📺 Finished watching: Slow Horses (Season 2)

Poster of “Slow Horses” features Gary Oldman leading a group in a narrow, urban street. Review: I’m a big fan of the six-episode seasons. Long enough to enjoy the story, but not so long that it feels drawn out, leading you to too many dead ends and red herrings. The first season was perhaps a tad stronger, but I flew through this one, too. If each season continues to have its own classic spy theme (S1 = terrorists, S2 = Cold War debts to settle), I’ll be happy guy. But I like that some things are building from season to season. And finally, I appreciate their gutsy moves with characters. No spoilers, but I did NOT expect REDACTED to die so quickly! Rating: Two thumbs up.

Nick Heer: ‘Tim Cook Becomes the Newest Big Donor to the Trump Inaugural Fund’

Call this what you want: bipartisanship, diplomacy, pragmatic, or “the spirit of unity”. But do not call it principled.

Or bribery.

I love Nick’s writing just as much as I hate all the boot licking.

In case you haven’t heard yet, Apple TV+ is available to everyone to stream for free this weekend! It’s by far my favorite TV service. Here are my top five show recommendations:

  1. Trying
  2. Severence
  3. For All Mankind
  4. Ted Lasso
  5. Dark Matter

And their best movie: CODA

If you subscribe, what are your top 5?

Master of CSS Chris Coyier lightly redecorated his website, and it looks great. There are so many concepts here that I hope to dig into someday. chriscoyier.net

Pratik, writing.desipundit.com:

In general, even in 2024, the layperson is still intimidated by a “custom domain.” My wife’s firstname.com is available and yet she isn’t interested in getting it. Perhaps if we focused on the cool factor and owning a piece of the Internet (instead of data portability) […] it would get more traction.

He’s probably right. Most people don’t care about data portability. But more of them are impressed by cool URLs. And we know what they say about cool URLs

Spending 30 minutes working around Shortcuts bugs wasn’t how I intended to start my morning, but it sure did make me appreciate apps (@1writer@mastodon.social) that offer multiple avenues for automation. Thank you @agiletortoise@mastodon.social and @marcoarment@mastodon.social for x-callback-url!

Year in books for 2024

There may not have been many, but each were quite good!

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words States of Adventure: STORIES ABOUT FINDING YOURSELF BY GETTING LOST Project Hail Mary Down Rock Climbing: The AMGA Single Pitch Manual The Mountain in the Sea Alone on the Wall (Expanded Edition)

🍿 Just watched: Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Poster with three serious faces and text “Killers of the Flower Moon, 2023, Martin Scorsese. Review: I struggle with this one because on one hand, I loved the actors and think they all did a marvelous job with their roles. It’s also an important story that I’m glad was given a prominent spotlight. And there’s no denying that it was beautifully shot, with no expense spared. On the other hand, it was so damn long. And yet, with all that time, I still didn’t always follow what was going on. I’m giving it a thumbs up, but I don’t think I’m going to watch it again. Rating: one thumb up.

It’s been 0 days since an app that I rarely open but use almost every single day via its share sheet extension or Shortcuts actions was offloaded from my device. 🙄

Congrats to @manton for shipping Micro.one! It turned out to be more full-featured than I expected, which is to say it’s most of Micro.blog at just $1/month. With most blogging platforms starting at around $4/month and offering much less, Micro.one is quite the deal.

It’s a very good app, but I just canceled my subscription to Day One. I haven’t written in it quite a while. My IFTTT actions for saving blog posts there got turned off for some reason, so I don’t even have a full history there now. But I do like having that automation… I may change my mind.

In case you (somehow) hadn’t heard, you should definitely uninstall Honey, the coupon-finding app that’s been scamming both you and creators. youtube.com/watch

Tablet screen prompts user to delete the “Honey” app, showing the options “Cancel” or “Delete.” Background is a blue gradient. Status bar displays time, date, and battery percentage.

🆕📝 Overcast Podcast Listening Stats for 2024

I waited till the end of the year to share my total stats. It's...a lot of hours. 😳 🎙️

I’ve been impressed with the Meta Ray-Bans' new adaptive volume — it’s perfect for biking as it adjusts with speed and ambient noise. Meanwhile, the AirPods 4’s version? Not so much. It’s so finicky and distracting that I turned it off yesterday.

