Defiant Sloth

A reminder of the rationale for investment capital into corporate imperialism companies:

Companies were encouraged to seek growth at all costs and worry about profitability later, not an unheard-of strategy but one that could now be pushed to new extremes. Uber could burn through billions in cash for about 15 years, bending the market, smashing local regulations and monopolies, altering consumer behavior in the process, and then go public at an $82.4 billion valuation while losing $800 million a quarter.

The article links back to a similliarly damning piece from 2021 that hints at this entire ecosystem subsidizing millennial and gen z lifestyles whereby all of our behaviors and monetary attitudes towards expectations from companies like Uber, Netflix, etc. shift indefinitely.

Where do we go from here? It’s not like this line of thinking has changed in any material way over the past two decades; if anything, this is the norm, and the gambles are ever more macro in nature.

Anyway, there are a few other nuggets to glean from NYT’s assessment of the vast Netflix’s library, including commentary of the long tail of hours viewership and why certain titles may or may not have benefited from inter-country licensing and the inclusion in popular algorithmic groupings of streamable video. A question for Netflix is whether its model is actually similar to Uber’s or not: has it truly changed our video watching behavior beyond the initial SVOD (streaming video on demand) model shift with its immense library of choice in a “traditional” video format, or… are behaviors fundamentally changing again with the verticalization of video and hours spent on platforms like TikTok? Usage is almost the same between younger generations, so perhaps it’s a combination of time spent across the two complementary platforms.

Behaviorally, you could argue there is less friction to tap open TikTok and scroll (most similar to the early days of linear, live TV) than parsing through millions of titles deciding on what to watch (the Netflix model).

You aren’t alone, Ben.

Am I alone in preferring an offline, analogue, tactile reading experience? Is there something here, or is the future of media entirely, irrevocably digital?

Sitting back and reading paper is magnificent.

The hype is on point for Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. 📚

Really digging the vibes of this hulking skeleton yard decor — saw this before dipping into Halftime Rec for a beer.

Sometimes the Economist’s book reviews are (probably) a just-as-good reading of the book’s primary thesis and subsequent chapters. And while I’m curious about the topic, I get the idea behind Infantalised:

You may say that 1+1=2, but “my truth” is that it makes three. Post-modernists deem this way of thinking sophisticated. Keith Hayward calls it childish. He is right.

This Strib article really should have linked to my pull-tab library, but alas, at least it’s a good deep dive on the culture and history of the game.

Hey there.

Olga Tchepikova-Treon’s piece about Bong Joon-ho’s ‘The Host’, intersecting with the Coen brothers’ misanthropic tendencies, is a good read. After all, “who is more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?”

Thank you for writing this, Kevin (from @overkillwtf@overkill.social). My partner and I feel the same way. There are lots of DINCs out here trying to find each other amongst the populace, and it’s a difficult needle to thread in many circles.

Chicago. Six years after moving out, it still drips that high-octane energy whenever I visit. And what they’ve upgraded along the Chicago River in downtown is marvelous.

One of these days… my dream job.

Good to be on top — while just one of many airport rankings, J.D. Power issued its 2024 report and put Minneapolis-St. Paul #1 for customer satisfaction in the Mega Airports category. We just got back from a trip last night, and MSP airport is always a welcome respite after a day of travel.

The call for returning to lunchtime chatter that fuels the City and a new London restaurant flexing invitation incentives:

Just as important is the menu, on which top billing goes to a two-sip martini. The £5-a-glass snifter is an out-of-office message, explains Marceline’s operations director Liam Nelson. It’s a signal of hospitality, a loss leader, a statement of intent. It says: you’re safe with us — let’s get just a little bit drunk.

Yes please.

I concur, Matan Budy, on buying things you use:

…I press the pay button with love. It makes me feel good that I upgrade my life, or that I support someone who is working really hard for something I care about.

➔ A big concur to Dr. Drang’s thoughts on the most important update for watchOS — kayaking will be great:

the addition of mapping to paddling workouts… in the Workout and Activity apps. This was mentioned during WWDC, and I was glad to see that it’ll be in next week’s updates to watchOS and iOS. No waiting until “later this fall/year.”

When Silvio Rizzi released the new Reeder app, it didn’t explicitly replace the previous, fourth iteration — that one is now relegated to “Reeder Classic”, with the new version replacing the titular primary app. The experience is a very different departure from every RSS reader design paradigm that came before it. It has become a larger aggregator of feeds beyond just RSS reading material. And... its UX remains top notch.

