🔗 WWW
There are a lot of links out to different parts of the web on this site. I try to mark them all so they get listed here.
🔗 Dana on ‘The Speed Of Publishing’ - ‘then’ and ‘now’open.substack.com/pub/danaf…)
Yes - and ..
There’s a piece missing from the then .. now comparison. During ‘Slow Publishing’ the writer, editor, producer is also honing the deliverable into something that garners attention, creates a story, a question, a punchline .. that allows the reader, listener .. to get ‘in and out’ efficiently. In ‘Fast Publishing’ the reader / listener is required to do that themselves .. spending time sifting through what is being said to get to the essence. Very few people can do that ‘on the fly’, you just have to look around and see the swamps of unintelligible noise that the public is now exposed to. The swamp is over flowing. True, there are some excellent people that can do that .. the very large majority can’t. That has always been the case.
The solution is that we need personal information filters that surface what we want from the swamp. Our personal, intelligent, tuned information filters.
That’s what is different today … the ‘editor’ used to filter for us .. for everyone. We (suddenly?) - didn’t like that .. and now we live in our bubbles - I would argue partly because we don’t have our personal, intelligent, tuned information filters.
My bone is being tickled by a very funny writer over on Substack by name of Daniel Piper …
One excerpt from his Substack to give you a flavor:
Last night I went to a dinner party hosted by a friend. After dinner, one of the guests performed a magic trick involving some cutlery and a napkin, much to everyone’s delight. After that, another guest picked up an acoustic guitar and performed a song by the band Oasis. The host then excitedly asked if anybody else had a creative talent they would like to share. I immediately offered to write a short poem on the spot, featuring all of the guests. They were thrilled, and all watched with fervent anticipation as I took out my notebook and started writing. After ten minutes the poem was complete, and they asked me to read it aloud. I refused. They asked again, and I said no. As an author, my talent is the act of writing, not performance. Plus, my writing is deeply personal, it cannot simply be shared with anyone. They seemed disappointed, even after I assured them the poem was excellent. I couldn’t believe it. They had just had the privilege of watching a Serious Literary Author in the act of writing for a whole ten minutes, and now they were complaining. I thought they were being quite ungrateful.
Something I wrote into The Substack Notes about him:
I don’t always manage to read Daniel Piper each morning, but when I do, my day starts with a minimum of a hearty guffaw all the way through the ‘larf spectrum’ to that which some describe to be that of a screaming banshee, though I prefer to think of it as a chuckle. I appreciate that this might upset the author, who is by his own account a serious writer and experienced littérateur, but I actually don’t care .. because as both my friends will tell you, it is all about me. (I use the term ‘friend’ in the loose meaning of someone I talked to on ‘The Tube’ .. the London one .. I don’t talk to the bloody telly! That’s what screaming is for.)
Anyway all this to say that the tune of this particular ‘piper’ resonates. Deeply. Go try him out. Nothing to lose, everything to gain, which is a rare benefit in these trying times.
🔗 How’s that AI tsunami looking, a year on? (Charles Arthur)
🔗 Eleven Predictions: Here’s What AI Does Next (Ted Gioia) (This one is a Readwise link that includes my highlights)
Related. Very related. Yet different
From 🔗🎙️ Sean Illing’s Podcast Overview
Absolutely FASCINATING
How is the origin of our universe like an improvised saxophone solo? This week, Sean Illing talks to Stephon Alexander, a theoretical physicist and world-class jazz musician. Alexander is the author of The Jazz of Physics and his most recent book, Fear of a Black Universe_. This episode features music by Stephon Alexander throughout, from his latest 2024 album Spontaneous Fruit _and his 2017 EP True to Self.
The Crafting of Craft.
🖇️ Talking about knowing what you’re talking about - nobody who knows what they are talking about would confuse me with a real programmer.
That said, I just read 🔗 Going the Extra Mile — Beyond CSS, most of which is well above my technical pay grade - but still I was fascinated by the attention to detail around ‘crafting Craft’.
Consider - a whole post (well 75%) devoted to the process behind getting a check box ‘just right’ and the remaining 25% explaining ‘push away’, which I knew had to be coded in some way - but who knew there is a phrase for it?
Great read - even if you aren’t technical you get the idea of their focus on good design - Steve would have been proud of them
“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
💬 Steve Jobs
… which probably explains why they won app of the year and were name called (not once - but twice) in this year’s WWDC.
The article ends with …
All of this for what? Will all users see the difference? — Probably not. Was it worth it? — Absolutely. These are the minor details that often go unnoticed when present, but become conspicuous when missing. We strive for having as many of those details as possible, making the experience great but at the same time — seamless.
Kudos to Craft - a Great App and a serious tool for writing documents in the 21st Century.
Read and agree with a lot of the @gruber post 🔗 The iOS Continental Drift Widens
After I read it - I jumped to my Readwise queue - and up pops this.
My reading habits are clearly being tracked.
Pageless Writing Apps
🔗 Lex raises $2.75M for its AI writing tool that helps writers get past blocks.
The AI stuff is cool, but there was one thing about this app that made me want to keep using it: It has no historical baggage. I find it odd that many modern word processors like Google Docs and Word retain a bias toward pagination — the UX is intended for printing documents onto letter-sized paper. Lex, in contrast, does away with all that.
💬 TechCrunch
Been exploring 🔗 Lex.page for a couple ‘ months. I even pay - but not yet used it enough to know whether I am going to continue to pay.
That said, the above quote is interesting and I agree with the ‘historical baggage thought - but they are hardly at the vanguard of that kind of thinking!
It as if the writer has never heard of;
- Craft
- Ulysses
- IAWriter
- Drafts, et al
Let alone, Obsidian, Roam and Notion
Side note - Craft. Most definitely a personal favorite. And I am increasingly using it to share thoughts, ideas, minutes, reports to specific audiences - most often under ‘loose’ password control.
Cant wait to get my hands on the new stuff they have in Beta - though even that still wont solve what I really really want!
Adding to which their own foray into AI support, I just want to tie apps like that into a single world - and not have different versions of different LLMs spread around various apps. ANNOYING.
Shout Outs To @dsearls@journa.host and @dave in the 🔗 latest entry from ‘Jobsworth’
BTW - while I am here 🔗JP published another great post the other day about Cricket - specifically Cricket stats and records.
He opened with:
You have been warned. This one’s for hardcore cricket nuts. Red-ball nuts. Five-day nuts. The hardest of the hardcore. No coloured pajamas here.
I am definitely not a hardcore cricket nut - and still read the entire thing to the end. Fascinating.
📺 Kleo
Each episode kept me coming back for more. An increasingly difficult thing to do in theses ‘streaming times’.
Kleo on 🔗 Reelgood
People Don't Read Anymore - Except When They Do.
🔗 Raw data: Book and newspaper consumption - Kevin Drum
There is a mantra in the world that people ‘don’t read’ (anymore?).
And on top of that - if they do - (very) short form - definitely not books.
I have long thought this to be wrong.
They certainly might not read your stuff. Or my stuff, but they do read - BUT - they read what interests them , what engages them and definitely not limited to stuff that appears at the top of lists.
Kevin’s short analysis on the data says that today we are spending twice what we spent on physical books 40 (or so) years ago. As he says - buying is not reading (👋🏼 to the Unlibraries) .. but beyond physical books there are ebooks, blogs, newsletters … yup - we definitely aren’t reading any more - except when we do.
🔗 Shocking revelations about Sarah Wilkinson’s arrest and bail conditions
I am hoping there is another side to this story. But so far - only a hope.
Got off the ferry yesterday and looked for my usual scooter, and noted that the purple ones (Beam) weren’t there - only Lime available. Having lost Ola in the city earlier in the year - got me to wondering.
It would appear at first glance that Beam have been ‘naughty’.
They who are being parodied are apparently seeking this ‘lol’ site to ‘cease and desist’ - because really - there is nothing more important … right?
🔗 Failing What Matters Most - Your Premier EDR (Endpoint Destruction and Razing) Partner Since 2024!
Just in case you think that all VCs are like Thiel and Andreesen … no … no they are not - they are just the loudest voices with the quietest money.
🔗 VCs for Kamala
Well 🔗 THIS goes a long way to explaining the Andreesen, Horowitz, Thiel, Musk position on Trump.