FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: Actor Gene Hackman, His Wife and Dog Found Dead in Santa Fe Home. Hackman was 95; his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, 64.

(No, this isn’t becoming a dead celebrity blog. It’s just there’ve been a whole bunch all at once.)

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: ‘Buffy’ and ‘Gossip Girl’ actress Michelle Trachtenberg dead at 39. Sources telling news outlets (this was ABC; saw similar on Page Six) she recently had a liver transplant, and may have experienced complications.

WELL, THAT’S NOT TERRIFYING AT ALL: Two AI phone agents realize they’re both AI, and switch to a digital language for more “efficient” communication.

tweet

This totally won’t result in world domination, they promise.

COME FLY WITH ME, LET’S FLY, LET’S FLY AWAY: SpaceX Starship Flight Test 8 could launch as soon as this Friday, February 28, at 5:30 PM CT.

(That’s 6:30 PM ET, 3:30 PM PT, and 23:30 UTC.)

UPDATE: pushed to NET (no earlier than) Monday, March 3.

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: New York Knicks Broadcaster Al Trautwig Dies at 68. I never watched the Knicks, but I remember some of his national work in various Olympic Games.

(That’s three in a row today, after Roberta and Clint. Hopefully that tapers off for a bit.)

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: Former US Secret Service agent Clint Hill has died at age 93.

Mike Rowe tells of how they met and became friends:

tweet

(Alternate link, if you’ve sworn off TwitterX.)

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: Roberta Flack, R&B Singer Known for ‘Killing Me Softly,’ Dies at 88.

I’m in the age group that, while I know “Killing Me Softly” is a Roberta Flack song, I know it most as a Fugees hit. Meanwhile, I most identify her with her duet with Maxi Priest, “Set The Night To Music”.

FLUBBING THE EXTENSION WAS BAD ENOUGH: if Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. not only doesn’t stay in Toronto after the 2025 season, but ends up as a Yankee? Fire the entire front office for letting him go.

Sure, only a week into Spring Training, it’s way too early to start fearing the worst, but Vladdy’s saying what he needs to right now: that he wouldn’t rule it out.

YOU CAN’T PREDICT BASEBALL (SPRING TRAINING EDITION): Arizona Diamondbacks DH Ketel Marte drives in three runs on a… bases-clearing sacrifice fly?

MISSED THIS WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED LAST NOVEMBER: NASCAR to Utilize Shorter “National” Course Layout when they return to Circuit of the Americas in Austin, TX next weekend. They’ll drop over a mile off the circuit length (and therefore about a minute off the average lap times), and correspondingly add laps to the race to counterbalance.

IT PAYS TO BE A WINNER. The loser, not so much.

tweet

MY FAVORITE BAND JUST DROPPED A NEW SINGLE: “Love is an Ocean” by The Midnight.

Play it on repeat.

TIPS FROM MACRUMORS: Mastering the Mac App Switcher, macOS’s version of Windows’ [Alt]-[Tab]. A few tricks in here I knew, and several I didn’t.

HOW CAN YOU NOT BE ROMANTIC ABOUT BASEBALL? Auburn’s Cade Belyeu hits ‘inspiring’ home run hours after his mother’s death.

tweet

PRESUPPOSING, OF COURSE, THAT LIFE IS INTELLIGENT HERE ON TERRA FIRMA: New theory ups the odds that intelligent aliens exist:

“Our existence is probably not an evolutionary fluke,” says Jennifer Macalady, a study co-author and microbiology professor at Pennsylvania State University. “We’re an expected or predictable outcome of our planet’s evolution, just as any other intelligent life out there will be.”

NOT YET, ANYWAY: Netflix Isn’t Adding Apple TV Integration After All, saying the appearance of their content in the Apple TV app was a “bug”, and being rolled back.

What I’m getting out of it, though, is that the integration is built and ready to go, once the business issues between the companies are ironed out.

HUFF POST: You’ve Heard Of FOMO, But What Is ‘FOBO’?

TIL the same guy coined both acronyms in 2004.

DIDN’T WE GO OVER THIS WITH THE FBI IN 2016? Apple Ordered by UK to Create Global iCloud Encryption Backdoor, says MacRumors, citing Washington Post (paywalled) reporting. Fortunately, Apple has been consistent in refusing this type of overreach, to the point of developing their encryption in such a way as to make cloud data impossible for them access, even with an order.

I MEAN, HE KINDA WANTED A DIFFERENT TROPHY, BUT… Bills QB Josh Allen wins 2024 AP NFL Most Valuable Player award.

ANDY HAWTHORNE: Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?¹

Let’s tell the truth, then: Nobody reads your blog.

At least, not as many as you’d like. Maybe a handful, maybe none. You pour your thoughts into it, craft each sentence, pick the right image — then silence. No likes, no shares, no engagement.

So what’s the point?

There’s two lies we tell ourselves:

1. If I write it, they will come. They won’t. There are billions of blog posts out there. The internet is an infinite void, and your blog is a whisper in a hurricane.
2. If nobody reads it, it’s a waste of time.

Is it, though?

As Glenn so often says (and I will, from here onward, blatantly steal), read the whole thing.

LITERAL CLICKBAIT: bet you can’t click just once.

LIQUID COOLED: One Of the Most Active Volcanoes In the World Is About to Blow, some 300 miles off the coast of Oregon by the end of 2025. Good news spoiler: due to its structure, tsunamis are not expected.

SOMETHING TO READ AND RE-READ IF YOU NEED IT (AND I DEFINITELY DO): Learning how to Actually Start things:

I eventually stumbled upon an article (that I’ve lost the link to) that talked about focusing on doing the first step as soon as possible - the real first step. I was struggling to write some documents at the time, so my first step was getting the rough draft done? Or maybe even brainstorming ideas of what to write? No, that wasn’t the real first step.

When I sit down to write documents the first thing I do isn’t making a rough draft, or brainstorming, or starting a pomodoro timer, or finding background noise, or referencing my todo list, or any of the countless other things I think I do first.

The first thing I actually do is open the damn text editor.

NEWS FOR THE NEWS READER: Reading newsletters via an RSS reader is still great, via Jason Snell for Six Colors.

As I get back into blogging and RSS reading, I should strongly consider this.

ON MY TO-READ LIST: an NSA document about Zero Trust security in information technology.

(Hat tip: nZac)

NON-OPIOID MODERATE-TO-SEVERE PAIN RELIEF? FDA approves new class of painkiller – the first in more than 20 years. With a mechanism that doesn’t use opioids, it should be non-addictive.