🤴 Blue Prince is coming to Mac /// The Verge

Blue Prince released earlier this year and quickly became an early GOTY candidate with folks (i.e. me) drawing comparisons to the runaway hit Balatro.

This is incredibly exciting news for me after hearing so much positivity around his game early in the year. No release date, but I’m still stoked to get my hands on this for Mac whenever the time comes.

📸 Mood.camera recipe - Cuban Neg 📷 /// Gobino

With mood.camera I tried to create my own inspired Cuban Neg version. The result I came up with is perhaps a bit brighter, warmer and more colourful, but I’m very happy with how it looks.

I’m loving mood.camera right now. It’s encouraging to shoot with my phone more and since I set-up a film sim that’s a bit retro, grainy, and blurry, I’m just shooting rather than trying to get a perfect photo.

🏓 Tennis star Andre Agassi joins $20 million investment in Ballers, a multisport members’ club /// Fast Company

It will include courts where members can play pickleball, squash, and padel. There will also be a golf practice area with real sand traps and a large turf field where members can play soccer.

It’s called Ballers, but no basketball courts???

🔠 Creating the Fontstand Cooperative /// Fontstand

Love this kind of stuff.

🤖 Seven replies to the viral Apple reasoning paper — and why they fall short /// Gary Marcus

One is left simply having to test everything, all the time, with little guarantees of anything. Some model might be big enough for task T of size S and fail on the next size, or on Task T’ that is slightly different, etc. It all becomes a crapshoot.

While fun, I’m of the opinion the LLM model isn’t a pathway to AGI. It may lead someone to stumble on the right path, but complex algorithms with random output does not directly lead to it.

🤖 Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task /// arXiv

Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI’s role in learning.

This is why the calculator comparison makes zero sense. Kids still learn the concepts of math so they understand what the calculator is actually doing—it’s why teachers make you show your work. Oh, and a calculator is always right if the input is.

🎙️ Saluting Marc Maron, a Podcast Pioneer Who Unlocked the Gates /// GQ

I realize now that this was some of the first real public talk I had heard about sobriety; it was a massive part of his story, and it often came up with his guests. Of course, they traded war stories, but they also normalized it and got pretty open, an approach that stuck with me, even if subconsciously.

A true end of an era. I never got huge into WTF, but I was addicted to podcasts in those early days and would always throw an episode on here or there when I either liked the guest or plowed through my queue.

🧑‍💻 Hard Mode and status /// Baty

Apple Notes is surprisingly capable, but I don’t enjoy using it. So what did I do? Yesterday, I re-installed Bear. I’ve always liked using Bear. It’s beautiful and simple and gets right to the point.

Biiiig same. Simplifying all of my apps right now to things I can’t tinker with too much. Setting themes to black and white and utilizing Untitled Serif for titles and Untitled Sans for body fonts wherever I can to reduce distractions.

🏄‍♂️ The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Dies at 82 /// Pitchfork

The beloved musical auteur, who helped pioneer the studio-as-instrument, influencing generations of musicians in pop and beyond

A true legend. I had the opportunity to see him live about 8 years ago when he was on tour with Jeff Beck. While I was definitely there for Beck, it was a fun bucket item list to knock off to see Wilson with Jardine.

🎤 Tha Carter VI /// Pitchfork

The first problem is that there aren’t any good songs.

I try to avoid negative reviews, but damn… The writer of this review nails the comp to Eminem and how they seem hyper-focused on making these weird pop hits that haven’t been relevant for over a decade.

🧢 Chicago Man Wears White Sox Cap To Work /// Defector

I think it much more likely he just wears this around all the time, even to formal events where it’s entirely inappropriate. Have you met people from Chicago?

If I were religious, this would hurt me to my core. But the Cubs are first in their division with 41 wins while the Sox are last in theirs with 23, so suck it Bob!

⛹️‍♂️ Confessions of a Jumbotron Addict by Mickey Duzyj /// Short of the Week

Really fun little animated short film about the lengths a guy will go to get on the Jumbotron at MSG—and what it means to both him and his fellow fans at the games.

📻 KEVIN ABSTRACT & DOMINIC FIKE ARE GEEZER /// Blush

I’m not a big Kevin Abstract fan, but I dug Fike’s first album and this song is a banger. I don’t know what the reference to them being “Geezer” means, but it appears this is the first single from Abstract’s forthcoming album, Blush.

🤖 Dia /// One37

I cannot believe they’ve cancelled Arc and launched Dia — which now looks exactly like the browser experience they’re critiquing! — without updating their website and messaging. It speaks far more volumes than anything else I’ve written here.

Matt Birchler said some similar things and it’s hard to disagree with them after what I’ve seen on display so far. If they couldn’t make money with Arc, I don’t see how they make money with this even thinner skinning of Chrome that just utilizes Google’s AI for a chat bot built in (which Chrome also has now, I think and if it doesn’t, it will).

🧑‍💻 Congratulations on creating the one billionth repository on GitHub! /// AasishPokhrel/shit

Just some absolutely lovely shit.

🧑‍⚖️ Federal judge blocks Trump administration from continuing to detain Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil /// CNN

A federal judge granted Mahmoud Khalil’s habeas corpus petition and barred the Trump administration from continuing to seek his detention.

Will be interesting to see if they actually comply…

💇‍♀️ CDC Publishes   Female Body Hair Guidelines /// The Onion

This reportedly represents the first significant revisions to U.S. female body hair guidelines since 1977, when CDC director David Sencer urged all women to grow a full and unapologetic bush.

The maggots wish they could have this much control over people.

🤖 Sam Altman claims an average ChatGPT query uses ‘roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon’ of water /// The Verge

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on how Altman came to those figures.

The DJT method of pulling statistics out of your ass.

📢 Combine Multiple RSS Feeds into One /// rssrssrss

Combine multiple RSS feeds into one unified feed.

This looks great. I know Jack Baty used something like this in the past, but it looks like you can edit these easier, maybe? Either way, going to create one for all my things here shortly.

📱 Tech giants in the Gulf are building super-apps to dominate digital life /// Rest of World

More than 60% of UAE residents seek to optimize their smartphone storage by consolidating multiple apps into a single super-app, according to Dubai-based market research company Sapience.

At what point are we sacrificing too much for convenience.

🗣️ The Voice in Your Head /// Short of the Week

Old short film starring Lewis Pullman with some pretty big thematic similarities to his role in Thunderbolts*.

🇺🇸 Gavin Newsom Demands Trump Remove National Guard From LA Immigration Protests: ‘Breach of State Sovereignty’ /// TheWrap

In a Saturday night memorandum, Trump ordered the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to aid federal law enforcement officers battling growing unrest in downtown L.A. and surrounding areas. Newsom immediately condemned the order, suggesting it would only enflame tensions.

So much for “states rights.”

🎤 The 50 Best Lil Wayne Songs of All Time /// Pitchfork

He lived inside of his tour bus like a monk in a monastery, recording new tracks daily. If “A Milli” sounds like egoistic brain vomit from a dude on cloud nine, it’s probably ’cause it was.

Besides the fact A Milli, at 49, is severely underrated, along with the entire Tha Carter III, the list isn’t bad. What stands out most to me is how many of his best tracks weren’t even officially released on albums, but free mixtapes.