“After using the headset for about five days, I’m unconvinced that people will get much value from it”: Brian X. Chen reviews Apple’s Vision Pro (gift link).
The final comment:
It’s a computer for people to use alone, arriving at a time when we are seeking to reconnect after years of masked solitude. That may be the Vision Pro’s biggest blind spot.Oh well. There’s always Kranmar’s Vision Pro. Inexpensive, and good at costume parties.
Our household watched an Illinois Libraries Present event last night, a Zoom interview with Jerry Craft. I’m a fan of his graphic-novel trilogy, New Kid , Class Act , and School Trip . Some things I learned:
~ Craft’s first work was self-published after countless rejections: Mama’s Boyz , a book of comic strips.
~ He thought he’d never get beyond self-publication, as he was resolved to avoid three topics: slavery, civil rights, and police brutality.
~ New Kid, he said, made him “an overnight success” after thirty years of work.
~ Craft wanted to draw Jordan Banks, Drew Ellis, and Liam Landers as “three of the nicest kids you’ll ever meet.”
~ A live-action movie of New Kid is in development from the SpringHill Company (LeBron James and Maverick Carter) and Universal Pictures.
~ A Christian website faulted New Kid for including an “OMG.” Craft said he’d gladly change it to “Oh my goodness” if that made it possible for one more kid to read the book. (Me: But what kid says “Oh my goodness?” And they’d find something else to complain about anyway.)
~ He had to Google critical race theory after his books were charged with promoting it.
~ He draws in Adobe Photoshop with a digital pen and a Wacom tablet.
~ While answering questions, he drew, in real time, for the son of a librarian, a birthday card with Jordan on it. He has a trick to draw Jordan’s hair consistently: little hills, with two groups for the top of the head, two more for the hairline.
~ There may or may not be a fourth Jordan–Drew–Liam book.
~ Craft is now at work on an unrelated three-book project.
Coming in April from New York Review Books, The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins. The February Harper’s has excerpts. Two of them:
Another good day to think and be thankful for.I once saw Sonny Rollins, in 1993, and that still might the most exciting live music I’ve ever heard. And I saw him once again in 2006. The second time I had these pages.
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One day in the future people will be saying “Yes I once saw Sonny Rollins.”
All I’m gonna say is that anyone who reads Orange Crate Art should read Zippy tomorrow.
Moleskine, sono pazzi Now with another e-mail exchange. At least I’m getting a post out of this comedy of errors.
From The New York Times (gift link):
A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he was immune to charges of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election, ruling that he must go to trial on a criminal indictment accusing him of seeking to overturn his loss to President Biden.From the ruling:
We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results. Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count.[From a Wikipedia article about Nixon v. Fitzgerald: “The Court ruled that the President is entitled to absolute immunity from legal liability for civil damages based on his official acts. The Court, however, emphasized that the President is not immune from criminal charges stemming from his official or unofficial acts while he is in office.”]
At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches. Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter. Careful evaluation of these concerns leads us to conclude that there is no functional justification for immunizing former Presidents from federal prosecution in general or for immunizing former President Trump from the specific charges in the Indictment. In so holding, we act, “not in derogation of the separation of powers, but to maintain their proper balance.” See Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 754.
In the continuing story (parts 1 and 2) of my attempt to receive a refund for a defective Moleskine planner:
Having had no response to a January 9 letter, I e-mailed the customer-care address yesterday and attached that letter. And I got an e-mail back with the offer of a replacement planner.
I replied, explaining, as I aleady explained in an e-mail (January 8) and in my letter, that I have requested a refund because, after being promised a refund, I bought a replacement Moleskine planner from Amazon. I don’t need another 2024 Moleskine planner. I don’t need another 2024 Moleskine planner. I don’t need another 2024 Moleskine planner.
See? I’ve now told them three times.
Somehow I get the impression that Moleskine doesn’t give sufficient attention to quality control (sixteen missing pages) or customer service. I would like to be proven wrong. But I’m pretty sure that I’ll be buying a Letts or Leuchtturm pocket planner for 2025. It’ll be my first non-Moleskine since 2005.
And I forgot to mention: fountain-pen ink bleeds through the pages. Badly.
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Later the same day: I e-mailed Moleskine to say that if they will not refund my money, I will settle for a pocket notebook, black, squared. I received a reply offering me a planner (“the exact item”) or a voucher to be used on their website. I explained, for the fourth time, that I don’t need another planner. I pointed out, too, that the notebook has a lower price. And I asked: wouldn’t it be simpler to send a notebook rather than a voucher that I can use to order a notebook? No reply yet.
Fourteen e-mails so far. Two more and it’ll be one for each page missing from my defective Moleskine.
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February 7: I found a customer-service number: 833-809-9087. (How come it’s not in their notebooks? How come it’s not on the company website?) They’re going to send a pocket notebook, black, squared. I still plan to switch to Letts or Leuchtturm next year.
Related reading
All OCA Moleskine posts (Pinboard)
[“Moleskine, sono pazzi”: Moleskine, they’re crazy.]
I like seeing a comic strip in which someone is doing the dishes by hand. And I like the way Ed Kudlick does the dishes.
[Any resemblance to me is totally coincidental.]
Three weeks after publication, a factual error in the New York Times obituary for Joyce Randolph stands uncorrected:
As Trixie, Ms. Randolph played the upstairs wife who crossed her arms and commiserated with her best friend, Alice, over addlepated husbands who somehow got drunk on grape juice, found a suitcase of the mob’s counterfeit cash, invented a “handy” kitchen tool that could “core a apple” and, after waiting all year for the convention of their International Order of Friendly Raccoons, took the wrong train.Those choice — or, in Brooklynese, cherce — details make me think that the writer, Robert D. McFadden, loves The Honeymooners , so much so that he may have been writing from memory. But in the Honeymooners episode “Better Living Through TV” (November 12, 1955), Ralph and Ed do not invent the Handy Housewife Helper. The brother of one of Ralph’s fellow bus drivers has a Bronx warehouse in which someone left 2,000 of the gadgets. Ralph and Ed buy the lot for $200 and try to sell them via a television commercial.
