I wanted to get out to walk the dog early Friday morning because I had an important 11 am meeting — not a video meeting. Real life. So I got up early enough and shaved. I put in a new blade and noticed how much nicer it was. I go months between changing razor blades, and by the end of that time, it’s like dragging a broken beer bottle across my face.

I thought to myself that I need to change the blade more often. So, after I let the dog in from the backyard to the kitchen, I got out my phone, leaned against the kitchen counter, and I checked on ChatGPT to see how often I should change a Gillette Mach 3 blade, which is the brand I use. ChatGPT said every 5 to 10 shaves. So I set a reminder in Omnifocus, which is the reminders app that I use, to change the blade in two weeks, based on my shaving every other day, which is what I do.

I wanted to set a notification for that reminder because I usually don’t check OmniFocus until midmorning, and a notification would pop up on my phone screen first thing in the morning. That’s how I remind myself of things I need to do first thing in the morning — I set notifications to pop up on my phone home screen, because, like many people, I check my phone as soon as I get up. This may be a bad habit, but I’m not going to worry about that now.

I did not want to set a due date for the OmniFocus task, because you should only set a due date on tasks where there is a real penalty for failure to complete them. I learned that from the GTD productivity system.

I could not figure out how to set a notification for a task in Omnifocus without first setting the due date, and after much tapping around on the Omnifocus iPhone interface, I asked ChatGPT. ChatGPT give me a bullshit answer so I searched the web and that didn’t work so I hunted around on the Omnifocus website for the Omnifocus manual. I was not able to find a way to do what I wanted to do, so I just gave up and used the Due app to set the reminder.

Then I decided to double-check whether ChatGPT had misled me on the number of shaves recommended between blade changes, and sure enough, the Gillette website said that I should change every 15 shaves. It also said that there is a colored strip on that blade itself that fades when it is time to change the blade. I have been using Gillette Mach 3’s for 30+ years and was completely unaware of that. So I stood up from where I was leaning on the kitchen counter tapping my phone, and I went into the bathroom and fished the used razor blade out of the trash, and compared it to the new blade, and confirmed that there was a colored strip on the new blade and that was not present on the old blade. So it turned out I did not need to set a reminder at all.

Then I went out and walked the dog, which is what I had initially set out to do.

A Small Web July — The author of the Small Cypress blog is “spending less time on the corporate web for the month of July,” minimizing Meta products, Reddit, and maybe Bluesky, and spending more time on small websites, RSS and the real world.

I did a social media fast in June 2022, inspired by Cal Newport’s writing on “social media detox” and “digital minimalism.' I would not say it had any effect on my life. I would also say I did not follow Newport’s prescription – he says you should make a point to add healthy activities you love to your life, to fill the social media gap.

Every few years I get a craving for nitro coffee, and I have some and remember I don’t like it. This weekend should do me for nitro coffee through 2028.

When state legislatures consider whether to bail out rural hospitals, remember that the tax money you send to the feds didn’t decrease, it just got stolen from hospitals and sent to billionaires and ICE agents. If your state then bails out the hospitals, your state tax money is now going to something your federal tax money was supposed to cover, so basically your state taxes are bailing out the Republican hand out to billionaires.

— @mcnado@mstdn.social

The next time a politician claims we can’t house the homeless, feed the starving or give medical care to the poor…. remember that they were able to build a concentration camp in 8 days.

We could provide for everyone if we wanted to, but instead we’re spending the money on fascist facilities and cutting taxes for the wealthy.

— @broadwaybabyto@zeroes.ca

Trump’s Big Beautiful Gulag: The concentration camp reminagined as a hype house. By Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day.

When George W. Bush left office in 2009, the United States was mired in two wars and the global economy was in free fall. When Donald Trump left office after his first term, the United States was mired in a deadly pandemic and its economy was recovering from a free fall. (And this is to say nothing of Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election in a desperate bid to stay in office.)

That’s two Republican presidencies over 20 years that ended in disaster. There is no reason to think that Trump’s second term will be the exception that breaks the rule.

— Jamelle Bouie

Jamelle Bouie at The New York TImes:

If signed into law, the Senate version of Trump’s policy bill would slash $1.1 trillion from Medicaid and $186 billion from anti-poverty food assistance to help pay for trillions in tax breaks, including more than $564 billion in business tax cuts. By one estimate, these changes would result in at least 17 million people losing their health insurance over the next decade, as well as millions losing SNAP benefits, with some states possibly even ending their programs. All this so that the top 1 percent of households can receive an estimated average of a few tens of thousands of dollars each year.

