Defiant Sloth

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.

Fun piece from the ‘rebooted’ Minnesota Star Tribune on the state’s long-standing lake party franchise, Zorbaz. We bumped into one of these unintentionally on a winter retreat to Nisswa last year, and now feel like we need to visit a few of these in the summer. It’s a… curious place.

Six Colors' Interview with Zach Gage on Puzzmo and specifically, Pile-up Poker. He’s got an agreeable rationale for why it’s limited to five hands per day, something I’d been curious about since it was launched.

Ingenuity in ’re-agriculture' has led to successfully transitioning out of factory farming into medicinal tinctures, mushroom coffee blends, and solar panel surplus energy. “If all goes well, the profits from mushrooms could exceed what the farm was generating from hogs during the best of times.”

The most magical restaurant on the North Shore has, and always will be, New Scenic Cafe.

Watched the Olympic Men’s Basketball game at Roscoe’s in Duluth. Dive bar with the sound on was the chef’s kiss of vibes to enjoy the USA win in.

Looking up at the St Paul Cathedral after dinner around the corner on Selby Ave. The architecture is a major landmark of the neighborhood, and the reverse view from its summit perch oversees Saint Paul’s downtown.

A lot of eyes on Minnesota over the past few days, and I’ve enjoyed seeing the country awash in midwestern banter. Also proud to see a representative from our state on the presidential ticket — Tim Walz is a tremendous, well-engineered asset and temperament on the national stage.

Great new video from coffee guru James Hoffmann covering celebrity coffee products. Few have captured the egotistical rationale (me = “founder”) and business machinations (scaled but mid production) driving this celebrity trend than he does. It’s still all about merchandising recurring revenues.

Kudos to Matt Birchler’s simple declaration about the AeroPress making a phenomenal cup of coffee. I agree that regardless of how skilled you think you are with pour overs or other methods, the AeroPress delivers an impressively consistent cup without much room for error.