When it was completed in Lower Manhattan in 1974, 33 Thomas Street, formerly known as the AT&T Long Lines Building, was intended as the world’s largest facility for connecting long-distance telephone calls. 1 Standing 532 feet — roughly equivalent to a 45-story building — it’s a mugshot for Brutalism, windowless and nearly featureless. Its only apertures are a series of ventilation hoods meant to hide microwave-satellite arrays, which communicate with ground-based relay stations and satellites in space.
Who is peeking over your shoulder while you work, watch videos, learn, explore, and shop on the internet? Enter the address of any website, and Blacklight will scan it and reveal the specific user-tracking technologies on the site—and who’s getting your data. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Jesse Armstrong Explains ‘Succession’ Season 4 Finale Choice
The final draft of the show isn’t the script. It’s the version we air. My fellow writers and I always wrote and rewrote scripts with the knowledge that we could in safety try something a little more grayed-out and subtle, or a little odder, or a little more vivid and “red,” as Lucy Prebble would say in the room; knowing that if the execution on celluloid left something too opaque or too vivid we had a safety net. That we could dance closer to the precipice with the assurance that the final, final edit was yet to come. It’s a great freedom. Without the power American TV gives a showrunner, the temptation can be to write in a closed-off, invulnerable way with every scene sleek and sealed — less prone to misexecution or misinterpretation. And that’s a shame. Because I do think the cracks are where the light gets in — the bits of a show that elbow out at odd angles, the bones that stick in your throat.
What I always hoped for in the show was that sense of something you couldn’t look away from. Episodes that both demand the viewers’ full attention and were worthy of it. And that quality comes from the careful plotting in the room, and then careful writing and rewriting. But it also comes from what we choose to leave out. Because there’s a paradox about the core of a TV show, especially one that lives somewhere in the world of the satirical. If you don’t have anything you want to say, there’s a danger the show will never live. But at the same time, if you do have something to say, there’s a danger that if you ever state it, it will kill the whole endeavor, so it lies flat and dead, like a propaganda leaflet dropped in the street. What you have to do is trust that if you set things up right and hold the tone and create the universe correctly, you can step back from the mechanism, let it run, and say, as in Walter Benjamin’s useful but disingenuous declaration: “I have nothing to say, only things to show.”
An ancillary benefit of keeping yourself out of the show is that what you thought you were transmitting is not necessarily what people will receive. And that’s a good thing. People are hungry, especially right now perhaps, for things that are other than what they seem — characters and situations that are allowed to be multiple. We all have an impulse to want to pull the mask off the baddie and have something simple revealed — base truths and clear explanations. But that first reducing, simplifying impulse will likely never wholly satisfy because it offends our deep sense of what the world is really like.
Taking a hard look at the world as it is, that would be my definition of satire, I think. This might be a less lofty ambition than an older version where satire functioned — or was imagined to function — in a sort of dialectic relationship with power. The idea that things happened in the public-political arena, and were then critiqued and mocked, and that interaction provided a release valve or even pointed in the direction of an alternative — I’m not sure that was ever how it actually worked. But even the idea of that relationship feels falsely soothing now that the powerful and the satirists are all seeking attention in the same ring of the circus. Which doesn’t mean that the annual article, “Is satire dead?” is ever going to be more fresh. That article will forever be boring and wrong. But it does mean the satirical approach needs to come in at a different angle. It probably always does, every generation. Comforting the afflicted feels relatively straightforward. But afflicting the comforted? Maybe it will go better if you avoid announcing your intention too clearly at the door.
iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10 are the most stable point-zero releases I’ve ever seen from Apple.
Very impressive. I have no qualms encouraging everyone to update.
AirPods Pro 2, Now With USB-C Charging Case
The Vision Pro is Apple’s initial foray into spatial computing. But Vision Pro is not Apple’s first product in the world of augmented reality: AirPods Pro (and to a lesser degree, at the moment, AirPods Max) are. We humans are visual creatures and we naturally tend to think of augmented reality as a primarily visual experience, but AirPods Pro offer profoundly enjoyable and useful augmentation of the aural world around you. Starting today, Adaptive Audio takes that to another level.
Adaptive Audio is only available for the AirPods Pro 2, which means I’m only going to be more irritated if I ever again find myself wearing my old first-generation AirPods Pro out of necessity. At this point AirPods Pro 2 are as much better than the original AirPods Pro as the original AirPods Pro seemed from the original non-pro AirPods. They’re far more than wireless earbuds — they’re clever, powerful, delightful computers you put in your ears.
He’s right. I’ve used the AirPods Pro 2 for the last year and they are incredible little computers. For years, I only used regular AirPods, insisting that for my lifestyle, I don’t want anything that slides into my ears and seals — I need to be able to hear what’s around me.
