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The Mighty Sparrow, Trinidad and Tobago’s Legendary Calypsonian, Dies at 91 ⚙︎

Alexander Bruzual, Trinidad Express:

Calypso legend Slinger Francisco, better known as the Mighty Sparrow, died on Sunday in New York at the age of 91.

A statement issued by Karen Francisco on Sunday afternoon said the calypsonian died peacefully, surrounded by family, after a brief illness.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Trinidad and Tobago’s Calypso icon, Slinger Francisco, known to the world as ‘The Mighty Sparrow’,” the statement said.

Margalit Fox, The New York Times:

A singer, songwriter and guitarist, Sparrow — his given name was Slinger Francisco — was renowned for his sonorous voice, unremitting energy and extraordinary command of the verbal prestidigitation and sly double-entendre that are among the hallmarks of calypso lyrics.

Sparrow, who began his career in the mid-1950s, was sometimes described as the last of the true calypso singers. But in fact he was a Janus-headed figure, simultaneously preserving calypso tradition and inventing it anew. As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, he continued to dazzle audiences with witty, topical lyrics and arrangements that defied listeners not to dance.

In 2005, The Daily News of New York called him “the Frank Sinatra of Trinidad.” But in the estimation of many, the Mighty Sparrow was so mighty that he exceeded even Sinatran proportions.

Peter Mason, The Guardian:

Loved and feted by Trinidadians more than any other public figure in the island’s history, he was to calypso what Bob Marley was to reggae — an inspirational living legend. In Britain, no less than elsewhere, the sheer wit and quality of classic songs such as Jean and Dinah, Congo Man and Mae Mae brought calypso to many who would never otherwise have encountered the music form, particularly in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when he was in his prime.

NBC News/The Associated Press:

The Mighty Sparrow will be remembered as “a defining voice of our culture, a master storyteller and a towering figure whose music helped carry calypso from Trinidad and Tobago to the world,” the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians’ Organisation said in a statement.

The Mighty Sparrow was a mainstay of my youth in Trinidad and after moving to Brooklyn. Jean and Dinah, Wanted Dead or Alive, Drunk & Disorderly, Gu Nu Gu, Tobago Girl, Doh Back Back, Whole Night We Jamming… if you were at a Trini lime, Ten to One is Sparrow pulsing through the speakers, uncles and aunties clinking Carib bottles and wining to the rhythm. Danceable, sure, but also lyrically dense with history lessons—and irreverent ribaldry. I doubt there’s a Trinbagonian over the age of twenty-five unfamiliar with Birdie.

Everybody down by de Express… Sparrow Dead.

‘Duo-Man,’ a Clever Walkman Concept for iPhone Duo ⚙︎

Vidit Bhargava on Mastodon:

Made an iPhone Duo Walkman. Duo-Man!

Duo-Man offers the complete walkman experience on the iPhone Duo. Open the Duo to pick and ‘insert’ the cassette, Close the Duo to start listening.

And Yes, I actually recorded the button clicks and static noise from a real Walkman! 😀

This was for @BitRigApp ’s hackathon today. Fun 3 hr sprint.

The first killer app for iPhone Duo. (Be sure to watch the video.)

(I didn’t think “kids these days” had any idea what a “Walkman” was, but this isn’t Bhargava’s first Walkman concept.)

I’m predicting an abundance of clever (or at least whimsical) apps that hinge (sorry) on the Duo’s folding design, much as the original iPhone was a playground for experimentation. My 5% chance of buying a Duo is now up to about 8%.

Drops, a Caffeine and Water Tracker from James Savage ⚙︎

James Savage spent ten years at Apple as a software engineer on Safari, App Clips, and other technologies. He left last year “to focus on smaller and more personal work.” Last week he released Drops, his first app since going indie:

Super excited (and only a little nervous) to say that Drops, my caffeine tracking app, is finally out! After 12 years, I once again have something on the App Store.

James describes his app as “a simple habit tracker for iPhone”:

Drops focuses on quickly logging drinks and places information front and center, getting you in and out without games or distractions. Log the soda you had at lunch, see where it leaves your caffeine for bedtime, and get on with your day.

Drops is thoughtful and carefully crafted, with an attractive yet wonderfully minimalist UI that gets out of your way. You can quickly record what you consume throughout the day with a single tap on one of the dozens of beverage presets (with caffeine levels for everything from Americanos to Sprite), or customize your drink by adjusting the caffeine level (decaf, half, full), number of espresso shots, even bean type. You can also easily add your own custom beverages. Drops is completely free (and ad-free), with an optional $7-a-year in-app purchase to unlock more themes and support its development. It also sports a beautiful icon designed by the good folks at The Iconfactory.

If you want to track “how caffeinated you are,” give Drops a shot.

Atta Babe, Kruk ⚙︎

Between this emotional farewell ceremony for Mike Krukow and his final KNBR Post-Game Wrap, I sobbed for nearly 90 minutes straight. I think I went through a quarter of a Kleenex box.

I’ve been listening to Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper—Kruk and Kuip—call ballgames for 28 years, far longer than any other announcers. They are the voices of Giants baseball and a beloved San Francisco institution.

Only Kruk is retiring this season; Kuip plans to continue calling games (despite a recent throat cancer diagnosis). But Giants broadcasts won’t be the same without this iconic duo yucking it up in my ear. (I attended many a game at Candlestick Park with a transistor radio and earpiece so I could hear them call the game, a tradition that continued at what is now Oracle Park, just with an iPhone and the MLB app.)

I will miss Kruk—and Kruk and Kuip—dearly.

Atta babe.

