Ben Johnson Brings Bombastic Bears viBes

Dec. 3rd, 2025 08:01 am
[syndicated profile] thedrawplay_feed

Posted by DrawPlayDave

https://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/ben-johnson-brings-bombastic-bears-vibes/

https://www.thedrawplay.com/?post_type=comic&p=11589

BEAR DOWN

Let’s talk Bears. Maybe the biggest surprise of the season to this point. Chaos kings. They currently sit at 9-4 as the #1 seed in the NFC (purely through tenuous tiebreakers as the Rams, 49ers, and Seahawks also have 9 wins, but still). After losing their first 2 games, they’ve won 9 of their last 10. Most of these wins have been scrappy, difficult affairs featuring numerous lead changes and gutsy comebacks. Ben Johnson went viral after beating the Champions in Philly on Black Friday after he tore off his shirt and yelled a lot. It was not the first time he has been caught yelling like a psycho in the locker room. The vibes are immaculate. Even if the Bears stumble down the stretch, this season has been a roaring success.

As I said in the Chaos Report, I was skeptical of BJ. Many were. He seemed to be a delightfully creative offensive mind, but the league is littered with quality coordinator minds that cannot handle the actual head coaching position. Ben Johnson seemed like a football nerd in the vein of a Shanahan or McDaniel, a guy with impeccable creativity and understanding of the X’s and O’s but not necessarily the “leader of men” mindset that coaches need. McDaniel is a super football nerd, but would you go to war for that little dweeb? I’m not running into battle for a guy who looks like he’d quote Gandalf in his halftime speech. (This is not LoTR slander, this is dork slander)

Brandon Staley was a creative football dork and he sucked. Matt Patricia was supposedly one of the “smartest men in football” but he was actually a big fat asshole who wore a pencil in his ear. Johnson could end up like either of them, or he could be Shanahan, a good football dork. Turns out I was not familiar with Ben Johnson’s game. Dan Campbell loved this man for a reason. Ben Johnson is a football sicko. He’s right off the Campbell block. Ben Johnson has the juice and he’s pouring it on the league.

The funny part is that everyone was hoping he’d fix Caleb and whatnot but he’s done it via the running game. Caleb is playing better football than last year for sure but he hasn’t taken the leap forward that you’d hope. He’s still got accuracy problems, especially when improvising. He’s not on pace to get the elusive 4,000 yards (but he has a chance). But the Bears are running over people so he doesn’t need to be a hero. In Philadelphia, on a short week, against the championship defence that sent the Chiefs into hell, the Bears absolutely steamrolled through with a ground game that makes everyone envious. 28 first downs, 17 of them rushing. 281 yards rushing. Both Swift and Monangai had over 100 yards each. They just kept bullying the Eagles.

I don’t think the Bears are likely to keep their current perch as the #1 seed. The Packers, who they haven’t faced yet, are 1 game behind them. The Lions, who they lost to once and play in week 18, are 2 games behind them. 3 teams in the NFCW are tied with them for wins, and they are playing SF later this year. The Browns (who have a stifling defense) are the easiest team remaining on the schedule. Their schedule up to this point hasn’t been murderers’ row and compared to every other good team they have a very low positive point differential. But the vibes are good, and sometimes the vibes are the key to victory. Ben has these guys believing in themselves. He has changed the culture. He’s been the kind of hire you want out of a new coach. It frightens me to think how good this team could be next year after the leap they’ve made.

So good for Da Bears. I hope they stay where they are at the top. I love watching this team.

The post Ben Johnson Brings Bombastic Bears viBes appeared first on The Draw Play.

https://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/ben-johnson-brings-bombastic-bears-vibes/

https://www.thedrawplay.com/?post_type=comic&p=11589

To Learn to Love Again

Dec. 3rd, 2025 03:49 am
[syndicated profile] baseball_rpf_ao3_feed

Posted by SusSoes

https://archiveofourown.org/works/75160451

by

After Carlos Correa left to sign with the Minnesota Twins, Jose Altuve thought he would never love again. His best friend and lover of seven years had chosen money over him. Years passed and once-electric feelings slowly grew cold. Until one day, Altuve received a phone call with a voice he never expected.

"I'm coming home, Jose."

Words: 1068, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

https://archiveofourown.org/works/75160451

Look How They Massacred My Boy

Dec. 3rd, 2025 02:37 am
[syndicated profile] daringfireballfeed_feed

Posted by John Gruber

https://fxrant.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-mad-men-in-4k-on-hbo-max-debacle.html

Todd Vaziri, on the HBO Max Mad Men fiasco:

It appears as though this represents the original photography, unaltered before digital visual effects got involved. Somehow, this episode (along with many others) do not include all the digital visual effects that were in the original broadcasts and home video releases. It’s a bizarro mistake for Lionsgate and HBO Max to make and not discover until after the show was streaming to customers.

I decided to help illustrate the changes by diving in and creating images that might do better than words. The first thing I noticed is that, at least for season one, the episode titles and order were totally jumbled. The puke episode is “Red in the Face”, not “Babylon”.

So HBO Max not only ruined several episodes by “remastering” the wrong footage, but they both mis-numbered and mis-titled the episodes. Breathtaking ineptitude. Think about it. This is the entire raison d’être — streaming high quality movies and episodic series. That’s the one and only thing HBO Max does. And they have zero care or craft for what they do. They didn’t just do this to any show. They did it to one of the most cinematically beautiful and carefully crafted shows ever made.

Vaziri’s post, as is his wont, is replete with illustrated and animated examples of the mistakes in HBO’s versions compared to the correct originals available from AMC and iTunes. Vaziri notes:

The fun thing about this restoration mistake is that now we, the audience, get to see exactly how many digital visual effects were actually used in a show like “Mad Men”, which most would assume did not have any digital effects component. In this shot, not only were the techs and hose removed, but the spot where the pretend puke meets Slattery’s face has some clever digital warping to make it seem like the flow is truly coming from his mouth (as opposed to it appearing through a tube inches from his mouth, on the other side of his face).

https://fxrant.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-mad-men-in-4k-on-hbo-max-debacle.html

HBO Max Butchers ‘Mad Men’ in Botched ‘Remastering’

Dec. 2nd, 2025 11:48 pm
[syndicated profile] daringfireballfeed_feed

Posted by John Gruber

https://www.wired.com/story/hbo-maxs-mad-men-barf-scene-proves-remastered-doesnt-mean-better/

Alan Sepinwall, writing for Wired (News+ link in case Wired’s paywall busts your balls):

Last month, HBO Max announced a major new addition to its library. Not only would the streamer be adding Mad Men — a show that HBO execs infamously passed on back when Matthew Weiner was a writer on The Sopranos — but it would be presenting the period drama’s episodes in a new 4K remastering. This would, according to the press release, give “audiences and longtime Mad Men fans the opportunity to enjoy the series’ authentically crafted elements with crisp detail and enhanced visual clarity.”

