Today’s good comics, all about walking dogs and learning to speak French: Unleashed in Paris by Kate Gavino (🐦@kategavino). 📚
No, no. I don’t think I would like any of those things, but thanks for the suggestion
Today’s prompt, to use in whatever creative endeavor you might practice: From Marcus Aurelius, “The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.”
Some fine reading for a lazy Sunday morning in the new issue of Gingerbread House (@GingerbreadMag): <gingerbreadhouselitmag.com/category/…> 📚
Someone had a big day meeting the new walker.
One of my favorite musicians, David Mead (@davidmeadtwits), released his first album in 8 years this winter, COBRA PUMPS. He offers it free to subscribers to his mailing list. Really looking forward to this. <www.davidmead.com> 🎵
The release of a new Wild Cards story always improves the day: How to Move Spheres and Influence People by Marko Kloos. 📚
SV bro-dream to “democratize” publishing by cramming as much unpaid work into a half-baked, VC-backed “platform” screwed writers and publications? Say it ain’t so. The long, complicated, and extremely frustrating history of Medium
For those few of us who have obsessed over litmags for years, The Review Review going on hiatus is a sad thing to see: So Long, It’s been Good to Lit Mag Ya!.
Today’s recommended reading: ON BEING BLACK IN APPALACHIA: A RESPONSE TO J.D. VANCE by Keith S. Wilson. 📚
Recently I posted a warning about running destructive software. Today I’m happy to unleash that destructive software into the world: TwitClean automatically deletes any tweets from your timeline older than a specified number of days: <github.com/michaelsm…>
Here’s your nerd TIL for the day: In the 1976 remake of King Kong, the ape’s voice was performed, uncredited, by Peter Cullen, better known to you as Optimus Prime.
Pro Tip: If you’re writing a little program that does something destructive – like, say, delete tweets from your timeline for you – maybe don’t actually let the program do the destructive thing until you’re sure it will destroy the right things. Oops.
RIP Dick Dale, King of the Surf Guitar. Please read Dick Dale Conquers the World by good friend John McDermott.
Only took like 38 years...
Speaking of programming: Most of my life, I’ve sort of fudged understanding the difference between a statement and expression, since no text I ever read described either clearly. Until today. From Crafting Interpreters: Where an expression’s main job is to produce a value, a statement’s job …
Almost tailor-made for igniting anxiety in someone who just turned 50 but still mostly enjoys programming: Ctrl-Alt-Delete: The Planned Obsolescence of Old Coders
This has made the rounds all week, but I feel it is worth pointing out. I understand that the folks employed there need the work, but people also used to paint alarm clocks with radium as a job. I’m done with Facebook. Twitter’s probably next. Toxic media. …
Bad enough that the AARP mailings started the day I turned 50, but this morning the clerk looked me right in the eye and punched that damn button.
Today’s required comics reading: It Was All So Different Then by Mike Dawson on The Nib. 📚
Best I can tell, the term for “wall lover” could be “toichonophiliac” from the Greek or “amans murum” in Latin, but I guess I’m gonna stick with the good old Anglo-Saxon portmanteau, “brickfucker.”
I don’t hold out much hope for “Big Data" or any form of machine intelligence when most human intelligence apparently can’t even do a damned mail merge correctly.
Today’s nightmare: [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/what-its-like-to-deliver-packages-for-amazon/578986/](I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon.)
Well, now this was unexpected and a bit sad: Tin House Magazine’s 20th Anniversary Issue Will Be Its Last.
Today’s comic you should read: Why Is U.S. Transit Crumbling? on The Nib.
Read: Umberto Eco’s 14 Features of Fascism