In recent years, science has been learning more and more about how central the role of inflammation is to our health. “The paradox that often makes treating chronic inflammation so difficult: It can be vital and harmful at the same time.”

Huh, here’s the trailer for a new director’s cut (of sorts) of the second X-Files movie (called I Want to Believe, orig. released in 2008) that, per Wikipedia, “will restore horror elements that were previously removed”.

I don’t know what sort of neurodiverse bucket this puts me in, but I think a lot about mowing the lawn1 relative to how much time I actually spend mowing lawns (~6-7 hours per year). And so I was completely fascinated by The Pudding’s latest post on optimal lawn mowing paths and “why some people mow a lawn better than others”. They built several digital lawns for people to mow and recorded all of their moves, how often they paused at certain times, and who mowed an optimal path. Solving the lawn [more]

“poetry camera is a new way to see your world. take a photo with the camera… poetry camera thinks… and prints out a poem about the scene.”

TBPN seems like a show I wouldn’t enjoy guesting on, but I actually enjoy it quite a bit.  ★

The Phone in Your Hand. “A layer-by-layer teardown of the most intricate object you’ve ever held.”

Using high-definition open source videos and photos from NASA and his own music, John Boswell (aka Melodysheep) created this mesmerizing eight-minute video recap of the Artemis II mission that enchanted us all back in the spring. Like all of his videos I’ve featured on KDO, this one is really well done. See also Animated Artemis II Photos Reveal Satellites Buzzing Around Earth and Stunning Artemis II Phone Wallpapers. (via colossal) Tags: artemis · astronomy · Earth · John [more]

Reuters: Apple on Monday asked a U.S. judge for a preliminary injunction barring two former employees ​and OpenAI from accessing, acquiring, using or disclosing alleged confidential information as it moves ahead with its trade secrets case. [...] The iPhone maker also filed a concurrent motion on Monday seeking expedited discovery, including production of documents relating to the defendants’ alleged access ​of Apple’s proprietary and trade secret information. It asked the judge to order the two [more]

The Past Catalog Archive is a throwback to fun & modest personal projects on the web. “There is no reason to keep these old catalogs to myself, or only allow them to be viewed. Share them and let everyone take a trip down memory lane.”

Ivan Mehta, reporting for TechCrunch: In its first acquisition since going public last month, Bending Spoons on Tuesday said that it has agreed to buy spreadsheet and database startup Airtable for $1.28 billion in cash. Founded in 2013, Airtable has so far raised over $1.4 billion over multiple funding rounds. At its peak, during the boom days of 2021, it was valued at over $11 billion, but earlier this year, its shares were said to be trading on the secondary markets at a valuation of $4 billio [more]

Reading Maps: Journeys from books & films (Moby-Dick, Murder on the Orient Express, The Hunt for Red October, The Muppet Movie, etc.) plotted on a map.

Work vs gym: a simple way to decide whether to use AI for a task. “At the gym, it makes no sense for that robot to lift weights for you. The point of weightlifting isn’t to move heavy things across the room; it’s to actually lift those heavy things.”

New app from Brett Terpstra: TerminalWidget lets you send output from commands, scripts, APIs, and Shortcuts directly to widgets across macOS, iOS, and iPadOS with rich formatting, progress bars, sparklines, and image support. It is available as a universal app on the App Store for $19.99. I don’t know what I’m going to use this for, but I know I want to use it.  ★

Some platforms are turning against AI-generated content. Others are embracing it. What gives?

REST serves the developers building against your API. MCP serves the agents now trying to use it. Most teams treat these as competing standards and have to pick one. They’re not rivals, they’re layers: most MCP servers just call REST internally to do the real work. The best ones don’t convert every endpoint into a tool, they design around what the agent’s trying to accomplish. Shipping that server also means shipping OAuth 2.1 with scoped tokens. WorkOS AuthKit already speaks that spec, so you s [more]

Juli Clover, MacRumors: Incoming Apple CEO John Ternus is rehiring Laura Legros, a former vice president of hardware engineering who retired from Apple in 2022, reports Bloomberg. Legros previously managed product delivery, development schedules, and coordination across engineering teams. Under Ternus, she will work across different parts of the company, and report directly to him. According to Bloomberg, Legros was one of Ternus’ most trusted deputies before she retired. She has presented at pa [more]

Aaron “Homeboy” Tilley, reporting for The Information (paywalled without gift links, alas, but MacRumors has a summary): When new employees join Apple, the company often issues them an iPhone and Mac and pays for an iCloud account with a large amount of online storage capacity. Crucially, during the onboarding process, Apple encourages new hires to use their preexisting personal Apple IDs with this iCloud account, through which their co-workers can share internal Apple documents and other files [more]

Om published this on Monday June 7 — the day of the WWDC keynote. He sent me a note about it, that is too personal to share in full. He described it as his “last shot” — “In case I don’t make it”. He didn’t make it. I didn’t read it right away because I was busy with WWDC. Then, after he died, I didn’t read it because I couldn’t bring myself to. I did, finally, today. It’s so good. Truly insightful. A taste: Augustus had the Senate and the priests. Dario had the Oval Office and the Vatican. The [more]

“Long live Hyrule jazz!” The Z Suites is “a modern jazz reinterpretation of the music from The Legend of Zelda”.

