Unbanned
May. 1st, 2026 04:01 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
dumbing_of_age_feed
The Dumbing of Age Book 15 Kickstarter is still like $300 or so from unlocking TONY as of this writing, so, uh, in lieu of his magnet announcement tonight, here's ALICE and JENNIFER again! They're magnets! They come with a book!
And Now, a Fairly Noisy Cover of “First of May”
May. 1st, 2026 04:10 amscalziwhatever_feed
“First of May” being of course Jonathan Coulton’s immortal celebration of spring, love, and outdoor recreation, possibly the most gentle song ever to drop multiple f-bombs. I thought, what if “First of May,” but with lots of drums and buzzy guitars? The answer to this question awaits you when you click on the video.
Fun fact: The basis for this version of the song is a previous cover version I did with an acoustic tenor guitar, eight years ago. I took that version, ran it through Logic to separate the guitar and vocal tracks, and then slathered the guitar in feedback and added an additional vocal track (along with other programming). It was not less work than just recording from scratch. It was still fun.
Note: This song is generally not safe for work, unless work lets you blast music with lots of f-bombs. In which case, crank it, baby.
Welcome to May!
— JS
employees don’t want to participate in our community outreach, parking issues, and more
May. 1st, 2026 04:03 amaskamanager_feedIt’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. Employees don’t participate in our community outreach activities
I’m a part of the “good will” committee for my office location, as well as the large committee for the whole company. Lately I’ve been feeling a struggle of getting other employees actively involved in our initiatives. Good will is a named tenet of our company, and we have a pretty healthy annual budget to go along with it.
We try and have one or two initiatives per month that have varying degrees of involvement. Sometimes it involved volunteering onsite (during work hours or directly after). Sometimes it’s asking for donations (gently used books or unexpired canned goods/shelf stable foods). We’re not asking people to go and spend their own money on things. The most successful ones are in-office, during office hours, but there’s only so many opportunities for those.
We also try and cover a variety of different areas — unhoused people, kids/schools, food scarcity, women, LGBTQIA+, community gardens and book depositories, animals, BIPOCs groups. We also ask employees about groups they would like to see us support.
I just feel like it’s been a struggle lately to get people involved. People never seem to have issues finding time for sporting events or happy hours, but no one seems to want to do a shift at the food bank. Shocking, I know. Any ideas on how to get people motivated?
They may not want to. Some people want to spend their limited downtime relaxing, and that’s okay. I’’m not sure it’s appropriate for an employer to try to change that.
People are exhausted right now, and they’re at work to earn money, not to volunteer. A lot of people who are charity-minded do their charity work on their own time, and don’t feel their employer needs to claim the credit for those efforts. If your company wants to do good in the community, that should mean it’s coming from your company’s resources — its money and its time (meaning that this should all happen on work time, not after hours, and other work needs to be moved aside to create space for it; the expectation shouldn’t be that people’s regular workloads don’t change at all to make room for it). If the company isn’t willing to do that, then this is just a value they’ve stuck on a list, not a genuine value they hold.
All that said, I think you have the answer when you say, “The most successful ones are in-office, during office hours, but there’s only so many opportunities for those.” If people aren’t interested in ones outside of that category, that’s feedback worth listening to! And if there are only so many opportunities for those, then maybe you stick to those because that’s what employees are up for.
Beyond that, talk to people! Survey employees on what they are and aren’t interested in participating in — both in terms of specific activities and general categories of activities (during work hours, 5-7 pm, drives where you bring items from home, etc.), and also ask how they’d like to see the company live out this value. That’s what ultimately should shape it.
2. Should I tell my manager about a recurring issue with a coworker?
I’m a receptionist at a small healthcare-adjacent company and would appreciate your advice on a recurring issue with a remote customer service representative, “Donna.”
Callers frequently report being hung up on a few minutes after I forward them to the customer service line. Almost every caller who tells me this has mentioned they were speaking with Donna when it happened, which is a problem I don’t encounter with any other representatives.
Because our work involves urgent health-related matters and long wait times, these disconnections can be pretty significant for our clients. Sometimes they’re sitting in the queue listening to hold music for 20 or 30 minutes before having to start over again because upon being transferred to Donna, they get disconnected.
Thing is, I’m hesitant to report this to our supervisor because the guy is a severe micromanager, and I want to avoid subjecting anybody to having to deal with him. I’ve been the subject of his ire before, and it’s not fun when his laser beams get trained on you. However, I’m growing concerned that Donna may be intentionally disconnecting calls, or has an unstable remote connection. How would you suggest I handle this situation?
You need to tell your manager about it. It’s a significant issue, and it’s got to be incredibly frustrating for your callers — and your position means you’re probably the only person (other than Donna) who’s aware of it. Your position does give you standing to raise it, because you’re partly responsible for the experience that callers have when they contact your company. (That doesn’t mean you’re responsible for whatever is happening once you transfer them, of course — just that when you have info about their experience that no one else has, you do need to make someone higher up aware.)
If that mean Donna gets micromanaged … well, some closer management might be needed here, because either Donna is intentionally disconnecting callers or is aware she’s frequently losing her connection and not bothering to ask for help to get that fixed. Or maybe she has, in which case she’ll presumably explain that to her boss — but either way, this is something you should escalate.
The subject line of your email to me was, “Is it appropriate to snitch on my coworker for this?” and this is not snitching. This is letting your manager know about a work issue that’s highly relevant to how well your organization is serving clients.
3. Disabled and losing access to parking
I work at a university that recently announced a major campus construction project that will eliminate a significant amount of central parking, including areas closest to my building. The announcement framed this as an exciting improvement to campus life, but for some of us, it creates a serious accessibility problem.
I have a disability that affects my mobility. Even now, I arrive over an hour early just to secure one of the limited nearby parking spots, and I still face a several-minute walk to my building, which can be difficult depending on the day. I am not the only one who does this in my building. There’s several of us who do this daily. With these lots closing, we are all extremely concerned that we simply won’t be able to access my workplace in a reliable or sustainable way.
This is the second time in a few years that staff parking has been reduced. In this case, the project will also remove several accessible parking spaces across campus, and they are not being replaced.
The university’s suggestion is to contact parking services for alternatives, but based on past experience, those alternatives are not workable for me. They typically recommend using a shuttle system, which is difficult for me to physically navigate, or parking farther away. Factoring in wait times and travel, that could add close to an hour to my commute each day. I also have religious commitments after work on Fridays, and this added time would make it difficult or impossible to attend. The shuttle isn’t always the most reliable. It’s also small and with more people probably needing to use this, it could add in well over an hour to my commute daily.
