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Just now I was unsuccessful trying to eat lunch and I realized after multiple failed attempts that I was holding the spoon upside down and that’s how thing are going lately.

I saw these ducks in a puddle. Not to be confused with snakes in a plane. đŸ“·

Our story opens with a Mandalorian Bar Mitzvah.

On our walk today, the dog and I got caught in a surprise and intense hailstorm

We were at Lake Murray, about a mile from home. It came on in seconds, and hit hard, a barrage of pellets the size of BBs. Uncomfortable for us both. We took shelter in the lee of the snack bar adjacent to the Kiowa Street parking lot.

The storm passed in 10-15 minutes and we moved on, both pretty wet. I hadn’t worn rain gear, because the forecast called for rain in the morning but not the afternoon.

I’m continually impressed by what a tough little dog Minnie is. She can’t have been happy being hammered by ice BBs—I know I wasn’t—but her attitude was, “All right, we’re doing this now I guess.”

I was taking this photo of the lake at the precise moment the storm hit. When I took my phone out of my pocket, no precipitation. Seconds later: heavy hail.

That white stuff on the ground in the second photo is hail.

Father of cellphone sees dark side but also hope in new tech (AP / Kelvin Chan)

94-year-old Marty Cooper, credited with inventing the mobile phone in 1973, sees dark sides but also hope in new technology

Cooper talks with the Associated Press about the mobile industry’s current and future directions and challenges.

As for his own phone use, Cooper says he checks email and does online searches for information to settle dinner table arguments.
> However, “there are many things that I have not yet learned,” he said. “I still don’t know what TikTok is.”

Cooper received a lifetime achievement award this week at the international Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the industry’s biggest conference.

MWC attracts 120,000+ people. Imagine going to an event like that and knowing all those people are there because of you.

Do you have a Zoom shirt?

When was the last time you laundered it?

Micro.blog does not show follower counts. It doesn’t tell you when somebody follows you. It has no concept of a like or favorite.

There are definite benefits to this system.

But there is one big drawback: Because I get very few replies to my mb posts, it feels like I’m talking to myself. On Facebook and Tumblr, I get a lot of likes. On Mastodon, I get fewer, but I get ‘em. This interaction lets me know that somebody’s listening.

Soon you’ll be able to see a restoration of one of the most infamous movies ever made: Guccione’s 1980 “Caligula.” (Boing Boing / Mark Frauenfelder)

Thomas Negovan, a musician and songwriter, has been working on the project for three years, based on the original camera negatives and location audio. He wants to create a movie that conforms to the original vision and Gore Vidal script.

“Caligula” was filmed in 1976 as a big-budget indy movie, with an impressive cast including Malcomlm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, and Helen Mirren, and budget twice the size of Star Wars.

But then Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione took over, threw out the original script, and added explicit sex scenes without the consent of the other creators. Guccione filmed the sex scenes secretly on the movie sets.

Negovan is using the original camera negatives and location audio, enhanced with AI. He created a five-minute video explaining his work—it looks great and I’m looking forward to seeing this movie, which may be a lost masterpiece.

Here’s the teaser trailer: