Tag: google

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We’re back from the weekend with a new edition of the Pook-Emu Bee links.

1 | OpenAI builds dedicated ChatGPT experience for teens with parental controls and study features (Eric Revell for Fox Business. August 18, 2026.)
This is heartwarming and all but what if the kids just went outside and tried reading once in a while?

2 | Google Opposes Site Blocking in Europe as U.S. Piracy Blocking Plans Gain Momentum (Ernesto Van der Sar for Torrent Freak. July 11, 2026.)
Sometimes Google does in fact have a point.

3 | Mamdani plans to build temporary highway in Brooklyn Heights to fix crumbling part of BQE (Stephen Nessen for Gothamist. August 24, 2026.)
This sounds reasonable (if they can actually swing it). Sometimes the theater kid does in fact have a point.

4 | Linda McMahon: Parents Should Have ‘Every Right’ to Opt Out of AI Teaching (Jeff Poor for Breitbart. August 23, 2026.)
I agree… but missing is an explanation on how DOE would, or will, promote this in practice.

5 | Moving your Linux home folder to a dedicated drive is the distro-hopping secret I wish I knew earlier (Bobby Jack for How-To Geek. August 18, 2026.)
When I had to reinstall my OS last month, I copied my home directory in an external SSD. Somewhat more time-consuming.

6 | Lilbits: Rising RAM prices are taking a toll on PCs, tablets, game consoles, and more (Brad Linder for Liliputing. June 25, 2026.)
Good thing I have a non-insignificant number of computers and laptops. Good luck to the rest of you, however.

7 | To women, Lindsay Clancy isn’t a monster — she’s living proof of their worst fears (Natasha Pearlman for the New York Post. August 21, 2026.)
This is a very charitable take, but not as charitable as my keeping Pook-Emu Bee positive by stopping at “charitable.”

8 | Assassination Sing-a-Long: Hasan Piker Mocks the Murdered Charlie Kirk to Cheering Crowd (Jonathan Turley. August 23, 2026.)
The placement of links 7 and 8 is pure happenstance.

9 | Liquid Death and Jason Kelce’s Garage Beer Mockingly Call on Americans to Save Urine to Cool AI Data Centers (Lucas Nolan for Breitbart. August 21, 2026.)
I have yet to try Liquid Death after writing an article about it being displayed in a inadvertently humorous way last year. They wondered what would push me to purchase over-priced flavored seltzer. “I know! Potty humor featuring a retired football player who gets jobs because his current football player brother married a pop star!” They missed it by just this much.

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I’m a bit late with Pook-Emu Bee links today, but the streak continues. By the way, WordPress’s admin area looks different after the latest update. Change in color contrast. I’m not complaining.

A WACOM ONE tablet.
I ordered a Wacom One tablet on Ebay. Need to test, but looks good out of the box.

1 | Google is buying all of Spirit Airlines’ data to feed its AI models (Chris Isidore for CNN. August 18, 2026.)
Looks like AIrline training. I’ll let myself out…

2 | Frozen fruit bars recalled nationwide over possible glass contamination (Sophia Compton for Fox Business. August 19, 2026.)
Come again?

3 | Darline Graham: ‘I Was Just Honest,’ Many People Can’t Find Taiwan on a Map, Care About Other Issues (Ian Hatchett for Breitbart. August 19, 2026.)
A few weeks ago I saw the new Senator Graham give what I thought was a very savvy answer to a question from Sean Hannity about how she would differ from the late Lindsey Graham as a Senator. “Maybe she has good instincts” I thought. Then she was asked about Taiwan in a debate. “Maybe she was lucky once” I think.

4 | Army unit offers soldiers time off for ‘GTA 6’ debut if they reenlist (Patty Nieberg for Task & Purpose. August 18, 2026.)
I’m not a GTA guy but fun idea.

5 | How I browse the Web with uBlock (Hard Mode) (Untrusem. August 18, 2026.) (HT Tux Machines.)
I also use uBO on “hard mode” but I don’t use Redirector or Localcdn (I will look into this Redirector list, however).

6 | Captain in fatal NY Harbor boat tragedy is illegal immigrant: ‘Criminal is off our streets’ (Josh Christenson and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon for the New York Post. August 19, 2026.)
In addition to his myriad other problems, I will note that falsely claiming U.S. citizenship for any benefit under the act causes permanent inadmissibility.

7 | Samsung’s Hearing Aid Feature on Galaxy Buds Cleared by FDA (Samsung Newsroom. August 11, 2026.)
It would (or will) be neat with there are earbuds with FDA approval for hearing aid functionality supported by Gadgetbridge or something similar (by “supported” I mean features necessary to make them work as limited hearing aids).

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My “daily” Pook-Emu Bee links have been far from “daily” of late. As a result, my link backlog has grown to an ominous size. But today we get back on track. Tomorrow? That is always TBD, but baby steps to giant strides and all.

