Spotify opens new front in war on fair use – Six Colors
After all this, I decided to delete my Spotify account and sever The Incomparable’s relationship with that company.
Way to go, Jason!
I don’t like Spotify. In fact, I’ve never liked Spotify. But I am also of a different generation than my kids. So, here we are.
John Roberts Retreated to His Island. Supreme Court Critics Found Him. - The New York Times
“Maine is not here as your happy place, your wind-down from all of your hard work destroying my civil liberties and democracy,” wrote Becca Shaw Glaser in her column for the local newspaper, shortly after the Supreme Court eliminated the federal right to abortion in 2022. “No. May you never feel welcome here again.”
I concur.
“I think there’s a lot of daylight,” Altman told Decoded co-author and POLITICO senior tech reporter Brendan Bordelon. Asked specifically where he diverges from Anthropic and its CEO Dario Amodei, Altman said, “we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”
Well, thanks for making that decision for me, Sam.
It’s getting harder and harder for me not to call this man a piece of shit.
Seniors on Medicare to receive $90 payments for premium costs, Trump says | AP News
The White House said the $90 payments for seniors will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, established by Congress in 2008 as flexible funding to improve program operations and payments to health care providers.
Medicare Part B enrollees can expect to receive a one-time payment in October, either through direct deposit or by check, the White House said. Total monthly costs for the program — which covers costs like doctor’s visits, ambulance services and lab tests — start around $200 and vary with income.
Wait, I thought everyone was supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s their own damn fault that they don’t have enough to spend on healthcare. They’re just a leach on society. Might as well just let them die.
Right, Republicans? Right!?!
What If We Just Stopped? | dansinker.com
I’m not sure what keeps me there, what keeps any of us there, beyond inertia. We’re in the Looney Tunes stage of the end of social, where we’ve glided well past the edge of the cliff and it’s slowing dawning on us that the only way left is down. Fast.
What if we just stopped?
What if we stopped plugging our selves into the machines, stopped performing (wittingly and unwittingly) for the algorithm, stopped letting bots bait us, stopped all of it and figured out new ways—our ways—to do things again.
I love the sentiment here. I agree with so much. I just don’t believe people will (or can) stop themselves. Because I don’t know if people know how to just be anymore (without their phone as an “I’m bored” fix).
I watched the two Tom Cruise Jack Reacher movies today.
Hot take: I enjoyed them quite a bit.
Gosh, I hope nobody tells his mommy.
UPDATE: This article attempts to detail the incident, but is pretty light on actual details. I did enjoy this quote from NFLPA executive director JC Tretter:
“This kind of behavior from an official towards a player is unacceptable,” Tretter wrote. “Players are consistently held accountable when the roles are reversed. We expect the NFL to hold officials to the same standard.”
Sure they are, JC. Sure they are. I’m throwing a big, brown BULLSHIT flag on that one.
Why yes…yes, I was absolutely wondering that.
The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities | The New Yorker
By the time I got home, I had concluded, based on a multitude of examples, that the two great pillars of American culture are church and self-storage.
Strictly anecdotal on my part, this 100% checks out.
Umm…ok?
The death of web development education – Rescuing a field from disappearing
Many independent educators who used to earn a living from web development training and developer relations have reported that GenAI has ruined their business.
In retrospect, I should have seen this coming. And it worries me. Because what will the AI “gods” train themselves on when the next wave of technology has nothing written about them?
If you had told me that Mauricio Dubon was going to be hitting cleanup in the playoffs, I’d have thought you were insane.
IYKYK
The crest is fantastic! I would have preferred Atlanta Phoenix, but Atlanta City is still pretty good. And ATL CTY is a great shortened version!
Can’t wait!
It occurs to me that burying someone in a casket is incredibly wasteful.
I will admit…I don’t understand (yet) all of the (Man) City fallout. Honestly, I don’t even know what the 115 charges were.
During the May 28, 2026 Harvard commencement address, senior speaker Noah Eckstein said this:
Understanding is difficult. It takes effort. My grandfathers knew that, but they chose to try anyway. I want to leave you all with one simple practice. Whenever you meet someone you disagree with, stay your case, yes, stand up for what you believe, but also ask the other person about their beliefs. Ask them how they got there. Listen like you might be wrong. That’s not a weakness or betrayal of your own ideals. That is the hardest and most important thing you can do in a world that is constantly telling you, “pick a side”.
I can’t even tell you how much I love that line. I do my best to live this philosophy every single day. And so far, it hasn’t let me down.
The transcript of his entire speech can be found here.
