My most immediate takeaway from this novella of a thread is that Twitter is way overdue for long form tweets!
Elon Musk’s reply to a (long) Twitter thread. It would be pretty interesting to see Twitter allow longform “tweets”. No one sees Twitter yet as a blogging platform – I am sure Twitter won’t market it that way. As one of the replies to Elon’s tweets says, might be “twitter articles”. Hmm.
This week saw the schools and offices welcoming the students and employees in-person, and I realised I have entered the post-lockdown phase of the pandemic now. For a body and mind that has gotten used to the sluggish at-home routine, the rush-filled days are exhausting. I haven’t gotten used to this routine yet.
It isn’t as if I am working more. Rather, I must be working a lot less than what I was when I could focus more at home. For the majority of the times, that is. But the mere fact that I am at the office floors surrounded by the buzzing coworker space makes the stay tiring. I can see the same behaviour in my daughter. She was extremely pumped to join the school, and still is. However, even she is drained once she arrives home from the school. Well, her reason might be different – surrounded by friends new and old, she is bursting with energy. She has missed her classrooms. And the busy routine. There’s satisfaction on her tired face.
Is it all bad for me? Well, to be frank, not at all. I have enjoyed the company of coworkers in the last week. The way we work when we can interact face-to-face is very different from when it is all virtual. We take many decisions without planning and booking a time on the calendar; as a result, we close more discussions. The virtual mode of working restrained us through the need to over-plan. Over-schedule. It’s surprising how free I felt when I could simply walk to a person and talk.
Sure, the away-from-home routine has impacted my reading and writing habits, too. Well, to be frank, those habits are impacted for quite some time now. I need to get back, find a window to think in this hectic, unsteady life. It’s not new to me, but it’s funny how a couple of years at home has made me forget the office lifestyle. What was the work-life balance that we talked so much about, again?
Well, that’s a thought to ponder over some other time.
This post was sent as an introduction for this week’s issue of my weekly newsletter. I have realized the updates I begin my newsletter with every week get lost once it is out. So I intend to publish these as individual posts also.
Elon Musk wants to own and take Twitter private then? This might be good for users but terrible for current employees, right? Or good for both? Or may be not for either? Hmm. I don’t have enough knowledge about many things.
I am tired of websites with pop downs asking for permission to show notifications. Why would I enable that? Notifications are already a headache to manage, even the ones just from the apps. Why would I let websites also bug me incessantly?
Where else is Google starting to fall behind, and how could competitors chip away at its edge? Human evaluation of search quality is one of our flagship use cases at Surge, so let’s dive into three key Search verticals — Programming, Cooking, and Travel — and find out.
Source: Google Search is Falling Behind →
My daughter has reached an age now where she lip syncs to songs, mostly pop, in front of the mirror. Of course, using the comb as a mic. Sigh! It’s going to be tricky to keep up.
Apple needs to launch a TV+ app for Android. They have one for music. So I can’t understand why they won’t launch one for their TV offerings too. It’s such a pain to watch their shows and movies on a non-Apple mobile device. And I won’t buy an Apple device just for TV.
At times I feel everyone other than me is doing so much with their time while I sit here blank, staring at the screen. Not doing any thing that I should be doing. It sucks when this thought strikes.
Redacting takes time. You can’t edit pictures by thinking; you have to do it by looking. The more pictures you have, the more you have to look.
Source: Your Camera Roll Contains a Masterpiece | The New Yorker →
I have been very keen on listening to Audiobooks recently. The moment I have some spare time, I am listening to the audiobooks. That does not bode well for my other interests. I also blame the brilliant collection of books I have been recommended🙃.
Dyson’s headphones blow filtered air at your face →
Dyson said it engineered the headset to fit comfortably and distribute weight evenly, by drawing inspiration from horse saddles.
Seriously, WTF!
OnePlus is promoting their upcoming device with this tagline - “our most advanced cooling system ever”. That doesn’t sound like a good strategy to me.
When there are too many things I want to write about, I can’t publish any. I usually then take a pause, scribble a few words and save them as draft in Ulysses. The dashboard interface of Svbtle was pretty unique in that sense - a flow of unpublished ideas it was called. I wish the blogging platforms were bolder with Dashboard’s designs.