Photograph of a small tree in a fenced in area adjacent to a Brooklyn sidewalk at night. There is a flaring light next to the tree.
I took this photograph in the evening on April 13, 2026. I do not remember exactly where.

1. NYC subway riders push AG Letitia James to probe OMNY after extra charges, phantom fines (Haley Brown and Matthew Fischetti for the New York Post. August 3, 2026.)

I have yet to use one of the new OMNY cards. With that being said, I respect this news that the MTA is maintaining continuity with one of the charming features of the old Metro Cards.

2. Democrat Wisconsin Gubernatorial Candidate Francesca Hong Said She Left Restaurant Due to ‘Too Many Old White People’ (Paul Bois for Breitbart. August 3, 2026.)

Hong shared her story about the anxiety episode in a 2019 post on X. ‘I ate two bites of my kid’s cheeseburger at a Culver’s in black river falls and told him they ran out of ice cream. Mostly just wanted to leave bc I was on the verge of a anxiety attack,’ she said.

I’m concerned, albeit not surprised, to learn that there is apparently an online audience of communists that thinks that pretending to have “anxiety” attacks in the presence of white adults is a positive character trait. I fear that the not-so-young lady is overcompensating, and not because of the people she claims give her anxiety.

3. Gaming on the 4GB Radeon RX 6500 XT and GTX 1650 Super in 2026 — upscaling makes low-end GPUs viable for esports and internet cafes (Jeffrey Kampman for Tom’s Hardware. August 3, 2026.)

I believe my video card is a GTX 1650 Super (see obscured photo of the box from 2020). While I have not given it many stress tests since I built this computer in August 2020, I am heartened to know that it can handle some AAA slop games on medium settings. Whew.

4. Proposed ‘Green-Wood Green-Way’ gets $4M in City Council funding for outreach, design (Kristyn Brendlen for Brooklyn Paper. July 28, 2026.)

I would support this idea without the bike lane. I do not support it with the bike lane.

5. Altman’s recommendation sparks debate about AI in parenting (Holly Van Leuven for Morning Brew. August 3, 2026.)

If you have a thought which places “Altman” and “parenting” in the same sentence, the answer will always be “absolutely not.”

6. Google plans to exempt sanctioned nations from Android developer verification (Ryan Whitwam for Ars Technica. July 31, 2026.)

Paradoxically, the situation in sanctioned nations will actually provide more app freedom. And these are Google-certified phones at issue here. In places like Cuba and Iran, most phones are Android devices with full Google certification because they’re imported from other places where Google officially operates.

Eureka! Here I thought that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard was being insane because it is an Islamist death cult. But I now see that it is because they want to ensure that they maintain Android app freedom. Mr. President, please convey through Pakistan that they can keep their app freedom even if they stop being their authentic selves.

7. Hochul lets bill forcing embattled ACS to turn over records languish as another child dies in Bronx hellhole (Craig McCarthy, Jordan Donegan, and Matt Troutman for the New York Post. July 31, 2026.)

Tragically, there’s nothing new under the Sun. Rinse and repeat every few months. Another child or baby is dead and nothing changes.

8. Exclusive: UN Is Actively Obstructing US Probe Into Links Between Its Gaza Relief Groups and Hamas, as Americans Warn UN To Divorce ‘Cancerous UNRWA’ (Adam Kredo for The Washington Free Beacon. July 30, 2026.)

Getting full cooperation from UN agencies regarding their involvement with and infiltration by Hamas is about as likely as my plan to correct the Iranian government’s behavior by guaranteeing that they will retain their Android app freedom.

9. LG Monitors Fill PCs With Adware, and It’s Not Just Recent Displays (Kyle Barr for Gizdomo. July 20, 2026.)

There is no easy process to keep PCs from automatically installing these connected apps, especially since they come in quietly via Microsoft Update.

Here, running EndeavourOS on my workstation, I read about these events in Windowsland like I read about the goings on in the Central African Republic.

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Replied to I Do Not Recommend Google Hardware by Marius (マリウス)
For its first year or so, the Nexus 5 was actually a likeable phone ... Then the hardware started giving up. The battery, which had been mediocre to begin with, became unreliable and the phone would report 40% charge one moment and shut off entirely the next, and over time it began to randomly reboot and power off without any obvious trigger. The decline was not gradual either and once the battery started misbehaving, the device was effectively unusable within a matter of weeks.

I read an article on マリウス.com titled I Do Not Recommend Google Hardware. The author, Marius, goes through the issues he has had with various Google phones and tablets over the years. One of the issues, the Google Pixel 6a battery problems, struck a chord with me since my Pixel 6a was affected by the same issue (that is the reason I am currently using my 3a XL, which has been solid after I purchased it refurbished on Ebay). But one passage jumped out to me not because of Google, but rather my own BlackBerry Classic memories. The author was describing his Google Nexus 5 (I never had a Nexus 5). He explained it had battery issues:

The battery, which had been mediocre to begin with, became unreliable and the phone would report 40% charge one moment and shut off entirely the next, and over time it began to randomly reboot and power off without any obvious trigger. The decline was not gradual either and once the battery started misbehaving, the device was effectively unusable within a matter of weeks.

