Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Ms. Gracie didn’t boop me until 5:30 this morning. I’m grateful she allowed me to sleep in. If I could get her to let me sleep until 6AM that would be amazing.
The Hybrid React Native/Native app I’m working on is really starting to gain steam. We’ve shipped some new features and have a couple more big ones coming at the end of next month.
I’ve learned a lot about integrating React Native with native code and my learning continues. I mentioned before I hope I can work on this app through, at least, the end of the year. I know we can also improve on native performance, app UI spit-n-polish, and improve the network API to do more with fewer calls. It’s been an amazing project!
Hope you enjoy the links.
Keith Allen and Alisha Ebrahimji • CNN
Louis Gossett Jr., who won an Academy Award for his performance in “An Officer and a Gentleman” and an Emmy for the groundbreaking miniseries “Roots,” has died at age 87, according to a statement from his family.
RIP
Justin Fenton and Giacomo Bologna • The Baltimore Banner
The Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed early Tuesday after being struck by a ship, and rescue teams were searching for multiple people believed to have fallen into the Patapsco River, a Baltimore Fire department spokesman confirmed.
A horrible tragedy for the city of Baltimore and the families of the six men who lost their lives. ❤️
I hope they’re able to learn from the collapse and build in additional safety measures to help avert an accident like this in the future.
Also, why don’t tug boats escort these big ships into the harbor? I’d venture to guess it’s about the money?
A lot of people want to make a website but don’t know where to start or they get stuck. That’s in part because our perception of what websites should be has changed so dramatically over the last 20 years.
I’ve had a blog since February of 2001 — that’s 23 years! — and I’ve never been this inspired to build my own blog completely by hand.
Nilay talks to Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky. It’s a really good conversation about tech and community. Recommended
I don’t want to state the ass-numbingly obvious, but nobody wants to sit through more than half an hour of “content” before the nearly three-hour film they paid too much to see. It defies all logic to expect people to fork over more to be bombarded with ads and trailers they can’t mute or forward through the way they’d be able to do at home — where they can also sit on a comfier couch and eat better food.
YES! I don’t remember where and when this happened to us last but it was so frustrating.
Movie theaters, please, don’t do this.
Apple’s Phil Schiller Works 80 Hours a Week Overseeing App Store
Major control freak vibe. Who knows if it’s even true but Mr. Schiller should be enjoying some of that wealth and let Apple evolve.
Of course this is why I’m not rich. I don’t have that kind of drive anymore. I did my 80 hour weeks in the early 90’s and 2000’s. I’m over it. I don’t mind putting in extra hours here and there but when it’s the norm to work 60 hours a week, well, that’s just stupid.
The winning bid for the up-for-auction Anchor Brewing Company was supposed to be announced at the end of January, but things appear to be delayed, and a company rep tells us “a winner most likely will be announced in late April.”
This still saddens me. Anchor was an iconic San Francisco brewer who made good beer. As with everything else I suppose you have to change with the times or fold. 🍺
Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann • The Atlantic
Donald Trump is determined to avoid accountability before the general election, and, so far, the U.S. Supreme Court is helping him.
The best way to save our democracy and our republic is to vote for Joe Biden, even if you are a Republican. Just hold your nose and vote for him.
It’s also the only way we’ll see Justice applied to TFG. He’s terrified he’ll be tossed in prison without access to his social network, rallies, hair care products, well done stake with ketchup, and orange makeup. 👮🏿
If you want to know why Truth Social looks like so much other Fediverse software, it’s because it runs Mastodon with a Soapbox front-end.
I remember the hubbub around Truth Social using Mastodon. It’s nice we’ve defederated it. He wanted a captive audience of wing nut MAGAs anyway.
How fast will the newly minted public company come tumbling down? I’d call it meme stock of the year.
Sam Bankman-Fried maintains that his crimes were victimless and resulted in zero losses, and therefore warrant only six years of imprisonment. Prosecutors argue that 40–50 years are justified.
I heard Scott Galloway on Pivot say Bankman-Fried didn’t deserve the 25 years he got. Why not? Rich people never want their kind held accountable.
Bankman-Fried is young. Don’t worry, he will be young enough when he gets out to commit fraud again.
By Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin • New York Times
Facing an extraordinary on-air revolt by its leading stars, NBC’s top news executive said on Tuesday that he had decided to cut ties with Ms. McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, who was hired last week as an on-air political commentator.
Rachel Maddow was on fire Monday night. She always has the best lead in to her stories. If you missed it, go watch on YouTube . It was really great.
A few readers have asked about my speculation that Apple, along with the other DMA-designated gatekeepers (none of which are European companies of course), might reasonably pull out of the relatively small EU market rather than risk facing disproportionately large fines from the European Commission.
Gruber has an interesting take but I think it would be so much better if Apple just did the right thing and opened things up for developers to “side load”, create their own stores, and allow different payment methods.
Keep on providing awesome hardware and the platform developers love and let us help you grow the platform even more.
Look, I’m a nobody who doesn’t make much on the store. If I’ve made $2,000.00 on the store since 2009 I’d be shocked. I’ll continue to use the App Store and abide by the stricter rules because it doesn’t affect me directly but a lot of Indie Devs could benefit by paying way less than Apple’s 15-30%.
That opinion and $10 can get you a mighty fine drink at Starbucks.
But the same politicians don’t seem ready to acknowledge the root cause of these problems. A bill awaiting signature from Governor Ron DeSantis, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race in January, would ban offshore wind energy, relax regulations on natural gas pipelines, and delete the majority of mentions of climate change from existing state laws.
Florida continues to prove it’s the state with the biggest number of wack jobs in the union. Once that waterfront property starts disappearing folks can just sell their homes and move, right Ben? 🤣
With Threads starting to federate, there has been push back in corners of Mastodon, with some server admins blocking users from @threads.net entirely. I think just about everyone has complicated feelings about Meta, but I think this kind of move only harms users of the Fediverse.
I’m going to follow a few few folks on Threads because I enjoyed following them on Twitter and they don’t have, and seemingly won’t have, Mastodon accounts.
If it turns into a shit show I don’t have to follow Threads accounts. Easy peasy.
For months, Elon Musk has been dropping decidedly unsubtle hints that he believes in the great replacement, a conspiracy theory that liberal elites are “importing” immigrants into the United States, Europe, and Australia to wage political and biological warfare against white people.
Musk is a full on disgusting human being. He proves it more and more with each passing day.
How he’s still the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is beyond comprehension. ☣️
First and foremost let me state that this post is not about excluding people from the IndieWeb community. I am not here to be a gatekeeper. Rather, I am trying to call attention to a disconnect I see in how I’ve seen the IndieWeb movement promoted and how the IndieWeb community presents itself.
I agree with a lot of this piece. The IndieWeb is still very immature as a product platform but everything is there to create great experiences. It’s up to us to do it and do it in a way that’s easy for the masses to use.