But as irresponsible as this bill is, there is a dog-bites-man element to its existence. If we understand that Trump is, in most respects, an ordinary Republican president, then it is not news to learn that a Republican president wants to cut social services for the poor to sustain a large tax cut for the rich.

…

This reality extends, at least somewhat, to foreign policy.

What, so far, has been the signature foreign policy action of the Trump administration? A strike on Iran’s nuclear program. With one decision, Trump fulfilled the dreams of a generation of Republican hawks who have been clamoring for war with — and regime change in — Iran since President Bush proclaimed that it was a member of the “axis of evil” in 2002.

…

Across both the first Trump administration and this one, what you see are the longstanding goals of the Republican Party being fulfilled by a Republican president. What’s striking isn’t that this is happening, but that Trump, in his 10 years on the American political scene, has successfully obscured his rigidly partisan agenda with claims of populism and ideological heterodoxy. His occasional gestures toward support for existing social programs or greater taxes on the rich — and his willingness to say anything to amass power — are enough to persuade many voters (and some professional political observers) that Trump will somehow moderate the Republican Party or turn it away from its traditional agenda. If anything, it’s been the opposite: Trump’s willingness to do everything favored by his partisan fellow travelers has only accelerated the Republican Party’s dash toward ideological and policy extremism.

…

To look at the Trump administration and see something distinct from the past 44 years of Republican governance is to inhabit a fantasy in which past Republican presidents weren’t similarly contemptuous of legal and constitutional limits on their authority.

…

When George W. Bush left office in 2009, the United States was mired in two wars and the global economy was in free fall. When Donald Trump left office after his first term, the United States was mired in a deadly pandemic and its economy was recovering from a free fall. (And this is to say nothing of Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election in a desperate bid to stay in office.)

That’s two Republican presidencies over 20 years that ended in disaster. There is no reason to think that Trump’s second term will be the exception that breaks the rule.

Congressman Issa falsely claims ‘criminal illegals’ are enrolled in Medicaid

Which ‘wow’ skill is secretly super easy to learn? : r/AskReddit

I am a regular user of an LLM chatbot (ChatGPT). It’s becoming essential to my work and life. And I also hate vendors' efforts to stuff AI into everything.

If I do a Web search, I want search results, not an AI summary. Likewise, Gmail email summaries are an abomination.

LLM chatbots like ChatGPT are good for answering questions. Search engines are good for finding websites. Two different jobs. And I know how to read email — I don’t need AI help with that.

Prices of Both Housing And Rent Are Decreasing In China. “In 2016, Xi said that houses were for living in, not for speculating. The Chinese government took steps to reduce prices, those steps took time to bear fruit.” By Ian Welsh.

When an Internet service is not responding the best thing you can do is click the button over and over again, dozens of times if necessary, getting more angry and frustrated. Follow me for more helpful tech tips.

Warnings that AI will take people’s jobs re the latest way for CEOs to keep workers afraid and submissive.

Trump’s Immigration Enforcement: Free The Criminals, Jail The Innocent:

They’re literally freeing dangerous criminals while manufacturing cases against innocent people…. The Trump admin is literally freeing a repeat violent offender in exchange for testimony against Abrego–a man with no criminal history who was working and raising a family.

And Trump cut a deal with Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele “to let actual top MS-13 gang leaders go free.”

— Mike Masnick at Techdirt

Hamilton Nolan:

[Trump’s tax and immigration bill] contains enough money to build a new system of immigration detention centers far bigger than the entire federal prison system. The American Immigration Council says that it will be enough to facilitate the “daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens.” It will let ICE hire more field agents than the FBI. Its $170 billion in funding for Stephen Miller’s rabid campaign to purge America of brown people is comparable to the total annual funding for the United States Army.

…

This budget will give [Trump] the final piece of the puzzle that he needs to achieve his fever dream: a nationwide army of masked, unaccountable armed agents empowered to snatch anyone they like off the streets, and the physical infrastructure to imprison or deport those people at will. Thousands of men with guns, unrestrained by judges or local police, who do not answer to Congress, who point guns at the press, who arrest whoever they want, for reasons they do not share, and do whatever they wish with those people. The implications of this are going to make America a much darker place.

…

Yesterday, Trump proudly attended the opening of a concentration camp. There will be many more to come.

Dave Winer: New York City is “a tough place to govern.”

