Do You Back Into a Parking Spot or Back Out?

The View From RSS. What the web looks like when you subscribe to 2,000 RSS feeds. I am not tempted to try this.

Cory Doctorow: The web is bearable with RSS. Also, a brief history of Google Reader, Google+ (which Cory doesn’t think much of but which I loved and still mourn), and tips for customizing Firefox for avoiding nag screens and other annoyances. I’m using a Chrome-based browser; hopefully the plugins he recommends have parallels in the Chrome universe.

I am a die-hard RSS user and have been for more than 20 years. I have a love-hate relationship with Inoreader — I am perpetually looking for alternatives and keep coming back to it. Right now, I’m actually looking to use RSS less, and unsubscribe from high-volume feeds, viewing those websites in the browser instead.

Regarding breaking news, I used to say that if I don’t hear the helicopters circling over the house, I can wait to find out about it.

A fun read about Burger King president and viral video star Tom Curtis, who presents a down-to-Earth image: The Burger King President Who Took a Bite Out of McDonald’s. Also a fun read, about the viral McDonald’s video that Burger King responded to. Here’s the video of Curtis taking a big hearty bite from a Whopper. And the McDonald’s CEO takes a prissy nibble from the Big Arch. He calls it a “product!” Good grief!

It would be better for my mental health if I did not check the news as often as I do. Surely I am the first person ever to have had this insight.

What do you use for breaking news? I check in with a few sources a few times a day to see what the latest crisis is. I check Google News, Apple News and my RSS reader. How about you?

I stopped using Grammarly on the desktop earlier this week. It’s too intrusive with popups and insists I add Oxford commas, which violates my employer’s style guidelines and annoys my editors. I’m using a Claude project for proofreading instead, and it seems to work better while being less annoying.

The Verge: Grammarly is using our identities without permission. Grammarly’s AI agents make suggestions for improving writing supposedly inspired by subject matter experts, including prominent tech journalists, without permission.

Stories about celebrities being nice.

When prunes tried to rebrand as “dried plums.” Listening to this podcast inspired me to get a container of prunes to add to my morning oatmeal. They were tasty, healthy, and induced no undesired gastrointestinal acceleration.

They Haven’t Even Started Spending Yet. Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on buying elections represent unnoticeable amounts of money to oligarchs like Musk, writes Hamilton Nolan. For oligarchs, hundreds of millions of dollars is like a normal person spending $75.

United Airlines can now boot passengers who refuse to use headphones with their devices. Toss ‘em out the emergency door at 30,000 feet. Nobody wants to hear your shitty garage-band hip-hop.

The news has a 1914 fin de siècle vibe.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

That’s from “The Great Gatsby,” published 101 years ago, and perfectly describing the Epstein White House and its sexual predation and wars.

5 things nobody tells you when you move from ChatGPT to Claude. Good tips, despite clickbait headline.

Ars Technica Fires Reporter Over AI-Generated Quotes.

My reaction on reading the headline: “Hell yeah! Kick that sad bastard to the curb!”

But the article provides details that make the situation more complicated:

• The reporter was working while sick in bed with Covid and a fever.
• The quotes were paraphrases, not complete fabrications

Yes, what that reporter did was wrong and unprofessional and he has acknowledged that publicly and apologized on social media.

Where was his manager to tell him that he was impaired and should just stay in bed and watch YouTube?

“Most national and international news isn’t actionable by us as individuals, so do we really need to watch it?”

Mr. T on his hairstyle, gold chains and why he called himself “Mr. T”— He’s reclaiming his African heritage and defying racism. This brief interview is strikingly articulate and intelligent in the context of his being typecast as a brute during his acting career.

Tig Notaro steals every scene she appears in.

I’m glad we stuck with “Starfleet Academy,” because the most recent two episodes, which we watched Saturday, were brilliant. The most recent episode may have been the only time I’ve been deeply emotionally moved watching “Star Trek.”

And now I want to see “Our Town” again. I love that play and haven’t seen it since 2003, when the Paul Newman production aired.

Jay-den has seemed to be a delicate, hesitant character, but when his shipmate is threatened, Jay-den goes full Klingon. No hesitation there!

Caleb can be a dick a lot of the time, but he understands consent in his bones. And he and Nahla have great bantering repartee.