This anecdote almost perfectly describes my BlackBerry Classic experience. I purchased a refurbished BlackBerry Classic at the end of February 2018 after my BlackBerry Bold broke. It worked fine until about November 2018, when, on a walk to meet a friend in Williamsburg, it became non-responsive and randomly turning on and off. After a clean reset, it “mostly” worked, but the battery had issues similar to the above paragraph describing a Nexus 5. It would sometimes report 40% or 50% and suddenly turn off. The battery was especially unreliable in cold weather. By late 2020/early 2021, the phone’s performance began to slow, which was a factor prompting me to switch to a mainline Android phone in March/April 2021 (see the story of how I rescued photos from my Classic).

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I missed two days of Pook-Emu Bee links. But it is not all bad: Now we have even more links from around the web to choose from.

1. Why I Built Bubbles (Ben at Bubbles Blog. March 26, 2026.)

I’ve been an RSS obsessive for years. Hundreds of feeds, hand-picked one by one. But RSS only shows you sources you already know. New voices don’t find you there.

I added Bubbles’ Daily Briefing to my feed reader to find new articles of interest. Nevertheless, I offer my qualified disagreement with the assertion “new voices don’t find you” in a feed collection. As I argued in Feeds and Read-It-Later for Online Reading, a well-curated feed collection can serve as a discovery tool. For example, NLJ readers may have discovered many new websites and articles through my now-completed blogging wisdom project.

2. An Overdue Commemoration of Rasheed Wallace’s Atlanta Hawks Tenure (Dallin Duffy at Soaring Down South. March 20, 2020.)

In 2004, the Detroit Pistons made one of the most consequential in-season trades in NBA history, acquiring Rasheed Wallace mid-season and going on to unexpectedly win the 2003-04 NBA Championship. This article examples Mr. Wallace’s one-game pit stop with the Atlanta Hawks before being traded to the Pistons.

3. Ninth Circuit on AI Hallucinations (Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy. June 3, 2026.)

Checking citations is not difficult.

4. Whole Foods is coming to Cobble Hill’s Smith Street (Brooklyn Bridge Parents. June 3, 2026.)

Whole Foods is a bit rich for my blood. I’ll stick with Mr. Beet. (PS: I would consider this Boerum Hill, not Cobble Hill, but it is at worst one block in on the Boerum Hill side.)

5. Intel says ‘something has to give’ with memory prices — company says it ‘will continue to make sure that there are products which can take care of older memory technologies’ (Jake Roach for Tom’s Hardware. June 2, 2026.)

You would think that something has to give. But I’ll work under the assumption that my computers will need to make it into the next decade and go on well.

6. Interview with the Engineer of Uruky, a Private Search Engine (Privacy Dad. May 21, 2026.)

Interesting interview and new product. With that being said, I don’t have a use-case commensurate to paying for a meta-search tool (which is also why I have never been tempted to try Kagi).

7. Gmail Thinks I’m Stupid, So I Left (Jeremy at moddedbear.com. June 1, 2026.)

My main email is Posteo + SimpleLogin, but I use Thunderbird, which to be sure would ameliorate some (but not all) of Gmail’s problems.

8. Moldova could seek union with Romania if EU path stalls (Brussels Signal. June 2, 2026.)

As I discussed in NLJ back in June 5, 2023, there would not be much of a language barrier.

9. The Battle Over the ‘Times Square of Brooklyn’ (Anne Kadet for Curbed. May 29, 2026.)

Calling it “Times Square” is extreme. Times Square is an atrocity. But “the most Instagrammed location on the planet” has been made to be profoundly stupid by social media addicts (both tourists and locals) and vendors catering to said addicts. I would remind the people fighting against it that once you are at the point of negotiating with the vendors, you have already lost.

A blue glowing stand-up electronic "DUMBO" sign under the Manhattan Bridge. There is purple lighting in the background.
DUMBO is a Brooklyn neighborhood. The name stands for “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.” I took this photo of an electronic DUMBO sign under the Manhattan Bridge overpass on the evening of May 29, 2026.

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I have a busy day ahead of me, but not too busy for Pook-Emu Bee links. Before getting to links from around the web, I note that I just published the sixth and final part of my New Leaf Journal sixth birthday project, Be the Blogger You Want to Be (Or Read). Now watch me follow my own advice.

Photograph of the East River and Manhattan Skyline from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, with Brooklyn Bridge Park in the foreground. The sky is foggy. Off in the distance, you can vaguely see a Portuguese Flag attached to a ship docked at the South Street Seaport.
I took this photo from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade on the morning of May 27, 2026. If you squint, you can see a Portuguese Flag attached to a ship by the seaport across the river.

