Feeding mosquitoes is a dirty job

It’s been an eventful week, but I was finally able to take a couple of days off work, after helping launch a whole new section of the flagship website, which I think is the most important, but which for various reasons had lived in its own separate site for years.

I will eventually write about it in more detail, but the work we’ve done for that new section includes, among other things: cleaning up and moving a lot of content (none of which was my responsibility, thankfully), designing new visual elements that will eventually help us refresh the entire site (for which we had great external help), and rewriting a lot of code to accommodate my outlandish ideas about how we should build the front end of the site—this last part is what kept me at my desk for longer than I’m usually comfortable with.

I will one day blog again—soon.

Notes and links

• The imperative to describe “AI” as a failure

  My quasi-neighbor Ethan Marcotte’s “Against the protection of stocking frames” gets the top spot this week.

• Wirecutter on the new iPhone

  To no one’s surprise, I have a lot to say about this.

• Freeing captive bears from Armenia’s backyards and basements

  Bear news will always have my full attention.

• Scientists link hundreds of severe heat waves to fossil fuel producers’ pollution

  But of course it’s up to each individual to fix this mess, right?

• Airlines sell 5 billion plane ticket records to the US government for warrantless searching

  The only reason I miss Twitter is because I no longer have a way to yell at airlines in public. Not that it ever helped, but at least it was somewhat soothing.

• Heavier storms are here. Rain gardens can help

  Old but good, as they say—and yes, it’s about climate change but also about cool stuff that we can build.