As it turned out, there was perhaps too much clarity. Not long after the series went live on HBO Max, a screencap began floating around social media from a scene in the Season One episode “Red in the Face,” where Roger Sterling is vomiting in front of a group of horrified Sterling Cooper clients. When it aired — and in the version still available on AMC+ — seven men are onscreen, all of them wearing period-appropriate suits and ties. The HBO Max version, on the other hand, features two men who appear very out of place in 1960: crew members lurking in the background, feeding a hose to create the illusion that actor John Slattery is puking.

It’s not like the crew members are only partially on-screen, or out of focus far in the background. They’re right there. It’s glaringly obvious that no one at HBO Max even watched this. That’s how rotten the culture at Warner Bros. Discovery is. They obtained the rights to one of the greatest TV shows ever made (one that I personally hold alongside The Sopranos as my favorite ever), processed the episodes in some sort of “remastering” that did not need to happen, and didn’t even bother to watch the fucking new versions they produced before putting them on their service for the world to stream.

AMC+ has the entire original series, as originally broadcast, and it looks gorgeous. I bought all seven seasons from iTunes back in the day, and they look as good, if not better, in those versions. David Zaslav — a well-known idiot — should go to prison for this.

https://www.wired.com/story/hbo-maxs-mad-men-barf-scene-proves-remastered-doesnt-mean-better/

The Night the Angry Birds Went to John Cena's Show and Saw the Muppets

Dec. 2nd, 2025 11:19 pm
[syndicated profile] baseball_rpf_ao3_feed

Posted by Cosctcoy

https://archiveofourown.org/works/75149461

by

It's been a long time since the Angry Bird™ Pigs saw John Cena, I think it's safe to say they had a celebration after his big game- let's just say Oscar brought the oil and Wally brought his game face... 👀 They're ready to get this show on the road (if you catch my drift), so come with me as I tell you the story of The Night the Angry Birds Went to John Cena's Show and Saw the Muppets. Let's begin.

Words: 581, Chapters: 2/4, Language: English

https://archiveofourown.org/works/75149461

Apple to Resist Order in India to Preload State-Run App on iPhones

Dec. 2nd, 2025 11:05 pm
[syndicated profile] daringfireballfeed_feed

Posted by John Gruber

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/apple-resist-india-order-preload-state-run-app-political-outcry-builds-2025-12-02/

Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil, reporting for Reuters:

Apple does not plan to comply with a mandate to preload its smartphones with a state-owned cyber safety app and will convey its concerns to New Delhi, three sources said, after the government’s move sparked surveillance concerns and a political uproar.

The Indian government has confidentially ordered companies including Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi to preload their phones with an app called Sanchar Saathi, or Communication Partner, within 90 days. The app is intended to track stolen phones, block them and prevent them from being misused.

The government also wants manufacturers to ensure that the app is not disabled. And for devices already in the supply chain, manufacturers should push the app to phones via software updates, Reuters was first to report on Monday. [...]

Apple however does not plan to comply with the directive and will tell the government it does not follow such mandates anywhere in the world as they raise a host of privacy and security issues for the company’s iOS ecosystem, said two of the industry sources who are familiar with Apple’s concerns. They declined to be named publicly as the company’s strategy is private.

The second source said Apple does not plan to go to court or take a public stand, but it will tell the government it cannot follow the order because of security vulnerabilities. Apple “can’t do this. Period,” the person said.

To my knowledge, there are no government-mandated apps pre-installed on iPhones anywhere in the world. I’m not even sure how that would work, technically, given that third-party apps have to come from the App Store and thus can’t be installed until after the iPhone is configured and the user signs into their App Store Apple Account.

The app order comes as Apple is locked in a court fight with an Indian watchdog over the nation’s antitrust penalty law. Apple has said it risks facing a fine of up to $38 billion in a case.

This is another one of those laws like the EU’s DMA, where maximum possible fines are based on a percentage of global revenue. No one in India seems to actually be threatening any such fine, but it’s ludicrous that it’s even possible.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/apple-resist-india-order-preload-state-run-app-political-outcry-builds-2025-12-02/

Pinch Hit #68

Dec. 2nd, 2025 03:39 pm
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits
We are down to one open pinch hit! It is due at the main assignment deadline of Wednesday 17 December at 9pm UTC.

Comments are turned off for this community. To claim a pinch hit, please email the mods at yuletideadmin@gmail.com and:
  • Include the pinch hit number in the subject line
  • Include the recipient’s AO3 name in the subject line
  • Include your AO3 username in the body of the email

For example, if your AO3 username is yuletidehippo and you want to claim Pinch Hit #42 for AwsomRecip, you might email us with the subject line “PH 42 for AwsomRecip” and “I’m yuletidehippo on AO3” in the body of the email. As was the case previously, if you don’t receive a reply you did not get the pinch hit.

Also! We now have a pinch hitters' prompts post! If you weren't signed up and you're pinch hitting, your rare fandom prompts are very welcome!


PH #68: Тайны дворцовых переворотов | Secrets of the Palace Revolutions (TV 2000), Hotel Portofino (TV), Война и мир - Лев Толстой | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Request 1 by Alley_Skywalker
Тайны дворцовых переворотов | Secrets of the Palace Revolutions (TV 2000)
Characters: Ivan Alekseyevich Dolgoruky (Secrets of the Palace...), Pyotr II Alekseyevich | Peter II of Russia (Secrets of the Palace...)
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags (if 0: any from tag set)

