After the rain.
After the rain.
Greg Knauss on Mastodon:
The rapidly-increasing percentage of my day spent ensuring that whatever product or service I’m interacting with isn’t actively trying to fuck me is exhausting.
We are no longer customers or clients or citizens or even human. We are exploitable marks, turnips to be bled dry and discarded.
I don’t mean this to apply just to tech — it’s everything, from cable providers to oil companies to the stock market to (and inspired and led by) the President of the United States.
We live in a grift culture, where the only thing that matters is how much you have to be cheated out of.
Yep, yep, yep.
Between January and March 2026, Beyond Plastics placed 53 Bluetooth-enabled trackers inside single-use polypropylene cold cups and dropped them into in-store recycling bins at 35 Starbucks locations across nine states and Washington, D.C. Of the 36 trackers that returned usable data, none pinged from a recycling facility. Instead, the cups traveled to landfills, incinerators, waste-transfer stations, and material recovery facilities.
Can’t say I’m surprised.
Watched “All the President’s Men” for the first time last night. The 1970’s era of filmmaking sits in stark contrast to today. The picture quality, the color palette, the light (or lack thereof), the sound mixing, just to name a few.
But the thing that stood out to me was the following screenshot:
Why are there just cars parked perpendicular to the parking spaces? What kind of madness is this?
Wow, do I not know my U.S. geography! Atlanta is 7th on this list!
Speaking of the Braves, I came across this Instagram post from Dale Murphy today and thought I’d share…
I’ve been thinking a lot about Bobby Cox and the impact he had on my career and my life. It’s not a new thought—| always credit him for saving my career because well… he did.
Bobby was so loyal-he gave guys every chance he possibly could to succeed. He didn’t panic. He was patient. I never saw frustration come out as anger with him. I still remember him yelling encouragement to guys from the dugout when they were up to bat. They couldn’t always hear him…but everyone in the dugout could. I think that encouragement was for our benefit-knowing he’d be yelling the same things to us when we were at the plate.
Bobby always had your back. If you were on his team-you were his guy. If not, you weren’t. It was as simple as that. You might remember that game when I was with the Phillies and Bobby told Tom Glavine he had to even the score and throw at the next guy up to bat. Glav checked the lineup card and said, “Bobby, it’s Murph!” It didn’t matter to Bobby. We were friends of course. And a short time before that I had been one of his guys-but not anymore. I always admired Bobby for that—he was a players manager in every sense of the word.
You can still see Bobby Cox’s influence throughout the Braves organization today. As one of those who was fortunate enough to play for him, I will always feel lucky that our paths crossed in Atlanta, Georgia, all those years ago and blessed to have known him and be able to call him a friend.
RIP to one of the best-Bobby Cox.
I love that we have Murphy as one of the “good guys” of baseball representing Atlanta. My dad tells me when I was really little (in the 80’s), I woujd always talk about him while we watched the Braves on TBS.
Talk about a tale of two responses to a bad start.
The Film That Explains Contemporary America - The Atlantic
My colleague David Frum once wrote about the Trump era, “When this is all over, nobody will admit to ever having supported it.” I thought about that a lot while watching The Sorrow and the Pity, which showed how true it was in France. But the documentary is ambiguous on what a society should do about that. One old guerrilla says that he knows that informers continue to live around him. He cannot forget the betrayals, but he also doesn’t seek revenge. Ophuls makes a case that remembering what happened is essential, but he leaves for viewers to decide whether it’s more important to effect justice or to simply coexist with those who see the error of their ways, even if they do not admit it.
This will be the hardest part for me. I already know that.
Because I know these people. I work with these people. I live amongst them.
I don’t know that I will ever forgive them.
Ever.
The quiet grief of adult friendship
And perhaps this is why adult friendship feels increasingly radical. It resists the transactional logic modern life rewards everywhere else. Because a real friend offers something profoundly rare: unoptimised presence. Family is structured by blood. Marriage by institution. Work relationships by utility. Friendship survives purely through mutual choosing. Nobody has to stay. And yet some people do.
Despite impossible schedules and emotional fatigue, some friends continue returning. They send memes during meetings. They remember your important dates. They call you out-of-the-blue. Not because it is convenient. But because somewhere, beneath all the exhaustion adulthood imposes, they still consider your inner life important. Sometimes it is simply the stubborn decision to keep returning to people despite the world constantly training you to prioritise everything else.
