I’ve been quiet for a couple of months. I enjoyed publishing weeknotes but something had to give a few weeks ago and this was one of the things that got paused. Still not sure if they will return, or I move to more frequent shorter posts. Unclear, but I’m still here as someone did reach out to check in that I was still alive…well, something like that.
So why the break? Work. Fell into old habits of working all the hours. I’ve hardly gamed in the last 4 months either which is criminal given the consoles and games available to me but I pushed it to back burner which is really unhealthy. I’ve had the last week off work and done a bit of a reset as health issues have also been kicking in. I have kept my daily walks going though and listening to podcasts as that’s still my favourite way to unwind. Day 3449 of my move streak – 10 consecutive years are in sight!
A couple of topics that are bubbling around at the moment that I wanted to mention. First, the unexpected drama around MacStories. I’ve enjoyed MacStories for years due to the app’s they surface and the depth that Federico Viticci and John Voorhees often go into not only in the Apple world but in retro gaming. I’ve been a paid subscriber for almost 10 years as the path they were on wasn’t chasing news and clicks and I was happy to support them. I also applauded their principled stance to come off Meta and X platforms and do so publicly. It made it all the more disappointing this week when it was revealed that Macstories and also Viticci and Voorhees had returned to X and also were paying members. This was also done without talking to the rest of the Macstories staff. Clumsy at best and a real misstep.
There was a lot of blowback in the small Mastodon community I follow and little public acknowledgement of why. It was really painful to see the reaction of some of the staff. Roll forward a couple of days and Viticci posted an explanation via a Craft document. Odd. I’m sure they both have their legitimate reasons but it doesn’t stack up for me. Its also sad to see their about page now reduced to just the two of them as contributors have walked away from the site…maybe that was the plan all along. With their ongoing pivot to AI and less on Mac coupled with their move back to X I decided it was time for me to also move on and cancel my subscription. I was convinced that was the right move when within minutes I got a 15% discount offer to resubscribe. Uggghhhhh.
The death of Jason Arday was an avoidable death. If Arday was white the pile on would never have happened and likely he would still be here today. There are some questions to answer around Arday’s claims he made throughout his life but there are professors accused of far worse. Where are the daily articles from the right wing press about this case? Indeed one of the academics who criticised Arday, Nathan Cofnas, is a self defined “race realist” who himself is now suspended and whose role at Cambridge was terminated after saying that black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”. We really do live in unpleasant times.
Glasgow feels like a city in decline at the moment. Susan Aitken rightly took some flak from doing an interview last year which was seen through rose tinted spec’s. Three massive city centre fires haven’t helped but the avenue projects haven’t improved the city in my opinion, the littering challenges haven’t been dealt with and there’s a number of other day to day issues that the council just haven’t tackled. However this weeks BBC Scotland’s Disclosure programme, Welcome to Glasgow, while highlighting challenges in the city centre which are clear to see – crime, drugs, mental health and immigration – also did little to offer a balanced view nor actually investigate the why. Who is driving and funding the right wing protests in the city? Are the crime rates better or worse over the years? What about the good that is happening in the city? While Glasgow has taken a step back in recent years this was a really poor hit piece. Do better BBC.
Anyway, to finish this not a weeknotes post, some linkage:
- Ladies and gentlemen, he’s floating in disgrace: The secret of Toby Young’s decades long grift – its from 6 years ago but love this. There should be a rule that politicians that jump from party to party can’t within x years – they are just grifting.
- Don’t be a meat proxy – I still fear the day of being questioned at work via copilot…and me reaching to copilot for responses. Bullshit on bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving running out of credits daily on both Claude and Codex as I vibe code some apps but switch on your brain when either talking or replying to people – don’t copy LLM text verbatim.
- Bond Filming Locations – love this, no doubt vibe coded but who cares when its this good
- Stowaway – Ride along with anything in the sky – this is so good. And runs in a browser. What a world we live in.
- If Star Wars had a $10 Budget – loved this. So funny.