I’d written about a self-funded documentary on the American Motors Corporation a couple of years back, and how they were running a GoFundMe to finance the production. At that point I donated and I’ve been getting regular updates since then. The producers finished production a couple of months ago and recently announced that it was available on PBS, and would be streaming on YouTube on May 22.
Twenty years ago, in the early days of the internet, a physics teacher with an interest in aviation history started building a list of U.S. aircraft serial numbers, matching them to the aircraft type, and researching the history and distribution of each individual plane. His list—and his name—became famous in the online aviation community as the go-to reference for what a plane was, where it was sent, and what happened to it. The list was always bare-bones: a tabbed HTML file with the barest of formatting, but he updated it frequently. I went looking for a serial number the other day and my decades-old bookmark led to a broken link; some further searching revealed Joe Baugher had passed away from cancer in 2023, and a new historian took over the list at a new URL.
The Verge goes over the current state of travel in the U.S. and risks to data privacy; basically the advice is to leave your devices at home and travel with a dumb burner, or at the very least, disable all biometric logins like Face ID, delete all sensitive information, and make sure it’s been securely wiped from the devices.
If you’re a US citizen, “you have the right to say no” to a search, “and they are not allowed to bar you from the country,” Hussain said. But if you refuse, CBP can still take your phone, laptop, or other devices and hold onto them.
Every Sunday, this site posts a new longform journalism article. There are some excellent examples in there that I haven’t gotten to, but I’m definitely bookmarking it. Also see: Longreads, which also aggregates longform reading.
File this under Things I Learned today: my work MacBook Pro and personal MacBook Air can charge from both the MagSafe port and one of the two USB-C ports on the side. I found this out quite accidentally at work when I plugged my work machine in and it made the happy “I’m charging” ping when it was connected to a Dell power brick/port extender.
I’ve got two sets of Apple Airpods Pro: my original set, which I bought in 2020, and a Pro 2 set, which I bought in the middle of 2024 to upgrade the first set after the microphone started failing. I had the originals replaced under warranty in 2022 when one side went bad and started clicking constantly, and they returned to faithful service. I use the good ones for everything but working in the garage, and I relegate the first set for getting dirty under the truck or painting a bedroom. They’ve been crackling in my ear for several weeks now, and I finally took the time to look up a solution: the noise cancelling circuitry is going bad, apparently. Turning it off solved the problem immediately, but leaves me without a cocoon.
Blind elevated their ethereal sound into a more mature exploration of the imperatives of existence. It’s more subdued, at least from a production standpoint, but finds its niche in luminant melodies and the band’s elegant yet spare musical arrangements.
I’ve written about The Sundays before; they are one of my favorite bands of my college years. This is a thoughtful retrospective of their second album, which came out in 1992 with a different vibe from their first record. Melancholy, yes, but still beautiful and inspiring. I wish they’d continued making music together, but we have three excellent albums to look back on.
Jeff Bezos’s $10bn philanthropic fund has stopped backing the world’s leading voluntary climate standard setter, following rising scrutiny over its influence on the body, in a move seen as the billionaire’s latest effort to curry favour with US President Donald Trump.
WRI has several large projects funded by the Bezos Earth Fund, which have done excellent work so far. We learned that Andrew Steer was stepping down from the Fund last week; several other colleagues who followed him have also left. Make your own inferences there.
I don’t remember where I stumbled across the link for this, but it’s a web-based reconstruction of Activision’s famous Pitfall. In the summer of 1982, I spent hours at my friend Mike’s house trading the Atari joystick playing this game; we didn’t have this for our Intellivision. Mike had spent long hours learning the game and thus knew which way to go, while I was still mastering the art of not being eaten by crocodiles. Be warned: you will lose hours on this site.
98% of Costco shareholders voted overwhelmingly to reject a review of their ongoing diversity programs. The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, put forth the proposal, claiming DEI initiatives are somehow a risk to shareholders, which is fearmongering nonsense. We’ve been Costco members for years now, and I couldn’t be happier about it. In a time when we need to vote with our wallets (because our regular votes don’t seem to matter), this is one small bit of support my family can offer.