I’m very sad to hear that Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, one of the most useful services I’ve used for over a decade. It has always been free, but I would have been happy to pay to keep it alive. With its demise, I’m trying out Reading List, a free service from Apple that’s built into Safari and seems to be a good alternative — especially since it works across multiple devices.
Several times in the last couple of weeks, I have asked for a glass of ice water in restaurants and found a wedge of lime or lemon in there. I didn’t request any fruit in my beverage, which will be perfectly refreshing without the citrus enhancement. The recipe for this delicious drink consists of exactly two ingredients: ice and water. Nothing else. No server would dare bring me french fries with cottage cheese on top. You’ll never get a turnip in your cup of coffee. No one would ever think of adding a dollop of horseradish to a waffle. So why is the lemon/lime wedge in my water considered acceptable — without asking first?
I have tried watching several standup specials recently, but none of them were good enough to recommend. In fact, I never even got to the twenty-minute mark with any of them. They all had something else in common. After an opening graphic with their name, a voiceover announced it to the crowd, as if they didn’t know who they were about to see. To make things worse, in each case the comedians acted amazed that the audience was giving them a rousing standing ovation — as if they hadn’t been urged to do so by the opening act/warmup person. Stop wasting time — get to the comedy.
Last month, I wrote a piece about how, with print newspapers in a death spiral, this is not a good time to be a comic strip artist or a syndicator of games and puzzles. But it just occurred to me there is an upside. We have plenty of unscientific nonsense being spewed into cyberspace every day, but if the reduction in newspapers means fewer outlets for horoscopes (and not as many morons reading them), I’m okay with it.