A local guy invents a water bottle that cajoles the mouth and throat muscles to exercise in a way that assists snoring prevention during sleep. Some fascinating research (unexpected, as these things usually go) led to the ideation of this. Curious to see what they tackles next.

Two thrillingly wise takes on how many of us have complicated our lives intentionally and unintentionally through the nature of modern products and our intention to optimize aspects of the day to get more out of… things.

Matheus Lima doesn’t think anything is worth consuming at more than 1× speed, because life happens at that speed, and you’re kidding yourself that you’ll even retain the content well at a faster rate:

The feeling that there’s too much to consume and not enough time. That you’re falling behind if you’re not optimizing every minute. The queue never empties. Finish one podcast, three more dropped today. Clear your YouTube watchlist, the algorithm refills it overnight. There’s always fucking more.

Terry Godier laments the time and sanity we have each day, and how we spend it with products, has been eroded by the toxic proliferation of updates and notifications:

Nothing you own is finished. Everything exists in a state of permanent incompletion, permanently needing […] The problem was never how many things you own. The problem is that owning means something it never used to. Everything you buy is the beginning of a relationship you’ll be maintaining until one of you dies or gets discontinued.

Luxury is (and probably always has been) the absence of distractions and incomplete tasks. We should all strive for completion and quiet, particularly when it’s very much free or cheap to access.

Really enjoy seeing the younger generations still connecting with cinema, so much so they’re calculating profitability to reassure themselves that if their favorite films are getting box office returns, the studios will hopefully continue to make their ilk.

I’m usually not one for indulging in nostalgia, but the pull towards it has been greater these past few years. Noah Kalina has a good reason why:

It’s probably because most people who grew up in that era are having a midlife crisis, but it probably also has something to do with enshittification and how corporations, in their pursuit of infinite profit, have turned everything we once loved into unremarkable products to be quickly consumed and discarded. We long for the days when things seemed like they had real meaning and value.

This is how you continue to win the PR battle of late-stage capitalism, in context of Costco aiming to return any potentially recovered tariff charges to its members:

[CEO] Vachris said Costco aims to shield shoppers where possible, noting, “We always want to be the first to lower prices and the last to raise them.”

AppAddict has a well-sourced, updated list of OCR apps for Mac. Personally, I can vouch for CleanShot — it gets multiple-(and I mean multiple)-times-a-day usage from me. TextSniper was also good (my initial pick years ago), but redundant if you have CleanShot.

Information Architects’ take down of the fetishization of Microsoft Office and US software tyranny, and how Europe could break free by using “a contemporary, dynamic, simple model”. But the real nugget in here is why it’s so difficult to accomplish:

We do not dislike bad software as much as we dislike changing our behavior

Trying the new Acme Weather app by the original Dark Sky devs.

A clean, succinct interface kindly echoes the old app. Community submissions is neat, but not prominently used yet. The innovations seem to be multiple forecasts averaging and this cheeky experimental notifications pane. I’m in.

An experimental settings page labeled Acme Labs offers toggle switches to receive notifications for rainbows, auroras, and sunsets.

Taegan Goddard's reality check on the worst jobs in politics, kindly suggesting folks should pursue local government instead:

Rank-and-file House members have remarkably little power. They spend an extraordinary amount of time fundraising. Leadership tightly controls the agenda. Cable news and social media warp incentives. And public approval of Congress routinely hovers near the basement.

Because at the end of the day...

City councils decide zoning, housing supply and public safety priorities. County executives oversee health systems and infrastructure. State legislators shape education funding, voting laws and abortion policy.

Thoughtless acts of idiocy in the name of disgruntlement and social media attention. It happens too often, and as Bethany points out, is egregiously dangerous when such acts involve children (perhaps even more so in a school context).

What is this moment? Benn Stancil writes a frenzied piece, kind of nailing it with that bomb of a first paragraph. And this:

They say the internet is dead, full of robots talking to one another. On the contrary—it is furiously, psychotically alive. It is a vortex of this new psychosis, tightening around a single axel, spinning faster and faster as it does. Log on, and that is all there is.

Absolutely this:

[for a local newspaper with out-of-state reader:] Why not instead charge per article. Like a toll you pay on a road you drive on once every few years.

Basically another way to fund local papers + incentivization for garnering attention to great articles.

An overdue excalamation for not just the past few months, but years: I’m proud of our local Minnesota press. So many extraordinary journalists keeping tabs within communities not just within the Twin Cities, but far and wide outside them. Highlighting a few (but far from exhaustive) who have been instrumental in covering the ICE occupation here:

(Pictured - print issue of Hill & Lake Press)

A newspaper spread showcases a collection of images from the Minnesota general strike in January, a protest event featuring crowds, signs, and marching.