How Podcasts Ruined America. This is an odd claim and article. No mention of the clear precursors to right-wing podcasts (talk radio, blogs, Twitter) and the general shift towards less accountability for public speech, esp. by conservatives. 🤔

Read to the end for a good Instagram Reel

So, I don’t know what kind of nerd you are, but my brand of nerdiness dovetails neatly with this video about the origins of some of the most common symbols on your keyboard: #, @, &, §, *, ¶, †, and ‡, as well as ☞. The “and” symbol or ampersand does not look like a word, but it is one. In fact, it is a full one. It is the Latin word for “and”: “et”. The Romans themselves used this. How do we know? Because we have this: the earliest known example of it, graffitied onto a wall in the doomed Roma [more]

What Climate Science Can Tell Us About the Lost World That Inspired The Odyssey. “A new climate study suggests that centuries of repeated severe drought added to the pressures on that collapsing world.”

Following up from last week, when I asked: When you lease an iPhone through Apple Upgrade, you need a cellular account on one of the big three U.S. carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon. That kind of stinks, and I’m not quite sure I understand why. You’re leasing the iPhone through Apple and Klarna, not the carrier, so I don’t know why Apple cares. If you know why, shoot me a message and explain it. Is it just a simplistic credit-risk evaluation, where prepaid plan-holders and MVNO users in gener [more]

Ulysses S. Grant, in 1875: Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intel [more]

This is fun: BoxSquad. Limbs & borders are all draggable.

“A Los Angeles Costco parking lot [has] become a hotspot for skaters over 40. Its long, low curb lets us keep doing tricks on safer, lower-risk terrain […] Curbs represent the twilight of skateboarding, the end being closer than the beginning.” Lovely.

Bobby Allyn, reporting for NPR: Trump Media & Technology Group is now shopping to traders and investors a premium version of Truth Social delivering early access to the feeds of high-profile users, including the president. Starting Saturday, for a fee of up to $100,000 a month, trading firms can access “Truth API” to get a glimpse of the president’s often market-moving announcements about economic policy and global affairs before the rest of the world. Trump’s media company says customers have a [more]

This 17-minute interview about the Odyssey with Christopher Nolan conducted by philosophy doctoral student Zhong Shu is one of the better ones I’ve seen. The first two questions are: Do you consider yourself a bard for a civilization at dusk? Have you Christianized The Odyssey? And nary a comment or question about filming in IMAX. Tags: Christopher Nolan · film school · interviews · movies · The Odyssey · video · Zhong Shu

Google Earth stupidly launched an AI image-gen feature with no guardrails then put it on pause after a huge outcry. “Tonight I typed just one sentence into Google Earth and put refugees near the Mexican border. Then I planted a nuclear plant in Iran.”

The Listening Museum: “36 mechanical keyboards and switches, curated and sound-mapped. From IBM Model M (1985) to Topre to thocky modern customs. Click any card, type on your real keyboard, hear it as if it were on your desk.”

My thanks to Agent Fone for sponsoring last week at DF. Agent Fone is a crazily ambitious new smartphone that doesn’t merely ship with a built-in AI assistant. Instead, the entire concept is that it enables you to create custom software, right on the phone itself. Ideas for new apps that you’ve had in your notes for years. Weird little app ideas that only you would want. Describe your idea, answer a few questions, and Agent Fone builds an app, or widget, and it’s on your home screen. They’re loo [more]

Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code at Anthropic, was interviewed by Diana Hu on stage at Y Combinator’s Startup School 2026 last week. Starting around 20:30 in the video, he briefly discussed directing Claude to perform difficult tasks: Cherny: I think the skill nowadays is less about prompt engineering and more about figuring out how do you give Claude a hard task that seems a little bit too hard. Then how do you make it possible for Claude to verify its work along the way? The verification is p [more]

Michael Lopp, at Rands in Repose: I have felt since it was announced that the Apple iPhone Upgrade Program has not just been a deal, but a steal. The specifics: You apply for a loan for a full-price iPhone at 0%. If approved, your payments are split over 24 months. Pay for 24 months, and the phone is yours. That was just the deal; the steal was that it was low effort every single year to get a new phone. I’d re-up for a new phone, and Apple would forgive the remaining payments of the loan becaus [more]

