August 5: Sameness

Lake Como, anyone?

When The Streets Come Alive

Experiencing the aliveness of public space in China

I posted my book news on four platforms to compare engagement

Here's what happened when I posted on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, and Facebook

Obsidian + Letta

Easily use your Letta agent in Obsidian.

On an Atmosphere OS

What if an Atmosphere account could handle email, groupware, and device-level identity without putting Google or Apple at the center?

On Atmospheric Stacks…

Or, how we can supplant Substack and take back the stack, together as an ecosystem!

particles!

waow

消えるRAMディスクへの防衛策。Restic×Rcloneのバディで実現する「超高速・重複排除・全自動」二重バックアップ戦略

サイトの健康状態を把握することは安定運用の第一歩ですが、そのためだけに毎回わざわざSSHでログインして、黒い画面で top や htop コマンドを叩き続けるのはスマートではありません。仕事中であっても、デスクの前にいる […]

Airport Patterns, Stuttgart, Germany

An early-morning graphical impression before departing for a business trip from the gate area in Terminal 3 of Stuttgart Airport, Germany.

Blade Runner 2019 and Obsession: Autonomy and the Male Gaze

 Watching Curry Barker’s Obsession, I was reminded of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner 2019. Both films feature a near-identical deconstruction of their female leads. They split soul from body, reflecting on the male gaze. 

Stop Advertising The Atmosphere As Speculative Technology

The atproto enthusiast community is inadvertently turning others off to the ecosystem

Sports in the Atmosphere

Lessons from attempting to build an AT proto sports app and how to actually make it happen

Tjenestenektangrep - irriterende eller farlig?

En kommentar til medias omtale av tjenestenektangrep (DDoS)

The Reader, Kenninji Temple, Kyoto, Japan

Between sliding doors outside a tatami room at Kenninji Temple in Kyoto, Japan, a man seated on a bench facing the garden is reading a book.

How to turn YouTube into a tool (instead of a giant time sink)

Don't passively consume—take control over what you see.

If AI was suddenly banned

Would my life change?

Technorealists, the silent majority?

you might find yourself standing in the unremarkable center

August 5, 1926 Weather from the Hill, Olaf Thorvaldsen | Cook County News Herald

The first full week of August promises nearly perfect weather. Expect blue skies, light winds, and temperatures close to the seasonal average, interrupted only by a warm spell next Wednesday when the mercury should climb into the 80s. I am told that on such afternoons many respectable citizens suddenly discover pressing business at the harbor or along the lakeshore. I cannot say whether this is true, only that the weather will provide an excellent excuse.

Mini-Classics

Patterns: I have collected cross stitch patterns through so many years that I don't remember where I got every pattern. I wish I did, though, because the Unicorn and the Wanderer patterns are beautiful. I really like the mini paintings. They're satisfying to complete. The confetti on some of the patterns is really evident in the backs though.

X+Y: A Brilliant Young Mind Review

A story about self-discovery and the wider world.

Nakajuku Evening Panoramas, Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan

Coming back from the office yesterday, I got off two stops early to shoot some panoramic photos of daily life along Nakajuku Shopping Street in Itabashi, Tokyo.

W Social Isn't New. It Isn't Truly European. It Isn't Even Theirs.

Another rant on this “European” alternative

"Networking" is not a bad word

It can even be fun, if you stay authentic

Supergirl (Craig Gillespie, 2026)⭐⭐⭐

A big swing and a small miss. Supergirl is an almost direct adaptation of Tom King and Bilquis Everly's award-winning, 2021 comic series, Supergirl:Woman of Tomorrow.

LLMs are bad decision helpers

I want to preface this by saying I am not anti-AI/LLM, especially in the way it has manifested on social media. In fact, I'm highly critical of the movement due to how abusive the movement has gotten (especially on Bluesky and the FOSS community) and dismissive to information that contradicts their claims, and I do...

Thousands of Photos, No Filenames: A Four-Prompt Workflow

Helping a small business owner automate the tagging of images to work with their social media strategy

saving >$400/mo on atproto infra

(eventually) trying to make operating atproto infra cheaper

Micro.blog mission, short recap

Holding space for each other

Every builder is advancing a critique of the hellscape we're currently in. Everyone who's building a community is pathbreaking Another Way that things could be.

Cellosophical Explorations #2

Bacterial Chemotaxis as a model system

Abhängig

„Feierabend!“, verkündet der Kollege fettgedruckt im Slack-Channel. Github ist down, die Statusseite spricht von elevated errors und degraded performance und alles was wir zu sehen bekommen ist das Einhorn, der Github-Failwhale sozusagen, und jede Menge API-Errors. Es ist im Grunde traurig, aber es ist auch nicht ganz falsch, bestünde das Problem lange weiter, könnten wir...

CodePen 2.0

Noting perhaps my largest personal career accomplishment, which is launching CodePen 2.0. Far more work, believe it or not, than the entire creation of the original CodePen. This isn't the place to describe every detail of what we did and why we did it. If you're interested, perhaps our Why 2.0? podcast or the What's...

gf pasta salad

for a nice late summer day

Permissioned Data Shapes: Notifications

A self-keyed space gives notifications a home you control: every app gets an append-only sink to write into, you pick the reader that turns them into pushes and emails, and allowing or revoking an app is an access control you already have.

Cloudy

ATProto needs TVTime alternatives

It's time to bring open web to movies/series tracking apps on ATProto

Quiet Temple Entrance, Kanazawa, Japan

The quiet and peaceful entrance to Gannenji, a small temple in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.

Utah's records director just rejected the Lieutenant Governor's attempt to silence four citizens

The office argued four separate people could be declared vexatious as a single "combination acting in concert." The Director used the bill sponsor's own words to say no, and warned the theory would let agencies punish lawyers for representing clients.

BBC Radio on your HomePod

This may be a fairly niche topic for those in the UK, but it’s a hack I now use daily so I thought I’d share. Unlike many other radio stations, it’s not possible to ask your Apple HomePod to directly play radio from the BBC. If I say, “Play 6 Music”, my HomePod mini starts playin