I keep on hearing such mixed things about The Bear season 3, it’s insane.

I wouldn’t know. found S01E01 so anxiety inducing that I never watched another episode of it. 🫨

This review is worth it for its Astral Weeks joke alone.

Good morning all. It’s currently 18°C where I am ☀️

📖 Morning links:

• Just paying attention to greenery, even in an urban environment, has mental health benefits
• There’s a tradition in Japan where grandparents buy their grandkids a $450 bag when they start school
• A look back at the now dead newsletter service TinyLetter
• The Netflix show “Tour de France: Unchained” is apparently good. With the Tour starting this Saturday I think I might check it out to get me in the mood.

🧍‍♂️Me update:

• 6hr 15m of sleep 🛌
• I have a tiny sore throat this morning. But a happy side effect is that my voice sounds masculine and gravely.
• It’s the last day of hot temperatures in the UK, which makes me happy. I don’t mind a hot weekend. But hate a hot weekday. Give me rain and clouds and cosiness.

Watching Noah Kalina’s “Hotline Show” series on YouTube. I can’t tell if it’s good or not. But it’s cosy, relaxing and weirdly captivating. So let’s say good.

He also described getting sleepy as “sun setting”, which I rather like.

Good morning all. It’s currently 15°C where I am ☀️

📖 Morning reads:

• “Vaccines have saved 150 million children over the last 50 years” - Our World in Data. “Every ten seconds, one child is saved by a vaccine against a fatal disease.”
• “How This Real Image Won an AI Photo Competition” - Scientific American
• “TinyLetter: looking back on the humblest newsletter platform” - The Verge
• “Your brain does not process information and it is not a computer” - Aeon Essays

🧍‍♂️Me update:

• 9hr 22m of sleep 🛌
• I didn’t have dinner last night due to my stomach pains yesterday. That didn’t stop me from having a greasy burger though.
• I lived up to my promise and didn’t have any caffeine yesterday. I shall do the same today.
• My girlfriend has pain at the top of her spine today so will be WFH today with me.

🔗 15 rules for blogging - Matt Webb

Some of the best and most realistic rules for blogging I’ve seen. Though I realise I’m breaking rule 12 with this post:

Don’t use a post just to link to something elsewhere. If there’s a point to make, start with that.

🔗 Why I write and why I won’t – Remy Sharp°

He says that one of the benefits of sharing your thoughts or solutions on your blog is that they’re very easy to find again thanks to search engines.

I’d never really thought about that. Search is difficult. I’m unsatisfied with the search function of nearly all software I use.

And whilst Google isn’t what it once was it will probably still be better at finding something I’ve written on the web than Obsidian will be at finding something I’ve written in my notes.

🔗 Stream on

Simon Collison has written about having a longer form blog and also a short one.

A primary motivation for creating my Stream was the paralysing sense that a blog post needed appropriate length and weight.

I understand that feeling well. I am always too aware of my audience when I write. To the point that anything too short or off topic feels like I’m wasting their time. As a result I have created way too many blogs down the years (and I still maintain too many).

So I’ve found my recent discovery of Micro.blog very freeing. I don’t care too much on here. I just share what’s on my mind. No matter how short, long or off topic.

Daughter Realizes Dad Has Worn Same L.L.Bean Flannel Shirt Since 1988

I’m a recent convert to flannel. Like pickup trucks they do just look a bit silly in the UK. But the benefits outweigh that for me.

They’re so versatile. Lovely and warm in the autumn, often letting you go out without a jacket. And you can wear a t-shirt underneath and then unbutton the shirt if you get too hot. And in the winter they’re often thick enough that when paired with a jacket you are nice and toasty.

Flannel is also hardy and long lasting (though not as hardy as they once were I’m sure). I drunkenly fell off my bicycle last year wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch one. It has a few scuffs, but it survived very well indeed. And if I wasn’t wearing it my skin would have been covered in road rash.

Another reason I like this story is because it reminds me of the ‘capsule wardrobe’. The idea that you have a default outfit – or a few default outfits. Meaning you don’t spend a bunch of time working out what to wear each day.

I have too many clothes to have a ‘capsule’. But I would say I have a ‘uniform’ at work. I wear the same Cos fleece, Charles Twyitt trousers and Clark’s dessert boots each day.

“Israel Adds a Medieval Weapon to Its Arsenal in Fight Against Hezbollah"°