Please see letter for prompts and squee (and better readability for Likes/DNWs)!
General Likes:
A focus on the romantic/emotional aspect of a relationship and some semblance of a plot/point rather than just sex | mutual pining | secretly requited pining | complicated relationship dynamics | relationships that take some effort/time to work | loving each other but because [insert reasons here] not always being able to be together/communicate those feelings | UST | romantic partners who just can’t help but adore each other | kissing | face touching | forehead and hand kisses (esp. for comfort or as shows of devotion) | hugging | holding hands | non-sexual physical contact in general | praise kink (in the sense that there’s a lot of emotional investment in and getting-off on getting praised or otherwise acknowledged as worthwhile) | hurt/comfort!!! | LOYALTY KINK | themes of loyalty in general | conflicted loyalties | protectiveness and self-sacrifice | friendship | family (dynamics) | platonic love | backstories and childhood fics | fluff and banter | cuddling/snuggling | well-rounded characters | characters with emotions/sympathetic motives | the “other side of the story | politics and intrigue | worldbuilding especially in fantasy and historical settings | romantic asexual characters and asexual romances.
General DNWs (see letter for caveats on some of these):
Humiliation | noncom/rape | incest (unless requested or canon; doesn’t include cousins) | ships with 10+ years age gap (unless requested) | minors under 16 in sexual/romantic relationships with adults | Explicit rating and PWPs | above T rating in art | healing cock | BDSM and D/s | A/B/O | kink involving pain, humiliation or feature bodily fluids | foot kink | mpreg | cross-dressing | non-canon genders/gender headcanons | genderbending/genderswap | crack!fic | age regression & age play | AUs other than Canon Divergence (includes e.g. non-canon supernatural creatures/magic, soulmate marks, etc) | crossovers | time travel | apocalypse/post-apocalypse scenarios (unless canon) | gore | urine/feces | depictions of vomit(ing) beyond a cursory mention | non-canon permanent injuries/disabilities | (physical) torture | positive portrayals/framing of parental favoritism | narrative implications that “sex = love” or that romantic partners HAVE to have sex to have a “valid” relationship or to be “really” in love.
Gifts are enabled ❤

Letter:
https://alley-skywalker.dreamwidth.org/82828.html

Request 2 by Alley_Skywalker
Hotel Portofino (TV)
Characters: Anish Sengupta, Lucian Ainsworth
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags (if 0: any from tag set)

Please see letter for prompts and squee (and better readability for Likes/DNWs)!
Lucian/Nish is OTP ❤
General Likes:
A focus on the romantic/emotional aspect of a relationship and some semblance of a plot/point rather than just sex | mutual pining | secretly requited pining | complicated relationship dynamics | relationships that take some effort/time to work | loving each other but because [insert reasons here] not always being able to be together/communicate those feelings | UST | romantic partners who just can’t help but adore each other | kissing | face touching | forehead and hand kisses (esp. for comfort or as shows of devotion) | hugging | holding hands | non-sexual physical contact in general | praise kink (in the sense that there’s a lot of emotional investment in and getting-off on getting praised or otherwise acknowledged as worthwhile) | hurt/comfort!!! | LOYALTY KINK | themes of loyalty in general | conflicted loyalties | protectiveness and self-sacrifice | friendship | family (dynamics) | platonic love | backstories and childhood fics | fluff and banter | cuddling/snuggling | well-rounded characters | characters with emotions/sympathetic motives | the “other side of the story | politics and intrigue | worldbuilding especially in fantasy and historical settings | romantic asexual characters and asexual romances.
General DNWs (see letter for caveats on some of these):
Humiliation | noncom/rape | incest (unless requested or canon; doesn’t include cousins) | ships with 10+ years age gap (unless requested) | minors under 16 in sexual/romantic relationships with adults | Explicit rating and PWPs | above T rating in art | healing cock | BDSM and D/s | A/B/O | kink involving pain, humiliation or feature bodily fluids | foot kink | mpreg | cross-dressing | non-canon genders/gender headcanons | genderbending/genderswap | crack!fic | age regression & age play | AUs other than Canon Divergence (includes e.g. non-canon supernatural creatures/magic, soulmate marks, etc) | crossovers | time travel | apocalypse/post-apocalypse scenarios (unless canon) | gore | urine/feces | depictions of vomit(ing) beyond a cursory mention | non-canon permanent injuries/disabilities | (physical) torture | positive portrayals/framing of parental favoritism | narrative implications that “sex = love” or that romantic partners HAVE to have sex to have a “valid” relationship or to be “really” in love.
Gifts are enabled ❤

Letter:
https://alley-skywalker.dreamwidth.org/82828.html

Request 3 by Alley_Skywalker
Война и мир - Лев Толстой | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Characters: Anatole Vasilyevich Kuragin (W&P), Fyodor "Fedya" Ivanovich Dolokhov (W&P), Elena "Hélène" Vasilyevna Kuragina (W&P)
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags (if 0: any from tag set)

Please see letter for prompts and squee (and better readability for Likes/DNWs)!
Ship preferences for this request: Dolokhov/Anatole, Dolokho/Helene, Anatole/Dolokhov/Helene
General Likes:
A focus on the romantic/emotional aspect of a relationship and some semblance of a plot/point rather than just sex | mutual pining | secretly requited pining | complicated relationship dynamics | relationships that take some effort/time to work | loving each other but because [insert reasons here] not always being able to be together/communicate those feelings | UST | romantic partners who just can’t help but adore each other | kissing | face touching | forehead and hand kisses (esp. for comfort or as shows of devotion) | hugging | holding hands | non-sexual physical contact in general | praise kink (in the sense that there’s a lot of emotional investment in and getting-off on getting praised or otherwise acknowledged as worthwhile) | hurt/comfort!!! | LOYALTY KINK | themes of loyalty in general | conflicted loyalties | protectiveness and self-sacrifice | friendship | family (dynamics) | platonic love | backstories and childhood fics | fluff and banter | cuddling/snuggling | well-rounded characters | characters with emotions/sympathetic motives | the “other side of the story | politics and intrigue | worldbuilding especially in fantasy and historical settings | romantic asexual characters and asexual romances.
General DNWs (see letter for caveats on some of these):
Humiliation | noncom/rape | incest (unless requested or canon; doesn’t include cousins) | ships with 10+ years age gap (unless requested) | minors under 16 in sexual/romantic relationships with adults | Explicit rating and PWPs | above T rating in art | healing cock | BDSM and D/s | A/B/O | kink involving pain, humiliation or feature bodily fluids | foot kink | mpreg | cross-dressing | non-canon genders/gender headcanons | genderbending/genderswap | crack!fic | age regression & age play | AUs other than Canon Divergence (includes e.g. non-canon supernatural creatures/magic, soulmate marks, etc) | crossovers | time travel | apocalypse/post-apocalypse scenarios (unless canon) | gore | urine/feces | depictions of vomit(ing) beyond a cursory mention | non-canon permanent injuries/disabilities | (physical) torture | positive portrayals/framing of parental favoritism | narrative implications that “sex = love” or that romantic partners HAVE to have sex to have a “valid” relationship or to be “really” in love.
Gifts are enabled ❤

Letter:
https://alley-skywalker.dreamwidth.org/82828.html

Tags:

There’s a stain on my notebook where your coffee cup was

Dec. 2nd, 2025 05:55 pm

Taking flight

Dec. 2nd, 2025 05:00 pm

(no subject)

Dec. 2nd, 2025 09:11 am
lotesse: (Default)
[personal profile] lotesse
ngl it's been fun that the snow set in hard this year as soon as December was on the horizon

Comment sought on fictional 1953 rural British hotel tea

Dec. 2nd, 2025 02:55 pm
cimorene: a collection of weapons including knives and guns arranged in a circle on a red background. The bottommost is dripping blood. (weapon)
[personal profile] cimorene
An order for tea was understood by this person to include a plate piled with bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, and chips, three or four kinds of jam, scones, a heavy fruit cake, a loaf of bread, a dish of stewed fruit, and one of radishes.

