As I struggle to know whether it’s even worth having a website on which I regularly publish, I made a few small improvements to this one over the weekend. If you read via RSS, you won’t notice anything. If you visit in a browser, you’ll now see a blogroll along the right. The list will get added to over time, but I started with a bunch of my favorites. I also tweaked the header a bit by adding a personal logo beside my name and I dropped the link to my mom’s obituary as one of the main links. I plan to move it to a more permanent place on the web at some point. I also added a now page, which is a bit sparse, but it’s something I’d been meaning to add.
Beginning down a long road of extracting myself from Google
For an individual, I pay Google a lot of money every month. I pay for YouTube Premium (for the family), YouTube TV, NFL games, Google One for extra space on my OG Gmail account and Google Workspace for my personal domain. I’ve finally come to the point where I’m going to begin moving away from Google services. It will take a while, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
Google Photos will probably be the most difficult service to move away from, but Immich looks like a promising replacement. Fastmail is likely where I’ll end up for email, calendar and contacts and I’ll likely start that process soon. Since I have multiple personal domains, that will be a helpful migration. Docs and Sheets might well be impossible, or at least the trade-offs might be too great. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do there yet.
I don’t plan to cancel YouTube Premium. The value is irreplaceable and nothing really comes close. I don’t think you can watch NFL games anywhere else, so that will have to stay as well.
Google Maps is relatively easy to replace with Apple Maps. I guess Mapquest is making a comeback too, which is kinda nuts.
If you have advice on the topic, I’d love to hear about it, especially as it relates to Google Docs and Sheets.
The Hugging Face Incident is, in a distorted and dangerous way, an illustration of what the AI companies are trying to achieve. They want long-running AI agents to work without human intervention, solving problems and organizing as needed, with our human job limited to giving instructions and evaluate output.
From Ethan Mollick’s post, Agency and Agents
The 2026 Tiny Awards are underway. Go vote! Great see some familiar names on the selection committee too. Go visit all of their sites after you’re done checking out the nominees.
The almost-total “blood moon” as seen from Los Angeles, CA
I’m back on Twitter, y’all.
I’ve always loved this photo of Dolly by Andy Warhol. It’s difficult to imagine a world without Dolly setting the impossibly high bar for what kindness looks like, especially in these trying times. She is undeniable. May she rest in peace.
I saw the incredible Jeff Parker and the the IVtet (thank you, Greg!), which included drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and saxophonist Josh Johnson. It was the first of three nights at the Lodge Room in the Highland Park neighborhood in LA. It was one of those rare shows where you hear all of these sounds and you have absolutely no idea where it’s all coming from. Jeff and Josh both use pedals a lot, but I focus so much on Jay, who is certainly one of the greatest living drummers.
Phoebe Bridgers in the BBC Live Lounge covering Lithium by Nirvana. Absolutely stunning. Wow.
I don’t believe for a minute that Amazon is the only company that has been buying rare books to scan them and, in the process, destroy them. They’re just the latest to get caught.