Marvel successfully argued in court that their action figures for some of their range were for "nonhuman creatures" and avoided paying a higher rate of tax on X-men figures. Magneto was right, that's all I'm saying.

I cannot improve on that headline. Also, if you click through to the listing and look at the pics, as American megamansions with (let's be kind and call it) a "strong aesthetic" go, this one is surprisingly bearable, and actually feels like it'd be quite liveable. Anyone got 32 million lying around that I can have?

A depressing but probably accurate analysis.

A fascinating account of one family, split into two branches, and a very clear highlight of how much many elements of race/racism are a social construct. Some sad and difficult stuff in here, and some cause for hope, too.

A perfect set of little touches makes this a must read.

Keiron is absolutely bang on here. It can be summarised as "get buy in", but the flip side is "if you want to play a reluctant-hero character who has to be convinved to do things, make sure it's very, very easy to convince them".

The writing has been on this particular wall for over a decade, and smaller indie artists have known it for a long time. What interests me is that Jimmy Iovine is now saying it.

This article resonated very, very strongly with me, and particularly this quote:

“The reason that tech generally — and coders in particular — see LLMs differently than everyone else is that in the creative disciplines, LLMs take away the most soulful human parts of the work and leave the drudgery to you,” Dash says. “And in coding, LLMs take away the drudgery and leave the human, soulful parts to you.”

I've listened to "Cross Road Blues" a number of times over the years. This really is an impressive new digitisation of a very clean and well preserved original.

And the letter he has written to the community of Apple users seems really very genuine and plausible, and I find myself wondering how many CEOs can really say the same sorts of things about their job. Obviously, being the CEO of Apple is a pretty one-of-a-kind thing, but still: how many of them feel a sense of outright joy that they get to do the job the do? As opposed to some of ghastly, competative grindset mentality or even just a weight-of-responsibility thing?

Perfect summary. Especially the "Party" one.

The World Bank abandon free market doctrine in favour of sensibly targeted government intervention. In further news, down is up, and dogs are now cats and vice versa. I jest, but this is both interesting and kinda-good-news.