It’s not without some mild reservation that I note the 18th anniversary of the release of the Nintendo Wii. One of my favorite gaming systems is now an adult.

The Wii hit the shelves on November 19, 2006, and quickly became the biggest holiday gift. Waiting lists—and the lines of people wanting to buy—stretched long. People who were lucky enough to reach the front of those lines would sometimes buy two or three and sell them at absurd markups.

In honor of Wii’s birthday, let me tell you the story of how my good friend Torrey Walker (aka THW) made my Christmas that year.

I first wrote about this as it happened in my now-defunct personal blog. Here those entries (lightly edited for length and clarity).

It started just a few weeks after the release, just as the frenzy was reaching fever pitch.…

December 05, 2006: Don’t Buy A Wii

I must implore you: Don’t buy a Nintendo Wii.

As you’ve no doubt heard, both Sony and Nintendo have new gaming systems this gift-giving holiday season, Sony with its sequentially named Playstation 3, and Nintendo with its oddly named Wii.

When I younger, and more dexterous, I loved playing video games. I owned a Playstation and SuperNES; I now own a PS2 and Nintendo GameCube. But I don’t play anywhere near as much as I used to, so the thought of buying a new video gaming system didn’t catch my fancy. Especially one that costs $600 (PS3) or was a minor advance graphically (Wii).

My friend Torrey, though, is an avid gamer, to the point where he stood in line to buy a Wii. Me being the curious sort, and him being the generous type, he brought his Wii over to share with [my then-girlfriend] Ying and my friend Elliot.

We played with Wii for several hours, and it was an absolute blast; from the clean and minimalist Apple-like design, to the Wii-mote (the wireless Wii remote controller), to the surprising physicality of the Wii Sports games.

Ah, the games. Wii comes bundled with a sports pack: Bowling, Tennis, Boxing, Golf and Baseball. You use the Wii-motes as you would use the appropriate sports implement: with Bowling, you pull your arm back and roll it forward as if you were releasing a bowling ball; with Tennis, you swing as if you had a racquet; with Boxing, you hold them in your fists and punch; etc.

Of course, these are video games, and you would expect that you’d be sitting on your couch, waving these Wii-motes around and jamming buttons, but no: we found ourselves getting into the physical motions of playing the games. We’d swing the Wii-mote like we really had a tennis racquet in our hands, even though a sharp wrist flick would be enough. Or we’d deliver huge roundhouse punches in Boxing, even though fast jabs would get the job done.

Both Elliot and Ying were especially interesting to watch. Elliot really got into Tennis; he was leaping back and forth across the floor, reaching for the balls as they whizzed past him. Ying took Boxing to heart, punching and jabbing like her life depended on it, and working up a sweat.

In fact, that would be the hallmark of the Wii afternoon: by the end of the day, all four of us had gotten some amount of physical activity we would not have gotten if we were playing any other video game. That’s right, a workout. Elliot, Ying and I all “boxed” for 15 or 20 minutes, and by the end of it, not only had we started sweating, we actually felt pain in our shoulders and arms!

From a video game!

By the time Torrey was re-boxing the Wii, I was already considering buying a new video game system. I concluded my initial review:

So again, I must beg of you: don’t buy a Wii. If this post tempted you, resist. If you find yourself in a Toys ‘R’ Us or Wal-Mart, and you see that gleaming white rectangle sitting on the shelf, you don’t want it.

But do me a favor will you? Hold on to it and give me a call, OK?

Two weeks later, things escalated.

December 17, 2006: A Wii Bit of Madness

It’s 5:30 on a Sunday morning, and I’m about to go stand in line for a Nintendo Wii. What am I, crazy?

Indeed, I was clearly suffering from Wii-thdrawal after playing with the system but not having one of my own, so I figured I had to at least try to get a Wii. It didn’t go as I’d hoped.

[Ying and I] have returned from our Wii excursion, and other than memories of long lines and cold people, we are empty-handed. We visited ten locations (which includes repeat visits to one), and each store had a line longer than we could have imagined.

Waking up at 5:30 am was, it turns out, an amateur move.

We happened to be [at Westgate Mall Target] last night about 8pm, and three families had already lined up (one at 6pm) for an 8am store opening. When we returned this morning, about 7am, the line was over 100 people, for a store claiming 100 units.

Had we decided to stand in line at 8pm the night earlier, we would have come home with a Wii. Ah, Wii-grets.

Ying is a little disappointed by the lack of Wii; she’s second-guessing her decisions to wake up at 5:30, to go to certain stores in a certain order, etc. For me, it was more of an experiment. It was interesting to see which stores had longer lines, and how many people were willing to brave the cold (37 degrees, by my car’s gauge) for a game system.

I’m willing to wait until the excitement subsides a bit.

Yep, I’d pretty much Wii-signed myself to not owning a Wii for weeks, possibly months, and I was OK with that.

Then Torrey Did A Thing.

December 20, 2006: THW comes through, Wii is in the hizz-ouse!

In 1984, my mom woke me up early Christmas morning. Sitting next to my bed was the unopened box of an Apple //c computer and monitor. My uncle owned one of those, and I’d spent time at his house hacking with it. He’d once promised he’d bring it over to my house so I could have more time with it. Even in my sleepy state, when I saw the box, my initial shot of excitement was quickly replaced with cold logic: “What’s my uncle’s computer doing here?”

I was told nope, it’s not your uncle’s, it’s yours, and it’s your Christmas gift.

I believe the ceiling still has an imprint of my head, and the floor a dent from my jaw [from] the extremely unexpected present.