(The entire 65-minute ceremony is worth watching, but if you don’t have an hour, Kuip’s tribute to his broadcast partner starts at 35:31, and Kruk’s farewell starts right after, at 47:06. But if you’re a Giants fan—or even just a baseball fan—you’ll want to watch it all. Just stock up on Kleenex.)

Justin Verlander Gets Pulled by His Daughter in His Final Career Start ⚙︎

There are many reasons why baseball is a beautiful sport, but none more than for moments like this. If this doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, you’re not hooked up right.

Not a bad start either for Verlander’s final game: 5⅓ innings, 5 hits, 2 runs, 6 strikeouts, 1 walk in a 4–3 no-decision win over the Pittsburgh Pirates that ended with a 2-run walk-off homer.

Verlander pitched one unremarkable season for the San Francisco Giants in 2025, finishing 4–11 with a 3.85 ERA in 29 games. But with a career 266–159 record, 3.33 ERA, 3 Cy Young Awards, a Top 40 finish in career wins (266), and a Top 10 in strikeouts (3,560), Verlander is a sure-bet first-round Hall of Famer.

Mehmet Oz Has No Idea How Insurance Markets Work ⚙︎

Melody Schreiber, reporting for The Guardian:

The Trump administration is removing 760,000 people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace on allegations of fraud, officials said on Tuesday – adding to previous efforts to chip away at federally subsidized insurance programs and likely causing some of the lowest-income Americans to forego healthcare, experts said.

The US government is also investigating about 420,000 people whom they suspect of fraud, and they are putting a six-month enrollment moratorium on new agents and brokers selling Obamacare policies, officials said at a press conference.

The removed enrollees are a mixture of “phantoms” and “ghosts” as well as people who don’t meet the eligibility requirements of Obamacare, said Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

“These are not real people,” he said, claiming that expelling them from the ACA marketplace would save the federal government $2.2bn.

I’ll grant the potential for fraud here (though the CMS press release and fact sheet provide scant details). I’ll even let the “not real people” comment slide as a rhetorical explanation for the purported fake enrollments.

But this:

About 35% of ACA enrollees have never used their health insurance, Oz said. “That’s just not possible,” he said, adding, “So we know there is fraud.”

Oz—the head of a federal health insurance agency—clearly has no idea how insurance works. Healthy people who pay for and don’t use health insurance help spread the risk and costs of insurance coverage across a larger pool. Many healthy people pay for health insurance as a hedge against emergencies because the astronomical medical costs could otherwise bankrupt them. In some states, you’re required to carry medical insurance, regardless of your health. Some people refuse medical service because they can’t afford the after-insurance cost of care. Insurance companies count on a subset of people who dutifully pay their premiums and use little or no healthcare. Asserting fraud from non-use is logically flawed at best and actively deceitful at worst. Not only is it possible to have insurance and not use it, it’s literally the business model.

From the top down, this entire administration is filled with incompetent, clueless clowns.

The Biggest One-Hit Wonder ⚙︎

Chris Dalla Riva at Can’t Get Much Higher combs through music streaming data to determine a workable definition of a “one-hit wonder”:

After crunching these numbers, I think a resolution to The One-Hit Wonder Paradox begins to emerge. A one-hit wonder doesn’t need to actually have a hit in the traditional sense. It can help. But nobody needs to crack the top 40 to join the one-hit wonder hall of fame. You just need to meet a few criteria.

A fun read (and listen—it’s copiously linked to YouTube music videos).

A Negroni Tasting and History Lesson

We’ve reached Hump Day for Negroni Week, which runs September 21–27. For me, the week kicked off early—and quite coincidentally—with a Negroni tasting and history lesson on Sunday, hosted by my friend and former colleague Matt and presented by Richard Powers, dance historian turned cocktail historian (and ably bartended by our friend Ryan).

We tasted our way through 11 variations of the Negroni—starting with the classic recipe of equal parts (Beefeater) gin, Campari, and (Carpano Antica) sweet vermouth as a baseline—while learning the origins and history of the cocktail. The most surprising fact I learned was that while the Negroni was “invented” in 1919 or 1920, it wasn’t mentioned in print until 1947, and was largely unknown outside of Italy until 1962.

(The second most surprising fact was that my favorite variation, the Boulevardier—Bourbon instead of gin—is not technically a variation on the Negroni: it was created independently by American-born writer Erskine Gwynne while living in Paris, sometime around 1927. There’s no indication that Gwynne was familiar with the Negroni at the time.)

I wrote of the Negroni:

Its classic form of equal parts gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth is delightful, of course, but what I truly love is that you can use the Negroni as a template for building a variety of drinks that (more or less) follow its equal parts base spirit, bitter, and aromatic modifier structure.

Wait… a template?

Indeed. Each of the ingredients in a classic Negroni can be swapped for something else. The Boulevardier, as noted, swaps the gin for Bourbon. The Contessa trades the Campari for Aperol. A Pandan Negroni subs in pandan liqueur for sweet vermouth. Some variations adjust the standard equal parts to restore balance or foreground (or background) a specific flavor profile. The specific gin, bourbon, bitter, or aromatic can make a massive difference (a juniper-forward gin would give a very different cocktail from a gin that is cucumber-infused). In short, the Negroni has a virtually infinite number of variations.

All but one of the 11 variations we tried were (according to my notes) equal parts cocktails. If you wish to make one (or all) of these cocktails, first, pre-chill a coupe or rocks glass (these work equally well up or on the rocks). Add the ingredients to a mixing glass or tin, add ice, stir to chill and combine (about 30 seconds), then strain into your vessel of choice.