But these second-gen AirPods do exactly that, but they make it optional. I can hear what’s around me when I want to, but I can also enable noise canceling and tune it all out. Most often, I find myself in a noisy place and just sliding them in. I don’t listen to anything, I just enable noise canceling. It’s helped my focus tremendously.
The new Adaptive Audio feature in iOS 17 is scary good. Though it’s only been a day, I no longer find myself toggling between transparency and noise cancellation — the AirPods do it themselves.
Computers, when designed thoughtfully, are magic.
What Happens When Global Human Population Peaks?
Sustained below-replacement fertility will mean tens of billions of lives not lived over the next few centuries — many lives that could have been wonderful for the people who would have lived them and by your standards, too.
That line makes my skin crawl.
I am not quiet about my antinatalist beliefs. More than any other belief I hold, these have alienated me from people that either a) have children, b) want children, or c) have never questioned why someone would want fewer people in the world.
Thing is, my antinatalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I don’t wish for the human race to go extinct, which means I’m not against the entire concept of having children. I’m against having children in the context of our current climate, of our civilization, and in large part because I know people will never stop breeding (though this article seems to suggest otherwise). My antinatalism is both contextual and aspirational.
I’m not stupid. I get why this triggers people that have children or want them, but we as a culture have forgotten how to get along with people that hold different beliefs than our own. (I, a liberal, am friends with many conservatives — something my liberal cohort seem to be having a harder and harder time tolerating. Strangely, my conservative friends, though none of them are diehard Trumpets, don’t seem to have the same hang-ups… grist for a later mill.) Plainly: it’s impossible to be in your late 30s and not have friends that have children.
But my friends that want children, and specifically want their own biological children… That still triggers much of my self-righteous ire. Why — why?! — when we know there are so many children in the foster/adoption systems that are already born, why do people insist on having their own? It’s the same feelings triggered by people who only adopt puppies and kittens. I have experience managing animal shelters — it’s always the older animals that get left behind in kennels and cages. Consequently, those are the animals I choose to love. I am, as you can imagine, pro-adoption.
An argument I often hear is this: I want something, be it a child or a dog, that I can shape and mold. I want the experience of having the utmost control over this creature. Hell, my parents did that when they had me, and they did so very intentionally, perhaps to the detriment of some of their other relationships. I sympathize with this urge. I too would love the experience of having a creature I can shape completely, passing along the best qualities that were passed down to me. I adopted my current dog when she was just shy of two — the youngest animal I’ve yet had — and it’s been a delight to see her open up to the world, and I wince every time I pat her on the head or I introduce her to a tall man — each triggering a reaction born of abuse she suffered before I had her. Do I wish I could spare her those experiences? Absolutely.
But ultimately, I derive joy from knowing that she’s seen some shit and that only makes us luckier to be in each other’s lives. I put down a dog a few months ago — he was an old man when I adopted him, neglected and full of cancer — but gosh, the appreciation he had for our time together was undeniable, an appreciation born of relational experience. He knew love because he knew the absence of it.
That is the foundation of my antinatalism. I’m only against the birthing of new people until the ones already here can have the chance to be loved.
We all deserve that chance.
Why and how to write things on the Internet
In my opinion, the strongest reason for any random person to start a blog is that you will have more awesome friendships—both in the sense that you will meet new awesome people as a result of your blog, but also in the sense that writing will cause you to have more interesting ideas, which will make your existing friendships more awesome because you’ll have better stuff to talk about.
Most other important things in life, like job opportunities and romantic relationships, are downstream of the quality of your friends, so this is pretty great.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been writing on the internet for much of my adult life, here and there, anonymously and, at least recently, not. The power of the internet is in finding connection, and I’ve made friends or acquaintances via my online presence that make my life far more rewarding. In “real life,” I know at most one person that’s interested in iOS app development, another one person that might appreciate (yet doesn’t love) Star Wars action figures, and maybe two or three that are interested in technology in general. “Real life” is bounded far more by geography and circumstance, but online, people with similar interests flock to each other like moths to a flame.
Thing is, none of this has happened on social media. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok… These companies that tout their “we’re all about connecting people” bonafides are advertising companies and nothing more. Don’t be fooled. The only site that has a semblance of camaraderie (in my experience) is Reddit, and even that has started to undergo some unpleasant changes.
The real fun lies in the small web. What started back on uJournal and LiveJournal back in the late 90s and early 2000s led me here to Micro.Blog twenty years later. It’s the joy of hunting for great writing, for righteous opinions, for scathing dissents, for unique voices, all unfiltered by the cruft of advertising. It’s the human internet.
I am, as ever, torn. I both love my corner of the internet and hate The Internet. But I have to remember: I’m an anomaly. I pay for my search engine so I’m able to tweak my personal search algorithm. How many people do you know pay for a search engine? How many people spend a good deal each year on bespoke software for their iPhones and Macs so that they might use them to their fullest potential? My internet is not most people’s internet, and that’s easy to forget.
