jadanzzy

I found out through John Dickerson's tweet that Rachel Held Evans died on May 4, 2019.

I knew she was in the ICU because of a handful of progressive Christians I still follow on Twitter—one of the few remnant indicators of my religious past—mentioned her sudden health issues.

Her husband has been providing health updates on her blog as well. His last post recounts the experience of her death.

I knew a little about Rachel and her work during what I'd call my emergent-slash-liberal Christian phase, just before finally leaving the zoo. But it was reading through all the eulogistic tweets about her death, and people sharing some quotes of hers throughout the years, that her death left me surprisingly emotional.

Like this:

And this:

And this:

And also this:

I hope (and, if you believe in God how she did, that you pray) that her vision for Christianity comes true. It would make for a far better one.

Rest in peace, Rachel Held Evans.

TYPOGRAPHY 2020: A SPECIAL LISTICLE FOR AMERICA

For those who think it trivializes our political process to judge candidates by their typography—what would you prefer we scrutinize? Qualifications? Ground into dust during the last election. Issues? Be my guest. Whether a candidate will ever fulfill a certain campaign promise about a certain issue is conjectural.

But typography—that’s a real decision candidates have to make today, with real money and real consequences. And if I can’t trust you to pick somereasonable fonts and colors, then why should I trust you with the nuclear codes?

Fun website. Butterick, a typography expert and designer, reviews a bunch of the Democratic candidates' websites.

Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?

Over the course of many conversations with sex researchers, psychologists, economists, sociologists, therapists, sex educators, and young adults, I heard many other theories about what I have come to think of as the sex recession. I was told it might be a consequence of the hookup culture, of crushing economic pressures, of surging anxiety rates, of psychological frailty, of widespread antidepressant use, of streaming television, of environmental estrogens leaked by plastics, of dropping testosterone levels, of digital porn, of the vibrator’s golden age, of dating apps, of option paralysis, of helicopter parents, of careerism, of smartphones, of the news cycle, of information overload generally, of sleep deprivation, of obesity. Name a modern blight, and someone, somewhere, is ready to blame it for messing with the modern libido.

I blame internet-based technology, and all of its manifestations.

IF YOU WANT TO KILL SOMEONE, WE ARE THE RIGHT GUYS

Yura promised that customers' money was held by an escrow service and paid out only after a job was completed. But Allwine worried that when he deposited money it would simply end up in someone's bitcoin wallet. He wanted Yura's claims to be true, though, so against his better instincts he transferred the bitcoin. “They say that Besa means trust, so please do not break that,” he wrote Yura. “For reasons that are too personal and would give away my identity, I need this bitch dead.”

The movie 'Fargo', but in real life, and in Minneapolis, using cryptocurrency and the dark web, and a far less gruesome ending.

Your love of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons could be killing the retailer

“I don’t come here very often,” said Zoe French, 51, who works nearby and was after laundry detergent. “Once a year, maybe I’ll use a coupon if I need to buy something big.”

That, analysts said, is crisis for the beleaguered chain: shoppers who balk at the thought of buying something at Bed Bath & Beyond without a coupon.

We shop at BB&B maybe once or twice a year? And we've hoarded way more coupons than I guarantee we'll ever use.

#fridayfinds

My last post was about some podcasts I really enjoy. Amy and I watch a ton of fiction television shows. So I want to continue this listicle run with some TV shows that I think are truly the bee's knees. Some of these shows are currently running. Others may have ended, but not too long ago.

Let me stress again: every show that I list here is a show that I think is seriously wonderful and worth watching as soon as possible. You can expect that I think each of these shows feature stellar acting, writing, and directing. So I'm not going to give a review for each show. I'll just link to each show's Wikipedia page, which you can get to by clicking show name below, so you can read a bit about it. Don't spoil it for yourself though, please.

These are not ranked in any particular order. Also, none of these shows are family-friendly. Sorry!

