From Manu on Identity. It’s also why I find broad group definitions so annoying. Lumping together potentially billions of people using arbitrary traits as the dividing line is such a lazy way to look at the richness of human diversity and experience. Every time I see people using … | Continue reading
Robert goes over why he keeps a blog. I still think a blog is great for your career. I’ll be writing more about technical stuff on my business site/blog because I’m learning more about Laravel and Python and want to branch out from WordPress stuff. | Continue reading
It’s almost irresistible to blame something or someone else, to shift responsibility away from ourselves, and to look for the central knob, the product, the pill, the technical fix that will make the problem go away. Thinking in Systems Pg 4 I love this quote because it relates c … | Continue reading
Yes you read the title right. This high school student built his own laptop and it’s not some janky thing it’s a viable usable laptop. | Continue reading
I know I’m always looking for good book recommendations, as much as wanting to know which books are not worth reading. To that end I’ll be doing a monthly recap of the books I read with a recommendation so you can populate or weed books out of your TBR pile. Non-Fiction Declutter … | Continue reading
Reading this article from 404 about Mark Zuckerberg being annoyed that anything he says leaks and causes damage to his company…maybe stop saying shitty things that devalue humans. It’s possible Marky that you’re being an asshat and many of your employees don’t agree with you and … | Continue reading
Years of social media have managed to convince us that a scrollable timeline, a comment box with a characters limit and a like button are the tools we need to use to connect with each other. That is a big fucking lie and if you don’t believe me write me an email and I’ll be happy … | Continue reading
This is the third book in Ryan Holiday’s series on the four cardinal virtues from stoic philosophy. Courage is Calling covers courage, temperance is covered by Discipline is Destiny and this covers justice. His coming book will cover wisdom. Holiday’s investigation of justice cov … | Continue reading
As we finish up the first month of 2025 people are still all fired up about their goals, though some are already seeing the cracks in the self they projected into 2025. Today I want to address the reading goal and it’s value for the quality of your life and the quality of your re … | Continue reading
Robert Breen says no and he’s probably right, though they all say they want some of the books when I ask them today. While I place value on my book collection of a personal nature that exceeds the monetary value of the books, I also realise that as I age I need to talk to […] | Continue reading
If you want to use Gmail then 404 has a post on how to turn off Gemini summaries but of course the easiest way to do this is to not use Gmail. Proton is a good option. | Continue reading
Once again, don’t go into the company of powerful people, particularly white ones, and point out the obviousness of systemic racism. They have a label for that, “identity politics.” When you think independently of the narrative that people are comfortable with, you make them unco … | Continue reading
Reminder if you’re part of the book club and have thoughts on this month’s book I encourage you to publish them and send me a link so I can include it in next week’s wrap up of our book for January. A core topic of discussion in Holiday’s look at justice in Right Thing Right […] | Continue reading
The question about using Kindle, or any electronic reading device, brings up many emotions for people. Some swear by them and some swear that they make you dumber, while others feel nostalgic for the smell and feel of a book without weighing in deeper than expressing their person … | Continue reading
The title is a bit meta, but there are some excellent options on this list of best self hosted apps of 2024. I’ll set up Pinchflat to give my younger children access to YouTube creators that don’t label their content as kid friendly because that breaks their monetization, but are … | Continue reading
While it’s older, I just read Federico talk about his 11″ iPad Pro setup and as usual I want to use the iPad more. I don’t think Apple is any better than other large tech companies but I’ve tried other tablets and the iPad is the best tablet on the market. Nothing has even come [ … | Continue reading
Unsurprisingly Apple gets as much of your data as it can. Apple fans dunk on Microsoft for ads and tracking, but Apple isn’t any better with it’s service upsell’s in system and all the tracking it does. But “Apple is a better company”…so that makes it okay? Except for the fealty … | Continue reading
What the title says, here is a mechanical keyboard modded to have a TouchID switch. I love fingerprint authentication which I have on my TouchID keyboards for the macOS systems I have around and on my Framework 13″ laptop. I plan to build a Linux desktop this year and need to loo … | Continue reading
Outside of the constant services Apple wants to push on users, or the fealty payments Tim Cook is making to the criminal insurrectionist president of the US, they charge stupid amounts for storage upgrades. At least there are options to avoid the Apple storage tax, even if you ca … | Continue reading
This is a heartbreaking story about an IUD that caused suicidal thoughts so that’s a content warning. What really gets me is that her medical professionals ignored her at first. Although after reading Invisible Women this doesn’t surprise me at all because it documents so many wa … | Continue reading
The moral circle was first talked about by Stoic philosopher Hierocles in 2AD and is defined as the number and type of entities you give moral consideration. In the context of Right Thing Right Now, Holiday talks lots about justice and who justice applies to in society. Which of … | Continue reading
Last week I talked about consuming content and how your library should be about the stuff you want to learn instead of a performative shelf of stuff you’ve read. One key point I mentioned was that if I owned a book, but had read it and taken good notes on it I better have a […] | Continue reading
I was just talking with my coworker about how hard parenting can be. Like Matt, we don’t have family in the area and have never had much support with our kids. To add to this my wife struggled with post-partum depression with all our kids but very deeply with our 3rd child. Add t … | Continue reading
I felt so constrained. I was giving so much of my creativity to something I wasn’t actually creating. I have always had this hope to do things on my terms as a creative person. I’ve always had this passion for creating something from the ground up that was totally mine. I was ini … | Continue reading
