Total: 22 posts
Posts in: editorial
- Apple’s primary drivers of revenue are the #iPhone, the App Store, and services.
- There are millions upon millions of …
- The Way It Is (1986)
- Scenes From The Southside (1988)
- A Night On The Town (1990)
- Harbor Lights (1993)
- Hot House …
apple
editorial
Longform
MacBook Neo? Yeah, go ahead and buy it!
“MacBook Neo Hands-On… Watch BEFORE You Buy!”
“New $599 MacBook Neo! What Apple Didn’t Tell You”
“BEFORE you buy the MacBook Neo…”
“Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo is GREAT (..or is it?)”
The headlines on countless YouTube videos say it all… right? It’s compromised! Apple didn’t tell you everything! Don’t make the wrong choice! It’s madness, per usual, as influencers scramble to carve out a potentially contentious position on Apple’s new affordable laptop, the MacBook Neo.
It’s all bunkum, if you ask me.
These influencers are the same people who complain when their $1200 Pro phones aren’t also the best cameras ever and shocked when …
journalism
politics
capitalism
editorial
Longform
A Word to the Weiss | An Unauthorized Reprint
David Ellison has quietly courted Bari Weiss for a possible role at CBS News—a move that hints at how he may steer the network if his merger goes through.
by Oliver Darcy - June 24th, 2025 [Source]
David Ellison and Bari Weiss. Bari Weiss (Status Illustration/Leigh Vogel/Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)
Late last year, during a trip to New York City, David Ellison quietly made time for a meeting that said as much about his worldview as it did about his interest in media. According to people familiar with the matter, the Hollywood scion set time aside on his busy calendar to meet with Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press. Ellison, like a number of C-suite executive types, has long been an admirer of Weiss’ style of journalism, …
writing
capitalism
editorial
Longform
IAPWE won't leave us alone!
We are being harassed by the International Association of Professional Writers and Editors, also known as IAPWE. We signed up for memberships a few years ago, then cancelled after our first year. We found no benefit to the membership. Now, despite cancelling everything we could find on PayPal, speaking with the credit card servicer who can do nothing, and emailing IAPWE over and over and over again, they continue to charge us.
We both subscribed using PayPal, and we’ve no clue how they got our card details to charge us directly! I’m going to assume they can see all those details in the PayPal dashboard, which is frightening. The image above is a receipt from earlier this year, but the charges have not stopped.
This has been …
apple
editorial
technology
Longform
Are Apple Silicon Macs too good?
In his latest video Luke Miani asks if #Apple made their new machines too good. Across two polls, having run a second one to verify the results of the first, respondents strongly indicated they had no intention of upgrading their early M-series Macs. I have a feeling Apple fully expected that, however. Watch the video on YouTube. We have three Mini’s, two M1 and one Intel, and have no need to upgrade them anytime soon. I may desire an M4 Mini, but I don’t need one. What is behind this?
To understand this there are, I believe, two different, unrelated factors that need to be taken into consideration:
politics
editorial
satire
Microposts
I am not an illustrator or an artist of any kind, but I’ve been messing with images for decades. However #Adobe sucks ass so instead I’ve been using Pixelmator since 2010 or so. I made this in Pixelmator Pro for macOS 15. #TFG #satire #funny #art #idiocracy #EndFascismNow #DeposeTrump #SaveAmerica
politics
editorial
Microposts
There is a very dear price we will pay if we allow our elected leaders to keep leaning into the Overton Window #TFG smashed open. In other words, the #Democrats need to be taught what #FAFO really means and now, not in 2026. #uspol rimaregasblog42.substack.com/p/those-w…
journalism
editorial
dollarnomics
Longform
$15 a month for a single newsletter is unsustainable
#journalism #dollarnomics #editorial - Tyler K. Nothing reporting.
DATELINE INTERNETOPIA - #Substack has created a mythology in the form of the $15 a month newsletter. The claim was that it would help support independent writers who have been driven out of organized news gathering by capitalist greed’s desire to “trim the fat” (meaning people who cost money they’d rather have in their Cayman bank accounts), but the model is unsustainable. In reality, all it does is net Substack more revenue.
Of course, they need that larger cut to support the now far more bloated model that appears to include completely free hosting of a blog, unless you want to use your custom domain, and then you’ll have to cough up …
capitalism
editorial
technology
Longform
Substack charging for "setting up" custom domain names you own is extortion
That sour, disappointed look flooded onto my wife’s face. She was upset. I asked her what was wrong, and she explained to me that her Wordpress stats weren’t working like they used to. I poked around and couldn’t find anything obviously amiss in the Jetpack plugin settings, so I told her it was likely a glitch and would clear up. About a week later I got the email.
