Meta had an earnings call this week. Revenues and profit are down. The metaverse division lost $2.8 billion in a single quarter. And Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, regarding the payroll, that there are “probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.” Here’s why that’s bad news for people using Facebook…
The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York just added plaques for some new members. And they’re terrible. Here’s the new plaque for David Ortiz, a player I revere. Why this typography is all wrong I’m no designer, but like all real writers, I care enough about type to know what works and what…
As a person who once made his living making predictions, I’m fascinated by how public figures speak about what they were wrong about. The New York Times created a natural exercise in studying that when it published eight “I was wrong” columns by its regular columnists on Sunday. And we learned that like all humans,…
I nearly retched yesterday when a client told me to edit a passage he wrote, even though he and colleague were still “languaging” it. Languaging? Gag me. It’s a trusim that “Any noun can be verbed.” That doesn’t make it a good idea. Where to draw the line on verbing nouns In my first job,…
In the continual iconification of our interfaces, there are images that live on only as icons of bygone technology. I propose that we call these anachronicons (from anachronism + icons). What got me thinking about this was the knobs on my new Weber gas grill. They look like this: Are you having difficulty figuring out…
You go to a Web site, perhaps for a large company or retailer. When you get to what you think you’re looking for, it just stalls and nothing seems to be happening. What went wrong? The nature of the web and the internet makes that a very hard questions to answer. Just off the top…
Here are this morning’s news headlines on Fox News (in the order they appear on the site): Reckless Rhetoric: Media and Democrat attacks on Justice Kavanaugh scrutinized after assassination attempt Request Denied: Napa DA refuses to release video from Paul Pelosi’s DUI arrest ‘Feeling of Validation’: Crime victim recalls treatment he got from now-recalled liberal…
Elon Musk’s bid to take over Twitter starts with platitudes about free speech. He says he’s a “free speech absolutist.” “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy,” he says in the news release about his takeover of the company, “and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of…
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are having their Hollywood moment. Could this change the way America perceives the tech industry? American ingenuity is a value we grew up believing in. The American mythos of technologically advanced startups and their dazzling founders is an unbroken chain, from Edison to Jobs to Zuckerberg. They make us feel good about…