I’d like something like the Clicks iPhone keyboard but for the iPad mini.
In a win for Uber and Lyft, a California Court upholds a proposition classifying gig workers as contractors.. Uber, Lyft and Doordash win, workers lose.
Dear Tim Apple: Congratulations on launching Apple Maps on the Web. Now do News.
Julie and I are quite enjoying the TV series “Evil,” which is of the paranormal investigator genre, like “The Night Stalker” and “X-Files.” In this case, the paranormal investigators work for the Catholic Church.
We’re partway through Season 1.
Did “Night Stalker” and “X-Files” invent the genre of the paranormal investigator, or was that trope already around and established?
Today I found my reporter’s notebook for South by Southwest 2007. That was the event where Twitter hit its first tipping point. I remember cruising around in a taxi with a friend who had a 17" MacBook open on his lap, connected with a wireless modem, watching Twitter for news about parties.
The notebook has a page of notes about voicemail messages. Remember voicemail?
I’m planning my first international trip in five years. I can’t find my passport, but I did find a receipt for a fleece I bought from LL Bean in 2011.
Although I have declined to renew my Tumblr premium membership, I’m grateful to Automattic for keeping the service going.
Today I learned there’s a tabletop roleplaying game based on “Space: 1999.”
I’m disappointed to hear that “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was a bomb. We quite enjoyed it.
MacStories' Federico Viticci praises wired EarPods as an alternative to Bluetooth AirPods.
I don’t have a use for EarPods because all my sound-emitting devices are from Apple. Weirdly, that makes me more of an Apple fanboy than the editor of MacStories is.
Congratulations to @mtt on launching the Sumo Theme for Micro.blog. I like it so much that I immediately switched both my blogs to that theme.
Ghost cities in the Amazon are rewriting the story of civilization
The Amazon rainforests seem like “an environment largely untouched by humans.” But new archeological discoveries are changing that perception.
“With so much evidence of ancient human activity, it is now thought the pre-Columbian Amazon was inhabited by millions of people – some living in large built-up areas complete with road networks, temples and pyramids.”
And they did it all without the benefit of agriculture as we now understand it.
These discoveries defy conventional wisdom about the nature of civilization.
newscientist.com (subscription required)
“one of the reasons i have no particular problem with the manner in which harris has become the presumptive nominee is that i think plebscitary participation in internal party processes is overrated.put another way: is the primary process actually better at picking nominees then the pre-1972 system of conventions and party elites? i don’t think so!” — Jamelle Bouie
Tumblr is raising rates for Premium membership by 1.75x. And I'm canceling
I’ve been disappointed in the direction Tumblr has taken under Automattic, though I acknowledge that it’s a hard business. None of Tumblr’s four owners has managed to make the platform financially sustainable, despite an enthusiastic user base.
Also, I acknowledge that I am not the target audience for Tumblr. I am old enough to be the target audience’s grandparent.
The 75 Best Sci-Fi books of all time. esquire.com I added a couple of these titles to my to-be-read list.
Kamala is a happy warrior and that is a powerful political strength for her
America loves happy warriors; it’s why we loved FDR and Reagan. Biden was a happy warrior as VP, but by 2020, his age caught up with him, and mostly, he seemed tired and angry. That’s not his fault, but it worked against him.
Trump seemed like a happy warrior in the 2016 election — or at least he did in the primary — but now he’s an angry, bitter rageaholic, as are his supporters. A happy warrior can do extremely well against angry, bitter rage.
America still employs a ton of news reporters
Wait, does America really still employ a ton of news reporters? Searching for bright spots in the twilight of the newspaper industry. wapo.st
Surprisingly, given the dire state of the journalism industry, America employs about as many news reporters as it did three decades ago.
That’s not a win—America has nearly 20% more jobs and people than it had 30 years ago.
But it doesn’t point to an industry in collapse either.
The catch is that many of these reporters work outside of journalism organizations, often in PR and marketing.
Having read the article, it describes my winding career path well. I’ve been a daily newspaper reporter, covering local government, crime, community and features. I’ve been a business-to-business tech journalist, which some might argue is not actually journalism. I’ve been a content marketer. And now I’m an analyst. During all that time, I’ve been using the same skills. Even the transition from print to the Internet was gradual and involves many of the same skills.
Silicon Valley is getting behind Universal Basic Income but that’s not enough to resolve the tech-driven wealth divide. “‘We get to be billionaires and you get a few hundred a week’ doesn’t really solve the broader problem.” — NextDraft
“One way to think of Llama 3.1 is that it is the free Google Docs to Microsoft’s paid Office 365.” — Casey Newton, Platformer