Interesting quick read on lifestyle creep which rightly says that so many people struggle to make their ends meet at all that of course they spend more when they start earning more. On a personal note, we live within our means, but when it comes to healthcare and specifically den … | Continue reading
From Celeste on the dropping enrolment of men in college: Male flight describes a similar phenomenon when large numbers of females enter a profession, group, hobby or industry—the men leave. That industry is then devalued. Dang, the mental gymnastics shown by the men to say anyth … | Continue reading
Jumping on Kev and Manuel, here are my answers. Why did you start blogging in the first place The oldest post here comes from 2008 when I thought I was a decent designer and made some Photoshop brushes. I had blogged a bit before that on WordPress.com, but those posts are gone. I … | Continue reading
As a child you’re taught to tell the truth, at least that’s what I teach my kids coming down far harder on them for lying about eating all the candy than for eating all the candy if they tell the truth about it. Yet when I sit back and look at the news I see […] | Continue reading
Umberto Echo had a famously large library of 30,000 books most of which he knew he’d never read. When asked about his huge library he’d correct people calling it his antilibrary, a resource for all the things he didn’t know. It wasn’t about showing off all the books he had read, … | Continue reading
Non-Fiction Dark PR First, Grant was kind enough to gift me a physical copy of this book when I said it wasn’t available at my local library. No request from him, just asked for my address and sent a book. In this book the reader is provided with many frameworks to use when they … | Continue reading
Good post from Tracy on the culture of more. I own about 500 physical books personally, and I’d guess if we include the kids books we have over 1000 books in the house. We love books and if a kid expresses interest in a book I almost always buy it for them. I didn’t say […] | Continue reading
Yes I hate them, so much that every time I realize a site uses one I stop and spend some time wondering if I really need to use that site. But 404 media has a compelling case for not wanting usernames/passwords which makes the magic link not a terrible idea for many. I know that … | Continue reading
Extending my 2024 stats here are some thoughts on 2025. Content I did a decent job writing in 2024, but my video production dropped off. For 2025 I’d like to be intentional again about getting videos out on YouTube. While I’ll still cover some software stuff on Obsidian or Calibr … | Continue reading
My Site I had 120k views on my site with the most popular post being a look at Scott Scheper’s Antinet Zettelkasten book, which I don’t think is worth your time. My second most popular post was How to Handle PDFs natively in Obsidian. Both of those posts were from 2023 and when I … | Continue reading
No as long as you keep the volume low enough and in fact noise cancelling headphones can help preserve hearing in some cases, but they’re not hearing protection. If you’re doing construction wear hearing protection and properly guard your hearing. | Continue reading
This was an excellent podcast with David Roche and the thing that stuck out to me was David saying that you just need to keep shooting your shot and good things can happen. If you don’t take a chance then nothing will happen because no effort was put out. Good reminder for me thi … | Continue reading
In this very short piece Kotte shows the power of linked writing online. As he says, it’s 110 words on how unfit Trump is to run a country but leads to hours of reading about the in depth bad stuff he’s done. Your own site can do this. It takes a while to get started […] | Continue reading
For 2025 I’m starting a book club and we’re starting with Right Thing Right Now by Ryan Holiday. If you want to get the weekly insights sign up as they’re only coming via email. Members will get some extras like PDF/ePub copies of the book insights and if there is enough interest … | Continue reading
His top recommendation looks nice, I wish I could find a place to test it out that’s not an entire day of driving away. Do you have a favourite chair? What is it? | Continue reading
Make a habit of shipping things, instead of starting things that never get done. | Continue reading
This was the ideal I hoped would happen with my iPad. The reality of my iPad usage is that it mostly sits with my bicycle training station and runs the app that connects to my trainer. I watch YouTube videos on it while I ride, or watch YouTube videos while I deal with laundry. W … | Continue reading
This is brought to you by members become one to keep the content coming. Reading for 2024 – read more?? In 2024 (46 books as of writing) I read more than 2023 (31 books total) which makes me happier but is still below the previous 9 years of around 70 books per year. I’m not […] | Continue reading
While Ed’s story of crappy tech points directly to a Windows computer, Apple isn’t much better. Yes the hardware is nicer so you don’t have multiple minutes to wait while you login in, but it’s also more expensive meaning that many people couldn’t afford the supposedly “better” e … | Continue reading
A few days ago I was one of the many people that did something to support a creator that YouTube demonetized and wouldn’t communicate with. Well she’s back and that’s good and all, but damn YouTube is broken. You have to have a big enough channel go viral and get lots of complain … | Continue reading
This was a good video about the pressure of reading, at least for those with a YouTube channel that is all about books. I’m writing more about reading for 2025 tomorrow, but just do what you want. Read the books you’re interested in and read as much, or as little as you want. My … | Continue reading
This story is exactly why I will never rely on money from YouTube. The byzantine rube goldberg machine process required to still never get answers is terrible, but since YouTube has no viable competitors they can keep being crappy to creators and not suffer any consequences of th … | Continue reading
Latest entry in People & Blogs by Manuel. I only recently came across this site so didn’t realize it was a recurring series of posts but I love it. I’ve been recently thinking about how to increase the other writers/sites I highlight and this might be a good idea I can riff on to … | Continue reading
Back in 2014 the billionaire Nick Hanauer appealed to other 0.01%ers to support raising the minimum wage to $15/hour because it would promote equality. Sitting 10-years later I can’t look at the article as anything but laughable in that it tries to sound reasonable and appeal to … | Continue reading