I saw The Toaster Museum linked to over at Hacker News and immediately thought of John Siracusa (@siracusa).
Here’s some great context for why I immediately thought of him, by his friend and Accidental Tech Podcast (@atp.fm) co-host Casey Liss (@caseyliss).
Associated Humane Societies.
I have some more Bluesky invite codes.
But I’m 40 and married, so I don’t just hand a code to the first internet user that smiles at me.
Bluesky servers can use the invite tree in moderation decisions, so I do at least some vetting of folks before I send them a code. No hate/harassment/anti-vax etc.
Top Gun: Maverick, 2022 - ★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
Sure, it’s a couple hours of Tom Cruise being paid millions of dollars to do stunts literally everyone else in the world would have to pay millions of dollars to do. But nails the fan service, the tech, and the physics.
And it’s fun.
Also, it includes an appearance by the Ice Man himself, though anyone who has seen Val Kilmer’s autobiographical documentary Val will instantly notice that Kilmer basically just walked onto the Maverick set dressed as he always dresses to greet company these days.
Threatening to take away your customers’ fake merit badges if they don’t pay more isn’t a business.
It’s barely a grift.
It’s how a lonely bully enforces the closest thing to social relationships he can possibly attain.
But at least we can call the post-mortem when this all explodes “the X-Files.”
Obviously this is incredible, full stop. But if you’re trained in the craft and the composers, this must be one of the most delightful things you’ve seen in a long, long time. And those animations!
The kicker? The performer, Joseph Castanyer Alonso, is the cellist of the Royal Stockholm Philaharmonic Orchestra. Piano isn’t even his primary instrument. Wild.
🍿 Prey, 2022 - ★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
A Predator movie is only as good as its protagonist.
The dialogue can mostly suck, as it does here.
The CG effects can look like trash, as they too often do here.
The plot can be an early colonial-American choose-your-own-adventure story, as it (mostly) is here.
But if you have 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger, or 2022 Amber Midthunder, you will have a movie worth your time, and worthy of a theater run.
That Prey didn't get the latter is an affront to Midthunder's performance.
She carries the movie, together with the skilled eye of Philadelphia's own Dan Trachtenberg.
And you can't help but notice, as the movie progresses toward a climax that thrills in spite of its predictability, that only she and the Predator get any character development. They're growing in parallel: she coming into her power, and it learning that its power may, for the first time, not be enough to ensure its survival.
(And yes, the dog lives.)
One bit of Casey Newton’s latest Platformer piece, on how Threads can survive the calm after the storm, must have many social media pros searching their feelings.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of social media managers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
I need Mrs. Meyers to answer for the fact that her “Compassion Flower” handsoap scent has me routinely smelling like I think Axe body spray is a legitimate thing for a 40-year-old person to smell like.
Kaya’s Kitchen.
Avon-by-the-Sea Beach.
I was going to treat reddit like Facebook, visiting every 1 or 2 months to see what was going on. But reddit leadership are so hostile to the most engaged users that I think it’s time to delete my account, which sucks.
Reddit removes years of chat and message archives from users' accounts | Mashable
💬 💬 Okay, I'm trying again to see if I can set it up so my updates on status.lol are imported to my Micro.blog and syndicated out from there.
Elon Musk is the answer to the question:
What if we gave MRAs, incels and wannabe MAGA Big Deals™ billions of dollars and Peter Thiel’s cell phone number?
List of Indie Dev Sales Events
Matt Corey put together a list of developers holding sales in an indie software version of Amazon’s Prime Day:
Below, you’ll find a list of over 100 (🤯) Indie apps that are offering discounts for Indie App Sales, July 11-12! Each of these apps is developed by an Indie App Developer - that can mean a lot of different things, but generally speaking, these are built by very small teams, or individuals either full time or part time. Indie App Developers are the epitome of small businesses, and sure do appreciate your support!
Mark Frauenfelder, writing at Boing Boing:
A recent study of sleep loss and depression found that one night of total sleep deprivation generally worsens mood and emotional regulation in healthy individuals, but induces a temporary lift in spirits for some individuals with depression. . . . The findings were remarkable: lack of sleep escalated negative mood among the healthy subjects, but eased depressive symptoms in 43% of the patients with depression.
Presented without comment. 😐
Here’s a link to the study itself. Let me know if any copies fall off the back of any trucks, because i don’t have access to PNAS.
Firefox address bar modifiers - the tilde.institute wiki:
The address bar has become our entry point to the internet these days. Firefox in its default configuration does some sort of smart guess on what you type there. If it resembles a URL then the browser makes that request. If not, it sends the string you typed to your default search engine. It also includes some fuzzy search matches from your history and all that, which is fine 90% of the time, but sometimes you need a bit more control over what results it shows you.
I had no idea. These are super-useful.
(via Hacker News)
Breakfast at Monmouth Junction Kitchen
I’m trying out a new cross-posting method, this time using the #RSS feed for a new “status” category in Micro.blog to cross-post to other services, like Mastodon and Bluesky. If it works, I can leave cross-posting deactivated by default on regular posts.
(take 2…)
I guess we’re supposed to shit on Threads.
Skepticism is valid. But they already collect data from Instagram users. And you can always deactivate or delete your account: help.instagram.com/139886812…
I’m giving it a chance, but the forced algo. timeline is probably a dealbreaker for me.