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Karen McGrane

@karenmcgrane.bsky.social

On a good day, I make the web more awesome. On a bad day, I just make it suck less.

1026 Posts4739 Follower779 Folgt
Tim Carmody@tcarmody.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I made an app, Humanist, to convert PDFs to EPUBs and edit them, but now it has many more features: you can ask your books questions using local/open-weights LLMs, you can manage an e-book library, share between devices, read/take notes on e-books. All AI features optional. LMK if you want to test!

Karen McGrane@karenmcgrane.bsky.social · 3mo ago

One thing that I’ve enjoyed being exposed to as a former New Yorker now visiting is out of home B2B advertising for TV networks. Apparently it’s worth it to run subway or street ads for TV networks.

Tim Carmody@tcarmody.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I'm looking for testers for a Mac app I've built. It's called Humanist, and it's designed to take PDFs and turn them into clean, searchable text (EPUB, md, better PDFs, etc). It's got a versatile editor built in so you can compare the original to the output and correct it. I built it fast & it's fun

Tim Carmody@tcarmody.bsky.social · 3mo ago

It’s slightly strange than in embracing dogs as a preferred pet, we’ve accepted into our households animals that are even more directly obsessed with status* than we are * also snacks, which may be related to status in deep ways we can’t fully see

Karen McGrane@karenmcgrane.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Tim informed me of this last night and I was like uhhhh perverts? My take is simply that regular people are too precious about what they’ve written and professional writers are accustomed to having their words eviscerated by other people. So don’t ask them for advice.

Tim Carmody@tcarmody.bsky.social · 4mo ago

One of the problems with asking writers for advice about writing is that almost all professional writers are perverts (when it comes to writing, at least)

Karen McGrane@karenmcgrane.bsky.social · 4mo ago

It is my birthday, I am 54. The big round number birthdays matter to everyone, but being born on 4/4 the ones that end in 4 are special to me.

Tim Carmody@tcarmody.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Today is my wife @karenmcgrane.bsky.social’s birthday. She is an amazing woman, famous in all the right parts of the internet. If her work has touched yours in some way, or you otherwise think she’s great, you should tell her today! She deserves every accolade.

Karen McGrane lecturing between an Apple laptop and a screen projector
Karen McGrane@karenmcgrane.bsky.social · 5mo ago

We had a spirited debate I was confident I would win about the number of lakes in our respective states. Minnesota puts it on the license plate! Land of 10,000 Lakes! We have butter named that! Turns out if you question the definition of a "lake" Minnesota is really not all that competitive.

Tim Carmody@tcarmody.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Another upper Midwest debate: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota all have different definitions for what it means to be a “lake.” Wisconsin’s is the most permissive. In fact, if you use WI’s criteria, Michigan has more lakes than either WI or MN. But by MI or MN’s scale, it’s Minnesota.

Karen McGrane@karenmcgrane.bsky.social · 5mo ago

RIP Daniel's Bagels, the last real one. It was right next door to a Dunkin and I would get a bagel from Daniel's and an iced tea from Dunkin (it's good! actually brewed!) Once in line saw a tourist order a bagel at Dunkin and almost physically accosted her but then minded my own business.

Tim Carmody@tcarmody.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The hard part is since our favorite place in Manhattan went out of business you either have to travel to a far borough or wait in an enormous line to get the good NYC bagels. So to get a warm, decent bagel and trimmings delivered to your house in Philadelphia is a wonderful treat