pauleychrome

NOW FOREVER OFF THE RAILS: Fair winds and following seas, Ozzy Osbourne, dead at 76. The Black Sabbath lead announced a Parkinsons diagnosis in 2020.

I'M NOT SAYING IT WAS ALIENS, BUT... This Satellite Died in 1967. Why Did It Just Speak to Us Again?

MERLIN MANN: “That was good.”

On a small experiment/subtle tweak that can change how you see the world.

BIG BROTHER IS ALWAYS WATCHING: Swedish PM's movements leaked by bodyguards uploading workouts on Strava.

OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS (ALMOST) FINALLY OVER: Passengers at some U.S. airports no longer have to remove shoes during regular TSA checks.

SEVENTEEN YEARS AFTER A SEVENTEEN-YEAR CAREER: Alexander Mogilny is finally a Hockey Hall of Famer.

A FEW YEARS OLD, BUT JUST READ IT TODAY: How an attempt to win a TV Guide contest for a screening of Star Trek: The Next Generation's finale episode, "All Good Things...", took down the UCLA mainframe in 1994.

FLIGHTRADAR24 BLOG: Following the fuel: how the world tracked the B-2 diversion flights. Aviation enthusiasts went bonkers Saturday following US Air Force aerial refueling aircraft, speculating what it could mean with regards to possible bombing operations in Iran. Meanwhile, the real mission was taking place thousands of miles east.

BLEEPING COMPUTER: No, the 16 billion credentials leak is not a new data breach. Reports of a newly-circulating trove of credentials are accurate, but they're not from fresh hacks — they're a new compilation of prior leaks. If you changed your password the last time there was a big Facebook, Google, or Apple leak, you're probably fine. If you didn't, and/or if you use the same password for multiple things, you should 1) stop doing that, 2) use two-factor or multi-factor authentication (2FA/MFA) whenever it's available, and 3) consider using passkeys if a site offers one.

FORMER HP CTO PHIL MCKINNEY: I Convinced HP's Board to Buy Palm for $1.2B. Then I Watched Them Kill It in 49 Days.

Man, I remember those days. I (along with the rest of the world) was three years into iPhone, but my phone prior to that was a Treo 650, and I'd owned a Palm IIIc in college. I was curious to see where Palm would go... just to see it spectacularly flame out under new ownership.

FROM HOLLYWOOD STAR TO THE SKIES OVER THE DAKOTAS: She was a Disney star with platinum records, but Bridgit Mendler gave it up to change the world - Ars Technica.

OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER: Taylor Swift buys back the rights to her master recordings.

THIS ONE GOES TO... 26??? iOS and other Apple operating systems to start identifying by year this fall.

DR. DRANG ON THE... FRAGILE... APPLE HARDWARE DISPLAYS AT COMPUSA: I was the reason one of those demo machines was frequently broken.

(via 512 Pixels)

TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE: Max is HBO Max again: Streamer reverts to old name.

BACK ON THE BALLOT: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred hands down decision that permanent ineligibility status ends after death, paving the way for Pete Rose, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, and up 15 others who died while on the Ineligible list to potentially be considered for inclusion in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

TARA ROSS: This Day in History: "Join, or Die". I knew Franklin's rattlesnake cartoon was used extensively during the American Revolution, but I often forget it originally came about over twenty years prior.

EIGHTY YEARS AGO TODAY: Victory in Europe.

WELL-ARMORED METEOR: A failed Soviet Venus lander will fall back to Earth after being stranded for 53 years. Designed to survive a Venusian reentry, there's a strong likelihood it will reach Earth's surface largely intact between May 9-10.

THE PRECURSOR TO COACHELLA: Steve Wozniak (yes, that Steve Wozniak) staged the first Us Festival in 1982.

A COLLECTION OF SO-THAT'S-HOW-THAT-HAPPENEDs TO CLOSE OUT THE WEEKEND: How we got road stripes and drive-thru windows.

8 YEARS AGO TODAY: Chris Coghlan flew.

IT'S EVERYWHERE, AND YOU BARELY NOTICE IT: The hardest working font in Manhattan.