Jason Becker: ‘What hardens and what falls away– experiencing tech as we age’

As we get older, some ideas become things we cannot let go of, whereas other ideas become less and less important. That’s not to say this is good or bad– I’m not saying someone like Riccardo isn’t keeping up with the times or any such nonsense. I’m saying that each of us, uniquely, has a set of ideas, principles, routines, and desires that become hardened while others wither away. Depending on the mix of things you care about, you can end up deeply satisfied or unsatisfied as the world continues on its own path.

🔗 The Back Page: Getting the carbon out (Dan Moren / sixcolors.com 🔒)

Regardless, we’ve made great strides in the last year, introducing a carbon-neutral version of the Apple Watch Series 10; releasing our first carbon-neutral Mac, the new Mac mini; and eliminating spaghetti carbonara at Caffe Macs. We’re not sure if it had carbon in it, but better safe than sorry.

😆 Well done, Dan.

🆕📝 2024 Apple Product Tier List

Thanks to Basic Apple Guy for inspiring and enabling this ranking!

🆕📝 7 Things This Week [#164]

Usually I'd like to theme the final *7 Things* of the year in some way, but I'm feeling pretty under the weather, so I'm keeping it casual to close out 2024. I hope you're all feeling better than me and have a happy new year! 🎊

🆕📝 Grading my 24 Apple predictions for 2024

Did I make good bets? Bad bets? You bet I did! 🛎️

🍿 Just watched: Carry-On (2024)

A serious man in a blue uniform looks over his shoulder in an airport setting. Review: Carry-On, 2024 - Jaume Collet-Serra. Jason Bateman was a great villain. He nailed the dead eyes and flat-yet-menacing tone. I absolutely did not recognize Taron Egerton, even though I loved him in Rocketman and Tetris. He made another good performance here. The story… well… While the premise was good and hooked me in the beginning, it kind of fell apart fairly quickly. How on earth would no one intercept this TSA guy constantly leaving his post and acting super strange on Christmas Eve? Also, just don’t put in (or break, you choose) the earpiece! Once I accepted that the film was full of plot holes and just wanted to be an exciting thrill ride, I enjoyed it for what it was. Rated one thumb up.

🆕📝 PSA: Best Buy’s Upgrade+ program didn’t even last long enough for users to get a single upgrade, but Upgraded is another option

Best Buy is out before upgrading anyone's laptop (LOL), Apple isn't offering their own MacBook Upgrade Program, but maybe Upgraded is good?

John Gruber:

Not only is using Apple Intelligence for automation more accessible (in every sense) than writing a programming script or creating a Shortcut, it’s also something we’re all much more likely to do for a one-time task. I often create scripts, shortcuts, and macros to automate tasks that recur with some frequency; I seldom do for tasks that I’m only going to do once. But why not use Apple Intelligence and ChatGPT to save a few minutes of tedium?

I do often make shortcuts for one-off tasks—either for accuracy or cause it’s the only way I can connect the dots. AI could disrupt this.

Lou Plummer:

Since Jimmy Carter left the white house, his basic goodness and humanity has never, ever wavered. He has represented the US admirably and performed with unmatched wisdom in advocating for world health improvements that have saved millions of lives. The pictures of him volunteering for Habitat for Humanity into his 90s are famous.

I’m sad tonight to know that I’m going to be on a planet without Jimmy Carter on it for the first time ever.

📺 Restarted Severance tonight, too, in anticipation of its second season. S1E1 is such good television! Mystery after mystery. So compelling.

📺 Just finished: Shrinking (Season 2)

Two men stand together; one holds the other’s face into a smile. Review of Shrinking (Season 2) on Apple TV+: Goodness, they’ve really made something special here. I liked the first season a lot. I loved the second season. The characters are dynamic and singular. Their chemistry is unmatched. (Well done breakout Dereks!) The writing is quick, witty, and cuts to the core when it needs to. The story is heart-wrenching and heart-warming. I laugh every few minutes in every episode. I tear up in most of them too. It’d be worth getting Apple TV+ just for this show. Rating: Two thumbs up.