When I was younger, and this topic came up, I must admit that I kind of rolled my eyes a bit. It seemed like “olds” bemoaning some nostalgic past that may or may not have actually existed.
At almost 46, however, I am seeing things very differently. Feeling the loss of that connection more than I ever have.
StanChart CEO seeks to reassure staff over ‘lower value human capital’ comment | Reuters
Standard Chartered (STAN.L), opens new tab CEO Bill Winters sought to assuage staff concerns on Wednesday, a day after saying that the bank will cut thousands of jobs over the next four years as it moves to replace “lower-value human capital” with technology.
I mean, he could have said “human scum”. How ungrateful are you, people?
How to deal with your kid leaving • Buttondown
Our children should know that we had lives before them, during them, and after them. If for no other reason than they need role models of how to live a life. Which gets lived until the very end.
I love every part of this post. My oldest will be a senior in college this year. My youngest is off to Europe for the summer (after his college freshman year) in about 48 hours.
Shit gettin’ real.
Kleptocracy - Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
Here’s the bottom line. Donald Trump wants to take $1.8 billion dollars of money that taxpayers like you and me have paid to the government, and he wants to give it to his most hardcore followers, the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6. Trump calls them victims of Joe Biden’s weaponization of the Justice Department. It’s corruption. Corruption in plain sight. Trump is going to give his supporters taxpayers’ money.
The sad thing is I’m not surprised by this at all. Not even a little bit.
When everything is bad, nothing is bad. People get desensitized. They can no longer keep track of it all. It’s all so awful that none of it gets processed anymore.
Yep.
Japan’s Tourism Troubles Are Being Fuelled By Social Media Assholes
In none of those examples were the size of the crowds of tourists the problem, or even their general behaviour. The vast majority of people were fine! The problem was the tourists with their phones out shooting themselves for a video or taking endless selfies, blocking crowds, barring entrance to stores and just generally getting in everyone’s way in the most annoying way possible. I know simply blaming TikTok and Instagram and YouTube Shorts for so many flashpoints is an overly-simplistic explanation, but also, from everything I saw in my two weeks (where other kinds of rude or offensive behaviour outside the occasional jerk were rare), it was kinda true.
I’ve said it before. Social media is, in and of itself, a menace.
Minnesota to ban prediction markets like Kalshi, Polymarket : NPR
The new state law makes it a crime to host or advertise a prediction market, which it defines as a system that lets consumers place a wager on a future outcome, like sports, elections, live entertainment, someone’s word choice and world affairs.
Honestly, I agree with this. It’s not good for society.
DOJ announces nearly $1.8B fund to compensate Trump allies | AP News
The Trump administration announced Monday the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate allies of the Republican president who believe they have been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, an arrangement that Democrats and government watchdogs derided as “corrupt” and unconstitutional.
I’m sure glad we have no wasteful spening happening in the federal government these days.
Can’t complain if you don’t do your part.
Of the many things he’s done, this fucker has further emboldened racists.
This is at a publicly, nationally televised baseball game. And they had no qualms about it. In fact, they were proud of it.
We Are Eating Our Own Seed Corn – SQLServerCentral
Here is the deeper problem, and the one that should give even the most enthusiastic AI advocates pause.
The AI systems that are replacing junior workers did not emerge from nothing. They were trained in decades of human-generated work: code committed by junior developers learning on the job, documentation written by entry-level technical writers, support transcripts from help desk analysts in their first year. Every iteration of AI that handles “routine” technical work is drawn on a reservoir of human expertise that was built, painstakingly, by people doing exactly the jobs we are now eliminating.
What happens when that reservoir stops being replenished?
Not the first person to say this, but it bears repeating. Again and again and again.
Daring Fireball: AI Is Technology, Not a Product
The idea that AI agents “will have already figured out where [we] need to go, and the car will be waiting without the friction of a request” strikes me as pure fever dream high-on-the-hype fantasy. I’m just going to step outside a restaurant when I’m done eating a meal and a ride-share is going to be there, waiting for me, without my having hailed it? Every time? And I’m going to find this pleasing, not creepy? And ride-share drivers are going to respond to all these requests, because the requests will never be wrong? And this is going to happen, somehow, without my carrying a phone with me? And this is going to happen in the next four years? I don’t think I’d want this even if it were plausible, but it doesn’t sound plausible.
Nailing it.
That moment you realize you’re way too old to be walking through a mall.