Today, THW sent me an email.In today? What time can I stop by to say hi? I’m leaving... tomorrow and won’t be back until just before New Years. /thw

Stop on by, I told him. I figured we’d BS for a few minutes, catch up on what’s been going on the last couple of days, chat about plans for the holiday break we’re about to start. You know, typical friend stuff before you don’t see each other for two weeks or so.

In he walks. We chat about two minutes before he steps back outside my office, and I hear some rustling of plastic. He steps back in and hands me a white box with “Wii” written on it in huge letters.

Let me go through my thought process here.

On seeing it: Fucker! You got a me a gift and put it in a Wii box? That’s cold.

On holding it: It’s heavy.... Oh! You’re loaning me your Wii for the week you’ll be away. That’s fucking sweet. What a good friend.

I thanked him for loaning it to me, and he says, nope, that’s yours. That’s your Christmas gift.

I couldn’t quite get my mind around it. You’re giving me your Wii?

“No”, he says (silently adding “you idiot”, I imagine), “it’s yours.”

Through a series of circumstances, he had an extra one. When he read my entry about waking up at 5:30 to stand in line, and coming back empty-handed, he made his decision: as his Christmas gift to me, he would sell me his extra Wii. I guess he decided that getting up that early to buy one was a worthy endeavor, and instead of making beaucoup bucks scalping it on eBay (as he rightly could), he decided to sell it to me.

Wow.

Last Saturday, when Ying and I had decided to wake up early the next day, I called Elliot, and offered him the chance to buy a Wii, should we find ourselves lucky enough to find two. He declined, but was touched that I would give up a potential financial benefit for him. I didn’t quite understand it at the time. He’s my friend, and of course if I’m buying a Wii I’ll pick up a second one for him.[…]

Now, I get it. What Torrey did was a selfless act. Not in the same realm of giving up a kidney or the last taco, but still remarkable. He passed up the chance to make money so his friend could have a Wii-filled vacation. I was actually tearing up a bit when he [handed] it to me.

Unsurprisingly, I still have that Wii, and it was a source of joy for . While I haven’t played it in a long while, it—and the hours and hours of fun it generated over the years—remains a treasured touchtone of my friendship with Torrey.

Thank you Torrey for that unforgettable act of friendship, and Happy Birthday Wii!

It’s an odd feeling to be—in even a small way—celebrating seven years as an American citizen, just days after American democracy gave us, for the second time, a Donald Trump presidency.

Yet it is also fitting, as the reason I became an American citizen seven years ago was because American democracy gave us, for the first time, a Donald Trump presidency.

In 2016, despite living in America for thirty-five years, I wasn’t ever motivated to pursue my citizenship. There was no real reason, merely inertia. Lack of citizenship never stopped me from doing anything: As a permanent resident I could work legally, had most of the protections of being a citizen, and while I wasn’t always thrilled with the people America elected (hello Reagan, Bush, and Bush), the impact on my daily life was minimal.

In my Member Update #2, I wrote:

For my first decade or so in the U.S., I didn't care much for politics, and didn't really identify with a political party.

I only really started paying attention to politics during the Clinton administration. Because politics wasn’t huge in my life, neither was voting. I came close to applying for citizenship as I tracked Barack Obama’s rise—from a junior senator speaking at the DNC, through his historic nomination, election, and reelection—but the inertia was powerful. I deeply regret missing the opportunity to vote for him, or to be naturalized under his presidency.

After eight years of Barack Obama, I was excited by the possibility of following our first Black president with our first female president, but my first hint this wasn’t the timeline I thought it was came on February 16, 2016. I wrote in Day One:

Tonight, I fear for America.

Donald Trump won the Republican New Hampshire primary. […]

Trump would be an unmitigated disaster, and it’s going to ensure that I have my citizenship, so I can leave the country for more than six months at a time....

I wonder if there’s any chance of my getting it in time to vote?

It wouldn’t have been enough time, but it didn’t matter: I didn’t start the process.

Then this, on March 8:

It’s Time.

Trump has won Michigan and Mississippi. He won Michigan with over 37%; his nearest competitor is Kasich with 25% and Cruz with about 24%. He won Mississippi with 49%, with Cruz at 35%. This terrifies me. Trump has a legitimate shot at the nomination, and the presidency.

I included a link to 10 Steps to Naturalization, Understanding the Process of Becoming a U.S. Citizen.

I’d finally started the process, but there was no real urgency. I had faith in the American democratic system, and, like many people then (and many people this year) I was certain beyond any doubt Trump could not possibly win. I could wait, and would get to be naturalized under America’s first female president.

Yeah.

January 19, 2017:

Awake in a Marriott in Annapolis.

The end of Barack Obama’s administration is near and I’m sad and scared.

I never completed my citizenship papers and a small part of me worries it won’t go through.

Also sad that I’d be sworn in under Trump.

Sad indeed, but not enough to allow that distasteful prospect to deter me. His inauguration was the motivation I needed to finally complete the process: I felt it necessary to cloak myself in the protections of American Citizenship.

February 2, 2017:

Just mailed my citizenship application. I’m slightly short of breath.

I had a biometrics appointment a month later, and on August 30 I went in for my in-person interview, where they assessed my English reading and writing ability, along with my knowledge of U.S. history, the Constitution, and current politics.

The interview was a little nerve-racking, mostly because I feared vapor-locking while answering the civics questions, but I got through them with no issues.