Jason Snell: On Thursday, Apple announced record third-quarter earnings, with total revenue of $109.4B, up 16 percent from the year-ago quarter. iPhone revenue was up 22%, Mac revenue was up 10.4%, Services revenue was up 12%, and Wearables revenue was up 6%. iPad revenue was down 6%. Six Colors also has their usual transcript of the analyst call, Tim Cook’s 90th and final one. Over at MacRumors, Juli Clover wrote a retrospective on Tim Cook’s 15-year run as CEO: When Cook took over as CEO, App [more]

Louie Mantia returns to the show to talk about the state of UI and icon design on Apple’s platforms, and some speculation on Apple’s trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI. Sponsored by: Notion: The collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents work side by side, with a Developer Platform teams can build on. Even Realities: Even G2, the everyday display smart glasses. Use promo code talkshow to save 10% off the R1 Ring and/or Even Clip. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a websit [more]

Read to the end for a good sociopolitical breakdown of various backyard animals

Cabel Sasser on Mastodon: the temu app will be studied for generations. i opened the app, and recorded this unedited, nearly two minute, launch sequence. it somehow just gets funnier and more absurd I agree with this sentiment, right down to the fact that Temu doesn’t deserve capital letters. I placed an order from Temu back in August 2023. At the time Temu was the #1 app in the App Store. I surmised it was some sort of crap store, but wanted to see for myself. It is in fact not merely a crap st [more]

The Onion: Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation. The actual Wilson on Bluesky: “No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this.” Most fun movie discourse since Barbenheimer.

Granola CEO Chris Pedregal on invisible AI bots, the coming fight over who sees your transcripts, and why he turns down the companies that ask for them

I ran across this post on Threads the other day: “What’s the hardest record in sports history to ever break?” A sampling of the replies: “Bill Russell’s 11 NBA championships including 8 in a row.” “Lionel Messi scored 91 goals in the 2012 calendar year.” “Cy Young 749 complete games.” “Fernando Tatis (Sr) - 2 Grand Slams in the same inning. Most of the others mentioned here are highly improbable, but there’s no way anyone ever hits 3 slams in one inning.” “Lionel Messi’s 8 Ballon d’or” “Sir Dona [more]

Mark Zuckerberg, in an op-ed Tuesday for The Wall Street Journal (gift link; and irony isn’t lost that “everyone” needs a paid WSJ subscription to read this): We are fortunate to live at an incredible moment in history. In the next few years, people will be able to use superintelligence beyond human capacity to create and discover extraordinary new things, build new businesses, express our ideas, learn new concepts, and improve our lives, health, relationships and careers. Perhaps we’ll be able [more]

A Telegram Arrived — And I Had to Choose Between My Head and My Heart. “On Boxing Day, I rang my father and told him my news. He was momentarily silent until his delayed shock was so great that he dropped his favourite coffee cup and I heard it smash.”

Samuel Axon, Ars Technica: Apple has released iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS 26.6. Apart from potential security hotfixes, these are likely the last updates before the arrival of iOS 27, macOS 27, and so on. All of today’s releases include minor bug fixes, and there are numerous security updates: more than 150 for macOS 26.6. Apple also rolled out macOS 14.8.8 and macOS 15.7.8 for older devices, also focused on security fixes. In terms of new features, you won’t find many in these release [more]

Paul Kafasis, on the Rogue Amoeba blog back in April: Though Sparkle serves us very well, it has one notable downside. Update announcements are most likely to appear at the least convenient time: right after you’ve launched the app. You want to start recording with Audio Hijack, for instance, but the app is telling you about a new version. We’ve long wished to avoid these disruptions. With that in mind, we’re making changes to how update notifications appear throughout our apps. In the future, w [more]

“A new Airbus passenger jet completed an ultra-long test flight between Australia and France lasting more than 24 hours—paving the way for the world’s longest nonstop commercial flights starting up next year.” Wow.

Comedian Mo Welch has a new show on PBS called The Drawing Room, where she interviews people while she draws them (and her guests draw her). What a great idea for a show. The first three episodes are live already: Brett Goldstein, Sarah Silverman, and violinist Vijay Gupta; here’s the premiere episode with Goldstein: Each episode is only 10-12 minutes long. The lineup of guests for the rest of the season include Demi Adejuyigbe, Tig Notaro, Adam Conover, and Aparna Nancherla. [more]

The Beauty of Doing Nothing Together. “What you’re doing hardly matters. What matters is inviting someone into the ordinary parts of your life instead of waiting for an occasion that feels worthy of an invitation.”