(It's even trickling into this site...)

250 YEARS AGO THIS WEEKEND, THE EVENTS THAT LED TO A NATION: Yesterday's date in 1775, Paul Revere makes his famous ride. The next day, the “Shot Heard Round the World”.

THEY'RE NOT SAYING IT'S ALIENS. BUT... Strongest Evidence of Alien Life Yet Found 124 Light-Years Away.

On Earth, the chemicals dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide are produced only by life, mostly microscopic marine algae called phytoplankton.

The researchers emphasised caution, saying that more observations were needed to confirm these findings, and that they were not announcing a definitive discovery.

But the implications could be huge, according to Nikku Madhusudhan, a Cambridge University astrophysicist and lead author of the study

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: Wink Martindale Dead: Host of 'Tic-Tac-Dough' and 'Gambit' Was 91. One of the legends of daytime TV game shows when I was growing up.

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: Dazed and Confused and Boston Public actor Nicky Katt dead at 54.

While it’s a situation I wish on no one and no family, the phrase I’ve heard used in connection to similar military passings seems to fit best: “lost the battle with his demons.”

I WENT TO A PROM AND A BASEBALL GAME BROKE OUT: Minor League team hosts prom during a game. "Why did the Winston-Salem Dash host an in-game high school prom? Because a pipe burst in Georgia. Welcome to the 2025 Minor League Baseball season."

FAST LADY, LAP 2: Katherine Legge entering multiple Cup, Xfinity races in 2025.

A PIGMENT OF YOUR IMAGINATION: Purple exists only in our brains.

IT'S VLADDY TIME: Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue Jays agree to extension: 14 years, $500 million.

Despite the outward assertions that he’d been letting his agent handle all that since Spring Training started, I bet this was still on his mind the last week and a half — he has yet to homer this season (10 games). Now that it’s done, what’s the odds he dingers over the Monster tonight vs. the Red Sox at Fenway?

HOW DID I MISS THIS? For the last 6 years, in what the BBC called "one of the most charming cases of nominative determinism ever", the president of Nintendo of America has been a man named… Doug Bowser.

FRESH SET OF EYES: New NASA Space Telescope Unveils Its First-Ever Images. SPHEREx is the "Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer".

THE LATE VAL KILMER, IN HIS OWN WORDS, ON TWO OF HIS BEST-KNOWN PROJECTS:

Val Kilmer on starring in HEAT. Legend. pic.twitter.com/tuHsFbfJLc

— Todd Spence (@Todd_Spence) April 2, 2025

great val interview with @ELLEmagazine from 2006 pic.twitter.com/KpheODr0Gp

— brooke is crashing tf out (@verybrookie) April 2, 2025

SIMULTANEOUSLY SOOTHING AND DISTRACTING: Relaxing jazz music against AI-generated retro-futuristic visuals.

TODAY'S ENTRY IN THE TURNS-OUT-I-DON'T-DISLIKE-THIS-AFTER-ALL COOKBOOK: Chicken Francese, known as Chicken French in the Rochester, NY area.

First one I tried, 10-plus years ago, was too sour-tasting. With the lack of other data, I presumed that was how it was supposed to taste, and decided I didn't care for it. Gave it another shot today, and it was really good. Said a friend in a group chat, "too many places dump half a gallon of lemon juice in it." Definitely worth trying if you find someplace that's good at making it.

MOST OF THESE ARE GOOD IDEAS ANYWAY, BUT THERE'S ONE I DIDN'T EXPECT: Diet changes might reduce risk of ringing ears

SCIENCEALERT: The ISS Has a Hygiene Problem, But It's Not What You'd Think

(Hint: we broadly encountered a similar issue during the COVID pandemic.)

FAST LADY: British driver Katherine Legge to make NASCAR Cup Series debut at Phoenix Raceway this Sunday. Legge would be the first woman to compete in a Cup Series race since Danica Patrick in 2018.

THAT'S NO SMALL CATCH: Asteroid Alert: NASA Drops Impact Risk to Near Zero, But There’s One Small Catch.

