Defiant Sloth

The NYT has a huge article with curated restaurant menus that dissects trends across menu design, fonts, iconography, and the food itself. Love this.

It seems like credit card spending and delinquency rates could be heading heading towards a minor catastrophe, no?

More bad news for journalism:

[Google News] ultimately does not focus on whether a news article was written by an AI or a human

This probably won’t end well.

Egg on ball.

Finished ‘North Woods’. Lumbering exercise in cross-genre short stories woven together across time but confined to a single location in upper New England. 📚

Succinct retrospective on The Sopranos, exemplifying its radical impact on television and storytelling, as well as its enduring theme of social change. Likely why it found new (and re-found old) audiences over the last few years. Magnificent show.

Look, I know this superlative isn’t entirely true, but in the circles I follow online, which tend toward enthusiastic pontificating about the best setups for hardware, software, and every day use items, no one seems to be talking about one of the most important pieces of hardware we all use every single day.

The toilet.

And in particular, toilets with bidets.

Now there are some publications out there doing the good work of reviewing these — namely outdoors/camping enthusiasts like Outdoorsy Nomad (thanks for the recommendations!), Wired (naturally), and of course in Reddit (r/bidets), but I rarely see anyone else talking shop. Sure, you may say that I live in the US and we don’t have a history or culture around bidets, but we’ve been wrong. For many years.

• Bidets are amazing. 
• They are life-changing.
• We all need to be using them.
• And they seem to be generally more environmentally friendly than toilet paper.

I mean just look at some these things — Toto and Kohls have spectacular full hardware options. There’s a Bidet King specialty shop. And if you aren’t ready to take the hybrid toil/bidet dive (they can be expensive investments), there are plenty of add-on options for literally any toilet.

Washlets. Wand-only. Portable.

No matter the context, your special parts can be cleaned hygienically with minimal expenditure.

And since I haven’t invested in anything more than entry-level items, let’s talk briefly about two items to get things rolling.

Easily Accessible: The Tushy

If anyone has heard of a budget bidet, it’s probably Tushy. Great direct-to-consumer brand, and easily accessible as an entry-level (but most certainly solid mainstay) for any bathroom.

• Older models start around $80, with newer models in the $100+ range
• They’re very easy to install in under 10 minutes, no plumber required
• The pressure is phenomenally consistent, plus self-cleaning of the wand (though you’ll probably want to disinfect it during toilet cleanings)
• You can get the models directly off their site or on Amazon (2.0 version linked here)

Easily Portable: VIKKEN Go+ Bidet

Once you’re regularly using bidets, I guarantee anywhere you visit that doesn’t have one will feel woefully inadequate. While not a perfect solve, there are plenty of portable options (the aforementioned Outdoorsy Nomad has a great round-up) of varying designs — the simplest constituting a nozzle attachment wand to squeeze a plastic bottle’s volume through, with the more functional being a battery-operated mini-bidet wand.

The VIKKEN Go+ represents the latter, and for $39, its slim profile and ability to use its included bottle or attach to almost any other bottle makes it an obvious choice for flexibility. It also packs small (sort of the size of a 6-8oz seltzer can).

Does it work?

Well enough. It has two pressure options (activated by a button that is revealed once the bidet wand is flipped out for usage). You can hold and use this thing one of two ways when mounting the toilet — I won’t get into graphic detail — and it provides a fairly controlled experience.

Overall, Bidets Are a Must

Improved hygiene, moderately better eco-friendliness, and far more rewarding experiences await your manifest lifestyle change when you decide to transition to using a bidet (or bidets plural!).

Highly recommended. Just try.

🫡

This Ezra Klein Show episode is stellar — “How to Discover Your Own Taste”. Discussion with Kyle Chayka spans curation, taste, and aesthetics, particularly in the context of the Internet, and as an important resistance against The Algorithm that can deter true individuality.

Transcript link for the readers out there.