— Georgette Heyer, Detection Unlimited (1953)


There is some context to this scene that I understand from other reading about the period - rationing, for example. And I've often come upon fictional hotels and pubs in the country serving much more generously than more urban and sophisticated visitors are used to.

But I don't really have a sense of how unusual this is - what a normal pub or hotel would serve for tea. I would have guessed a combination of something like beans, meat, or fish with bread and then scones or cakes, perhaps, but the beginning of this sounds more to me like an English breakfast than my understanding of a tea.

Also: is a dish of radishes just washed radishes for snacking? Or is it more slices with some kind of dressing? My parents were both fond of radishes and grew them in our garden, but I've never encountered the idea of a whole dish of them (and nothing else) on the table at a meal. (Recipes that include them, yes, but would you refer even to roasted radishes as "a dish of radishes"?)
Tags:

Updates

Dec. 2nd, 2025 02:26 pm
cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
[personal profile] cimorene
1. Wax's fatigue and stress

Wax had a breakdown about a year ago after Snookums died and we lost Anubis, the same as I did. But she hasn't really rebounded, just been scraping along as if she had the flu since then. She recently told me she thought it wasn't burnout, or anxiety, but maybe something physical related to menopause or thyroid perhaps, and she finally went to a doctor and had a bunch of bloodwork done. But it looked like it wasn't anything like that, and the doctor who gave her the results said she needs to probably see a gynecologist to check if it's related to hormones next. That was a couple of weeks ago, and she hasn't done it yet - she seems to have been alarmed by some vagueness about how the referral process is gonna work. This is her work health insurance, so completely differently from how it works for me.

2. Me seeing a doctor

I got up early yesterday to call between 8:00 and 8:01 am and actually got a record-fast callback in less than 40 minutes, and this time they ACTUALLY GAVE ME AN APPOINTMENT!!! The appointment is in a week and a half, shortly after my birthday. I have a whole list of questions unrelated to this medication to ask the GP while I am there.

3. Cat training & cat divorce

The other day Tristana and Sipuli were briefly sitting calmly on opposite sites of the gate looking at each other! It only lasted for about one minute. While I was still talking to Wax about it, as we watched, Sipuli jumped down, turned in a circle, then jumped back up and tried to grab Tristana through the gate, and Tristana jumped away of course. But it's still a milestone. (I think I've seen this twice before maybe.)

Sipuli is focused enough on training now that she will keep her attention on me even if Tristana is right there staring through the gate! She only ignored me to jump on the gate once, and I ended the session immediately. Since then she has kept her attention on me in spite of gross provocation from Tristana several times.

I think I will try training them to turn in a circle next, and I've started doing this with Tristana by moving the target around to the side next to her hip so she has to twist after it a bit. (Tristana has not even realized she can touch the target with her foot instead of her nose yet. Sipuli seems to switch sort of randomly.)

4. Attempting to become less sedentary

I was doing pretty well with stretches and exercises in the last few months up until I got my driver's licence, but the week before last which I spent at that job-hunting course caused me to drop all the balls I had been juggling (balls of daily routines I mean), and I have not managed to get back to the exercise yet. Which is extra annoying because at the same time I started knitting a sweater for an 18-year-old nephew, so doing shoulder- and arm-focused stretching routines would be more useful now than it was a month ago. I spent all last week feeling exhausted and didn't get past cleaning and knitting. But at the same time, it's now pitch black by four in the afternoon and doesn't lighten until after eight. I need to dig out my sunlamp and get it set up in a good position, probably. In twenty years I've never managed to establish a lasting routine with it, but maybe I just need more practice.
Tags:

Good Advice (That You Just Can’t Take)

Dec. 2nd, 2025 09:03 am
[syndicated profile] thesphinxblog_feed

Posted by NevilleMorley

https://thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/02/good-advice-that-you-just-cant-take/

http://thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/02/good-advice-that-you-just-cant-take/

An addendum to my comment last week, speculating on the possible motives for anyone to send a fake, GenAI-produced enquiry about a possible MRes project. One of the more serious theories is that it’s a way of gathering more training data, up-to-date specialised information about a niche topic, expressed in analytical terms – either specifically to improve the generation of research proposals, or for more general purposes. But I now wonder whether it might be an attempt at refining the essay mill, “let us write your assessment task – solely for research purposes, obviously” grift, now that the bottom has been thoroughly kicked out of that business model by ChatGPT and its ilk. What you get for your money is something that has been scrutinised and refined by proper academics, so it will not just be unique but cutting-edge. And the great thing is that academics are usually eager to offer advice to potential students, so will do this all free of charge – so long as they don’t know what they’re doing.

The main reason I’m wondering this is an email this morning from someone (with an Arabic rather than Nigerian name) basking for advice on a section of their Masters thesis:

After reading your insightful work on frugality, I was greatly inspired by your perspective and the depth of your conceptual analysis. I am currently working on a section of my Master’s that focuses on the conceptual foundations of frugality and its theoretical development. I would be deeply grateful for your guidance in developing three axes of my thesis on frugality…

There’s no indication of this person’s academic background or discipline or the nature of their overall project; their three ‘axes’ are internally coherent but very vague, and nothing that couldn’t be produced by GenAI, especially if it has been fed one or more of my pieces on the topic. The summary is in fact so vague that a reasonable response would effectively require me to write a minimum of several hundred words, developing each point.

I have not written such a response – because receiving this message reminded me that I received something rather similar a couple of weeks ago, from the same account; the two main differences were that it requested comments on eight research questions rather than three research axes – and that it was introduced as part of a PhD project, not a Masters. In that case, I wrote back asking for some more information about the overall project and what the enquirer had read about frugality already (besides, allegedly, my work), and got no reply. This does make it a lot easier to give the latest message the brush-off; if it’s a real person, they need to get their story straight for a start.