My thoughts after using it for a week:

• The gist of the new Reeder interface: Add RSS feeds (blogs, audio, video), other selected feed types with APIs (Mastodon, Bluesky, Glass, etc.).
  • Reeder breaks feeds into separate streams, including an aggregate everything called ‘Home’
  • All posts are synched by scroll position, not unread count.
  • You can save individual posts to buckets called Links (saved web links), Later (stack integrated directly into Reeder’s feed), and Bookmarks (not actually sure what this is, to be honest), and Favorites (favorited posts).
  • You can also tag posts for organization, and turn them into public links.
• At first, I anxiously worried it would grind against my habitual RSS instincts from 20 years of using reader apps (🫡 NewsFire, my first one in 2004).
• But, after using the primary Home feed for several days, a new habit had formed, and...
  • This new method is superior.
• I do not miss seeking out specific feeds (you can still do this, and Reeder syncs your scroll position), and not surprisingly, I have been reading and seeing more from my feeds because I’d usually put off checking Colossal or

Dang, the new iA Writer app logo is beautiful.

One of those unexpected, sudden rising to fame stories that happens every so often in the literature wold: this time with Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series. I’ve only watched the Apple TV series so far (which is stellar and on its 4th season), but I’ve got my eye on the books next…

➔ Patrick Rhone has a nice “Rhoneism” today regarding clothes, and remarks specifically:

[...] fashion and the idea of having multiple items of various pieces of clothing is a fairly recent idea history-wise [...]

Nice to see an intersection of this thinking × capsule wardrobe trending, too.

Stumbled upon a pull-tab that oddly looks like an angry JD Vance. I don’t like it, and I didn’t win.

So I took the bait and am using the rebooted Reeder app, and I like it.

The gist this time around is it turns various feeds into a primary scroll list, synched by timeline position across devices. Having used RSS for years, I worried I’d miss a particular blog, but the new habit is actually less stressful and more manageable than previous iterations of the app concept: just open and scroll. If you think you missed a blog, you can always go to it (and Reeder does seem to sync your position within those individual blog feeds), so you can double-check without the glaring unread count haunting you.

While it does take getting used to, I like its implementation of ideas. Sorted feeds for videos and audio, as well as bookmarks and read later features if you want them. Having one aggregate list for everything (called ‘Home’) isn’t so different from, say, NetNewsWire’s ‘aggregate ‘Unread’ view, which I usually used day to day, so the adjustment is minor. Additionally, you can filter out feeds from the Home view that update an inordinate amount daily (e.g., Political Wire), and so I’ve just been checking those manually. Not a big deal.

Overall, the app is marvelously polished for interaction and pleasurability, and if you can get over the opinionated changes that diverge from 20+ years of RSS reader design paradigms, it’s absolutely worth trying.

A few days overdue, but had a great time at the MN State Fair. Went a few days, including the low-key opening on August 22nd (which also was an attendance record at 138k), and the final Sunday (also a record at 256k). There wasn't a food highlight this year, but stuck with a few staples:

• Pronto pup + corndog combo is the right approach).
• Baba's hummus bowls have become a new go-to as well.
• The butter vat dipped corn on the cob, obviously.
• Midway Men's club burgers and beer, of course.
• Tried a malt at Kiwanis Malts — fairly good, will bring it into rotation
• Spaghetti Eddie's pizza on a stick still hits
• We missed an opportunity to get Hmong Union Kitchen's sticky purple rice on a stick (alas, it was sold out when we tried), so will need to see if they keep it for next year
• Notable non-food: The Horticulture building redesign and exhibits were satisfying — seed art was fantastic this year (it seemingly leveled up to a true art form), the scarecrow competition was wild, and the flowers, always a must-see. Talent Show was solid (we missed the semifinals but saw the opening big show event at the end). The Garden for all-day karaoke, as always, a must for vibes.

A new trick we pulled off this year that will definitely be part of the flow for next is scooting to the fair -- we found an easy route from our house that's just a joy to use with minimal car traffic interference. Until next August...

I’ve been the same exact way Nick Heer does about a number of small iPhone interactions lately (mostly stemming from the Dynamic Island and dimmed always-on screen). Worth a read if you feel the little pains, too.

Playing a Dragon Quest game immediately lightens the mood and lifts the soul. I’d credit the culmination of its color palette, the boisterous soundtrack filling every scene, and the whimsical designs and dialogue. Perfection. Dragon Quest is comfort gaming at its finest.

Agree with the take here (we need an “iTunes for streaming TV”), but doubt it’ll ever happen — though it seems like YouTube TV is the closest to achieving this. One of the biggest hurdles for getting eyeballs in this major transition isn’t paying for streaming, it’s the friction between everything.