Tag: AI

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Photo of a black moving truck parked on the street. There is an image of the Tasmanian Devil holding a grand piano over his head and text that reads ACTION PIANO MOVING 1 800 480-6683 WWW.ACTIONPIANOMOVING.COM PIANOS BOUGHT AND SOLD.

This week’s random photo is of a piano moving truck. In hindsight, a picture of the grand piano these guys had artfully wedged into a service elevator would have been more impressive. But, this is all I got. Maximum respect to the piano movers of the world. Death Wish Piano Movers of Boston takes the cake for the most aptly named business though.

It’s been an exciting week here (more on that later), so it’s a very light weeknote. Enjoy the links…

Links

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Recently, Microsoft published Breaking down the infinite workday (via slashdot). It’s a short piece touting a larger research study. Two things really caught my attention:

Our telemetry data shows that, on average, employees using Microsoft 365 are interrupted every 2 minutes by a meeting, email, or notification.

Every 2 minutes? That’s terrible. How do people feel about the state of things?

For many, the workday now feels like navigating chaos—reacting to others’ priorities and losing focus on what matters most. In a time when every hour counts, that drift could quietly drain energy and stall business progress.

Sounds like a total shit show. This might be tolerable during work hours. But, increasingly, it doesn’t stop after punching the clock*. No matter the time or day, the notifications never cease.

Continue reading →

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Photo of a sign advertising Rockaway Beach Surf Shop attached to a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The advertisement is a cartoon of five people with pompadore hairdos surfing. The text above the cartoon is "ROCK ROCK ROCKAWAY BEACH". Below the cartoon, the text is "Since 1972, Rockaway Beach Surf Shop, 177 Beach 116th St, Rockaway Park, NY 11694, 718-474-9345." There are other, smaller signs attached to the fence around the surf shop sign and there is ivy growing on the fence, obscuring some of the signs. There is some industrial landscape in the background.
It’s not far, not hard to reach

We spent a couple days at Rockaway Beach. It was nice to get away, even if away means a different borough. It was very hot on Friday, so it was good to be near the water and not needing to ride the subway. We ate some delicious food and took in the local vibe. Plus, we got to engage in a bit of plane spotting. We can do that at home too as the LaGuardia arrivals flight path is over the neighborhood. But, the flights departing JFK in the evening tend to be going to more exciting locales than those arriving at LGA. Think Amsterdam vs. Atlanta.

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Photo of hot pink with white lettering banner on a cinder block wall on a NYC subway platform. It advertises a florist with the text "OH MY GOD FLOWERS... Dude, she deserves beautiful flowers, make her happy today! 1-929-309-5719 www.ohmygodflowers.com 2413 Coney Island Ave"
Effective advertising on the subway.

Including a random photo this week. This may be one of the most memorable ads I’ve seen on the subway, ever.

It has been about two months since the Youtube ban of 2025 went into effect. While I still have Youtube blocked on my computer at home, the ban hasn’t yielded a massive amount of bass practice and I am still far from reaching James Jamerson levels of skill. Instead, I’ve been watching more HBO and Netflix, oops. It’s not all bad though. My Youtube consumption is down sharply and what I watch now is of higher quality. Also, with longer form entertainment, think I can be more intentional with my viewing than with the random, short videos on Youtube. Going forward, I’ll put some more thought into what I’m about to do before I click play.

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The July 4th holiday, and the number on this weeknote post provide a potent realization: “Crap, halfway through another year…”

Yeah. Time really flies.

Due in part to that realization, I was thinking of a way to remind myself of things–goal oriented things, not a todo list things. Perhaps a personal, daily newsletter will do the trick. I do check my email in the morning, so that’s a good place to get something in front of me. There are myriad ways to do this; I chose to create a little Python personal newsletter mailer script, mostly for fun. A very basic version is getting sent to my inbox every morning. I’ll see if it helps…

This also gave me a chance to try out Codeberg as a replacement for github. So far, so good on that front. I don’t notice much difference since Codeberg seems to have the github features I use most often (git repos and issues).

In US Political news, congress passed a spending and policy bill this week that seems destined to drive this country off a fiscal cliff so that the most wealthy among us can become more wealthy while the rest lose what meager benefits they have. Also, they opened a concentration camp in the Florida everglades and gave it a cute name to distract people from the fact that they are warehousing people in cages, in tents, in a swamp. I really hope the hurricane resistance of those tents aren’t put to the test.

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