Another option is purchasing access to parking at a nearby institution, but that requires an upfront cost of over $700 annually, which is not financially feasible for most people.
My job could be performed remotely, but remote work is not currently offered as an option, and I worry that pushing too hard on that could negatively affect my job security.
I have not reached out to parking services, as I am not optimistic about the response they will give. Historically, the university has been resistant to feedback on parking and accessibility concerns or they ignore emails totally. Another colleague reached out to them with these exact concerns, but she’s certain she’ll not receive a response or they will not care as they have when there were issues with parking spots blocked off earlier last year.
At what point does this become an ADA issue? What are my options for advocating for reasonable accommodations in a situation like this? Would requesting remote work on days when I cannot access parking be reasonable, or am I better off pursuing a formal accommodation through HR or another route such as an anonymous ADA complaint?
It’s an ADA issue now. Under the ADA, employers with 15 or more employees are required to provide accessible parking as a reasonable accommodation for workers with disabilities, and they must engage in an interactive process to find solutions if spots are unavailable.
You should submit a request in writing to HR with the subject line, “official request for accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.” Don’t go through parking services since they’ve been unresponsive; approach it as a legally required medical accommodation with HR.
4. Independent contractor vs. employee
I have a question regarding W2 vs 1099 contractor definitions. I understand one key legal difference is a contractor sets their own hours. Does that mean that no employment where I commit to showing up at a certain time can be a 1099? Like, let’s say I am a tutor. I choose my students and can let them go. But let’s say I sign on to tutor someone intensively for you hours once a week for a semester at a specific time slot, and I sign a contract to that effect, do they now have to give me a W2?
The IRS doesn’t use a black and white test for contractors where if you don’t set your own hours, you can’t be a contractor. Rather, they look at the totality of the circumstances. They look at three factors: (1) behavioral — does the company control or have the right to control what the worker does and how the worker does their job? (2) financial — are the business aspects of the job (like how the worker is paid, whether expenses are reimbursed, and who provides tools/supplies) controlled by the company? (3) type of relationship — are there written contracts or employee-type benefits (insurance, vacation pay, etc.) and is the work a key aspect of the business? The law says, “Businesses must weigh all these factors when determining whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor. Some factors may indicate that the worker is an employee, while other factors indicate that the worker is an independent contractor. There is no ‘magic’ or set number of factors that makes the worker an employee or an independent contractor and no one factor stands alone in making this determination. Also, factors which are relevant in one situation may not be relevant in another. The keys are to look at the entire relationship and consider the extent of the right to direct and control the worker.”
There are independent contractors who commit to working set hours. Doing that doesn’t on its own make you an employee.
The post employees don’t want to participate in our community outreach, parking issues, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
Visible Zork 3 is now available to all
May. 1st, 2026 04:01 amzarfhome_blog_feedThree months ago, I launched the Visible Zorker Patreon with a promise: fund me and I will create a new Visible Infocom game every month.
You did! And now the tree bears fruit.
I decided to put the games on a two-month delay, so that Patreon supporters would have a leg up. I worked on Visible Zork 3 in February; I made it available on the Patreon page on March 1st.
Two months have passed. (Happy Workers' Day!) And thus Visible Zork 3 is now live on the project page. The source code repository is also live, licensed under the open-source MIT license.
Enjoy the lonely, shadow-lit, eerily silent world of Zork 3... It's a bit of a tonal shift from the first two games, isn't it? The cartoonish treasure-hunts have been replaced with a somewhat philosophical meditation on virtue. (One might compare the route Ultima 4 took a few years later.)
To be sure, there are still some brightly-colored puzzles left over from the original MIT Zork. The blend isn't entirely smooth. But it's the wrap-up we have for the world of Zork... well, until Enchanter crashes back in. That will be another episode.
More readings on Zork 3:
Behind the curtain, in early-access land, the release cycle rolls on. Patreon supporters got hold of Visible Deadline in April. They got Visible Starcross today.
Now that the pump is primed, you can expect a new game every month on the project page. Deadline will appear on June 1st, Starcross on July 1st, Suspended on August 1st. There may be a one-month break after that, as NarraScope is going to eat up a bunch of June (and then push out the following schedule slots).
Here's some previews of upcoming goodies:
Part of the map of Deadline, showing the routes used for NPC movement and visibility. (Here is a larger view including the grounds.)
My recreation of the Starcross Mass Detector Chart. (High-resolution source archived here.)
(Of course, if you join the Patreon at the $4 level, you get in on the early tier. That means you get Deadline and Starcross today, Suspended in June, and so on. This is the carrot. There is no stick; everything winds up open-source eventually.)
As you see, I am trying to add a little something creative and insightful to each game. It's not just lists of objects and variables. I will also do new, high-quality scans of feelie material that I have access to. (See my Deadline scans here! Mind you, I really have to rescan those pages in 600dpi lossless. I didn't get this A3-bed scanner for nothing.)
So where are we with the Visible Zorker? I feel pretty good about it!
I originally said that I was aiming at $500/month in Patreon support. That number was, as I admitted, an arbitrary goal. But the Patreon is over the $300 mark as I write this. I expect that will bump up if Zork 3 makes a splash. Now that we're in the swing of a public release every month, maybe it will move significantly.
So I'm happy with the response. More importantly, I'm having fun. This is fun! The Visible Zorker was a genuinely new thing in the world. Nobody else is doing it. Oh, plenty of people could have done it -- there's no real technical challenge in there -- but I thought of it. I get to be the one. I can build in my sense of history, my sense of design, and my sense of whimsy.
It's a real boost in a world which seems intent on treating us all as machine parts, one mouse-click away from outsourcing.
So I'm on board to do the next batch of games. Maybe next year I'll feel burned out and overwhelmed. I can't say. But right now, I'm jazzed to start the next one. (Suspended is up next! What a great piece of visual design that package was.)
Thanks for coming on this -- can I say adventure? Adventure, I said it -- with me.
The Talk Show: ‘Food and Beverage Director’
May. 1st, 2026 02:58 amdaringfireball_feedMG Siegler returns to the show to discuss Apple’s announcement that Tim Cook is stepping aside (into the role of executive chairman) and John Ternus will become CEO.
