I’m reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It’s my first Sanderson and I’m a little over 300 pages in. It’s been on my TBR for a few months and finally decided to take it on.

I got a French press and used it for awhile. I’m extremely lazy though and got tired of having to clean the coffee grounds out of the screen. That’s something I didn’t consider before buying it. I switched to a chemex that I like much better. Yeah, there are disposable filters but it works better for me. If I were starting over, I’d probably just get some kind of pour over thing that fits over my mug. That would take up less space than the chemex.

I feel that. I’m finding myself gravitate back to going directly to individual blogs. Just in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been introduced to new blogs on these smaller, more slower-paced niche communities. So it feels reminiscent of how I used to use the Internet 10-15 years ago before Reddit and monetization of everything. I had a handful of places I’d rotate through. It was just enough that there was usually something new everyday, but not an infinite sea of content. And I’m finding now that I’m actually reading the links being posted instead of just reading the comments. It kind of makes me think of how people used to watch TV. A show would release one episode a week and you had to wait for next week’s show. And there was a limited number of shows. Now with all the content on all the streaming platforms plus YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc. there’s an endless amount of content to consume and no built-in breaks so you can literally binge non-stop.

With Reddit or other fill-in-the-blank service where your attention is the end goal to sell ads, the incentive is to get you to never pause, never take a break, never leave. It was exhausting. Here, it feels more relaxed.

Yup… when the only rule in the engine is “maximize profits”, this is what we get. We need a version 2 that includes some kind of rule that also incentivizes “do good for the world” or something to that effect… however you quantify that. I’m not hopeful that iteration will happen though. It’s hard, if not impossible, for a system to change itself. It’d be like changing the rules of Monopoly while playing it where the current winner has the most leverage and influence on how the rules change. If you’re already winning, you don’t want to change anything unless it makes you win more. You certainly wouldn’t want to change it in a way that made it harder for you. So the only way to change the rules in a way that benefits the current “losers” is if all those losers unite to overrule the leverage of the winner, which is why the winner puts in so much effort to keep the losers divided and arguing amongst themselves about what the problem is and what rules to implement or change.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

This is awesome. I bought a 100 pack of razors and a safety razor very similar to yours near the beginning of 2014 and I’m probably only about 25% through the razors. I hated the idea of spending so much on the big name multi blade razors.

I’ve bought at least two bags from ebags.com that I’ve been very happy with. The first bag was for a large 17 inch laptop I used in college. It was one of the only places I could find that carried laptop backpacks that could fit a thick 17 inch laptop. That bag is still getting use when I travel with very little signs of wear. I was so happy with it that when I needed a new carryon bag, I went back to ebags and got their Mother Lode Travel Backpack. It looks like they have a lifetime warranty for their ebags brand products.

I really like the size and aesthetic of the Field Notes notebooks. Small and thin enough to fit in a pocket. Maybe not as durable as some might be looking for. I kind of like the weathered look they get after some use though.

For something larger and more durable, I’ve liked these Miliko brand notebooks. The paper is nice to write on and doesn’t bleed through.