Meta’s idiot moderation AI strikes again, this time deleting a meme I posted to Threads weeks ago for allegedly violating Meta’s terms of service prohibiting drug sales. Of course, I was not selling drugs — it was stoner humor. I used to run into this kind of thing several times a month on Facebook before I stopped posting there about two weeks ago.
This incident was particularly annoying because I was unable to dismiss the warning notification to click through to the timeline.
A 70-year-old hiker was found alive and well after spending five days alone and lost in the wilderness. Warren Elliott “ate berries and drank from the river to sustain himself. He was found ‘in good spirits’ and uninjured.” Score one for the geezers.
Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day: Conservatives are struggling to get ahead of this whole “weird” thing. (My two cents: That’s cuz they’re weird.)
I’m not thrilled with the ageism in the Democrats' new slogan: “Donald Trump is old and weird.” But I’m happy to see it seems to be working. I’ll deal with my issues after President Harris is sworn in.
Also from Broderick: Musk Is Violating His Own Terms Of Service (And Likely Election Law) If You Even Care.
Open standards make podcasting work
A Few Blockbuster Podcasts Are Making All the Money. I listen to about 90 minutes of podcasts daily, but I only listen to one of the listed top ten podcasts. I haven’t even heard of most of these (though some of the hosts are familiar names — they’re real-life celebrities). That’s a testimony to the excellent richness of the podcast landscape, and that richness is, to a large degree, attributable to open standards.
“Nearly 100 million Americans age 12 and older listen to podcasts every week,” according to this article in the Wall Street Journal.
I started listening near the beginning, 20 years ago, when podcasts were very much a nerd affair. It amazes me that they are now mainstream like TV and radio are used to be.
Anchorage [Alaska] will one day be the port of exchange between Asia, North America, and Europe…. I don’t think you all are considering how much an ice free Arctic Ocean will change international trade routes. It will become the very northwest passage explorers had been looking for since like 1500.
“Bob Newhart holds up”
An insightful essay on what made Newhart’s work genius, by Jason Zinoman at The New York Times:
Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.
Newhart was a master of the slow build and used silence and his stammer as power tools.
Also: Marc Maron interviews Newhart from 2014 and 2018.
Newhart went straight to the top. Unlike other comics, he didn’t have years of playing small gigs to refine his act before hitting it big. He went from nowhere to a #1 album and had to learn his craft in the spotlight.
Newhart repeats the hilarious story about how his wife met Don Rickles. The Newharts and Rickles became lifelong friends. Rickles was an insult comic who spewed racist jokes at a time when a person could do those things, and it was clear they were demonstrating how racism was stupid. But offstage, Don Rickles was, by all accounts, a kind and gracious man—the opposite of his onstage persona.
Newhart shrugs and does not explain how he and Rickles became close friends. But I think a big part of it is that they were both good men who played Rat Pack shows but were not interested in the boozing, philandering lifestyle. They were family men.
Please share tips for managing windows on an ultrawide computer display
I recently upgraded from a 27" 14-year-old Apple Cinema Display to a 34" Dell ultrawide.
Until now, I’ve always run a simple windowing setup: Most of the time, I’m using one app, and it’s maximized to fill the whole screen. When I want to switch apps, I Cmd-Tab between them (that’s equivalent to Alt-Tab on Windows). Often, I use two apps, and I tile them side by side when I do.
But that strategy is not going to work for me on a 34" display because the individual app becomes too big to take in.
If I’m working on just one application, I think I’ll have it centered, full height, 2/3 or 3/4 of the width of the screen. We’ll see how that works out over time. But what goes on either edge?
How do you manage your ultrawide lifestyle?
I use the computer for basic productivity, the web and social media. I’m not a gamer and I don’t generally watch videos or listen to music on my desktop.
I already use Raycast for window management, so I don’t need pointers to software such as Raycast, Moom, or Magnet. However, if there are particular applications you love for window management on ultrawide displays, please let me know.
By the way, I searched the Internet for tips on making the transition and found reddit.com/r/ultrawidemasterrace, where people share tips and photos of their ultrawide setups. 34" seems huge to me, but it barely qualifies for that sub. For example, check this out: a 49" display with another monitor mounted above it.
Jenisha Watts, a senior editor at The Atlantic, writes about the Sonya Massey killing: ‘This Is the Worst Police-Shooting Video Ever’.
I finally had enough and deactivated my Twitter account. Recently Musk has revealed himself to be an even bigger schmuck than previously.
“Dexter” is returning, with Michael C. Hall as the titular character.. Good news! The character died at the end of the previous miniseries (spoiler for 2-year-old TV show soz) but there are ways they can retcon this. It’d be a cheap trick, but I don’t care if it brings the show back.
Rob Beschizza/Boing Boing: “The New York Times wanted to summon one of its favorite characters: an everyday Dem so upset with the Left that they were going to vote for Donald Trump instead.” They quoted “Anna Ayala, notable to [the Times] only for being a 58-year-old who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but now likes the other guy.”
But Ayala is “the famed criminal who put a human finger in a Wendy’s chili among various other escapades.”
(Corrected to fix typo, credit Rob, post to correct place. Oy.)
Palestinian Deaths In the Gaza Conflict Are Probably Close To Half A Million — Ian Welsh.
That’s roughly 4% of a Holocaust, and showing no sign of stopping.
Israel and its enablers have learned precisely the wrong lesson from the Nazis.
“Confused about the Vance couch thing? Here’s a quick rundown”
It started as a a joke on X, with user @rickrudescalves claiming Vance revealed in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy that he lubed up two couch cushions and had sex with them when he was a teenager. It went very viral and a lot of people believed it because, I mean, look at the guy, it seems like something he would do. The Associated Press, however, made the mistake of trying to debunk all this, declaring in a headline that Vance has never fucked a couch. But as many pointed out, can they actually prove that? How do we know? The AP has since deleted the post, but I think we, as a nation, should keep loudly discussing this until November.
If you’re participating in get-out-the-vote campaigns, remember that Election Day is when voting ends. For absentee ballots, voting starts Sept. 21. So, get-out-the-vote campaigns start in September.
California’s image will be a weapon in the Trump campaign against Harris.. MAGA aims its messaging at convincing people who have never been to California or New York that those places are hellholes.
I have lived in California for 30 years. It’s great, despite also having real and serious problems.