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Scientology ‘Speed Running’ Trend
May. 1st, 2026 02:36 amdaringfireball_feedUwa Ede-Osifo, reporting for The Guardian:
On any given day, Los Angeles’s Hollywood Boulevard teems with tourists and street performers clustered near the area’s many landmarks. But in recent months, the strip has been set abuzz for a new reason.
Throngs of mostly adolescent boys and young men have been rushing the Church of Scientology’s international headquarters on the famed street.
The so-called “speed runs” appear to be bids for social media valor — clips of the raids have amassed millions of views on TikTok — as much as they are an outgrowth of public intrigue surrounding the church, which has previously drawn accusations of being a cult. Some users have developed blueprints for the building based on information gathered from videos of the raids.
I’m not condoning it, of course, but this video of one guy doing it sure was fun to watch.
Launching a permanent archive for XOXO
May. 1st, 2026 02:27 amwaxy_feed
Last week, we launched XOXO Explore, a permanent archive for XOXO, the Portland-based festival and conference I co-organized with Andy McMillan for eight years between 2012 and 2024.
This was a huge undertaking, bringing together every lineup, schedule, recap video, conference talk, and standalone website that we ever made into a single permanent archive, filled with little photos and ephemera from the festival. It includes the final versions of our policies, which we refined over several years and released under open licenses, along with an archive of our guide. We even finally made a proper About page.
This is something we first started talking about back in 2015, and attempted three times, but it was never finished until now.
We’re really proud of it, and to mark the occasion, we made a line of limited-run merch, which you can preorder until the end of the day tomorrow, Friday, May 1. This includes all-new shirts, hats, stickers, felt and enamel pins, but also ridiculously niche artifacts, like a custom LEGO set of the XOXO 2024 festival grounds, miniature versions of the “Lower Your Expectations” sign we hung over the entrance to XOXO 2024, and a zine by Jez Burrows documenting one ridiculous thread from the XOXO Slack that spiraled out of control.
Andy McMillan wrote more about it on the XOXO blog, if you’d like to read more.
A Snapshot of Web Design History
There’s a lot to explore in Explore, but one easy-to-miss detail is the “Website Archive” at the bottom of each year index, collecting and archiving all of our past websites for posterity.
After XOXO started in 2012, we made three separate sites every year, with three different purposes:
- Teaser. Our first sites were always single-serving pages to announce the dates, usually encouraging people to sign up for our email list to get notified when registration opens.
- Lineup. The first time we announce a big chunk of the festival and conference lineup, the cost for passes, and details on registration dates.
- Schedule. These sites were more involved, with full minute-by-minute details of the full festival with speaker/performer bios.
Part of my job on XOXO Explore was revisiting all these sites and migrating them off our paid hosting onto Cloudflare Pages, since XOXO LLC was officially closed with nobody to pay the bills.
Creating static builds of each site, either by recreating the development environment in Docker in the best case or crawling them, was like a time capsule of web dev tooling and trends between 2012 to 2024.
It was different almost every time, sometimes changing stacks in a single year: PHP/MySQL and no build tools at all in 2012, Gulp/Bower/SASS in 2014, Bourbon/Middleman in 2015, Jekyll and Rails in 2016, Node/Express and serverless computing in 2018, Gatsby in 2019, Eleventy in 2024…
To capture the MySQL-backed Rails app that we created for our 2016 schedule, I had to scrape the responses from every possible API query and store everything statically to recreate its dynamic category/year filtering and pagination. Ridiculous.
Some of my favorites from the archive:
- The 2014 lineup site with colorful geometric illustrations by Jon Han.
- For our 2015 teaser and lineup sites, painter Brendan Monroe made beautiful illustrations in his stark black-and-white style, and then joined us to paint several murals in person at the festival.
- The 2015 schedule site by Scribble Tone cleverly plays with CSS blend modes. (Don’t miss the “Don’t Touch” easter egg in the bottom-left.)
- After a year hiatus, we hired four artists to paint a mural together on a 12-hour livestream for our 2018 teaser. (Click “Watch timelapse” to see it happen in seconds.)
- The 2018 lineup site made by Paulo using a vibrant original illustration from Shawna X.
- The dark/light mode clicker game hidden in our 2024 teaser, made by BRAIN’s Brian Moore and Mike Lacher.
- The circus-themed 2024 lineup site by Ashur and Emily Cabrera.
- The 2019 lineup site by Friends of the Web, anchored by several floral illustrations from Cate Andrews.
- The original 2012 and 2013 schedule sites by Paulo are instantly nostalgic for me. It’s where it all started.
It was a big pain, but we felt it was an important part of the festival’s history and worth preserving.
Wrapping XOXO
It took longer than we anticipated, but launching this site was the last thing on our XOXO to-do list. It feels weird to say goodbye to a project that was a part of our lives for so long.
The XOXO festival ran for eight years, but Andy and I ran the XOXO community for over 12 years, as it grew from an annual festival to a year-round Slack community, local meetups, a 16,000-square foot workspace, an aborted funding platform, and many other experiments along the way.
I’m deeply thankful to everyone who was a part of it. The Credits page names some of the key people behind the festival, Slack community, and our web and design efforts. But there were so many more volunteers, patrons, and attendees — literally thousands of people — that made it feel unlike any other event I’ve been a part of.
This has been a very difficult year for me, filled with stress from a family crisis that upended my life and work for the last four months. It’s the reason I’ve largely been absent from posting here and on social media this year, but things are starting to look better.
For right now, it feels good to once again release something new into the world with my name attached to it.
I loved XOXO, which remains one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever worked on. I’m grateful to Andy McMillan for pushing for years to build this beautiful new archive that honors the work we did together.
Dilly-Dallying In Denver: Day 4 (The Final Day!)
May. 1st, 2026 03:11 amscalziwhatever_feedIt is the last day of April and I am finally posting the final part of my time in Denver, which was literally almost two months ago now, but that’s neither here nor there. On the fourth day, one of Alex’s other friends from college flew in for their birthday as well, and got there very early in the morning. So all three of us got into shenanigans today!
You always have to start out the day with going to a cute coffee shop, so we went to Savageau Coffee & Ice Cream.
