so I tried to buy the new books from @scalzi (Monsters of Ohio) and @annaleen (The Wall is also a Road) and @pluralistic (The Reverse Centaur's Guide to life after AI) but was unsuccessful in finding any of them at the new Barnes & Noble in Cupertino so wondering where is the best place to order each book (trying to avoid ordering from Amazon) and would love to order signed copies if there is an easy way to do so. may check out the audiobook for Cory's book from the library the others have holds

My hypothesis

1) they fear showing advertisers how much money is being wasted would reduce their revenues

2) their tools aren’t up to the job

So they continue to serve ads for physical businesses that don’t actually include even the state let alone the city or address of the business

And endless ads for events that happened long ago

Or for events or products that are sold out (or no longer available at the price shown)

Not to mention endlessly badly targeted ads

An idea (and a hypothesis for why it isn’t being done)

A lot of companies with “AI” are also major ad platforms (Meta, Google, Amazon) yet I still see endlessly bad ads across their platforms (ignoring for now ads they manage outside of their own platforms)

Why haven’t they used their AI tools to flag ad campaigns that are out of date and/or horribly targeted / missing crucial data. So stuff like the ad for a spring 2026 launch of a new restaurant I just minutes ago saw served to me isn’t.

I play Magic the Gathering and in recent years many sets each year of MTG are what is referred to as “universes beyond” - which are mtg cards that use another media property’s characters and universe to make the cards in that set of Magic. The next set later this month is Star Trek (others have included Avatar, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who, Assassin’s Creed, Marvel (Super Heroes and Spiderman) and many others.

Each time I’m amazed at who doesn’t know that property

Has anyone else noticed a general trend towards hyper fixation on fandoms? In many sectors - ie not “all sports” but a specific team and league, not all SF/Fantasy but either specific authors or specific subgenres (Romantasy, grim dark etc) and likewise with games (tabletop, board or video) where many people seem to have picked on or a specific genre and not tried others. Or with media deep knowledge of one show/world but not a broader survey of shows/films?

And to be clear I’m asking whether you are walking, biking, driving or taking other forms of transportation.

Curious about something (will add my thoughts in replies)

When you leave your house how many stops do you typically make before your final destination? (Whether a round trip or a one way trip)

Such spaces do already exist today (public parks/libraries/community centers in at least some US towns and cities are welcoming to all, still have tables and benches, don’t restrict biking or skateboarding (though some parks have separate skate parks) and even have clean bathrooms.

But it isn’t universal (and often is a sign of a relatively affluent community)

I live by one such experiment - blocks of downtown by me have been closed to cars with public tables and benches and activities

Not entirely random thought I’ve been having lately - what would our urban spaces be like if a bunch of buildings removed the “no loitering” and “no skateboarding/biking” signs from their sides of their buildings and instead had indoor and outdoor spaces that encouraged hanging out, had bike racks, even had spaces for skateboarding balanced with of course others using benches etc to actually sit on them.

And now imagine if these spaces also had clean public bathrooms and solid WiFi

governing well and appointing people who want to help others (and believe in the importance of their institutions to help do that) along with rolling back the many bad policies of the GOP will, I hope, mean that 2026 while remarkable won't be a one time occurrence but mark the beginning of a new era of US politics where far fewer states are "solid Red" and where the government works (full stop). Which includes making it easier, not harder, to vote - and showing that engagement is worthwhile.

there is a lot of stuff to call upon the newly elected Democrats (at the state and federal level) to do and I certainly agree that subpoenas and investigations and likely some impeachments may be necessary and useful.

But perhaps even more - and possibly more important in the long run - is for the newly elected Democrats to demonstrate by their actions that change is possible and that real people can see real results that change their lives and communities for the better (see NYC)

so while tax breaks (and market moves by various very large funds) can influence the market - and big trends (like the AI bubble / data center IMHO overbuilding) do influence specific stocks (and private company valuations) the larger pool of investors as well as the finance folks at corporations (and banks) would rather have known expenses they can model and plan around over existential changes that can occur randomly.

I not a licensed broker or anything like that (briefly considered it decades ago, did work very briefly on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as a runner for a trading firm) but I've followed the markets for decades (and have at times been a more active trader than I am these days - now I'm a very boring holder of lots of low fee funds and ETFs and only a handful of shares directly) - but broadly investors (public and private) prefer known regulatory and structural systems over chaos

Something I think a lot of commentators (here and perhaps on various media) miss is that real investors (the ones running large funds/investing large pools of money) like certainty over uncertainty (with the exception of certain hedge funds that trade on volatility - though even they prefer to limit extreme risks and instead trade on risks/theses they can test)

i.e. the reason the market has gone up with the clear win by the Democrats is in part because it reduced uncertainty and extreme risk

And it’s worth noting that the last 100+ years we as a nation have had a largely fixed number of representatives which isn’t what the Constitution originally called for - in that time the US population has grown considerably (under 100M in 1913 to over 340M today). Going back to a non-fixed number of representatives would make the US House more complex but it is very much what the constitution called for - so “originalists” would be hard pressed to argue against it

And of course this would cause nearly all house districts to be redrawn so yes this risks a lot of gerrymandering

But smaller districts and a LOT more representatives would also make the US House a lot more responsive to voters and probably make for a wider range of elected officials and I personally think more diversity and opportunities would be healthy for the country. We would get better laws and build a deeper bench of experienced elected officials

This won’t happen but one idea for the incoming Democrats to upend US politics but do so in a way that would be very very hard for conservatives to argue against.

Repeal the “permanent apportionment act” and set the number for representatives far lower than the 800k+ people it is today (even higher in states like CA).

This would add a massive number of new representatives and make each more accountable (and shift the electoral college) all by going back to the original constitution

I really really want an option on MacOS (and iOS) to turn off ALL autocorrect/autosuggest changes to what I type. Please just go back to suggestions that don't auto insert themselves but let me go back and correct an error (if it is an error) but getting tired of automatic tools changing what I want to type into entirely different things (like "who" instead of the what earlier in this sentence)

I'm ok if typos slip through. I far rather a real typo over changes that entirely change meaning

Wherever you are if you are a registered voter here in the US this is an election you shouldn’t sit out. And don’t just vote on the top of the ticket state wide races - local races often are decided by just a few votes and have a real impact on your local community. Here in California there are competitive local races to decide much about my town (Mountain View)

So just completed my ballot and will be hand walking it to a voting center later this morning.

Cool new I voted stickers this year

and meeting outdoors means it can be accessible to anyone who needs to be highly covid (and flu etc) cautious. I'm thinking about meeting at Ada Cafe in Palo Alto as one option for this - as they are a great non-profit cafe, have real food, lots of outdoor seating (at a library) and is just a great space. But open to other location suggestions (could even be hosted by some company or organization) but to goal is for it to be as lightweight as possible while still helping each other.