Previously I mentioned Mel Brooks and added “the greatest living Jewish comedian”. I do this because last spring, when students were protesting during graduation ceremonies in support of Gaza, the Google News feed (in it’s infinite wisdom) surfaced a Tweet where someone mentioned a protest during Jerry Seinfeld’s commencement speech at Duke University. The author of the Tweet wrote something about how students were protesting during a speech given by “the greatest living Jewish comedian”. Of course this was meant to imply that the protests were an even greater insult to all Jews everywhere, but my first thought was “Oh my God, did Mel Brooks die?!” I frantically checked Wikipedia and was relieved to learn that Mel Brooks is still with us. And that’s why I’m compelled to add “the greatest living Jewish comedian” when I mention Mel Brooks. He will be 99 at the end of the month. A living legend!
Previously:
Oh man! Mel Brooks is making another Spaceballs movie! I bet it’s gonna be a mess and I’m gonna love it! There are so few things in popular culture that are really for me, but here it is! It’s a blessing to be alive at the same time as Mel Brooks, the greatest living Jewish comedian.
I’ve been a fan of the Mario Kart series since the original on the Super Nintendo. I expect that I’ll play Mario Kart World eventually and like it.
Prior to the release of Mario Kart World, the most recent Mario Kart game was Mario Kart 8, released over ten years ago for the Wii U. It was re-released for the Nintendo Switch, but it is the same game.
The framing of these facts in this Ars Technica review really bugs me.
While the series has added a few crucial new features here and there since its Super NES debut, it has settled into an extremely comfortable groove since the 2014 release of Mario Kart 8 on the ill-fated Wii U.
It has “settled into a groove” because it’s the same game.
Since then, we’ve seen the franchise lean on nostalgia-rich DLC as it introduced a barely differentiated Switch port and a series of course-packed expansions rather than another distinct sequel.
It’s true. The current title has been the same game for a decade. And they have not released another sequel prior to the sequel they just released.
Save for the expert-level, ultra-fast 200cc racing mode, the broad strokes of a Mario Kart game have gone from staid to practically frozen in amber in recent years.
The broad strokes of “a Mario Kart game” are “frozen” because it is, in fact, the same game.
I still have no answer for what I’m doing when Pocket goes away. Somewhat unrelated, but I recently borked my self-hosted Nextcloud installation so my feelings about a self-hosted alternative are kind of skewed. I’m feeling the weight of the maintenance of the stuff I already have, and adding a read-it-later service to my pile is unappealing.
Previously:
I’ve been looking at alternatives to Pocket for some time. I like Pocket the service, but there’s a cluster of problems that I’m trying to solve and Pocket only covers a handful of them.
Generally I want to save things I find the internet, which feels a little like grasping at water. I’m trying to bookmark web pages, but I also want to archive them as insurance against link rot. And I want to read long articles independent of their web design. Ideally I want all this without saving my things into a web service and whatever format it uses for itself.
Pocket was always only a partial solution. It was easy to use and gave me bookmarking and clean reading. I needed another piece of software to cover the other cases.
I tried using ArchiveBox. I love the idea of it, but it was overkill for my needs. It downloaded too many weird formats, which would be great if I wanted to capital-A archive a web page, but my needs are more modest. Also ArchiveBox crashed the bejeezus out of my Raspberry Pi server for some reason. I didn’t investigate it that deeply and I gave up on it.
Sometime later I rolled my own command line script that downloads webpages and converts them to text, PDF, and eBook (both epub and mobi for Kindle). It works well but it’s a bit clunky. And it isn’t available on a mobile device, while Pocket is available from my mobile browser’s share sheet.
I considered polishing up my download script, but it was a someday/maybe project at best. Since Pocket is going away forever, and I’ll be relying on that script more, I’ll end up making those updates I wasn’t planning on ever doing.
And now we’ve come to the real reason why I don’t want Pocket to go away. I don’t want to do anything, but now I’ll feel compelled to.
Previously:
I’m not the only one bummed about the end of Pocket. Here’s Sam Cole for 404 Media writing Pocket, One of the Only Apps I Ever Liked, Is Shutting Down.
Not knowing that pocket was getting the axe, I bookmarked the open source alternative wallabag (never used it, don’t know if it’s any good). Because it sure feels like self-hosting your own software is the only way to have any kind of guarantee about these things.
There’s a tipping point where having rough edges, expecting no customer support, and eating the maintenance – all hallmarks of managing open source applications – is better than the mainstream options.
And for someone like me, I can go and install things on my Raspberry Pi home server easily enough. But normal people?
I feel like we spent the last 15 years telling normal people Don’t use spreadsheets like a nerd! and Don’t use Word docs like an old business man! Even though you could run your life perfectly well off of those things. No! Instead we have all these apps and websites that are cheaper, faster, and better than anything before.
If you’re a non-techie that is looking for something to hang your hat on, I don’t know what to tell you.
Maybe go back to doing things the old cruddy way. Your computer desktop is an absolute Goddamn mess, but it doesn’t have a fiduciary responsibility to any shareholders.
That’s the reluctant conclusion of Cole’s article:
404 Media contributing writer Matthew Gault suggests copy-pasting links to articles into a giant document to read later. Now that Pocket is no longer with us, I might have to start doing that.
Previously:
Pocket is shutting down - https://getpocket.com/farewell
Well this sucks. I bought into the Firefox ecosystem when I switched to Linux. I figured, these folks are the ones driving a major independent browser so I should use whatever they have.
Maybe it’s “enshittification”, but I know I’m nobody’s prime customer. If I like it, it’s probably doomed or bound to change dramatically.
My first and best example of this was being at Google I/O 2011. I had my T-Mobile G1 and everyone there had either a Nexus One or the new Nexus S. It felt like everybody was aligned about what Android was and what it should be. But in the real world, everyone bought Samsung Galaxy phones and the Nexus line eventually died.
Even though I’m not the target market for hardly anything, it’s still sad when something I use and like goes away.
Points to the BBC for the Paul Simon headline.
I’ve gotten into buying movies on Blu-ray. And look, I know that that’s not where the world is going, but it would be awesome if Blu-ray movies included the soundtrack CD as well. I’m sure it would be a hassle and blah blah licensing. My thinking is that when I’m buying physical media, I want all the things. At least it makes more sense to me than giving me a digital code for some weird website.