U.S. Set to Drop Charges Against Indian Billionaire Accused of Fraud - The New York Times
The reversal came after the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-chairman of the prominent firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
Mr. Giuffra’s efforts on Mr. Adani’s behalf culminated in a previously unreported meeting last month at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Giuffra ticked through about 100 slides outlining why prosecutors lacked basic evidence, as well as the jurisdiction even to bring the case, one of the people said.
Another slide also made an unusual offer: If prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs, echoing a pledge he had made in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election.
Fraud = bad. Bribes = good. Got it.
I’d love to go back to my year 2000 self who was sitting in his database course at Georgia Tech and say “Normal form is great, even preferred, but NOT always practical in the real world. It’s ok.”
Having a stored procedure run for 6-7 seconds on principle alone when it could run in less than 1 second is just asinine.
What happens if you’re both?
I’ve never been to a graduation where I or someone I know wasn’t graduating. There’s a first time for everything!
Utah is not jazzed about a potential AI data center
Plans to build an AI data center that will span 40,000 acres in northwest Utah were approved by county commissioners last week, despite protests from thousands of local residents who believe the project will wreak havoc on the local environment and increase energy costs.
Voices don’t matter anymore. People don’t matter anymore. Only money.
I’m convinced that Waymo’s just drive around the city as we sleep. On the way back from the airport this morning around 5:45am, there were two in front of me at the stoplight. And one behind me. And three at the cross street stoplight.
Judgement Day is coming.
Just going to leave this here…
The city of Atlanta, especially Atlanta sports, owes a great deal to these two men. Fitting statement on both Ted Turner and Bobby Cox.
2 Letters from Steve | David Gelphman’s Blog
But until the product was officially released I could not show it to anyone without permission from Apple management. There was no way I was going to take the iPad with me unless Steve personally approved it.
One from way back (in 2013), but someone linked to it recently, and I loved reading it. Heck, I probably read it 13 years ago, but don’t remember. Small acts of kindness can go a long way. We should all remember that. We should all strive to live up to that.
The war between fast and legitimate is here
The history of speed without legitimacy is a history of fraud and human wreckage and a great many self-justifying memoirs published with the gift and grift of hindsight. Every time someone tells you that move-fast-and-break-things is a good strategy, you should ask what got broken and whose problem it’s going to be to fix it.
What a fantastic way to put that. It’s something that has triggered my brain when it comes to AI. AI is simply the newest move-fast-and-break-things fad to be introduced into our lives. It just so happens to be permeating more parts of our lives than, say, a communal remote work “solution”.
I continue to be impressed with Joan’s writing. A wonderful read.
History of Changes to the Minimum Wage Law | U.S. Department of Labor
The 2007 amendments increased the minimum wage to $5.85 per hour effective July 24, 2007; $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008; and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009.
2009!!!! We haven’t changed it since 2009?!? I heard someone say this today, and I had to go check for myself.
Know what that amount is adjusted for inflation?
$26
We are not taking care of people in this country.
Parents Increasingly Reject Vitamin K Shots for Newborns, Hospitals Report — ProPublica
In almost every case, the babies’ deaths could have been prevented with a long-standard vitamin K shot. But across the country, families — first in smatterings, now in droves — are declining the single, inexpensive injection given at birth to newborns to help their blood clot.
Many of them are doing so out of a well-meaning but ill-informed abundance of caution. In the hopes of safeguarding their newborns from what they see as unnecessary medical intervention, they have shunned fundamental and scientifically sound pharmaceutical intervention. The trend is also fueled by a contradictory pairing: families’ fierce desire to protect their babies and a cascade of false information infused into their social media algorithms.
Although it is not a vaccine, the vitamin K shot has been swept up in the same post-pandemic tide that has led to a drop in key childhood vaccines, including for measles and whooping cough.
How very pro-life of them…
Former MLB pitcher (best known for his years with the New York Mets), said this about meeting Trump on Laura Ingraham’s show:
It was just an amazing experience. I mean, I’ve always been a huge fan of President Trump and I met him for the first time today. A dream come true. I’m riding this bliss in this moment, in this interview with you right now. And I just really don’t quite understand the negativity or the pessimism he gets with the media and some of the population of this nation, cause he’s such a patriotic guy and he cares so much about everybody and the health of this nation and the health of this world.
I am genuinely worried about things like this. This knucklehead and I live in the same country, yet seem to live in a completely separate universe. Look, I get you might like him. But to sit there and say “he cares so much about everybody and the health of this nation and the world” is clowntastically ridiculous. It’s so tone deaf, I don’t even know if I can put it into words. It’s like this guy is the living manifestation of the proverbial ostrich.