1. Government says 5.7 trillion yen of Japanese media was pirated last year, thinks AI could help (Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. May 26, 2026.)

I assumed by “AI could help” that the Japanese government was thinking that AI could help track down copyright infringement. Not so: “However, one of the ideas being floated by the researchers is to promote the use of AI in production to lower costs and secure profits.” Well… depending on the uptake, I suppose that could also reduce piracy.

2. Magnifica Humanitas (Peter’s Path. May 26, 2026.)

It’s on my reading list, and perhaps my future article list.

3. Zubac remembers the shock of his first NBA paycheck being cut in half (Bruno Feliks for Basketball Network. February 9, 2026.)

A star NBA center on how he learned about California tax rates.

4. Freedom 250 Announces Free FIFA World Cup Fan Zone on National Mall (Jasmyn Jordan for Breitbart. May 20, 2026.)

This isn’t what General Washington fought for.

5. Linux On Android Provides Inexpensive, Powerful Computing (Aaron Beckendorf for Hackaday. May 26, 2026.)

I should really mess around with Termux at some point.

6. Beloved NYC bakery faced stomach-churning issue before suddenly closing (Nicole Rosenthal for the New York Post. May 24, 2026.)

I’m glad I didn’t buy anything from there before it closed (it was right by my favorite spot for buying coffee beans).

7. DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search (Rebecca Bellan for TechCrunch. May 26, 2026.)

Google’s AI search push is working very well for me so far. I have not seen a dip in Google traffic to NLJ, but I have seen a big uptick in the last week and a half in DuckDuckGo traffic. While Google is my biggest referrer by a good margin, DuckDuckGo has always been second and clearly sends much more traffic relative to the size of its user-base.

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I was too busy yesterday to put together my daily Pook-Emu Bee links. I am busy today as well, but not too busy to take a link break.

Article Links

1. Six search engines worth trying now that Google isn’t really Google anymore (Amanda Siberlin for TechCrunch. May 21, 2026.)

This is a fair list but the article misses some nuance about the sources used by Startpage and Ecosia. I would add Mojeek to the selection.

2. Prosecutor charged for allegedly emailing self sealed Jack Smith Trump report veiled as cake recipes (Justin Dunleavy for Just the News. May 20, 2026.)

This scheme sounds like a lemon cake.

3. Jeff Bezos blasts Mamdani for casting billionaire Ken Griffin as a ‘villain’ in Hizzoner’s viral video filmed outside NYC penthouse (Carl Campanile and Anna Young for the New York Post. May 20, 2026.)

Mr. Bezos is not wrong. While he is on the subject of being right, can he right the wrong that is the Amazon chatbot on store pages? It evolved from Rufus to Alexa and I think it went from war crime to super war crime.

4. A before-and-after look at downtown Brooklyn’s new streetscape (Nate Berg for Fast Company. December 9, 2025.)

They did a nice job. But it is still Downtown Brooklyn. You can only do so much with all the traffic and ugly apartment and office towers.

5. Delivery Robots Take Over Chicago Sidewalks, Sparking Debate And A Petition To Hit ‘Pause’ (Alec Karam for Block Club Chicago. December 8, 2025.)

I’d welcome them to Brooklyn on the condition that they take over the bike lanes while keeping bikes off the sidewalk.

6. Pocketbook Era With Koreader (tc3. September 21, 2025.)

I have a Pocketbook Color and InkPad Color with Koreader. I have almost talked myself into buying an Era for the side buttons, but it would be a bit expensive in light of the fact that I already have two working Pocketbooks. But let it be said Pocketbook comes with my recommendation for anyone who does not “need” the Kindle or Kobo stores.

7. Firefox Should Let Users Disable Searching from the URL Bar (Terence Towles Canote at A Shroud of Thoughts. May 20, 2026.)

I enable the search box on Firefox and agree with this take. But with that being said, I have reasons for usually searching from the address bar.

Videos

Natsu Basho (May Grand Sumo Tournament) Day 10: Atamifuji vs Wakatakage (May 19, 2026.)

I won’t spoil the outcome other than saying it was a big lift.

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We are having a second consecutive 90+ degree day here in Brooklyn today’s Pook-Emu Bee links are warmer than the outside temperatures.

Photograph of an LED clock screen showing 35 minutes past the hour, indoor temperature of 84, and humidity of 51.
According to the Marathon atomic clock by window, it is 84.4 degrees F there (which is about 6 feet from my desk) and 51% humidity.

Links

1. Google Search as you know it is over (Sarah Perez for TechCrunch. May 19, 2026.)

The AIfication of Google Search is concerning but NLJ has been hitting new highs in Google Search despite my disfavoring AI cawlers via .htaccess and robots, so we’ll see if it has any effect on my numbers.

2. Japanese indie gay bar management sim Sodomy Fatale will have you serving blood cocktails to flamboyant homosexual vampires (Dorde P for Automation West. May 19, 2026.)

That title is a little bit more attention-grabbing than the one Victor and I gave our visual novel back in January-February.