This little coffee shop had a really cool layout, with a whole wall of different, framed mirrors. I ended up getting a white chocolate and pistachio flavored iced matcha:
With coffees in hand, we headed over to the Denver Botanic Gardens. I was extremely excited to visit the botanical gardens, as I love flowers. Things were just barely starting to bloom in the still chilly spring air. Heck, it had snowed two nights before, so I was partially expecting everything to be dead. And while a lot of plants were still dormant, there was plenty to see.
Alex had actually just been gifted a membership to the gardens, so they used two of their guest passes on us, which was really nice. I believe it’s about twenty dollars for standard adult admission, otherwise.
I took a lot of flower photos, and it was difficult to decide which ones to show y’all. I ended up picking out ones that are purple and pink, because those are my two favorite colors. So enjoy these handful of shots from our time walking around at the gardens:
The Denver Botanic Gardens had so many beautiful orchids, most of which were in glass cases or on huge display carts. They were absolutely stunning and they had a wide array of colors. Orchids are one of my favorite flowers, so these were very cool to see.
The gardens were such a nice experience. I just love walking through trails with different plant life all along the sides and learning about new flowers. The gift shop was really cool, too! There was a huge variety of items, but I only ended up getting a couple pins. All in all a successful outing.
We left just in time to head to our early dinner reservations at Ash’Kara. This was another restaurant where we wanted to partake in their Restaurant Week offerings, but we actually showed up at 4pm, and the dinner service (including the Restaurant Week stuff) didn’t start until 5. So we actually ended up sitting and enjoying Ash’Kara’s happy hour for a little bit before we got to have our actual meals. Thankfully, they weren’t busy at all and let us hang out whilst we waited for 5pm to roll around.
I really loved the interior of Ash’Kara. It’s very colorful and eclectic, has cool light fixtures, and has a lovely bar.
Here’s their happy hour menu:
And the beverages:
While these drinks definitely sounded good, I ended up ordering a mocktail. This was their cucumber spritz, which is just cucumber syrup, lemon, and soda water:
And Alex got another one of their mocktails, the passion-hibiscus spritz, with passion tea syrup, hibiscus, lemon, and soda water:
I loved these glasses, they remind me a lot of Jupiter glass but with a more ornate design. Both of these drinks were super light and refreshing without being too sweet, as mocktails sometimes can be. I actually ended up getting Alex’s drink for my second one because I liked it so much, but both were great choices.
We wanted to get a couple happy hour food items, but didn’t want to fill up too much before we ate our actual dinner. We ended up ordering the Castelvetrano olives:
Castelvetrano olives just so happens to be my favorite type, so these olives with orange zest and Calabrian chili were absolutely delish. They were bright, briny, and really packed a punch. They were easily shareable and a great start to the rest of our meal.
We also got their pickled veggie platter:
If you like briny, pucker-worthy pickles, this is the appetizer for you. Crunchy, fresh veggies with a ton of pickle-y bite to them. I liked the pickles the best, just because the carrots were hard for me to bite through (I have sensitive teeth).
And for our final shareable, we got the fried halloumi and panisse:
Oh my goodness, look at that golden brown color. That is picture perfect right there. While I absolutely love fried halloumi, I wasn’t sure what panisse was. You can really tell a difference between the cubes of panisse and the halloumi, too. My friends didn’t know either, so we looked it up and they are essentially chickpea fritters, like polenta but made with chickpea flour and then fried.
The fried halloumi was the best I’d ever had. It was hot and crispy, and the cheese squeaked like a Wisconsin cheese curd. The panisse was soft and pillowy on the inside, and I was happy to try something I had never heard of before. This was an absolutely bomb starter and we all really enjoyed it.
Finally, it was time to view the Restaurant Week menu. Set at $45 a person, here’s what we were looking at:
This one turned out a little blurry, so let me walk you through the different options and tell you what everyone got.
For the first course, you basically pick between four dip options. There’s hummus, htipiti, labneh, and babaganoush. You can also add on pita, pickles, fries, and olives, but whatever dip you chose did come with your own naan as a vehicle for your dip.
I got the labneh, Alex got the hummus, and Alex’s friend got the babaganoush:
My labneh came with roasted grapes, sumac honey, sesame seeds, and chives. The hummus had a sprinkle of paprika and chopped parsley on top. The babaganoush had a paprika oil on top with crispy shallots and some microgreens.
All three of the dips were so divine. My labneh was so creamy, and the texture worked really well with the soft grapes and tiny crunch from the sesame seeds. The hummus was excellent, and had plenty of garlicy flavor without being overpowering. The babaganoush might’ve been the star of the show, with the savory, roasty flavor of the eggplant and perfectly crunchy shallots. The naan our dips were served with was warm and soft. All three of us were eating each other’s dips because they were all so good. The labneh and babganoush are a must-try.
We also added on an order of Za’atar fries:
I love za’atar and think it is an underutilized spice in many people’s cooking, so it was awesome to see za’atar fries. These were hot, fresh, crispy fries with just the right amount of herbaceous and saltiness from the za’atar.
For course two, you could choose between salad and falafel. Alex and their friend got the falafel:
I got the Fattoush salad:
This salad had chicory, pickled red cabbage, pomegranate arils, fried sage, roasted delicata squash, and naan breadcrumbs with a shrub vinaigrette. Oh my gosh, this salad was bomb. So many different textures and flavors happening here, yet nothing contrasting in a negative way. Crunchy pickled cabbage, soft roasted squash, fresh greens, and tart pomegranate, it was a beautiful dish. I really loved this salad.
For our final course, we could choose between braised lamb shoulder, lemon pepper salmon, or a roasted cabbage dish. While Alex and I got the lamb, their friend got the roasted cabbage:
I almost got this, and when I saw it I knew I wouldn’t have regretted my choice if I had. With tons of caramelization on the roasted cabbage and plenty of caramelized onions, it looked so flavorful atop that soft basmati rice.
Here was our lamb shoulder:
There were a lot of words that accompanied the lamb shoulder description that I didn’t recognize, and I had to ask the waiter about several of them. The lamb is served with a sweet potato tershi. While I love sweet potatoes, I didn’t know what a tershi was. Turns out, it’s like a dip or a spread that is typically made from pumpkin or squash, and is usually spicy or at least warmly spiced. Thankfully, this version wasn’t very spicy, just nicely spiced. It also had zhug, which is sort of like pesto, but with cilantro and parsley instead of basil, and different spices like cumin. There was also hawaji in the dish, which is a Yemeni spice blend I’ve never heard of it. Now, I did know already what kataifi is, and it’s the crispy shredded phyllo you see on top.
