- Sarah Perez for TechChrunch: Kagi brings its ‘small web’ of a human-only internet to mobile devices.
I have been on the Kagi family plan since January 2024 and can strongly endorse their search service. Only later did I discover that they had Serbian roots which oly made my endorsment stronger.
The company had at some point sent out free T-shirts to subscribers, featuring their delightful dog mascot. Being bright yellow, our daughter promptly stole it from me and started wearing it at school (another one she snatched was the yellow gold Hypercritical shirt, and I think there is a pattern there). One day at school when they were learning about globalization, their teacher had them look at their shirt labels. She was wearing the Kagi shirt, and to her surprise it said “Made in Serbia”, the village of Arilje to be exact. This bloog has been on their small web list for a while, but only since two days ago did I start noticing a double-digit influx of traffic. Welcome, all who stumble upon this writing.
- Gregory Meyer for the FT: Big bargains and ‘white knuckle’ buying: inside the rise of TJ Maxx.
TJ Max and Marshall’s are, next to Costco, the favorite stores of our family’s wise shopper. This article explains why, and the mastery of their buyers is reflected in the stock price. Also reflected in the price is the decline of Macy’s, which according to my wife exists only to satisfy the need of clueless international tourists to shop there based on branding alone — at least in their DC locations.
- M. John Harrison for The Guardian: The Delusions by Jenni Fagan review – an afterlife of queues and bureaucracy
This is the book he recommends, with an excerpt on Harrison’s blog. Yes, it is on the pile
- Nick Maggiulli: Why Private School Isn’t Worth the Cost.
Because people who can get it are connected enough and well-off enough that it doesn’t make an iota of difference, except in reducing the anxiety of their striving parents. You can guess, based on the tone, where our own kids go to school.
- Om Malik: Lobster Boil.
I could not care less about OpenClaw, but Malik’s whole article reeks of undisclosed LLM-generated text. Were those original algorithms over-trained on his writing? Wouldn’t be the first time that style got to me
- Richard Griffiths: Two Million Notes and No Dictionary: Learning from Semyon Vengerov’s Cautionary Tale.
“Russian bibliographer Semyon Vengerov (1855-1920) spent his life accumulating two million filing cards, but he died before he finished the dictionaries and bibliographies he set out to create.” Was it worth it? Well, had he completed his work maybe he would have been more known in Russia, but I doubt he would have inspired half as many blog posts. Here is to being a punch line.