The thing about NY that people might not understand is that the politics are dirty and fucked up. Dems tend to elect handsome young heros who when they have to deal with NYPD and the sanitation workers, the teachers union, and the federal government, also the ancient infrastructure, melt.

How do you save your best AI prompts for reuse? Do you just drop them in a text document on your desktop, or is there a better way?

Currently reading: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚

Currently re-reading: Getting Things Done by David Allen 📚

Currently reading: Mark Twain by Ron Chernow 📚

”american leftists seem extremely focused on anti imperialism (good) but rarely- if at all- discuss decolonization in their own fucking country, despite acknowledging that it is a settler colonial state. “

 Mamdani and Zionism. 

Nolan:

Subway’s not scary. It’s fine and safe. It’s full of women and children. There are tons of old ladies on there. You should def be helping those old ladies carry their grocery carts up the stairs. That is an issue we can discuss. The rest of the stuff, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

You sound real corny being scared of the subway.

When I say this, you may read my meaning to be, “The subways are fine if you are brave,” or “Riding the subway is a character-building because it teaches you to be tough.” No. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the subway is fine. It is not scary. It is the standard mode of transportation for millions of New Yorkers. Six million rides a day. Let me try to put it in terms that a non-New Yorker can understand. “I am scared of riding the Google shuttle bus to my job at Google.” “I am scared of riding the Epcot monorail.” See how crazy that sounds? Same basic thing.

Most of the people who live outside the city drive cars to work. This is far more dangerous than riding the subway. Last year there were ten murders in the NYC subway system, with well over a billion total rides taken. During the same time period, there were 253 traffic fatalities in New York City. One person dead every day and a half. Cars? Those things are fucking dangerous. The subway? You might be tempted to buy a churro. Could be damaging to your diet, yeah. But you can work it off. Don’t make such a big deal out of it.

There are homeless people on the subway. They are there because they have no homes. Some of them are mentally ill. If you ride the subway a lot, it is possible that you will see a homeless person who does not smell good sleeping on a train. It is possible that you will see a mentally ill person ranting and raving. This may make you uncomfortable. But imagine how they feel. Not only are they homeless, but they are also in need of mental health treatment, and they don’t have it, and instead they are consigned to riding a train all day, where people constantly move away from them and view them with disgust. An awful fate.

What might a serious policy response to this situation look like, from mature adults who take this issue seriously? Is it… “have cops with guns arrest them all?” Come on. Give me a freaking break. Stupid Rambo ass policy. A real solution would involve a serious investment in mental health and housing programs, and then having a dedicated team of outreach workers who can go onto subways and connect the homeless people there to the services they need. Incidentally, this is Zohran Mamdani’s proposal. When Serious Political Thinkers talk about it, they say “he wants to defund the police.”

On r/AskReddit: What things in porn actually happen in real life?. Pizza is delivered.

Seriously, use the browser you like, don’t worry about battery. Matt Birchler has advice for Mac users.

Nations Are People. Do you deserve to die for your own bad government?

Hamilton Nolan:

If you live in America, your government is run by Donald Trump. Ugh. You might despise that guy. You might have worked hard against him during campaign season. When you visit another country, and tell them that you are American, you might add, “But don’t judge me!” You would not want to be branded with the weight of the various stupid and despicable actions of your own government. You understand, first, that you do not agree with those things, and second, that you as a regular person have little power to affect those things. You are just living your life. You want to be respected as a human being.

“Unfortunately, this simple and intuitive understanding of the difference between the government and the people of your own country often evaporates–or gets erased–when the discussion turns to foreign countries. When someone says “Russia,” you probably think of Putin, not of the teenage girl dreaming of what she will do after graduation. When someone says “Iran,” you probably think of something that is often referred to as “the regime,” rather than of the laughing family gathering for a holiday meal. This mental mistake, this unwitting juxtaposition of one thing for a different thing, is like a steamroller that paves the way for you to accept unacceptable things. You would never nod sagely and agree that a bomb should be dropped on a child. But air strikes to “cripple” the “command and control” of a “hostile regime?” Well, of course, serious people understand that this may be necessary in the grand chessboard that is geopolitics.

…

Are you willing to be killed for your own government’s sins? Are you willing to have your house destroyed and your child hit by shrapnel and your elderly parents lose access to medicine because of the policies of the latest president? If that seems unfair for you, it is unfair for anyone, anywhere. From this perspective, it is easy to see that the hurdle that a war must clear to be truly moral is so high that it stretches up into the clouds. Grounding ourselves in this perspective–always holding people, and their right to live, in the forefront of our minds–is the only way to make clear judgments about what our own government does with its killing machines.

