“Headless Body in Topless Bar” turns 40 (Daring Fireball)
I wonder whether the 12.9” iPad has a future.
Seems like almost anybody thinking about buying one of the big iPads would be better off with a MacBook Air.
For most people, the 12.9” iPad is an ungainly platypus, neither mammal nor bird.
The only people who seem like they’d want the 12.9” iPad would be graphic artists and other people who really, really need that big display and touchscreen and Pencil support.
The 12.9” iPad is too big and heavy to be as portable as the smaller iPads. You can’t hold that 12.9” iPad in your hands for long, unless you’re Andre the Giant. And iPad OS isn’t as versatile as MacOS.
I have an 11-inch iPad Air with a Folio keyboard that I use as a mini-laptop when I want something like that, and I have an iPad mini that I use every day for reading and social media.
Honestly, I’d probably be happier with a MacBook Air than with the iPad Air, but I can’t justify the expense of buying a new MacBook right now.
Truthfully, the iPad mini was a foolish purchase, as I already had the iPad Air. But, still, I’m glad I bought the mini, because it’s my primary iPad now.
Cory Doctorow has got me thinking about doing a better job structuring threads on Mastodon and Twitter.
Damn you, Cory, I don’t have time for this.
*shakes fist*
Ever since I was a little kid, I have thought men’s suits from the 1930s-50s looked great.
When I was a little kid, I watched old black-and-white reruns of Superman, Abbott & Costello, and particularly John Astin in The Addams Family, and thought to myself, damn, those guys looked sharp. Particularly the double-breasted suits.
Well, Lou Costello didn’t look sharp. But Bud Abbot? Sure. A good suit made even Abbott look good.
That feeling continues to this day.
We’ve been watching a few 1930s-50s movies, including the first couple of Thin Man movies (1930s), “My Man Godfrey” (1936), and just this weekend, “Executive Suite” (1954). And I think: Why don’t men dress like that anymore?
Why do we all go around dressed like hobos and toddlers?
And then a couple of days ago, I thought, you know, I could just buy a vintage suit.
I don’t know where I would wear it.
The dog would like me to go to the deli again today and pick up another sandwich. Less lean this time. Not too fatty, but a little more fatty than yesterday.
Julie put a lean corned beef Reuben sandwich on the kitchen counter and left the room for a minute. While she was out, the dog snatched the sandwich off the counter and ate half of it.
The dog has a death wish.
I did 14,000 steps yesterday, about 4,000 more than usual. Climbed Cowles Mountain, about 3.4 miles distance and 890 feet elevation. Then got home and walked the dog for a mile. My knees would like to discuss my choices.
Amazon Web Services sales and support teams are currently “spending much of their time helping customers optimize their AWS spend so they can better weather this uncertain economy,” says CEO Andy Jassy in an annual letter to shareholders.
www.theregister.com/2023/04/1…
AWS customers are “not cost-cutting as much as cost-optimizing so they can take their resources and apply them to emerging and inventive new customer experiences they’re planning,” Jassy said.
(This is pretty much what we’d expect Amazon to say. It may also be true.)
Amazon invested heavily in AWS during the 2007-8 economic downturn and saw that investment pay off. Jassy sees its “Kuiper” satellite broadband program as being at a similar stage today.
And AWS is putting greater focus on custom silicon.
Cats have no idea how arms work. They’ll park behind you or six feet away, and demand scritches. Cats think arms are 7-foot-long tentacles.
Anxious about the coming week? Cowles Mountain has a message for you.
I saw this sign while hiking today. That’s Lake Murray in the background.
In defense of Mastodon threads (and Twitter threads too):
Threading an essay requires the author to compose it in stanzas, each of which is a standalone, complete thought – and that means that readers can engage with each though separately, by replying to just that stanza.
For me, that stanza-by-stanza discussion – a kind of pro-fisking structural affordance – is the most interesting and powerful innovation of the social media thread. I
— Cory Doctorow, How To Make the Least-Worst Mastodon Threads.
Great insight—but too much work for me, as a general thing.
It’s been years since I hiked Cowles Mountain and I think it’s gotten taller.
Oh my knees.
Good hike though.
Elon Musk’s Free-Speech Charade Is Over
Musk’s “‘free-speech absolutism’ was mostly code for a high tolerance for bigotry toward particular groups, a smoke screen that obscured an obvious hostility toward any speech that threatened his ability to make money.”
Adam Serwer at The Atlantic:
Conservatives built an entire body of jurisprudence around the First Amendment’s protection of corporate speech when large corporations were reliably funding Republican causes and campaigns…. But once some corporate actors decided it was in their financial interests to make decisions that the GOP disliked, conservative lawyers then turned around and argued that speech was no longer protected if it was used for purposes they opposed.
…
For them, free speech is when they can say what they want, and when you can say what they want.
… “traditional fact-checking and counterarguments are the least effective means of combating conspiracy beliefs…” but ”’fact-based inoculation’ – a kind of information vaccine where people are primed to spot misinformation before they are exposed to it – significantly reduced conspiratorial thinking…. “ Conspiracy theories: How Cranky Uncle aims to inoculate people against anti-scientific thought (The Sydney Morning Herald)
We watched “Executive Suite” (1954). The powerful head of a nationwide furniture company drops dead on a Friday evening without naming a successor, and five vice presidents fight for the presidency over the next 24 hours. Features the highest high tech of its era: person-to-person calls, intercoms and telegrams. Pretty good movie.