But I am, at heart, in love with my internet. I am so immeasurably grateful for the opportunity to have connected with so many people over the years. After all, what else is there?
MAGA is not interested in building anything, in winning a real majority, in constructing an actual future rather than lamenting an invented past. Everything is performative and destructive. It’s all driven by who they are against rather than what they are for. As a Republican Senator told Romney as he settled in, their view is that the first consideration in voting on any bill should always be: “Will this help me win re-election?”
There’s no definitive moment in the collapse of a republic, but that quote comes close. If all you care about is your own grip on power, regard the opposing party as ipso facto illegitimate, and give zero fucks for the system as a whole, a liberal democracy has effectively ceased to exist. A single major party, captured by radicals and nihilists, can do that.
Scenes From the End of the Sexual Revolution
The Ace Theater boomed with laughter, a thousand bodies convulsing right back at him, blonde beach waves straight from the dry bar bouncing with mirth. That energy hit the stage. He kept shaking. This was not the sound of “offense,” but its opposite, the release of people hearing something they had long wanted to say, reassuring themselves that they are not culpable for the misery they Lyft beyond.
What a fucking line.
A+, 10/10, no notes.
Apple continues to use our own mortality as marketing
On Tuesday, Apple revealed yet another reason why we might want to have our Apple devices with us at all times: Roadside Assistance. The service, which is compatible with the iPhone 14 and later, lets you contact AAA via satellite in case your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
In the West, I use location sharing via satellite connectivity on my iPhone 14 constantly, but visiting family in the Midwest I don’t (and can’t) use it at all. It’s a testament to cell carriers that they’ve blanketed much of the eastern half of the United States with cellular connectivity.
Russia’s Scorched Earth Policy in Ukraine: A Trip to the Dried-Up Kakhovka Reservoir
When people attack a teaching by criticizing the behavior of the messenger, they fail to distinguish between truth and authority. Truth does not depend on the person preaching it because truth is objective. If objective truths did not exist, then any discussion on moral codes is meaningless because two persons could have opposing views on the acceptability of murder and both would be correct from their subjective standpoint. Murder being right and wrong at the same time is absurd. Thus, though humans may err in interpreting truth, truth itself is objective and outside of humans.
I’ve always been a touch uneasy with the charge of hypocrisy — both leveling it and having it leveled at me. It’s a bit too…easy. Online, it’s a get-out-of-jail-free deflection, a charge you can throw at someone to put them back on their heel and thus distract from your own inevitable failings.
I found this article particularly interesting given it’s a Catholic publication and, well, need I say any more? But in our cultural slide toward relativism, I find myself with strange bedfellows yet again.
Daring Fireball: Thoughts and Observations on This Week’s ‘Wonderlust’ Apple Event
On the photography front there were two major new features announced Tuesday. The first is a new generation of portrait photography, where Portrait mode can be applied to an image after it was shot as a regular still image. I’ve wanted this feature ever since Portrait mode debuted. While capturing, you don’t have to do a damn thing. You just frame your photo and hit the shutter. No switching modes. But on-device machine learning will decide on the spot whether Portrait mode would improve the image (which will only happen automatically if the subject is a person, dog, or cat), but you can enable it, disable it, and adjust it to your heart’s content in post.
The second is the iPhone 15 Pro models’ ability to capture spatial video. I had speculated over the summer that it would be cool if Apple could launch this for iPhones this year, and they did it. Clearly the optimal way to watch spatial video will be with a Vision headset, but the best way to capture them — especially in terms of the old adage that the best camera is the one you have with you — will be with iPhones. I considered it a lock that iPhones would eventually be able to capture spatial video memories, but to me it’s a sign of operational excellence and cross-device collaboration that Apple pulled it off this year, with iPhones that will ship months ahead of the first-generation Vision Pro. (The ability to shoot spatial video using an iPhone 15 Pro isn’t available yet — it’s “coming later this year”. And the hands-on area units didn’t have the feature, nor any example spatial videos preloaded. So the only thing we know about the feature is what was broadcast in the keynote.)
Why the smartphone camera changed photography forever
When I was shooting film, the problem was the huge expense of processing and printing. With digital, the problem became the crazy amount of time it took to grade, retouch, and print my pictures. I loved shooting for myself, I just couldn’t justify the money, or the post-processing time – or both.
But in 2007, everything changed. The iPhone was launched.
We, the audience, are not responding to the sharpness, the clarity, the minimal chromatic aberration or lack thereof — the technical quality aspects of this imagery. We’re responding to the honesty; to the realism; and to the intimacy of the photographs people are posting on Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr, etc. After all, we’ve never really seen it before. Or at least, not in such abundance.