🥃
If you forget to chill the glass ahead of time, fill it with ice, then add water. The glass will quickly chill while you make your cocktail. Dump the water and ice, pour your drink, and enjoy.

Unless otherwise noted, we used Beefeater gin, Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth, and Campari. I’ve shorthanded this below to simply gin and vermouth.

  1. Negroni: Gin, vermouth, Campari. This was our “control,” which we went back to throughout the course of the afternoon as a comparison.
  2. Americano: Sparkling water, Campari, vermouth. The original basis for the Negroni, from which the credited inventor—Count Negroni—asked for gin instead of sparkling water. Quite refreshing.
  3. Red Light: Bols Genever, Campari, vermouth. Genever is a Dutch spirit, from which the British were inspired to make gin (much to our great good fortune). A sweeter variation.
  4. Contessa: Aperol, gin, vermouth. A less-bitter variant, almost syrupy. The gin almost disappears here; a 1½:1:1 ratio—or a strongly flavored gin—might tame the sweetness if it’s not to your liking.
  5. Negroni: Gran Classico Bitter, gin, vermouth. A less sweet, quite tasty version.
  6. Barr Hill Negroni: Barr Hill Tom Cat Barrel Aged gin, Campari, vermouth. Light smokiness, oaky. One of my favorites of the afternoon.
  7. Boulevardier: Four Roses Barrel Strength bourbon, Campari, vermouth. As tasty as I expected.
  8. The Night Is Young: Buffalo Trace Bourbon, Aperol, vermouth. A lighter, less bitter Boulevardier.
  9. Sake Negroni: Hirai Junmai Sake, Dolin Blanc vermouth, Campari, Aperol. This is the one departure from the typical 1:1:1 ratio: 1½ sake, 1½ Dolin Blanc, ⅔ Campari, ⅔ Aperol. It was unique in many ways. A light, fruity variant. I want to try this one again, and with different sakes.
  10. Agavoni: El Conquistador Tequila Blanco, vermouth, Campari, bitters. The nose was strongly vermouth and Campari; the palate was strongly tequila. A favorite.
  11. Kingston Negroni: Smith & Cross Rum, Campari, vermouth. If you enjoy funky rum, you’ll love this funky cocktail. The rum is quite forward, especially on the nose.

Cheers!

⚙︎

Ichiro Suzuki, a 52-Year-Old Former Professional Baseball Player, Throws a 127-Pitch Shutout Against a High School All-Star Girls’ Team ⚙︎

Jared Greenspan, MLB:

Ichiro [Suzuki] was on the mound in an annual All-Star Game against the best high school girls baseball players in Japan. And he dominated. Ichiro pitched a complete game shutout on 127 pitches with a whopping 17 strikeouts to steer his team to victory.

Ichiro has participated in similar exhibitions since at least 2021, helping to spotlight girls’ and women’s baseball in Japan. That’s fantastic, and a laudable goal.

Less fantastic are the predictably misogynistic responses to his appearances; see, for example, the comments on X/Twitter to the original (paywalled) Seattle Times article. Apparently some SportsBros are epically excited about an aging former professional baseball player dominating high school girls in a sport he played at the highest level for longer than most of his opponents have been alive.

What I’m seeing surprisingly little of from these SportsBros in this age of virulent transphobia is pushback against a “biological man” playing in “women’s sports.” I’ve been told this is the reason why we must ban transgender people from participating in sports.

This lack of pushback might lead one to believe that banning transgender players is about something other than “protecting our vulnerable girls.”

Our ‘Very Stable Genius’ Decrees We Call It ‘Super Intelligence,’ Not ‘Artificial Intelligence’ ⚙︎

Donald Trump, speaking to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday (C-SPAN):

The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, hereinafter officially called super intelligence, changing the name, and that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake, and it is not fake. It’s actually amazing, but we have to be careful. In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports. From this point forward, all of United States documents, and hopefully the world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term super, as opposed to artificial. So it’s super intelligence. In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence dash SI. SI. Let’s see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better, and it’s much more accurate. Let’s see if I have any power. Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t. We’re gonna find out pretty soon.

The term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1955, but tossing aside seventy years of history is nothing for someone who, in fits of pique, flouts hundreds of years of history by unilaterally renaming international bodies of water.

Trump may have been at his most self-aware there at the end, questioning whether he has any power to drive this inane rename beyond his own government’s documents.

Trump also claims that “The United States leads the world in super intelligence,” which is a completely true and accurate statement because no-one else in the world is calling it “super intelligence.” It’s easy to win a game no one else is competing in.

Which naturally makes me wonder: which of our brown-nosing AI wannabe-overlords will be the first to start referring to their product as “super intelligence”? My gut instinct is to pick the obsequious Mark Zuckerberg, but the sycophantic Elon Musk, smarmy Sam Altman, and zealously earnest Dario Amodei might each eagerly adopt it to further ingratiate themselves with the regime. (I’ll stick with my gut and pick Zuckerberg.)

A closing aside on the transcription of “dash”: In his speech, Trump said “super intelligence dash SI.” That’s what you see above, and is my transcription from listening to the video. Several other sites that report the speech (for example, The Verge, CNet, The Hill) insert a typographic dash (“—”) in place of his verbalized “dash.” This is sanewashing—cleaning up Trump’s spoken gaffes to make him sound like a competent, fluent speaker rather than a doddering old man reading a teleprompter like he’s Ron Burgundy… “Damn it, who typed a dash on the teleprompter? For the last time, anything you put on that teleprompter, Trump will read.”

Negroni Week 2026, September 21–27 ⚙︎

Today is Day 2 of Negroni Week, created by Imbibe Magazine (and sponsored by Campari):

In 2013 Imbibe Magazine launched Negroni Week as a celebration of one of the world’s great cocktails and an effort to raise money for charitable causes around the world.