If you've ever read Neal Stephenson's fantastic Seveneves, you'll have a hint to that catch, and its potential effects.

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: Actor Gene Hackman, His Wife and Dog Found Dead in Santa Fe Home. Hackman was 95; his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, 64.

(No, this isn’t becoming a dead celebrity blog. It’s just there’ve been a whole bunch all at once.)

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: 'Buffy' and 'Gossip Girl' actress Michelle Trachtenberg dead at 39. Sources telling news outlets (this was ABC; saw similar on Page Six) she recently had a liver transplant, and may have experienced complications.

WELL, THAT'S NOT TERRIFYING AT ALL: Two AI phone agents realize they're both AI, and switch to a digital language for more "efficient" communication.

Today I was sent the following cool demo:

Two AI agents on a phone call realize they’re both AI and switch to a superior audio signal ggwave pic.twitter.com/TeewgxLEsP

— Georgi Gerganov (@ggerganov) February 24, 2025

This totally won't result in world domination, they promise.

COME FLY WITH ME, LET'S FLY, LET'S FLY AWAY: SpaceX Starship Flight Test 8 could launch as soon as this Friday, February 28, at 5:30 PM CT.

(That's 6:30 PM ET, 3:30 PM PT, and 23:30 UTC.)

UPDATE: pushed to NET (no earlier than) Monday, March 3.

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: New York Knicks Broadcaster Al Trautwig Dies at 68. I never watched the Knicks, but I remember some of his national work in various Olympic Games.

(That’s three in a row today, after Roberta and Clint. Hopefully that tapers off for a bit.)

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: Former US Secret Service agent Clint Hill has died at age 93.

Mike Rowe tells of how they met and became friends:

Agent #9

A great man has died, who happened to be my friend. https://t.co/Mc7RuS7YR7

His name was Clint Hill, and if you knew of him, it’s probably because you’ve seen him on television. Clint was Agent #9—the now-famous Secret Service agent who chased down the convertible and… pic.twitter.com/IisAi9n6yw

— The Real Mike Rowe (@mikeroweworks) February 24, 2025

(Alternate link, if you’ve sworn off TwitterX.)

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: Roberta Flack, R&B Singer Known for 'Killing Me Softly,' Dies at 88.

I’m in the age group that, while I know “Killing Me Softly” is a Roberta Flack song, I know it most as a Fugees hit. Meanwhile, I most identify her with her duet with Maxi Priest, “Set The Night To Music”.

FLUBBING THE EXTENSION WAS BAD ENOUGH: if Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. not only doesn’t stay in Toronto after the 2025 season, but ends up as a Yankee? Fire the entire front office for letting him go.

Sure, only a week into Spring Training, it’s way too early to start fearing the worst, but Vladdy’s saying what he needs to right now: that he wouldn’t rule it out.

YOU CAN'T PREDICT BASEBALL (SPRING TRAINING EDITION): Arizona Diamondbacks DH Ketel Marte drives in three runs on a... bases-clearing sacrifice fly?

MISSED THIS WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED LAST NOVEMBER: NASCAR to Utilize Shorter "National" Course Layout when they return to Circuit of the Americas in Austin, TX next weekend. They'll drop over a mile off the circuit length (and therefore about a minute off the average lap times), and correspondingly add laps to the race to counterbalance.

IT PAYS TO BE A WINNER. The loser, not so much.

Chris Bassitt lost the Blue Jays' fantasy football league, and is the bat boy today as punishment🤣

(via @Sportsnet)pic.twitter.com/MRhlOrXqhc

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) February 22, 2025

MY FAVORITE BAND JUST DROPPED A NEW SINGLE: “Love is an Ocean” by The Midnight.

Play it on repeat.

TIPS FROM MACRUMORS: Mastering the Mac App Switcher, macOS’s version of Windows’ [Alt]-[Tab]. A few tricks in here I knew, and several I didn’t.

HOW CAN YOU NOT BE ROMANTIC ABOUT BASEBALL? Auburn’s Cade Belyeu hits 'inspiring' home run hours after his mother's death.