That morning, there were so many moments I was hopeful. First, it was just an accident. Next, that everyone could escape the towers if given the chance. Then, that only one tower would fall. Then, that these would be the only casualties. Then, worst of all, that something this profound and dramatic would soften people’s hearts and make them reflect.
I was wrong, over and over again. I don’t know exactly where the line is between optimistic and naive, but these days I feel tremendous compassion and empathy towards the young man who had all those foolish beliefs. I don’t regret hoping that such a horrible day could lead to something better.
But I really did underestimate how power works, and how little it would take to push people from their better angels to their most vicious, vengeful selves.
A disclaimer: I have had substantially more at-bats with debt collectors than most people, as a result of an old hobby of writing letters on behalf of debtors to their lenders and non-affiliated debt collectors. I did this over the Internet, on my own volition, because it seemed pro-social and I was extremely underused by my actual job at the time. This experience leaves me with strong opinions on the debt collection industry; a frequent archetypical person in need of a letter was a Kansan grandmother in diminished financial circumstances who had been harassed for months. I’m going to try to keep these views to a dull roar here, in the spirit of spending more mental energy on discussing why the system presents as so broken.
People with a passion are not to be underestimated.
There is a familiar pattern to my writing. To my actual writing.
I sit at my desk. I start to write. I build up momentum.
A few pages in, I start to think how people might respond to it. I think of the thousands of oh, that's easy for you to says and well, you've never had tos I've heard over the years and I slow down.
Then I stop. And I erase what I've written.
I have a lot of ideas, some of them good. I think I know the way things should be better than most people. I have a strong desire to change the world, to make this planet a better, kinder place for all creatures, not just humans.
But when you’ve had a life like mine, how can you tell anyone else how to live theirs? When I’ve been afforded so much, how can I tell others how it should be?
Thing is, all those that’s easy for you to says? They’re not wrong. It is easier for me to say certain things, to reach certain conclusions. But the irony remains: just because some conclusions are easier to reach, it doesn’t make those conclusions wrong.
When you’re a beneficiary of luck and capitalism as I have been, no one wants to hear your fucking opinion. Being born to two kind, loving people? Pure luck. I may not have a lot of power and I may not have a lot of money, but I don’t have any debt. I don’t need anything and I want very little. That is true freedom.
This is why I delete. It’s the same urge that drives me out into the woods or up into the mountains. Let’s face it together: I am not going to change this world. No matter how good my ideas, no matter how right my conclusions, no one wants to hear that shit from me. This culture loathes imperfect messengers, no matter how good a point they might have.
So rather than complain, rather than coming off as a spoiled brat, even if I’m not wrong… I keep my mouth shut and retreat.
Summary: I believe that small websites are compelling aesthetically, but are also important to help us resist selling our souls to large tech companies. In this essay I present a vision for the “small web” as well as the small software and architectures that power it. Also, a bonus rant about microservices.
and
Kagi Small Web via mjtsai
OpenAI confirms that AI writing detectors don’t work
In a section of the FAQ titled “Do AI detectors work?”, OpenAI writes, “In short, no. While some (including OpenAI) have released tools that purport to detect AI-generated content, none of these have proven to reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-generated content.”
How I love summer, for I am far less online and far less anxious about the rise of AI when I’m able to go outside.
Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found
and
California’s Salton Sea Eyed for Lithium Extraction With New Tech
Horace Dediu: ‘The Value of a Customer’ via Daring Fireball
The average iPhone customer is 7.4 times as valuable as an Android user. That’s remarkable, but not surprising.
I know very few Android users these days, but those I do share a common refrain: “tech is too complicated, so why would I pay more for an iPhone?” Never having used an iPhone, they become used to a certain…lack of polish. Case-in-point: for the first decade of Android, scrolling on the devices was awful. Jittery, jumpy… Compare that to the very first iPhone, which nailed smooth scrolling right off the bat.
Like using a Mac, the joy and delight (and I use both of those words intentionally) of an iPhone is not in the tasks you accomplish with it (you can, after all, take a photo with an Android, or send a text, or browse the web), but the million little in-between interactions. Opening an app. Swiping to go home. The speed at which FaceID unlocks your phone. The little thoughtful, playful animations of the Dynamic Island. All those interactions add up.
They add up to customers that deeply and perhaps subconsciously satisfied. And people who are satisfied are far more likely to use their phone. It so happens that most people use their phone to, well, buy stuff.
Me? I spent a good deal of money on software for my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I buy apps that are thoughtfully designed by creative people. (Lumy is a recent find that I just adore.) And, notably, I’m happy to do so. For that, I credit Apple.
Three things I’ve been enjoying:
- The Larry Sanders Show
- The music of Florence Price
- The reference desk at my local library. Ask a question about, say, local history…then stand back. Phone books, plat maps, soil surveys, yearbooks, geographic studies…you name it, they know where to find it. You know you’re on to something special when you get a reference librarian to say, “Well now I’m curious.”