Chris Foley

TIL You can embed YouTube videos in Micro.blog. Here are the steps:

1. Install the YouTube Embed Shortcut Plugin.
2. From the YouTube video you want to embed, find the ID from the url of the YouTube page, NOT from the Share link (this caused me 30 minutes of frustration this morning).
3. Create the embed code within curly brackets: yt "YOUTUBE_SHORTCODE"

The full embedded video will show up on your blog, but appear as a link on the Micro.blog timeline.

So let’s get the day started with a set of roots and dancehall reggae with Last of the Lions:

There is no rulebook in this world that says we have to toughen up and be thick like hide. This is the sort of insidious narrative that is causing so much unnecessary suffering in this world, because we are all afraid to be our true selves openly in this world. So we suppress and repress, and we knowingly and unknowingly hurt each other like this. In my opinion, it is better to be a weak buttercup that is mindful of the presence of the other buttercups in this world. That to me, is strength.

Winnie Lim, my first hate comment

Christopher Isham on Closer to Truth looks at the question of whether time is fundamental:

How deep goes time? Is time bedrock reality, part of the fundamental fabric of reality? Or is time an emergent thing, generated by deeper truths of existence? What is the place of time in deep physical laws like relativity and quantum mechanics? Can we get to the bottom of time?

Another look at time

The experience of watching YouTube videos on Feedbin is really good. What you see is only subscribed channel updates, with no algorithmic feed, no recommended videos, no scrolling comments, less ads so far. From my 100+ subscriptions I transferred over only around a dozen that I’m really interested in watching. I’m hoping that this way of viewing YouTube videos will cut down on the mindless rabbit holes I’ve been getting into lately, ie. GTD setups, marble racing, European roller coasters, Tie fighter schematics, etc.

Odysseus has a fascinating video on managing multiple interests. Basically:

• list all your hobbies and goals
• create a hierarchy
• organize your time
• push some things to the future
• embrace the struggle

After several years of using Reeder for all my RSS needs, I just activated the Feedbin 30-day trial. I really like the option to post directly to Micro.blog from the Feedbin interface.

From the Pen Cup: Taking It Slowly

I really like this discription of the experience of slow reading, slow writing:

I’m finding so much joy in the slowness of all of this—both the reading and the journaling with this pen. There’s so much to savor in both. God, we are rushing all the time and it feels good to put aside the craziness of the world for even a little while. To take my time with each chapter, and also to enjoy the ritual of choosing a pen, filling it, waiting for the ink to flow, then filling up a journal word by word and line by line over days, weeks, and months. To simply be present. To notice the poetry and beauty in this novel and also, at times, on my own pages.

Another Little Free Library location spotted in Burlington on my way to the barber.

Currently reading: Station Island by Seamus Heaney 📚

Found at a Little Free Library location a few blocks from my house.

Finished reading: Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane 📚

But to think in radiological time is also, necessarily, to ask not what we will make of the future but what the future will make of us. What legacies will we leave behind, not only for the generations that succeed us but also for the epochs and species that will come after ours? Are we being good ancestors?

Winnie Lim: creative retail experiences, and warmth and tokyo:

We often talk about art in terms of art made by artists, but I love experiencing the art that is created through the rendering of creative retail spaces, especially when it is independently owned.

Here’s my blogroll. All of these blogs are by writers whom I genuinely respect. I’ve been reading their articles for years, starred or bookmarked them, quoted them in notebooks, and come back to their writing time and time again.

Since the pandemic, Little Free Library locations have been cropping up around the neighborhood. This morning I found a location that specializes in poetry! I borrowed volume of Seamus Heaney and might add a few books to the collection one of these days.

Alex Tabarrok: Claude 3 Opus Also Fails Steve Landsburg’s Economics Exam

Like the AIs, I got the first question wrong. But with some knowledge of the crazy real estate market of Vancouver and Toronto, I did get the right answer on the second question.

Maris Kreizman: Against Disruption: On the Bulletpointization of Books:

It seems to me that there is a fundamental discrepancy between the way readers interact with books and the way the hack-your-brain tech community does. A wide swath of the ruling class sees books as data-intake vehicles for optimizing knowledge rather than, you know, things to intellectually engage with.

For those of us with lofty reading goals (including myself), a reminder that genuine appreciation of reading is about taking one’s time to appreciate the complexity and richness of what books have to offer.

Finished reading: Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish 📚

Unlike many books about business and productivity, the most meaningful chapters of Clear Thinking were at the end. Also really classy acknowledgements at the end of the book.

Over the last few days I’ve been catching up with a sizeable backlog of RSS feeds on Reeder. I’m all caught up to early December with just under 1500 articles left to scroll through (thank goodness for keyboard shortcuts). Reading feeds a few months after their publishing date is an excellent filter - so many posts seem initially relevant but lose traction very quickly. Other posts stand the test of time exceptionally well. These are the ones that I aim to think the most deeply about.

Found a Leuchtturm weekly planner on sale for $10 today. Fountain pen is a 1960s Pelikan. 🖋️

Susan Eichhorn Young: What Kind of Colleague are You?:

In our business, there are also those who are generous, kind, attentive, open, empathic, compassionate. This doesn’t mean you have no backbone to stand up for yourself in the face of the negative behavior. It means you truly are recognizing what you do and who you are has purpose and reason, and that each colleague around you has their purpose and reason.

Wise words from Susan. I have many colleagues with whom I’ve shared years of experiences, trust, and camaraderie. And all of those relationships must be earned.

Rebecca Toh: small unknown complex life:

You can have a good experience on social media if you are very intentional and mindful. There are accounts I really enjoy on social media and I have found a lot of inspiration there. But I still believe the corrosive effects of social media outweigh its good, because I know for a fact that social media apps CAN be re-designed to be less addictive and less manipulative, and they are not because of the ultra-capitalistic world we live in. I’m not sure who or what I’m angry at or if it’s even anger I feel. Maybe it’s sadness instead.

All that to say, it’s easier to breathe and write here. The energy here is so much cleaner.

Rebecca’s blog has always been one of the saner places on the internet, and I’m glad that there are still independent sites where one can still experience the quiet web. Rebecca also links to ooh.directory, an actual old-school blog directory, just like in the early days of the web.

I feel