Since then, Negroni Week has grown from about 120 participating venues to thousands of venues around the world, and to date, the initiative has raised over $5 million for charitable organizations.

As it’s been for the past few years, this year’s charitable organization is Slow Food, which—

… envisions a world where everyone can enjoy food and beverage that is good for them, good for the people who produce it, and good for the planet.

I’ve been celebrating Negroni Week since at least 2015 (X/Twitter link). On Sunday, I kicked it off early—and quite coincidentally—with a Negroni history lesson and a tasting of nearly a dozen variations. More on that soon. Meanwhile, here are links to previous Negroni Week celebrations:

The Negroni, as you may have surmised, is one of my favorite cocktails. Its classic form of equal parts gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth is delightful, of course, but what I truly love is that you can use the Negroni as a template for building a variety of drinks that (more or less) follow its equal parts base spirit, bitter, and aromatic modifier structure. Swap the gin for bourbon: my personal favorite, the Boulevardier. Sub out the sweet vermouth for pandan liqueur? A Southeast Asian-inspired Pandan Negroni. Aperol instead of Campari? The lighter, sweeter Contessa. The variations are endless.

Cheers to a good week and a good cause.

Classic Negroni in a square rocks glass.
Classic Negroni: Beefeater Gin, Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth, Campari.

‘How Chat-Based Large Language Models Replicate the Mechanisms of a Psychic’s Con’ ⚙︎

Baldur Bjarnason, writing at Out of the Software Crisis under the headline “The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con”:

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on an idea that I think explains the mechanism of this intelligence illusion.

I now believe that there is even less intelligence and reasoning in these LLMs than I thought before.

Many of the proposed use cases now look like borderline fraudulent pseudoscience to me.

He explains:

By using validation statements, such as sentences that use the Forer effect, the chatbot and the psychic both give the impression of being able to make extremely specific answers, but those answers are in fact statistically generic.

The psychic uses these statements to give the impression of being able to read minds and hear the secrets of the dead.

The chatbot gives the impression of an intelligence that is specifically engaging with you and your work, but that impression is nothing more than a statistical trick.

Bjarnason lays out the six steps of “The Psychic’s Con,” which a supposed psychic will use to con (or “cold read”) their marks, and then matches them with how LLMs are pulling the same trick. It’s a fascinating piece that describes how both psychics and LLMs rely on human psychology to perform their “magic.” From Step 6 of “The LLMentalist Effect”:

6. The marks become cheerleaders

The most enthusiastic believers in an imminent AI revolution are starting to sound very similar to long-time believers in psychics and mind-reading.

They come up with increasingly convoluted ideas and models to explain why the impossible is possible. They become more and more dismissive of fields of science and research that challenge their world view. Their own statements become tinged with awe and dread.

And they keep evangelising. This is real!

Often followed by: This is dangerous!

This seems especially relevant as leading AI chatbot providers call for a slowdown amid fears that AI will destroy humanity.

Oh, did I mention Bjarnason published this in July 2023?

(Via Timothy Perfitt.)

Duane Kuiper Diagnosed with Throat Cancer ⚙︎

Duane Kuiper, in a statement released on the San Francisco Giants X/Twitter account:

I was recently diagnosed with throat cancer and began treatment last week with my doctors at Stanford Medicine. This cancer is unrelated to the one I experienced five years ago, and I’m optimistic that it will be successfully treated. I’II miss the broadcasts tomorrow and Wednesday as I continue treatment, but I’m looking forward to returning Tuesday and this weekend to celebrate my partner, Mike Krukow, and his remarkable career as he calls his final game before retirement. I’m incredibly grateful for the care I’m receiving and for the tremendous support, from my family, the Giants organization, my broadcast partners and so many others.

Awful news. Throat cancer for a broadcaster is especially cruel. Truly, fuck cancer.

I hope Kuip recovers and is able to grace us with his wonderful voice during the 2027 season and beyond.

David Pogue’s 125 Siri AI Tests—And 50 of My Own

David Pogue catalogs (on Substack, alas) 125 Siri AI tests he tried on the just-released OS 27:

This Siri can see into your Apple apps: Mail, Messages, Notes, Files, Calendar, Contacts, Reminders, Photos, Music, and so on. (Of course, all of this data is locked on the phone. Nobody, not even Apple, has access to it.)

As a result, you can ChatGPT your own life. You can say things like, “What did my wife say I was supposed to do with the plants?” Or, “What was the show that Casey said I should watch?” Or, “What’s my flight number to Austin?” And it pops right up.

You may not even care where that information actually lives--some text message, some email, some note. All you know is that you didn’t have to go scrolling your messages back to A.D. 700 to find the answer.

The hardest part will be getting out of the habit of opening apps, and remembering that you have Siri. Give it a few tries. Learn to trust it. You’ll save incredible amounts of time and fumbling.

I used the beta-test version all summer, growing more and more excited. Now that the final version is out, I wanted to see how often it gets things right. It is AI, after all. So I ran it through 125 tests.

115 of Pogue’s 125 tests were successful (some more than others). Only ten were outright failures (and most of those are likely to work with future app or OS updates).

