Nice to see verifiable proof of this from Manuel and the impact a link can have in getting others to find a new voice to listen to. Be gracious with your links. | Continue reading
According to Applebaum, one of the key tactics that autocracies use to encourage citizens to opt out of any type of democratic process is a firehose of falsehoods. When presented with something bad the regime did the autocrat will produce as many reasons as possible that the bad … | Continue reading
Like this content, become a member to help keep it coming. Today we look at doing without existing in the world, don’t delegate your thinking, and the absurdness of the wealth of some people in the world. Always Doing, Never Existing I don’t know how to exist without doing anymor … | Continue reading
While Applebaum did reference Donald Trump a few times in Autocracy Inc, the bulk of the book was written before Trump’s second Presidency yet many of the tactics described by Applebaum in the book have clear parallels to what we see Trump’s team doing today. Want to read all my … | Continue reading
I just found Polyphia last night and they are awesome. The video below was my introduction to them. Next up, purchase a few of their albums. | Continue reading
We’re not even out of Chapter 1 in this month’s book and another thought has been sticking with me. Democracies love to preach the virtues of freedom – but they’ve never hesitated to install “friendly” leaders abroad when there’s profit to be made. This isn’t the first time I’ve … | Continue reading
Do you enjoy this, become a member or buy a book to help keep the content coming. Today we have a hard conversation about the rights of people, how play was lost, and local music. Trans Rights, Women’s Rights, Gay Rights…Oh my This was a very interesting episode of Uncomfortable … | Continue reading
The first point that stuck out to me in Autocracy Inc is that many democratic countries believed if they engaged with autocrats economically they’d export their clearly superior ideas and democracy would spread throughout the world. This is a very common thought because we all wa … | Continue reading
Should you tolerate everyone? What about people who are intolerant and actively work to restrict the rights of others? Should you specialize early or wait? Which brings greater long-term success? Oh, and a fun music video from one of my current favourite bands to lighten up the m … | Continue reading
This was the book club book for August 2025. Join the free newsletter to get all the posts that talk about it. In September we’re reading Never Play it Safe by Chase Jarvis Where most productivity books try to give you a system to get more done, Oliver Burkeman takes a different … | Continue reading
The more I experience the increasingly enshittified world controlled by corporations, the less surprised I am when they find new ways to squeeze money out of both customers and creators alike. In their continual quest for profits, I’m extremely skeptical of any promises made and … | Continue reading
Once you stop struggling to get on top of everything, to stay in absolute control, or to make everything perfect, you’re rewarded with time, energy and psychological freedom to accomplish the most of which anyone could be capable. –Meditations for Mortals Pg 149 When I look at mu … | Continue reading
I’m still thinking about ownership and simplicity so here are some tips on Emacs from others, some talk about the importance of physical ownership, and a thought from an upcoming short book on choosing a note tool. Owning tasks in Emacs I’ve been using Emacs with Org mode for a f … | Continue reading
One of the key questions I’ve asked myself for years when a task comes along is “What if this were easy”, so seeing Oliver Burkeman bring up the same question in week three got me smiling. One problem with typical productivity advice is that it assumes you need a deep reservoir o … | Continue reading
What happens to life when basic needs, like housing, becomes an investment vehicle? How does you life change when the joy of watching sports is tied up with the idolization of gambling? What do we do with our leisure time when so much of the push around us asks us to monetize our … | Continue reading
I’ve lost count of how many people have told me they want to write a book — but never start. They want to be authors, but they’ve invented roadblocks limiting them from writing. They enjoy their comfortable cocktail of procrastination and excuses that gives them license to avoid … | Continue reading
If you like this content, become a member or purchase my book Analogue Productivity. This helps the content continue. For the love of plain text Over the last two years I’ve taken ownership of much of my media. I own movies on discs that are placed on my server that are streamed … | Continue reading
In truth, I don’t actually like reading later. 99% of the time, if I save something to read later, the fact that I’m not reading it now is a good sign that I don’t actually want to read it and should free myself of the obligation. Saving the article is an act of self-soothing, te … | Continue reading
Pull and refresh on YouTube to bring you some new videos that their algorithm thinks you’ll like. Pull and refresh on Mastodon to see new articles recommended by people you follow, I’m sure some of them are interesting. Reddit lets you scroll to the “bottom” of a list of things t … | Continue reading
Today’s issue of 3 Threads ended up being all about the value of friction. Far from being something to avoid, it acts as a filtering function to help us decide what is valuable to us. Booking Time Should Require Friction I’ve long thought that friction is a filtering force in all … | Continue reading
This month we looked at Farsighted by Steven Johnson in book club. Join the club to get all the content on it. Next month we’re reading Meditations for Mortals. The purpose of Farsighted is to help us make better decisions with Johnson saying that outside of a pro/con list, we te … | Continue reading
Optimize for what you care about Because, at the risk of sounding a little fruity, I believe that a life in which we habitually abandon the known Good Things in order to helplessly stab at “”managing”” a nebulous morass of chaoses that we can never control is not much of a life a … | Continue reading
While this newsletter is free, membership helps support my work so that it can keep showing up in your inbox. Last week we looked at how diversity improves decisions, today let’s look at how we can improve our decisions when we’re faced with personal decisions. One of the first q … | Continue reading
Want to keep this newsletter coming become a member. Anyone know the name of the music album this blog post title refers to? No looking it up. Quantum Computer’s Aren’t Real While I had heard of this paper debunking the breathless media headlines about quantum factorization I adm … | Continue reading
