Final No-Shave November check-in. 🥸 Tomorrow you get to see baby face. 👶
🔗 Discover Wallace & Gromit. Shot on iPhone:
Wallace and Gromit star in a festive stop-motion animation, shot on iPhone 16 Pro. Discover how Academy Award-winning creators Aardman used the powerful camera system to turn their 23-centimetre characters into a 101-metre projection for Battersea Power Station.
What a delightfully neat treat. I hope they make a recording of the projection available for everyone to watch.
A new (Black Friday-themed) Very Good Tweet™ has landed:
In case you’re feeling trigger-happy on shopping sites today, I do have some fun designs for sale. Free shipping through Monday, Dec. 2 with code: EXTRAGRAVY
I spy something new in Micro.blog’s Mentions 👀
Great hack.
It's pretty simple and evident who cares about people in the US.
Andrew Bosworth: ‘Inbox ten’
For those who are curious, my system is Inbox Ten. That means I aim to end every day with fewer than ten emails in my inbox. I also have fewer than ten open chat threads across all interfaces. I’ve also read all relevant notifications in internal tools, read all relevant posts in internal groups I care about, and started rough drafts of any relevant proactive communications I intend to produce.
Email is the backbone of my system and I treat every email I receive as an action to be taken.
I prefer Inbox Zero, but reality these days is Inbox Ten, and it works well.
Some intriguing advice from Derek Sivers: Write one sentence per line
It helps you see first and last words.
First words punch. Last words linger. Seeing your sentences vertically helps you notice your beginnings and endings. Chop the weak beginnings, like “I think” and “Whether or not”. Start with powerful subjects and verbs.
He lists a bunch of other benefits too, including the ease of varying sentence length, judging each one on its own, and physically moving them around. And since Markdown will combine separate lines into a paragraph, it’s a breeze to do. I’m trying it now!
Derek Sivers, in his People & Blogs interview:
Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?
Space matters, but when you’re really inspired and driven, it’s almost like going into a trance. You don’t care where you are or how comfortable the chair.
This is so true. Most of my best writing happens in wildly uncomfortable places and positions, with the least ergonomics. It doesn’t matter if the words are flowing.
I was listening to a podcast episode the other day while I was driving and in there there was a thought that stuck with me: the idea that the web is moving from a creator economy to a curator economy. […]
Anyway, now more than ever, if you find value in curated blogs, newsletters, zines, or any other type of curated material, consider supporting the people who create and maintain them, because the vast majority of the time they don’t do it for the money, they do it because they think it’s important.
My list of Very Good Tweets™ was already starting to be degraded by linkrot, so I’ve rescued them with screenshots. Eliminates a bunch of gross embed code on the page too!
A Very Good Tweet™
So you’re telling me season 2 isn’t called Silos? Missed opportunity.
Manu Moreale: ‘Small scale is the best scale’
Scale matters. Send 1$ to a very small creator and you’ll make their day. Send 50$ to a famous YouTuber and they’ll barely notice it. Send an email to someone who wrote a post that resonated with you on their small personal site and you might start a friendship. Send a message to a famous celebrity and there’s a high chance they won’t even see it.
Firmin DeBrabander: ‘The Freedom of an Armed Society’
But furthermore, guns pose a monumental challenge to freedom, and particular, the liberty that is the hallmark of any democracy worthy of the name — that is, freedom of speech. Guns do communicate, after all, but in a way that is contrary to free speech aspirations: for, guns chasten speech.
This becomes clear if only you pry a little more deeply into the N.R.A.’s logic behind an armed society. An armed society is polite, by their thinking, precisely because guns would compel everyone to tamp down eccentric behavior, and refrain from actions that might seem threatening. The suggestion is that guns liberally interspersed throughout society would cause us all to walk gingerly — not make any sudden, unexpected moves — and watch what we say, how we act, whom we might offend.
This is how I’ve felt for a long time. Guns = fear. And fear does not promote healthy conversation, debate, or civility. The freedom of speech and expression can only go so far when you know someone who doesn’t like what you’re saying can extinguish you with the pull of a trigger.
(Via Jason Kottke in a post I recommend you read in full.)
Om Malik, in an old post, on a massive transition that I hadn’t ever considered:
These days, we want to carry the contents of our homes with us wherever we go. Photos, once housed in beautiful frames and curated in albums, are now stuffed into our iPhones, and our relationships are nurtured on social networks via electronic address books from anywhere on the planet. I know Coltrane, Miles, Dizzy, Ella and Thievery all come for a walk with me whenever I pull the door behind me. Thanks to the rise of place-shifting and devices such as Sling Media’s SlingBox, even my television travels with me.
Jan-Lukas Else, jlelse.blog:
Aren’t starter packs also just a new form of blogrolls?
Hmmm. Yeah, I suppose they are! Maybe more like public Twitter lists (RIP) or an OPML file you can subscribe to. But a good observation.
Saranac Lake Turkey Trot! It was magical with our fresh layer of snow. ❄️🏃♂️🏁
Ivan Penn: ‘Vermont Utility Plans to End Outages by Giving Customers Batteries’
Many electric utilities are putting up lots of new power lines as they rely more on renewable energy and try to make grids more resilient in bad weather. But a Vermont utility is proposing a very different approach: It wants to install batteries at most homes to make sure its customers never go without electricity. […]
“Call us the un-utility,” Mari McClure, Green Mountain’s chief executive, said in an interview before the company’s filing. “We’re completely flipping the model, decentralizing it.”
Makes sense!
Chance Miller, on the Channels app’s whimsical new Theater Mode:
Finally, this month’s Channels update also adds a brand new Theater Mode feature. When enabled, Theater Mode will “play multiple trailers and a feature presentation pre-roll before starting your movie.” It’s basically a way to replicate more of the movie theater experience without leaving the comfort of your own house.
Unnecessary, and not for everyone, but fun nonetheless!
Nicolas Magand, thejollyteapot.com:
What I like about my blog is that it feels like home, while social platforms are more like a bar or a restaurant. You go there to get a drink or to have dinner, you have a good time, you socialise, you meet friends and feel energised by the crowd around you, you eventually pay the bill, and then you go home.
Once at home you can finally relax and be more like yourself, the real you. For instance, you can wear whatever you want, do whatever you feel like doing, the way you like doing it, without worrying of what a stranger […] might think.
Finished reading: Endurance by Alfred Lansing 📚
What an absolutely riveting tale of human survival. Wow. 🥶😮
One day later and now AirPods Pro 2 are even cheaper than AirPods 4 with ANC! $154 vs $169 🤯
I really like the sound improvements, addition of ANC, and other little upgrades of my AirPods 4. But, after several months of use, I have to conclude that the AirPods 1 (& 2) design still fits my ears best.
David Sparks is frustrated by the slow adoption of passkeys. Me too. And he pointed out why sites hedging their bets and letting you set up both a password and passkey can be dangerous, which I hadn’t considered:
When a site offers both options, it creates a tempting target for bad actors. Imagine this: You try to log in with your shiny new passkey, and a fake prompt tells you it failed. Next thing you know, you’re asked to log in with your password instead. Guess what? You just handed over your credentials to the bad guys.
It works directly against the promise that passkeys are unphishable.