Like Pogue, I’ve also been using Siri AI throughout the beta, and I, too, found myself impressed by what Siri is now capable of. Here are 50 (undifferentiated) examples from my own usage:

  1. ✅ Today is Ciara’s birthday, draft a message for her and let me review it before we send it. It found the right person and drafted a “happy birthday” message, but I needed to rewrite it.
  2. ✅ How many photos and videos do I have from my trip to Tokyo Japan this year? “You have at least 40 photos and videos from your trip to Tokyo, Japan this year. These include memories from locations like Tokyo Disney Resort, various museums, and dining spots around the city.” I have over 300 photos from Tokyo, so I suppose “at least 40” is a technically accurate statement.
  3. ✅ What is my driver’s license number? Finds a photo of my license and reports the number.
  4. ✅ What are the Known Travel Numbers for me and my wife? Finds and displays the two KTNs.
  5. ✅ What were the names of the people handling my mom’s healthcare? Provides the names and lists their responsibilities.
  6. ❌ What time is my wife’s flight tomorrow? Couldn’t find any flight information in my “emails, messages, or calendar events.” The information is in TripIt, which doesn’t (yet) expose its data to Siri AI.
  7. ❌ What was the earliest time that I was in Hawaii? “Based on your records, the earliest time you were in Hawaii was in July 2010, according to a car rental reservation in Kauai.” I was in Kauai in 2010 (and did rent a car), but my earliest Hawaii trip was to Maui in 2005. That information is also locked away in TripIt.
  8. ✅ When was the first time I was in New York after 2001? Identified three trips from 2004 in my calendar.
  9. ✅ What time is today’s Giants game? Provides start time and opponent.
  10. ✅ What was the final score of yesterday’s Giants game? Provides the score. In neither this nor the previous example did I specify “baseball” or “San Francisco.”
  11. ✅ How many more home games do the San Francisco Giants have this season? Gives the number of remaining games (6) and the teams, dates, and times they’re playing.
  12. ✅ Which of those games are day games? Gives the three dates and times.
  13. ✅❌ Donnafugata? (Yes, just the one-word question.) Gives a paragraph summary of the Italian wine company founded in 1983, a list of its estates, and a paragraph on its “Art and Sustainability.” But what I was really looking for was a photo of a wine bottle. I feel bad about giving it an ❌.
  14. ✅ Can you identify the TV show where a father and his son are doctors and they solved murder mysteries? “The television show you are thinking of is Diagnosis: Murder. The series stars Dick Van Dyke as Dr. Mark Sloan, a medical doctor who solves crimes with the help of his son Steve, a homicide detective played by Van Dyke’s real-life son Barry.” This answer came as a great relief to my wife.
  15. ✅ What documentary was Sally Field nominated for an Emmy this year? “Sally Field was nominated for a 2026 Emmy for her role in the Netflix film Remarkably Bright Creatures, not a documentary.”
  16. ❌ How long will it take for me to get to my next appointment? Tells me it will take 7 minutes to drive to an appointment in February 2027.
  17. ❌✅ Why do you think that’s my next appointment? “I apologize. I previously looked too far ahead and missed an event on your calendar for today. You have “Lunch w/Dawn” scheduled for 12:30 PM at The Grind Cafe.” It does not tell me how long it’ll take to get there.
  18. ✅ How old was Barack Obama when he became president? “Barack Obama was 47 years old when he became president.”
  19. ✅ (While looking at a website) Add this page to my to-do list. I’ve added “Designation of Beneficiary Brokerage Nonretirement Account” to your reminders.
  20. ✅ (While stuck in traffic in San Francisco) What’s going on at the Chase Center today? “Today at the Chase Center, you can catch the Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live: Glow-N-Fire show. The event starts at 2:30 PM. Would you like me to look up more details or find tickets for this event?” No thank you.
  21. ✅ (While driving past a busy park in San Francisco) What’s going on at Stern Grove today? “Today at the Stern Grove Festival, it’s the second day of The Big Picnic Weekend. The lineup features Al Green along with Goapele and the Glide Ensemble.” It also provides details on the event and links to the performers.
  22. ✅ (While running behind schedule for a flight) How long before a domestic flight do I need to check in my bags? Gives a brief general answer, asks which airline, then provides airline-specific cutoff times. (I just barely made my flight.)
  23. ✅ How long was Mary married to Joseph before she was pregnant? “According to biblical accounts, Mary became pregnant during her betrothal period to Joseph, before they had “come together” or consummated their marriage. This betrothal typically lasted about a year, but the exact duration before her pregnancy is not specified.” (My wife wanted to know.)
  24. ✅ (Driving past a park) Make a note of my current location. Creates a new note with the location.
  25. ✅ What is the park that is near this neighborhood? “Robert V. Godbold Park is about 2,500 feet away on Northwest Maynard Road. North Cary Park and Fred G. Bond Metro Park are also nearby.”
  26. ✅ Add those to the note. Adds the parks to my “Current Location” note.
  27. ✅ (Pasted in a crash report) What caused this crash? The crash was caused by an unhandled Objective-C exception in the ChatGPT application, triggered when the system attempted to display a lightweight text input affordance (likely related to Writing Tools or a contextual menu). The application tried to order a window on screen, which resulted in an exception being thrown from _CFBundleGetValueForInfoKey, ultimately causing the app to terminate with a SIGTRAP breakpoint.
  28. ✅ Explain how Apple Pay works from the perspective of a merchant looking to implement it. Provides an accurate and coherent explanation.
  29. ✅ What time does the stock market open? “While I’m not a financial advisor, the U.S. stock market opens at 9:30 AM Eastern Time. Consult a financial professional for personalized advice.” I chortled.
  30. ✅ What year was Lincoln shot? “Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865.”
  31. ✅ What year was the cassette recorder introduced? “The first cassette recorder was introduced by Philips in 1963.”
  32. ✅ How much are tickets to the San Francisco Pen Show? It first heard this as “Pinto” and asked, “Sorry, did you say tickets to the San Francisco Pinto, Penso, Pincho, or Penzo?” After clarifying, it provided the date, time, location, and price.
  33. ✅ When did I last attend the San Francisco Pen Show? “You attended the SF pen show on Saturday, August 30, 2025.”
  34. ✅ Do I have a car rental for my Raleigh trip? “Yes, you have a confirmed SIXT car rental booking at Raleigh Durham International Airport.”
  35. ✅ What is my car rental situation for my next Maui trip? Finds a 13-day car rental and messages about comparing costs between two rental companies.
  36. ✅ Please remind me to check and compare prices for my Maui trip after I wake up. Creates a reminder in the default list.
  37. ✅ That should be on personal. “I’ve moved the reminder to your Personal list.”
  38. ✅ Also remind me to call Marriott about my arrival time. “I’ve moved your reminder to check and compare prices for your Maui trip to the Maui list, and I’ve added a new reminder to call Marriott about your arrival time to your Personal list.” A demerit for moving the previous reminder.
  39. ✅ Both of those are for the personal list. “I’ve moved your reminder to check and compare prices for your Maui trip back to your Personal list.”
  40. ❌✅ Change my default reminders list to my Personal list. Tells me it can’t change it, instead describing how to do it myself.
  41. ❌ Find my résumé. Finds two résumés of people who aren’t me, plus “some older notes and Twitter threads related to resume advice and critiques.” It never found “jasonguy2018.pages.”
  42. ❌ Open jasonguy2018.pages. “I’m sorry, but I’m unable to open ‘JasonGuy2018.pages’ directly.”
  43. ✅ What’s my FedEx package? Tells me I have a package coming from Fontana, CA, the tracking number, and the estimated delivery time.
  44. ✅ (With directions to a Vuori store running in Maps in CarPlay) What time does the Vuori store close? “There are a few different Vuori stores, so the closing time depends on which one you mean.” The one that I am currently driving to. “The Vuori store you are driving to closes at 7:00 PM today.” This one blew my mind.
  45. ✅❌ Hey Siri what time is my next flight? “Your next flight is United Airlines 2080 from San Francisco to Raleigh/Durham, departing on Friday, July 24, 2026, at 11:59 PM.” This was indeed the next flight on my calendar, but it wasn’t my next flight.
  46. ✅ What’s my hotel situation? You have an upcoming stay at the Residence Inn by Marriott Raleigh-Durham Airport/Brier Creek starting Saturday, July 18, 2026, and a stay at The Westin Nanea Ocean Villas, Ka’anapali starting Saturday, August 1, 2026.
  47. ✅ How long to get to my Whisky Tastings event today? “It will take about 37 minutes to drive to your event, ‘Ticket: Enjoy Whisky in the Woods!’, in Portola Valley.” It included directions.
  48. ✅ When is the next tech beach in Jamaica? “The next Tech Beach Retreat in Jamaica, known as TBRX, is scheduled for December 2–5, 2026. It will be held at the Princess Resort and Spa in celebration of the event’s 10th anniversary.”
  49. ❌ (While looking at a message in Mail) Add this to my reminders list for today. Tells me the location of my parked car, because “your parked car location was active on your screen when you asked me to ‘add this’ to your reminders.” Friend, it wasn’t.
  50. ✅ (After taking a screenshot of that receipt) Add this to my to-do list. Adds the image to Reminders with the title “Return Athleta Jetset Bomber.” I’m still pondering how it knew it was a “return.”

