Limit your Shorts scrolling to zero minutes per day.
And to think, I just cancelled my YouTube Premium Family subscription… maybe I should keep it after all…
The Independent Variable
Latest Posts
Tax Day means less filings from immigrants worried about exposure to ICE
politicsSo not only are we spending hundreds of billions to try to deport people, we're also going to be losing hundreds of billions from the tax revenue they bring in.
Spaceballs: The New One
moviesThe fact that Mel Brooks is going to turn 100 soon is wild. He looks and sounds great. But I hope they film his stuff first, because Spaceballs was like my Bible as a kid, and I really hope they can deliver on this. Even if not, what the hell—it'll be fun to have something with a 100-year-old Mel Brooks in it.
The conspiratorial left needed proof Trump is a monster. They settled on Sascha Riley.
politicsWhen asked directly what expertise she brought to survivors of trafficking or child abuse, Voldeng said, “My approach is proactive and pre-emptive.” Her team, she said, is “a mix of Red Cross meets Jedi Knights.”
I don't even know where to begin. If anything, this feels more like a mental health story than a political story. It's a little scary to think that something like this can happen. Our brains are just so fragile and malleable. I'm sure this guy maybe believes it and thinks his memories are true, But I just don't think in any world that any of that is a real possibility. The fact that people want to help him get the message out and believe it is an even more troubling sign of the times. What's even worse is it would probably take real proof of something like this to get the people on Trump's side to turn against him. There's enough monstrous stuff out there that he's done and said with real evidence alreasy, and it has zero effect on people and their morality as they strive for more power and ignore the real-life consequences that come from that.
Allbirds, the San Francisco shoe brand that made 'Salesforce Ones,' pivots to AI
aiAmerican Exchange Group, which entered a purchase agreement with Allbirds earlier this year, intends to “build on Allbirds’ legacy and deliver compelling products to Allbirds’ customers” by changing its name to NewBird AI. The company is set to receive $50 million from an investor, and stocks have soared to $19 per share, up from $2.59 earlier this year.
This feels like the moment when we can officially say AI has jumped the shark. Even as a skeptic, I have to admit the usefulness is real; I've been able to utilize Claude Code to help me make some little web apps and tools for myself, but I don't know how you go from being a huge shoe company—even if you are based in the Bay—to an AI company. Its capitalism run rampant. Everyone's just chasing a dollar rather than working on things that they actually think are important, that they enjoy, or that they want to do. It's the personification of a bad MBA.
Flexoki
designThis project has been a battle between my competing desires in science and art. One part of my brain searches for reliability and precision, while another part searches for those elusive imperfections that remind us what feels real. Solving for all these problems is how I arrived at Flexoki. I hope you find it useful.
I didn't really understand this at first, but I've come to be a bit obsessed with this theme. Similar to Solarized, it didn't seem useful for my own purposes—even if I can see how developers might find them nice. I think the prose & analog approach that Steph takes makes it better for me personally. It brings some of the simplicity that I love about the simple black, white, and blue themes that I tend to use across a lot of things while still being easy on the eyes, easy to understand, and a delight to use. I now use it in all my home-baked apps, in Drafts, in Obsidian, in Mona, in Ghostty, basically anywhere I can have a theme, I'm using Flexoki.
