Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 08-05-26

Two Pook-Emu Bee daily links in a row? What in the world is going on here?

My new (old… 2000 model) atomic G-SHOCK has arrived.

1. Mega Drive, Saturn And Dreamcast Watches Are Coming To Japan (Damien McFerran for Time Extension. July 5, 2026.)

The Dreamcast watch looks cool. The other two are a bit too dark (granting the Genesis and the most well-known Saturn model were black).

2. Random: Fire Emblem’s New Game Adds Some Serious Firepower (Liam Doolan for Nintendo Life. July 5, 2026)

The new Fire Emblem looks great. I would be excited but for the fact I’m not planning to get a Switch 2 ($450, going on $500, plus the price of the games makes me a bit squeemish). That curtails my excitement.

3. DOJ Secures $3.2 Million Settlement with Sam Altman’s OpenAI for Discriminating Against Americans in Favor of Hiring Foreign Workers (John Binder for Breitbart. August 4, 2026.)

When he backtracks on saying that AI won’t take everyone’s jobs, he doesn’t specify by citizenship or nationality.

4. ‘Hoodwill’ vs. Goodwill (Simone Seiver for The New York Times. August 4, 2026.)

I have been there. “Hoodwill” is turning that whole block into a dump. Shut it down.

5. RFK Starts Off Cooking Show With Reminder To Always Cook Raccoon To At Least 165 Degrees (The Babylon Bee. August 4, 2026.)

The “tough badger” line got me. Babylon Bee at its best.

6. U.S. government reportedly planning to close Nagoya consulate (Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. August 4, 2026.)

I didn’t expect the State Department to weigh in on the disappointing performances by the two Yokozuna at the Nagoya Basho.

7. Brooklyn records just 2 homicides in July, marking safest month on record (Olivia Seaman for Brooklyn Paper. August 4, 2026.)

Some positive crime news from my home city (or as some would call it, “borough”).

8. I’m Scared a Stranger Will Call My Novel AI, So I Built GitHub for Words (Meet VellumProof, Formerly WritHub, Lol) (Dylan’s Blog. August 3, 2026.)

As I opined in Staying the Course in Writing in the LLM Moment, I doubt there is much one could do to satisfy baseless allegations of AI usage (not to say that there are not countless cases of bad actors using AI and lying about it). Thus, my approach is to just continue writing as a human being and not worry about the possibility that someone may care enough about what I write to make false allegations. With that being said, this “VellumProof” is an interesting idea that may be worth developing, especially in the context of looking for a publisher.

9. Is an RSS or Feed Reader Robbing Your Experience? (Adam Douglas. July 23, 2026.)

I agree that “using a feed reader aplication [does not] take away from the [reader’s] experience.” Moreover, I would add from a webmaster perspective that people who offer feeds (they should) and want people to visit their sites should make sure to make visiting worthwhile. There are some sites that I make a point of visiting directly instead of reading through my feed reader. For whatever it is worth, I will note that I don’t think either this site or NLJ suffer from being enjoyed in a stripped-down feed reader or read-it-later interface, but I encourage people to nevertheless stop by once in a while and appreciate my handiwork.

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