So many great lines in this piece by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic:

By the numbers, the tariffs are less an expression of economic theory and more a Dadaist art piece about the meaninglessness of expertise.

Who knew Bill Gates was such a good blogger? Love this story of Altair BASIC in a quirky, unique design with animating text.

Apple stock getting destroyed today. I feel for small investors who are caught up in this. But also maybe a lesson for Tim Cook and his $1 million donation to the inauguration.

Trump is reckless. You might think you’ll benefit by supporting him, but really you’re just empowering him.

Had a dream where one of my notebooks had special AI pages. I could write questions on them with ink and answers would appear. Too much ChatGPT on the brain. Also, the future will be just as much The Diamond Age as it will be Her.

Haven’t had coffee or left the house in a couple days after being sick, and those are two of my favorite things to do. Finally outdoors again. The gloomy weather isn’t helping… Need some sun.

The latest update to Micro Social adds location check-ins for Micro.blog. Very interesting! There’s so much potential here that we haven’t had time to follow through on, so great to see another app pick up the slack.

Excited for the Nintendo Switch 2. The kids have our old Switches, so I had picked up a Lite mostly for travel and miss having something that can connect to the TV.

Rest in peace, Val Kilmer. Glad he was able to reprise his role from Top Gun, in a way getting the thanks and goodbye he deserved before he passed. His part in Heat will always be my favorite.

Extraordinary what Cory Booker has done. A lot of people feel powerless right now, with little substantive action possible. Talking for 24 hours accepts those limits and leans in to the symbolic. 🇺🇸

I was sick most of yesterday and tuned out of any social web drama, so was at first surprised to learn that this week’s FediForum has been cancelled. Details on their Mastodon account:

We’ve all had a difficult few days. Tempers are high. Some of what’s been happening in the Fediforum comments section has reached insult-only stage and I have heard of physical safety concerns.

Sounds like the right call to postpone. Hope they can regroup, get some rest, and I look forward to attending in the future. FediForum has served a unique role in the community.

Enjoyed this illustrated story by Jackie Lay about the life of Victoria Woodhull, who ran for president in 1872.

Just great defense from the Longhorns. Love their midrange shooting too. I picked UConn vs. Texas for the women’s championship game, so could still happen. 🏀

Finished reading: The Bear and The Nightingale by Katherine Arden. Beautiful and haunting. 📚

Spurs / Warriors tonight. Not a close game but still fun. It has been too long since I was last in San Antonio. 🏀

Whether you’re an AI optimist or skeptic, or somewhere in between, you can probably relate to this blog post by @paulrobertlloyd. It’s going to dominate tech headlines for at least a couple more years until everyone is completely burned out on hearing about it, then (maybe) fade into the background.

Decided to subscribe to The Atlantic. There’s a certain kind of story that I miss from the NYT and WaPo after cancelling both those subscriptions last year. I still don’t want to obsess with the news, but when I dip my toes in, I want the coverage to be good.

We talk about Apple getting into trouble with Siri + LLMs, but Google has major problems too. Their search business is going to fall out from under them. Not sure they have the decisiveness to actually redesign their main product.

I’m enjoying Kagi instead of Google, but it’s still not quite right. For a paid search engine, there should be no clutter. If the query is an actual question with an answer, give me a ChatGPT-style UI, free of distractions. If the query is to find a web page, give me 10 blue links and nothing else.

Did not finish: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. I enjoyed the first part of the book but after setting it aside just couldn’t get back into it. 📚

More details of when Sam Altman was fired by the OpenAI board, from an upcoming book by Keach Hagey:

The board felt they couldn’t divulge that it had been Murati who had given them some of the most detailed evidence of Altman’s management failings. They had banked on Murati calming employees while they searched for a CEO. Instead, she was leading her colleagues in a revolt against the board.

You come at the king, you best not miss.

There seems to be a timezone bug in Siri + ChatGPT. To get better answers while driving I experimented with telling Siri to “ask ChatGPT to…”, but anything that needs the time is 5 hours off. I assume Apple is including the current time in a prompt to OpenAI, in GMT. Hopefully an easy fix. 🤖

My NCAA women’s bracket is still holding on with that Longhorns win! Great game Texas / Tennessee. 🏀

Randomly stumbled on my post from two years ago about Threads joining the fediverse. It holds up so well it could’ve been written yesterday. Still no sign of Meta completing the parts of ActivityPub like account migration that would ease up on lock-in.

Got an email today for a class action lawsuit about chicken that I thought must be a phishing scam or a joke, but it appears real. The lawyers are going to make bank on this one! I don’t remember overpaying for chicken 5 years ago… I do wonder how they got my email address.