¶I never appreciated the subtle but important difference between the definitions of impracticable and impractical. I can’t remember what caused me to think about it this afternoon, but the question popped into my head for some reason. So I went to the hardcover dictionary in my office and looked up both words:

¶impracticable: incapable of being performed or accomplished by the means employed or at command

¶impractical: not wise to put into or keep in practice or effect

¶The linked definitions don’t match exactly those from my physical dictionary, but they’re fairly close. If something is impossible to do, it is impracticable. If it’s possible but shouldn’t be done, it’s impractical.

¶So, for ease of remembering:

¶It’s impractical to view an impractical situation as an impracticable one.

¶Meaning, you can view an impractical situation as an impossible one, but you shouldn’t.

¶Weather: Perrysburg is overcast with haze early this morning (79°F overnight at Toledo Executive), a continuation of the Canadian wildfire smoke that’s blanketed the Midwest all week. Today looks better — mostly sunny with a high near 81, though patchy smoke returns after 3pm. Rain moves in Monday night into Tuesday, with highs climbing into the mid-80s first. Source: National Weather Service

¶Headlines: Today’s the World Cup final — Argentina faces Spain at 3pm ET in East Rutherford, with Messi playing what’s expected to be his last World Cup as Argentina chases back-to-back titles. That follows Saturday’s third-place match, where England beat France 6-4 on a Bukayo Saka hat-trick, while Mbappé closed out the tournament with a World Cup record for most goals ever scored. Meanwhile, wildfire smoke keeps choking the country: air quality alerts remain active in 18 states after Milwaukee posted the worst air quality reading on record Thursday, more than double its previous mark from 1987.

¶In tech and science, Apple sued OpenAI this week alleging systematic theft of hardware trade secrets tied to OpenAI’s consumer device push with Jony Ive’s io Products, a sharp reversal from the two companies’ 2024 partnership. Google, meanwhile, has delayed Gemini 3.5 Pro after internal testing showed it falling short on coding benchmarks against OpenAI and Meta’s newest models. On the science side, NASA awarded nearly $600 million to Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace, and Intuitive Machines for four commercial Moon Base cargo landings targeting late 2028, and a new study in Neurology found that high artificial sweetener intake is linked to faster cognitive decline, particularly in adults under 60 or with diabetes.

¶Worth reading:

• The wildest allegations in Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI — TechCrunch. A genuinely wild read on how a 2024 hardware partnership curdled into accusations of stolen designs and “show and tell” interviews.
• Terraforming Mars may be more realistic than scientists once thought — ScienceDaily. Cheaper launch costs and new materials have turned a sci-fi idea into a real research question — worth reading for the engineering, not just the ethics.
• Air Quality Alerts Remain In 16 States As Canadian Wildfire Smoke Spreads To Midwest, Northeast — Forbes. Good rundown of just how bad this smoke season has gotten and which cities are worst off.
• Popular sugar substitutes linked to faster brain aging — ScienceDaily. An observational study, not proof of causation, but a notable finding given how common these sweeteners are in everyday diets.

¶Weather: Smoke haze is lingering over Perrysburg tonight (low around 66°), a holdover from the Canadian wildfire smoke that’s been fouling Midwest air quality all week. Sunday looks better — mostly sunny with a high near 81 and patchy smoke not moving back in until afternoon. Rain returns Monday night into Tuesday, with highs climbing into the mid-80s first. Source: National Weather Service

¶Headlines: The big story overnight is the US and Iran exchanging strikes over the Strait of Hormuz, with CENTCOM hitting military infrastructure near Bandar Abbas and Iran striking a Kuwaiti desalination plant — a grim turn less than a month after the two countries signed a preliminary deal to stop fighting. In the UK, Andy Burnham was confirmed as Labour leader and is set to be sworn in as prime minister Monday, becoming Britain’s seventh PM in a decade.