At times, Wordle is all about luck when it’s all about which character you select with 10s of solutions possible. I wasn’t lucky today – I ran out of tries guessing all the wrong characters.
I upgraded to Galaxy S22 today. I love the design of this phone, plus the feel in the hand. It’s compact, yet powerful. I also like what Samsung has done with Android. This possibly is the best compact smartphone out there. Not just with Android.
I don’t care about Wordle streaks. Rather, I can’t. I never solve it at a single device and so never manage a streak. Well, that’s not the only reason, either. I don’t solve it daily anyway.
After a break of 3 weeks, I sent out the email letter with posts from the last weeks. The posts weren’t many, but I like to write and share these letters. I usually do not write them ahead of time. I do so when I receive the schedule reminder. It gives me a chance to think about and share what’s at the top of my mind now.
Of course, there’s a downside. When life keeps me busy, as it has for the past few weeks, I can’t word these letters. But I have stopped making it too much of an issue. It’s ok if I cannot send the letter out. Anyway, I am not doing this to gather a follower base, but to send a personal letter to the few interested friends.
Today’s Wordle was tricky. Two tries in and I had a big smile on my face. I am sure I wasn’t alone.
It’s been so long that I listened to any podcasts – the audiobooks are keeping me busy.
The Micro.blog Android app has improved a lot over the last 30 days. I must have missed a few updates from @vincent for sure.
Not visiting timelines was refreshing. I don’t think this experiment will stay though. Being stagnant online is not something I like. That’s what I become when I’m not reading other’s thoughts. Funny how our minds work – you give it more space, it stretches and goes to sleep.
iPhone SE is a lazy upgrade — Apple is a boring company. If there is one thing that will dent the juggernaut that is Apple, it is their tendency to play safe to cater to the majority. We need to sell in millions, so we can’t experiment too much on design. I understand the why. Consumer aren’t supposed to care.
The strategy might work in US. Apple might throw numbers to prove that SE sells well worldwide. But all they are doing is to keep a manufacturing unit running since last 2014.
India is an extremely competitive market on price and I am tired of waiting for Apple to price their low end devices well.
SE needs a better, modern design. Be bold and make one custom for smaller devices. Or stay lazy and make iPhone 12 mini your new SE. Or if that’s too premium, make iPhone 11 the new SE. But kill those bezels already.
And 64GB? Still. Seriously?
I have recently been a lot picky about the stuff I buy. Or the subscriptions I sign up for. Or the projects I undertake. I was never good at it. And I don’t claim that I have mastered the skill now. I still struggle to recognise the price that I would eventually have to pay. First look, the listed cost looks cheap. But I have started asking now, “can I pay the second price?”
The answer is usually a big no. David Cain succinctly words the reasons behind this problem of mine (the above linked essay is a must-read).
I believe this is one reason our modern lifestyles can feel a little self-defeating sometimes. In our search for fulfillment, we keep paying first prices, creating a correspondingly enormous debt of unpaid second prices. Yet the rewards of any purchase – the reason we buy it at all — stay locked up until both prices are paid.
I could also closely associate with the side effects of this problem, as David lists them. This made me acutely aware of the gravity of this pilling debt.
This scarcity feeling creates one of the major side-effects of our insurmountable second-price debt: we reflexively overindulge in entertainment and other low-second-price pleasures –- phone apps, streaming services, and processed food — even though their rewards are often only marginally better than doing nothing. This stuff is attractive because it takes little effort (and we’re tired from working to pay for so many first prices) but it can eat up a ton of time, depleting the second-price budget even further.
I have been away on vacation since the last few days – I had no network I could connect to. My hotel did provide me an option to connect to Wifi, an offer that I humbly declined. As a result, I don’t remember any other visit to a beach that was this peaceful.
The guiding philosophy is “Go deeper, not wider.” Drill down for value and enrichment instead of fanning out. You turn to the wealth of options already in your house, literally and figuratively. We could call it a “Depth Year” or a “Year of Deepening” or something. In the consumer age, where it’s so easy to pick up and abandon new pursuits, I imagine this Depth Year thing really catching on, and maybe becoming a kind of rite of passage. People are already getting sick of being half-assed about things, I like to think.
Source: Go Deeper, Not Wider →