Microposts

📚 Although I exceeded my goal of reading 45 books in 2024 by finishing 60 books. I’m going to keep my goal for 2025 at 45, anticipating that I’ll be reading more non-fiction this year which will slow me down – for the better.

If you’re interested in owning your own web content (and you should be), the new Micro.one is a fantastic option at a super affordable $1/month. I joined Micro.blog back in 2018 and am a very happy Premium user.

The people should own the town square

Nice to see this:

we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new non-profit organization, affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.

Mastodon continues to be our best, decentralized option and I’m glad it exists

🔗 Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.2: A Deep Dive into Working with Siri and ChatGPT, Together

I’m aligned with Viticci here:

I think empowering LLMs to be “creative” with the goal of displacing artists is a mistake, and also a distraction – a glossy facade largely amounting to a party trick that gets boring fast and misses the bigger picture of how these AI tools may practically help us in the workplace, healthcare, biology, and other industries.

I could use the help with reducing busywork and letting me focus on the creative part. That’s what I’m looking forward to

After using the new Reeder for a couple of months I’m going to stick with it.

I like having all of my sources (RSS, Micro.blog, Mastodon, Bluesky, and podcasts) consolidated into one feed with easy gestures to tag as “read later” or open in a native app. The recent addition of folders was helpful, as I’ve created an “Attention” folder for anything I really don’t want to miss. Everything else is part of the river of updates and I don’t worry about completion.

One issue with the consolidation is that I’m following people across multiple services and seeing duplicate posts. I’ve been standardizing to their Micro.blog timelines, when available. This fragmentation across services is a common complaint and I expect I’ll be experimenting with different solutions. Now that we can so easily cross-post, we also need to manage our conversations. Recent updates to Micro.blog have been really helpful for this.

The most productive thing I’ll do all week: Organized the giant box of cables by taking out anything we no longer need, had no idea what is was for, or already had at least three backups. The photo is of the discard pile

A tangled pile of various electronic cables and chargers is spread out on a surface.

🔗 The Problem with Sci-Fi Body Armor // Bret Devereaux

I want to focus on rigid science fiction armors because they offer an interesting lens to consider their design: how to armor a human body in a rigid substance is an exceedingly solved problem: quite a few cultures have tackled this particular problem with a lot of energy and ingenuity, attempting to balance protection, mobility and weight. And the “problem with sci-fi body armor” begins with the fact that most of these futuristic ‘hardsuits’ utilize little of any of the design language of those efforts.

🔗 My Experiment to Eliminate Read-It-Later Backlog Stress

Every so often, I audit every information source I’m subscribed to. I ask three simple questions I picked up from the late Jim Rohn:

  1. Who am I allowing to speak into my life?
  2. What effect is that having on me?
  3. Is that ok?

There are a lot of things I subscribed to a long time ago that I just never bothered to unsubscribe to. And every once in a while, I get annoyed and ask myself, “Why am I still consuming this?”

Good advice. Obvious? Perhaps, though we often need reminders to do what’s good for us.

🎧 Having switched back to Albums (again) for music, I’m discovering what a mess my Apple Music library has become. I’ve got duplicate tracks within albums, duplicate albums, incorrect metadata, and all sorts of nonsense. Really tempting to just delete my entire music library and start over!

🪓 We had great fun at last night’s Axe Pancreatic Cancer event. We started the event ten years ago to raise awareness and funds, after my Mom’s short battle with the disease. So gratifying and amazing to see what the event has become, especially under the stewardship of Pancreatic Cancer Canada.

Four people are smiling and posing together indoors with string lights and a netted background.An axe is embedded in a wooden target with colored rings.