Let’s start with the point that Steven Johnson makes over and over in Farsighted, if you want to make good decisions the diversity in background, gender, all other factors…matters. Homogenous groups – whether they are united by ethnic background, gender, or some other worldview l … | Continue reading
Two friends got run over by a car this week while riding their bikes. One is doing fine, the other was likely on his last ride. I’ve been on the radio this week and talking to a number of my non-cycling friends about bike and pedestrian safety this week and I wanted to share a [… … | Continue reading
Next month’s book is Farsighted by Steven Johnson, join the Book Club to get all of the content. I’m on vacation next week out of internet range so there will be no post which gives you two weeks to get started on the book. This month we’ve read The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul … | Continue reading
Next week is vacation so I doubt I’ll be writing anything. Instead I’ll be enjoying a cabin in Northern BC. In Search of Novelty There’s another reason simplicity offends. It’s boring. And boredom is culturally taboo in high-status circles. – The Cult of Hard Mode I think about t … | Continue reading
If the internet hype is to be believed iPadOS 26 will solve most of the problems that caused your iPad to not become your computer of choice. If you believe the hype that is. I’ve been using iPadOS 26 for a few days and while it does improve the window management issues in Stage … | Continue reading
I’m late in Burnout Society now and I think that the author is missing a key turn in his arguments. He recognizes that many activities in the modern world are being reduce from expert positions to mere labour but then goes on to say that burnout is the result of voluntary self-ex … | Continue reading
Adding Edges to Consumption Caitlin Dewey spent this great article exploring how to have guardrails on media consumption. Social media sites aren’t going to do it for you. The algorithms on Facebook and X and Reddit are designed to keep feeding you shit that keeps you interested … | Continue reading
For years now multitasking has been one of the “key” elements on many job descriptions. It’s often seen as the only way someone can get by in today’s frenetic world, with so many notifications, emails, and other interruptions coming our way. Even outside of the things that push t … | Continue reading
I’m spending next weekend away racing bikes. Don’t expect an email but have an excellent weekend. Notebooks for Coders I learned very early on in my career that I’m not very good at thinking when I’m at a computer. When I have my code editor open, I’m in a “function mode” where I … | Continue reading
Lou wrote a list of what he likes in a blog and I agree with them. I’d add that while I don’t want to hear about how bad things are all the time, I also don’t want fanboy blogs either. There are a number of Apple centric sites that I stopped following because they were […] | Continue reading
This is the monthly wrap-up of book club get it, along with all the posts for the month, in your inbox for free by clicking that link. Next month I’ve got a busy month of travel so we’re reading a shorter book, The Burnout Society (Amazon). Early in The Siren’s Call Chris Hayes, … | Continue reading
Get this in your inbox by joining the email list. Workload and Rest Cal Newport brought up a few studies that looked at the four-day work week to show that productivity barely decreases, if it decreases at all, when you reduce work by an entire day. But Alex Pang spent two books … | Continue reading
While reading the magazine version of Plastic Money I came across this quote near the end. For its part, Plastic Bank isn’t interested in hiring full-time collectors. “I think it’s even more exciting for the world’s most resourceful to have an unlimited opportunity,” Katz says. “ … | Continue reading
I was catching up with some tech news yesterday and while I was listening to a discussion about the latest updates coming from Google and their potential impact on the web I had a sudden realization: when tech reporters say “the web” they don’t mean the web. When these people tal … | Continue reading
You go to Google to screen out irrelevant information and to reliably focus on the output of Googles information processing system. This gives Google exclusive access to the most precious resource, which is your attention. And since they have your attention, they can sell your at … | Continue reading
New stuff isn’t necessarily better I agree, old software has value. One of Cal Newport’s books puts forward the idea that we automatically view any new technology as good, he contrasts this with the Amish who evaluate the utility of a technology in helping them maintain the way o … | Continue reading
Yup, analogue tools can help reduce overwhelm because they don’t notify you. They just sit there and do their jobs. | Continue reading
In Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, commercial artists began putting up posters around the city advertising venues and shows and the like. It was so effective that soon posters were covering every surface of the city, leading to a concerted push by Parisians to regulat … | Continue reading
Unstatus Joan had an interesting post about stepping away from the status markers of society. While many people are stepping away from the traditional markers of status, cars/houses, that also shows the status they have as she acknowledges. Rejecting conventional status markers o … | Continue reading
I was travelling recently and realized I didn’t pack the small fan I often would bring on trips since I’m used to sleeping with a fan at home. Luckily with a quick search I found this excellent StackExchange answer to use SoX that come with some excellent formula’s in the answers … | Continue reading
Never before in human life on the planet have more people had access to a wider array of diversions at each waking instant. And yet, we are increasingly stalked, as the King is, by the sense that it’s not enough. The more diversions available the more diversion we need, and the m … | Continue reading
Ryan Holiday’s Cancelled Talk Recently Ryan Holiday had his talk at the US Naval Academy cancelled which means that we’re really looking at the Streisand effect where his talk is going to get far more coverage than it would of presented to a small group of Navy recruits. This tal … | Continue reading
This is our first look at Siren’s Call by Chris Hayes, and it’s a bit of a confession from me. Hayes hit me pretty hard by page 4 when he equated the world around us, particularly the online platforms, to the Sirens from the Greek myth of Odysseus. Online platforms called to me v … | Continue reading
Non Fiction Making it So by Patrick Steward My wife got me this for Chrismas 2023 and I finally sat down and read the wonderful book looking at the life of Patrick Steward from his perspective. A few things stand out to me, he was 45 when he got the roll as Captian Picard in […] | Continue reading