“hi” — Email is Good
Hi. I’m pinging you to see if you respond in a somewhat realtime fashion. […] If you respond fairly quickly, then I’ll respond with my question so we can kick off this little session.
Robin Rendle › Newsletters
A Text Renaissance
I think my limit for open-loop writing is about 14k words. For the book on temporality I’m working on now, I’ll probably serialize it online in some form before trying to put it together as a book. All in all, it was a wonderful outpouring of deep reserves of creativity and knowledge, the likes of which I haven’t seen online in a long time. Twitter is where all the history-making, universe-denting social media action really is. It is as close to a pure ideas-commons/digital public as we’ll ever get. Email today is now less a communications medium than a communications compile target.
xkcd: Unsubscribe Message
The simplicity of dropping Google in 2018
Switching off of Google in 2018 is easy because you’ve probably abandoned most of their products anyway, and the ones you’re still using are stagnating.
“i have been one of those that sent the email more often than I should have, and it took me way too long to realize those outcomes arent great either not sending it can, at least, prevent/postpone the cognitive weight of working through whatever gets st
“They had to develop cultures of safety. That often means specific social safeguards. Those ‘ossified corporate structures’ that Silicon Valley hates so much because they ‘keep you from moving fast’? Yeah, a lot of them exist to keep top brass from doing hideously stupid things.”
“FYI fellow Mail users, keep this box unchecked to disable all those gross email clients that track your opening / reading of emails.”
FYI fellow Mail users, keep this box unchecked to disable all those gross email clients that track your opening / reading of emails. pic.twitter.com/eW9wMAHt7B— Sebastiaan de With (@sdw) March 10, 2019
Why Mailbox died
For me, the genius of Mailbox was twofold. First, using it simply felt faster than any email app I ever used. It pre-fetched messages in the background; whenever you opened it you could start dealing with the daily horror of your inbox right away. Second, using it was satisfying in a way no other email client was: every time I swiped my fat thumb on a message, banishing it to the archive, the email turned a lustrous green. Mailbox was good for dashing off quick replies, but it was best-in-class for cleaning house. Every time I found myself standing in a line, I’d open up Mailbox and positively murder my inbox. Mailbox turned you into an email assassin.
Lindy Effect
More people should write
That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it.