The Mobis e-Cornering system on the wheels of this future Ioniq 5 is the dream.

Another great generative AI perspective (this one from John Siracusa) about the coming foibles of creative ownership and the relationship between those creating and those consuming. Very astute approach to thinking towards the right way to frame the big question of “who made this”.

Digging Chuck Wendig’s rant about generative AI and the creative arts, notably that the timing isn’t right yet for relying heavily on it (at all).

I think there is a use case for streamlining creative (in marketing, et al), but only to assist, never to replace.

Heavenly headline — Gartner predicts that half of consumers will abandon or limit use of social media interactions by 2025. Plenty of reasons that could catalyze this.

But… anyone’s guess if it’s an accurate prediction. I bet we’ll see a decline, mainly due to mental health, but nowhere near 50%.

Matthew Panzarino joined the startup TipTop (posted about it on The Obsessor). A more modern, integrated approach to selling electronics seems neat, yet I couldn’t get through setup — it requires a Google sign-in and Gmail scraping. Alas, it’s a red flag and a very poor UX for non-Gmail folks.

Just a shout 👋 out to the wonderful Mac development company, Panic. They have made wonderful software for years, produce games (and a portable game console!), and lather everything in delightful whimsicality, including their website.

The Verge went hard with this piece about the homogenization of websites, pointing the finger at both Google and web developers everywhere. Fairly right in its assertions, but if we stop thinking about the imprisonment from search engines… just imagine the possibilities.

Been a while since I read a David Mitchell novel, but I just finished The Bone Clocks 📚 and wow: an entirely unpredictable and expansive work (much like his portfolio, natch…). It also had an uniquely contemplative focus on a singular character over the course of her life. A fanciful read, indeed. 📚

I log all the entertainment I go through every year, dating back to 2009. There’s something about a list across time that helps me orient where I was, how I was thinking, the things I liked at the time (do they still hold up?), and, naturally, to reflect on all the miscellaneous time spent.

I add a double-plus (++) to some of these items to notate my high enjoyment of a thing, so I’ve got several easily recommendable on hand when someone asks.

Here are ++ from last year — note that not all of these were released in 2023.

Literature

• The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell)
• A Million Heavens (John Brandon)
• Hotel Splendide (Ludwig Bemelmans)
• Timequake (Kurt Vonnegut)

Shows/Films

• White House Plumbers (series, HBO)
• Scavengers Reign (series, Max)
• Succession (series, HBO)
• The Last of Us (series, HBO)
• Slow Horses (series, AppleTV)
• Mrs. Davis (miniseries, Peacock)
• All Quiet on the Western Front (film)
• The Banshees of Inisherin (film)
• Triangle of Sadness (film)
• The Diplomat (series, Netflix)

Games

• Celeste (various consoles)
• Super Mario RPG Remake (switch)
• Metroid Prime Remastered (switch)
• Baldur’s Gate 3 (various consoles)

Astute observation from Airbag Industries on the impressive feats of independent teams building massively scalable products in competitive industries — his example is Craft, a great (I use it!) super app designed for notes, collaboration, and in this case, a powerful CMS.

…yet his company is within .1% of Squarespace’s influence on the top five thousand websites on the planet.

While I don’t usually do this, I’m writing a brief review of the Re:Form wallets (RE:01 and RE:02) that the company recently sent me after a connect online because, well, the products were that good. So, fair disclosure: I was provided these to assess for feedback.

Overview:

First up, there are currently two wallets that German-based Re:Form makes: one with a coin sleeve (RE:01), and the other without (RE:02).

