Slade Watkins

"Demon Plague", Pokémon Horizons, and some other things too

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** The Bulletin ** – December 2, 2023

Evenin’ y’all,

I’ve emerged from my suffering of sickness to bring you this week’s Bulletin, which I normally stuff full of information and goodies for you. This week, it’s ever so slightly on the lighter side this week as I’m currently battling an illness (which I’ve nicknamed “The Demon Plague” in conversation with the people in my life) which thankfully isn’t COVID, BUT that’s not to say I didn’t find some interesting things to share with you. That’s all below for you as usual.

This week, in spite of everything: I’ve been mostly focusing my energy into other things—like putting myself out there a little bit and actually talking to my friends outside of social media. I also helped fix my friend Max’s blog (successfully, might I add! does a lovely job with it and I’m glad I could help get things back on track! He’s a great guy and wonderful friend, and I hope you’ll consider reading it!) Trying (and mostly failing miserably) to beat Microsoft Windows into submission—all of which was resolved by simply reinstalling Windows 11. Oh, and, I suppose playing an unhealthy amount of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp while I recover too.

I’m starting to slowly feel at least somewhat normal again and can help finish my mom’s website as well as work with Oman on getting the rverse website finalized as well. (Lots of website work to close out the year, yippee!) Not sure what else I’ve got on the menu as we close out the year, though—will keep you posted on it though.

Okay, now with all of that out of the way—I think that’s enough chit-chat: let’s get into the rest of this week’s Bulletin!

Upcoming events

My mom—the talented woman behind Theodessa Designs—will be present at the Holiday Market in Greenwich Junior Senior High School’s gymnasium from 10am-3pm tomorrow (December 3, 2023). I accidentally forgot to throw this into last week’s Bulletin, but put out a little thing on social media to remind everyone. My bad!

As far as I’m aware, this is the last one she’s doing for a while—so come on down and say hey if you’re in the area!

*Percival’s are not for sale, so sorry for the inconvenience.

This week’s soundtrack

I’m kind of a Spotify addict, so I happen to listen to a lot of music. Here’s what I’m currently listening to—usually on repeat. Here’s what I’ve got for you, for the week of December 2, 2023…

Thanks to Songlink for making all these streaming platform-agnostic!

Things I found across the net

This quip has been removed due to a copyright claim from my cats, Oscar and Beauregard.

  • Rockstar announces “Trailer 1” release date for GTA 6: After what feels like 84 years, Rockstar has announced that a trailer for the long-awaited sequel to GTA V will be releasing on Tuesday, December 5th, 2023, at 9AM Eastern Time (US). I’m curious to see what they show off!

  • 10 year old asks Apple to redesign the nerd emoji, please: Alright, kind of a cute one here—but a 10 year old from the UK named Teddy has petitioned Apple to redesign the ‘nerd’ emoji (🤓) arguing it makes people who wear glasses feel “absolutely horrible.” He even sketched a new design himself, calling it a ‘genius’ emoji instead. While I don’t know if Apple will listen, despite making international headlines, it’s adorable and they should at least send him a treat of some kind!!

  • Apple-related misinformation relating to NameDrop begins spreading, thanks to police departments across the U.S.: Well, folks, in a definitely-not-surprising turn of events, police departments across the United States are spreading misinformation relating to how Apple’s new NameDrop feature in iOS 17 works. According to a Facebook post by the City of Chester, PA Police Department, they state that the feature “allows the sharing of your contact info just by bringing your phones close together.” This isn’t true, as the feature requires not only really close proximity with the phones, but also manual confirmation upon sharing contact details. While other departments across the U.S. updated their messaging after being called out, the post from that particular police department remains unchanged, with comments disabled, further perpetuating this false information. Fun—how about we don’t do that?

  • Apple reportedly ending Goldman Sachs partnership, leaving Apple Card in limbo: As reported by The Wall Street Journal (via 9to5Mac), Apple has appeared to have pulled the plug on its partnership with Goldman Sachs, who helped build—and is the bank behind—Apple’s credit card, which launched in August 2019. The deal between the two companies was set to expire in 2029. The future of Apple Card is unclear at this time, as Apple apparently continues to work internally to find a solution for its 6.7 million cardholders (as of early 2022).

    • WEDNESDAY UPDATE: Apple made a very opaque statement about the reports to tech outlets: “Apple and Goldman Sachs are focused on providing an incredible experience for our customers to help them lead healthier financial lives. The award-winning Apple Card has seen a great reception from consumers, and we will continue to innovate and deliver the best tools and services for them.” The future of Apple Card continues to remain unclear following this statement’s release.

  • My mom made an Instagram account for her kitten: Yep, she did it—she made an Instagram for her one-year-old Maine Coon kitten Percival (mostly known as “Percy” or as I like to call him, “Perchy”) that joined our family back in February. If you want to follow it, and you totally should, his username is @percivalmainecoon! He’s adorable—and I’m very excited that this is his first Christmas with our crazy family! (If you follow me on Instagram, I’ll be sure to reshare some of the photos from his account to my own every so often, too!)

  • Android 14 gets its first “feature bundle”: Android 14 (with some backporting, too) is getting an absolutely enormous “feature bundle” (a title notably separating Feature Drops for Pixel devices and feature bundles for everyone else)—and being a recent Android reconvert from iPhone, I’m appreciative of this. Most notable in this update: Huge updates to Google Messages, an expanded emoji palette hits Emoji Kitchen on Gboard, and you can now set custom PINs for security keys, too. I linked Android Police above, but you can also check out Google’s Blog for more info. I am suspecting that, because this is not Pixel-exclusive, that this bundle of features will roll out through Google Play System Updates very soon.

  • On YouTube this week: If I’m being honest, it’s mostly just a bunch of random Doctor Who related things, but there are a couple other goodies in here, too:

https://instagram.com/p/C0T08tIuPNp/

Well, that’s all I was able to put together for this week. I hope y’all enjoyed. I am well aware I owe you a couple bonus posts. I’ve already started my notes for them, so it’s just a matter of feeling up to putting everything together. That should be rather soon, assuming my recovery continues to go well! 🙂

As always, my email is [email protected] if you’d like to get in touch. I’m also elsewhere on the internet, where you can usually find me being absolutely unhinged (although, admittedly, I’ve been pretty slow at getting back to people and updating my feeds this week due to my illness—but I’m doing my best to catch up.) If any of that interests you, I’m sorry or you’re welcome!

Yours less sickly than he started the week,
Slade