🚀 Futureland is now on the App Store /// FL Blog

Friends of the Variable just released their new, completely rethought and built from the ground up v2.0 of their app. They’ve put tons of work into making something that’s more than just a habit tracker and I highly recommend you check it out.

👃 Are We Living in a Big Nose Renaissance? /// Air Mail

You might not be aware of it most of the time, but if your nose is big enough, like mine, you can actually see it, with one eye closed, on your own face. The pink pyramid pokes into your field of vision and blocks out any detail on the other side. Small-nosed people do not have this problem.

It’s happened, my time has finally come! Still need to get this deviated septum fixed one day though…

👾 Phil Spencer confirms Xbox will support Switch 2: ‘I congratulated Nintendo’s president’ /// VGC

Xbox’s teams are said to be prepping multiple releases, including Diablo 4

Diablo 4 coming to Switch is all I care about and is enough to get me to want a Switch 2.

😞 Taking Leave /// Whatever

This meant that the absolute best case scenario of this whole situation was that he didn’t have the sense or wisdom to understand that making a move on a woman 40 years his junior, economically dependent on him, and whom he had met just literally hours before, was an extremely questionable idea. And by extremely questionable I mean dude what the fuck how do you not understand the actual consent issues involved here. The answer I came to is he probably did understand, and that when all was said and done, the “absolute best case scenario,” which is still very terrible, was not where we would end up. And indeed, that’s not where we are today.

Finally got around to reading this and appreciate Scalzi’s willingness to stick up for what’s right. We see too much defending and deflecting these days and not enough calling each other out on our bullshit, especially among friends.

🔥 Mark Duplass Brought His Indie Scrappiness to LA Wildfire Relief Efforts — and It’s Working /// The Wrap

After a couple days, Duplass realized he could reach higher. He called out to Google on his Instagram, asking for Chromebooks to be donated to Los Angeles school districts forced to return to remote learning. He asked Nintendo to donate Switches to kids who lost theirs to the fires. He even called out Airbnb for making the process to seek temporary housing increasingly difficult for displaced residents.

It’s cool to see Duplass on the ground doing the work, but am I the only one wondering why it takes an actor to get these companies to help?

🤑 RFK Jr. Secretly Got Rich Off of “Public Health” Efforts /// New Republic

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. failed to report making hundreds of thousands of dollars off his anti-vaccine nonprofit, which he claimed he never took a cent from.

I sometimes get confused about work that’s unpaid and work that rakes in $2 million to my personal bank account too.

🍳 Eggs may be expensive forever /// Business Insider

Egg prices are soaring again as the bird flu sweeps the US for the third straight year, cutting into supply. On the other side of the equation, seasonal factors have pushed demand up (all that holiday baking and cold winter weather makes people into egg-heads), and consumers have been buying eggs more than normal for the past couple of years.

It’s almost as if the president doesn’t control egg prices.

👨‍🎨 David Lynch Was The Artist of Our Time /// Defector

A pseudonymous coder has created and released an open source “tar pit” to indefinitely trap AI training web crawlers in an infinitely, randomly-generating series of pages to waste their time and computing power.

It really sucks when someone like this passes, but I’m thankful for his art and especially that he was able to give us Twin Peaks: The Return.

⛓️‍💥 Free Our Feeds Wants to Make Social Media Billionaire-Proof /// TPA

Free Our Feeds isn’t just trying to create yet another social media alternative. They’re attempting something far more fundamental—they want to make the underlying technology of the Bluesky platform (called the AT Protocol) “billionaire-proof” by putting it in the hands of a nonprofit foundation.

I don’t fully trust Bluesky and wish this money were going to make Mastodon more accessible, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

💰 Nearly $1 Trillion: The Staggering Combined Net Worth Cheering at Trump’s Inauguration /// Intercept

The combined net worth of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet was roughly $120 million. That figure, however, is dwarfed by the roughly $20 billion combined net worth of Trump’s presumptive Cabinet, assuming they all get confirmed. It stands to be the wealthiest Cabinet in American history, yet it doesn’t include figures like Musk, who won’t require Senate confirmation.

