🔗 Apple unveils powerful accessibility features coming later this year:

Accessibility Reader is a new systemwide reading mode designed to make text easier to read for users with a wide range of disabilities, such as dyslexia or low vision. Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro, Accessibility Reader gives users new ways to customize text and focus on content they want to read, with extensive options for font, color, and spacing, as well as support for Spoken Content.

I have high hopes that this will be a big upgrade to the ‘Speak Screen’ and ‘Speech Controller’ features.

Finished reading: Brian’s Hunt by Gary Paulsen 📚

Thus ends the Hatchet Adventure series. They sure do make you want to escape to the woods.

Fewer podcasts. More audiobooks. 👍

Om Malik blogs about censorship being a core goal in Chinese AI development:

Pete’s assessment suggests that Chinese authorities have shifted their focus from simply blocking information to creating sophisticated models that provide alternative narratives. You can’t filter these models, for they have finessed and developed evasion techniques and thus will be offering alternative sanitized versions of history that align with government narratives. This represents a fundamental shift from previous censorship approaches.

The sinking feeling in my gut tells me it won’t only be that government.

Finished reading: Brian’s Return by Gary Paulsen 📚

Food for the soul.

What a pleasure it was to help Shane review technical skills ahead of his Single Pitch Instructor exam! I should have taken more pics, but we were too busy practicing belayed rappels, knots and hitches, rescue techniques from above and below, creative anchors with limited gear, and much more.

I love hearing from climbers that it’s mastering the skills that they value most. That they want to feel more confident and competent when cragging with their friends, even if they never formally instruct with their certification. Climbers looking out for one another — this community rocks. 🤘

Thanks, Shane, for a great day and smiling through the rain!

Want to shore up your own technical skills? Book a private day with us, or keep an eye on our group events calendar for upcoming clinics! Link in bio.

I had the pleasure of guiding Tom up his 22nd and 23rd High Peaks this past week. That’s makes that 19 we’ve summited together! The weather wasn’t certain it was going to give us great views, but it smiled upon us in the end.

And the mountain gifted us with some rare trailside wildlife sightings — a fox and a snake! These mountains give and give.

@newyorkoutdoorguides @lakeplacidadk #Adirondacks #PerfectDayADK #HireAGuide

![A metal plaque embedded in rock commemorates Esther McComb’s first recorded ascent of Mt. Esther at age 15. Text reads:

1839 MT ESTHER 1939 4270 FEET TO COMMEMORATE THE INDOMITABLE SPIRIT OF ESTHER McCOMB AGE 15 WHO MADE THE FIRST RECORDED ASCENT OF THIS PEAK FOR THE SHEER JOY OF CLIMBING TROY N.Y.](https://jb.heydingus.net/uploads/2025/17953004720954229.jpg)

Finished reading: Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen 📚

Finished reading: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen 📚

I’m enjoying going back through books I loved as a kid. This is one that shaped me.

🆕📝 7 Things This Week [#175]

Heavy nostalgia in this one.

Jason Kottke shared another platform-agnostic music linking service with a catchy name, but my favorite is album.link. It’s more full-featured, and has a great URL. (And does songs and podcasts too.)

🔗 Trump illegally fires Democrats on Consumer Product Safety Commission:

On Friday, Donald Trump abruptly removed the three sitting Democrat appointees on the five-person U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission – the independent watchdog agency that issues recalls and regulates everyday products, including consumer electronics. With no apparent cause for removal, the firings violate existing Supreme Court precedent dating back to 1935, as did Trump’s removals of the Democratic commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) back in March.

It feels hopeless when nothing comes of it.

My short but wild ride reading this @matt@isfeeling.social article:

“Nice, Matt’s found a new font!”

“Wait. No, he likes a new game.”

“Wait. No. He likes a new show that sounds like a game!”

“Oh wait, he did find a new font.” 🤣

John Siracusa makes another Apple stalwart critiquing how it’s lost its way, and he’s calling for new leadership:

The best leaders can change their minds in response to new information. The best leaders can be persuaded. But we’ve had decades of strife, lawsuits, and regulations, and Apple has stubbornly dug in its heels even further at every turn. It seems clear that there’s only one way to get a different result.

In every healthy entity, whether it’s an organization, an institution, or an organism, the old is replaced by the new: CEOs, sovereigns, or cells. It’s time for new leadership at Apple.

Robin Rendle discussed his blogging flow on Manuel Moreale’s People & Blogs series. The whole interview is quite good, but this bit stuck out to me:

But heed this lesson: your blogging tech stack should not be smart. That’s the most painful thing I’ve learned over the years. We need to take out all the complex build tools and fragile parts that slow us down and prevent us from doing the writing. It doesn’t matter if you’re using the coolest new tech thing, what matters is this: how fast can you write and publish something?

All my little shortcuts and tools are in service of this.

🔗 A literary history of fake texts in Apple’s marketing materials:

One rule of Dimension Apple is that there is no cross-over: The people who populate any given update are all new to that update, and never appear again in future marketing materials. “Rich Dinh” and “Trev Smith” are unique to iOS 17; “Sarah Castellbanco” and “Eden Sears” to iOS 8; etc.

With one exception: John Bishop.

What an amusing trip down the rabbit hole.

MacOS Keyboard Shortcuts to Get Things Done | Matt Langford

A few weeks ago, I decided (finally) to embrace some custom keyboard shortcuts on my Mac. I’ve tinkered a bit over that time, but I’ve landed in a place where I’m happy with the results. I’m going to detail every custom keyboard shortcut I’ve created and the apps required to make them work.

Matt’s got a really helpful list here. I’m going to have to copy a few and make better use of the Hyper Key!

🆕📝 Two bits of good Apple TV+ news

New seasons are coming for two great shows

We wrapped up April and kicked off May with 3 more summits on Tom’s tick list! Dial and Nippletop provided challenge and beauty with the miles and elevation gain. Tabletop’s approach was more pleasant, but the last half mile proved particularly dicey with a shark’s fin of snow taking up the narrow trail. Tom crushed it both days, always with a smile and a chuckle at the hard bits, reveling at the payoff views of the high peaks. 25 miles and 6000 feet of elevation gain over two days is not for the feint of heart this time of year, but Tom proved himself!

@newyorkoutdoorguides @lakeplacidadk #Adirondacks #PerfectDayADK #HireAGuide

Last weekend, I escaped the rainy ADK to climb with some friends in the rainy Red River Gorge in KY! Miguel’s and RRG was our usual weekend getaway back in the CMU days, but it’s a longer haul from NY now! Still, mega fun weekend ticking off some classic routes that I hadn’t done in years, and trying hard on new ones.

📺 Finished watching: The Residence

Apple’s got a new ‘Snapshot’ page (tool?) on their site. Curious. (Via 9to5Mac)

Finished reading: Frightful’s Mountain by Jean Craighead George 📚

Another solid entry in the series. One more to go.

This new Maggie Rogers single rules! 🎵

🆕📝 HeyDingus Now Runs on iCloud

It's been a long time coming