At the end, the interviewer handed me my result form, with a big “X” next to “Congratulations! Your application is recommended for approval.” I unexpectedly choked up when he wished me luck, and only barely kept my emotions in check as I rose to leave.

I went home and poured myself the most American of spirits, bourbon—Jefferson’s Reserve, a hat-tip to our founding fathers.

Then, on November 9, 2017:

American Citizen!

So here I am, seven years after Donald Trump’s first inauguration, celebrating my citizenship and my right to vote, just days after millions of other Americans exercised theirs to vote for Donald Trump. Again.

Deja vu is a weird sensation.

It’s just after 4 a.m. on the East Coast as I post this, and I haven’t been able to sleep because it’s now clear that Donald Trump will again be president of the United States.

While it hasn’t yet been officially called by the AP or others, Trump sits at 267 Electoral College votes, with AK and its three electoral votes the only thing standing between him and victory. I suspect by the time the sun breaks over the Atlantic Ocean, Trump will have been declared the winner, with as many as 312 electoral votes.

What has become of this country?

Tens of millions of my supposedly “fellow” Americans consciously chose a demagogue and the vile hatred he and his followers represent. They knew the nastiness he offered, and they wanted it.

I admit that in my heart of hearts I was hoping for a Harris landslide, a blowout victory that repudiated MAGA politics. Instead, Trump has solidified his grasp on this country (when you’re a star, they let you do it).

Don’t ever tell me again this country isn’t deeply racist and misogynistic.

This election was about power: Who has it, who wields it, and who benefits from it.

Americans voted for their own self-interest: To keep themselves at the top of the food chain.

They understand that being a white male makes you untouchable, and being a white female confers the privilege of white men upon you.

A significant number of Latino voters also aligned themselves with Trump, perhaps out of a misguided attempt at self preservation, but equally likely out of an anti-immigrant “fuck you, I got mine” mentality.

I’ve seen a lot of people on Mastodon (and I’m guessing across most social media) saying they’ll fight Trump for the next four years.

Cool cool cool.

What makes them think he’ll allow that fight? Where will they take it? The courts? The press? Congress? The streets?

They have a lot of faith in the strength of institutions he’s pledged to destroy—or which have already capitulated well before his election.

The Supreme Court has granted him immunity. The press already has demonstrated deference. Congress will be a feckless lapdog. And protesters in the streets are likely to be met with a military presence—whether it’s U.S. military or Trump’s “Proud Boys.”

After what we’ve observed over the last decade+, and especially what Trump and his MAGA party have done and said they’ll do, what reason is there to believe he won’t shut down any protesters, with intimidation if not violence? We’ve seen it already.

And here’s a truth: Those with the energy to fight are often the ones who can just walk away from that fight without consequence.

The rest of us who can’t “blend in” are tired of having our souls crushed by an America we thought had our backs.

I’ve also seen people trotting out “we are better than this” and “this is not who we are”.

Bullshit.

It’s time to retire both phrases. We’ve proven we’re not “better than this.” We’ve shown this is “who we are.”

It’s been true for a long while, but there was always some amount of plausible deniability. It’s pretty damn hard to deny it now after this electoral outcome.

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump gets sworn in for the second time. On that day, I expect The Great American Experiment will come to an end.

Seventy-five days.

It feels impossible to overstate the importance of this election. “The fate of our democracy hangs in the balance” seems somehow both overwrought and woefully insufficient. Yet that seems to be the stakes at play. We are choosing between Kamala Harris, who supports democracy; and Donald Trump, who has repeatedly expressed disdain for it.

An election between these two candidates—one, a prosecutor, Senator, and the sitting Vice President; the other a convicted criminal, adjudicated sexual assaulter, and twice-impeached former president—should be a cakewalk. That it’s a coin flip is terrifying, and for the next few days we’ll all be bundles of raw, vibrating nerves as we await the results.

While we’re unlikely to have a definitive winner tonight, I’m hoping we have a clear trend: that undecideds break for Harris, Democrats turn out in huge numbers for her, and Republicans, tired of the circus, vote for a president they can oppose without fear of retribution.

As I write this approaching 11 p.m. EST on election night, it’s not clear that America will repudiate Trump for a second time in two elections; in several places he’s doing better this year than he did last. It’s obviously still early, and there’s a lot of vote counting still to be done, but Trump’s continued (and growing) strength with a certain portion of the electorate is deeply concerning. The trends don’t seem to be trending toward Harris.

Keith Olbermann noted on a recent episode of The Countdown that

[…] there are people voting for Donald Trump today that were nine when he began his first campaign. They don’t know an America without a subculture of boastful stupidity and conspiracy.[…] They only know this shit.

Those 18 year olds have known only the divisiveness and anti-democratic rhetoric of Trump and MAGA Republicans. Many have grown up believing Trump is a “normal” politician, that his and MAGA policies are mainstream, and that democracy is about demonizing the other side.

That mindset may carry the day.

Like many of you, I’ll be glued to my screens tonight, in both anticipation and fear.

I started my evening feeling nervous but optimistic. Right now, as I write this, that optimism is starting to wane. The evening has shades of 2016, and that scares me beyond measure.

Apple had a busy week of product announcements, in an unusual format. Instead of an in-person event, or a single keynote-style video presentation, three classes of products were announced over three days via press release and 10-15 minute videos.

Monday: iMac (video):

Apple today announced the new iMac, featuring the powerful M4 chip and Apple Intelligence, in its stunning, ultra-thin design.