Just a wild figure. But still, the middle class in middle America thinks DJT has their best interests at heart and not that of the super wealthy.

📧 Want a little less Donald Trump in your brain? Vox has a new newsletter that dials down the franticness /// Nieman Lab

Personally, I haven’t figured out how my own news consumption patterns might be different in Trump II than in Trump I. (Other than spending 95% less time on Twitter.) But I’m sure there’s a market out there to be served by products like The Logoff.

I’m giving it a go to see how it is.

🤖 Developer Creates Infinite Maze That Traps AI Training Bots /// 404

A pseudonymous coder has created and released an open source “tar pit” to indefinitely trap AI training web crawlers in an infinitely, randomly-generating series of pages to waste their time and computing power.

Love this completely.

🥇 The Denties - 2024 /// The Dent

I love fake annual awards and this one was terrific.

👩‍💻 Annie Mueller /// People & Blogs

This was great; one of my favorite P&B interviews yet.

🫂 An Intimacy Coordinator’s Take on That Awkward ‘It Ends With Us’ Video /// THR

But he didn’t ask her or even mention that it was something he wanted to shoot — he just went for it. She pulled away, and then he did it again.

I already had feelings about this, but it’s great to get a POV from someone who lives this sort of stuff.

🏀 Investors Seek $5 Billion to Form Basketball League to Rival NBA /// Bloomberg

A group of investors being advised by Maverick Carter, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James’ business partner, is seeking to raise $5 billion from private capital sources to form an international basketball league to rival the National Basketball Association, according to people familiar with the matter.

I’ve been working on a piece about how major league sports don’t innovate because they have a monopoly, but I don’t see this one working. At all.

🐻 Chicago Bears to hire Ben Johnson: Deal for the new head coach reportedly being finalized /// Chicago Tribune

Fingers crossed he can figure out how to get Caleb and the offense humming…

🪨 A Stone Only Rolls Downhill by OK Go

Another amazing music video from OK Go. All I could do while watching this was think about how much planning went into it. I feel like it’s been awhile, but I was just thinking about them a couple weeks ago.

☺️ Kindness in a transactional world /// Manu

Kindness is the reason why I’m doing this. There’s no other reason. I don’t care about getting a reward. I care about showing people that in this stupid transactional world, we can still be kind to one another. We can still help someone, even if we’ll get nothing in return.

Another great note from Manu, but I think he misses that it should be fun. Sure, we can be, and should be, kind without expecting anything in return, but we should have fun while doing it.

🎮 EA just made a whole bunch of accessibility patents open-source /// Engadget

Just some cool news from the end of last year you may have missed.

📺 Rachel Maddow Returns to Hosting Nightly on MSNBC /// THR

I’m a big fan of Alex Wagner and her measured approach—although I don’t watch MSNBC—so it’s a bit of a bummer they need to keep dragging Maddow in, but hopefully Wagner can find a stride hitting the streets like she did on The Circus.

🏀 Unrivaled Could Be A New Solution To The WNBA’s Old Problems /// Defector

Until recently, most WNBA players spent the offseason playing in overseas leagues, where money flowed freely. But for a mess of geopolitical and financial reasons, good opportunities in Europe and Asia are harder to find these days.

Ideally, more money would come out of the NBA side of things, since they share a TV deal, so the women could be paid more, especially as their ratings go up and the men’s go down.

🧑‍💻 On Meta’s moderation changes /// Manu

My hope is that this decision along with their other decision to start populating timelines with AI-generated content—as if that’s the point of a social media platform—will help more people realise that it’s time to abandon these digital cancers and get back to a more sane way to interact with the web and to connect with others.

I share Manu’s hope. My struggle is knowing where to point to, or even go myself, for “better” social media. I prefer Mastodon, but Bluesky has the momentum, and wish I could stand up a forum people would actually use.

When it comes to the actual changes Meta is going through—it’s a disaster that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

🎮 Doom in a PDF, what more do you need to hear? /// Polygon

I don’t understand how this is possible, but am completely fascinated by it.

🔥 LAPD Arrests Everyone Who Lost Home In Fire /// The Onion

How dare them for being unhoused!