A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ I fucking started two. [🔗 Kev Quirk // startafuckingblog.com]

2️⃣ This is a raw, heart-wrenching, yet uplifting story from Alena Smith about going through, well, a lot in the hope of birthing and raising kids and not dying. All while writing and directing the excellent Dickinson. [🔗 Alena Smith // nytimes.com]

3️⃣ It seems super unfair that truckers don’t get overtime pay (they’re typically paid by the mile), so things like delays, cargo loading, and inspections are all basically free labor. [🔗 David Zipper // theverge.com]

4️⃣ It makes total sense to me that what is essentially a sophisticated predictive text program nailed so many of the “correct” responses to these prompts. But it’s still pretty wild. [🔗 JONAS DEGRAVE // engraved.blog]

5️⃣ Scruff the dog picked up over a thousand water bottles last year. The Good News Podcast has the details in a tight three minutes. [🔊 thegoodnewspodcast.fm]

6️⃣ Jacob Collier is officially on my shortlist of performers I want to see live. The guy is supremely talented. Just watch this short of him building a loop with like half a dozen instruments in just 60 seconds. [📺 Jacob Collier // youtube.com]

7️⃣ I will never unsee the use of Papyrus in the Avatar logo. And now you won’t either. [📺 Saturday Night Live // youtube.com] (Via Jason Kottke)

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7 Things

Craig Hockenberry of The Iconfactory (creator of Twitterrific), on the demise of the the Twitter API for third-party clients and what comes next:

One thing I’ve noticed is that everyone is going to great lengths to make something that replaces the clients we’ve known for years. That’s an excellent goal that eases a transition in the short-term, but ignores how a new open standard(ActivityPub) can be leveraged in new and different ways.

Federation exposes a lot of different data sources that you’d want to follow. Not all of these sources will be Mastodon instances: you may want to stay up-to-date with someone’s Micro.blog, or maybe another person’s Tumblr, or someone else’s photo feed. There are many apps and servers for you to choose from.

It feels like the time is right for a truly universal timeline. That notion excites me like the first time I posted XML status to an endpoint.

I feel that excitement too. That’s why I’m all in on Micro.blog for my social media, pared with this, my very own old-school blog and website.

Linked

What’s the best system to rate media or products? Grades from F to A? Stars from one to five? A simple thumbs up?

Online catalogs like Goodreads and Letterboxd stand behind their five star standards. Amazon and eBay give percent ratings out of 100. Netflix takes thumbs up and down and converts them to a percentage as well. But faced with adding ratings for books I’ve read to my own short reviews on Micro.blog, I’ve waffled.

At first, I just shifted over my out-of-five book ratings from Goodreads. But too many were the cowardly three stars. Did I like it or not? Even I didn’t know! And don’t get me started on how you can do half-stars, which essentially make them out of ten instead. Too many choices! I briefly courted with ratings out three. Bad/okay/good seemed like it should be enough for anyone. But I quickly saw how any odd numbered rating system has the same fatal flaw: it allows you to sit on the fence between good and bad, deflecting an actual decision.

And so, as you might have guessed from the title, I’ve landed on four-star ratings. Poor/okay/good/great, as it were. Or oof/eh/ooh/wow. Four stars forces a definitive decision, and leaves just enough room for nuance — unlike thumbs up/down. Three stars communicates a positive recommendation and four that it was stand-out, while two or one says that it can probably be skipped or was notably bad.

I should have realized that Matt Birchler had already landed on the correct format. ★★★★

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [🔗 goodreads.com]

2️⃣ Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown [🔗 goodreads.com]

3️⃣ Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson [🔗 goodreads.com]

4️⃣ Black Wings Beating (Skybound, #1) by Alex London [🔗 goodreads.com]

5️⃣ Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp [🔗 goodreads.com]

6️⃣ The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss [🔗 goodreads.com]

7️⃣ Rabbits by Terry Miles [🔗 goodreads.com]

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Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know.

7 Things

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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Happy New Year, folks! I hope you achieve something that you’re proud of in 2023. 🎉

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1️⃣ Universal Control has been one of my favorite additions to the Apple ecosystem in the past few years. I love that it makes using two completely different operating systems so seamless. Jason Snell points out some other fantastic use cases for Universal Control in this article. [🔗 Jason Snell // macworld.com]

2️⃣ I had no idea that user stylesheets were a thing, but of course, they were a thing. Their need is largely supplanted by read-it-later apps, RSS, and ad blockers, but I’m still intrigued. [🔗 Nick Heer // pxlnv.com]

3️⃣ 👏 Bring back the Mini! 👏 Bring back the Mini! 👏 [🔗 Sami Fathi // macrumors.com]

4️⃣ I just discovered the OfferUp service this week. It’s kind of like eBay and kind of like Facebook Marketplace, but with a bunch of the friction removed. It’s geared toward selling your items locally, but they’ll help you ship stuff, too. Worth a look if you’re doing some new year clearing out. Here’s my sales page. [🔗 offerup.com]

5️⃣ An absolute banger from P!nk that my wife and I have had on repeat. It was the best dancing song for New Year’s Eve. 😉 [🔗 P!nk // song.link]

6️⃣ Did you know that there’s a Season 2 and 3 of the classic Neature Walk videos from back in the day? Me neither! But they’re pretty neat! [🔗 vicscrappyvideos // youtube.com]

7️⃣ An app just for joy: Pixel Pals. It works best with an iPhone with the Dynamic Island, but still super cute on any phone. You get little animated animal friends that can hang out on your home screen and lock screen. 😊 [🔗 Christian Selig // apps.apple.com]

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Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know.