The new iMac now offers a $200 nano-texture option for the display; I have it on my M4 iPad Pro and it’s fantastic for eliminating reflections and glare. As with the iPad Pro, though, it’s not an option on the entry-level configuration, so you’ll also pay at least another $200 just to unlock the nano-texture, technically making it a $400 upgrade, assuming you weren’t already in the market for the extra CPU power, gigabit ethernet, and four total Thunderbolt 4 ports.

The new colors are very pretty (if muted); great for those who, unlike me, want a pop of color in their computer. As before, the mouse/trackpad/keyboard accessories are color-matched, and now sport USB-C instead of lightning (finally!), although the mouse still charges from the bottom—a location I’ve never understood. I did appreciate John Gruber’s recent defense of its placement, though.

The iMac can also drive two 6K external displays alongside the built-in 24” display, which makes for a phenomenal battlestation. If I was an all-in-one person (rather than a laptop-and-monitor person), this would be a great system.

Tuesday: Mac mini (video):

Apple today unveiled the all-new Mac mini powered by the M4 and new M4 Pro chips, and redesigned around Apple silicon to pack an incredible amount of performance into an even smaller form of just 5 by 5 inches. […]

For more convenient connectivity, it features front and back ports, and for the first time includes Thunderbolt 5 for faster data transfer speeds on the M4 Pro model.

The big story here is that the new Mac mini is mini-er: Less than half the desk footprint of the previous mini (though a tad taller).

This is a device for which I have zero need yet desperately want to buy, simply for the cool factor. I have a barely used M1 Mac mini that I may have to trade in. The boost in CPU and data transfer might make it a phenomenal Blu-ray ripper and in-home video streamer.

Wednesday: MacBook Pro (video):

[…] the 14-inch MacBook Pro includes the blazing-fast performance of M4 and three Thunderbolt 4 ports […]

The 14- and 16-inch models with M4 Pro and M4 Max offer Thunderbolt 5 for faster transfer speeds and advanced connectivity. All models include a Liquid Retina XDR display that gets even better with an all-new nano-texture display option and up to 1000 nits of brightness for SDR content, an advanced 12MP Center Stage camera, along with up to 24 hours of battery life, the longest ever in a Mac.

I’m a huge fan of the 14” MacBook Pro. The Liquid Retina XDR display on my M2 MacBook Pro is stunning, and as I mentioned above, I love the nano-texture display on my iPad Pro; having it on my laptop would be fantastic. Good news: The $150 nano-texture option is available on the base model MacBook Pro.

Adding Thunderbolt 5, a nano-texture display option, a brighter display, and 24-hour battery life makes this a near-perfect laptop. If I could only have one computer, it would be the 14” MacBook Pro. I find it the perfect combination of portable and powerful.

All it needs is cellular capabilities. (Maybe next year.)

Apple Intelligence

Each press release touted—via the same boilerplate—support for Apple Intelligence:

Apple Intelligence ushers in a new era for the Mac, bringing personal intelligence to the personal computer. Combining powerful generative models with industry-first privacy protections, Apple Intelligence harnesses the power of Apple silicon and the Neural Engine to unlock new ways for users to work, communicate, and express themselves on Mac.

I’m excited to experience Apple Intelligence, though most of the features I’m interested in—primarily those driven by “personal context”—won’t come until (I presume) 2025.

My experience so far with the available Apple Intelligence features has been ho-hum. The notification and email summaries are interesting, though not terribly useful in most instances.

For example, a pair of Amazon notifications, the first telling me a package is 10 stops away, the second saying it was delivered, was summarized as “Package delivered, currently 10 stops away.”

I know Apple Intelligence will improve over time, so I’m not going to ding it just yet, except to say Apple is really pushing it as a reason to buy new hardware, and I think most early purchasers will be disappointed, at least initially.

Remember: Never buy hardware for the promise of what it will do in the future. Buy for what it’s capable of doing today.

M4 Power

The new M4 looks pretty damn powerful, and it wouldn’t surprise me if most people buying one won’t need to upgrade it for many, many years. (I wonder what impact that will have on Apple’s sales in the long-term?)

If you currently have an Intel-based Mac (or PC), even the most entry-level M4 Mac will be a massive upgrade in speed. For some, like a medical student I was speaking with recently who owned a 2017 Intel-based Mac, even a refurbished M1 or M2 Mac would be noticeably faster (not to mention lighter and less noisy) than what they now use.

Apple hardware has never been more powerful and capable, and with such low power and cooling needs. I’m salivating at the possibility of some radically redesigned computers in the near future.

A few days ago—after a brutal Mets loss to the Dodgers—I snarked on Mastodon:

A Dodgers/Yankees matchup would be my worst nightmare.

Zero rooting interest. Turn off the television.

Welp, here we are.

Growing up a New York Mets fan, I’m vehemently anti-Yankees. As a San Francisco resident and Giants fan for the last quarter century, I unconditionally detest the Dodgers.

As storied as Yankees/Dodgers World Series matchups have been historically—11 of them going back to 1941, including Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956 (still the only one pitched), Sandy Koufax’s 15-strikeout complete game in 1963, and Reggie Jackson’s 3-home runs on three consecutive pitches from three different pitchers in 1977—the idea of supporting either team makes me violently ill.

My rooting rules are uncomplicated ^[1] :

• Mets and Giants over anyone
• Eastern/Western Divisions over the others
• National League over American League
• Anyone over Yankees/Dodgers

Yes, that sometimes meant rooting for a Central Division or American League team if they were up against the Yankees or Dodgers, but it was always worth it. Nothing was more important than those two teams losing.

