Practical AI tip: When someone sends me a PDF calendar (😡), I ask Claude to process the info into ICS format. For my kids' daycare snack calendar, I say:
Please convert data from each day to one all-day event, like: Snacks: AM: Cheerios / PM: Crackers
And I get the excellent result pictured here.
With Omnivore being acquired by Eleven Labs and shutting down, I recommend Readwise Reader.
You can still self-host Omnivore, but I think Readwise is worth its ~$100/year price, though all-in Apple users might prefer GoodLinks for a simpler but still well-designed alternative at a much lower cost.
And just like that, someone I have idolized since I was a young child shows themselves willing to deliver our republic to death by authoritarianism.
Here’s a real form someone I know who makes more than minimum wage was recently asked by their employer to sign:
I understand that for calculation of overtime, my contractual hour rate with Employer is set at minimum wage, which is the wage that New Jersey Department of Labor sets, or the Federal minimum wage, whichever is higher. This means that if I clock hours in excess of 40 in a one week pay period, that my pay should be equal to/or greater than 40 hours at minimum wage and overtime at 1.5 times the minimum wage.
Am I missing something, or is this what us fancy lawyers call… illegal af?
“Michael Keaton Enters the SNL Ring”
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:
“There is a vocal group of sycophants who are cheering on Matt’s actions via Anonymattic,” [an employee] said, “drawing favorable comparisons to how Elon Musk and Donald Trump operate. Their morale seems high, but I can’t relate.” Screenshots viewed by 404 Media show some staff having changed their Slack usernames to include “[STAYING]” to signal their support of Mullenweg and intention to remain at the company.
The thing is, whether you agree with him or not, it’s not the rhetorical position he has taken that’s the problem, it’s the way he’s expressing and defending that position that is the problem. And it’s such a problem that it’s hard to see anyone defending his recent behavior as having much of a reputation left after all of this.
As I’ve said before, I don’t envy his/the company’s lawyers the job of litigating around his ongoing meltdown. I’ll be keeping an eye on the filings at CourtListener.
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.
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.
DropScout is my favorite in its class of apps and I hope Daniel gets his API access back.
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:
Ichabod Crane: You have moved the body.
Dr. Thomas Lancaster: I did.
Crane: You must never move the body!
Lancaster: Why not?
Crane: … Because…
😑 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
Saturday, September 21, 2024 →
Watching these “network state” clowns fail will be fun, but that shouldn’t overshadow the predatory nature of their worldview.
Thursday, September 12, 2024 →
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. Sure, I’m editing on the fly because they’re both younger than five, but they’re loving it.
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.