Your roundup of tech, culture, and nostalgia for

September 13, 2022 // Web version //

TimeMachiner. Tech, culture, nostalgia. By Aaron Crocco
Inside Today's Issue:
Jaws Bites the Box Office
A mile and a Half for a Dunkin’
Bologna Smugglers
Death to the SIM

Read to the end for a tweet showing some good autocorrect.

Hey there! Welcome to the newest issue of TimeMachiner. For those of you who are new here, thanks for giving me space in your inbox. 🙌🏻

The past week has been the start of what many call "Techtober" even though we're still in September. What this made up word means is we have now entered the season of companies rolling out new products and software to lock in their holiday lineups.

Apple and Samsung have held their events (with more to come from Cupertino) and the battle of "this year's best phone" is already happening. For most of us, this is all noise. Technology advances in such an incremental way, the days of major "wow" news from any company is few and far between. We are in some weird annual cycle of refreshes that have taken some of the fun out of new "things" for us to enjoy. I was even talking to a friend about this last week and I wish we would get updates in a more random fashion. Software that takes 18 or 24 months to come out. Or revisions to phones or computers whenever they are ready.

The video game industry follows this with new hardware coming out only once every 7+ years with a few small tweaks along the way. But consoles last for "generations" and it is always exciting to see what is new. Perhaps other industries could learn something from seeing that excitement that is gone from what they're doing.

In other news, I finished Star Trek: Strange New Worlds a couple of weeks ago and it was amazing! The final episode was spectacular and got me to delve a bit into classic "TOS" Trek with Kirk and the original crew. I won't spoil anything, but if you want fantastic Star Trek, SNW is surely a fantastic one.

Finally on the book front, I tried about five times to get into Max Gladstone's "Last Exit" but it wasn't doing it for me. So back to the library it went. This is what I love about the library, especially for the Kindle or other ereaders. You can borrow, renew, and return without ever needing to go to the physical library. The resource is truly a benefit for all. So, now I'm fully-immersed in Elliott Wink's "After IO" which is a fun space thriller / mystery. I have only had the book for a few days and the first third has gone by super quick. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Here's today's Random Factoid: Camels store water in their bloodstream, not their hump which is fatty tissue. Source

Poll of the week

Last week's results:

Would you rather speak all languages or speak to animals?

Unlike last time, there are no ties this time around! Speaking all languages would certainly go far in the modern connected society in which we all live. While I would want to know what animals are thinking, I do think being able to converse with everyone out there without practice would be super awesome.

TODAY'S POLL

Which invention from the following list would you eliminate forever from the present, past, and future?

🚵🏻‍♂️ Bicycles
💻 The internet
🖨️ 3D Printers
🏊🏻‍♂️ Heated Swimming Pools

Results will be posted in the next newsletter.

Snob Things is the weekly newsletter that carefully selects the 10 best stories of the week and other interesting things to watch, buy and buy that feed your curiosity and critical sense. It arrives every Saturday. Sign up here.



Jaws Bites the Box Office
You can't keep a good classic down. Leave it to the Spielberg movie that made everyone afraid of the water to make big bucks in a limited return to theaters. Recently national theater chains held a National Cinema Day event and movie tickets were a cool $3 to see a movie. Jaws ended up…
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A mile and a Half for a Dunkin’
Stow, Massachusettes is in a bit of a crisis. The small town that sits about 30 miles east of Boston has had the most Massachusetts of slights committed against it: the closing of its Dunkin' Donuts locations. WBZ's Matt Shearer reports that where there were once two locations in the small town, there are…
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Bologna Smugglers
The border of the US and Mexico has a smuggling problem. One that causes hundreds of pounds of meat to illicitly flow into the US. This high-value item is definitely unexpected. It's bologna. Madeleine Aggeler at Texas Monthly tells us more. The bologna arrives in darkness. Hundreds of pounds cross into the U.S. from…
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Death to the SIM
For all the hullabaloo in Apple's announcements last week, one key item was also announced: the iPhone 14 in the US will not come with a spot for a physical SIM card. eSIM, a software-only equivalent, will be the only way to go from now on. Is this a smart move on Apple's part?…
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