Promises The ‘Trump Phone’ Would Be ‘Made In USA’ Lasted 1/100th Of A Scaramucci. The Trump organization has scrubbed its website of claims that the phone would be made in America. Now the site has handwaving about how the phone will be infused with “American values.” By Karl Bode at Techdirt.

What is a democratic socialist?

Cross the Courts Off the List: We have enough information to conclude that the law won’t save us.

Hamilton Nolan:

The most significant remaining opportunity for course correction is the midterm elections. It is not so much that the elections (which if history is any guide should cause Republicans to lose control of Congress) are a magic wand that will fix our broken democracy, any more than, you know, Obama’s election fixed America. It is instead the much more modest but vital hope that Republicans can still lose power in elections. The midterm elections will be a test not so much of whether the Democratic Party will finally become the heroic resistance heroes we need–they won’t–but rather a test of whether Trump and Co. will have it together to suppress the vote to the degree that elections, also, need to be crossed off the list of fruitful avenues of opposition.

We are going to see ICE agents at polling places, and politically motivated government investigations of political opponents, and possibly a number of non-Republican politicians and activists arrested and put in jail. That will be the setting of the midterm elections. Trump is a man who does not believe in even the abstract concept of losing an election. He is surrounded by yes men top to bottom in the federal government, and he has armies of armed agents at his disposal. The midterm elections are going to be a very, very important gut check for our democracy, and the extent to which it still functions. We, all of us, all of civil society, must protect the integrity of those elections at all costs. If the Trump administration is able to suppress the vote so severely that the midterms cannot be seen as fair, we are in an even worse place than we are now.

Having given up on the possibility of a Supreme Court line in the sand, I am now looking at those elections as the next most important data point about how much hope is left to return to our traditional standard of “normal.” Apart from the elections, the other meaningful source of opposition is: Us. People. I have hoped that organized labor could be the rallying point for popular opposition to dictatorship. So far, that hasn’t happened. Institutionally, the long decline in union power has rendered organized labor extremely ineffective, disorganized in the face of a war on the existence of public sector unions, and unable to act in a powerful, concerted fashion on a nationwide scale. It is still possible, however, for unions to be one part of a grassroots coalition that forms to battle this out. The national protest movement we have seen arise–most recently the “No Kings” protests–shows me that the bulk of public opinion is on the right side here. The fascists are a minority. Stopping their advance, though, will require funneling the public opposition into organizations, into all facets of direct actions. What we have now is the sentiment, but not the organization. It can be built. The situation is not, in any sense, hopeless. There is much more to be said about the mechanics of all this, but for now, join an organization that is in the fight, and fight.

It’s just that the path is narrower. We don’t gain anything by telling ourselves fairy tales about what is coming. If the courts won’t do their ostensible job of saving us then it is time to think of the law not as the arena of our salvation but as a minefield to pick our way around carefully en route to a more promising destination.

I received this in my Facebook notifications. I didn’t realize adolescent memes and dad jokes count as “high-quality content.”

I loved “Airplane” when it was first released. I laughed and laughed and probably saw it several times.

A few years ago, I discovered Julie had never seen “Airplane” and then sat down to watch it with her. We were both bored and gave up after about 20 minutes. But that was long enough for us to watch the “Saturday Night Fever” parody scene, and we both decided we’d like to watch “Saturday Night Fever” again.

And man — I think I have said this here before — but “Saturday Night Fever” blew me away that time. In my mind, I had previously conflated the movie with the cheesy disco comedies that came out in its wake. But “Saturday Night Fever” was brilliant and dark. One of my top 10 movies for sure.

The 100 best walking cities of 2025. — I can vouch for Barcelona, London, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, New York and Glasgow.

McDonald’s around the world: A discussion with author of McAtlas: A Global Guide to the Golden Arches, Gary He. By Chris Arnade, who has written about McDonald’s as local community centers and force for good, particularly for the poor.

You could escape the heat or cold, charge your phone, get inexpensive food, use the bathroom, and connect to Wi-Fi, while generally being left alone, as long as you didn’t act too weird.…. if you want to understand America, spending time in McDonald’s is not a bad way to go.

10 Hot Takes About Superman. “10. Superman is American. The truth is, Superman is as American as a hot dog inside a piece of apple pie served in a baseball glove.” By Charlie Jane Anders.