Better Things (FX)

Genre: comedy, drama

Detectorists (BBC Four)

Genre: comedy, drama

Killing Eve (BBC America)

Genre: thriller, comedy

Atlanta (FX)

Genre: comedy, drama

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Video)

Genre: comedy, drama

Sharp Objects (HBO)

Genre: thriller, mystery

Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime)

Okay this is the one show that I cannot unanimously recommend to everyone, for two main reasons:

  1. The Return refers specifically to season 3. You had to have watched seasons 1 and 2, which aired in 1990 and 1991, which I did just so I could watch season 3. It also would have helped to watch Fire Walk With Me, and even The Missing Pieces. I didn't, and just read synopses and watched YouTube videos to fill in the gaps.
  2. David Lynch is the most famous surrealist director of our time. This show is really creepy, really really weird, and definitely a head-scratcher.

Genre: mystery, horror

The Crown (Netflix)

Genre: drama

Rick And Morty (Cartoon Network: Adult Swim)

Genre: comedy, sci-fi, animated

#tv

I listen to a lot of podcasts—so much so that I'm confident the amount of time listening to podcasts outnumbers the time listening to music.

Maybe that's sad. It is what it is.

I obviously won't be listing podcasts like This American Life, Serial, or 99% Invisible. These are podcasts that aren't as popular (or maybe they are and I just don't know?), but may be worth your while. They are definitely worth mine.

While I'll link to the podcast's main page, you can obviously find them on your podcast app of choice. (By the way, I enthusiastically choose Overcast as my app of choice).

Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend (Earwolf)

Okay. Yes. Conan O'Brien is very well-known. But his new podcast, I believe, isn't well-known yet. I suspect that'll change soon. He interviews celebrities. My favorite interviews so far have been Dana Carvey, Jeff Goldblum, Lisa Kudrow, Michelle Obama, and Tig Notaro.

His podcast is the only one in which I actually like listening to the ad spots. He makes them hilarious. And he very prominently features his sweet and hilarious assistant Sona Movsesian, which makes it better.

Twenty Thousand Hertz

This, I think, is my favorite podcast of the moment. It's about all the familiar sounds that we hear throughout our lives, from companies' sonic logos to video game sounds to bird songs. If you listen to 99% Invisible, it's like that but about all things sound—not design. I just found out about it and I love that there's a long backlog of episodes I can go back to.

The Argument (NY Times)

I gotta give credit to Jamie Carroll for introducing me to this one. I think of it as NY Times' competitor to the Slate Political Gabfest or 538's Politics Podcast. It's a succinct ~35 minute podcast featuring three prominent Times' opinion writers (David Leonhardt, Michelle Goldberg, and Ross Douthat) of varying political opinions (moderate left, progressive-left, conservative right, respectively) talking about a few key hot political topics. These days, I look forward to this podcast more than Gabfest or 538's.

The Dream (Little Everywhere & Stitcher)

This investigative, mini-series podcast takes a journalistic look at the world of multi-level marketing companies (Herbalife, Amway, Mary Kay, Rodan+Fields, etc), and leaves you feeling very angry. I was hooked, and sad when it was over. Even sadder when I know that federal legislation to make it illegal isn't likely to happen anytime soon. The podcast goes into why.

Caliphate (NY Times)

Another investigative, mini-series podcast. I didn't know about it until Xin told me (h/t Xin). Heartbreaking, engrossing, brilliantly-made. It's about journalist Rukmini Callimachi's harrowing journey into the world of ISIS. Definitely shed tears listening to this one.

#podcasts

Does That Bible Come in Rose Gold? (The New Yorker)

The Bible didn’t evoke any such adrenaline rush. “So the idea I had was, what if this was designed in a different way?” He met Ye-Chung at a Christian event on campus and was captivated by the fact that they shared almost the same name. “We knew we wanted to do something with art and faith,” Ye-Chung said. “It would be a brand. At first we wanted to do a magazine, but we didn’t have an audience. We decided to just start with the Bible.”

Ah, so it's a marketing issue.

Why Urban Millennials Love Uniqlo (The Atlantic)

The question Uniqlo faces now is whether it can inherit the Gap’s empire without repeating its mistakes. To do so, it will have to convince shoppers across the country of a proposition that’s radical for the industry: Fashion can be affordable without being disposable.

I Don’t Care. I Love My Phone. (NY Times)

A few months ago I went to dinner with the kind of people whose idea of fun is to correct your pronunciation of “niçoise,” and they boldly suggested that we all put our phones face down in the center of the table for the entirety of the meal and what felt like a needlessly lingering discussion afterward.

