Michael Love

@elkmovie.bsky.social

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Founder & President, Pleco (pleco.com); maker of mobile Chinese dictionary apps since 2001

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Second summer sending oldest kid off to sleepaway camp and once again the first night information vacuum sucks; I understand why it’s important for *her* to be focused on camp and not on us, but it would it kill you to send along pictures of smiling kids at dinner or evening meeting or whatever?

iPhone mirroring: finally Apple forcing Pleco onto macOS. #WWDC

Apple v. Epic hearing not going well for Apple so far, a total of *38* apps have requested the external link entitlement since January and judge seems intensely interested in this fact.

Haven't seen a story about this (maybe I missed it?) but it looks like YGR found enough merit to Epic's argument that Apple is defying her App Store external purchase links injunction to schedule an evidentiary hearing on it, for May 8th. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

storage.courtlistener.com

These numbers make me feel like I’m a bigger fish (albeit still a pretty small one) publishing industry wise than I had previously thought myself to be. Though for all I know reference / textbook / educational stuff is still doing huge numbers, or non-US is bigger and more diverse.

This is incredible, compelling reading. As a bibliophile editor of a book series, I’m not sure that the conclusion is we should all be on substack, but I get the thrust of the argument. Note: 90% of books sell less than 2000 copies; 50% sell less than 12 copies; 80% of books go to c.20% of buyers

No one buys bookswww.elysian.press Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.

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Reply to

kilgore trout

the more humans tech companies push out of internet spaces the less content humans generate for ai to gobble up, starving out the models until they decide the only thing left to eat is their own shit. it sounds goofy but I think it is in our best interests to see that that process accelerated

Mac sales are sluggish because the software is bad, and the software is bad because Apple has spent the last decade treating developers like crap and favoring their own profitability at the expense of ours.

Apple is preparing to overhaul its entire Mac line with a new family of in-house processors designed to highlight AI in an effort to boost sluggish computer sales

Apple Plans to Overhaul Entire Mac Line With AI-Focused M4 Chipswww.bloomberg.com Apple Inc., aiming to boost sluggish computer sales, is preparing to overhaul its entire Mac line with a new family of in-house processors designed to highlight artificial intelligence.

Huzzah, our long nanationaltional nighnightmare is over

📢 App Version 1.76 is rolling out now (1/3) This release includes some bugfixes that have been bothering everybody. • iOS: We fixed the issue with the composer’s autocomplete inserting garbage into your posts. • Android: We fixed another issue that would cause the back button to stop working.

a) This is gross + will probably dissuade me as a 香辣脆 fan from every buying any of it from noted asshole David Chang b) Does anybody have any good older examples of 香辣脆 translated as 'crunch' instead of 'crisp'?

"Momofuku is concerned that consumers might confuse a jar of Homiah Sambal Chili Crunch, which has a colorful floral motif paper label, with a jar of Momofuku Chili Crunch, which is minimalist with a hand-drawn font and no paper label."

‘Trademark bully’: Momofuku turns up heat on others selling ‘chili crunch’www.theguardian.com David Chang’s food empire is sending cease-and-desists in what some say is an effort to dominate the spicy condiment’s market

I met Mo Yan once - my study abroad program somehow persuaded him to show up and speak to a few dozen American high schoolers - and he was the complete opposite of a party stooge (which I’ve also met a few of); glum soft-spoken ex-peasant distinguished only by a slightly ostentatious leather jacket.

A new-old post on Stories from a Burning House, on defamation, dissidence, and the unwinnable game contemporary writers are forced to play.

Yo Man, Mo Yanwww.burninghou.se When's the last time you wondered about Alice Munro's political stances?

Comin' out of my cave And I've been doing just fine Gotta gotta bow down 'Cause I'm the son of God It started out with a kiss How did it end up like this (It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss)

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Michael Love

Reply to

Jamey Perry

About a month before I was scheduled to travel to New Orleans to cover my episode, my boss @johnrogers.bsky.social asked me how it was flying with a wheelchair. I told him—it’s terrifying. Airlines break an average of 30+ wheelchairs A DAY. www.travelersunited.org/the-time-is-...

Airlines damage passenger wheelchairs — more than 200 a weekwww.travelersunited.org The airlines damage passenger wheelchairs and lose mobility devices at a rate of more than 200 a week. It's criminal.

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Michael Love

New York public school system makes all their students learn the recorder because they’re secretly looking for the one kid that will solve their rat problem

Was looking for some random fun overpriced immersive thing to do with the kids in NYC tomorrow, and after reading some reviews, it kind of feels like the gap between “normal immersive experience” and “Willy Wonka Glasgow Thing” is… maybe not that big?

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The US Justice Department is poised to sue Apple as soon as Thursday for antitrust violations

Justice Department to Sue Apple for Antitrust Violations as Soon as Thursdaywww.bloomberg.com The Justice Department is poised to sue Apple Inc. as soon as Thursday, accusing the world’s second most valuable tech company of violating antitrust laws by blocking rivals from accessing hardware an...

