James Wester

Life can be very difficult sometimes. This is my dog eating a cucumber. You’re welcome.

This is one of the only remakes I want to see. (And I mean Logan’s Run, not the musical Carousel.)

@nickgillespie That is one of my favorite factoids about Texas road trips: Halfway from Texarkana (furthest east in Texas) to LA is still in Texas. But I never knew anyone (until now!) who had done it!

When I moved from LA to Huntsville, TX, the halfway point was El Paso, TX.

This starts with an SR-71 being shot down. With bullets. From a fighter. Yes, some red flags indeed.

@GenTXer2 The current recommended starting word for Hard Mode is now LEAST. I find it works pretty well. (It was CLASP but changed sometime in June.) Also, the Wordlebot is a jerk.

Out of curiosity: For those who play WORDLE, what is your starting word? My current word is "STEAM" but thinking of changing.

I heartily disagree. If you spend your life writing and editing, AI writing is still obvious for its blandness.

So @scottew expressing something that is becoming more apparent to me every day: all-remote really benefits those who are established or experienced. Add to that our attitude towards deploying AI to do "entry level" work and we are about to gut our pipeline for mid-level talent.

@dgwbirch LOL. Exactly.

@jameswester It's always better to be ripped off on f/x by your own bank rather than by the foreign acquiring bank, so always decline DCC.

I have been in this business for a very long time, and I still forget how to answer dynamic currency conversion prompts. ("Wait. Which do I choose? Yes? No?) The rule of thumb is if they do work for you now ("dynamic"), you pay for it.

@patio11 This is a good primer. I still forget and just click through without thinking.

Attempted to get USD from a Japanese debit card at a U.S. ATM (yeah, weird even for me) and was presented with a screen clearly designed to bamboozle a tourist into paying 13.5%, and thus will repeat the industry advice: if a machine asks you if it can convert currency, answer No

Suggested next target.

Sam Neill. "I would like to have seen Montana." Maybe the best last words of a character ever. RIP.

@Coinmaster100x Of course they can. That's not the point of what I said.

@jameswester laws can be followed and still debated

For those who seem to forget: It's not a "loophole" if it is exactly as the law intended. No one is exploiting a "loophole" if they are following the exact letter of the law. What you are talking about is a law you don't like. (And you may be right to not like it.)

True story: “Randolph Mantooth” was the name I would occasionally give to hostesses and maître d's. It was such an awesome name and sounded great. “Table for Mantooth.” RIP

Today is a historic day for Circle, and I think symbolic of a much bigger evolution in the architecture of the emerging internet financial system. Circle has received final approval from the OCC to operate as a national trust bank. We have been granted a charter for First National Digital Currency Bank, NA. Over 10 years ago, as we were forging the concepts of Circle, we believed a new kind of national bank would ultimately be needed to issue full-reserve dollar digital currency. This was before USDC even existed. The vision was clear: a new base layer of money on the internet would be necessary, and for it to reach widespread use, it needed to operate under national banking supervision. Years later, after launching USDC and achieving strong product-market fit, I wrote that we sought a charter for a full-reserve digital currency bank. Then, through a half-decade of work with policymakers and regulators, we saw the GENIUS Act codify into federal banking law a framework for these safe, efficient, and technologically superior digital dollars. Launching and operating as Circle National Trust, we will offer custodial services for digital assets, including stablecoins and other tokenized assets, held to the highest standards afforded under Federal national trust bank supervision. As the GENIUS Act approaches full implementation in early 2027, we are now poised not only to be supervised by the OCC, as required by law, but to bring critical components of USDC's operation and reserves into this structure. This is all part of building a new fundamental money layer for the internet. A layer that can scale from an AI agent paying another AI agent in fractions of a second for fractions of a cent, to retail transactions, to investments, trading and lending, to the largest wholesale transactions between global systemically important institutions. All of this needs a form of money and regulated infrastructure that can support the entirety of this new internet-native economic system. A new architecture for money on the internet has arrived. It is now being hardened into an edifice the world can trust and build on. We are thrilled to be the first of a new cohort of firms establishing this kind of banking infrastructure. Jeremy

Highly recommend this piece by @rosehorowitch. And I also highly recommend not reading any of the replies to @DKThomp because it will break your heart. (It's scores of people arguing about the death of reading who have clearly not read the article on the death of reading.)

The point here about what books *are* selling is so depressing. People walk past Roth and Faulkner and Bellow to read YA Elf Slop IX: An Elven Wedding theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/…

I just finished a spreadsheet that has taken months. It has multiple sheets and a lot of interconnected lookups and formulae. I just tested it, and it works. This is what it must be like for recording artists to hear a final mix and think, "That's a hit." Except really dull.

I sat for entirely too long trying to figure out what regulatory agency the "SCCOP" is. Regardless, this is good news if it can be passed soon.

@JeffMarsico I sound classy, right?

@jameswester Do you live in an Italian mountain village?

Goat cheese, watermelon, and balsamic vinegar glaze. (Works with strawberries too.)