I Still Miss My Luddite Web Browser — Charlie Jane Anders on being a science fiction writer and hardcore late adopter.

We’ve moved from a system where corruption hides in shadows to one where it operates in plain sight, confident that we’ve all accepted it as just how things work.

— Mike Masnick, We Have All Become Too Comfortable With Corruption www.techdirt.com/2025/06/2…

Matt Stoller: Mandani is running a “system-defining” election, possibly reinventing the Democratic Party. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-democ…

I was a Twitter addict in the late 2000s and 2010s, but I lost interest in Twitter even before its change of ownership. I think I’ve lost interest in reading or writing prose chopped up into 300- or 500-character chunks.

Too much of Bluesky is people being outraged about politics and posting unverified news rumors. Too much of Mastodon is people being outraged about politics, unverified news rumors, and posting about technology issues that I’m not involved in. I still check both daily, but my heart isn’t in it.

Nowadays, I like blogs, newsletters and news and magazine websites, like I did in the 2000s.

I like Tumblr and Reddit. They’re great sources for the memes, vintage photos and vintage ads that I’m addicted to, as well as odd, delightful personal essays. I post regularly to Tumblr. I rarely post to Reddit — it’s too much work running the gauntlet of moderators and rules.

Seriously, I am surprised how much I continue to like Tumblr.

I like the community and connections on Facebook, but I hate Facebook as a software platform. Too much noise! It’s like trying to carry on a quiet conversation in a noisy, rocking subway car, with a smelly guy next to you shouting randomly.

Here’s where to find me on those other platforms, if you’re interested. Not on that list: Facebook. I’m trying to discourage people from connecting with me on Facebook. Eventually, no one will be left connecting with me on Facebook, and I can pull the plug.

Lewin Day at Hackaday:

Born in 1848 in Albany, New York, James Goold Cutler would come to build his life in the state. He lived and worked in the growing state, and as an architect, he soon came to identify an obvious problem. For those occupying higher floors in taller buildings, the simple act of sending a piece of mail could quickly become a tedious exercise. One would have to make their way all the way to a street level post box, which grew increasingly tiresome as buildings grew ever taller.

Cutler saw that there was an obvious solution—install a vertical chute running through the building’s core, add mail slots on each floor, and let gravity do the work. It then became as simple as dropping a letter in, and down it would go to a collection box at the bottom, where postal workers could retrieve it during their regular rounds. Cutler filed a patent for this simple design in 1883. He was sure to include a critical security feature—a hand guard behind each floor’s mail chute. This was intended to stop those on lower levels reaching into the chute to steal the mail passing by from above. Installations in taller buildings were also to be fitted with an “elastic cushion” in the bottom to “prevent injury to the mail” from higher drop heights.

Tim Cushing at Techdirt:

Who are we ejecting from this country at the rate of dozens of people per day? Hardworking, law-abiding migrants who’ve done nothing more than seek jobs, pay taxes, and carve out a better life for their loved ones. The government knows what it’s doing. After all, it already has all the evidence it needs to show its mass deportation program has nothing to do with making this nation safer or more secure.

…

The pretense of making America safer has been discarded. America won’t get any safer, just as surely as it won’t get any greater under this president. For years, it’s been known that migrants commit fewer crimes than natural-born citizens.

…

It’s nothing more than a racist purge…. just looking at ICE’s numbers, it’s easy to see this isn’t about ejecting criminals. It’s about getting rid of non-white people.

Paul Krugman:

I was enormously cheered by Mamdani’s victory, not because I think he’ll be a great mayor — honestly I have no idea — but because a Cuomo victory would have been deeply depressing. Why? Because it would have been an affirmation of elite impunity and lack of accountability. Cuomo is by all accounts a terrible person, and his bungled response to Covid killed people. For him to make a comeback simply because he’s part of the old boys’ club and had the big money behind him would have said that the rules only apply to the little people.

There’s a huge argument among Democrats about whether they need to run more centrist candidates. I am not ready to weigh in on that debate. But if you’re going to take that side, find better centrists. I mean, are Cuomo and Eric Adams the best you can do?

…

Oh, and centrist Democrats often urge leftier types to rally behind their nominees in general elections. I agree. Anyone claiming that there’s no difference between the parties is a fool. But this deal has to be reciprocal. Zamdani will be the Democratic nominee, and anyone calling themselves a Democrat should support him.