Now that we know what everything is, this dish was incredibly delicious. Super tender lamb and soft sweet potatoes contrasting the crunchy kataifi. The bright, fresh, herbaceous zhug lightened up the rich, warm flavors of the lamb. This dish was so unique and unlike any lamb I’d had before. I highly recommend this dish if you like lamb, or if you’ve never had lamb and are curious to try it. This dish would be the perfect introduction to it.
Ash’Kara was a really awesome culinary experience. There’s pretty much no Mediterranean restaurants around where I live, so experiencing this amazing cuisine was such a treat. I absolutely loved all the different flavors and unique dishes I got to try. I would a hundred percent revisit Ash’Kara if I go back to Denver.
So, that’s pretty much everything I did for my few days in Denver! Tons of amazing food, great drinks, cool museums, awesome flowers, and of course, friends.
For the rest of my time in Colorado (which was about another three days), we went out to Palmer Lake and stayed in an AirBnb with more of Alex’s friends. It was a lovely mountain lodge and we had a lot of fun, and I made this charcuterie board:
This board had dill Havarti, a red wax Gouda, double creme brie, drunken goat, and whipped hot honey goat cheese. Plus prosciutto and salami, smoked salmon, jalapeno and garlic stuffed olives, pickles, cheddar crisps, and candied pecans. Aside from the dijon mustard, Alex’s mom makes jams and spreads, so we used her cherry berry, apricot mango, and blackberry spreads. I also threw together a sweet treat board:
Alex requested two things: blackberries and strawberries. Trader Joe’s (where we got literally all of this from) had these special white strawberries called pineberries that were supposedly really good, so we gave them a shot. There’s also mini peanut butter cups, milk chocolate covered pretzels, and then these super yummy little mousse cakes. There’s the raspberry mousse ones with vanilla cake, and the chocolate ones. They were ridiculously good.
Anyways, aside from enjoying our time in the cabin playing games and whatnot, we also saw the Red Rocks Amphitheater (not attending a concert, just saw it regularly), and the Garden of the Gods. The Garden of the Gods was honestly such an amazing experience; the beauty of it all brought a tear to my eye. I highly recommend checking it out. Who knew rocks could be so awe-inspiring.
The last thing I have to post about is the Denver airport, and it might be for different reasons than you’d expect! So stay tuned for the actual final post about Denver.
Have you visited the botanical gardens before? Was it when everything was more.. alive? What would you have ordered from Ash’Kara? Do you like lamb? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
Mongoose Traveller JTAS (May 2024) – revived through Wed 13 May
Apr. 30th, 2026 05:55 pmbeyondthebundle_feed
Through Wednesday, May 13, to finish off Traveller Week 2026, we revive the May 2024 Mongoose JTAS Bundle featuring the Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society, the Traveller guide from Mongoose Publishing. The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society is your indispensable guide to adventuring in the Third Imperium of Traveller. Each 128-page volume is a treasure trove of information and enhancements, including adventures, new ships, alien creatures from across Charted Space, philosophical musings on the big empires, histories, different takes on familiar equipment, new vehicles, patrons, characters you meet in starports, playable alien races, and more.
This revived May 2024 Mongoose JTAS Bundle can boost your Mongoose Traveller campaign like a Jump-4 drive. Pay just US$27.95 to get the twelve issues in this revived offer’s JTAS Collection (Volumes 1-12, 2019-2023, retail value $180) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks. In this list, each link goes to the DriveThruRPG product page that lists highlights of that volume:
Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Volume 01: Burst lasers, a turret weapon midway between pulse and beam lasers; guides to piracy and smuggling in the Spinward Marches; new variants of the trusty ATV; theDelphinus Starliner, to travel in absolute comfort; the Two Thousand worlds of the K’kree; the Dynchia, fully playable humanoid aliens.
JTAS V02: The Githiasko, for those wanting to try a truly alien playable race; “Last Flight of the Themis”; battle fleets of the Marches; the Quiet Vigilance patrol vessel; “Airstrike,” a complete guide to raining death upon your enemies; exotic atmospheres of strange worlds.
JTAS V03: Cartridge laser weapons, for those wanting to avoid heavy power packs; Zhodani military organization; the nitty-gritty of Jump drive operations; engage in electronic warfare in “War in the Fourth Dimension”; the Tvastar Manufactory Ship, a vessel designed for instant colonization; enact a prison break in “Rescue on Ruie.”
JTAS V04: The Hlanssai, a playable alien race from the Vargr Extents; a Travellers’ guide to the Florian League; Siduri Station, a complete starport; the Mainstrider 300T, a new trading vessel for starting Travellers; unknown blips; Imperial Marine Task Force Organization.
JTAS V05: A rescue mission with advanced fire engines in the adventure “Chariots of Fire”; field equipment of the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service; salvage rights of derelict spacecraft; damage control operations on ships under fire; Jump Boats and their Jump Boat Tenders; the Virushi, a one-ton playable alien race.
JTAS V06: Vehicle-mounted missiles; the Steppehauler Modular Freighter, with prototype Hop Drive; maritime vehicles; making a tramp trader profitable; stars and stellar objects in deep space; save a populated world from a hurtling asteroid in the adventure “Critical Vector.”
JTAS V07: A week in Jump; “Misadventures at Blinderby Manor”; Initial 24 Armaments Go Cases and Energy Weapons; stellar cartography; the Spacer’s Union; the Black Zone Astro-Tomb; advanced lasers; the Golden Dawn yacht; Krungha Processing Ark; Deepnight character creation; immigration in the Imperium; Iderati Space Defense System.
JTAS V08: Divine intervention; “Care Package”; Omicron – the Mythical Weaponsmith; the Gauss Rifle’s big brother; Sojourner light trader; talking about turrets; the Pink Diamond; the Hunter Career; BB-2 Nuclear Powered Bus.
JTAS V09: “Icebox Found at the Exe Cutoff”; Zadony-Tessen Survival Armaments; Belvedere Station; criminal organizations of the Marches; Vindicator Logging heavy walker.
JTAS V10: Tamara’s Travelling Tavern; “The Argon Gambit”; intrusion decks; Iris Valves – a users and abusers guide; organized crime in the Core; Evergreen research vessel; the Zhodani fleet; monetizing heroism; hunting and preparing food; soldiers, officers, and Specialists; advanced education; Unicycle of Mass Destruction.
