Ask Paul: May 29 ⭐

Happy Friday! It's the fifth Friday this month and the end of a short week that felt awfully long for some reason. But let's kick it off early with some great reader questions.
🎶 Nashville
train_wreck asks:

You excited for the trip to (country) music city? (Nashville, Tennessee). It’s my hometown! Hope you have fun here.

Thanks, yes, though it's mixed up in a lot of busyness between our return from Mexico and that week, plus the three industry shows (Computex, Build, WWDC) still to come. But yes.

Stephanie and I did visit Nashville once, over 20 years ago, because I was speaking in Huntsville, Alabama and we decided to make a long weekend out of it. Among other things, we visited the nearby Jack Daniel's distillery, which was in a dry county at that time, so we couldn't even taste anything during the tour. (You can easily imagine me in the back of a group muttering "Are you f#$king kidding me" when we found this out halfway through.) I guess that's no longer the case.

But I do recall really liking the city, and the music scene, and it will be interesting to revisit it. I sometimes go into trips like this doing zero research, but I will try not to do that this time, and Steph and I have both passed around a few ideas for the kids to look at. There are still a few weeks to go before we leave.

One thing that came up in my "research," so to speak, was that there's an Amazon Prime series out now called Scarpetta, based on a series of books I'd never read, that's filmed entirely in Nashville even though the show takes place in Virginia mostly. (This is the second recent example of this I've noticed; there's a TV show version of Man on Fire, an excellent book and movie, that was filmed entirely in Mexico City but takes place, in the show, in Brazil for some reason. The movie does take place in Mexico City and was filmed there.) Anyway, hoping that this Scarpetta show would provide some good glimpses of Nashville, we've been watching it this week. And I cannot stress enough how terrible it is. We have two episodes to go as I write this and will endure the rest. But ... terrible. Unless you enjoy 45 minutes of people just yelling at each other, I guess.
"New Oura Ring 5 unveiled with dramatically smaller design"

Now it only fits on your pinkie
🧑‍💻 Build it and you are dumb
Will asks:

Next week is Build, and I am curious if the entire focus will be on AI? I am assuming there will be some news on Copilot and maybe some Windows news in there as well, but what exactly will the focus of Build be and who is the audience today?

I am curious as well, but there were no pre-briefings and won't be, per se, as press/bloggers won't get materials until the night before the show, which I believe is a first. Mary Jo and I were chatting about this just yesterday, and I guess this year's show will be much smaller than usual. I was invited, which apparently is unusual as many were not. But I won't be attending in person, in part because I...