The most exciting examples are the follow-ups that build on a previous query. That was impossible before Siri AI, and when it works, it feels like I’m talking to a real live assistant who understands context.

Siri AI will only get better, especially as third-party developers integrate their apps with Apple Intelligence. (They may be reluctant to do so, but as more people witness the potential of Siri AI, customer pressure will eventually encourage even the most recalcitrant developer to adopt it.)

With the foldable iPhone Duo coming, and rapid improvements to AI, we’re slowly edging closer and closer to a modern-day Knowledge Navigator.

⚙︎

Tyler Stalman’s iPhone 18 Pro Camera Review ⚙︎

Tyler Stalman compares the new camera against the iPhone 15 Pro, because he’s heard “that the average upgrade cycle for iPhone Pro […] is about three years.” I imagine that’s true for the general iPhone Pro customer, but I’d bet that the people buying an iPhone Pro for the camera—and thus watching Stalman’s review (hi!)—upgrade more often.

Links’ iPhone 18 Pro Camera Review ⚙︎

Links’ video review (in Mandarin with English subtitles) is very human—polished, but less “produced,” for lack of a better descriptor. Links is a talented travel photographer, and that perspective comes through in his review. Several stunning photos and many comparisons between iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro provide a great feel for the hardware and software improvements in the new camera system.

PetaPixel’s iPhone 18 Pro Camera Review ⚙︎

Jaron Schneider’s written review at PetaPixel—and especially the companion video featuring Schneider, Jordan Drake, and Jason Vong—provides more of the technical details professional (or at least professionally minded) photographers crave. The wealth of example photos, and comparisons between iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro, are especially valuable.

Apple Scores 28 Emmy Wins ⚙︎

Rick Porter, The Hollywood Reporter:

Apple TV had its best ever showing at the Emmy Awards on Monday, topping its previous high mark … from a year ago.

For the first time since it launched in 2019, Apple TV led all outlets at the Emmys with 28 awards (Apple, the parent company, also won for best commercial). A record-setting haul for first-year comedy Widow’s Bay accounted for half of the streamer’s total. The horror-comedy won 14 total awards, breaking the prior record of 13 for a comedy — also set last year by another Apple series, The Studio.