3. Don’t let the old man in (Robert Birming. May 19, 2026.)

Too late. I already let myself in.

4. Fedora Retiring Its Deepin Desktop Packages (Michael Larabel for Phoronix. May 19, 2026.)

I was never tempted to try Deepin. That was apparently the right call.

5. Firefox 151 brings PDF merging, local profile backup, document PiP, and enhanced privacy (Paul for AlternativeTo. May 19, 2026.)

Local profile backup and the PDF features sound useful.

6. Matter of I-B-M-S-, 29 I&N Dec. 628 (BIA 2026) (Board of Immigration Appeals. May 19, 2026.)

Interesting Board of Immigration Appeals decision on adjudicating change of venue requests. The logic should be applicable to other motions. I have a feeling the Immigration Judge who issued decision below will be (or already is) looking for new employment.

7. LaGuardia Airport adds hologram ‘concierge’ Bridget in latest spooky invasion of AI (Brooke Steinberg for the New York Post. May 19, 2026.)

That’s not a hologram. That’s an AI generated woman on a screen. For real holograms, go read my review of A Midsummer Day’s Resonance.

Video

Natso Basho Day 8: Tobizaru vs Ura

I have been following the Natsu Basho grand sumo tournament (I’m up to date on day 9 of 11). This fight between Tobizaru and Ura on day 8 was terrific. Watch and enjoy. I watched the January and March tournaments as well and recalled the announcers discussing how popular Ura is (it was also obvious from the crowd). Ura struggled in January and March (maybe injuries?), but I got he idea. He has been doing well in May and is consistently producing exciting matches. I understand why he’s popular. Add me to the Ura fan club.

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I had been sitting down to churn out today’s edition of Pook-Emu Bee links when work fell into my lap. But it is now lunch, and lunch means it is time for links.

1. Humpback Whales Sometimes Hold Their Mouths Open for No Clear Reason. Tourists Are Helping Scientists Understand the Rare Behavior (Margherita Bassi for Smithsonian Magazine. May 18, 2026.)

Maybe they’re just messing with everyone.

2. What Trump’s psychedelics order means for healthcare (Maia Anderson for Healthcare Brew. May 18, 2026.)

In the long-run it will mean more people wandering around under the influence of psychedelics.

3. Your blog needs more photos (Robert Birming. May 18, 2026.)

That’s not a problem on New Leaf Journal but this blog could indeed use more photos. I’m on it.

4. Bloat (Herbert Lui. May 18, 2026.)

One tradeoff with being prolific is bloat.

This is not untrue. The best way to mitigate the trade-off is trying to ensure that every article or post is in some respect pleasant or useful.

5. Turning an $80 Android tablet into a Debian Linux PC (Brad Linder for Liliputing. May 18, 2026.)

I like the idea of bringing mainline Linux to Android tablets. Now let us try to expand it to tablets that do not fall into the “why did you buy that in the first place?” category. Signed me.

6. Venezuela Extradites Nicolás Maduro’s Money Man Alex Saab After Biden Freed Him (Christian K. Caruzo for Breitbart. May 18, 2026.)

Sounds like a big shift in Caracas’ thinking. Did something happen? I feel like I missed something.

7. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt booed during graduation speech about AI (Mirna Alsharif and Austin Mullen for NBC. May 17, 2026.)

‘If you’d let me make this point, please —’ Schmidt said amid boos. ‘The point I’d like to make is choose a diversity of perspectives, including the perspective of the immigrant who has so often been the person who came to this country and made it better. America is at its best when we are the country that ambitious people want to come to. Let us not lose that.’

Did the chatbot tell him to try to use immigration policy as a shiny object when his AI lecturing was poorly received?

8. A first-timer’s observations about Watkins Glen International (NASCARCASM. May 12, 2026.)

I had only seen Watkins Glen on TV. Nice views.

9. First NYC casino to offer live table games sets opening day (Carl Campanile for the New York Post. April 20, 2026.)

I often find myself thinking “what can New York City use more of?” Here is our answer: Commercial vice.

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After two missed days due to having many work assignments, I return with a new edition of my Pook-Emu Bee links. Of course, there are no Pook-Emu Bee links tomorrow because of the newsletter and Sunday is hit and miss, so I encourage you to thoroughly enjoy today’s links.

1. Microsoft BitLocker-protected drives can now be opened with just some files on a USB stick — YellowKey zero-day exploit demonstrates an apparent backdoor (Bruno Ferreira for Tom’s Hardware. May 13, 2026.)

I had never heard of Bitlocker until one day in 2022 when someone I know was locked out of his Windows PC due to BitLocker. He managed to get back in but I dare say this security vulnerability could have been very useful. (HT Ambient Irony.)

2. Just stop using these (Hazn. May 13, 2026.)

I largely agree. If only everyone would just stop using those.

