“Michael Keaton Enters the SNL Ring” youtu.be/CJGNX31DI… It’s one of the better films of the last several years. 10/10, no notes.

Sam Cole, writing at 404 Media about Matt Mullenweg’s ongoing, unforced founder mode flameout: “We were unaware that Matt redirected sign-up emails until current Automattic employees contacted our support team,” a spokesperson for Blind told me, adding that they’d “never seen a CEO or executive try to limit their employees from signing up for Blind by redirecting emails.” This is just gross. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would still want to work for him now that toxicity is the norm, but he still has fans inside the company:

Abhorrent CEO or not, a lot of really incredible people at SpaceX achieved a really incredible thing with the Starship launch/Super Heavy catch, and it was awesome to show my kids and see the excitement in their eyes. youtu.be/b28zbsnk-…

Amazon killed API access for one of my favorite apps, price tracker DropScout. Its developer, Daniel Kramer, writes on Mastodon: Amazon has pulled my API access and the app is non-functional as a result. I’m looking for find a solution but the future doesn’t look good. Apparently it’s against terms of service to track prices. There are other apps that do this so it’s a bit surprising. Apparently they’ve given other services permission and I’m trying to see if they will allow DropScout to do this.

The 1999 movie Sleepy Hollow is, to my mind, the film to watch during the transition from early autumn to the Halloween season. It captures the dreary, de-saturated feeling you get, on the east coast of the U.S., anyway, when you realize there won’t be another day without a chill in the air for a few months. It’s full of weirdness and dark humor, but one of my favorite exchanges in the movie is this:

😑 Sometimes, when I've really had it with my kids, I just look them right in the eyes and tell them, with the most stern and serious expression I can muster, "There will be no fourth chances!"

Matt Mullenweg is a litigator’s worst nightmare — please stop talking in public about the subject matter of the litigation — but presumably Wordpress' lawyer Neal Katyal knows what he’s doing and doesn’t expect the PR blitz to cause problems.

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I find it strange that my Google TV with Chromecast started outputting green static and weird noises on every input of my LG CX the day before the all new Google TV streamer is set to go on sale…

⌚ Dear watchOS 11, I didn't stand when you suggested I should, so why did you tell me I did a great job getting closer to my stand goal? Confusedly, Joe

Watching these “network state” clowns fail will be fun, but that shouldn’t overshadow the predatory nature of their worldview.

Sometimes I’m writing a Very Serious Blog Post™️ and then I have an intrusive ‘90s thought. For example, I love and hate the fact that, probably for the rest of my life, every time someone says “I don’t wanna wait” I have no choice or free will at all and I just sing 🎤 for our lives to be OH-ver 🎤

Matt Webb wrote about his open source in-page chat tool, cursor party: “If you’ve visited my actual website, rather than reading by email or whatever, such as reading this very post, you may notice somebody else’s cursor pass by as you’re reading.” It’s a wonderful, playful, well-executed idea.

Today there was a cybertruck parked at the daycare where parents park to drop off their kids. I’m wondering if I should put my tie on after drop-off because, like, how self-important do ties seem these days, right? But then there’s a literal human person driving a cybertruck to drop off their kids.

Finished reading: The Fellowship Of The Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien 📚 By the end you know all the players, some have already been lost, others have played out their parts, and still more have shown the true good in their hearts, and the depths of evil the Ring may inspire them to should they come to possess it. This is probably my tenth or eleventh time reading these books, but my first time reading it with my kids.

Bluesky’s Trust & Safety decisions may not please everyone, but they’re clearly thinking them through in good faith. While nothing is perfect, a primarily public data store subject to moderation by obfuscation (requiring API work to get at certain moderated data) strikes a thoughtful balance.

I’m no employment lawyer, but an (allegedly) inconsistently applied policy of ominous non-compete reminder meetings when your best creatives post stuff to their personal accounts sounds…problematic. It’s also an efficient way to inspire them to leave, and that’s exactly what Becca Farsace did.

This review may contain spoilers. This is the first time watching it with the kids. They were enthralled from the initial sword fight on, though we did skip the fire swamp, the “Booooo!” lady, some torture, and much of the burning-giant-in-a-trenchcoat scene. To me, it’s still true that the idea that more than only a ver small handful of movies are better than this one is wholly, totally, and in all other ways…

Jelly Roll was a compelling interviewee on the New York Times Interview, and while I haven’t listened to his music yet, I intend to. But I’m posting to warn anyone who turned the interview off after Jelly Roll inveighed against voting: he walked that back in the final minutes of the podcast episode, which was a second interview session on a different day, telling the interviewer he was just messing with him.

Fun milestone: my son is exactly calling-every-man-with-a-white-beard-Gandalf years old. 🧙‍♂️

This 1956 promotional video is a time capsule of New Jersey when my parents were kids. This Technicolor color film was produced in 1956 for the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, and based on a 1953 John T. Cunningham book This is New Jersey. It’s surprisingly light on corporate propaganda. However, the mention that one third of the state was below the Mason-Dixon Line was a little too… wistful, especially given the paucity of people of color in the film.

Can anyone make an argument that the VP should be anyone but Buttigieg? And I mean an argument that would make sense to someone who doesn’t listen to the Politico Playbook Daily Briefing every morning. He has: ✅ name recognition, ✅ policy chops, ✅ resume, ✅ sparring experience, and ✅ a thick skin.

Today, after a typical barrage of dad jokes during a break from playing with my kids, my niece told me I am saved in her phone as “Joe Ross Cringe Uncle.” She even showed me the contact card to prove it. She and my wife both thought I would, and should, take it as an insult. I did not. 🤪

Linked Links: Google Docs Can Import and Export Markdown by Michael Tsai Maybe I’ll use Google Docs more often now that it can copy/paste and import/export Markdown. I still remember using it for hours at a time throughout law school, but most firms maintain their vise grip on Microsoft Word. Linked Links is my term for posts where I’m linking to someone else’s link post. Maybe I’ll stick with it as a recurring post type.

I never found Letterman funny, and he comes off as mean and a little bigoted in this clip with the late, great Richard Simmons. But Simmons has a ton more charisma than Letterman, outshining him in a 4-minute clip produced by Letterman’s own team.

Everyone who has ever traveled by airplane has at least one infuriating story, including me. But when I missed a scheduled flight on American Airlines last week, the customer service person put me on the next flight with none of the fees, up-charges or judgment that I was expecting, and it was nice.