Widow’s Bay won six Emmys during Monday’s telecast, including best comedy series, to go with eight Creative Arts honors. Another first-year show, Pluribus, won six total awards, including drama lead actress (Rhea Seehorn) and best writing for a drama (Vince Gilligan). Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Palm Royale, Slow Horses and Mr. Scorsese accounted for Apple TV’s remaining eight Emmys.

Apple’s closest competitors? HBO, with 21 wins, and Netflix, with 16. Apple TV has truly become “prestige TV.”

I’ll have to give Widow’s Bay a go, despite it being a “horror-comedy.”

See Also: The complete list of winners on the Emmys site.

Samuel Alito’s ‘Unhinged’ Dissent In USPS v. California ⚙︎

Jay Willis, writing at Balls and Strikes on the stridently “unhinged” dissent from Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Clarence Thomas) in USPS v. California:

Alito and Thomas could not let this conclusion go unanswered. Alito began his opinion by recasting the rule not as an attempt by Trump to regulate elections per se, but as a coincidentally election-adjacent exercise of the Postal Service’s “broad authority to regulate the mail,” which is, for technical reasons I won’t bore you with here, ostensibly harder to challenge in court. Strangely, the facts that the rule is titled “Ballot Mail for Federal Elections,” and applies to the activities of state “chief election officials,” and says that its primary purpose is protecting the “integrity of federal elections,” and does not implicate any class of mail other than mail-in ballots do not appear anywhere in Alito’s trenchant analysis.

Somehow, the second chunk of Alito’s dissent is even less serious. First, he asserted that the injunction would cause the Trump administration to suffer “irreparable harm” because leaving it in place would “deal a serious setback to the Executive’s goals.” As Alito has done with unsettling frequency over the last several years, he also claimed that the government has a “strong interest” in enforcing the rule in order to “better detect election fraud.”

These claims are equal parts nonsensical and detached from reality.

Justice Alito wrote 2,000 words to basically say “nuh-uh.”

Celebrate the Supreme Court Not Outright Rigging the 2026 Election ⚙︎

Richard L. Hansen, Slate:

There are two ways of looking at the Supreme Court’s three-sentence ruling in USPS v. California Monday evening, which put an end to Donald Trump’s attempt to disenfranchise millions of elderly, disabled, military, rural, Native American, and other voters in the 2026 midterm elections who depend upon vote by mail to cast a ballot. The first is to lament that the government pushed this case to its limits—going not once, not twice, but three times to the high court—and that two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, were willing to simply ignore mass disenfranchisement and side with Trump’s bogus voter-fraud crusade. The second is to note that the court’s conservatives and liberals came to the brink, saw that ruling the other way risked serious election subversion, and said no. For the time being, let’s celebrate that the center of the court did hold, even as dangers remain ahead in both 2026 and 2028.

I suppose we should be grateful the Supreme Court performed the absolute bare minimum of its duty to the Constitution, but I’m betting this ruling merely delays the disenfranchisement until a less inopportune time.

San Francisco Giants Avoid 100-Loss Season ⚙︎

Justice delos Santos, Mercury News:

The 1985 San Francisco Giants will not have company.

With a 10–3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday night at Busch Stadium, the Giants won their 63rd game under rookie manager Tony Vitello, guaranteeing that they will not lose 100 games in a single season for the second time in franchise history. San Francisco, at 63–89, had far greater expectations, but given all that’s gone wrong, the Giants can take some minor solace in avoiding the wrong type of history.

Nick San Miguel at Around the Foghorn calls avoiding triple digit losses “borderline miraculous.” I was afraid I’d jinxed things when I mentioned the ignominious milestone on Friday, after which they lost four in a row. The team’s next goal: do better than the 2017 Giants, which went 64–98.

Just two more wins.

Wiley Hodges: Audio Intelligence is ‘Genius, Done Right—But Still Creepy’ ⚙︎

Wiley Hodges, writing (on Substack, alas) about Apple’s new, always-listening “Audio Intelligence” features available on Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4:

Audio Intelligence appears to me to be the first case of a always-on feature with some of the qualities of surveillance we’ve seen in other products—an enduring record, an uncertainty on the part of others in the room about what’s happening—that also takes care to minimize the privacy harms that seem to be essentially intrinsic to such products. By doing their homework and showing us the receipts, Apple has taken fears of audio recording or even detailed after-the-fact transcripts off the table. But what they’ve left there is a set of questions about social and even legal norms and expectations. They’ve also created a potential problem for Apple Watch users in the form of a newfound suspicion that every word is being recorded unseen. It isn’t true, but it’s difficult to shrink the whole of Apple’s extensive privacy protections surrounding these features into a pithy soundbite.

Hodges is a former Apple Product Manager, so he understands Apple marketing and motivations better than most. He acknowledges the many ways Apple is feverishly working to avoid its own “Glasshole” moment. It’s clear the product marketing and privacy teams have put a lot of thought into avoiding even a whiff of impropriety. But, to quote Nick Heer, “good luck explaining that to anyone around you after you read back an exact transcript of what they just said.”

Gloria Steinem’s Final Essay ⚙︎

I missed this essay when it was published in The New Yorker on the day Gloria Steinem died:

Whatever the name, words that stand for equality are demonized by those who benefit from inequality. Opposition will always come from people whose power rests on the group they were born into—whether that is sex, race, class, or ethnicity—rather than on what they do as individuals. This persists because they believe in hierarchy and they fear what might happen if they have no built-in advantage. And this is sad because they may never find out who they really are, and what they would really want to do in life.

