Editor of Tedium, an offbeat newsletter that’s been rocking since 2015. I complain on the internet a lot, and I accidentally made a search engine.
Support what I do here: https://ko-fi.com/tedium
Interests: #writing #news #history #technology #retrotech #weird #geoworks #freelance
This week was a bit heavy for me so I’m only getting to write about The Post now, but here’s what I’ll say—WaPo was one of the few real “safe harbors” in journalism where reporters could stay for decades.
That’s now gone, and that’s really concerning.
https://tedium.co/2026/02/07/washington-post-layoffs-perspective/
new @tedium
This week was a bit heavy for me so I’m only getting to write about The Post now, but here’s what I’ll say—WaPo was one of the few real “safe harbors” in journalism where reporters could stay for decades.
That’s now gone, and that’s really concerning.
https://tedium.co/2026/02/07/washington-post-layoffs-perspective/
new @tedium
You know what makes me happy? Publishing a piece by Andrew Egan—who I haven’t had on the site in three freaking years! He’s got a great story about the plaques that show up around NYC—and the townhouse that doesn’t have one, but probably should.
https://tedium.co/2026/02/06/new-york-plaques-historic-moments/
New @tedium
Been doing some server optimizations this AM so in case udm14 or Tedium have been a bit slow, that’s why. I think I got it fixed but give a shout in case you’re still having an issue.
@nitpicking No, because they appear to be using this to put system widgets into, not menu bars.
Yeah, that’s what people want from Windows 11. Another bar to go with the first bar. Give ’em a MacOS/MATE hybrid. That’ll win over the normies.
https://www.theverge.com/news/870663/microsoft-windows-11-top-menu-bar-powertoy-experiment
RE: https://writing.exchange/@ernie/115979322915207697
If you haven’t tried it yet, now’s your chance!!!
@McNeely The open source version is quite good (and pretty customizable). If you need an alternative, there’s Harper.
@grammargirl Every editor I’ve ever had removes the ellipsis from my writing … despite the fact that I love them.
(Should note that this isn’t as bad as it seems: LanguageTool is open source and that OSS tool is trivial to install. Just a single brew command will get you up and going. Plus, it means you’re managing this all locally and not taking up their cloud resources unnecessarily.)
I sort of feel like LanguageTool should be run by a foundation. Genuinely a good tool, sad they couldn’t make the free model work anymore.
“To be clear, this is not far from where graphical interfaces for Linux and Unix variants started 40 years ago, but it’s arguably making a comeback because of a combination of sophisticated users and sophisticated tools.”
https://tedium.co/2026/01/29/niri-danklinux-scrolling-window-managers/
It took a while, but scrolling window managers are finally having a moment.
Today's @tedium talks about how the form has evolved from PaperWM to Niri, and how setups like DankMaterialShell might make it more approachable for folks sick of GNOME or KDE.
https://tedium.co/2026/01/29/niri-danklinux-scrolling-window-managers/
@emsquared so good, so fluid
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Thanks again to Amandeep Jutla for the question.
Find this one an interesting topic? Want me to do another dive? Commission one here: https://ko-fi.com/c/caf0972c99 Oh, yeah, subscribe to @tedium: https://tedium.co/
Ultimately, though, the reason we switched from two-piece bottles to single-piece is simple: Plastics technology had matured, and the old way cost more.
If you look hard enough, though, there are examples of the single-piece feet out there. I found this example of an ad promoting 4-liter (!) Coke bottles, circa 1985.
But it took awhile for the single-piece bottles to reach the market. There were numerous iterations, and Sewell was notably involved in a lawsuit with Coca-Cola around this time over unfair competition.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/720/1196/1768766/
