What are you doing tonight? Oh, pouring out and sorting my bag of lump charcoal.

iOS26 is full of idiotic, terrible tiny changes that make things worse, and it’s not just me being cranky. I think my “favorite“ is that you now have to tap twice to see the Safari tabs you have open.

I'm listening.

This is going to be my new photo for everything.

Introduction to the Literary Humanities Humanists have long pursued subjects they are not trained in and know little about, such as medicine or urban design. Now, English professors are realizing that their training and expertise is perfectly suited to teaching and studying literary texts.

Pumpkin spice grift season has arrived.

In recent weeks, a number of people have mentioned returning to this article of mine from 2021. Here's a gift link.

“Carl’s Jr. of Anaheim, California is testing a program enabling customers to order by touching selections on a touch-sensitive display terminal.” (TWA Ambassador Magazine, July 1991)

Some new friends

Yeah, sorry, I don't think this is right at all. I think the desire, especially among young(ish, but getting older) self-employed media professionals, to construct a perfect package for every moment or idea, as if it's being served in as a Michelin-star dish or a Tweet (RIP), is a fantasy.

With respect to my Chicagoland brethren, is it not time to cosmopolitanize the Chicago Dog's name, perhaps as the Sport Dog? The deep-dish pizza is hardly constrained here, after all.

Oh, thanks for the update.

This is hell.

The contemporary experience of waiting for your coffee while watching the barista make orders for mobile-order ghost people who are not present and will not arrive before your coffee eventually gets made, behind the ghosts.

No. I mean, sure, smartphones will use AI more, but the smartphone is the end of computational history. There will be no equivalent in wearables and ”AI agents” will not overtake it either.

Oh, it’s a working lunch then.

Sometimes I think about this insane figure from a popular computer-science ethics textbook.

Superb. genius.com/Seal-kiss-fr...

A lesson I learned from getting hit by a tornado: Don’t scrimp on home insurance. We HAD to get Cadillac coverage because of the unique nature of our home—nobody else would cover it. If we hadn’t we’d have been totally fucked. If your insurer is, like, State Farm you don’t actually have insurance.

My $600 Apple headphones weren’t fully seated in their headphones diaper so now I cannot use them until they charge again.

Good thing we get these helpful AI review summaries now.

Check out this deft salesbot pivot Rufus, Amazon’s product AI, has just performed on my behalf.

Souplantation was a Southern California soup-and-salad-bar buffet chain. (RIP) But what did the name mean? Was it forcibly overthrowing something? With Soup? What was that something?

Better together

Kong error

Lot of reasons Target is faltering, many discussed here. Not mentioned: Dearth of inventory for basics long past pandemic impacts and a self-inflicted, unworkable checkout process from idiotic personnel cuts. Remember when it used to be fun to go to Target? Now it’s awful.

Last trip to New Mexico, probably ever. Here’s my haul.

So far, the main kind of critique of my “ChatGPT’s senior year” story, which is basically “This is doomerism.” Which, I don’t think it is! But is that your bet? “Nah we’re good?”

Quick question.

Oh no.

DFW is one of the few airports (PHX is another) where personnel attempt to drive large electric carts through the terminal, screaming “I’m driving a car in the airport!” or some such as it any of it makes sense.

Sometimes you’ll see a couple big, muscular dudes jogging together in the park and it feels like being in an 8-bit brawler.

This year's rising seniors have never experienced a year of college without generative AI. It's AI's senior year, too. And AI is ubiquitous: Over 90 percent of college students now use it in some way. I wrote about how AI already changed college forever. (Gift link)

This year's rising seniors have never experienced a year of college without generative AI. It's AI's senior year, too. And AI is ubiquitous: Over 90 percent of college students now use it in some way. I wrote about how AI already changed college forever. (Gift link)

Taylor Dayne is sixty-three years old.

Okay hold on. Was Mike Mulligan, aware that Marianne (like all steam shovels) was doomed and therefore euthanized/prestiged her, or was he just incompetent?

Made this lunch today, but after it was over the 20th century remained a long time ago.

So uh, does it prevent some insects to no extent? Or does it prevent all insects to some extent? Or no insects exceedingly well?

This comical category error continues. Do you know what it's like to talk to a Ph.D.-level expert about anything, and especially their expertise?

Received my first "Fall into Savings" email today.

If you are a green or even early-career professor whose retirement option is TIAA, I would strongly advise you to understand how its various kinds of accounts really work, because you may find that it's kind of the worst combination of public pensions and private retirement investment accounts.

Finally copped

If you are (or know) a rising college senior, I would like to talk to you (or them) for a story about AI in college classes. DM me here, email [email protected], or Signal ibogost.47

Miss you King

Some personal news

ALSO! Not sure if university STUDENTS use this platform, but if so I want to hear from you too. What is working, or not working, with AI in your classes? What do you want from it, and how does that relate to what your professors are doing?

University professors: As the fall nears, how are you thinking about using, or defending against the use of, AI in your courses? We're a few years in now, what seems different? I want to talk to you for a story at @theatlantic.com. DM, email [email protected], or signal @ibogost.47.

Today, on July 27, Home Goods was absolutely chock full of Halloween wares.

For two decades now, in-flight Wi-Fi has occupied a limbo between miracle and catastrophe. @ibogost.bsky.social on why there's no guarantee it's getting better anytime soon: