I used to follow Aisle One for years, but at some point the RSS feed I had must’ve dropped off and I inadvertently forgot about it. But recently it cropped back up, and there’s a fantastic newsletter as part of the new approach to content. Highly recommended.

A short but note-worthy take on management and career-pathing that really resonates with what I’ve seen over the years:

Good management is a skill. There are too many accidental managers, promoted because they were good at what they did, rather than because they were suited to what lay ahead.

More career options in addition to management is critical.

Who isn’t loving the Midwestern autumnal vibe right now.

This worm celebration by Camryn Bynum was perfect last night.

Love this sketch card of a classic Tom Bihn Synik bag and the things you can pack into it. Comes slotted into one of the cardholders in their equally classic Nik’s Minimal Wallet. Both amazing products for everyday and traveling uses.

Mural at Groundswell.

Nice to see the dev behind Really Bad Chess returning to gaming with Puzzmo, which — I quote — brings us a “place for thoughtful puzzles”.

Also love their email tactic: they’ll “let you know about tomorrow’s key drop 5 minutes before we tell the rest of the internet”. Brilliant call to action.

Warehouse and fulfillment are a curious industry to shift into “gig work”, but that’s exactly what seems to be happening as labor needs continue to heat up. PepsiCo is an early adopter, though I’ll hold my breath on how well the more stringent and compliance-based workloads go with this approach.

Om sums up the soulless hell of social media quite nicely in this piece:

“In this reality, the primary task of these [social] platforms is not about idealism or even entertainment — it is about extracting as much revenue as possible from human vanity, avarice, and narcissism.

Films are longer. Blame blockbusters and prestige directors. Or maybe streaming competition. Who knows after reading this, but the data is surprising.

The wonderful world of dive bar politics by way of the Men’s bathroom door — Anchor Bar, Superior WI.

Bayfield, WI from a perch on the Madeline Island ferry. Pleasant sojourn at the island for the weekend. Lots of grilled white fish accompanied by wine, Old Fashioneds, and beer.

You hit a certain age… and you start to think more about aging. So I’ve been savoring any article like this one from the Guardian.

Overall ➔ good to know vocabulary peaks at 65, and happiness in our eighties.

Great find from Kottke (actually a repost from a decade ago) about the Japanese artist using Microsoft Excel to paint. It’s a rather fascinating methodology, and I love the maximization of a tool within its limits.

My first concert in several years was fantastic at the Turf Club. Saw Islands perform, alongside some human-looking puppet named Andy on stage. They played several tracks from the new album, but also broke out a few classics. We sat at the bar the whole time, which is the right vibe for this place.

The Economist has a fantastic focus in their latest Technology Quarterly about the pursuit of immortality.

In short, immortality is impossible, mostly due to physics and the human genome, but… extending life is very much a possibility and near-future reality.

What a way to open this article on the FTC suing Amazon.

Sea of Stars has been a really charming throwback to so many great SNES-era RPGS. Reminds me of the serious plot (but plenty of whimsy) that games like Chrono Trigger brought along, with touches of much-needed modernity of the UI and gameplay. It’s excellent.

A really neat app from the makers of Halide was released today called Orion. In a throwback homage to VHS design cues, this turns your iPad into a portable screen for cameras, video game consoles, and computers of any kind. Great idea, great execution. They even made a guide for adaptor devices.

While I rarely think about playgrounds (no kids here), from a zoning perspective and for children’s creative enjoyment, they are immensely valuable. This recent Axios article had me surfing through fond memories of running through the massive structures in Bloomington growing up.

I’m an idiot and have started curating a library of pull-tabs. If you’re into weird art, stupid gambling, dive bar culture, or all of the above, this is worth bookmarking.

Maybe I’m old, maybe I don’t get the 5E rule set, but no dice roll for ability points in the character creation stage of Baldur’s Gate 3 is… a bit of a letdown. The game is incredibly polished, though, and this is no way a critique — just longing for the old days.

Freshly-roasted SK Coffee beans (Colombia Variedad F6), ready for a pour-over. ☕️

Molly Young nails the feeling of paralytic anxiety many feel when confronted with high art of any kind that draws on prior knowledge of "original" art (sure, an "allusion"), and we all wonder how exactly we're supposed to enjoy and nod at the brilliance without effectively reading/seeing/experiencing everything that is alluded to.

This fact-laden piece by The New Yorker ("How Plastics Are Poisoning Us" by Elizabeth Colbert) spins another dark tale on plastics, the facade of recycling them, and how shitty they are to our planet.

We already know a lot of this — we collectively don't trust that plastics are being recycled (you really won't after reading this), corporations using plastic vessels and those creating them will never change their mind, and replacement materials are surprisingly less efficient or useful for plastic tasks. These are real, hardcore problems in displacing plastic.

But Elizabeth buries the lede at the bottom of the article:

If much of contemporary life is wrapped up in plastic, and the result of this is that we are poisoning our kids, ourselves, and our ecosystems, then contemporary life may need to be rethought.

Contemporary life is a ludicrously big statement. But what else is there to say? Part of what enabled the integrity of logistics for the global goods ecosystem was plastic packaging. How would we go about changing it?

Perhaps global ecosystems are a major part the problem. Maybe we need to focus more on local ecosystems, and here in the US, state-by-state or city-by-city. Let's focus more on local retail, local production, and local uses vs importing everything from everywhere. It can be an incremental, purposeful movement that starts small, but we know money is the only true lever. And by encouraging the adoption of non-plastic packaging for use in local/proximity environments, or accommodate other materials for storage/in-store shelving — especially for spoilable goods (subsidies, anyone?) — we can start to make the impact that compounds globally.