Damon Beres, writing for The Atlantic under the hed/subhed: “The New iPhone Underclass: Apple’s rental program is a trap”: The Klarna plan — “Apple Upgrade,” which replaces the iPhone Upgrade Program — is truly, legally, a lease. This is confusing! And it’s confusing in part because this is not how Klarna, a well-known buy-now, pay-later service, typically operates: When you use Klarna for clothing from Shein or lip kits at Sephora or an Xbox at GameStop, you’re paying back a loan, exactly as yo [more]

Volcanologist Laszlo Kestay took this photo of a lava skylight in 1996 while conducting field work at Kīlauea on Hawaiʻi. The hardened lava flows strongly resemble doomed souls being sucked into hell or the damned escaping the underworld. Tags: geology · hawaii · hell · Laszlo Kestay · photography · volcanoes

Ryan Christoffel, writing for 9to5Mac: Apple Upgrade launched this week, and the iPhone Upgrade Program is being discontinued as a result. But despite some similarities, the two offerings are not the same. Here are the key differences. I wrote yesterday that there seemingly is no catch with the new Apple Upgrade program, but there’s at least one, which Christoffel’s piece doesn’t note. When you lease an iPhone through Apple Upgrade, you need a cellular account on one of the big three U.S. carrie [more]

The legacy of the Luddite movement changes when you zoom out a bit. “The development of cooperatives around the world is another story that should not end too abruptly. We could still be weaving it today.”

The trailer for Wicker (starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki). “An outcast in a fishing village commissions a husband for herself made out of wicker.” Looks unhinged (complimentary).

The coffee shop where 162 regulars have their own mug (1977). “The cups may not be such a small thing after all. They are a town register and a history and a confirmation that life goes on in a small American town.”

I really like what Razaak Eniola has to say here about human difference. Before Prince was Prince, Prince was weird. And that goes the same for probably any of your favorite artists. Before Erykah Badu was Erykah Badu, Erykah Badu was weird. Before Marc Rebillet was Marc Rebillet, Marc Rebillet was weird. Everybody loves to clap at the end — and most of the time we are clapping for the wrong reasons. We live in a culture that loves final products. It’s cool to be weird, as long as it’s rooted an [more]

Last week 9to5Mac reported on code in the latest iOS 27 developer beta seemingly meant to restrict leased devices after the user had missed one or more payments. When engaged, Restricted Mode limits the device to the following apps: Accessibility Reader App Store Health Magnifier Phone Clock Settings Wallet Passwords And some limited access to apps like Messages or health-related apps that might have critical messages. Many people reasonably speculated that this feature was related to Apple Upgr [more]

Walmart is busy building out their fast EV charger network in the US…currently 73 locations in 17 states. Their eventual goal is install chargers at “thousands of its locations by 2030”.

Read to the end for a good comic

A terrarium iPhone case that houses actual growing plants and moss.

“Zugunruhe is a German term describing the restless, twitching urge migratory birds feel when caged — and the same primal restlessness humans feel when trapped.”

Apple Newsroom: Apple today announced Apple Upgrade, a new product leasing program provided by Klarna for iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, and iPad available on the Apple Store online, in the Apple Store app, and at Apple Store locations in the United States. Apple Upgrade makes it even easier for customers to get the Apple products they love with a leasing plan that is right for them. [...] Apple Upgrade offers 12- and 24-month leasing options for iPhone and Apple Watch, and 24- and 36-month leasing o [more]

Something that still blows my mind is that every apple seed produces a new variety. Every single one. This is a lovely short documentary about a project called Some Interesting Apples, which aims to find apples growing in unusual places (i.e. not commercial orchards but in places where people tend to discard apple cores): The last three years I have been involved with a project called ‘Some Interesting Apples’, the primary aim of which is to record and, where characteristics make desirable (a [more]

New from Tapbots: version 3 of their excellent clipboard manager for Mac. There are so many clipboard managers for the Mac. I run two other apps — Keyboard Maestro and LaunchBar — that offer good clipboard managers as ancillary features. But for years now I’ve chosen to use Pastebot. Chief among my favorite features: Remembers up to 1,500 clippings (up from a mere 1,000 in v2). Syncs via iCloud. If I copy something on one Mac, it’s in my Pastebot history on my other Macs. That sweet Tapbots UI. [more]

Participants in a recently published study spoke 28% fewer words per day in 2019 than they did in 2005. (People are spending more time alone and more time digitally communicating.)

Nate Anderson, reporting for Ars Technica under the headline “A Missing Underscore Sent Innocent Man to Prison for 18 Months”: Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name “fus__ro_dah” (two underscores after “fus”), but they accidentally requested records for the username “fus_ro_dah” (one underscore after “fus”). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme. [...] Despite finding no evidence of the crim [more]

The Thomas Crown Affair? Directed by and starring Michael B. Jordan? Ok, I’m in.