The focus of the queries is consistent; given that this is a relatively minor part of my research interests, it does feel as if someone/thing wants to gather information and/or samples of academic discourse specifically about frugality. I suppose that is not a topic an enquiring AI is likely to learn much about from its techbro masters… I wonder if Ingo Gildenhard and Cristiano Viglietti are getting similar messages.

https://thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/02/good-advice-that-you-just-cant-take/

http://thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/02/good-advice-that-you-just-cant-take/

CHAOS REPORT WEEK 13: IS ANYBODY GOOD?

Dec. 2nd, 2025 08:01 am
[syndicated profile] thedrawplay_feed

Posted by DrawPlayDave

https://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/chaos-report-week-13-is-anybody-good/

https://www.thedrawplay.com/?post_type=comic&p=11579

THE WEEK IN CHAOS
–The middle months of every season are usually the most chaotic. The front-runners are usually visible, the bottom feeders clear, but everyone flawed (most teams) are duking it out in the middle as some bad teams continue to fight and some good teams continue to struggle.

This year is different. This year is genuinely, truly chaotic. Even the good teams are bad. I have no idea who is going to win anything come the playoffs. The Colts? Daniel Jones is apparently playing on a fractured fibula (the smaller of your two lower legs bones) and they’ve lost 3 of 4. The Bears? They are 9–3 with a +6 point differential and every game is an adventure. The Eagles? The offensive problems we knew, but they just got destroyed by Chicago’s run game, and the 2023 vibes are higher than ever.

The Chiefs? Despite not being out of it, they haven’t been this on the brink since Alex Smith was playing. The Broncos? They sit atop the AFC, and yet…they always seem on the edge of losing every game. The Bills are an inconsistent mess. The Bucs are injured. The Steelers are the same mid squad as always, the Ravens are shit and somehow now leading the division anyway, the 49ers are on IR, the Patriots have coasted on a piss-easy schedule so who knows how good they truly are, the Lions are inconsistent, and the Rams, despite looking arguably like the most put-together competent team in the league this year, just lost to our chaos overlord the 7-6 Carolina Panthers with a -50(!) point differential.

Normally around this time of the season we have a few easy contenders for Chaos Team of the Year. This year, the race is wide open. The Panthers are my current favorite, and it’ll be hard to argue against them if they make the playoffs. But the Bears have an argument. The Broncos have an argument. The Bills are always chaotic. The Cowboys, Texans, Jags, Ravens, Eagles, and even Bengals could pull it off depending on how December goes. This year is absolutely stupid and I could not be happier.

GIANTS CORNER
–Yeah that went about as expected. Honestly nice to watch a classic ass-kicking instead of being competitive and then collapse completely.


CHAOS OF THE WEEK
–As Thanksgivings go, this was a great one. I can’t remember the last time Thanksgiving had 3 fun games. Usually one is good, one is mid, and one is a dud. Packers/Lions was a tight fight with the QBs dueling hard. Cowboys/Chiefs was a delight and featured all kinds of cool moments, like Mahomes busting out some classic Mahomes bullshit late in the 4th. Bengals/Ravens then took the quality of the first two games and decided to get stupid. Isaiah Likely fumbled out of the endzone for a touchback and the Ravens turned the ball over pretty much every drive for maximum comedy. The game still stayed relatively close for a while too. I am going to include Black Friday in this category of Thanksgiving games, because it kind of is, and it was also very fun. The Bears running the Eagles into the dirt so harshly and the entire stadium chanting “Fire Kevin” was primo fun. Most of the weekend more or less went as expected but the holiday slate of games was fun all around and contained a bunch of surprises.

CHAOTIC MOMENTS OF THE WEEK
–Oh so now the refs correctly call the Tush Push fumble?
-I used to hate the endzone fumble touchback rule. The “worst rule in football”. I have come around to thinking it is hilarious and must be preserved. The endzone is a special place and you are not allowed to disrespect it.

THE VIBE CHECK
–I was skeptical of Ben Johnson. Hiring football nerds sometimes works (Shanahan) but just as often results in Brandon Staleys or Mike McDaniels. I was worried about Ben being a leader outside of innovative plays. I was incorrect. Ben Johnson is a sicko (complimentary) and he has the juice. The Bears vibes haven’t been this good in a decade.

The Eagles though, the vibes are through the floor. They are hacking away at the foundation in the basement with a pickaxe. Despite being clear favorites to end the NFCE winner streak and being 2 games ahead of Dallas with favorable schedule, they feel like they are falling into a ravine filled with briar patches, sharp rocks, and angry snakes. Sirianni cannot beat the charges of being “only as good as his coordinators” and his drinking buddy Kevin Patullo sucks at offensive coordinator. For being a culture guy, the culture sure seems toxic and gross right now. Sometimes I think Sirianni is a good coach who gets too much hate and not any credit thanks to Howie’s expert team building. Years like this make me think the opposite. What is he bringing to the table outside a face you want to slam in a car door?

It seems like Mike Tomlin is finally crossing the threshold of tolerance in Pittsburgh. He won the Super Bowl with Bill Cowher’s team, lost another shortly afterward, and the Steelers haven’t been relevant in the playoffs since the mid-2010’s. Tomlin is a good coach, but I think it might be time for both parties to split. Sometimes a stagnant relationship has to end rather than just be “good enough” forever.

CACKLES OF THE WEEK
–We have a new contender for funniest pick of the season

BIG OOF OF THE WEEK
-I’ve seen plenty of kicker mistakes in my life, but I’ve never seen one forget how to swing their own leg and stub their toe in the dirt.

CHAOS WATCH
–The whole league, basically? I’ve given the Patriots shit for such an easy schedule but considering how weak the top appears to be across the league, that might be enough to just sail through to the end.
– I feel like Dallas and Green Bay are destined to meet in the wildcard again. I kind of need this. Football needs this.

FRAUD WATCH
–The Bears are for real. This is not a fake team that is actually bad. But does anyone believe they are genuinely 9-3 good?
-I was unsure of how the Bengals would look with Burrow back, but they looked like a team that will be annoying, with a manageable schedule. Possible playoff hopes here.
-The Colts might be regressing to the mean
-The Panthers and Broncos are frauds but honestly? Good for them, they are having a great time.

