This video from Wall Street Journal is a fantastic short doc about the history of the Blackwing 602 pencil and how it nearly went extinct. I absolutely love docs like this. It’s short, informative, niche, and well edited. Sign me up for any and all other documentaries like this
I’m elated to share that my daughter, Sloane, was born 13 days ago. She’s a happy and healthy girl born 3 weeks early. She has beautiful blue eyes, a fierce set of lungs, and loves being a night owl. As a new parent there’s lots of learning
I have been thinking a lot about the podcasting industry lately. The main thread is how even though there were massive layoffs in the podcasting industry, ad revenue and listenership continues to grow. It seems the podcasting industry is set to have the same fate as the newspaper and television
To kick things off, we had a roundtable conversation with a trio of makers and thinkers, all of whom are creating independent media. They are Gita Jackson (Aftermath), Alex Sujong Laughlin (Defector Media), and Rusty Foster (Today in Tabs). We wanted to talk with Gita, Alex and Rusty about the
I love the idea behind Project Tapestry by The Icon Factory. With Project Tapestry, we’ll create a universal, chronological timeline for iOS for any data that’s publicly available on the Internet. A service-independent overview of your social media and information landscape. Point the app toward your services and
Manton Reece: Today we’ve added a brand new option for manual cross-posting from Micro.blog to other services, including Threads. This new option is great for services that don’t yet have an open API, so Micro.blog can’t automatically post to them, or for when you want
Matt Birchler: More Birchtree is a way to get more Birchtree writing, ad-free browsing, and the fuzzy feeling of supporting indie writing. Member posts will be more personal pieces, as well as more raw feelings about the tech news of the day before I’m ready to share with a
Alex Cranz writing for The Verge: a memo from CNN CEO Mark Thompson outlines some of the early plans to try to save CNN from cable — and grow its presence on the phone. As noted by The Wall Street Journal, which has seen the memo, the first step will be
After a hellish month for Substack many writers on its platform have decided it is time to set up their newsletters and writings elsewhere. If you aren’t familiar with what happened, you can find out more on a timeline I made. A large number of Substack writers, including Ryan
Over a month ago an article from Jonathan M. Katz at The Atlantic made waves with an article titled "Substack Has a Nazi Problem". At least 16 of the [Substack] newsletters that I reviewed have overt Nazi symbols, including the swastika and the sonnenrad, in their logos or
This Longform episode with data journalist Mona Chalabi, who has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, and won a Pulitzer for her work, was so good I listened to it twice in one day. In the podcast she speaks about the ongoing Israel and Palestine war and her
An old college buddy of mine, Adam, who also has been a creative partner for me over the years, created an awesome video essay. It’s about the end of physical media, what it might hold for the future of media consumption, and how collectors might be dealing with this
Between the Vice News layoffs, the podcasting industry crumbling, and Jezebel closing its doors it's safe to say that the media industry is having a bit of a crisis. It's clear that advertising on sites like Jezebel and large podcasts aren't cutting it anymore,
Apple created a really interesting post covering the “Shot on iPhone” keynote they did for Scary Fast. They also created a video accompanying it. What I thought was more interesting though was the backlash it got from people saying that because it had so much gear and equipment required to
My last piece of content that I made was on June 9th, 2023. It was partially an essay about the end of Twitter and the end of Reddit but it also originally contained a section about me talking about how I was giving my newsletter another shot after some time
The Death of Internet Communities 1.0 First it was Twitter and now Reddit. There are more and more fun places online seemingly ruining things for their own short-term gain. If you aren't aware here is a very brief explanation and places you can go to learn more
Content Moderation
Today Techdirt released their second game, Moderator Mayhem. It is a “game that lets you see how good a job you would do as a front line content moderator,” Mike Masnick writes, “for a growing technology company that hosts user-generated content”. Not only does the game have you moderate content,
Casey Newton
I was listening to a recent episode of the podcast Hard Fork, and a specific part of it really resonated with me. It was where Casey Newton was talking to his co-host, Kevin Roose, about NPR’s decision to leave Twitter after getting a “state-affiliated media” badge. You know what
Mastodon
People signing up for Mastodon will no longer have to worry about what server to go to. Instead, Mastodon will now be defaulting to a server they operate. Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s Founder and CEO, explained his reasoning for this saying that “[m]aking the onboarding process as easy as
Content Moderation
Shortly after Substack announced their Twitter competitor Substack Notes Nilay Patel interviewed Substack’s CEO, Chris Best, to talk about it. In it, Patel asked Best if the statement “all brown people are animals and they shouldn’t be allowed in America” would be censored on Substack Notes. Best refused
Apps
Nick Heer writing on Pixel Envy: Here are three relatively recent interactions I have had with independent software developers: * In November 2020, I suggested a separate display of the optional external_url property for JSON Feeds in NetNewsWire. I was not sure how to program this, but I thought it
Apple
Jarrod Blundy writing at HeyDingus: Tonight, I noticed something curious about Apple’s latest post to their official Newsroom, a blog of sorts where the company makes public statements and press releases. The post regarding the opening dates for their two newest retail stores is categorized as a ‘Quick Read’
Audio
Craig Smith wrote a very interesting post for Freesound. In it he explained how took tape with sound effects ranging from the 30’s and 80’s and restored them. The kicker is that one of those recordings was the Wilhelm Scream. The biggest issue he had was a lot
Matt Taibbi
I have been eating popcorn all weekend as I read more and more about the dispute between Substack and Twitter. If you haven’t been following the Twitter and Substack drama, you can check out a great timeline of events from The Verge. I’ll give you a small summary
Mehdi Hasan
Along with the full interview of MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan interviewing Matt Taibbi, Tech Dirt goes into even more detail about the errors and inaccuracies Taibii brought with his reporting on the Twitter Files. Mike Masnick writing for Tech Dirt: Hasan came prepared with facts. Lots of them. Many of
Daniel Jalkut
Daniel Jalkut on Red Sweater’s blog: A few weeks ago, I found myself staring at the about box for the app, and this default shade of blue stood out to me: There’s nothing particularly wrong with it. It is, after all, the default color for all links. But
Substack
From Substack: In the coming days, we will start rolling out a way for writing, ideas, and discussion to travel through the Substack network. We’re calling this new product Notes. In Notes, writers will be able to post short-form content and share ideas with each other and their readers.
The Verge
The Verge has created a pretty quick and fun color quiz where you try to pick the correct color for 8 logos. I managed to get 7 out of 8 correct, which was pretty good considering the average is about 4.5.
AI
Feedly, the popular RSS feed service, recently came under fire for a now-deleted blog post (here is an Internet Wayback Machine link) in which they discussed using AI models to track protests, riots, and rallies. Many people were concerned that this technology could be used by employers and corporations to
AI
Noor Al-Sibai and Jon Christian writing for Futurism: Earlier this year, when BuzzFeed announced plans to start publishing AI-assisted content, its CEO Jonah Peretti promised the tech would be held to a high standard. “I think that there are two paths for AI in digital media,” Peretti told CNN. “One
Podcasting
From Spotify’s news blog: It’s official: Anchor, the world’s largest podcast hosting platform, has combined with Spotify for Podcasters to create an all-new, first-of-its-kind platform with everything you need to create and grow a podcast This is exciting for podcasters who are already hosted on the platform—
Casey Newton
Hard Fork is a show that I slept on far too long and as someone that has interviewed Casey before I feel shame admitting it. This episode in particular really grabbed on to me, and it was so good I plan to listen to it again in a few days.