Keeping it slow
The boy has been feeling a bit unsettled for the past few weeks, sometimes waking up at 4 or 5 am and ready to play or j...Inflation and, you know, getting laid off.
My iPhone 13 mini is at 93% battery health. And still lighter than all of these newer phones. The new Airpods Pro are nice. Airpods Pro + iPhone seem like a far more powerful computing option than any VR or glasses imo.
I sniff an Apple global MVNO in the near future.
This is really good and honestly I will keep paying for Kagi vs. any LLM all day.
Kagi News looks good! First they define the problem:
Driven by relentless ad monetization, news has become mental junk food - an endless stream of clickbait that destroys our ability to think deeply and clearly.
Huh….did not have Atlassian buying The Browser Company (makers of Arc browser) in my bingo card: www.atlassian.com/blog/anno…
Guess I’m gonna try to audition to be Pearl Jam’s next drummer 🤣
No…really
The little, seemingly innocuous, questions ChatGPT and others ask at the end of every result, you know, “Would you like me to x, y, z?” is the most predatory dark pattern I have ever seen.
Let’s take it from the top.
My wife and I decided to pony up for COBRA health coverage through the end of the year until new plans and costs are available for open enrollment into ACA next year. The current plans (and subsidies) are not competitive with the coverage I received from work. We have providers/specialists in other states that we see currently that the Nebraska ACA plans do not include (nor do they offer out of network coverage except for emergency and urgent care services).
Healthcare is indeed broken in this country. I would be paying up the nose regardless of COBRA to insure my family.
I stand by what I have been counseling friends and colleagues: get your rainy day fund in order asap. If you have zero, build it to 3 or more months of expenses (but get yourself to that 3 month and keep adding to it). If you have 3, build it to 6. If 6, get it up to 12. Frankly, when you get to 12, add 6 more months if you can. Costs will be variable and surprises come up, and healthcare will not get cheaper.
The state of Nebraska really does not want anyone to successfully file unemployment claims.
Had some fun tonight playing a drum cover of The Wood Brothers song “The Trick” off of their most recent album, Puff of Smoke 🎵
So many devices.
My wife took this wonderful photo of our son during their outing at a nearby lake today. She’s always had a knack and talent for photography, she never wanted to pursue it professionally.
All that to say, I’m a lucky bastard to get these from her.
I listened to this Wood Brothers album about 10 times today. I imagine if you did similar you wouldn’t regret it either.
Engineering momentum, with occasional job searching
On Tuesday, August 19th I am officially unemployed. As I dive in to the world of job hunting, I suspect I will need to r...Following specific YouTube channels in my RSS reader has made life much more manageable.
“Chinese Democracy” by Guns ‘n’ Roses came to mind immediately, which means we are all gonna die.
If ALIENS landed on Earth today…Which album should they choose to judge humanity?
Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast keeps getting better and better. In this episode with Joe Mantegna, I’m just falling in love with Chicago all over again.
There are a handful of albums I really play on repeat regularly and Hail to the Thief is on top of that list.
Radiohead: Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009) kottke.org
Reading about the social features The Verge are building into their site and I can’t help but be reminded how of how Google really screwed up with Blogger (one of many in a long list of screwups). I read somewhere they still have millions of active blogs but you wouldn’t know it through their search I guess.
The Verge, really doubling down on blogging as the social network, here’s a nice thread on Bluesky by Nilay Patel:
Verge quickposts are a bit "fake" today -- they're just Wordpress entries designed to look more or less like tweets. Since the beginning, I've wanted to make them "real" -- to turn our feed into a true social feed, with all of the social features (and interop with Bluesky and Mastodon!) that brings
— nilay patel ([@reckless.bsky.social](http://reckless.bsky.social)) August 6, 2025 at 11:25 AM
A reminder that the hyped math of AI productivity doesn't add up
Colton Voege writes No, AI is not Making Engineers 10x as Productive. I would extend this conclusion to any profession o...Green bean fort. Courtesy of my wife and son 📷
🎵 I recorded a snippet of my one of my attempts to learn Fresh Tendril by Soundgarden and just when I think I’ve nailed the count on it, the beat inverts by an offbeat eighth note.