But facing each other? Sometimes the rules, much like Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, result in an untenable situation which, if left unresolved, may end with a catastrophic core meltdown.

So my solution is easy: Don’t watch the games.

I’m probably not the only one.

Sure, some won’t watch because this is a “coastal elites” match up of Evil New York against Hollywood Los Angeles, both with their big money, big name players—the middle of the country naturally roots against both as easily as I do—there’s a bigger reason this Series is likely to be ignored by the masses.

Keith Olbermann explains on his mosty-politics-but-somtimes-sports Countdown podcast:

The famous Yankees and Dodgers are actually two of the most disastrously underperforming franchises in sports. If you consider the year 2000 as the last year of the 20th century, the Yankees have won one World Series in this century. Even if you don’t, they’ve won one World Series since 2000. The Dodgers have won one World Series in a full season since 1965.

Nobody cares about these teams because they’ve basically sucked for a generation. On top of that, baseball itself has changed—for the worse—since the turn of the century^[2].

Olbermann again:

The long regular season and the quick playoffs were designed to establish which team was best that year. You played and you played and you played from Spring to Summer into Fall and you beat everybody in your league. And then you faced the team that had played and beaten everybody in their league.

And the result was a Series that was always novel and fresh and exciting and faced pitchers against hitters they’d never seen before.

Today, with Interleague play, “balanced” schedules, the extended Wild Card playoffs, and the National League adoption of the Designated Hitter rule (barf), the regular season is boring, the playoffs are boring, and—because the World Series teams already faced each other during the regular season, as the Yankees and Dodgers did in June—the World Series matchups end up being... boring.

Olbermann, once again:

It is believed about 60 million people watched game 7 of the 1986 World Series^[3] on television.

If 60 million people watch the entirety of this World Series on television, if that’s the total audience for seven games, they will hold two parades afterward: One for the winning team and one for all the TV and advertising executives.

And by the away, if they get sixty million total audience on TV, the ad executives and the TV executives will get drunker than the winning players do.

And his coup de grâce:

We’re just amazed that the two best teams on paper are actually in the World Series, and how did they get there? They beat the wildcard teams.

Winning against the fourth place team. Congrats?

When I linked to a study showing police stop Black drivers more often than speed cameras, I wrote:

There’s no denying DWB is real; I’ve experienced it myself multiple times.

Here’s one example. I originally wrote this in June 2008 for my now-defunct personal blog. I’ve updated temporal references appropriately, and lightly edited for clarity.

In late 2005, my buddy Ron and I and several other coworkers volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. Ron had asked our company to sponsor an event for the Black employees association, which included buying several boxes of pizza for the volunteers. By the end of the day, there were a lot of half-empty boxes no one wanted, so Ron decided to take them home.

We plopped into my Nissan Altima for the drive back to his place in Mountain View; me, with my baseball cap turned backwards; Ron, many boxes of pizza on his lap; both of us shabby from building houses. As we’re approaching our exit on the freeway, we notice a cop car trailing us. My immediate comment to Ron was “I bet you he exits with us” and, sure enough, he does.

But then, he passes us on the left and pulls a couple of cars ahead of us. As we wait for a light to change, I think, hey, it was just a coincidence, no ulterior motives.

We turn onto Ron’s block and park. Ron gets out, and I notice there are flashing lights behind us. Ron looks back, his hands filled with pizza boxes, and asks, somewhat incredulously, “Did he just pull us over?”

Yep. He sure did. He’d apparently waited until we turned, then flipped on his lights and followed us.

The cop gets out of his car, strolls over to us and asks for my license and registration, which I dutifully hand over. A well-trained question crosses my lips.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?”

His answer will go down in the annals of justification history: “I noticed your front license plate was missing.”

I glance over at Ron, then back to the cop.

“I know,” I say evenly. “Is that a problem?”

“There are people who steal the front license plates from cars, and put them onto similar vehicles. If you do a plate check, it seems to match.”

“So,” I ask coolly, “you wanted to warn me that my front plate was missing, in case it had been stolen and used on another, stolen, car?”

“That’s correct.”

I took a breath.

“Well, I only have the one,” I fibbed with a small smile, knowing full well the second one was on the back—and had been for some three years.

“Sometimes they come stuck together from the DMV, and you end up with both on the back.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that,” I responded with faux concern. “I’ll have to check that when I get home!”

At some point during this conversation, I’d gotten out the car so the cop could show me the missing plate I already knew was missing, and was standing with Ron, both of us rolling our eyes at each other in disbelief. 

I eventually thanked the officer for his concern and assured him that my front license plate hadn’t been stolen (since one had never been placed there), and that I’d be sure to check my rear plate for a second one stuck to the first.

I also felt compelled to slip in during the conversation, in my best “I’m an educated black man: Your worst nightmare” voice, that we both worked for Apple, had just come from volunteering at Habitat for Humanity after having bought a dozen pizzas for the crew, and were taking the rest home. Just to let him know that he wasn’t dealing with a couple of punk-ass kids.

I asked if there’s anything else we can do for him, and bade him farewell, and we watched, shaking our heads, as he returned to his vehicle and pulled away.

Here we were, two intelligent, well-paid, well-spoken Black men in somewhat shabby clothing, pulled over by a cop who’d followed us on the freeway, run our plates and found nothing, but—still suspicious of two disheveled Black men driving a well-maintained car and carrying several boxes of pizza—“found” a reason to “inform” us that our front plate was missing.

Purely as a courtesy, of course.

If only we didn’t have those pizzas.