Elon Musk ‘Resolves’ Antitrust Claims Against Apple ⚙︎

Mike Scarcella, Reuters:

Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI said on Monday they have resolved their claims against Apple, in a lawsuit that ​alleged the iPhone maker conspired with OpenAI to unlawfully monopolize markets for smartphones ‌and generative AI chatbots.

In a court filing, X and SpaceXAI, a division of SpaceX, moved to dismiss the claims in a lawsuit they brought against Apple and OpenAI last year. The filing did not explain the reasons ​for dismissal or say whether a settlement had been reached.

It never made sense for Musk to sue Apple for partnering with OpenAI instead of xAI any more than it would make sense for Starbucks to sue me for choosing Blue Bottle Coffee. It’s as logical as threatening to sue advertisers for not spending money with you. Oh, right.

II’m curious what Musk secured from Apple that led to this dismissal. Access to sensitive information? A promise to feature Grok? A future integration? Or did his lawyers finally point out that claiming Apple “makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store” was severely undermined by him posting about Grok hitting #1 on the App Store?

See Also: Techmeme coverage.

XCancel and Nitter Are Down Again ⚙︎

XCancel:

Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice. We can’t share more details.

No details on that “new development.”

Nitter, the software behind XCancel, is again archived and read-only on GitHub (as of September 10, 2026) and the web server at nitter.net is not accepting requests.

So much for the law and logic of fair use prevailing.

Litterbox remains a great option if you, individually, want to avoid X, but XCancel was valuable to me to avoid linking to X at all. (Litterbox is also limited to viewing a single post, while XCancel allowed for reading entire threads.)

I hope XCancel and Nitter return, but I fear a final nail has been hammered.

Missouri’s Barely Averted Redistricting Constitutional Crisis, Explained ⚙︎

David French, in an Opinion piece for The New York Times, dissects the complicated Missouri redistricting efforts and resulting lawsuits, from which “America just barely averted the first constitutional cris is of this year’s midterm election” (gift link):

I wanted to walk through this situation in detail because it’s indicative of exactly how MAGA attempts to fix elections. It uses the complexity of the law (and public ignorance of the law) to obscure the utter brazenness of its defiance. […]

Missouri Republicans crossed the line, right before they jumped back. [Missouri secretary of state, Denny] Hoskins engaged in gross legal gamesmanship by rejecting the referendum petition on specious grounds the very day of the primary election. He then tried to use that legal gamesmanship to justify using the new maps. […]

Legal gamesmanship is one thing. Outright defiance is another. It raised the nightmare scenario. What do we do when a state government defies a court, and the court has no independent means of enforcing its decision?

And consider this: All of that gamesmanship and all of that defiance was over one House district, and it occurred weeks before the election, without any overt pressure from Trump to break the law.

In other words, prepare yourself.

‘Streaks Considered Harmful’ ⚙︎

Lex Friedman on his new (annoyingly good) site, Lex on Tech:

Streaks are evil. They’re evil because they work. I do Duolingo every damn day so that I don’t lose my streak, and there are times I absolutely don’t want to do Duolingo. I hate that I’m doing it as I do it, I hate that the streak conceit is having its desired psychological effect upon me, and yet there I sit, practicing more French.

I currently have a 607-day publishing streak here on JAG’s Workshop and a 596-day Duolingo streak (including one 550-day “friend streak”). The publishing streak is legitimate; the Duolingo streak has been extended with “streak freezes” multiple times and is anything but legitimate. I am quite conscious of both, and I’m both dreading and eagerly anticipating the day they end.

Except…

Friedman references a paper published by Jackie Silverman and Alixandra Barasch:

Silverman and Barasch found that a broken streak is demotivating out of proportion to what was actually missed. Skip one day and you’ve failed twice: once at the behavior, and once at the streak. People are so attached to streaks that they’ll complain to companies when a bug wipes one out and lobby to get it restored.

I lost a 560-day Wordle streak in 2023 because of an unexpected loss of internet and power. I was so devastated, I’ve played exactly once since then.

Great. Now I’m just dreading the end of my streaks.

Baseball ‘Is Designed to Break Your Heart’ ⚙︎

A. Bartlett Giamatti, on baseball:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

This is how Bart Giamatti opened his classic baseball essay, “The Green Fields of the Mind,” first published in the November 1977 issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine and Journal. It's a beautifully written piece that I was reminded of today during the Giants pregame show.

The Giants have had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season. Going into tonight’s game, they sit on 62 wins, one seemingly elusive win away from avoiding the mortifying humiliation of a 100-loss season, an outcome which has occurred just once in the franchise’s 144-year history, in 1985.

Tonight’s game against the San Diego Padres is being broadcast nationally as part of Apple’s Friday Night Baseball, and one of only four games being broadcast in Apple Immersive on Apple Vision Pro. That’s where I’ll be watching the game. I hope they win. I worry they’ll embarrass themselves.

Because baseball is designed to break your heart.

‘How Final Calls From 9/11 Became a Record of the Tragedy’ ⚙︎

Dave Roos at History.com, earlier this week:

As horrific as it is to watch the World Trade Center towers crumble to the ground, those indelible images were recorded from the relative safety of the streets below. The final phone calls and voicemails left by 9/11 victims, however, provide a raw, real-time record of what it was like to be trapped inside the towers or aboard one of the hijacked planes.

Twenty-five years later and I still find it difficult to read or watch anything related to these attacks. I couldn’t make it through this article without becoming emotional. Actually hearing these calls would shatter me.

Apple ‘Surprise and Shine‘ Event in 90 Seconds ⚙︎

Apple:

Watch a quick Apple Event recap to learn about iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5.

Even Apple scrubbed right to the end for the iPhone Duo intro, and also found the “Fertile Window notification” sequence awkward.

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