Cade Belyeu’s mother, Staci, lost her battle with cancer this morning.

Hours later, he homered in Auburn’s first game of the season.

Wow.

(🎥 @AuburnBaseball)

pic.twitter.com/7nyyAE03el

— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) February 15, 2025

PRESUPPOSING, OF COURSE, THAT LIFE IS INTELLIGENT HERE ON TERRA FIRMA: New theory ups the odds that intelligent aliens exist:

“Our existence is probably not an evolutionary fluke,” says Jennifer Macalady, a study co-author and microbiology professor at Pennsylvania State University. “We’re an expected or predictable outcome of our planet’s evolution, just as any other intelligent life out there will be.”

NOT YET, ANYWAY: Netflix Isn't Adding Apple TV Integration After All, saying the appearance of their content in the Apple TV app was a "bug", and being rolled back.

What I'm getting out of it, though, is that the integration is built and ready to go, once the business issues between the companies are ironed out.

HUFF POST: You've Heard Of FOMO, But What Is 'FOBO'?

TIL the same guy coined both acronyms in 2004.

DIDN’T WE GO OVER THIS WITH THE FBI IN 2016? Apple Ordered by UK to Create Global iCloud Encryption Backdoor, says MacRumors, citing Washington Post (paywalled) reporting. Fortunately, Apple has been consistent in refusing this type of overreach, to the point of developing their encryption in such a way as to make cloud data impossible for them access, even with an order.

I MEAN, HE KINDA WANTED A DIFFERENT TROPHY, BUT... Bills QB Josh Allen wins 2024 AP NFL Most Valuable Player award.

ANDY HAWTHORNE: Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?¹

Let’s tell the truth, then: Nobody reads your blog.

At least, not as many as you’d like. Maybe a handful, maybe none. You pour your thoughts into it, craft each sentence, pick the right image — then silence. No likes, no shares, no engagement.

So what’s the point?

There’s two lies we tell ourselves:

1. If I write it, they will come. They won’t. There are billions of blog posts out there. The internet is an infinite void, and your blog is a whisper in a hurricane.
2. If nobody reads it, it’s a waste of time.

Is it, though?

As Glenn so often says (and I will, from here onward, blatantly steal), read the whole thing.

---

1. Andy has redone his web site and this post is no longer on it. As my post here occasionally still gets some traffic, I've adjusted the link to point to the original text, now on the Internet Archive.↩

LITERAL CLICKBAIT: bet you can’t click just once.

LIQUID COOLED: One Of the Most Active Volcanoes In the World Is About to Blow, some 300 miles off the coast of Oregon by the end of 2025. Good news spoiler: due to its structure, tsunamis are not expected.

SOMETHING TO READ AND RE-READ IF YOU NEED IT (AND I DEFINITELY DO): Learning how to Actually Start things:

I eventually stumbled upon an article (that I've lost the link to) that talked about focusing on doing the first step as soon as possible - the real first step. I was struggling to write some documents at the time, so my first step was getting the rough draft done? Or maybe even brainstorming ideas of what to write? No, that wasn't the real first step.

When I sit down to write documents the first thing I do isn't making a rough draft, or brainstorming, or starting a pomodoro timer, or finding background noise, or referencing my todo list, or any of the countless other things I think I do first.

The first thing I actually do is open the damn text editor.

NEWS FOR THE NEWS READER: Reading newsletters via an RSS reader is still great, via Jason Snell for Six Colors.

As I get back into blogging and RSS reading, I should strongly consider this.

ON MY TO-READ LIST: an NSA document about Zero Trust security in information technology.

(Hat tip: nZac)

NON-OPIOID MODERATE-TO-SEVERE PAIN RELIEF? FDA approves new class of painkiller – the first in more than 20 years. With a mechanism that doesn't use opioids, it should be non-addictive.

JAYS FOLLOW-UP: I noted in the Anthony Santander post a couple weeks back that Toronto was looking at signing Max Scherzer. That's reportedly now done.

Also, while (I'm telling myself that) I have no expectation that he signs in the Six, On SI thinks the Blue Jays have made a sizable offer to Alex Bregman. We'll see what becomes of this.

