[Tove Danovich writes about the Teal Pumpkin project on NPR.org](Teal Pumpkins Make Halloween Less Tricky For Kids With Food Allergies):

Having a teal pumpkin on the doorstep (teal being the color of food allergy awareness) is a way to signal to people with food allergies that this is a safe home for trick-or-treating, says Jennifer Norris, president of the Food Allergy Community of East Tennessee (FACET), which started the project.

I learned about the teal pumpkins a couple years ago, and we have been a teal pumpkin house on Halloween ever since.

Since discovering that my children have peanut allergies, Halloween has moved from a fun tradition to an endless, irritating minefield of peanut-containing, and potentially peanut-contaminated, foods. (Practically every candy or baked good with chocolate may be contaminated with peanuts. As parents, my wife and I have to be very strict and diligent.) So much candy is off limits to my kids that it makes me feel sad for them. I think they do miss out on a huge, terribly unheathy part of the experience: the candy. We are baking some brownies and have purchased some truly safe, peanut-free chocolate for them, so Halloween will still be fun, even if the collecting candy part of trick-or-treating is kind of pointless.

Kate Conger of the New York Times reports:

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, said on Wednesday that the social media service would ban political ads on its platform, in a stark contrast to rival Facebook, which has faced blowback for taking a hands-off approach to political advertising.

This is definitely the correct position to take, based on what we already know about the scale and effectiveness of social media disinformation campaigns, which are largely driven through social media advertising. Facebook, in contrast to Twitter, seems to be doubling down on their willingness for “anything goes” political advertising on its platform.

I ordered an Apple Watch Series 3 for my wife last night. I hope she loves it. I wonder if we will actually use the walkie-talkie feature.

🎵 R.E.M.’s Monster is an underrated album, though it certainly is very much of its moment (the mid 1990s).

I am currently baffled that Apple’s NSDataDetector will not identify the “tel:” link in the string “call tel:1-212-555-1415” but will identify it in the string “call_ tel:1-212-555-1415” and in the string “call www.google.com tel:212-555-1415”. I guess “call” is a magic word when it precedes " tel:" for some reason.

The Secret Ingredient That Improves Meat Every Time is mayonnaise. Nope. No, no, no! I think you’re a genius, Kenji, but no.

My wife really wants an Apple Watch. I can’t believe it. She is eyeing the Series 3 (the lower price is a big factor, as is the smaller size).

Samit Sarkar reports about the impending closure on Polygon:

“Unfortunately, the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected,” said John Kodera, deputy president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, in a statement on the PlayStation Blog. “Because of this, we have decided to remain focused on our core gaming business.”

That’s too bad, but not at all surprising.

I never understood why someone would want to watch TV on their PlayStation. For me, at least, gaming and TV don’t mix at all. I feel a huge mode switch between interactive and non-interactive entertainment. It wouldn’t occur to me to want to do anything other than game on a gaming console.

Also, to me at least, Sony is not a brand I strongly identify with and want to align with additional areas of my life. I do like my Sony headphones, and did have a Playstation Portable long ago, but Sony has never been, in my opinion, a warm and appealing brand.

🎵 Peter Buck and Mike Mills (of R.E.M. fame) are in a supergroup that only performs original songs about baseball. The world is a weird and wonderful place.

Maybe macOS 10.15.1 will stop Xcode edit windows form tearing and revealing snapshots “The Matrix” behind them when I switch tabs. 🤞

I hate to admit it, but I love reading a good pan of an expensive restauarant. Case in point, today’s review of Peter Luger, the Brooklyn steakhouse, by Pete Wells, in the New York Times:

The restaurant will always have its loyalists. They will laugh away the prices, the $16.95 sliced tomatoes that taste like 1979, the $229.80 porterhouse for four. They will say that nobody goes to Luger for the sole, nobody goes to Luger for the wine, nobody goes to Luger for the salad, nobody goes to Luger for the service. The list goes on, and gets harder to swallow, until you start to wonder who really needs to go to Peter Luger, and start to think the answer is nobody.

Once again, WinSCP is making me happy. It would be even nicer if I could drag from one instance of it to another, though.

🎮 I got the Xbox Wireless Controller that I ordered today, after a weekend of telling myself I will cut back on the hours I spend on gaming (only a few per week, but still).

📺 I remain excited for the “His Dark Materials” series. The last preview I saw made me wonder if it would be more goofy than good, but this teaser, in which author Philip Pullman provides some soundbites, has pulled me back in to being into it.

Dan Moren, on Six Colors, reports:

Boasting a new design with flexible ear tips, the AirPods Pro add the highly-anticipated Active Noise Cancellation feature to remove background noise and provide better sound.

I am happy that the AirPods Pro will not replace the base AirPods model, which I like precisely because it (1) does not fit inside the ear canal, and (2) lets outside noises in, which is great for safety and comfort.

🎮 “Hollow Knight” kicked my ass this evening. I tried to beat The Trial of the Fool for about an hour, to no avail. The game was so much easier when I was playing it for a couple hours every night. I lost a lot of muscle memory since I stopped.

John Gruber took note of the terrible UI decisions Apple made on its iOS Mail app.

The new toolbar in iOS 13 Mail is just strange. The old toolbar had discrete buttons for Flag, Move, Trash/Archive, Reply, and New Message. Now it’s just Trash and Reply, with all of the other functionality stashed in the new Reply action sheet, pictured here half-height and full-height. That new “Reply” action sheet is really a “Do Something With This Message” sheet — I’m not sure what the icon for this should be, but the Reply icon seems like an odd choice. I know a few people who assumed that iOS 13 removed the ability to move messages to other mailboxes because the folder button was removed from the toolbar. They — reasonably! — never thought to look for it by tapping what clearly looks like the old familiar Reply icon.

I wanted to write about this for the past couple weeks, but decided not to complain to my blog about software that I could probably replace, if it really bothered me enough. I thought that Mail was perfect on iOS 12 and now it is much, much worse for me. The functionality I use most often—delete, archive, flag—is now two or three taps (or taps and swipes) away, when it used to be all in one tap at the bottom of the screen.

🎮 I just used the last of my birthday money to purchase an Xbox wireless controller, which I can use with my Windows 10 PC, my Apple TV, and my iPad Pro. I’ve had my eye on one since Apple Arcade came out. I’m starting to eye Steam, too, for more metroidvania-style games.

🎮 I started a third playthrough of Hollow Knight last night. I am eagerly awaiting its announced sequel, Silksong, and don’t know what other game to buy that will scratch the same itch for me. It is such a well-crafted game, and its bosses are still quite challenging to me.

My commit history, in my apps and in my life (if that is a thing), is a mess.

📺 I watched the premiere episode of “Watchmen” a couple days ago and am still a little shaken by it. I am not sure I liked it, but it certainly made an upsetting and confounding impression on me.

I noticed that Lucas/"AppleProgramming" is posting new tutorial videos to YouTube, after a 3-year absence. I learned a lot from his videos when I was developing my first Mac OS X app. (He has lots of iOS tutorials as well.) His videos are really good, and there is a terrible dearth of information on the web about Mac programming.

📺 I got to watch it a bit late, but I was please that “The Good Place” returned to form in their last episode. I have thought that Season 4 has felt tired so far (the new characters really don’t help), but last week’s episode was sharp and funny. I hope tonight’s is as well.

Tech podcasts have been a huge bummer to listen to lately. Tech used to be fun (for the most part), but it is now it is so entwined in the downfall of civilization that I am seriously considering unsubscribing from podcasts I have listened to for over ten years.

⚾️ MLB At Bat has been crashing on me every time I try to watch a World Series game this morning. 🙁