U.S. Army veteran Sae Joon Park took two bullets in the spine defending America. Now he’s being deported. Meanwhile, ICE has arrested only 6% of known immigrant murderers. Also, ICE arrested a pregnant Tennessee woman who had a stillbirth while in detention. nextdraft.com/archives/…

The first meeting of RFKJr.’s CDC vaccination panel was “packed with anti-vaccine talking points and arguments” and they’re questioning all childhood vaccines. Children will die unnecessarily if this committee has its way. arstechnica.com/health/20…

Trailer for “London Calling,” starring Josh Duhamel, about a down on his luck hitman who has to babysit the teen-age son of his new crime boss. Looks good. youtu.be

What is spotted dick? Tasting History With Max Miller youtu.be

Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day:

Social media does not turn a bad candidate into a viable one. It’s just amplification. And the same platforms that can amplify the ugliness and hatred and resentment of someone like Trump can amplify the joy and earnestness and seemingly genuine conviction of a candidate like Mamdani. It cannot, however, make voters forget that a candidate like Cuomo killed their grandparents during COVID or that current New York Mayor Eric Adams is a genuine maniac. There’s no magic trick. Mamdani ran a regular ass campaign where he spoke clearly about what he cared about and was normal about it and it worked. Revolutionary! And I understand why this would all be very threatening to Democrats, seeing as how most of them do not seem to care about anything.

Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice. theonion.com

⁠⁠Now is not the time for bravery or valor! This is the time for protecting your own hide and lining your pocket…. ⁠This is the time to let the wave of apathy and indifference roll over you as you think about getting a really nice renovation to your house in Kalorama.

An MIT student developed a system that uses AI-generated polymer masks to restore damaged paintings in hours rather than months. arstechnica.com

What’s a “public internet?” By Cory Doctorow pluralistic.net

⁠⁠The Supreme Court just gave the Trump administration a green light to traffic humans to random countries around the world–including war zones where migrants face torture, slavery, or death. And they did so while offering literally zero explanation for why this is legal or constitutional.

— techdirt.com

The CDC’s once-revered vaccine panel is now a “farce,” and calls are growing to cancel its upcoming meeting. arstechnica.com

Infectious diseases physician Fiona Havers, who recently resigned from the agency in protest, said the CDC’s vaccine processes have been “corrupted in a way that I haven’t seen before.”

She said:

If it isn’t stopped, and some of this isn’t reversed, like, immediately, a lot of Americans are going to die as a result of vaccine-preventable diseases.

“The federal government has effectively given up on regulating driverless vehicles. That’s good news for Elon Musk.” theverge.com

The Middle East and Africa are hot spots for data center growth. fierce-network.com

“One of the most tech-savvy judges in the US has ruled that Anthropic is within its rights to scan purchased books to train its Claude AI model, but that pirating content is legally out of bounds.” theregister.com

The résumé is dying, and AI is holding the smoking gun. HR departments are being overwhelmed by “hiring slop” — applicants using AI to bulk-generate resumes. arstechnica.com

The LA Dodgers claim they deterred an ICE raid, but the men in masks claim otherwise. techdirt.com

We’ve been traveling, and I’ve been mostly unplugged from the news during that time. I see we’re going to war in the Middle East again. I’m sure it will go well this time. Fourth time’s a charm, right?

A Republican lawmaker suffered delays receiving care for her life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, blames the left. Classic MAGA: Pass a bad law and then blame the people who opposed the law for the problems the law creates. theguardian.com

House staffers can’t have WhatsApp on their devices. The chief administrative officer claims the messaging app is “high-risk.” theverge.com

You sound like ChatGPT: AI is changing how we write and what we sound like when we talk. theverge.com

As ICE Raids Continue, Parts of a Vibrant City Go Empty. Missing vendors, markets of rotting food, and families too frightened to leave home: this is life in Los Angeles now. motherjones.com

Jio: ‘AI is the new UI and APIs are the new KPI’ — The telco discussed its ambitious plan to make AI inclusive and affordable for 1.4 billion Indians, at TM Forum’s DTW Ignite conference. My latest on Fierce Network.

“Let’s make sure that Venice is not remembered as a postcard venue where Bezos had his wedding but as the city that did not bend to oligarchs.” nytimes.com

Forms of Transportation that Were Supposed to Change the World (But Didn’t…). youtu.be

Overheard: “Sometimes the toast falls off the plate and lands butter side up on another plate.”