I came across this reel on Instagram this morning, and it spoke to me:
I think we’ve completely lost shame. And I genuinely find that terrifying, because there used to be shame. There used to be things you simply didn’t do because they were shameful. Not illegal, not because you’d necessarily get caught or get punished for them. You just had enough shame not to do them. There are ways you didn’t behave in public and things you didn’t say about people and things you didn’t expose about your family and things you simply wouldn’t do for attention. There were certain lines where something inside you went, “No, I’d be ashamed of myself.” And that mattered.
Because today I genuinely don’t know if that line exists anymore. We’ve become obsessed with this idea that nothing should embarrass us, and nothing should make us feel ashamed, and no one gets to judge us, right? The whole “I don’t care what anyone thinks“. Ok, but what happens when nothing is shameful anymore? What happens when there’s nothing you wouldn’t do because you’d be too ashamed to do it? I think that’s terrifying, because here’s the reality: laws can tell you what you’re not allowed to do. Consequences can tell you what you might pay for doing. But shame used to tell you, even if no one ever finds out, I still wouldn’t do that. And I think we’ve completely underestimated how important that is.
And listen, I’m not talking about being ashamed of who you are. I’m talking about having enough dignity to know there are certain ways of behaving that are beneath you. We’ve spent so long teaching people don’t let anyone shame you. Fine. But maybe we went a bit too far. Because a world where people are ashamed simply for being themselves, that’s horrible. But a world where absolutely nothing is shameful anymore, where there’s no behavior beneath us, no line where embarrassed to cross, nothing we’d be scared for being known for. That’s an absolute nightmare.
Because if absolutely nothing is shameful anymore, then what exactly are we too ashamed to do? And if the answer is nothing, that’s the problem.
Hot take: The rise of influencer culture and (in a broader sense) social media itself are both the cause and serve as examples of this phenomenon. He’s right. It is a (huge) problem.
It’s not fall to me until the day that I wake up and the thermostat is below what I set the AC to be while we sleep.
Still not there yet.
I watched the newly-discovered video of Apple’s “Antenna-gate” press conference from 2010, on Gruber’s recommendation. For better or worse, I do miss Steve Jobs. It’s refreshing to hear him speak so candidly, and be so well-informed, about the topic at hand. A real throwback to a different time.
I’ve had my new iPhone 18 Pro for about 5 days. After having spent 2 years with an iPhone 16 Pro Max, I must say it’s refreshing to come back to the smaller size. It has great hand feel, as they say. I’m really enjoying it.
Thursday afternoon vibes
What if we had spent the hundreds of billions of dollars that we’ve already spent on AI…on healthcare?
Surely this has happened before…
If I were a soccer player in this day and age, I’d buy two pair of the same boot style, but different colors. And then wear them mismatched, switching the colors per foot with each match. Just because.
Remote controlled cars have come a long way since I was a kid.
I’m watching the Barcelona match this afternoon and they are playing Sevilla (in Sevilla). During the hydration break (don’t even get me started), the camera focuses in on the Sevilla huddle. The manager is talking to the team. And he is speaking to them in English.
This is a La Ligua match. In Spain. A match between two Spanish teams.
And he’s speaking English. Fascinating.
UPDATE: Turns out, in addition to Spanish players, they have players from France, Switzerland, Portugal, Brazil, Chile, Greece, Georgia, Nigeria, and Scotland.
I guess English is the most common denominator.
America is no longer a serious country.
There will come a day when I finish up a project/patch at 3:30 in the afternoon and NOT feel guilty about being “done” for the day. Sadly, that day is not this one.
Which Rude is it? – Chris Coyier
What do you order from this one person working at this coffeeshop at 4:00 AM?
You can’t help but be aware there are 20 people behind you in line and how there is one person taking orders and making the coffee drinks. Right?!
You could order a latte, which will take like 3 minutes to make. Or you could order a drip coffee in which this person hands you a cup in 3 seconds.
My brain is built such that I cannot possibly order something that will take this person a while to make. Like the words would be unable to come out of my mouth. Even if a cortado sounds really good right now, actually, I can’t do it. I can make an active choice to get a perfectly fine drip coffee and get this line moving and get all these strangers-yet-neighbors their coffees too, or I can cause a big ol’ hitch in the giddyup.
I hope I’m not trying to grandstand how perfect I am. I’m showcasing one part of how my brain works. I really don’t like inconvinencing other people.
I notice, because it seems like plenty of other people don’t.
This is such a me-coded post.
