If they offered it in a curvy cut, I’d be ordering right now. (Link courtesy of Kottke.)

Okay, this is hilarious, and honestly the best possible advertisement for MapQuest. Maybe I should be using MapQuest for directions on my phone?! (Link courtesy of Daring Fireball.)

As of Feb. 26, Amazon is removing the ability to download and transfer your purchased Kindle ebooks. This sucks. This means you lose the ability to back them up, or to move them to your devices over wired connections. If also means Amazon can one day decide to remove the books entirely, because you never really owned them to begin with.

I suggest you log into your account NOW and download each of your purchased ebooks. Of course they make it as difficult as possible, so you have to click on each one individually and download it to your computer. (I had 77 of them. I’m sure there are people with loads more.)

And then if you were so inclined, you might also install something like Calibre, an open source ebook collection manager. And if you were further inclined, you could also install some useful plugins that would give you further flexibility in how you read your purchased content.

Guardian Media Group today announced a strategic partnership with Open AI, a leader in artificial intelligence and deployment, that will bring the Guardian’s high quality journalism to ChatGPT’s global users…

Yeah, no. Subscription cancelled, and I told them why.

Actually, Master and Commander is a Domestic Fantasy About a Codependent Life Partnership! Olivia Wolfgang-Smith on the Queer Subtext of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin Series…

Okay, I saw the movie version but don’t remember much about it. I certainly didn’t think I was interested in reading the books… until now. 😂 (Link via Metafilter.)

Along with posting more often on my own blog, I’ve also been trying to get back in the habit of reading others’ blogs more regularly. I followed a link recently to my old friend and colleague Daphne Chong’s site. I really loved her “Ode to Twitter”, especially this bit:

I feel a surprising pang thinking about Twitter going away, even though I don’t actively post on it today. There is more than a decade of me catalogued – a lot of my professional growth, and serendipitous connections. Even now, I can’t get some of that back…

Looking back on the thousands of tweets I imported over the weekend, I know exactly what she means. It was a big part of my life for a long time, and I’m sad that it ended the way it did.

A few years ago, I read an article about how FOX News’ goal was to make people afraid to leave their house. (I apologize for not remembering where I read this.) But that line stuck with me. Make people afraid to leave their house. Make people believe that the unknown is scary. Make people believe that otherness is scary.

Source: How to grow old • Buttondown

I loved this piece about staying curious, about being open to new experiences, and about the need to protect our entire community. “Even if, and especially when, some of it might have become unfamiliar to us. Because those might be the places where our curiosity takes it tomorrow.”

I saw this video linked on Bluesky a few days back, and I’ve spent the last two days bingeing the series. I’m almost up to the end. It’s great! This young guy is a rapper and a music geek who nevertheless hates musicals and somehow hasn’t ever seen Hamilton. He watches a couple songs at a time, pausing to react to what’s happening, call out motifs that are repeating, and analyse how the writing illustrates character. Needless to say, he ends up loving it and gets fully invested in the story. His enthusiasm is infectious.