A personal blog for Michael Mitchell
📺 This Week’s Watchlist:
From Netflix:
Just finished this one—very good in my opinion! Except for the last episode, which needed a little work. It felt a bit too unbelievable. But overall, the whole season was better than The Night Agent! 🎬
Tags: #TV #Entertainment #Netflix
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I've been wanting to write about this topic for a while, but the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson allegedly by Luigi Mangione has been weighing on my mind. First and foremost, healthcare in this country has been in shambles for a long time.
Throughout my career, I've always had employer-provided healthcare—through two government employers (state and county) and one private employer. I can say that the state-provided plan was the cheapest but middle-of-the-road in terms of quality. The county government plan was a little more expensive, but it was by far the best coverage I've ever had. Now, I work for a private employer, and while I'm grateful to have insurance, it has been the worst plan I've ever had—and I work for a hospital.
All three employer-provided plans I've had were self-funded but administered by private companies. The prescription coverage across all of them was terrible, though the county plan was the best of the three.
Today, I leveraged my single Mastodon instance, my Raspberry Pi, and my paid Claude AI account to create an automated weather posting system for my home location. Using Claude AI, I generated code to automatically post weather updates and other information—tasks I previously relied on IFTTT for. It was an interesting project, and I plan to extend it further with additional automated posts.
I can see IFTTT and Zapier either having to step up their game or eventually fading away. AI is a game-changer for those of us who aren't coders. While I’m sure the code isn’t the most optimized (Claude AI is supposedly the best at code generation right now), it’s incredible how AI allows regular people like me to experiment and bring my ideas to life.
This is how I envision AI—not as a replacement, but as a helper and a great equalizer. I know this technology will inevitably change lives (not necessarily for the better) and eliminate some jobs, but it’s also making powerful tools and knowledge more accessible to the masses.
Tags: #AI #Selfhosting #Automation
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📺 This week’s Watchlist:
From NetFlix:
Hoping to squeeze in a few more episodes this weekend! 🎬
Tags: #TV #Entertainment #NetFlix
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I totally agree with Leo's perspective in this YouTube video. If I could easily move all my PC games to macOS or Linux, I'd jump ship in a heartbeat.
The problem is that not all of my games are compatible with macOS or Linux, and the cost of switching would be significant. If there were a one-time platform transfer option, that would be a game-changer—I’d be gone in an instant.
While there's a lot to like about Windows 11, there's also plenty to dislike. My biggest frustrations are the forced OneDrive integration and the Outlook fiasco. Microsoft should reconsider some of its recent decisions, as they’re pushing away users like me who prefer more consumer-friendly choices.
Tags: #Microsoft #Windows #Consumers
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It all started with a simple question: Can I take an RSS feed from one blog and feed it to another?
I knew that my Write.as blog automatically generated an RSS feed and that I used to import posts directly into Micro.blog. However, I was running into issues with duplicate posts. So, I had an idea—why not see if ChatGPT could help me or if there was already a program that could parse an RSS feed and pull it into Micro.blog?
ChatGPT confirmed that it was possible. It suggested that I use my Raspberry Pi to run a script that would fetch the feed, filter out what I didn't need, and then push the cleaned-up version to Micro.blog.
📺 Today’s Watchlist: Paramount+
Looking forward to finishing them all for this season. 🎬
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I figured out why Elon Musk has aligned himself with this administration—it appears his alignment may benefit him by reducing opposition within the federal government.
If you look at the agencies Musk has targeted for “audit” under the fictional Department of Government Efficiency (which sounds like something out of Harry Potter), you’ll notice a pattern: almost all of them were either investigating or preparing to investigate Musk and his businesses.
📺 Today’s Watchlist:
Looking forward to finishing both. 🎬
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You ever feel like you're talking to a wall, like nobody is listening? I do—all the time. I feel the same way about writing and blogging. It often feels like I’m just writing for catharsis because no one seems to be reading or interacting.
But maybe, someday, a future generation will stumble upon my writings and think, I can relate, or I know how he felt, or even That’s not a bad idea.
Just thinking out loud again. 🙂
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