A friend asked a group of tech journalists the most time we spent at an individual publication. I spent a long time poring over my memory and LinkedIn profile and am still not sure.

Mapping my career path is like working out the timelines of the Back to the Future movies. Or unbending a pretzel.

The Micro Macintosh is a programmable $43 miniature reproduction of the 1986 Macintosh Plus with a 0.85-inch screen that “runs animated images of the Mac OS 7 operating system and a captivating game of Pong.” It “serves as a delightful desktop toy that pays tribute to a bygone era of computing.” tindie.com

California Senator Alex Padilla was assaulted, handcuffed,forced to the ground and detained when he tried to confront Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference. politico.com

Tape, glass, and molecules – the future of archival storage. Tape is the standard for archival storage, but it has to be rewritten every five years or so, which is expensive. Microsoft and other vendors are working on technologies using etched glass and DNA that could last hundreds or thousands of years. theregister.com

A Manufactured Crisis: How A Few Hooligans In LA Became The Pretext For Military Rule. techdirt.com

Trump overhaul of $42B broadband fund upends states' plans to expand access. arstechnica.com

Move over Disinformation Dozen — Meet the Hateful Eight. RFK Jr. is stacking the federal vaccine advisory council with anti-vaccine lunatics and grifters. Many people will die because of this. Violet Blue’s Threat Model

Meet the members of the Dull Men’s Club: ‘Some of them would bore the ears off you’. By Susan Chenery at The Guardian:

The 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson once wrote, “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others'. It’s a sentiment eagerly embraced by The Dull Men’s Club. Several million members in a number of connected Facebook groups strive to cause dullness in others on a daily basis. In this club, they wear their dullness with pride. The duller the better. This is where the nerds of the world unite.

“Posts that contain bitmoji-avatar-things are far too exciting, and will probably get deleted,” warn the rules of the Dull Men’s Club (Australian branch).

Maintaining standards of dullness is paramount. Alan Goodwin in the UK recently worried that seeing a lesser spotted woodpecker in his garden might be “a bit too exciting” for the group.

…

Australian member Andrew McKean, 85, had dullness thrust upon him. He is, dare I say it, an interesting anomaly in the Dull Men’s Club, a shift in tone. Three years ago, he had a heart attack. He recovered but the hospital’s social workers deemed him unable to care for his wife, Patricia, and they moved to a nursing home in New South Wales. There is nothing droll or amusing about being stuck in a nursing home. But he has elevated the dull institutional days into something poetic and poignant by writing about them and posting “to you strangers” in The Dull Men’s Club.

His life before moving into a home had been anything but dull. An electronics engineer, in 1967 he was connected to the Apollo moon mission. Then a career in the television broadcasting industry took him to the UK, Malta, West Africa and Canada.

Once a traveller who lived in a sprawling house at Pittwater who spent his days in the sea, now his life is reduced to a single room – “Every trace of my existence is contained within these walls.” Sitting in his worn, frayed armchair by the window “watching the light shift across the garden, he writes about ageing and “the slow unfolding of a life”.

He is surrounded by the “faint hum of machines and the shuffle of slippers … the squeak of a wheelchair, the smell of disinfectant”.

…

He lives for the bus and a few hours of freedom in a life that has shrunk. On the bus “something stirs in us, a flicker of youth perhaps”. He treats himself to KFC, “the sharp tang of it a small rebellion against the home’s bland meals”.

He sits on a park bench, an old man with a stick, invisible and inconspicuous to the people rushing past “watching the world’s parade, its wealth and hurry”. He observes it all and reports back to the Dull Men’s Club. “Though the world may not stop for me, I will not stop for it. I am here, still breathing, still remembering. And that in itself, is something.”

Disney sues AI image generator Midjourney. pivot-to-ai.com

How Far Does $1,000 Take You on a Trip to London? We Found Out. The challenge: three days in the British capital with a teenager on spring break — Tom Vanderbilt. Thanks, Julie! wsj.com

Let’s Be Clear: The Rioting In LA Is By The Cops, Not The Protestors — Mike Masnick. techdirt.com

RFK Jr. announces 8 appointees to CDC vaccine panel—they’re not good. arstechnica.com

This Israeli Government Is a Danger to Jews Everywhere — Thomas L. Friedman nytimes.com. Yes.

