‘Intentional Web Manifesto’ 🔗 Steve Ledlow / tangiblelife.net

Lou Plummer describes his perfect day (and it, indeed, sounds super nice). 🔗 amerpie.lol

I should probably start listening to Zane Lowe’s show on Apple Music, because I always love artist interviews when I happen across them. This one with Maggie Rogers on NPR Fresh Air was short, sweet, and wonderful. Hard to believe she’s my age. 🎙️ overcast.fm

Celeste Davis: ‘Why aren’t we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping?'

For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied. One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition!

This post is long, and I won’t pretend I read every word, but I got the gist and was nodding along. Our institutional disregard, dislike, and devaluation of feminism will continue to bite our ass as a society. The only way it’ll change is by teaching kids by example to accept and celebrate people as they are.

(Via Patrick Rhone)

🤧 I spent week 1/52 of 2025 as sick as a dog. Thankfully, it was a light week, and I could shift responsibilities around. But it was a harsh reminder not to procrastinate on yearly vaccines. My much smarter wife got hers — just one day of feeling lousy before her body bounced back. Lesson learned.

Jason Becker: ‘Banning Books that are “developmentally inapporpriate”'

“Developmentally inappropriate” is largely a term used to mean, “A topic that a child brings to an adult that they feel uncomfortable talking about with a child of that age.”

Most exposures to content that somehow becomes traumatic is only much more so when the world signals to a child that they should never talk to an adult about what they saw and how it made them feel because they were wrong to have come across it in the first place.

Hear, hear.

Manton Reece: ‘The long goodbye for Tim Cook’

Tim Cook has led Apple to incredible success, but his words are hollow. Even the principles he seems to care most passionately about, like user privacy, are in doubt. I’m increasingly thinking it’s an act.

I used to consider Tim Cook with nothing but admiration. From graceful filling the impossibly big shoes Steve Jobs left behind, to recognizing the responsibility his role gave him and coming out as the first and most prominent openly gay CEO, to his advocacy for user privacy.

The shine’s worn off over the years. Actions speak louder than words.

🆕📝 Experimenting with link posts on my microblog (and “the how” with Shortcuts)

This was gonna be a short post about emulating Dave Winer's link posts, but it, uh, grew into a peek behind the curtain.

Tired of managing screenshots in my photo library, I’ve put together this shortcut that takes a screenshot, automatically frames it with Shareshot, and sends it to the share sheet where I can save it or upload for sharing. All without littering up my library. 👌

Smartphone screen displaying a shortcut app sequence with actions: Wait 1 second, Take screenshot, Frame with background, Show screenshot, Share. Framed on a gradient background.

Pixelfed is doing data exports right by offering a local HTML site to browse your photos and data like a webpage. Along with the raw files, they include a JSON file for easier imports elsewhere. More self-contained, interactive exports like this, please! mastodon.social (Via Numeric Citizen)

🆕📝 Mesh Baselayers Beat Traditional Ones

It both defies logic and makes perfect sense.

Even as a Robb Knight superfan, it slipped me by that his Lantern tool for reviewing media on Micro.blog exists. 🤯 I’m pretty content with QuickReviews.app, but this sure is handy!

🍿 Watched (back in May 2022): The Matrix (1999)

Movie poster for The Matrix (1999, directed by Lana Wachowski) featuring four characters in dark clothing, standing confidently. Review: Maybe it’s just because this movie is hyped so highly, but I didn’t think it quite lived up. I enjoyed the concept and it’s very imaginative, but I could have done without the romance aspect and the second half dragged a bit for me. But I can see why people like it, why it’s back in the zeitgeist, and why it spawned such a fervor. Rating: One thumb up.

🍿 Watched (back in May 2022): Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Poster featuring characters from Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) directed by David Yates, surrounded by magical elements. Review: An improvement from the sequel, but not as delightful as the original. This movie ties up a few loose ends, but leaves many yet to be tidied. Jude Law plays a great Dumbledore, and the rest of the cast likewise reprised their roles well. All said, I’m not sure I actually like this series. I almost wish the first movie was a one-off and didn’t try so hard with the Grindelwald/Dumbledore storyline. Rating: One thumb up.