SNUFF FILM OF THE WEEK
-The Vikings proved to me something else this weekend. It can always be worse. There are roughly 3 tiers of NFL quarterback. 1 – Starters, dudes who can function in an NFL offense consistently enough to play. 2 –  Backups, guys with flaws and limits but can also still functionally play football but relying on them is a bad idea, and 3 –  Dudes who should never be on the field. McCarthy might be ass, but we are viewing him as a starter. He’s basically a low-end backup. Max Brosmer? Max Brosmer is Nathan Peterman level, he exists to be on the practice squad and if he ever sees the field something has gone terribly wrong. This is like when the Giants had Mike Glennon and Jake Fromm. Glennon sucks. Fromm shouldn’t have ever seen the field. Guys like Brosmer are supposed to get drafted in the 7th, spend 3 years as a 3rd stringer you only see in pre-season, and vanish to end up on a coaching staff a decade later. Kevin O’Connell was actually this guy.

DISAPPOINTMENT DUCK
–The Steelers keep pretending they matter before reminding us they do not. But to look so pathetic against a bad Bills defense and get run all over? Rough.

MOST UNWATCHABLE TEAM OF THE WEEK
–The Titans are in hell. Just a completely miserable franchise.

BEFORE WE GET TO PICKS, THE CARTOON BETS FROM WEEK 13




 

————————————————————

BETS FOR NEXT WEEK – CRAB PEOPLE

TNF – COWBOYS @ LIONS
This game is so much more interesting than it would have been in week 2 or 3. The Lions are not themselves, the Cowboys are surging with a legitimately deadly offense. If the Lions lose this, things are dire for Detroit.
If the Cowboys win, I will draw Dak Prescrab

TITANS @ BROWNS
Shedeur vs Ward. Incredible how some things work out. I feel bad for Cam Ward. Forgotten on a garbage roster on a listless franchise, now forced to eat shit against Myles Garrett and will suffer unending insults by the Shedeur Cult for being drafted over him when Shedeur just has to manage his team to victory over one of the worst teams in football.
If the Titans win, I will draw Crab Ward

SEAHAWKS @ FALCONS
Should be a simple win but who knows.
If the Falcons win, I will draw Kirk Crabsons

COLTS @ JAGUARS
Big test for the Jags and Colts. If the Colts stumble here, the division becomes incredibly wide open, and everything is chaos. It’s in Jacksonville, so I’ll go Jags.
If the Colts win, I will draw Shane Steicrab

COMMANDERS @ VIKINGS
Weird to think the Vikings are better off if JJ goes back under center. Taking the Commies.
If the Vikings win, I will draw JJ McCrabthy

BENGALS @ BILLS
It would be very Bills to lose this game so that’s what I’m going with.
If the Bills win, I will draw Dalton Kincrab

SAINTS @ BUCS
Saints are just putrid.
If the Saints win, I will draw Alvin Crabmara

STEELERS @ RAVENS
Big test to see who gets blown out as the 4th seed come January. I kept thinking the Ravens would figure it out, but they can’t. They are bad.
If the Ravens win, I will draw Lamar Crabson

DOLPHINS @ JETS
Dolphins quietly aiming for a winning record despite everything. Two games to .500!
If the Jets win, I will draw Allen Crabzard

BRONCOS @ RAIDERS
Lol
If the Raiders win, I will draw Maxx Crabsby

RAMS @ CARDINALS
The Cardinals are feisty in the sense that they give teams issues but they also don’t win any of these games so is it even worth the fiestiness?
If the Cardinals win, I will draw Jacraby Brissett

BEARS @ PACKERS
As much as I want the Bears to win this, I think the team finally suffers the reality check gut punch here.
If the Bears win, I will draw Crableb Williams

SNF – TEXANS @ CHIEFS
Chiefs have to win every game from here out (basically) to make the playoffs. That’s when Mahomes turns it on. I hope Houston suffocates this in the crib but I’m still picking KC.
If the Texans win, I will draw Crab J Stroud

MNF – EAGLES @ CHARGERS
CAN THE EAGLES COLLAPSE PROPHESY BE FUFILLED? I hope so, go Chargers.
If the Eagles win, I will draw Crabber DeJean

A TIE
If we get a tie, both Crab QBs getting steamed

The post CHAOS REPORT WEEK 13: IS ANYBODY GOOD? appeared first on The Draw Play.

https://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/chaos-report-week-13-is-anybody-good/

https://www.thedrawplay.com/?post_type=comic&p=11579

A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes

Dec. 1st, 2025 02:52 am
[syndicated profile] standardebooks_new_feed

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/richard-hughes/a-high-wind-in-jamaica

After their parents’ plantation in Jamaica is destroyed by a hurricane, a group of children returning to England are kidnapped by pirates.

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/richard-hughes/a-high-wind-in-jamaica

[Sponsor] Protect Your App From Bots and Abuse With WorkOS Radar

Dec. 2nd, 2025 12:14 am
[syndicated profile] daringfireballfeed_feed

Posted by Daring Fireball Department of Commerce

https://workos.com/radar?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=q12025

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https://workos.com/radar?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=q12025

Gurman Pooh-Poohs Financial Times Report That Tim Cook Is Retiring in First Half of 2026

Dec. 2nd, 2025 12:03 am
[syndicated profile] daringfireballfeed_feed

Posted by John Gruber

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-11-23/apple-ios-27-snow-leopard-like-quality-focus-ai-features-tim-cook-retirement-mibq7jv8

Speaking of Apple executive HR news, in his Power On Bloomberg column last weekend, Mark Gurman pooh-poohed the Financial Times’s recent report that Tim Cook was likely to retire early next year (paywalled, alas, but summarized by MacRumors):

In October, I wrote that the internal spotlight on Ternus was “intensifying,” and that barring unforeseen circumstances he would be the leading candidate. But I didn’t put a date on when a change might happen. Then, around midnight two Fridays ago, the Financial Times published a report with three central claims: Apple is “intensifying” succession planning; Ternus is likely the next CEO; and Cook is expected to step down between late January and June.

The first two points are anything but revelations if you’ve read Bloomberg coverage and Power On, or have simply been paying attention to the realities of Cook’s age and tenure. The timing, however, is another matter entirely. It’s a huge deal that the FT did this: A respected publication should only predict the CEO transition date for a company of Apple’s scale with a high level of confidence — based on people legitimately in the know.

This is where I have concerns. Based on everything I’ve learned in recent weeks, I don’t believe a departure by the middle of next year is likely. In fact, I would be shocked if Cook steps down in the time frame outlined by the FT. Some people have speculated that the story was a “test balloon” orchestrated by Apple or someone close to Cook to prepare Wall Street for a change, but that isn’t the case either. I believe the story was simply false.