Longtime Motel 6 spokesman Tom Bodett sues chain over using his name, voice — Reuters. finance.yahoo.com

The GOP Is Way Too Fucking Excited About Using US Troops On American Protestors. By Mike Masnick. techdirt.com

Currently reading: Washington by Ron Chernow 📚I was going after Chernow’s new Mark Twain biography. I was a Mark Twain fanatic in my teens and 20s and read several biographies of him. I was eager to see what was new to be said about Mark Twain.

But I stumbled across this book and realized that I do not know a lot about George Washington’s life, so I decided to read this instead.

Julie and I went to visit Mount Vernon and Monticello in November 2016, and I thought then how those two presidents stood as Titans compared to the 🤡 who was then about to enter the White House. Everything that’s happened in the last nine years has confirmed that opinion.

Currently reading: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell 📚

Finished reading: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley 📚⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ⭐️

Finished reading: Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind by Edith Hall 📚⭐️⭐️⭐️

In light of recent ICE raids at the Federal Courthouse and Buona Forchetta Restaurant in San Diego and in Los Angeles, and the outrageous and dangerous Republican overreaction to Los Angeles protests, it’s important for all of us to find ways to turn our grief and outrage into action for our immigrant neighbors.

ICE raids are violent and excessive, but the community stepped up to fight back and block ICE’s departure. Here in San Diego, ICE responded with military tactics, including flashbangs and smoke grenades. As we write this (Sunday afternoon, June 8), it’s unclear how the situation in Los Angeles will play out. But it’s clear that Republicans want a mass, violent confrontation with protesters, and if they can’t find the occasion, they’ll manufacture it. And Republicans want to break blue states, starting with California.

Here are some things you can do to help preserve freedom and help your neighbors, compiled from local community organizations:

The No Kings March is Sunday, June 14, at Waterfront Park in San Diego. It’s part of a national day of action. See the link, preceding for information on that event and other No Kings events elsewhere in the county and online.

Volunteer to help elect Democrat Paloma Aguirre as County Supervisor in the July 1 special election. If Aguirre loses, the County Board of Supervisors flips Republican. The Aguirre campaign is asking people to canvass and phone-bank. While the district is overwhelmingly Democratic, Republican turnout is high, making this an at-risk election for us, as Democratic Party community leader Cynara Kidwell Velazquez noted at the recent June meeting of the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club.

What can you do if you see harassment? Sign up for bystander intervention training by Right To Be. That organization has classes to help protect against harassment of immigrants, women, disabled people, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQIA+ people, in public spaces, online, in the workplace, and so on.

Submit a public comment to your San Diego County Supervisor by June 12 to urge them to increase funding for immigration legal services. You can also email your county supervisor directly.

Also, tell the San Diego City Council that they should be funding community services, not surveillance tech. While our neighborhoods in San Diego are in desperate need of essential services such as libraries, parks and public restrooms, the city is cutting funding for those essential services, instead spending millions of dollars on a mass surveillance system: the Flock Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) and “smart” streetlight cameras—wasting money and threatening our privacy and civil liberties.

According to a petition on Change.org: “Flock ALPR tries to track the public movements of every individual in San Diego, 24/7, aligning with authoritarian agendas and the concerning trend of increasing surveillance. Instead of fostering community safety through positive and supportive measures, we are being forced into a society that values monitoring over meaningful safety solutions.” Sign the petition to oppose mass surveillance now.

Further resources:

• Showing Up for Racial Justice is an organization for white people working for justice. The San Diego chapter is active and will next meet June 22, at a location to be determined. Sign up for email updates. SURJ’s Linktree lists calls to action.
• The Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations' Migration, Refugees and Immigration webpage is a great resource, including an immigrant action toolkit. The Episcopal Diocese of San Diego’s Migration Ministry webpage provides useful definitions, Know Your Rights info, and links to partner organizations that offer a variety of ways to help immigrants.
• Mobilize US and CBFDIndivisible list events, petitions and volunteer opportunities.
• Take Action for San Diego Democrats is a web page run by the county Democratic Party with information on upcoming events, supporting the Aguirre campaign, learning more about running for local office, Planned Parenthood, how to make effective protest signs and more.

I wrote this for an upcoming issue of the newsletter of the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club, along with fellow board member Janet Castaños .

Kevin Smith’s “Dogma” is finally getting a re-release. Snoochie boochies! latimes.com

S2E3 “The Last of Us.” Catherine O’Hara is a really bad therapist.

Reading the news since yesterday afternoon, this quote occurs to me:

“Wonderful things can happen,” Vincent said, “when you plant seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes.”

— Elmore Leonard, “Glitz”