Don’t mind me, just clearing out some old reviews in Drafts that I never got around to posting until now. 😅

🍿 Watched (back in May 2022): Explorer: The Last Tepui (2022)

Climber grips a steep rock face, wearing a green helmet and orange jacket, suspended high in a mountainous landscape. Film: Explorer: The Last Tepui 2022 - Renan Öztürk & Taylor Rees. Review: A cool and important project, and incredible landscape. Impressive climbing and work by the team to make it possible to collect research data. But they took themselves a little too seriously in my opinion, which leaked into the documentary. Rating: One thumb up.

📺 Finished watching: Slow Horses (Season 2)

Poster of “Slow Horses” features Gary Oldman leading a group in a narrow, urban street. Review: I’m a big fan of the six-episode seasons. Long enough to enjoy the story, but not so long that it feels drawn out, leading you to too many dead ends and red herrings. The first season was perhaps a tad stronger, but I flew through this one, too. If each season continues to have its own classic spy theme (S1 = terrorists, S2 = Cold War debts to settle), I’ll be happy guy. But I like that some things are building from season to season. And finally, I appreciate their gutsy moves with characters. No spoilers, but I did NOT expect REDACTED to die so quickly! Rating: Two thumbs up.

Nick Heer: ‘Tim Cook Becomes the Newest Big Donor to the Trump Inaugural Fund’

Call this what you want: bipartisanship, diplomacy, pragmatic, or “the spirit of unity”. But do not call it principled.

Or bribery.

I love Nick’s writing just as much as I hate all the boot licking.

In case you haven’t heard yet, Apple TV+ is available to everyone to stream for free this weekend! It’s by far my favorite TV service. Here are my top five show recommendations:

  1. Trying
  2. Severence
  3. For All Mankind
  4. Ted Lasso
  5. Dark Matter

And their best movie: CODA

If you subscribe, what are your top 5?

Master of CSS Chris Coyier lightly redecorated his website, and it looks great. There are so many concepts here that I hope to dig into someday. chriscoyier.net

Pratik, writing.desipundit.com:

In general, even in 2024, the layperson is still intimidated by a “custom domain.” My wife’s firstname.com is available and yet she isn’t interested in getting it. Perhaps if we focused on the cool factor and owning a piece of the Internet (instead of data portability) […] it would get more traction.

He’s probably right. Most people don’t care about data portability. But more of them are impressed by cool URLs. And we know what they say about cool URLs…

Spending 30 minutes working around Shortcuts bugs wasn’t how I intended to start my morning, but it sure did make me appreciate apps (@1writer@mastodon.social) that offer multiple avenues for automation. Thank you @agiletortoise@mastodon.social and @marcoarment@mastodon.social for x-callback-url!

Year in books for 2024

There may not have been many, but each were quite good!

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words States of Adventure: STORIES ABOUT FINDING YOURSELF BY GETTING LOST Project Hail Mary Down Rock Climbing: The AMGA Single Pitch Manual The Mountain in the Sea Alone on the Wall (Expanded Edition)

🍿 Just watched: Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Poster with three serious faces and text “Killers of the Flower Moon, 2023, Martin Scorsese. Review: I struggle with this one because on one hand, I loved the actors and think they all did a marvelous job with their roles. It’s also an important story that I’m glad was given a prominent spotlight. And there’s no denying that it was beautifully shot, with no expense spared. On the other hand, it was so damn long. And yet, with all that time, I still didn’t always follow what was going on. I’m giving it a thumbs up, but I don’t think I’m going to watch it again. Rating: one thumb up.

It’s been 0 days since an app that I rarely open but use almost every single day via its share sheet extension or Shortcuts actions was offloaded from my device. 🙄