Wordpress had determined that my wife’s social justice and political analysis blog (https://rimaregas.com) was now deemed a commercial website and that she’d need to pay up in order to continue getting the vital stats she needs to run her site. It is important to note here that we don’t use Wordpress hosting, but Name.com website hosting, so …
capitalism
editorial
Microposts
I think Sam Elliot kinda nails it… to the wall… with his special brand of gravitas and casual Southern snark. #politics #TFG #capitalism
editorial
Microposts
Reality has unveiled its new slogan for the next era of humanity!
BUCKLE UP
whee. #sarcasm #FML
capitalism
editorial
Microposts
Um. Wow. Okay… So, it’s a banana… and it’s taped to a wall… with a strip of standard silver duct tape. And it just sold at auction for $6.24 MILLION DOLLARS. Aside from being the easiest art to forge, I applaud artist Maurizio Cattelan for creating “Comedian” since it pokes the art industrial complex in the eye and the winning bid makes fools of every last art “speculator” out there. It also peeks under the veneer of stupid we’re running on these days. #art #banana #stupid www.nbcnews.com/news/us-n…
editorial
featured
Longform
I'm done with Microsoft Windows
As of May 31st, 2024 when Microsoft announced Windows Recall, I have a single physical machine, and no virtual machines, with any version of Windows installed and that will not be changing as long as Microsoft remains on the path they're forged for themselves. The one machine which has Windows 10 is a Dell Venue 8 Pro which needs a dongle to install another operating system, and I need to find the dongle. Once I find the dongle, Windows is gone, gone, gone. Why would I go through so much trouble getting rid of Windows?
In short, mostly Windows 11 and that I'll have to pay to get support for Windows 10 in October of 2025, but also everything Microsoft is doing now that is clearly anti-consumer. Let's dig into the demonstrable reasons: …
apple
editorial
Longform
Apple's Notes cannot be exported, and that's wrong...
Ok, this is annoying. Apple Notes is a wonderfully capable notes app that allows you to bulk import all manner of rich text file formats, even entire Evernote exports, and organize them the way you like... with one exception. If you want to stop using Notes, you have to leave everything you created in Notes behind, or export them one by one.
I have over 300 notes.
This is not only annoying but terribly wrong of Apple. I shouldn't have to explain why. I didn't spend a few thousand dollars on Apple gear to lose control over the data I create. I have personal notes, drafts of articles, detailed project concepts, musings, recipes for loads of gluten-free foods, and a bunch more categories. And now that I'm not using Apple Notes anymore... …
television
movies
editorial
featured
Longform
How J.J. Abrams broke Star Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation 30th Anniversary Print by Dusty Abell, Copyright © 2017, Roddenberry Entertainment Inc. Reprinted with permission. All Rights Reserved. Dusty Abell is a comic artist who has pencilled countless comic books, is an illustrator, and has been involved in the animation industry as a character designer since 2000. He has worked on productions such as Batman: Return of the Caped Crusader, Batman vs. Two-Face, Young Justice, Mike Tyson Mysteries, King of the Hill, The Official Handbook of the Invincible Universe for Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead, and many, many others.The first Star Trek television show, known colloquially as The Original Series, ran from 1966 to 1969. The series, produced by …
editorial
Longform
Medium's stats are broken, so I left...
This is my stats page. This is not helpful.Much like today’s other causes of cultural constipation such as race relations, government, cold medications, etc., etc., ad nauseam, the page you see above appears functional, but is not.
Sure, you can click on things and you can see numbers and charts, but none of it is functional to the point where you can derive real, usable data regarding any of the indicated data points.
Take the chart above for example. The Views chart only shows you how many articles were “viewed”, but not which articles. It’s just a number. The Claps indicate how many times the Clap button was clicked, but not by how many users. You need to click the number of claps (as seen in the image below. Yes, it’s that tiny, …
apple
editorial
Longform
Apple's Butterfly keyboard tragedy & potential e-waste disaster
Without official unit sales numbers from Apple, we have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of these machines are in the wild.
I am a life-long fan of Apple. Born in ‘68, I grew up in the thick of the consumer electronics and personal computer boom of the late 70's. Keeping to myself at times, loudly evangelistic at others, a shame-free Mac Ex-pat, reluctant Windows user for a decade, and always the staunch critic, my fandom runs deep. From my early experiences with Apple ][e machines, to all of the Macs I’ve had since, and arriving at now with the two Mac Minis on my desk, one an M1 and the other a last-gen Intel model, I have had my most satisfying and productive years on Macs.