• Both are engineered and built in nearly the same way, and are just about identical across measurements: welded seams, proprietary Re:Fine™ material, and magnet integration (honestly, the best part). As you’d expect, the RE:01 is slightly thicker due to the coin sleeve, but it’s negligible.
• Each is designed to hold 3-8 cards well, including metal/plastic combos — I’ve tested, and it’s accurate.
• These are very lightweight at 34 grams and 23 grams respectively; my recent go-to, Tom Bihn Nik’s Wallet, is a shade lighter at 16 grams, but 🤷‍♂️
• Super durable materials and a lifetime guarantee is welcome.
• On the RE:01, the coin sleeve is an addition I never thought I’d have a need for in the US (I abhor carrying coins), but... I’d find it exceptionally useful for storing other countries’ coins when traveling abroad. I’ve also slipped an AirTag into it, and it’s hardly noticeable in-pocke

The Great

Overall, the wallets are a pleasure to use and haul around.

• The material reminds me of ripstop used in other offerings (like with Pioneer), but lighter-weight, denser construction, not overly stiff (but rigid enough to hold itself), and completely waterproof (which is excellent).
• It’s slim, and has one of the smallest footprints when resting in a pocket.
• The springy vibes of opening and closing the wallet with the magnets adds an element of joy - it’s a bifold unlike anything I’ve used before, and keeps the profile as slim as the cards its holding without bulging outwards like others in the market. This yield is due to its construction — the magnets are a certain thickness at the ends of the bi-fold sides, so as you fill the wallet with cards, it simply fills in the already evened-out spaces near the fold.
• And once you fill the wallet with 3-4 cards, everything remains tautly in-place, including a card in the outside quick-slot.

The Minor Inconveniences

• There’s no way around it — the material tends to gather dust and particles, though it does shrug off a bit as you pocket/un-pocket the wallet, and you can always wash it off with water. I've been told from the company that the material does break in over time and lessens the attraction of lint to stick.
• In pocketing/unpocketing the wallet, you’ll sometimes face a bit of friction with certain fabrics, so it doesn’t always glide right in/out of your pocket depending on your attire.
• Most slim wallets share a common ground with loose paper currency, and the Re:Form wallets aren’t exactly any different. Inserted cards fit perfectly in their slots, but adding cash creates an additional friction point that requires surgical removal depending how card-tight you’ve loaded it.

Overall

Amongst the slim profile, magnet enclosure, welded seams, and RE:01’s clever pocket, Re:Form has climbed to my top three wallet recommendations. I don’t often carry cash, but if you do, the Trove wallet (and its elasticity) is the smartest slim wallet for accommodating it. The pocket on the RE:01 probably works best well for coins and an AirTag.

Overall, the Re:Form wallets are truly excellent products. I genuinely like where Re:Form has gone with this design, and look forward to seeing if they employ their materials and magnets in other clever ways in the future.

Agree with Panzer on this over at his new blog — Opinel knives are an exceptional deal. Inexpensive and sharp, they’re a perfect knife to have around the house for prepping and serving charcuterie boards, vegetables, and fruits.

Already missing this excellent Variedad Colombia F6 Natural coffee from SK, which alas, was in short supply and I didn’t buy enough. It was magnificent, jammy, wild.

Kudos to this concept — solo dates, artist dates, dates with oneself, whatever you want to call it, some respite from staying at home by yourself and instead pushing out into the world for a dinner, a hike, or another excursion sounds mundane but is a rewarding practice to adopt.

We’re entering the era of streaming platforms licensing their content back to Netflix. Hard to reckon with their 247M subscribers worldwide when your platform is less than half of that. For studios like HBO, it’s an overt but effective marketing investment to bring awareness to their offerings.

This Reading Rhythms party in New York needs to gain traction elsewhere. This is my kind of vibe:

The parties, which began in May, take place on rooftops, in parks and at bars. Show up with a book, commit to vanquishing a chapter or two and chat with strangers about what you’ve just read

While hearing about additions to the Apple News+ offering is good, I agree with Dan Moren — the UI and presentability of News+ needs work. The primary feed, for instance, doesn’t have a way to sort news themes (alt., Artifact does this well). It’s paramount to have a good news reader for the masses.