Chris Foley

Props go out to @heyloura for her Lillihub client for Micro.blog. Things I like so far include the layout of threaded conversations and mentions as well as the Discover area at the very top of the interface next to Timeline. There’s something really satisfying about using opinionated software that easily plugs into open standards formats.

I still miss the days when you could post, view conversations, and comment on both Facebook and Twitter from the Friendfeed interface.

Four years ago on March 21, 2020, a recital I did with mezzo soprano Krisztina Szabó at Tapestry Opera was the last concert of the season in Toronto before everything shut down for the pandemic. Tapestry has made the recital public for one week, and you can watch it below:

We’re not here to crack any mysteries. We’re here to roll around in life and experience its peaks and troughs and make discoveries and pick up things and poke at things and create things that express our ignorance and awe at all this mystery and beauty.

Rebecca Toh: 04: photography as a result of life

This morning I’m grateful for the experience of browsing Micro.blog, which largely involves visiting elegantly designed blogs with zero clutter and reading interesting articles, most of which generously invite further thought. Back to my espresso.

Your ikigai can be found in small daily rituals, side projects, and deep conversations. It can be found in moments of silence and idleness, or in moments of creative flow.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff: Rediscovering Ikigai: What We Got Wrong and How to Find Meaning in Life

Hussein Kesvani’s Guardian article about Reddit becoming rubbish in the lead-up to its IPO paints a rather bleak picture of the internet in 2024. All the more reason to embrace microblogging, which might already be a dark forest of the internet

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.