I’ve bounced between browsers over the years. Chrome or Chromium were my default for many years while I ran Linux, with a few small dalliances with Chrome-powered alternatives like Brave. I tried Safari when I switched to a MacBook and used it for months. I then hopped on the Arc Browser bandwagon, which introduced me to features that I now consider essential. That experience wouldn’t last forever. ...

A short article that mirrors my thinking rather well. In particular: Each little metacognitive act of constructing a sentence, though, reflects valuable thinking. Knowing how to use conjunctions, for instance — the ifs, buts and therefores — is an important exercise in logical reasoning. How much should we outsource that to AI? Too much, and the writing experience may feel like a fill-in-the-blank exercise like MadLibs.

I previously wrote about my excitement that Mario Kart 8 was receiving more courses. Two years later, all the courses are released and have been summarily conquered by my Gold Mario character. I have 3 star trophies across all 24 Grand Prix cups, in all available speed levels. Though I fell off playing Mario Kart regularly in the last year—that change has been for the best—it remains a relaxing activity on a lazy weekend afternoon or a fun evening game to play with Erin. There are no more explicit accomplishments left for me in the game,1 so I can launch it when it strikes me as fun, and otherwise spend my extremely self-limited gaming time playing the several other Switch games I’ve purchased over the years. Among those I’ve started and hope to complete are Cuphead, Röki, Bastion, Firewatch, and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. It may take me years, but I’ll make progress! ...

Doodling is more than scrawling sketches and shapes in the margins of your notes. It encompasses any idle, unguided, and spontaneous bursts of creativity.1 In a light-bulb moment a few months ago I rediscovered my love of doodling with words, and it’s now something I try to do when I have spare time. Doodling is a phenomenal way to passively develop a skill while enjoying the process. ...

ELKHART, INDIANA—John Wheedle, founder and owner of Wheedle & Sons Whittling, presented his plan to “go after the big market, starting with those hotshots down in Fort Wayne” during a gathering of business professionals and entrepreneurs at the Elkhart Community Center. The evening’s theme was Aim for the Stars. Group members were encouraged to present on ambitious, long-term plans and then receive constructive feedback. Wheedle was third to go. On his way up to the podium, several attendees recall him saying “This is going to knock their socks off.” ...

I was talking with a friend of mine late last year about baseball and the Ohtani signing. He idly speculated that the ratio of foreign-born to domestic players in the MLB had stabilized a while ago, perhaps around the 1960s. This was mostly a gut check, and I wasn’t convinced. I went digging for more info. ...

I came across the javascript terminal app Playball. It’s fun and slick, and I’m enjoying using it. It gives you a way to view MLB Gameday data from the terminal, and it’s beautifully done. When you first run the app after installing it via npm, you are greeted with the day’s schedule, and the box scores of any games. Keyboard navigation hints are shown at the bottom of the window at all times, so you can easily look at scores from previous days, or check out the schedule in the future. You can jump back to the current day at any point. Navigating any screen can be done with either the arrow keys or vim keybindings. ...

In my weekly perusal of education newsletters, I came across a Time magazine article about new attempts to bring AI and machine learning to monitoring student behavior on school devices. While the article focuses on student mental health—suicide prevention in particular—I looked into the companies mentioned therein and discovered that the scope of monitoring efforts is broad and deep. It is a fascinating and discomforting topic, with each company working on a different aspect of student safety with rhetoric to match. ...

I just finished Frankenstein, which I last read during my British Literature class in high school. It reminded me of the phenomenon of Disney retelling an old story with key details removed and altered to make it kid-friendly,1 though in Frankenstein this happens in reverse. Every representation of the monster2 in popular media that I’m aware of is a green, slow-moving, large man, often with bolts in his neck. In reality, the book shows a monster who learns much about the world by observing a small family in a cottage, eventually becoming literate and quite eloquent. He also possesses superhuman speed, strength, and stamina while requiring only a limited vegetarian diet. It’s a fascinating tale that explores the concept of sin, revenge, and responsibility; most of that is lost in the classic “monster movie”. ...

I’ve watched nearly every Pixar movie. I have some I entirely adore and will happily rewatch whenever the opportunity presents. The others I still enjoy but they don’t have an ongoing impact on my life. Elemental is firmly in the second category. Its charm and inventive physical humor kept me delighted, and its role as a modern fable about immigration and racism makes it worth watching, but its story had inconsistent pacing with confusing characterization. ...