Emma Roth, The Verge: eBay and three former executives will pay $55.7 million as part of a settlement with a Massachusetts couple targeted with a bizarre harassment and cyberstalking campaign in 2019, as reported earlier by CNBC. The settlement will resolve a lengthy legal saga that revealed how eBay’s former executives sent live insects, a bloody pig mask, a funeral wreath, and other strange items to David and Ina Steiner over their newsletter’s coverage of eBay. The Steiners, who operate the E [more]

This is an extremely 2026 story (derogatory): because of the Trump regime’s assualt on scientific funding, a group of scientists who has been studying marmot populations in Colorado since 1962 turned to OnlyFans to fund their research this year. From The NY Times: In June, Daniel Blumstein, a biologist, sat in a field in Gothic, Colo., waiting to see a marmot. The rodent was elusive, leaving his thoughts to wander. He lamented a lack of funding for his work amid federal cuts to scientific resea [more]

Study: Dinosaurs Were Charbroiled After Chicxulub Impact. “The impact would have produced an immense cloud of dust that superheated the upper atmosphere, charbroiling living organisms unable to take shelter and igniting widespread wildfires.”

Why Do We Tolerate Elon Musk’s Racist Commentary? “Musk’s virulent racism and vicious, disturbing views are no secret. He does not hide them. They sit in plain view, easily accessible on the social media website he owns…”

On the experience of the long haul flight. “The meal cart appears two hours in. You can hear it banging into passengers’ knees before you see it, and the sound causes the entire cabin to sit up slightly, like meerkats detecting motion on the savanna.”

“The Booker Prize 2026 longlist has now been announced…” Among the authors nominated are Marlon James, M. John Harrison, Emma Cline, and Elizabeth Strout.

Please Use AI. “Be sure to use AI when planning that next camping trip, the last one you will take with this particular child. Definitely do not text your friend who has fly-fished every river in Pennsylvania and biked every backwoods trail…”

Word nerd Rob Watts explains where the names of all the European countries come from. Which country is the “land of the rabbits”? Why does Germany have so many different names? Where do the Dutch actually live? What links Croatians and neckties? (via open culture) Tags: Europe · language · Rob Watts · video

30 notable sales of rare books by AbeBooks over the past 30 years, including first editions of Moby-Dick, Winnie-The-Pooh, and Leaves of Grass.

Dan Frommer, writing for Business Insider in 2011 about that year’s WWDC (Jobs’s last): While discussing Apple’s free, new iCloud email service, he took an apparent jab at Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and the others, which stuff ads in their free email services. “No ads,” he boasted. “We build products that we want for ourselves, too, and we just don’t want ads.” Jobs’s “we” is interesting to ponder here. Apple’s senior leadership today is comprised mostly of the same people in senior leadership positions [more]

19th Century Japanese Woodblock Prints Creatively Illustrate the Inner Workings of the Human Body. Love these.

Here’s a map of the 21 US cities that used to have a population of 100,000 people but don’t anymore. Many of these are Rust Belt cities, in which manufacturing employment fell steeply during the latter part of the 20th century. The thread at Reddit mentions Detroit and St. Louis as two other cities whose population has dropped during that same time period. Detroit went from 1.85 million in 1950 to 639,000 in 2020 and St. Louis dropped from 857,000 to 300,000 over the same time period: St. Louis [more]

How the Words We Teach English Language Learners Changed, and What That Says About Us. “The shifts reflect a life that moved further from its own making: less tied to tools, animals, food…; more tied to global institutions, categories, systems…”

Don’t use AI until you’re 40. “We have been so quick to treat access to new technology as an inevitability that we have failed to question whether every powerful tool should be placed in the hands of every developing mind the moment it becomes available.”

Every phone now ships with an assistant. You ask, it answers. Lame. We built a phone that writes software instead. The app idea you’ve had in your notes for years. The side hustle you will never get around to building. The weird thing only you would want. Describe it, answer a few questions, and it’s on your home screen — yours, working, sendable to a friend. No app store between you and your ideas. The first fifty units go to teams who’ll push on it and tell us what breaks.  ★

Jason Snell: Apple’s most valuable asset is its brand. Not its real estate, not its intellectual property, not even any particular product. Even the mighty iPhone has no value if, over time, the traits that differentiate it from competitor products are erased. Apple’s brand has always stood for higher quality products — you pay more, but you get more. Apple has never wanted to be the low-price leader. It didn’t put stickers on the first Intel Macs to get some marketing dollars from Intel. It doe [more]

In the wake of OpenAI’s cyberattack against Hugging Face, few seem ready to acknowledge the implications

We Used to Be Able to Buy Things in This Country. “Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy.”

The European Central Bank is providing a sneak peek at the next design of the Euro banknotes. From a shortlist of 10 designs created by artists and designers from across the EU, one will be selected as the basis of how Euro banknotes from €5 to €200 will look in the future. Here are a few I pulled out from all of the designs: It’s notable (*cough*) that some of the banknotes are designed vertically vs horizontally. The influence of portrait mode on smartphones? [more]

“Datatype is an OpenType variable font that turns simple text expressions into inline charts. No JavaScript, no images, no rendering library — just type the syntax and Datatype’s ligature substitution does the rest.”

