It could be the parts of the web where I roam, but I’ve been reading a lot more about privacy, whether it’s Apple’s recent efforts to make their iOS more inherently private (see pieces in Bloomberg and The Verge) or the growing rumblings of government regulation (see pieces in CNBC and in Recode/Vox). By virtue of simply being online, all of us have been inducted into one or more Big Data Mining ecosystems whereby not…
In offices across the land, someone’s co-worker is making a remark that ‘it’s hump day.’ Wednesday. Just two more days after this. But what if the weekend was only one more day away? Joe Pinsker over at The Atlantic does a deep dive into the move by several companies to reduce working days (and hours) down to four, but keeping the pay that had been allocated for five: effectively giving their employees an immediate 20%…
So it’s a day after the fact, but, hey, I don’t usually post on Sundays anyway — even Father’s Day. But Father’s Day means it’s time for plenty of geeky dad memes, say of Jango Fett and his many clone offspring. However, with quite a bit of regularity, someone writes an article about how Benjamin Sisko of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is one of the best ‘space dads’ around. I have to agree: even…
So let’s say you’re thinking about traveling again, perhaps even flying. Perhaps you’re wondering what happened to the efforts to make a new supersonic passenger aircraft since I posted about it in November 2019. Well, you’re in luck! Rebecca Heilweil over on Vox/Recode has an update on Boom, the company working on building new supersonic passenger jets which United is now very keen to start flying. A big question, however, is not only if they…
I really should come up with a symbol/repeatable post that I put up when things get busy, like the prolific writer and de facto pop culture historian Mark Evanier does with his Cream of Mushroom Soup posts. And perhaps it should be Viking-themed. But while I mull that over… and work on both a script and some audio editing, here’s a darn fine Danish PSA. And no, Vikings didn’t wear helmets with horns. It could…
Besides the inevitable barbecues in the U.S. this long weekend, it’s a good one for reflection (not the least given the reason for the long weekend). So that got me thinking about ideas and inspiration and a recent article by David Robinson for the BBC about how people get ideas… and how a certain professor is testing some assumptions of how people get and choose ideas. The article goes a lot into brainstorming and business…
Tomorrow, your kids may be binge-watching some cartoon on some streaming services. They may even do so whilst consuming copious amounts of Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs. But they will not be viewing a network broadcast slate of cartoons like generations of kids have. Why is that? Charles Moss in The Saturday Evening Post has your answers in a article so perfectly titled, I just used it above. He also provides a whole lot more detail about…
Generations of children may feel the world is a bit less colorful as children’s author and illustrator Eric Carle has died at the age of 91. There’s a great piece by Emily Langer in the Washington Post, where I got the delightfully succinct phrase “simply told and radiantly illustrated” from. There’s also a nice 2-minute piece by Neda Ulaby on NPR as well as a remembrance from the BBC. In these remembrances, you’ll get a…
Last week, I mentioned the big news that was AT&T’s retreat from WarnerMedia (still to be approved). And, as many people have noticed, media consolidation continues apace. This week’s revelation? Amazon is looking to buy MGM. Now, since MGM has been trying to sell itself for a while, this may not come as a surprise, but what this means for consolidation… well, who knows?
I’ve had several posts over the years about people finding their purpose in life, several posts about hobbies, and also just generally about motivation. Especially as so many of us are about to re-enter “normal” work locations and schedules, it’s an opportune time to consider what you want to be doing — and for those of us who have the luxury of considering what to do beyond “anything that pays the bills NOW,” there’s often…