I take a few weeks off from posting (the current stage of what’s happening with our country has been eroding my brain)… and a plethora of perspectives pile up.

With regards to cinema creation driven completely by AI, I like M.G. Siegler’s take:

Hollywood shouldn’t be concerned about a kid in their basement using AI to make a rogue version of Star Wars, they should be worried about Disney using AI to make a version of Star Wars without much of the headcount currently needed to make a Star Wars. This is the real disruption here.

Relates to my piece a few months ago. This is worth emphasizing in the midst of the Warner Bros./HBO takeover by either Paramount or Netflix. Companies acquire, companies streamline, companies penny-pinch. Hollywood actors, directors, and writers need to be thinking about this every waking moment.

Everything has to break all at once, I suppose. From The Economist, on the rapid decimation of the free press:

Journalists have plenty of faults, but preventing them from doing their jobs will have dire consequences. A vigorous newsgathering ecosystem, once destroyed, is hard to rebuild. And a world with less press freedom will be dirtier and worse-governed.

Appreciating The Verge’s work lately, including keeping us informed on the best gas masks to buy in 2026 (naturally), and doing stellar work informing the latest in Minnesota. A tech site has every right to do this (particularly in the wake of technology being used against citizens of the USA).

Screenshot from the Verge: Two gas masks and a bottle are displayed against an abstract, green and black background with text about gas masks and their use.

Small non-violent victories. A knitting shop in Minneapolis resurrects red Norwegian hats to signal defiance of ICE actions and raise mutual aid:

Since making the pattern available for $5, the shop has raised nearly $400,000, Mashaal said Friday. So far, she said, they have donated a total of $250,000 to two local nonprofits focused on housing support for immigrants in the community — STEP (St. Louis Park Emergency Program) and the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund.

The pattern for knitters is available here. An historic example of the Norwegian cap is here.

Kirstie Kimball (of Beyond Beurre Blanc) on the extremely difficult nature of writing about food in Minnesota right now:

I want to also say that almost every single writer I know has received a lot of flak right now for not covering things the exact way specific individuals want us to. So much of that is that we are balancing getting you to go out to restaurants, covering tragedy, and also making sure that restaurants stay protected. Most of my interviews right now have been off-the-record. I’m going to assume that’s true for everyone else.

She has been doing extraordinary work (as well as many others she highlights in her post). In the face of immense adversity to this state and her own well-being, she has (as I commented on her post) a “ seemingly unending energy to provide support for neighbors and promote food shelf/hospitality urgencies, and being a voice of reason, a voice of hope, and a voice of truth in these times.”

I’m simply calling out one of many heroes in the moment right now.

A well-documented piece from The Guardian on the situation here in Minnesota. It’s been difficult to discern from our local vantage how the rest of the country and world see it.

Positive momentum into 2026 with regards to the prices of renewable energy:

Today, wind and solar are cheaper than coal and natural gas, and increasingly, they are boosted by ever more affordable batteries, which have gotten 90 percent cheaper over the last decade.

Generational context of invasive structure (via Racket):

Today, Fort Snelling is doing what it was designed to do: acting as a site from which Washington can project violent power over anyone who gets in its way. Dakota people saw this in the US-Dakota War of 1862, when the U.S. deployed soldiers from Fort Snelling to do battle on the Dakota. When it forced Dakota women, children, and elders into a concentration camp down the bluff from the fort. When it expelled the Dakota from their homelands and oversaw the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

And we are seeing it today as federal agents fan out from Fort Snelling into neighborhoods, seizing peaceable people, and reserving the right to shoot anyone, like Renee Nicole Good, who gets in their way.

Mobilizing for the truth.

Throughout those four minutes, almost every civilian — dressed in puffy coats and plaid flannel and fluffy knits — eventually takes their phone out to record. They are filming the cars, ICE agents, each other. One woman is walking her dog on the sidewalk at the start. She appears again to ask, “What’s happening?” to the filmer; later, she shows up in the periphery, this time with her phone out.

Short clip from Christopher Nolan on the defense of the physicality of movies, both shooting them and rewatching them.

Accurate.

A grand way to start the year: “Dedicated to bad writing… and other irregular tributes.”

The Disney and OpenAI licensing partnership seems like a terrible idea, insofar as controlling IP representation and the risk of diluting branding — unless, of course, there are critical limitations for usage and context.