They can’t both be right. Either the Financial Times or Bloomberg and Gurman will have a serving of claim chowder no later than June. But as Gurman points out, the only disagreement in their reporting is regarding timing: soon vs. soon-ish.

It could be that we see something like the following next year. Current board chairman Arthur Levinson turned 75 this year, the suggested age limit for Apple Board members. So maybe he rides off into the sunset and Apple names Cook, who already has a seat on the board, executive chairman. Maybe in February, ahead of Apple’s annual shareholder meeting. Then, in the second half of the year, Cook steps down as CEO, Ternus takes the CEO job, and Cook remains chairman of the board for the next decade or so. One change at a time, with a drip-drip series of leaks to trusted business news publications, like the one to the Financial Times last month — seemingly from the board itself — to make none of it come as a surprise.

I don’t think the leak — from multiple sources — to the FT was a “test balloon” (cue John Siracusa on ATP 666 regarding “trial balloon” being the correct idiom). It was more of a “heads up, this is what’s coming”.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-11-23/apple-ios-27-snow-leopard-like-quality-focus-ai-features-tim-cook-retirement-mibq7jv8

culture consumed (November, 2025)

Dec. 1st, 2025 07:02 pm
hermionesviolin: (step into the light)
[personal profile] hermionesviolin
books
  • [Nov 4 Rainbow Book Group] Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqwšeblu LaPointe (2025) -- Coast Salish author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes -- she gets really into riot grrl and punk but also realizes just how white it is, and figures out how to integrate her Indigenous identity

  • [Nov 12 climate change book club] Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety by Britt Wray (2022) -- I know it was largely because I was tired, but I definitely wished this book was shorter

  • [Nov 19 DEI book club -- November is Native American Indian/Alaska Native Heritage Month] Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology ed. Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (2023)

  • Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe (2022) -- near the end of Thunder Song (p.194) she says, talking about her relationship with her ex-husband, "It ended. We both played our roles in that. I wrote a book about it."  Many of us at book club were interested to learn more about the life that isn't talked about in Thunder Song -- and wondered if it might be a more linear narrative (it's not particularly).

  • [Dec 2 Rainbow Book Group] Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (2021) -- baby lesbian in 1950s SF Chinatown

  • [Dec 10 climate change book club] Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee (2023, fiction) -- this read really quickly (good because it's almost 500 pages!), which was nice after having struggled a lot with reading recently. I had forgotten that [personal profile] skygiants' reiew talked about it being a Ride that was not well-served by the Serious Business cover art it got.

  • Summer at Squee by Andrea Wang (2024) -- middle-grade novel about a Chinese American kid at Chinese cultural summer camp -- gets into issues of different kinds of Chinese American identity/experience -- seen on the shelves of a local independent bookstore

  • The School for Invisible Boys by Shaun David Hutchinson (2024) -- another middle-grade novel (seen on the Most Anticipated Queer Middle Grade: January-June 2024)
    & its sequel: A Home for Unusual Monsters (2025)

  • Dragon Bike: Fantastical Stories of Bicycling, Feminism, & Dragons ed. Elly Blue (2020) -- volume 6 of the "Bikes in Space" series -- trying for light reading when I was struggling to read, and also trying to read down some of the stuff on my shelves

  • [bff book club] Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction by Shira Hassan (with Foreword by adrienne maree brown & Introduction by Tourmaline) (2022) -- finally, we finished! Our near-term plan is to pivot to lectionary preview Bible study now that bff is preaching regularly.

  • The Transition by Logan-Ashley Kisner (2025) -- trans-masc werewolf YA horror

    I first heard about this from Book Riot, Our Queerest Shelves, "12 New Queer Books Out in September 2025" (Sep 2, 2025) and was intrigued by a GR review that said: "We've all heard about werewolf analogies when in comes to transition and largely that idea has been reclaimed by the trans community as empowering, but Kisner takes it in a different direction, instead emphasizing how becoming a werewolf goes against bodily autonomy in the way that transition doesn't."

theater
  • [CST] Summer, 1976 with my mom (who graduated high school in 1977) Abby M from church (my mom was sick) [online program]
    1976. An Ohio college town. The second wave of feminism is cresting. Two very different women are thrown together through a faculty babysitting co-op and an unlikely friendship forms between Diana, a fiercely iconoclastic artist, and Alice, a free-spirited yet naive young housewife. Summer, 1976 is written by Pulitzer winner David Auburn (Proof) with Paula Plum, recipient of the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence making her CST directorial debut. She is joined by Elliot Norton Award-winning actors Lee Mikeska Gardner and Laura Latreille as Diana and Alice. In the course of 90 minutes, we are brought directly into their memories and the small moments that change the course of their lives in this funny and poignant play The New York Times praises as “sharply observant…subtly, insistently feminist.”
    This play was sadder than I had expected.  When I went back to the blurb afterward, to see what it had actually said versus my expectations, I realized it says almost nothing about the actual play -- about half of the blurb is just the credentials of the people involved.

    Googling, some sites use the phrase "motherhood, ambition and intimacy," which feels like a pretty accurate summary of the themes of the play. In Googling I also came across a WBUR review of this production.

    When the season was initially announced, Abby noticed that almost none of the plays were written by women (Silent Sky was the only one of the five). I didn't get "written by a man" vibes watching this play, but it is interesting that the Artistic Director writes in the program for this play (talking about the plays they selected for this season), "We doubled down on our mission - the feminine perspective and science wrapped within our social justice values," when only one play is actually written by a female perspective. (Yes, obviously women shouldn't be the only people writing women. And also.)
***

Currently Reading:

Nothing, apparently.

Reading Next:

It's hard for me to tell what I'll want to read next.  I've been having bouts of wanting light reading and going through my TBR and requesting a bunch of books from the library and then when they arrive finding I'm not interested in a bunch of them atm. And I don't really like reading ebooks, so I have a ton of stuff I've bought in bundles on itch that idk when I'll ever read. (Not helped by the fact that browsing on itch I have to click into a specific title to get any details on it, which does not help my "browse for something I'm in the mood for," especially when I'm tired.)

Oh, I was recently reminded of Betsy Bird's "31 Days, 31 Lists" every December, so I'll be ILLing some amount of kidlit.

I've already read my December book club books, so I guess I can list my January book club books:

[Jan 6 MPL Rainbow book group] My Brother's Husband v.1 by Gengoroh Tagame; translated from the Japanese by Anne Ishii -- I will maybe also read Volume 2, depending on how I feel about Volume 1.