Read to the end for "The Odyssey" in 70mm VapeMAX

The Batman Effect: people in an experiment acted more altruisticly when the caped crusader was present.

From the filmmakers who made the excellent Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland comes a four-part series on space exploration, Once Upon a Time in Space. A short trailer is above; here’s a synopsis: Drawing on intimate, unseen archive and powerful first-hand testimony, this landmark 4-part series tells the human stories behind our quest to explore space, offering a unique perspective on our changing world and where we are headed. The series first aired on the BBC and the first two episodes ar [more]

Regarding my recent pieces regarding Apple’s shitty ads in the App Store and Apple News (and, perhaps soon, Apple Maps), a friend sent me this pithy take: The ads Apple is happy to inflict on us in its apps are the equivalent of the stickers it would never allow on its physical products. Bullseye. That’s what those stickers on PCs are: they’re ads. Intel pays for the “Intel Inside” stickers that booger up PC laptop palm rests. Longtime readers will recall that back in August 2007, Apple held a T [more]

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF to promote their MCP server. Debugging SSO, managing users, adjusting auth policies, configuring branding: every configuration task has lived behind a UI that only a human can drive. The WorkOS MCP server gives agents the same access as your dashboard login. Hundreds of operations, discoverable at runtime. Connect in one command via OAuth, with scoped tokens instead of a master API key. Pass a screenshot of your marketing site and ask your agent [more]

Why does the media keep debasing itself for a man who despises them?

An Uncomplicated Man, Emily Wilson’s review of Nolan’s The Odyssey. “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script. Sadly, Damon’s Odysseus isn’t complicated or wily or artful.”

Astronauts returning from long missions report a “jet lag of the self”: “a sense of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame”.

I appreciate the plain speech of Science magazine’s Derek Lowe in his recent piece, The Assault On Science Funding Continues. When I talk to people about this subject (and that includes some journalists as well) and say what I’m about to at the end of this paragaph I am sometimes met with disbelief. But I mean what I say and I am trying my best to say what I mean: The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. Th [more]

Welp, right at the top of the CDC page on autism and vaccines: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” 🫨

Fascinating essay by Nikhil Suresh: On a trip overseas, I had the privilege of a meeting with one of the Fortune 500 executives mentioned at the beginning of the post, who will remain anonymous so that they are not executed by firing squad by their board. As we were chatting, it became clear that they were very switched-on and technically competent, and they also happened to be at a company that had committed to the usual battery of exorbitant claims about their recent innovations — we’ve 100×’d [more]

The European Commission on Thursday: The Commission found that Google gives preferential treatment to its own services, including shopping, hotels, transport and sports results, over those of third parties in Google Search, thereby breaching its obligations under the DMA. Google displays its own services more prominently in search results, including at the top of the search results page or by using enhanced visuals and filters, while similar third-party services do not have the same prominence. [more]

Julien Khaleghy, CEO of SerpApi: The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted our motion to dismiss Google’s lawsuit, marking a win not just for SerpApi, but for all who depend on an open internet. We’re pleased that the court rejected Google’s attempts to expand the DMCA to assert control over access to public pages. The internet’s founding principle — open access to usable information — is essential to driving innovation and ensuring everyone benefits from the promis [more]

Apple Newsroom: Apple and Ford today announced that Apple Maps will be integrated directly into Ford’s upcoming Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) Platform through Apple’s new MapKit for Automotive SDK. Coming to Ford’s UEV Platform in 2027, this integration will deliver a beautiful and easy-to-use navigation experience powered by Apple Maps directly to the vehicle’s displays. Road-level Maps information will also enable Ford’s Latitude AI team to build a seamless hands-free driving experience. Se [more]

Teddy Rosenbluth, reporting for The New York Times: On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. The case count toppled the record set last year, when measles infected more than 2,200 Americans and killed two unvaccinated children. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined. Reversing course on measles would req [more]

For a long time the best native Mac IRC client was Textual, but although Textual still works, it’s been sunset by the author. Not to fear, however. Fredrik Blank just launched bIRC: Creating an IRC client in 2026 is not something that will pay the bills : ) It would be just for the joy of programming. But the amount of work involved always made me throw the thought aside. But one night when I had nothing better to do, I started implementing the good old spec in Swift (RFC 2812). And then I got m [more]