Maker’s Mark was the first bourbon I fell in love with, and Woodford Reserve may have been the second. Both remain favorites for an “every day” bottle, but I’ve long left them to explore the broader bourbon world.

My whiskey partner Tammy Tan also claims Maker’s Mark as her first bourbon love, so we—along with other members of the West Coast Whiskey Club—were excited to revisit these two beloved brands in some of their more distinctive forms.

• Woodford Reserve:
  • Distiller’s Select (90.4 proof)
  • 2024 Master’s Collection (118.4 proof)
  • 2020 Master’s Collection (123.6 proof)
• Maker’s Mark:
  • 2023 Cellar Aged (119.3 proof)
  • 2024 Heart Release (111.7 proof)
  • Private Selection from Escaya Wine and Spirits (113.4 proof)
  • Cask Strength (109.6 proof)

Both Maker’s Mark and Woodford Reserve have distinctive flavor personalities. Maker’s, being a wheated bourbon (replacing the usual rye in the mash bill), tends to have a sweeter profile, with strong notes of vanilla, buttercream, and ripe fruit coming through. Woodford often has a drier, somewhat spicier profile, with notes of stewed fruit and burnt caramel.

Those broad distinctions showed up in this tasting, resulting in a nearly clean split of the brands in our final ranking.

As before, we tasted blind and discussed the pours together, then ranked them individually. We compared our rankings, and debated adjustments.

With our sometimes similar palates, Tammy and I again aligned on our top picks:

1. Maker’s Mark 2023 Cellar Aged
2. Maker’s Mark Cask Strength
3. Maker’s Mark Private Selection

We weren’t surprised here: We both love Maker’s Mark in general. We found the Cellar Aged to be the most reminiscent of “classic” Maker’s Mark, but with way more depth and complexity. It was simply the most “interesting” yet “classic” bourbon in the collection.

I liked that it was sweet, smoky, and with a prominent but not overpowering alcohol nose. It was a bourbon I wanted to chew on while pondering a cigar.

The Cask Strength was a close second. Immediate baking spices on the nose, with lots of vanilla and fruit, and a bit of tar on the back. The alcoholic burn was more prominent than I’d like, and the finish a bit shorter that ideal, but that just made me want to go in for another sip. It turned out to be rather well balanced.

The Private Selection snuck up on us. On first taste, we found it had a limited nose and palate, and we were close to dismissing it. But after letting it sit for a while, it really opened up, and the vanilla, chewy caramel, and fruit (figs? dates?) really came out in a lovely way that rewarded our patience.

That left our final four:

Placing the Woodford Reserve Distiller’s Select in seventh place was an early, easy call. We both agreed it was a perfectly acceptable bourbon, but which didn’t have nearly enough distinguishing characteristics to make it stand out in this pack.

We struggled with the ordering for 4, 5, and 6. For a while, I had the Woodford Reserve 2020 Master’s Collection in fourth place (in part due to Tammy’s influence!), pushing the rest of my list down, but I kept coming back to the Maker’s Mark 2024 Heart Release because of its classic caramel and brown sugar goodness, plus a little bit of extra heat and woodiness I found interesting, and which Tammy found slightly off-putting. I had to move the Heart Release up.

Likewise, the Woodford Reserve 2024 Master’s Collection had a lovely nose once it opened up, and some soft caramel and perhaps peppermint on the palate, but it had a sharpness to it that I didn’t fully enjoy. I sense this would do well in a Mint Julep.

The Woodford Reserve 2020 Master’s Collection had me intensely debating its position. In the end, I found its heavy alcoholic burn hid too much of the nose and palate. Once that dissipated, I did enjoy its sugar cookie and cream wafer flavors, but I just couldn’t get past that burn, causing me to drop it a couple of positions.

The West Coast Whiskey Club collectively ranked things in a different order: They placed our favorite, the Maker’s Mark 2023 Cellar Aged, at the four spot, and the Maker’s Mark 2024 Heart Release at number one (with a small handful of members ranking it last or near last).

The Cellar Aged especially seemed quite polarizing: It garnered more 1s and 2s than the “winning” Heart Release, but also a lot more 6s and 7s. Sixteen of the 24 tasters gave the Cellar Aged a top-two or bottom-two rank, vs. just 12 for the Heart Release.

(The only more-polarizing entry was the Maker’s Mark Cask Strength, with 17 of 24 ranking it top-two or bottom-two. It ended up in fifth place in the WCWC rankings, and second for us.)

On the flip side, there was broad agreement on the placement of the Woodford Reserve Distiller’s Select; half the tasters rated in the bottom two spots, and it pulled seven last-place votes, more than double anything else. Only two people ranked it as their top two. It was clearly outshone in this competition.

These were all good bourbons, though. I expect most of them would be even more enjoyable outside of a taste test, whether on their own, or in a cocktail. The ranking is definitely not a reflection on their quality. It can be difficult to judge quality from a half-ounce pour, and more difficult still with five or six other whiskeys clamoring for the attention of our nose and taste buds. I’m sure if we did this tasting again tomorrow, we’d end up with a different ranking.

I know, for example, that despite landing in the seventh spot, that I would gladly partake of a Woodford Reserve Distillers Select most any day. I’ve done it many times before; it makes for a wonderful Manhattan, for example.

Taste, as always, is subjective. Personally, I think I’ll seek out a Cellar Aged for my collection.