At dinner Sunday night, Brian pointed out that Jeeps always, always, always have rubber ducks on their dashes. And wondered if there was like an add-on package they bought when they purchased the vehicle. And now that’s all I can conclude.
MODERATOR: Kelan, you said, “surprised.”
KELAN: I voted for strength. The Emperor projects strength. That’s important. But I didn’t think strength meant a planet-killing battle station this close to my planet. I assumed deployments like this were for Outer Rim situations. You know, for lesser things, like Jawas.
Pitch perfect!
15 years ago, late one Wednesday night, something I read moved me so much that that I sat down at my computer and just wrote. I didn’t know why I was writing, but I just felt like I needed to.
I re-discovered my post about a month ago when someone at work asked me to restore our company blog archives. I read it again. And again. And again. It’s something I’m actually very proud of. I had planned to write something about it here, like a 15-year anniversary “where-are-things-in-my-life” kind of post. But the more I thought about it, and the couple of attempts to get something down on paper (wow, is that saying outdated 😁), the more it didn’t feel right. I think the original post speaks well for itself. And I’m going to let it.
Instead of reflecting on my post, I want to re-direct you to the post that inspired me. Take a moment today and go read “The last post” by Derek Miller. I sat down this past weekend and read it, along with Derek’s entire site again. One post after another. Going back in time. Like I wrote years ago, it made me laugh, it made me smile, it made me cry, and it made me hopeful. All over again. It’s a living chronicle of a life you shouldn’t miss. It will touch your heart, I’m sure of it. It touched mine long ago, and still echos deep inside of me.
I mean it, take the time for this one.
As always, be courageous.
P.S. I’ve updated the links in my original post. When I first started backtracking, the links in the post took me to a “page not found”. I was scared it was gone. Washed away into the ethereal memory of what used to be. But I found it again, and was relieved to see it re-organized into a site that will remain up and available for a long time. Whoever made that happen out there (probably somewhere in Vancouver, Canada), thank you.
In the age of never-ending price raising on monthly services, I have to hand it to Pandora Plus. They’ve kept the $3.99 monthly price tag the exact same since I signed up for it from my iPhone 5. For those of you counting at home, that was in 2012.
Kudos, Pandora!
Last night was fun! I’ll take the win any time and any way I can get it.
Boy was I wrong about the Fediverse
See I had forgotten the one golden rule of capitalism. To thrive in capitalism one must be amoral. Now you can be wildly sickeningly successful with morals but you cannot reach that absolute zenith of shareholder value. Either you accept a lower share price and don’t commit atrocities or you become evil. There is no third option.
I see no lies.
In all seriousness, I love the way Mat puts the following:
I never expected to find my news from strangers on a federated social network that half the internet has never heard of. I never expected a lot of things. But there’s something quietly beautiful about a place where people just… share what they know. No brand deals, no engagement metrics, no algorithm nudging you toward rage. Just someone who spent twenty years studying Arctic policy posting a thread at 2 AM because they think you should understand what’s happening. It’s the internet I was promised in 1996. It only took thirty years and the complete collapse of American journalism to get here.
Adding him to my RSS reader.
Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr? - Anil Dash
In contrast, platforms that are run by technically fluent, well-intentioned and thoughtful technologists can be very effective in maintaining content over a timescale of decades. The SmugMug team has been very thoughtful in managing both their business and their technical infrastructure in order to sustain Flickr’s public archives for years to come. (Though, as mentioned, you should still donate to ensure they can keep doing so!)
Where are all of the tech billionaires putting their support behind this? Oh, wait…that would imply they actually cared about public good and preservation. My mistake.
In the 2004 movie Shall We Dance (2004), a movie I admit I have not seen, Beverly (Susan Sarandon) and Devine (Richard Jenkins) are at a bar having a drink. Susan Sarandon nails this speech, which I love:
Beverly: All these promises that we make and we break. Why is it, do you think, that people get married?
Devine: Passion.
Beverly: No.
Devine: It’s interesting because I would have taken you for a romantic. Why then?
Beverly: Because we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet. I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things. All of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness. You can quote me on that if you’d like.
Devine: Sure I will.
What a wonderful description of what marriage should be.