Now, I didn’t die. But I also didn’t know what time it was.

Apple Watch authentication expanding beyond unlocking your Mac in macOS 10.15 (9to5Mac)

According to sources familiar with the development of macOS, the next major version of the operating system will allow users to authenticate other operations on the Mac beyond just unlocking the machine with their watch.

I love being able to unlock my Mac just by wearing the watch and standing close to the Mac, since I have a long and complicated computer password. And the security implementation underlying the watch-to-unlock tech is awesome as well.

But being able to do even more authentication via the Apple Watch (aside from watch-to-unlock and Apple Pay) is something I'm excited about. Many say the AirPods are the best brand-new product Apple's come out with in a while. While I really love my AirPods, I put the Apple Watch higher in my value list.

#fridayfinds

Last weekend, Amy and I listened to an episode of NPR's Invisibilia called A Very Offensive Rom-Com.

It centered around a “woke” Chinese American woman's romantic/sexual quest to find love. While looking for that love, she realized she was only engaging white men. And that led her on a quest to understand the cause of her (subconscious?) selection bias.

I do recommend you listen to the episode before continuing on...

...

...

...

Okay, ready?

While well done (as Invisibilia usually is), the episode left both of us unsatisfied because we had so many questions to which there were no answers given to us in the episode, mostly around the subject's childhood and the level of exposure to her ethnic culture. Based on anecdotal, personal experience, I have my own unverified assumptions as to why some minority Americans who are raised by their biological, minority parents are only attracted to white Americans.

  • Maybe they didn't spend a lot of time with their ethnic group growing up as kids.
  • Maybe they grew up in very white, homogenous schools in very white, homogenous towns.
  • Maybe they went to very predominantly white colleges/universities, after spending their childhood in very white, homogeous K-12 schools.
  • Maybe their minority parents didn't want them focusing on their ethnic culture so as to be successful in a largely white America.
  • Maybe they weren't exposed enough to any native ethnic media where the romantic characters looked like them.
  • Maybe their minority parents are highly educated, white collar professionals, thus increasing the chance that they're surrounded by white colleagues, friends, and children.

What do you think?

And so it is, folks. After getting my first email response from Facebook Support on March 19, I have finally received my download link, downloaded all of my data, and deleted my account.

Before last night, I was requesting a download of my data via a browser the entire time. But last night, I decided to download the app on my iPhone again and request the download there.

I received a link not an hour later.

The moral of the story? I dunno. I'm just glad Zuckerberg's not explicitly profiting off of my data anymore.

...Right?

#socialmedia

The Stages of Relationships, Distributed (FlowingData)

Based on data from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey, the chart shows that people typically wait longer to get married and live together sooner now than they did several decades ago.

This is a super cool animated infographic.

Does the Air Fryer Deliver on Its Golden Promise? (NY Times)

Could air fryers really be the best kitchen innovation since my beloved electric pressure cooker, or is it all just too good to be true?

The Myth of Beto O’Rourke (The Atlantic)

When Elizabeth Warren lost her voice in the middle of her weekend tour of Iowa in January, some sneered that she was showing her age. When O’Rourke’s voice was cracking hoarse by the end of his third rally of the day in Texas, that was taken as proof of his passion, and how much of himself he’s thrown into the race.

DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES FOR ADULTS (McSweeney's)

This is pretty funny, in a chuckling “yeah that's true” way.

#fridayfinds

Oh dear me. I forgot a critical step in The Guide.

In Step 2, when you create a contact for yourself, you're supposed to then go into Settings > Contacts > My Info, and then set your own contact.

My apologies to the maybe 2 people that found the guide valuable but were left confused when certain things may not have worked!

#apple

UPDATE: This guide is missing a critical detail for step 2 below which I write about in a separate post.

(If you don't want to read the intro, go straight to my Guide.)

I use Siri a lot. When I mention that to people, the common response (outside of my very techy company) is, “Really? Huh. I don't really use Siri much.”

When I ask why, I usually hear one or more of these reasons for why they don't use Siri:

  • “Siri sucks. It never does what I want or ask. (Insert other voice assistant) is way better.”
  • “I feel weird talking to gadgets out loud.”
  • “I just don't know how to use it.”
  • “I don't find digital voice assistants useful in general.”

