-
Apple dramatically increased their prices (John Gruber has a nice table). There haven’t been increases yet on iPhones but given new Pro models are set to be announced in September, you’d have to assume they’ll be price increases then, too. I was still debating internally whether I would upgrade to the new models or wait for a refurbished orange iPhone 17 Pro in February of next year. Depending on that price hike (and assuming it doesn’t apply to refurbished models), February is looking increasingly likely.
…and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-
On Tuesday evening I played basketball for the first time in… look, it’s literally been so long that I no longer remember. I have a vague recollection of going once or twice to somewhere in Kita-ku after we moved to Tokyo. I think it would have been while we were still living in Bunkyō-ku so let’s say that it’s been at least 10 years. I am pleased to report that, despite my fears, I did not tear any muscles or otherwise noticeably damage anything. There was a bit of soreness a day or two later but honestly, less than I was expecting. No steals but I did make a turn around fadeaway so that was nice.
-
Basketball was on Tuesday and in true me fashion, on Monday, I realised that I had neglected to buy any basketball shoes (I used to have a pair but, well, that was 10 years ago, right?). Not knowing at this point whether I would be down one working Achilles tendon within the next 24 hours, I purchased a pair of Nike Court Vision Mid Next Nature thinking that, if nothing else, I could at least wear them as normal shoes. ChatGPT was correct that the reason these are not recommended for playing actual basketball is that they lack the padding you would expect.
-
JD Vance is so easy to dislike that I’m not sure how good this really is but I appreciated the New Yorker’s review of his memoir, Communion.
-
Of course there was more work on Crossmate. The largest user-facing features this week were tips banners and a synced playing time clock but I also made changes to preserve formatting and keep titles when importing puzzles, encrypt push notifications end-to-end, speed up joining shared puzzles and increase the palette of assignable colours. I swear this is getting close to a final release.
-
I’ve been wondering what’s going on with the spate of big budget movies that went straight to streaming (the one that I was most tempted by was Apple’s Fountain of Youth). Patrick Willems explains it all in a 57-minute video essay. TLDW: Movie studios who (mostly) know box office bombs when they see them left these for the streamers and the streamers were just excited to have blockbusters that sound good on paper and feature big name stars.
-
Olivia Rodrigo released You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love two weeks ago. On first listen, nothing grabbed me like some of the stand-outs on Sour or Guts but over the course of this week I did find myself coming back numerous times to ‘U + Me = <3’ (Apple Music). Is that because Rodrigo shamelessly mines the music of my youth? I mean, what do you think? (How shameless? She literally has Robert Smith sing on one of the tracks.)