Watching tonight’s Inter Miami match and the commentator just said something that rings very true with me:
[Messi] doesn’t try to be the star of the show. He just naturally becomes the star of the show. And that’s what separates him from other greats, in my opinion.
Perfectly said.
I will never understand how people wear sweatshirts when it’s over 80 degrees outside. It’s 86 right now and there is a girl across the restaurant with a big sweatshirt on. I’m sweating just thinking about it.
In one of my company’s spam blocking summary emails, one of the blocked emails had the subject: “Who knows the dog’s name?”
Huh?!
I was today years old when I learned that U.S. astronaut Sally Ride was gay. Apparently, she had a 27-year relationship with her partner that she somehow kept hidden. My god, that’s a long time to keep the love of your life hidden from the world. I’m so glad she found that love, though.
This async/await thing is another one of those concepts that came in after I was already established in the industry, and I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around it. Am I behind? No doubt.
Jayme, Caroline, and I took a (really) quick trip down to Miami to see Messi and Inter Miami play Nashville. Given his recent retirement from international soccer, and everything that’s going on in his life, I wanted to make sure I saw him at home in Miami before he retires from soccer altogether.
I had two distinct feelings about our experience:
Anyway, it’s exactly the experience I wanted. I got to see Messi play (and score) at least one more time in person. And I got to visit Miami’s new stadium. Mission accomplished!
P.S. One thing the Benz has going for it is it’s indoors. I spent way too much brain power on worrying/planning for potential rain durting the game. That’s something I never have to worry about in Atlanta. (Also, I might be a bit spoiled 😄)
LeBron James partners with Polymarket
James posted a 14-second video to his X account showing him stepping off of an elevator after pressing the floor for “sports.” Other floors shown inside the elevator included politics, crypto, economy, culture, weather, esports and technology. The post’s caption reads: “Welcome to Polymarket HQ. Coming soon.”
What can go wrong?
(American) football is painful to watch at this point (because of the TV breaks and timeouts). Soccer has absolutely spoiled me.
Trump administration rule would end tax exemption for colleges that keep DEI | AP News
The Treasury Department proposed the change Thursday in a new regulation that, if made final, would kick in after May 2027. The rule is broadly aimed at ending any policies or programs that help students because of their race, and it specifically says such benefits in admissions, scholarships and facilities “would be incompatible” with the rule.
I’ll say again…fuck this administration.
Just going to drop this here. No reason.
Pulled out my high school freshman yearbook this afternoon. We were looking for a teacher’s name from back in the day. And I came across this gem of an artifact:
The two on the far left and far right are twins. Priceless! 🤣😂
I couldn’t have been more against George W. Bush in the late 1990s and 2000s. In the Trump world, I’ve become more sympathetic to him — as a human being, at least, if not on policy. He has also become quite a good painter.
While I share Manton’s feeling here, it’s only because Trump is so much worse.
Trump Is in Open Revolt Against the Constitution
Jamelle Bouie: ”The details of what is happening here are important — that’s why I laid them out — but it’s also important to step back and make a more fundamental point: the president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself. And this is part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the most fanatical of his allies, like Stephen Miller, to end the American republic and supplant it with an authoritarian regime in which President Trump holds sovereign authority over the whole nation.”
It is important to say, as well, that this is all out in the open, as plain as day.
repeated hair tearing-out noise
The last sentiment…same.
Getting older, some might say maturing, is realizing there is no fair. There’s only what is.
Yesterday, Messi announced his retirement from Argentina’s national team. So many posts flew around Instagram surrounding the news. These were a few of my favorites:
My kids keep asking me “why are you watching the Inter Miami games?”
This is why:
I just took my glasses off in an effort to hear someone better. God, I’m old.
Trump renames Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ amid Canada trade war
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that he said will “immediately” change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”
Trump’s attempt to rename the Great Lake, which straddles the U.S. northern border with Canada, came as a recent breakdown in trade talks between Washington and Ottawa has led to new retaliatory tariffs and a rapidly deteriorating relationship.
What a petty, small, piece-of-shit of a man he is.
I was today years old when I realized Alfred Molina, whom I’ve watched for years in so many movies (including the two Spider-Man movies), is English.
This is one of my favorite little products in quite a long time: Crosley Rondo Bluetooth Speaker
I listen to a lot of podcasts, and when it’s just me working in the office, I can sit this little guy up beside me and listen to my podcast friends like they’re on the radio in the early 1950’s. It’s fun, it’s nostalgic, and it was relatively cheap (at time of purchase) at around $25.
It’s just delightful!