JTAS V11: Stateroom excess; musical instruments; Ajilchin prospector ship; the Sword of Oberon; starships of the Spinward Extents; colonising the Tijian Expanse; spacecraft as benefits; Mighty Maus Mobile Centre; heavy plant vehicles.
JTAS V12: “Suits You, Sophont” (clothing options); starports and airships of the Imperium; Kyriani “The Wolf of the Marches” Nakamura, captain of the Triplebrick; Geonee ships; Hhkar Sublight Drive Systems; games for gamblers; campaign bloat.
Aid is at hand, Traveller! Get this revived May 2024 JTAS offer before it takes High Passage again Wednesday, May 13.
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/JTAS2026
Done with our travels – for now
This year’s Traveller Week 2026 sequence of offers ends here – just ahead of May 1, known to many SFRPG fans as Traveller Day. The cover of the first Traveller boxed set (1977) featured Free Trader Beowulf‘s iconic call – the universal distress call m’aidez! (French “help me”), transliterated as “Mayday.”
This week’s offers, all featuring Mongoose Traveller Second Edition, included the December 2024 Mongoose Traveller Update Bundle (if you’re new to the game, start here), Mercenaries (Dec 2023), Great Rift (Nov 2022), and the all-new Traveller Imperial Navy.
Traveller Great Rift (Nov 2022) – revived through Wed 13 May
Apr. 29th, 2026 05:55 pmbeyondthebundle_feed
We continue Traveller Week 2026 featuring many offers for the Second Edition Traveller SFRPG line from Mongoose Publishing. Through Wednesday, May 13 we revive the November 2022 Traveller Great Rift Bundle with the void-spanning Great Rift setting guide (2025 version) and the decades-long campaign Deepnight Revelation, plus many adventures in the deeps far (faaar) beyond the Third Imperium.
Traveller‘s Charted Space setting is cut in half by a region of very low stellar density a sector or more wide. Over the centuries, this natural barrier to astrogation has shaped the history of the Third Imperium. Deep in the Great Rift lie ancient mysteries, strange alien races, and human cultures who have not seen offworld contact in centuries. Portside rumors speak of giant creatures capable of interstellar flight, and of starship wrecks belonging to no known race. From the cold war of the Islands Cluster to the isolation of the Boulderfield, the Great Rift is a place of varied and insidious danger. A miscalculated jump means a slow death in deep space – yet Travellers are willing to take the risk.
The Deepnight Revelation, a refitted Imperial Navy cruiser, is bound for Terminus Point, a source of strong and confusing radio signals on the trailing side of the Riftmouth. The expedition along the Great Rift to the edge of the Spiral Arm will take nine and a half years; the earliest possible return to base is 20 years after departure; the complete journey is expected to take 24-28 years. It’s one of the most stupendous missions in human history, a voyage beyond everything we know.
This revival of the November 2022 Traveller Great Rift Bundle once again brings you two complete campaign sets and many adventures that send your player characters on a decades-long trek to strange new worlds where no Traveller has gone before. Pay just US$9.95 to get both titles in this revived offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $80) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete setting guide The Great Rift (2025) and the Deepnight Revelation campaign set.
This updated 2025 version of the 2017 Great Rift replaces the original three-volume box set with two expanded volumes, including a new chapter covering adventures in this vast expanse of space, new art, and the current Traveller formatting. If you purchased this Great Rift Bundle during its original November 2022 run, you also receive the newly added Great Rift 2025 campaign set automatically on your Wizard’s Cabinet download page on the Bundle site and in your linked DriveThruRPG Library. When you buy a Bundle of Holding early, you never worry about missing titles added later – even much later.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $34.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get this revival’s entire Bonus Collection with seven more sourcebooks and adventures worth an additional $195 that enhance your voyage across the Rift, including six Deepnight sourcebooks – Riftsedge Transit, The Near Side of Yonder, The Crossing, The Far Side of Nowhere, Voidshore, and Expeditions – along with the newly added five-scenario omnibus, Great Rift Adventures 1-5.
(And, purchasers of the original November 2022 run, you also receive the Great Rift Adventures omnibus.)
Note: These supplements and adventures require the Mongoose Traveller 2E rulebook, which isn’t included in this offer. If you’re new to the game, you want our revived December 2024 Mongoose Traveller Update Bundle in progress.
Get this revived November 2022 Traveller Great Rift Bundle before it embarks on the Riftmouth expedition into the void beyond Reference Point XF-1402, six parsecs into the Great Rift Wednesday, May 13.
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/2026GreatRift
Traveller Week 2026!
The Traveller Week 2026 offers all feature Mongoose Traveller Second Edition, available in the December 2024 Mongoose Traveller Update Bundle (if you’re new to the game, start here). The other offers this week include the all-new Traveller Imperial Navy and three more revivals: Mercenaries (Dec 2023), Great Rift (Nov 2022), and Mongoose JTAS (May 2024).
Traveller Mercenaries (Dec 2023) – revived through Wed 13 May
Apr. 28th, 2026 05:55 pmbeyondthebundle_feed
Traveller Week 2026 continues as, through Wednesday, May 13, we revive the December 2023 Traveller Mercenaries Bundle featuring soldier-for-hire supplements and adventures for Traveller Second Edition from Mongoose Publishing.
Mercenary has been part of the Traveller line since the 1978 Little Black Book 4. Mongoose published Mercenary 1E (2008) as the first supplement for its Traveller 1E. This revived Traveller Mercenaries offer presents the newest and largest version, the three-book Mercenary Second Edition boxed set (2021).
Funded in a February 2021 Kickstarter campaign (1,026 backers, £100K) and designed by longtime Traveller writer Martin J Dougherty, Mercenary 2E presents expanded systems for recruiting merc units of any size from squad to battalion; new mass-combat rules; defined equipment levels from Basic to Standard, Generous, Lavish, and Excessive; and a new ticketing system that lets you line up Commando, Striker, Warfighting, Cadre, Support, and Specialist contracts. A full support line adds tickets, equipment, adventures, and an entire theater of operations, the Solomani Front.
Note: These supplements and adventures require the Mongoose Traveller 2E rulebook, which isn’t included in this offer. If you’re new to the game, you want our revived December 2024 Mongoose Traveller Update Bundle in progress.