[Jan 11 feminist sff book club] She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan (2021) -- which is long (and the first book in a duology), so we decided to push that meeting out into January
I'm also planning to read the 2023 sequel, He Who Drowned the World, so am planning to get an early start on these long books. Though, I mean, I'm traveling for Christmas, so I may honestly just leave this as my plane ride books.

[Jan 25? OOYL book club] A Sharp Endless Need by Mac (Marisa) Crane (2025)

In an OOYL Discord chat, Frankie said:
I love this discussion tho bc we have talked about how as sports fans, it’s hard to enjoy a sports romance without sports. But then when is it too much sport? Where is the balance?
Has anyone in here read Mac Crane’s A Sharp Endless Need? What did you think of that balance? Maybe we can do that another time—a sports romance that literally opens in scene during a game
I feel a little bit like a faker since I am not in fact a sports fan, but here I am.

Work DEI book club is taking December off. We went ahead with Muslim American Heritage Month for January.  We haven't picked a book (or a date) yet, but below is the list of books under consideration; O suggested the first book on this list, and A.D. suggested the other 5:
Tags:

John Giannandrea Is Out

Dec. 1st, 2025 10:50 pm
[syndicated profile] daringfireballfeed_feed

Posted by John Gruber

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/12/john-giannandrea-to-retire-from-apple/

Apple Newsroom, “John Giannandrea to Retire From Apple”:

Apple today announced John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, is stepping down from his position and will serve as an advisor to the company before retiring in the spring of 2026. Apple also announced that renowned AI researcher Amar Subramanya has joined Apple as vice president of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi. Subramanya will be leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. The balance of Giannandrea’s organization will shift to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue to align closer with similar organizations.

After the fiasco around Apple Intelligence and the “more personalized Siri” features — which were announced at WWDC in June 2024, but postponed until 2026 in a tail-between-their-legs announcement in March 2025 — and the executive reshuffling immediately after that delay was announced that put Mike Rockwell in charge of Siri and moved all or most of Apple Intelligence and Siri under Craig Federighi, it would have been much more surprising if Giannandrea had stayed at Apple. In fact, I’m surprised he wasn’t out before WWDC this past June.

I don’t think we need to wait for additional details to know that he was squeezed out. If, as Mark Gurman reported back in March, “Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development”, why was he still there?

As for Subramanya, according to his LinkedIn profile, he was at Google for 16 years, and left to join Microsoft only five months ago. Either he didn’t like working at Microsoft, or Apple made him an offer he couldn’t refuse (or, perhaps, both).

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/12/john-giannandrea-to-retire-from-apple/

★ Signal Secure Backups Are Now Available on iOS

Dec. 1st, 2025 10:38 pm
[syndicated profile] daringfireballfeed_feed

Posted by John Gruber

https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/signal_secure_backups_are_now_available_on_ios

Signal Support:

Signal Secure Backups can help you safely restore your chats if something unexpected happens to your device (like dropping your phone in a lake). When this optional feature is enabled, your device will automatically back up your message history so you won’t lose important data if you get a new phone or reinstall Signal.

Your Secure Backup Archive is end-to-end encrypted and protected by a cryptographically secure 64-character recovery key that is never shared with the Signal service. Without your unique recovery key, no one (including Signal) can read, decrypt, or restore any of the data in your Secure Backup Archive.

Signal’s cloud storage service is optional (of course), and available to all users free of charge. At the free tier, it will back up the complete text of users’ chat history and the last 45 days of file attachments (images, video, etc.). For $2/month (through in-app purchase in the iPhone app), Signal will remove the 45-day window on media attachments, and store up to 100 GB of attachments — which, for most users, should be their complete history. (I don’t remember how far back in time my iCloud iMessage storage goes, but, as I type this, it includes 772,004 messages and consumes 83.4 GB of storage. I have a lot of images in there. 100 GB of storage feels pretty good for $2/month. My personal Signal account backup size is just 408 MB, which jibes with my gut feeling regarding how much I use Signal compared to iMessage — about one-half of one percent as much.)

Signal first announced this feature back in September in a blog post that has a lot of technical details about how it works, but until a week ago, it was only available on the Android version. It’s still labelled as a “beta” feature on iOS. I enabled it over the weekend and signed up for the $2/month subscription — both to back up all my attachments and to support the Signal Foundation. Now that I’m paying $2/month, however, I wish they’d stop periodically badgering me for donations when I launch the app.

I’m glad this feature became available when it did, and that I enabled it over the weekend. Yesterday I set up my personal new iPhone this year, and this morning, when I tried to transfer my Signal account from my old iPhone to the new one, after claiming to reach “100%” of the transfer, and the Signal app reporting on both the old (source) and new (destination) phones that the transfer was complete, the app crashed on both phones. After that, the Signal app was in factory-fresh state on both phones, without any trace of my account history. I then restored the new iPhone from my brand-new online Signal Secure Backup, and that worked perfectly. And it somehow took far, far less time than the old device-to-device transfer — maybe one minute, versus 15 minutes or so for the device-to-device transfer that wound up failing.

Until now, transferring my Signal account history from one phone to another always felt like delivering a crate full of eggs while riding a rickety old bicycle without brakes on a bumpy cobblestone street. Every time I did it device-to-device, it felt like I’d be lucky if it worked. And my experience trying it this morning — for the last time — proved me right. Signal proponents often defended this architecture by arguing that remaining only on device was a security benefit. In some ways that’s true, but there’s nothing “secure” about a transfer feature that loses all of your data if the transfer fails. (Signal data, by design, isn’t included in iCloud backups because Apple holds a key to unlock iCloud backups for customer service reasons, unless the user has enabled Advanced Data Protection.) Permanently losing all your data is a different form of “insecurity” than having it exfiltrated by an attacker or exposed to law enforcement agencies via a warrant issued to the cloud backup provider, but it’s a form of insecurity nonetheless.

Signal’s top priority has always been protecting your data from being obtained by others. That’s a noble idea, and central to Signal’s brand. But by placing that priority so far above everything else, it meant, until now, that you’d lose your entire account history if you lost or broke your primary phone. This new secure backup system shows that your data can remain secure while also being backed up off device. I’m glad the feature is finally here, but it should have been here years ago. A user-hostile “lose your phone, lose your account history” architecture may well be “secure” in a technical sense, but it’s the sort of brittleness that’s kept Signal from achieving more mainstream use.

https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/signal_secure_backups_are_now_available_on_ios

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