CURRENTLY READING: The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday.

This one's been on my to-read shelf for a while. A few summers ago, I got to read a distillation of Meditations, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius by Donald J. Robertson. A lot of the concepts in that book appear here as well. I wouldn't say I'm a stoic just from reading it, but between that book and Obstacle, it's pretty simple, with practice, to mentally step back from situations and stop worrying about things one can't control or change.

MISSED THIS ANNOUNCEMENT FROM LAST MARCH: Subway Selects PepsiCo as its Beverage Partner in the U.S.. I remember when they dropped Pepsi for Coca-Cola 15 years ago. Now they're back to what I remember as a kid and into my 20s.

REMEMBERING CHALLENGER: 39 years ago this morning, Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart during its flight to orbit. President Ronald Reagan, originally intending to deliver the State of the Union address that evening, instead made a shorter address, written by his speechwriter Peggy Noonan, on national TV.

From Ben Domenech:

One thing to know about Peggy Noonan and the Challenger speech, whose anniversary is today, is that in the moment The White House thought the speech didn't land.

Reagan himself believed that he missed the mark. Noonan went to bed thinking that she had been called on in a moment of crisis and had failed.

The next morning, she came into the office to messages from all sorts of people saying differently. And then Reagan called, and asked how she knew that he knew that "High Flight" poem - and she hadn't, she had just hoped he'd recognize the reference. Turns out it was on a plaque at the school of his daughter, and he had read it regularly.

Then she said she was worried the speech hadn't worked, and Reagan's response was: "Well, Frank Sinatra called, and he said it landed. And he doesn't call after every speech."

The first memory of my life - the very first thing that I remember - is sitting in front of the old tube television in my Keds, watching the TV, and knowing that this man on the screen was the president, and that was the leader, and he was important, and he was telling us why these brave people died.

Her words. His speech.

EDIT: How fitting that tonight I’m rewatching a favorite movie for podcast homework, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which, being released later the same year, begins with this dedication card:

I'VE HEARD OF LAKE EFFECT SNOW, but this is my first learning of airplane-effect snow.

SPOTTED ON X: Modern tech company logos if they existed in the 1980s.

Modern tech company logos if they existed in the 1980s pic.twitter.com/2CdlLzl53C

— prayingforexits 🏴‍☠️ (@mrexits) January 25, 2025

EDIT: these all appear to be from the work of Kostya Petrenko on Instagram.

NOW, IT'S ON: The actor behind The X-Files' Cigarette Smoking Man revokes his curse.

Had this sent to me today. The actor who played the Cigarette Smoking Man on X-Files lifted his “curse” on the #Bills.

For those who never watched X-Files, the clip is below. #BillsMafia https://t.co/bTj3ySRrxF pic.twitter.com/FhQ8I5rkEy

— Ryan Talbot (@RyanTalbotBills) January 24, 2025

Go Bills.

THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS: 'FBI' Spinoff About CIA Agents in the Works at CBS reportedly titled FBI: CIA.

I’m betting they workshop that.

TODAY I LEARNED: The first known use of “OMG” was in a letter to Winston Churchill.

CALLED BY THE HALL: Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner join Dick Allen and Dave Parker in the 2025 class of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

I HAVE ZERO INTEREST IN BUYING ONE — from Trump or anyone else — but on pure what-the-hell-actually-is-it grounds: What is a memecoin?

FINALLY: Toronto Blue Jays signing Anthony Santander pending a physical. After the other free agents that have slipped through Toronto's fingers this offseason, it's nice to see some progress. No, that's not a successful offseason by itself, but it's something.

EDIT: Not a signing yet, but I see they're also interested in Max Scherzer.

EDIT 2: Santander deal now club official.

MORE FROM MACRUMORS, citing Mark Gurman: iOS's updated mail client design coming to macOS when 15.4 drops.

MACRUMORS, FROM A FEW DAYS AGO: Three Companies Are Now in the Running to Take Over the Apple Card. These three make more sense (given Apple Card is a MasterCard) than the reports of American Express being in talks last summer.