7 Things

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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🎄 Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone! 🎄

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1️⃣ I’m glad to see the USPS take the “go big” route for electric vehicles. They upped their original purchase plan by a lot! [🔗 Umar Shakir // theverge.com]

2️⃣ Drafts is my perennial pick for the best iOS app, so I’m thrilled to see it recognized by the MacStories team with their Lifetime Achievement award. If there’s something I need to write down, remember, or get out of my head, I always reach first for Drafts. It’s the never-ending notebook in my pocket. [🔗 Alex Guyot // macstories.net]

3️⃣ This short article and interactive “thingy” is super instructive for a basic understanding of why the free market inherently redistributes wealth to the lucky few. A salient quote:

But imagine what would happen if we played this game with real people: Some of the wealthy players would inevitably argue that they deserve to be rich because they’re better at guessing the result of a coin flip.

[🔗 Wealth Distribution // pudding.cool] (Via John Siracusa)

4️⃣ David Smith reveals how automatic Backtrack works. A handy tip to share with anyone with an Apple Watch Series 6 or later! [🔗 David Smith // david-smith.org]

5️⃣ I loved this old-school climbing video showing an iconic climb in Yosemite back in the 60s. It’s what I imagine Reel Rock would have been back then. I recognized Royal Robbins right away but was tickled to see it was Yvon Chouinard climbing with him. [🔗 Donut Smasher // youtube.com]

6️⃣ Greg Morris has the wheels in my head turning with his blog post about reducing his contact points with the internet essentially down to just one. [🔗 Greg Morris // gr36.com]

7️⃣ This is my Christmas playlist. There are many like it, but this one is mine. 😉🎄 [🔗 Jarrod Blundy // music.apple.com]

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7 Things

“Who is this built for?” It’s a good question to consider from time to time.

If you’re an app user, you might think it’s you. You did, in fact, navigate to it in an app store and then download it to your device. You also signed in and chose what you wanted to see — but ask yourself: Which content can you fly through — fast-forwarding or rewinding to your leisure — or even skip if you want? Is it the content that you sought out, or is it the ads?

I’ll give you a hint, the content you can’t skip through…that’s what the platform was built to serve. Its creator and their interests. Too often, that’s not the end user, and their experience degrades accordingly.

I really wish that ‘Weave’ had won out as the brand name for the smart home communication standard over ‘Matter’.

Weave was the protocol that Nest had developed to go with their ‘Thread’ radios (think similar to Bluetooth or Wi-fi radios).

Seeing as Thread radios are still at the heart of interconnected devices with Matter, that whimsical many-threads-make-a-strong-weave analogy would be easier to explain than something as esoteric as ‘Matter’.

I like names that make sense, and Matter-the-home-standard doesn’t have one of them. At least Matter-the-reading-app has some logic behind its name. It comes from a quote and book by storied author Ursula K. LeGuin:

Words are my matter.

Typically the most tight-lipped tech company regarding future products, Apple has intentionally revealed what to expect from them over the next ten years. That’s right, even though something as longstanding as WWDC gets the “Apple today announced” treatment each spring, we can write in an entire decade of products on our BINGO boards.

Okay, enough of a lede. Which product is it? Major League Soccer on Apple TV, of course. Apple announced in November that they were committed to a ten-year deal with MLS to be its exclusive streamer, with deep hooks into the matches and how they’re presented.

That’s big. Really big. Especially since Apple TV+ has only been around since 2019 — just three years. In striking this deal, Apple has communicated to the world that it’s in it for the long haul with Apple TV content. I don’t know if it has ever pledged to ten years of anything before. MLS Season Pass is a massive commitment to the Apple TV streaming platform.

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ I mentioned Micro Mondays last week, and I’m back with a similar podcast recommendation this week. Really Specific Stories is a similar origin story interview show but for podcasters rather than bloggers, hosted by Martin Feld. And it’s usually a bit longer. [🔗 Really Specific Stories // pod.link]

2️⃣ Sebastian de With reminded me of this excellent product video from Apple a few years ago. It’s well worth a rewatch. [🔗 Technical Bhaijaan // youtube.com]

3️⃣ This three-minute episode of The Good News Podcast made my day. It warms my heart when people humor children and play within their imagination. [🔗 The Good News Podcast // overcast.fm]

4️⃣ The internet finds a way. 🤣 [🔗 spacekaren.sucks] (Via @Daniel_Rubino)

5️⃣ I’ve started testing out the beta of Reader by Readwise. It’s an impressive read-it-later and highlighting app, contending against my long-term favorite Reeder. You can sign up to try it out for free, too! [🔗 Reader by Readwise // readwise.io]

6️⃣ I feel like I’ve been just one step behind Greg Morris on his whole internet presence journey for a while. So I guess this post about re-splitting social media from blogging could be a look at what I’m doing next. [🔗 Greg Morris // gr36.com]

7️⃣ I think my favorite cubes to eat are sushis and calzones. [🔗 Cube Rule // cuberule.com]

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7 Things