Status:
Mad March weather today, literally swinging from bright blue skies to thunderous clouds in minutes, then back again. Even the rabbits were freaked out by a sudden hail storm.
This cartoon strip came to mind today.
I saw it on some feed at the start of the month and was struck by how good it was, like a really professional piece of work, but of course there was no credit attached. A bit of reverse image searching revealed it’s by the late Richard Thompson who worked at the Washington Post from the 80s until his death from Parkinsons in 2016. It looks like it’s from his weekly series Richard’s Poor Almanac which is running on GoComics.
Otherwise today was a light pottering day. I slept really badly but didn’t want to just rest up, so did some light chores around the house. Turns out the filter in the dishwasher needs cleaning. Who knew?
Reading:
- An exploit kit that can hack millions of iPhones has been publicly leaked - Anyone who can upgrade to iOS 26 should do so as soon as possible. This is not a drill. And so my holdout on all the awful liquid glass bullshit has come to an end. It’s ugly, but with judicious application of accessibility settings, plus the fact that I don’t really use my phone for much other than reading articles and listening to podcasts these days, means I can probably deal. (Thankfully this exploit doesn’t seem to affect the Mac so my actual computer can remain usable for a while longer.)
- Google is automatically rewriting news headlines in its search results - One the one hand, fuck Google for playing god, but on the other hand, online headlines are often terrible and click-baity so re-writing them to actually describe what’s at the link is not a terrible idea. I mean, I do it here when a good page has a title so bad I’m embarrassed to have it on my site. Related: Google just patented the end of your website with an “AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user.”
- “A new world is being born”: Rebecca Solnit on the slow revolution the far right cannot tolerate - Really looking forward to Solnit’s new book because we need a bit of grounded, long-term positivity in the fight against the omni-awfulness. Related: The one thing everyone gets wrong about feminism.
- Welcome to Paris, the city that said no to cars - A walk through the astonishing changes Paris has undergone in the last decade. And they seem to both be working and be popular.
Watching:
- House Party! (1983) (20:48) - A student short film that Reginald Hudlin later remade as the 1990 hit comedy film. Early hip-hop delights with shades of Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock.
- Ants Pants: Buying and using the biggest ECHO chainsaw - Echo CS7310SX (1:58:42) - Andris buys the biggest chainsaw he can and cuts up some wood.
Subscribing:
- ComicCaster creates RSS feeds for comic strips that don’t have them (such as on GoComics) so you can add them to your feed reader. I have a nice folder of daily comics that I read over breakfast which will now be a bit bigger. (Adding Nancy, classic and current, and the above mentioned Richard’s Poor Almanac)