¶On the science side, astronomers confirmed the first atmosphere ever detected on a rocky, habitable-zone exoplanet — LHS 1140b, 49 light-years out — based on helium escaping the planet, a genuinely big deal for the search for life elsewhere. Closer to home, wildfire smoke from Canada’s brutal fire season continues to choke air quality across the Midwest and Northeast. In sports, the World Cup wraps up this weekend: France plays England in today’s third-place match, with Argentina facing Spain in Sunday’s final, and the WNBA’s Caitlin Clark put up the first 40-point, 10-assist game in league history against Seattle.

¶Worth reading:

• First Atmosphere Detected Around a Rocky Habitable-Zone Planet — ScienceAlert. A real milestone in exoplanet science: helium escaping LHS 1140b confirms it’s held onto an atmosphere for billions of years.
• Wildfire smoke is driving terrible air quality in major cities, but relief is coming — CNN. Good context on why the Great Lakes region keeps getting smoked out, and when it might finally clear.
• Messi is the best player at the World Cup, and the best male athlete of all time — ESPN. A fitting note as the tournament closes with Messi and Yamal meeting in Sunday’s final.
• The U.S. and Iran blow past red lines as they lurch back toward all-out war — NPR. Clear-eyed rundown of how a June 25 drone strike unraveled a ceasefire deal in under a month.

¶I’ve never been much of a soccer fan. This World Cup has caught my interest, though. Seems like that’s true for other folks, too.

¶Team USA plays this afternoon at 3:00, and I’m a bit upset because we’ll likely miss it. You’d think they’d get a prime time slot, but I guess not. That’s fine. We’ll watch Scotland’s match this evening.

¶I learned about the Coastline Paradox yesterday when doing some internet sleuthing as follow-up to an argument I overheard regarding the proper name for the Gulf bordering the U.S.A and Mexico. The thrust of the argument was “our coastline in the Gulf is longer, so it should be called the Gulf of America”.

¶I’m not aware of some controlling rule or law that requires an international body of water be named after the nation having the longest bordering coastline, so, from a legal point of view, the argument appears to be meaningless on its face.

¶But, the math of it is quite interesting.

¶Under the Paradox, “it is impossible even in theory to obtain an exact value for the length of a coastline.” Why? I don’t fully understand the math yet, but it’s based on the observation that coastlines are fractals. And the length of a fractal curve approaches infinity as you use finer and finer measuring tools:

¶Empirical evidence suggests that the smaller the increment of measurement, the longer the measured length becomes. If one were to measure a stretch of coastline with a yardstick, one would get a shorter result than if the same stretch were measured with a 1-foot (30 cm) ruler. This is because one would be laying the ruler along a more curvilinear route than that followed by the yardstick.

¶See Measuring a Coastline

¶So any reported length of a coastline is inherently flawed, particularly if it does not mention the scale used for the component measurements that contributed to the total length.

¶As for the Gulf of Mexico/America debate, I view the coastline argument as absurd on two levels now (no controlling rule or law, and both coastlines are infinitely long). I say ‘Gulf of Mexico’ out of habit. I suppose time will change that if the name sticks.

¶This is sort of fascinating.

¶Dave Winer quoted his site’s tagline (“It’s even worse than it appears”) upon realizing that an analysis of his post yesterday about AI as aliens that “breaks it down into parts, and got every bit right” was actually written by AI (Perplexity).

¶AI thinks we’re them, even though we struggle to distinguish them from us.

¶I ordered the Canon RF 35mm f/1.4L VCM lens today. I’ve been waiting for the 35mm f/1.2L lens since I bought my first Canon mirrorless body in 2022 (an R5), but the unicorn status of that lens appears to be more accurate than ever. I love my Canon (now using the R5 Mark II alongside that original R5), but the RF lens lineup has some major holes in it, with the 35 1.2 being the biggest for me.

¶I actually bought the 35 mm f/1.8 with that original R5 and it’s been a great lens. It’s not an L-series, but I’ve been happy to have that as a 35mm prime as I learned the Canon system.

¶I’m planning to build my 35mm skills and am tired of waiting for the 1.2, so, alas, I ordered the 1.4 today.

¶It arrives tomorrow.

¶Congrats to the Carolina Hurricanes on winning the Stanley Cup last night. Now we can focus on what really matters in hockey right now — the Dylan Larkin initiated train wreck in Detroit.