the Titan 2

Well, this looks encouraging. www.androidpolice.com/unihertz-tit... 📱+⌨️

Pano AI Secures $44M to Expand AI Wildfire Detection Pano AI has closed a $44 million Series B round led by Giant Ventures, bringing its total funding to $89 million as it scales its AI-driven wildfire detection infrastructure.

Or early-detection of #wildfires via continuous analysis of landscape video scans by smoke-and-ember recognition deep-learning #AI models. www.causeartist.com/pano-ai-secu... 🤖📹🔥