Fortunate for me that I missed Apple’s Butterfly …
editorial
Longform
I don't like my mechanical keyboard
The Keychron K5 SE Low-Profile Mechanical Keyboard is anything but low profile. It’s also a clicky, sloppy, error-prone mess for a writer who taught himself to touch type using his own system.CLACK CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIKTIKTIK… CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIK… AUUUUUUGGGHHHH!!!
Tap tap, goes my Keychron K5 SE. It takes nigh on nothing to press a key, an advantage I’m sure is prized by gamers more rabid and entrenched than myself, but when I’m writing I’m forced to BACKSPACE to repair something that was rendered illegible every third or fourth word. So, I’m typing this review on my Dell tablet PC with a typecover-style input device, and my typing accuracy rockets back up to normal levels.
I’m a touch typist in the loosest of terms. I taught …
editorial
Longform
I desperately want a lightweight OLED Switch
" “>
Just make a bigger one, Nintendo.It was a mistake that when I finally bought a Switch, I got a Switch Lite. Sure, it’s a gorgeous indigo blue, but I’m old and the screen is too small. So, I bought an OLED Switch. It was also likely a mistake when instead of returning the Lite, I put it on a shelf and forgot about it. I’d made my new OLED Switch my main, so I’d just forgotten about its little brother.
A few months back, I was sorting through some stuff and found it. I pulled it out again and stuck in my Mario+Rabbis Kingdom Battle cartridge. I didn’t put it down again for three hours.
I’ve now found myself picking up the Lite more often, despite the small screen and my old eyes.
Mario+Rabbids doesn’t have a lot of tiny …
music
editorial
Longform
Francis Dunnery’s Let’s Go Do What Happens | Album Stories
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Everyone calls him Frank. Let’s Go Do What Happens was released in 1998.I’m quite sure that it was early Fall in Vermont; leaf turning season. It drew the leaf peepers and they brought their money. We didn’t turn in those circles, or any circles for that matter. We spent time at home or at school or with the baby or at various jobs. She worked at the Vermont State Department of Corrections for a time. I worked at the nearby IBM plant for a spell. I attempted another go at college. I’d like to think we failed each other.
Have a listen to the album while reading this piece.The radio station that had to be on in the car at the time was The Point FM, de rigueur for any self-respecting AAA aficionado. Where else …
editorial
technology
Longform
Can we please end the stupid "Natural" vs. "Reverse" scrolling debacle?
" “>
I am quite well versed in the extensive history of the operating system wars. Apple effectively created the home computer industry, and Microsoft has been doggedly chasing after ever since. This is not a new story in the slightest.
Historical documents tell us that Steve Jobs managed to arrange a tour at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, frequently called Xerox PARC, which had been tasked by their parent company with developing a wide range of modern computing technologies for the future. The PARC teams were responsible for laster printers, Ethernet, the desktop paradigm for graphical user interfaces, e-paper, Very Large-Scale Integration or VLSI, the process which made all of the computer chips we use today even …
music
editorial
Longform
America's most underrated musical genius | Bruce Hornsby
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Bruce Hornsby with The Grateful Dead performing at Soldier Field on July 4, 2015 in Chicago. Jay Blakesberg/Invision for the Grateful Dead/AP Images
I’m not going to go into a long, winding diatribe about how and why and when Bruce became a humble god living among us mortals. He’d just deny it. Instead, I’ll show you.
Hell, this is from 1999. There’s another 20 years of new stuff to take in from there, and he’s still going. Not now, of course. Pandemic, anyone?
You certainly know him from the title track from his debut album, The Way It Is, but that was back in 1986. What did he do from 1986 to 1999? Hmm…
apple
editorial
Longform
I've gone (back to) Mac & why you should, too.
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An overview of Apple’s technologically significant M1 chip architecture. Neato torpedo…
Back in 2009, I needed to have the CPU repasted in my MacBook Pro as it was running hot. Ill-advised in retrospect, I poked around Craig’s List until I settled on someone offering repair services that I felt I could trust. I spoke to him on the phone a few times, and we arranged to meet. I dropped off the laptop, we chatted jovially for about ten minutes, and then I went home.
I never saw that machine again.
I had been a contented Apple user since the (very) late 1970’s, but as the 2000’s wore on, my satisfaction had been whittled away by a range of issues like Apple’s pricing, the rise of the walled garden, and limitations preventing …