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Michael Love

What a great article about reading Jin Yong - the New(-ish?) translations of The Condor Heroes.

[EXCLUSIVE] “Kung Fu Is a Store of Infinite Fun: Reading Jin Yong in Translation, Part I” by Jeff Tompkinschajournal.blog 📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Jin Yong, aka Louis Cha Leung-yung (1924–2018). Picture via. ▚ Jin Yong (author), Shelly Bryant, Gigi Chang, and Anna Holmwood (t...

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1/8 Good piece by Ethan Wu on China's growth prospects. One way for China to achieve the 5% GDP growth target is through a boost in investment, but there are constraints on all three of the standard investment "growth engines": property, infrastructure and manufacturing. www.ft.com/content/45f6...

This is awful + definitely Tesla's fault, but it's also worth noting that there are many other reasons a car door might not open while the car is sinking, and that's why you should always keep an emergency safety hammer in the car to smash out the windows if needed. nypost.com/2024/03/09/u...

Mitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law Angela Chao made...nypost.com Chao, the billionaire former CEO of dry bulk shipping giant Foremost Group, tragically died at the age of 50 on Feb. 10 after accidentally backing her car into the pond while making a three-point...

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🚨Under the #DMA, there is no room for threats by gatekeepers to silence developers. I have asked our services to look into Apple’s termination of Epic’s developer account as a matter of priority. To all developers in 🇪🇺 & 🌍: now is the time to have your say on gatekeepers’ compliance solutions!

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Fortnite-maker Epic Games says Apple blocked its attempt to launch a third-party app store on iOS in Europe, publishing emails that allegedly show a violation of the Digital Markets Act just hours before it's set to take effect: www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/n...

Apple Terminated Epic’s Developer Accountwww.epicgames.com Apple has terminated Epic’s developer account.

Glad I didn't waste time supporting the Amazon AppStore for this. (meanwhile the case for a dedicated Windows port grows)

Microsoft will end support for its Android subsystem in Windows 11 on March 5, 2025, and consequently, for the Amazon Appstore on Windows as well (Tom Warren/The Verge) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

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This is a huge deal in Canadian lexicography!

2024 will bring the first entries of the Canadian English Dictionary, a project by Editors Canada to replace 2004's Canadian Oxford Dictionary. As a freelance editor and a former employee of OUP Canada, I know the pain of relying on the out-of-date COD. I'm so excited to see this move forward!

A New Canadian Dictionary - The Editors' Weeklyblog.editors.ca John Chew provides an update on the development of The Canadian English Dictionary, a new reference resource for users of Canadian English.

www.reuters.com/business/aer...

Chinese airlines can boost US flights to 50 per week, US sayswww.reuters.com Chinese passenger airlines will be allowed to boost their weekly round-trip U.S. flights to 50 starting on March 31, up from the current 35, the U.S. Transportation Department said on Monday, returning the market to nearly one-third of pre-pandemic levels.

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This week's newsletter is about how idiotic executives are killing the media by trying to turn beloved outlets into high growth startups that make content for algorithms rather than readers - and how growth-at-all-costs economics only creates value for investors. tinyurl.com/wyea22724

Software Has Eaten The Mediatinyurl.com As I wrote a year ago in The Rot Economy (and as I argued on the first episode of my podcast Better Offline), I believe that both public and private markets have become decoupled from the concept of "...

Always fun tithing 30% of your income to a company that likes setting gigantic piles of money on fire.

New: Apple is canceling a decade-long effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company

Apple Cancels Work on Electric Car, Shifts Team to Generative AIwww.bloomberg.com Apple Inc. is canceling a decade-long effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company.

Nothing more American than having to get lucky with a secret late-night tax filing window drop in order to enjoy a basic civil service that citizens of most other countries take for granted.

The IRS’s new Direct File website, a free site for filing a tax return, will open to the public in the coming days, the IRS announced Wednesday. But anyone who hopes to be among the first to use it will have to get lucky and check the website during limited and unannounced windows at the outset.

The IRS’s new free tax filing website is ready to usewww.washingtonpost.com The new Direct File website will let taxpayers in 12 states file free — but only a limited number of users can try it out in its early weeks.

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Michael Love

in the past 24 hours I've become entirely committed to the concept of "Northwest Asia"

I actually view AI flooding the internet with grey goo as not entirely a bad thing: it'll make the algorithmic feeds that have dominated the last decade-and-a-half of the internet useless but actually strengthen standalone destinations like Wikipedia + curated feeds like Bluesky.

My kid was asking questions about Frankenstein the other day, and pretty much every result other than Wikipedia was from an AI that didn't understand that there could be multiple versions of a character and insisted that book Frankenstein was afraid of fire + offered literary analysis of that.

Roses are red The coastline is sinkin' A samurai could have sent a fax To Abraham Lincoln