Tony's Stuff

Time for the Wealthy to Pony Up In 1970, I was 22 years old. The top tax bracket in the U.S. was 71.5% for net income over $200,000. That had been 77% in the previous year. Unions were still strong, and there were still many single wage-earner households. Almost no one had medical insurance, but medical care wasn’t expensive. I had health insurance through my work — it was an insignificant expense. Even when I started my own business and had to pay all of my medical insurance, that was never an expense that concerned me. That would not be true today! https://medium.com/it-doesnt-fit/time-for-the-wealthy-to-pony-up-80337c9e4de2?sk=607140045ddf1c42d2046aba1584edd6

Imagine being able to talk with your great-grandfather. Imagine setting him to be eighteen or thirty-five and seeing how his answers might have changed. That could be possible soon and may become a popular legacy as people record written and spoken conversations with a bot specifically designed to analyze and learn how to be you. At some point, the bots could also learn about you from other bots who have data collected from your relatives and friends. Collecting different impressions of the same incident or relationship could provide more accurate results. https://medium.com/tonys-tech-corner/tell-me-a-story-great-grandfather-120d5a48132b?sk=e3fa8c28d9a823b154ab987d2ce2ab8c

It Will Be a Shame If Apple Arcade Fails If Apple wants Arcade to succeed, I think there is much more that they could do. https://medium.com/macoclock/it-will-be-a-shame-if-apple-arcade-fails-cf5184e26829?source=friends_link&sk=3266002d01e4aa99e8b82ce82e163221

Sometime in the Spring of 1963, my father asked if I could help him with a project. That was unusual. My father seldom needed help with anything, not even major construction projects. What he needed this time was much more unusual. He wanted help mapping rocks on Lake Massapoag in our home town of Sharon, MA. https://medium.com/family-and-love/mapping-lake-massapoag-with-my-dad-4a1ddd51a7ee?sk=ea6f88ae2edc434cd0e8ca32599b974e

The title of this story might make you think that I was an insolent, bratty child. I was not. Neither did my father and I have any real issues with each other; we got along, had some good conversations now and then, taught me many things, and supported me in everything I wanted to do. No boy could ask for a better dad. The problem is that I didn’t support him in the things he wanted to do. https://medium.com/family-and-love/i-wish-that-i-had-been-nicer-to-my-father-f4ec4d6eb2c0?source=friends_link&sk=4f143c98ae02e277391c3c738db04741

The Apple Watch measures your Stand Minutes automatically. The results are reported in different ways in different apps and even different ways in different places within apps. That's confusing by itself, but your watch isn't actually counting standing time at all.  https://medium.com/macoclock/are-you-confused-by-apple-watch-stand-minutes-387cf894074e?source=friends_link&sk=9f55bb7cdbc387968372f7740778fd26

If you search for anything involving George Washington and throwing things across a river, you will find many articles that supposedly tell the real story. Most will tell you that it wasn’t a silver dollar, but a piece of slate. Some will say that his son or grandson witnessed the toss. .. Most of these stories are as apocryphal as the story they want to debunk. Let’s do the tiny bit of research that most neglect. https://medium.com/@pcunix/george-washington-threw-what-across-what-river-910ee016a97e?sk=b0830b589b4fbc4a7bb573053f86b5c1

We could see the records the manager was scanning. I was holding my stomach trying not to laugh because I had seen why my wife thought she saw her own name: it was an entry for a neighbor just a few houses away from us with a very similar name. Because it went by quickly, my wife thought it was hers. The manager reopened the lookup. “No, you aren’t here,” she said again. My dear wife looked surprised and hurt, and I was stifling myself behind her. The manager looked at her, looked at me, and finally said: “You aren’t SUPPOSED to be on that list!” https://medium.com/@pcunix/sometimes-good-people-write-bad-checks-f3d01fa7b80b?sk=9610d6cca6b427115b6c89bd2071decb

If you are not a coin collector, you may never have seen or even heard of Trade Dollars. What is most interesting about them is that they were produced to be used in China, not in the United States. As usual, the story includes greed and politics. https://medium.com/collectibles-history-knowledge/americas-trade-dollars-3ddd31f53d3?sk=cbf9a9c0905f0115c6988ec548c44f28