3. I want to comment on your blog post (Forking Mad. June 13, 2025.)

I respect the take but the spam on the one NLJ page I have with comments, the Guestbook, is already apocalyptic. But this did give me a fun idea. Stay-tuned.

4. New agents.txt file found on DreamHost (Kelson at K-Squared Ramblings. May 13, 2026.)

VPS providers should probably refrain from “retroactively” adding agents.txt or other files to live websites. At a minimum, I would suggest a warning and explanation.

5. WataMote anime studio Silver Link sees financial losses for third consecutive year, despite revenue growth (Carlos “Zoto” Zotomayor for Automation West. May 14, 2026.)

WataMote aired in 2013 and was not particularly good (I would classify it as “OK”). Thus, my first thought when I read the article was “well yes, if your best example of the studio’s work is a mediocre meme anime that aired 13 years ago.” But Silver Link handled all three seasons of Non Non Biyori, all of which were good (especially season two, which aired in 2015) and the third of which was my fourth-ranked TV anime of 2021. With that being said, Silver Link’s output is a bit bleak. Tearmoon Empire (2023) and Kokoro Connect (2012) were decent. I remember liking the first half of Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless back in 2016. Maybe I should finish that.

6. Android 17, Gemini Intelligence, and Googlebook: My first impressions (Rodrigo Ghedin at Manual do Usuário. May 13, 2026.)

I’m starting to see why Android is taking some dark turns.

7. The Dark Side of Unitree Robot Dogs (Maya Posch for Hackaday. May 12, 2026.)

When digging further into the robot, he found an easy to exploit arbitrary command execution flaw via the Wi-Fi password entry field, a year-old CVE-2025-2894 exploit, as well as highly suspicious traffic to Chinese servers whenever the robot’s software figured that it was not being watched.

I could have guessed the second part without the benefit of the completed research.

8. reMarkable’s Paper Pure is a $399 E Ink writing tablet that replaces the reMarkable 2 (Brad Linder for Liliputing. May 6, 2026.)

No backlight is an interesting design choice. Very nostalgic to me as someone who grew up using a Worm Light with my Game Boy Color.

9. Pedal parking: DOT plans 500 new bike hubs for NYC streets; online feedback encouraged (Barbara Russo-Lennon for amNY. May 4, 2026.)

I will spoil the feedback process for anyone who questions unlimited accommodations for bikes (including effective exemption from traffic laws) in New York City. Heads, bikes win. Tails, you lose.

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The drags on, but the Pook-Emu Bee links are strong. Or so I tell myself, at least.

1, Italy Summons Russian Ambassador After Propagandist Calls Giorgia Meloni ‘Whore’ (Christian K. Caruzo for Breitbart. April 22, 2026.)

That is not nice. Is Russian TV (which the Russian government has absolutely no control over, we are assured) just stringing together every insult the host can think of? But regarding Ms. Meloni specifically, this goes one step beyond Associated Press reporting.

2. Macron backs Lebanon as France is sidelined from Israel talks (Pauline Cohen for Brussels Signal. April 22, 2026.)

France hasn’t been sidelines this hard since several West African military juntas replaced French soldiers with Russian mercenaries (to the benefit of no one, including in many cases the sub-standard Russian mercenaries) five minutes ago. Of course, sidelining France in Lebanon is good for all parties, including Lebanon.

3. Shaq names the big men who gave him the most trouble (Julian Eschenbach for Basketball Network. June 29, 2025.)

I sadly never saw Bryant “Big Country” Reeves play on TV. The Vancouver Grizzlies were not a national TV fixture for reasons I explored in an article about their ill-fated 1997 trade which wound up costing them the second overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft and I did not have cable until the 2001-02 season, which he missed entirely with back injuries before retiring.

4. YouTube extends likeness detection to celebrities and talent agencies (Fla for AlternativeTo. April 22, 2026.)

“Talent agencies” and “celebrities” get special protections. Normal people, however, may have less luck with Google.

5. A look back at the SPLC (Scott Johnson for Power Line. April 22, 2026.)

I remember this reporting on SPLC with the refresher. Good stuff in hindsight.

6. Playdate Has Had Enough Of All This Generative AI Nonsense (Damien McFerran for Time Extension. April 22, 2026.)

I almost bought a Playdate when I saw it for about 40% cheaper than the store price on Ebay, but I did not pull the trigger. Their new AI policy for the store seems fair and reasonable to me.

7. NYC high school librarian a predator who targeted an ‘endless pool’ of Asian students: reports (David Spector for the New York Post. April 18, 2026.)

So what happened after authorities became aware of his behavior? Well…

SCI urged then-Schools Chancellor David Banks to terminate Von Hoppe in a 2024 letter, but he was instead reassigned to a ‘rubber room,’ Edelman reported. He has been on the city payroll since then, earning $140,588 as of last year, records showed.

Sounds about right. He will “retire” at the end of this year after collecting more than a year’s worth of full salary. Great job guys.