Pay just US$12.95 to get all three supplements in this revived offer’s Player Collection (retail value $97) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including Mercenary, Mercenaries of Charted Space, and Field Catalogue.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $24.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get this revival’s entire Referee Collection with five more titles worth an additional $101, including Specialist Forces, Solomani Front, and three Mercenary Adventures: 1: Verloren Hoop, 2: Bug Hunt, and 3: Must Travel, Need Guns.
This revived December 2023 Traveller Mercenaries gets its ticket punched again Wednesday, May 13. (Note! This offer ends before the two offers we launched on the first day of Traveller Week – the revived December 2024 Mongoose Traveller Update Bundle and its all-new companion, Traveller Imperial Navy.)
Traveller Week 2026!
The Traveller Week 2026 offers all feature Mongoose Traveller Second Edition, available in the December 2024 Mongoose Traveller Update Bundle (if you’re new to the game, start here). The other offers this week include the all-new Traveller Imperial Navy and three more revivals: Mercenaries (Dec 2023), Great Rift (Nov 2022), and Mongoose JTAS (May 2024).
Traveller Update (Dec 2024) + new Imperial Navy – through Mon 18 May
Apr. 27th, 2026 05:55 pmbeyondthebundle_feed
The last week of April 2026 is Traveller Week at the Bundle of Holding – a sequence of five offers in four days, all featuring Traveller from Mongoose Publishing, that lead up to Traveller Day on Friday. Each year on May 1, fans celebrate Traveller Day in honor of the cover copy on the 1977 First Edition of Traveller: “This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone… Mayday, Mayday…”
Through Monday, May 18 we kick off Traveller Week 2026 with two offers – one new, one revived. If you’re new to Traveller, start with the resurrected December 2024 Mongoose Traveller Update Bundle, with the core rulebook and useful supplements. Then check its all-new companion, Traveller Imperial Navy, with sourcebooks and adventures that focus on the Third Imperium space fleet.
Traveller is a game of bold explorers and brave adventurers. Spaceports, ancient civilizations, air/rafts, cold steel blades, laser carbines, far distant worlds, and exotic alien beasts – this is the futuristic universe of Traveller, the original and classic science fiction roleplaying game. Whether you’re a newly mustered recruit or a six-term veteran, you’ll find much to explore in these Traveller revivals.
1. TRAVELLER UPDATE [from Dec 2024]
Mongoose Traveller lets you explore the universe the way it suits you. Lightly revised to incorporate tweaks, rules updates, and new art, the Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022 contains everything you need to create your Traveller and begin exploring the galaxy in the far future. And the supplements in this revived December 2024 Mongoose Traveller Update Bundle give you new allies, contacts, and enemies – starships large and small – and robots of every size from nano to colossal.
Pay just US$17.95 to get all five titles in this revived offer’s Traveller Updates collection (retail value $150) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022, Traveller Companion Update 2024, Adventure Class Ships, Small Craft Catalogue, and the Robot Handbook.
The Update 2022 version is completely compatible with the original 2017 version of Mongoose Traveller Second Edition and its supplements and adventures.
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/TravUpdateR1
2. TRAVELLER IMPERIAL NAVY [all-new]
This all-new Traveller Imperial Navy companion offer adds sourcebooks and adventures about the Third Imperium space fleet. The Imperial Navy and the other titles in this new offer display the greatest military force in the Third Imperium, from the great fleets down to a band of new recruits. The navy is entwined in the politics and economics of the Imperium. It’s a training ground for the great nobility, and, for the general populace, a route to social advancement. Without its senior service, the Third Imperium would not exist.
Pay just $14.95 to get all six titles in this offer’s Imperial Navy Collection (retail value $115), including The Imperial Navy sourcebook, Element Class Cruisers: Ship Builder’s Blueprints (plus the Naval Campaigns Handbook), and all four Naval Adventures: 1: Shakedown Cruise, 2: Showing the Sunburst, 3: Fire on the Sindalian Main, and 4: Enemy of My Enemy.
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/ImperialNavy
These two Traveller offers go missing together in the warzone around Tyrian Orbital Prime, where Glorious Empire forces are assaulting Tyr and the very Dustbelt is at stake, Monday, May 18.
1. TRAVELLER UPDATE [from Dec 2024]
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/TravUpdateR1
2. TRAVELLER IMPERIAL NAVY [all-new]
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/ImperialNavy
Traveller Week 2026!
The Traveller Week 2026 offers all feature Mongoose Traveller Second Edition, available in the December 2024 Mongoose Traveller Update Bundle (if you’re new to the game, start here). The other offers this week include the all-new Traveller Imperial Navy and three more revivals: Mercenaries (Dec 2023), Great Rift (Nov 2022), and Mongoose JTAS (May 2024).
Apple Q2 2026 Results
May. 1st, 2026 12:41 amdaringfireball_feedApple Newsroom:
“Today Apple is proud to report our best March quarter ever, with revenue of $111.2 billion and double-digit growth across every geographic segment,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone achieved a March quarter revenue record, fueled by such extraordinary demand for the iPhone 17 lineup. During the quarter, Services achieved yet another all-time record, and we were excited to introduce remarkable new products to our strongest lineup ever. That included the addition of the iPhone 17e and the M4-powered iPad Air, along with the launch of MacBook Neo, which is captivating customers all around the world.”
Record results for the January–March quarter for revenue, profit, and iPhone revenue in particular. And iPhones were constrained by supply. Tim Cook led the analyst conference call because he’s still CEO, but John Ternus joined for the first time. Worth a listen to just their opening remarks.
Over at Six Colors, Jason Snell has the usual assortment of graphs charting Apple’s numbers. Spoiler: up, up, up. And he has his usual transcript of the analyst call. From that transcript, this bit from Ternus’s prepared statement made me smile:
I want to echo Tim’s sentiment about our shareholders, especially those who have been with us for many years. Thank you so much for your confidence in our company. As you know, one of the hallmarks of Tim’s tenure has been a deep thoughtfulness, deliberateness, and discipline when it comes to the financial decision-making of the company, and I want you to know that is something Kevan and I intend to continue when I transition into the role in September.
Translation: “In case you were worried, we intend to keep making money hand over fist when I become CEO. I’m not coming into the job to spend the company’s money like a drunken sailor.”
★ On the Future of Apple’s Vision Platform
May. 1st, 2026 12:11 amdaringfireball_feedJuli Clover, writing at MacRumors under the rather incendiary headline “Apple Has Given Up on the Vision Pro After M5 Refresh Flop”:
Apple has all but given up on the Vision Pro after the M5 model failed to revitalize interest in the device, MacRumors has learned. Apple updated the Vision Pro with a faster M5 chip and a more comfortable band in October 2025, but there were no other hardware changes, and consumers still weren’t interested. [...]