Following up on the previous item today, re: content blockers and ad-blocking, I ran into a weird situation a few weeks ago with my column “John Ternus Should Reverse Apple’s Slide Down the Advertising Slippery Slope”. That article contains this sentence, in Markdown: And -- at this writing, still "coming soon" -- Apple is launching [ads on Apple Maps][🗺️]. [🗺️]: https://ads.apple.com/maps The problem is that anyone reading that article in NetNewsWire saw it rendered like this, with the word [more]

Speaking of dickovers, here’s Cory Doctorow, writing this week at Pluralistic: Seizing the means of computation isn’t theft, it’s bargaining. Commercial surveillance companies will tell you that by spying on you, they are simply engaged in a marketplace exchange in which you swap your privacy for access to online services. But they are running a very curious sort of market: it’s a “market” where as soon as you stop to browse someone’s wares, the stallholder gets to reach into your pocket and cle [more]

Read to the end for some real good 'Project Hail Mary' fanart

Here’s a real gem that a reader sent me. Tomtoc is a maker of laptop bags and sleeves. Visit their homepage and, of course, you’ll get a dickover asking you to join their mailing list “for exclusive updates and get a chance to win a free tech pouch every month.” But here’s the gem. If you do subscribe, and you decide later to unsubscribe, you get this:  ★

The betting odds for the Sixers to win the NBA championship went from 20-1 to 10-1. Here’s James on Twitter/X, explaining his decision: This is my last decision. I’m not going for money. I’m not going for family. What am I really playing for at this point? I still want to sacrifice. I still want to work. I still want to grind. I still want to compete, to win and to have a chance at the feeling of winning another championship. I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team a [more]

Quinn Nelson returns to the show to discuss OpenAI’s ChatGPT/Codex “native” app migration fiasco, Siri AI in Apple’s OS 27 betas, MacOS 27 Golden Gate, and the hottest new cell phone of the year, the Trump T1. Sponsored by: Notion: Try the powerful, all-in-one Notion AI today. Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free daily greens, with code talkshow50off. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW.  ★

As more details emerge about OpenAI's cyberattack against Hugging Face, lawmakers are taking an interest. PLUS: Meta's cynical new ad + "pervert glasses" damage control

New orca behavior unlocked. They’ve been known to sink boats and wear salmon for hats; now they’re ramming fish so hard they explode. “Orcas were observed to hold sunfish in their jaws while a second whale smashed into the target at high speed…”

It’s our ethical duty to understand large numbers. “Our world is increasingly moving towards extreme values: Damages from climate change, deaths due to genocide, wealth that knows no bounds. We can’t tackle them if we can’t wrap our heads around [them].”

A Teen Reporter Searched for His Community in the Epstein Files. Adults Freaked Out. “Once everyone was back at school on Tuesday, the high schoolers lawyered up during their lunch hour.”

“From a Bond fan to Bond fans worldwide.” Nice work.  ★

Kirk McElhearn, back in February: I use Apple News to keep up on topics that I don’t find in sources I pay for (The Guardian and The New York Times). But there’s no way I’m going to pay the exorbitant price Apple wants for Apple News+ — £13 — because, while you get more publications, you still get ads. And those ads have gotten worse recently. Many if not most of them look like and probably are scams. Here are a few examples from Apple News today. One of the ads he examined was, supposedly, from [more]

Dvorak is best known for all the takes he was jacktastically wrong about, but what gave his schtick staying power is that he was technically savvy. His take here on the PS/2 was actually spot-on: that it was technically impressive in many ways, especially the way it was assembled without any cables, but that it was doomed in the market against ugly mess-of-cables commodity PCs. “Computer Chronicles” was the real show from the 1980s that Adam Lisagor so lovingly and spectacularly spoofed with “Co [more]

William Gallagher, AppleInsider: Legendary technology columnist, pundit, author and podcast host John C. Dvorak has died, age 80. He is survived by his wife Mimi Dvorak. Today Dvorak is best known for co-hosting the “No Agenda” podcast with Adam Curry, where he would critique mainstream news media. His death was first announced by the podcast on X, although note that Dvorak’s age is mistakenly given as 74. From the No Agenda News newsletter yesterday: For a man who spent decades famously predict [more]

Read to the end for a good advertisement for high heels

Glaze's Thomas Paul Mann on disposable software, the SaaS apocalypse, and why half the software you use in a few years will be something you made. PLUS: OpenAI's rogue model, and the distillation debate

The European Commission, last week: Today, the European Commission has issued two sets of binding specification measures to Google under the Digital Markets Act. The aim of the first specification measures is to ensure that competitors’ Artificial Intelligence (AI) services can compete with Google’s own AI services, such as Gemini, by having equal access to features on Google’s Android devices. The aim of the second specification measures is to rebalance the playing field by giving third-party s [more]

Read to the end for a good video about Boston

Read to the end for a cool butter recipe

Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 is very good — but the hype may be getting ahead of reality. (For now.)