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Today is Friday. That means it is time for our last Pook-Emu Bee link collection of the week (Saturday’s links come in the Newsletter Leaf Journal).

1. Gemini adds personalized AI image generation using your preferences (Fla for AlternativeTo. April 17, 2026.)

Google Gemini now enables users to generate deeply personalized images, with Nano Banana 2, by drawing on their preferences and Google Photos content. This new feature uses Personal Intelligence to automatically incorporate user context, reducing the need for detailed prompts or manual image uploads.

Cambridge Dictionary definition of facepalm.

2. Japanese man gets prison sentence and million-yen fine for writing monetized “spoiler-heavy” summaries of movies and anime (Dorde P for Automation West. April 17, 2026.)

While I support copryight, I’m not so sure about this one (on the underlying merits, separate from the stiff punishment). But I render no final “judgment” since I’m not familiar with Japanese laws or the website in question beyond the summary.

3. UK Greens demand US foots bill if fans barred over social media ahead of World Cup (Anne-Laure Dufeal for Brussels Signal. April 17, 2026.)

I understand the concerns of the UK Green Party in light of their foreign policy positions, which are often contrary to U.S. foreign policy positions and terrorism designations. Having considered their concerns, I render my response as an American: “No.”

4. Apple and Google Continue to Offer ‘Nudify’ Apps that Use AI to Generate Deepfake Porn (Lucas Nolan for Breitbart. April 16, 2026.)

Yes, but at least Google banned Doki Doki Literature Club. Please focus on the important things.

5. President Trump congratulates Tanajit Sandhu on becoming Lt. Governor of Delhi (Donald. J. Trump (via Trump’s Truth). April 16, 2026.)

Mixed in with many “truths” about ball room litigation and legal standing, potentially compromised former intelligence officials and podcast hosts, war in Lebanon, and local race endorsements. Sure, why not?

6. George Washington University Hires Federal Judge Overseeing Antisemitism Lawsuit Against It To Teach ‘Ethics and Discretionary Judgment’ (Jessica Costescu for The Washington Free Beacon. April 16, 2026.)

I find myself reminded of the legal manuverings of Frank Seddio in Brooklyn (see Newsletter 252 comment).

7. PC Makers Have Apparently Cracked the Code on Supply Shortages: Stop Making Hardware Regular Gamers Can Afford (Muhammad Zuhair for wccftech. April 3, 2026.)

Not a problem if you stick to my al|together visual novel review series.

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Replied to Testing suggests Google's AI Overviews tell millions of lies per hour by Ryan Whitwam (Ars Technica)
A new analysis from The New York Times attempted to assess the accuracy of [Google Search's] AI Overviews, finding it’s right 90 percent of the time. The flip side is that 1 in 10 AI answers is wrong, and for Google, that means hundreds of thousands of lies going out every minute of the day.

Ars Technica published an article by Ryan Whitwam titled Testing suggests Google’s AI Overviews tell millions of lies per hour. The article itself is about a New York Times investigation into the accuracy of Google’s AI overviews. The framing in the headline matches the first paragraph: “…1 in 10 AI answers is wrong, and for Google, that means hundreds of thousands of lies going out every minute of the day” (emphasis added).

While I am not a fan of “AI” replacing traditional search and have even published information about creating custom search engine shortcuts for DuckDuckGo’s No AI mode and Google Search, I am also not a fan of Mr. Whitwam‘s framing. Google’s generative AI implementation does not tell lies. It has no concept of truth or falsity. It returns purportedly responsive text to specific queries in accordance with its programming and index. It no more “lies” when the text is inaccurate than it “tells the truth” when the text is accurate. Assigning agency to agents confuses the issues.

(I will add as a separate issue that for those of us who support “traditional” search, framing the debate in terms of how accurate the AI results are is the wrong approach. Google and other traditional search engines often surface articles and posts with inaccurate information. As I noted in my prior writing, there are reasons for supporting traditional search and human authorship that go beyond assessing whether chatbots or the highest trafficked websites are more likely to spit out incorrect information.)

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Quoted Just Want Links in Google Search Results Instead of AI Overviews? Here's How to Do It by Peter Butler (CNET)
To add a 'verbatim' restriction to your Web filter shortcut, append the attribute "&tbs=li:1" to the end of your custom search URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14&tbs=li:1

I read read a good article by Hana Lee Goldin at Card Catalog titled Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here’s How to Use It. In the post, she ran through several tips for using Google Search effectively. I very seldom use Google Search proper, usually opting for alternatives. But I studied her post for ideas I can use in my research (Google does stand apart from most of the “alternatives” in  its breadth of search operators). One of her tips was to use Google Search’s Verbatim mode:

Google stops paraphrasing you entirely and returns results for exactly what you typed, stripped of personalization and synonym-swapping. It’s one of the most useful things Google has buried several clicks deep, and the fact that it takes three clicks to reach says something about how much Google wants you to find it.