In “The Internet Archive’s Fight to Save Itself”, Kate Knibbs at Wired writes: 

It is no exaggeration to say that digital archiving as we know it would not exist without the Internet Archive--and that, as the world's knowledge repositories increasingly go online, archiving as we know it would not be as functional. Its most famous project, the Wayback Machine, is a repository of web pages that functions as an unparalleled record of the internet. Zoomed out, the Internet Archive is one of the most important historical-preservation organizations in the world. The Wayback Machine has assumed a default position as a safety valve against digital oblivion. The rhapsodic regard the Internet Archive inspires is earned--without it, the world would lose its best public resource on internet history.

I, too, am rhapsodic about the Internet Archive. I use it regularly to find previous versions of websites, or content not otherwise available. Preserving our digital history is a noble and worthy effort that should be applauded. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, some would prefer to sue them out of existence:

Since 2020, it's been mired in legal battles. In Hachette v. Internet Archive, book publishers complained that the nonprofit infringed on copyright by loaning out digitized versions of physical books. In UMG Recordings v. Internet Archive, music labels have alleged that the Internet Archive infringed on copyright by digitizing recordings.

The book lending was a decade-old program, where they bought (or were donated) a physical copy of a book, scanned it, and loaned it out to a single person at a time, similar to a physical book from a library. It was expanded during the pandemic:

In March 2020, as schools and libraries abruptly shut down, they faced a dilemma. Demand for ebooks far outstripped their ability to loan them out under restrictive licensing deals, and they had no way of lending out books that existed only in physical form. In response, the Internet Archive made a bold decision: It allowed multiple people to check out digital versions of the same book simultaneously. It called this program the National Emergency Library. “We acted at the request of librarians and educators and writers,” says Chris Freeland.

Here’s what the Internet Archive wrote when they announced the National Emergency Library:

To address our unprecedented global and immediate need for access to reading and research materials, as of today, March 24, 2020, the Internet Archive will suspend waitlists for the 1.4 million (and growing) books in our lending library by creating a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners. This suspension will run through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later. 

During the waitlist suspension, users will be able to borrow books from the National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist, ensuring that students will have access to assigned readings and library materials that the Internet Archive has digitized for the remainder of the US academic calendar, and that people who cannot physically access their local libraries because of closure or self-quarantine can continue to read and thrive during this time of crisis, keeping themselves and others safe.

Students and libraries didn’t have easy access to books during the pandemic, and the Internet Archive tried to help, at no cost to readers. Instead of supporting the effort, or providing access to ebooks themselves, book publishers and authors sued. It’s unclear how much money the book lending cost these publishers and authors; I’m guessing it’s far less than the lawsuit amount. I doubt a significant percentage of those book loans would have been purchases.

The recordings were of records in the “obsolete” 78 rpm format:

In 2023, several major record labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony, and Capitol, sued the Internet Archive over its Great 78 Project, a digital archive of a niche collection of recordings of albums in the obsolete record format known as 78s, which was used from the 1890s to the late 1950s. The complaint alleges that the project "undermines the value of music." It lists 2,749 recordings as infringed, which means damages could potentially be over $400 million.

I’m guessing these record companies weren’t making any money from these 78s, certainly not $400 million worth. I’d bet they haven’t made that much combined since those records were first sold. They’re suing because it’s the only way for them to make money on works that otherwise make them nothing. It’s rent-seeking in the form of copyright infringement lawsuits, a transfer of wealth from a nonprofit to a very-much-for-profit.

As a nonprofit, the Internet Archive is supported by some very large foundations (and individual donations), with reported revenue around $30 million and expenses of nearly $26 million, yet I’d be surprised if that’s sufficient to continue archiving the ever-growing digital world—and to defend itself from lawsuits. The UMG judgement is thirteen times more than the Internet Archive’s revenue, and may be enough to put the Internet Archive out of business.

The BBC’s Chris Stokel-Walker writes about the potential impact of losing our digital history:

38% of web pages that Pew tried to access that existed in 2013 no longer function. But it's also an issue for more recent publications. Some 8% of web pages published at some point 2023 were gone by October that same year.

This isn't just a concern for history buffs and internet obsessives. According to the study, one in five government websites contains at least one broken link. Pew found more than half of Wikipedia articles have a broken link in their references section, meaning the evidence backing up the online encyclopaedia's information is slowly disintegrating.

Stokel-Walker goes on to note that:

[…] thanks to the work of the Internet Archive, not all those dead links are totally inaccessible. For decades, the Archive's Wayback Machine project has sent armies of robots to crawl through the cascading labyrinths of the internet. These systems download functional copies of websites as they change over time – often capturing the same pages multiple times in a single day – and make them available to public free of charge.

“When we then went and looked at how many of those URLs were available in the Wayback Machine, we found that two-thirds of those were available in a way," [Mark Graham, director of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine] says. In that sense, the Internet Archive is doing what it set out to do – it's saving records of online society for posterity.

Wikipedia gets a lot of attention as the world’s store of knowledge, but many of the “verifiable facts” that support Wikipedia articles are “backed” by the Internet Archive. Does Wikipedia pay anything to the Internet Archive for making their service more trustworthy?

(Worth noting: Wikipedia had 2023 revenue of $180 million and expenses of $168 million, six times that of the Internet Archive.)

Stokel-Walker, again: 

One thing is clear, though, [Mar Hicks, a historian of technology at the University of Virginia] says, we should all pay up to support the fight for preservation. "From a very pragmatic perspective, if you do not pay these people and make sure that these archives are funded, they will not exist into the future, they will break down and then the whole point of collecting them will have gone out the window," says Hicks. "Because the whole point of the archive is not that it just gets collected, but that it persists indefinitely into the future."