The first point is very understandable. I believe it's because Siri suffers from a marketing problem. To best understand Siri, I tell people to think of it like an iOS actions assistant. That is, whatever iOS-related actions need done, there's a strong chance Siri can do it for you. It is not a random internet search and trivia assistant, although it can do a bit of that. Google Assistant will always run circles around Siri on internet queries.

On the second point, I don't use Siri much in public, surrounded by randos. Heck, I still feel weird using Siri in front of friends. I do, however, use it very comfortably at home. But if it's weird to talk to your gadget at all, well, the guide is a good way to get over it.

My post is for you if you fall mostly in the 3rd and 4th reasons bucket. Well, also the 1st because you're using it wrong. 😏

Lastly, I won't go into more advanced Siri usage on this post, especially with Siri Shortcuts. While it's awesome, it'll make this post too long. I might do it in a part two.

Okay let's get to it.

Dan's Guide to Siri: The Basics.

  1. Turn on and set up “Hey Siri” on your iPhone 6s or newer by going to Settings > Siri & Search > Listen for "Hey Siri".

    PRO TIP 1: When (re-)training the device, hold your iPhone at arms length and turn your face slightly away. This trains the iPhone to understand your voice from a distance. My experience seems to suggest that using “Hey Siri” worked better with every subsequent iPhone. For example, it's near flawless on my iPhone XS and I can invoke it from across the room without having to yell obnoxiously. When I used it with my iPhone 7, it wasn't as reliable. YMMV.

    PRO TIP 2: Destroy the stereotype that assistants are women. Change your Siri voice to male in Settings > Siri & Search.

  2. Create a contact for yourself and fill it out as much as you can, including addresses, your birthday, and especially related names. Then, for those friends and family close to you, fill out as much of their contact info as possible too.

  3. Even if you don't use them, set up your accounts on Apple's first-party Mail and Calendar apps. Then turn off all notifications for those apps in Settings > Notifications. If you want, set up Apple Reminders too.

    PRO TIP 3: Using Siri for Find My Friends is nice, and best used for family.

  4. With all that set up, let's use Siri.

    PRO TIP 4: When you say “Hey Siri,” you don't have to wait for the chime prompt to state your command. Just say the whole command straight through. You'll hear the chime afterwards, indicating receipt (this isn't the case on Apple Watch and AirPods).

    Here's a handful of commands I actually use on a frequent basis:

    • Hey Siri, call [brother's name] at work on speaker.
    • Hey Siri, what’s the weather today?
    • Hey Siri, what my schedule today?
    • Hey Siri, where's [family member on Find Friends]?
    • Hey Siri, set a timer for [length of time].
    • Hey Siri, open [app].
    • Hey Siri, play [artist, album, song, playlist, radio].
    • Hey Siri, tell [friend] “I'll pick you up at 7. Sound good?” (you have to say “question mark”)
    • Hey Siri, take me to [restaurant].
    • Hey Siri, take me home.
    • Hey Siri, go to [website].
    • Hey Siri, remind me to brine the chicken breast when I get home.
    • Hey Siri, how many cups are in 3 liters?

    If you want a comprehensive list of Siri commands, Computerworld has a good one.

  5. Hey Siri works great on the Apple Watch. In fact, since I'm usually wearing the Apple Watch, half of my “Hey Siri”-ing throughout the day is invoked on it. Just raise your wrist to wake the watch, and “Hey Siri...”. Some commands won't be fulfilled to completion on the watch, however. In those cases, Siri will direct you to the iPhone to complete the command.

    PRO TIP 5: Starting with Series 4, you don't need to say “Hey Siri” before your command. Simply state your command by raising your watch so the watch face is perpendicular to the ground. In my experience, however, non-“Hey Siri” invocation isn't very reliable, so I stick with “Hey Siri”-ing first. I suspect it'll get better with every subsequent Apple Watch.

  6. With the new 2nd generation AirPods, you don't need to tap one of your AirPods to invoke Siri. It has always-on “Hey Siri”, ready to execute your command. Nice.

  7. Okay last one. Unlike the HomePod, with its far-field microphone array surrounding the speakers, using “Hey Siri” on your iPhone does not play nice when you're also playing audio from the iPhone speakers. No space for a far-field mic array.

#apple