Read to the end for a very good fandragon

The imperial project of Silicon Valley and the US government is out in the open. Countries need to reclaim their sovereignty.

The Verge's David Pierce kicks off our new series on staying productive in the AI era — starting with why you should stop trying to stay ahead

200 economists and AI leaders say something big is happening. What should we do about it? Plus: Apple sues OpenAI

Read to the end for a pizza crime

16 books for you to consider bringing on your vacation

Here's your Garbage Intelligence for June 2026

GPT-5.6 impresses the critics, but Fidji Simo's exit leaves OpenAI's focus — and its org chart — in flux. PLUS: Meta plays catch-up, and the "AI 2027" authors present "AI 2040."

Read to the end for Tucker Costanza

Adventures with Raycast’s new app-making app, Glaze

How apps like Uber make taxis seem unappealing

Read to the end for a cool new cafe that just opened up

Preorder my new book about the growing cost of data centers

How a recent talk by researcher Candice Odgers explains why ban critics are losing

Plus, a recap of top stories you missed in June 2026

AI's externalities are growing faster than the industry can address them

Read to the end for a good Tumblr post

Read to the end for a good Instagram video

Read to the end for the song of the summer

Read to the end for a powerfully astute observation

Matt Garman argues that junior employees are as necessary as ever. But AWS now sells agents that can recruit, code, and process claims. Will the balance hold?

Read to the end for real good Widow’s Bay content

The many problems with Mark Carney’s AI strategy for Canadians

Read to the end for some really good Backrooms fan art

And yes, AI is a factor. Replika and Wabi founder Eugenia Kuyda on how advances in coding changed her hiring calculus

Read to the end for a really good World Cup fan

Experiments with an imperfect policy are delivering more thoughtful social media rules

Highlights from Hard Fork Live, including Figma CEO Dylan Field on why design isn’t dead

Is it time to pull back for the endless stream of content?

A trip to Zambia (temporarily) gone awry

In its bid to push AI, it’s destroying its products and trying to kill the web too

And you're getting a free month!

PLUS: A rich and evocative Iraq War (?) rom-com

PLUS: The "forklift model" of A.I. education

Roundup 05/03/2026

Plus, a recap of stories you missed in April 2026

A Read Max re-run

Roundup 04/27/2026

A message to the Apple faithful

With Quinn Slobodian, Ben Tarnoff, and John Ganz

Let’s pretend it’s January, because I’m ready and excited to present to you the #new chips, cookies, cereals, and assorted garbage I found in the wild during 2025!! Last year, we started a new (temporary?) Panic tradition — at the very end of our Monday status meeting, I run through all the new snacks I’d found […]

How tech CEOs use the threat of job loss to distract from how AI is really used against workers

Roundup 04/20/2026

PLUS: Has Forum Brain crossed the gender divide?

Roundup 04/14/2026

Sam Altman wants intelligence to be a utility that you pay him for

Video of our conversation from Night of IDeas

Roundup 04/06/2026

On a weird few weeks of A.I.-writing scandals

Roundup 03/29/2026

A Read Max re-run

Roundup 03/23/2026

A recording of our livestream for paying subscribers

Roundup 03/17/2026 (Plus: a bonus book rec!)

This newsletter is brought to you by Squarespace.

Roundup 03/09/2025

This post is about a found mural, a lost artist, and a conference talk. It’s the full story of Wes Cook and The McDonald’s Mural. Grab a beverage, sit back, relax, and thank you for joining me. Ten years after giving my first talk at XOXO, Andy (Baio) and Andy (McMillan) asked if I’d like […]

When I was kid, on a road trip with my family, we stopped in Vacaville, California. And there, drawing us off the freeway with a wooden glow, was a brand new roadside attraction: Wooz. The pitch? It was a maze. A big maze. Wooz stood for “Wild Original Object with Zoom” (!), opened in 1988, […]

Long ago, I was in the studio audience of a local PDX TV kids show called Ramblin’ Rod. “Local kids show” is a format that is completely lost to time, which is pretty wild, because it was such a thing. Think Krusty the Clown — kids sitting in a studio, a goofball host, time filled with […]

Welcome to 2025. The vibes are a little heavy, so, I’m trying very hard to focus on the things I can control — and yes, that includes remembering to share things that delight me like the latest #new snacks and cereals I find at the grocery store!! Yeah. It’s an age-old, very-odd Cabel tradition. This time, […]

This video catalogs every borrowed sample from Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys, from the soundtrack to Car Wash to the Sugarhill Gang to the Eagles to the Ramones to the Beatles. They play the original first and then what they did with it on the album. Somehow this video only has 31,000 views?! You can also listen to this remix of Paul’s Boutique on Soundcloud, which combines the source tracks with Beastie Boys vocals and some audio commentary. Tim Carmody made a Spotify playlist of all th [more]