This story begins about two weeks ago, when I noticed some erratic, deep paw prints in the gravel of our side yard (the one I had been working on since summer 2022). Clearly, there had been some exciting and energetic coyote action, over night!
Dark Patterns FTW
Our Orwellian tech reality: “Enhanced ad privacy” is Google-speak for “more ways to spy on you serve you targeted ads.” More at The Register: Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history and at Ars Technica: Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome.
Heavy Stuff
Naomi Klein on following her ‘doppelganger’ down the conspiracy rabbit hole – and why millions of people have entered an alternative political reality; Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America (if you only have time to read ONE thing, this should be it.) How to Treat Right-Wing Violence in the U.S. …
Melon Pun
The melon farmer’s wife had a honeydew list.
The Fool’s Mischief
“For a while the fool’s mischief tastes sweet as honey. But in the end it turns bitter & how bitterly he suffers.” (Buddha)
Insanity
Week after week, I’m picking up the same stupid advertising bundle from our driveway (or the gutter, depending on where it lands after it gets tossed out of the driver-side window from an old white van that swerves left and right on our road at 4 a.m.) — to then separate the plastic wrapper from …
Sunday Punday
As a vegetarian, I am strictly antisciutto, but I am propasta.
Burning Gas
Our water heater is was a natural gas burning model with a 50 gallon tank (~190 liters). It was already there when we bought this house, eight years ago, and when it recently failed it wasn’t unexpected, but still caught us a bit by surprise.
Broken Voicemail on iPhone and the error 1035
When I updated from an iPhone 12 Pro to an iPhone 14 Pro* a few months ago, something apparently went wrong and the connection (aka “Visual Voicemail”) to the voice mailbox with the carrier broke. One of my contacts asked whether I had received their voicemail — I hadn’t and surprise, when I manually dialed in to the voicemail, I had 17 new messages. That sucked, because there were obviously some important messages among them.