If companies don’t want to maintain archives of their content themselves, rather than suing, why not partner with the Internet Archive to handle the archiving?

Just this September, Google and the Internet Archive announced a partnership to allow people to see previous versions of websites surfaced through Google Search by linking to the Wayback Machine. Google previously offered its own cached historical websites; now it leans on a small nonprofit.

It’s unclear how much—if anything—Google is actually paying for this partnership, though. Perhaps they donate, then take a tax deduction, saving themselves potentially millions of dollars while offloading the technical—and legal—burden?

I donate to the Internet Archive (and Wikipedia), but foundational aspects of the internet (see also open source projects) should not rely on the largess of individuals—or even massive foundations—to sustain them.

We also need to address the “single point of failure” nature of the Internet Archive. These recent lawsuits—or future ones—could very well kill the nonprofit, and with it, petabytes of valuable archives.

Perhaps every content company and publisher over a certain valuation should be encouraged (required?) to pay into a fund to ensure their content is archived for posterity, along the lines of FRAND licensing. Or they can maintain archives themselves, as long as they agree to make those archives available to the public in perpetuity.

Or perhaps indemnify the Internet Archive (and other nonprofits with similar goals) from these types of lawsuits. They aren’t selling access to this content, and there are no ads on the site. It’s not a money making venture.

Perhaps such an organization needs to be certified, or adhere to specific behaviors, to be indemnified.

Or perhaps the copyright laws need to be changed to allow for the explicit right to archive content and make it available online in some form.

(I’m not anti-copyright, unlike some critics of these lawsuits. I believe authors and publishers deserve the right to control the use of their content (especially in this AI-driven environment). That fundamental right needs to be balanced with the important goals of preservation and access.)

I’m not sure what the right answer is here, only that we need to preserve our books, movies, tv shows, music, and the rest of our human creativity.

I wrote at the top that I’m a big fan of the Internet Archive. I really do appreciate their work. For example, it enabled me to see the earliest versions of my first technology consulting company’s website. (Cringe.)

A perhaps more useful example: As a cocktail enthusiast, I enjoy drinking out of “Nick & Nora” glasses, named for the main characters in The Thin Man movies. But I’d never seen the movie, and it was challenging to find it to purchase or stream.

But the Internet Archive had a copy, and I was able to finally watch and enjoy this absolutely delightful movie.

(It’s now available almost everywhere, from Amazon to Apple TV+ to YouTube. Progress, I suppose, but what happens when the studio—or the streaming service—decides to pull it? This is also why I buy movies I care about on Blu-Ray, and rip/archive them myself.)

We need to ensure gems like these aren’t lost.

I’ve known Kira, the daughter of my good friends Ron and Irene Lue-Sang, since she was a day old. She was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) nearly a decade ago. Since 2015, the Lue-Sang family have helped raise funds to end T1D by walking in the annual Breakthrough T1D Walk (formerly JDRF). They’re fundraising ahead of the next walk on October 13, and I’m asking for your help in reaching their goal of raising $10,000.

If you’re unfamiliar with T1D:

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease that is diagnosed in both children and adults and has nothing to do with diet or lifestyle.

As the Lue-Sangs note on their fundraising page:

When you have T1D, your body stops producing insulin—a hormone essential to turning food into energy. Managing the disease is a constant struggle that involves monitoring your blood-sugar level, administering insulin, and carefully balancing these insulin doses with your eating and activity.

Kira wears a continuous glucose monitor to check her blood sugar levels, and an “insulin infusion set”, which, Ron explains, are:

steel needles that stay embedded in her thigh or tricep to slowly do the work of providing the insulin her pancreas no longer produces.

Managing T1D is challenging for anyone; it requires constant attention: measuring carbs, checking blood sugar levels, injecting just the right amount of insulin around meals, adjusting throughout the day as needed, replacing those steel needles and sensors every few days…. It’s a lot, especially for a teenager who just wants to be a teenager. As Ron put it,

There’s simply too much life to live for an active teenager to be bothered…. 

But bother she must, because failing to be vigilant every day could mean having

blood sugars so low that she shouldn’t walk around unaccompanied, or blood sugar so high for so long that she might not be getting insulin at all. Either situation could end in her passing out, ending up in the hospital, or damaging her internal organs (eyes, kidneys, heart) a little bit at a time.

Parents may expect to argue with their kids about various dangers in life (like riding a motorcycle, or driving too fast), and to be dismissed as being overprotective and paranoid. As a T1D parent, those arguments unexpectedly shift from “Check your mirrors before changing lanes!” to “check your blood sugar before starting the car!”

Elizabeth Stone said that having a child is “to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

Raising a T1D teen must be like having your heart roar off to school on a motorcycle every day.

The work Breakthrough T1D does helps further the science of living with T1D. Ron tells me:

One hundred years ago, science had barely discovered insulin. Before that, people with Type 1 Diabetes just wasted away a few months or years after diagnosis. 

Ten years ago our standard of care was pricking Kira’s fingers to check blood sugar levels at least four times a day and injecting insulin by hand. We’re grateful for the advances technology has brought, including modern insulin, continuous glucose monitors, and insulin pumps. But we believe—it’s an article of faith—that there are still more advances to come, if only we pursue them. 

If you can, please make a contribution to Breakthrough T1D to help them pursue those advances. Any amount helps, whether it’s $1, $10, or $100. No parent should agonize over the health of their kid, and no kid should have to stick steel needles into her thigh.

The Lue-Sang family thanks you, and I thank you.