This gave me an idea. I like writing about custom search engine shortcuts. What about an article on a shortcut for Verbatim mode? Alas, when I studied the Google Search URLs, I could not immediately ascertain what the shortcut would be. When I searched for an answer, I came across a comprehensive guide by Peter Butler for CNET. Thus, instead of writing my own Verbatim mode shortcut guide, I will cite to Mr. Butler’s as part of my learning in 2026 series.

First, Mr. Butler shared the Google Search shortcut for web search (excluding AI, instant answers, and other gimmicks):

The critical URL that you need to remember is https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14. The “%s” represents your search query, and the “udm=14” tag limits your results to the new Web filter.

For those who are interested, I wrote about how to create a custom search engine shortcut for the “no AI” version of DuckDuckGo.

Next, Mr. Butler shared how to add Verbatim mode to the web search shortcut:

To add a “verbatim” restriction to your Web filter shortcut, append the attribute “&tbs=li:1” to the end of your custom search URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14&tbs=li:1

For those who want to use Verbatim mode without limiting Google to web search mode, I quote from Alex Barrientos’ guide on Gadget Review.

Create a custom search engine in your browser settings … with the URL
https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&oq=%s&tbs=li:1

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There were no Pook-Emu Bee links on Saturday because it was newsletter day (22 links in issue 275!). There were no Pook-Emu Bee links on Sunday because I failed. But today is Monday. Monday is a fun day. I will not fail. In fact, I may even have some bonus links (either to make up for yesterday or to keep my link list under control).

1. 420 Court’s Façade Takes Shape in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn (Michael Young and Matt Pruznick for New York YIMBY. April 13, 2026.)

Carroll Gardens is next to Cobble Hill, which is one of Brooklyn’s historic districts. The line between Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill is easy to miss. Yet, as I noted in 2020, Carroll Gardens is not a historic district. With that in mind, this new construction is not bad.

2. Placard Abuse Clogs Downtown Brooklyn Bike Lane (Brooklyn Today. April 13, 2026.)

Placard abuse is a well-known problem. But must everything be about the struggles of bikers? The bikers in the area behave terribly even where the bike lanes are unimpeded.

3. Investors Juice BlackBerry as the SaaS-y Company Racks Up Contracts (Jamie Wilde for The Daily Upside*. April 13, 2026.)

Making QWERTY phones offered more value.

4. Morgan Library (I Love Beets. April 13, 2026.)

I have not been to the Morgan Library in a long time, but these photographs indicate that it is as aesthetic as I remember it.

5. ProPublica journalists walk off the job in first U.S. newsroom strike over AI (Andrew Deck for NiemanLab. April 9, 2026.)

I reached the “choose your fighter” screen between ProPublica and big AI. Then I left the game on and went for a walk.

6. Doki Doki Literature Club Removed from Google Play Store Following Policy Violation or Is This Just Another Attempt by Monika for Our Attention? (It’s Not, They Really Delisted It) (Azario Lopez for Noisy Pixel. April 9, 2026.)

While I never “reviewed” Doki Doki Literature Club, I referenced it in my review of a freeware visual novel called Save the Date in expressing my hope that Save the Date would be published on Steam, Itch, and other places where more people could find it. I never played the “paid” version of Doki Doki Literature Club, but from my knowledge of the free version, this decision strikes me as odd. It certainly deserves an “M” rating (which I presumre age-gates downloads/purchases) but I am sure there is more objectionable “content” on Google Play Store. Of course, I use F-Droid, so what do I know?

7. The Death of the Small Point Guard? (James Barlowe. April 10, 2026.)

Is there really a “death”? How many instances in NBA history have we had where the undisputed best player on a championship team was a “small” point guard? Off the top of my head: 2014-15 and 2022-23 Golden State Warriors (Stephen Curry), 1988-89 and 89-90 Detroit Pistons (Isiah Thomas), and 1972-73 New York Knicks (Walt Frazier). You could argue for a few additional cases in the 1950-51 Rochester Royals (Bob Davies), 1969-70 Knicks (Frazier). 2003-04 Pistons (Chauncey Billups), and 2016-17 and 2017-18 Warriors (Curry). I suppose one could try to include Dennis Johnson since he was “small” and add the 1978-79 Seattle SuperSonics? But if this is all we can come up with, it does not seem like building a team “around” a small point guard has ever been the best path to an NBA championship.

8. Ascendance of a Bookworm anime studio acknowledges gen AI use in opening, promises to replace offending scenes with hand-drawn art (Dorde P for Automation West. April 10, 2026.)

I never watched the first few seasons, and I doubt I will ever catch up. Were I planning to catch up, this would not encourage me. With that being said, I have 2.5 seasons worth of anime to catch up on. Every news article reminds me.

9. Friends Don’t Let Friends Play Monopoly (Dan Lewis for Now I Know. April 3, 2020.)

I never played Monopoly. No one ever tried to convince me to play Monopoly. Now I know that Dan Lewis does not think I should play Monopoly.