From an Instagram reel, comedian Dave Columbo nails it:
I can’t think of a clearer example of the damage. The Trump era has done to us as a country than this conspiracy theorization of every single event, incident, or rumor that comes down the line. Because when you build your entire life on the stupid idea that perception is reality, when every day you treat integrity like a hindrance and instead lie, distract, insult, reframe, and demonize anyone who challenges your ideas, then you have become become a broken clock that no one is gonna trust even if you happen to be relaying the correct information. Which is what is happening right now.
(It’s now just) Blind rampant speculation because the last thing any of us wanna do is trust the source. And you know what, maybe there are administration officials out there who decided that Trump is the imperfect Messenger of their genuine conservative agenda. They know he’s chaotic and selfish and maybe even have said so in the past, but they’ve resigned themselves that they can overcome the smell if he can just come through on some old school Republican policies. That he’s a means to an end (a.k.a. the look on Marco Rubio‘s face in every picture taken of him in the last year).
And if those people exist, to them I say look at how little trust the American people have not just in your dear leader, but in any of you, in any of this, in government, in checks and balances, in the basic ability for facts to be successfully relayed. He has burned out the part in our brains that can absorb information without immediately wondering what is being hidden from us. And sure, people have never trusted politicians, but it used to be a much more fringe idea to have this little faith in this much of the system.
And no golden statue or ballroom or arch is gonna distract from the fact that Trump‘s legacy is the damage he did to the credibility of American government to even have good intentions, much less communicate them, much less act on them.
No notes.
I was watching a Braves game with Jayme and Brian last week, and I saw this commercial (many, many times) for something called Genspark. Yet another AI company/product promising the world and delivering…well, who knows what?
The company, in and of itself, is not my issue. I hope they do well. I’m actually rooting for companies to do good things with this technology. So far, there are a few wins and LOTS of misses/damaging outcomes.
The commercial is my issue. It’s Matthew Broderick jumping from scene to scene suggesting a universal fix for, well, anything. Here are just a few snippets:
Genspark, finish this slide deck!
Genspark, dial in this spreadsheet.
Now, if you’re wondering about silly things like details, you’re right there with me. You’d think watching the commercial would provide you with those necessary details to understand how Genspark could these people. You’d be wrong.
Because apparently, Broderick just pops in to several people’s jobs, utters the words above, and poof, their job is done! Time to go home, kick your feet up, and reflect on what a great day’s work they’ve had.
Except they’d be fired in 2 minutes in the real world if they simply told any LLM, much less Genspark, to simply “finish this slide deck!”. Cool, finish it with what? What’s the topic? What’s the message the deck is supposed to be reflecting/teaching? Who’s the audience for the slide deck? What environment is it being given in? Are there accessibility concerns with the deck? Should it use images or no images? Where’s the data coming from? Is it a protected/restricted data resource? Is it going to be interactive? Will the presenter be using a clicker? Pointer? Is there music involved?
This is what pisses me off about these general marketing pushes. They promise the world. Owners, CEOs, and anyone else who doesn’t know better watches these things and make assumptions. They start dreaming. They start doing the math thinking how much money they’re going to save. How much headcount they can cut. How cool they can look.
Stop. Just stop. It’s not that simple. In fact, it’s incredibly hard. It involves answering all of those questions above. And it involves having a back-and-forth with a computer (for who knows how long) to get “right”. How long will that take? How much resource time/money will it take? Hard to say.
I continue to believe these tools have value. But as just that. Tools. They will not replace people in their jobs. They will augment their jobs.
STOP promising the world and not giving a shit about the repercussions and/or consequences.
Trump Adds His Face to Yet Another Piece of Americana — U.S. Passports
The Bulwark first reported on Tuesday that the State Department is finalizing a “radical redesign” of the passport that would feature a serious-looking Trump from his second inaugural portrait. The passport update is “ostensibly part of a larger celebration of the 250th anniversary” of the USA, the outlet added.
The narcissism has no bounds.
Listening to a 1991 Garth Brooks’ song (What She’s Doijg Now) made me nostalgic about how songs are a time capsule to a bygone era.
Consider these lyrics:
Just for laughs I dialed her old number But no one knew her name Hung up the phone, sat there and wondered If she’d ever done the same
Several things hit me:
I ventured to the Apple Store today at Cumberland Mall. Two observations from this afternoon:
Look, I know the economy is not going well, and malls are supposedly dying and everything, but come on. What are we even doing out here?
Life lesson: No matter how many times people are told “line forms here”, there will always be people who don’t care about civility, and will cut in line.
I’m in the middle of season 2 of AppleTV’s Shrinking. Loving this show. And much props to Wendie Malick. She looks stunning at 74.
This needs to happen.