The Vision Pro has been unpopular since it first launched, and Apple only sold around 600,000 units in total. Insider sources told MacRumors that Apple has received an unusually high percentage of returns, far exceeding any other modern Apple product.
Apple has apparently stopped work on the Vision Pro and the Vision Pro team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple. Some former Vision Pro team members are working on Siri, which is not a surprise as Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell has been leading the Siri team since March 2025.
This report comes as news to everyone at Apple working in the Vision Product Group (VPG). Nothing about the future of the platform has changed recently. When it was a secret project, prior to unveiling, it was called the Technology Development Group (TDG) inside Apple. Then, when Vision Pro was unveiled, it became VPG. And then at some point the hardware went under Apple’s hardware group (led by John Ternus) and the software under the software group (led by Craig Federighi). So there have been changes, yes, but only the sort of changes that are natural when a product shifts from being a secret to being one of Apple’s regular non-secret platforms.
As for poor sales, I think it’s unquestionable that Vision Pro sales — and general enthusiasm — have been a disappointment. What momentum they had out of the gate has seemingly petered out. But the optimistic scenario inside Apple was not all that high. The best-case scenario was surely a bigger number of units than they’ve actually sold, but not that much more. There’s no realistic scenario where Vision Pro was an out-of-the-gate hit like, say, the iPad was. It’s an all-new device in an all-new product category that starts at $3,500 and costs more like $4,000 if you need corrective lenses. Before it debuted, there were multiple reports from multiple sources that suggested (a) that Sony could only manufacture a maximum of 900,000 displays per year, capping dual-display Vision Pro headsets at 450,000 per year; and (b) that Apple itself “expected to ship fewer than half a million headsets in the first year of its release, according to people involved in its supply chain” (per Wayne Ma at The Information).
Look at how Apple unveiled the second-gen Vision Pro with M5 — it was the definition of “low key”. I don’t think there was a single person in Cupertino — not one — who looked at first-generation Vision Pro sales and thought, “I know what will turn this around in a big way: a second-generation speed bump where the M2 chip is upgraded to an M5!” That speed bump in October was not intended to make a huge difference. It was just a signal that they’re still at it. Speed bumps are good. (And it probably helps, not hurts, margins because the M5 is used on Macs and iPads too, and no other product still in production uses the M2.) Rather than anyone — literally anyone — at Apple being surprised that the October second-gen M5 update did not meaningfully change the sales trajectory, I think the entire company would have been flabbergasted (and caught flat-footed on supply) if it had.
This sentence from Clover’s report is doing a lot of work:
Apple has apparently stopped work on the Vision Pro and the Vision Pro team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple.
There’s only one Vision hardware product to date, and that product, through two generations, is named Vision Pro. If Clover is saying that no one is working on a third-generation revision of the Vision Pro product we know today, maybe that’s correct. I don’t know. I certainly hope it’s correct. I think it was fine for Apple to do one new-generation speed bump of the original hardware. But going forward, they clearly need to do something significant for the next hardware. Ideally, two things: a much more appealing “Vision Pro” and a lower-priced “Vision Air” or just plain “Vision” or, hell, a “Vision Neo”. Take a new crack at the high end with a lighter-weight higher-resolution Vision Pro and open up new markets with something starting at under $2,000.
But I don’t think anyone is reading that sentence from Clover’s report that way. It implies — along with the headline — that Apple is just giving up on the whole platform. That’s how everyone is reading it, and it’s clearly what the article, and especially headline, implies.
I don’t think that’s true, at all. There’s a VisionOS 27 update coming at WWDC and new hardware in the works. Not just AR glasses, but immersive Vision headsets. There are, I believe, as many people at Apple working on VisionOS software and immersive content today as there ever have been. It’s full steam ahead. The pressure is on, I’m sure, but there’s no doom and gloom. The Apple folks in the Vision group aren’t oblivious.1 They actually know the roadmap, and they know just how much work is between where the platform is today and where it needs to be for it to be a meaningful contributor to Apple’s bottom line. But they’re there, working on it. I don’t know who told MacRumors what (and their sourcing is just “MacRumors has learned”), but I know for a fact that it is not true that the teams working on the Vision platform have “been redistributed to other teams within Apple.”
It’s a strange thing for MacRumors to state so categorically something I believe has no truth to it whatsoever. And if there is some truth to it, it’s not what the article implies, which is that the whole thing has been shut down, somehow without the world knowing until now. Just two weeks ago John Ternus and Greg Joswiak were interviewed by Mark Spoonauer at Tom’s Guide, and both spoke of a bright future for spatial computing. Joz describing Vision Pro as a product pulled into the present from the future is a good way of emphasizing the yet regarding a product — and category — that’s not there yet. Apple executives know how to give a non-answer answer to a question they don’t want to answer honestly. (Exhibit A: Tim Cook “squashing” rumors that he was about to retire ... one month before he announced he was stepping aside as CEO.) The way Ternus and Joz were talking about the platform, and immersive content, this month was not lacking in enthusiasm. It was asking for patience.
It’s certainly possible that this Vision thing ultimately isn’t going to work out and Apple will throw in the towel on it. But that hasn’t happened, and if it does, it’s not going to come out of nowhere as a story on MacRumors for the people in VPG working on it. When Apple threw in the towel on Project Titan (the car project) in February 2024, an all-hands was held to break the news, led by then-COO Jeff Williams and Titan project lead Kevin Lynch. The team didn’t learn it from a fucking leak.
-
No one on the planet is more keenly aware of how few people own a Vision Pro than the people who work on the Vision platform. If you work at Apple and work on the iPhone, and you meet someone who asks what you do, and you tell them you work on the iPhone at Apple, there’s a good chance they’ll say “Hey, I have an iPhone!” and they’ll take it out of their pocket to show you. If you work on the Mac, you’ll meet a lot of people who will say “Hey, I’ve been a Mac user for a long time!” Tell people you work on Vision Pro, and the best answer you’re likely to get is “Oh, nice, uh, I think I’ve heard about that.“ ↩︎
Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr?
Apr. 30th, 2026 08:50 pmwaxy_feedAnil Dash on Flickr Commons' enduring legacy as a home for public domain photos from institutions around the world #