👨‍⚖️ Why Was Alito Flying the Flag Upside Down After January 6? — Atlantic

But there is still a difference between an ideologically conservative, or even partisan, Court and one with sitting justices whose worldview is so deranged by fanaticism that they would prefer the end of constitutional government to a president from the rival party.

None of this surprises me, unfortunately. Serwer has another good line about preferring a wanna-be dictator over a democrat… that’s the world we live in…

🎉 Weekend Edition Vol.023 — foofaraw

New issue is live to take you out of the doldrums of the work week and into the bliss of (hopefully) no stress.

🪦 Francis Ford Coppola Addresses ‘Megalopolis’ $120M Budget at Cannes Presser: “The Money Doesn’t Matter” — THR

And I’m going to be so busy thinking about what I got to do that when I die I won’t notice it.

I wrote a bit about my Megalopolis obsession in yesterday’s RoL, but what a beautiful sentiment.

☘️ The Celtics Are Once Again in the Eastern Conference Finals. Where’s the Drama? — The Ringer

This particular group of players… is among the most talented in the franchise’s storied history. That the team regularly goes through stretches of aimless play feels illogical. Cataclysmically embarrassing blown leads feel akin to AI hallucinations. Their past eight years have been a kaleidoscope that has refracted success in every possible way other than the way that is undeniable. There is still an unresolved tension at play.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Celtics found a way to win it all this year, but if I were a betting man, I’d wage against it.

🤖 OpenAI is making a risky bet on live translation — Rest of World

When Rest of World tested ChatGPT in September, it struggled doing basic math problems in low-resource languages like Tamil, Bengali, and Kurdish.

Like the article says, translation could be a company defining feature, but you’d really hope, given their stated goals, that it’d be developed in an equitable fashion.

🍷 The Cool Kids Are Drinking Merlot — Paste

Cabernet Sauvignon, often referred to as the “king” of Napa, exploded in popularity for the past few decades, as tastes began to favor intense, bold, tannic red wines. In general, Merlot tends to be a bit lighter-bodied than Cabernet, which is why the latter saw such wild success.

I think I’ll be sticking with my Cabs and GSMs, thank you very much.

🌐 We Are the Curators of the Web — Barry Hess

_We _are the human beings that are meant to curate the web. We should continue to spread the word about how we use the web, which is very personally and as active participants. We should make clear our desire for technologies that are accessible for non-technical people to be able to join us in controlling their own web presence. We build our websites and share our thoughts and link our links. Over time the web becomes surfable to more and more people.

Yes. 100%. I think we underestimate how finicky a lot of these platforms are as technical people (and I’m not even that technical). It’s why I do a lot of what I do on the web: to share and curate. It’s also why I’m a big fan of what Good Enough are doing with Pika. (Would be cool to see Pika build in a link blogging like format along with their regular and title-less posts.)

🍵 Is black the new green for Japan’s flagging tea farmers? — Japan Times

With wakōcha, there are no standard techniques for growing or processing, no standard machines — in other words, no rules.

It’s cool to hear about all the variety farmers can get with black tea vs the strict standards of green tea in Japan.

🔧 Issue #12: Tools — Taper

I don’t remember where I heard about this, but it’s another cool little web publication like The HTML Review. I haven’t dug into everything yet, but it’s pretty neat.

I wrote in The Media Guide yesterday that I was a little disappointed in the new Dehd album, Poetry, but as I was listening to it for a third time this morning, it really grew on me. Blue Skies had a similar pattern as well as it climbed up the ranks the more I listened to it.

🐻 Do the Chicago Bears really need a new stadium? — FT

“Sports stadiums [in the US] tend not to pay off. Without exception the return on public investment is negative,” says JC Bradbury, a sports economist who has studied public funding of US sports venues. He takes issue with some of the Bears’ figures and lack of detail — such as the projection that the project will have a regional economic impact of $8bn. “For a city that already has a team, in exactly the same location, that’s ridiculous,” he says.

My dad is vehemently against the city paying towards a new stadium (and even more against the Arlington Heights location given he lives in that direction).

🧦 Why Does the Ankle Rankle — GQ

I’ve been wearing my leather Birkenstock’s more and more since the weather has gotten nicer, but I still don’t think I’d ever go sockless in gym shoes…

🤖 We don’t need an AI manifesto—we need a constitution — FT

People aren’t perfect. Neither ethics training for AI engineers nor legislation by woefully uninformed politicians can change that simple truth. I don’t need to assume that Big Tech chief executives are bad actors or that large companies are malevolent to understand that what is in their self-interest is not always in mine.

I feel like there’s a lesson here for more than just big tech that people should be paying more attention to throughout their lives in general.

🎮 Phil Spencer isn’t your friend — Disconnect

After using his persona as a fellow gamer to sell a bad corporate strategy to fans of Xbox, it will be interesting to see what happens to him next. Will he be sidelined — or even sacrificed — as the company pivots to a strategy focused on milking the major franchises Microsoft bought with its ZeniMax and Activision Blizzard acquisitions beyond Xbox, or will he simply pivot to selling another corporate vision?

A great look at Microsoft and Xbox as they’ve been floundering and trying to grab on to any life line for the past decade.

🐦‍⬛ Ax Visio — Swarovski Optik

I obviously don’t need $5,000 binoculars as I’ve gotten more and more into bird watching (from home), but boy do I want them…

📻 The Problem with Music by Steve Albini — The Baffler

Historically, the progression of effort required to become a producer went like this: Go to college, get an EE degree. Get a job as an assistant at a studio. Eventually become a second engineer. Learn the job and become an engineer. Do that for a few years, then you can try your hand at producing. Now, all that’s required to be a full-fledged “producer” is the gall it takes to claim to be one.

This essay by Albini is from 1993—it’s truly delightful. It doesn’t go into the weeds, but you can feel the expertise and experience on the page. RIP.

🎤 Stand-Up Comedy Has Tripled in Size Over the Last Decade — Bloomberg

I think a big appeal for gong to stand-up shows is you get to go to a fun event and sit down at it… Or maybe I’m just getting old…

🗄️ Benefits of a daily diary and topic journals — Derek Sivers

I’ve considered making one for every musician, album, book, or film that’s had an impact on me, that I’d like to think more about. Why not? I admire the way that a good critic puts in hours of reflection on each piece, thinking deeper about something they’ve just taken in.

Ben’s post about Juicy Apps got me going down a rabbit hole of OBTF, Topic Journals, and Spark files (and how I can implement these in Bike) and this resonated with me as what I essentially tried to do back in the day with Roam.

💣 US finds Israel’s use of weapons in Gaza ‘inconsistent’ with human rights law, but will not cut flow of arms — Guardian

State department also says not enough concrete evidence to link specific US-supplied weapons to violations

There’s a chance they’re using someone else’s weapons to kill innocent people so “no harm no foul” for us, right?