Hi Crowd!
There are a little over 2,000 subscribers to The Crowd, a number which seems in constant flux as people rage quit or wander in having no idea what they signed up for. I had to go look that up because honestly I never really pay attention to metrics of any kind. For better or worse. Of those, just under 100 are also subscribed to the telegram group which is where I’ve been posting links all day long so some of you know where my head has been at recently. Though now that I type that out, I actually have no idea if there’s any overlap at all because again, no metrics, so maybe it’s 100 totally different people there? I have no idea. Anyway, stream of consciousness catch up inbound, buckle up!
Earlier this year I talked about using notes to document some things like which books and movies I take in so that I can better reflect on that later in the year but I also quick revised and added tracking coffee to that since in the course of my day I’m often trying new coffees a few times a week, if not every day. No I’m not in the coffee business anymore, I just like coffee and I’m lucky to have lots of options around. I was just writing this down and posting it to various social feeds but pretty quickly I realized two things:
- This is turning into an interesting list.
- Social feeds are ephemeral and it’ll sort of fade away in a way I didn’t want it to.
So, I revised my revision and added a special new coffee section to my website and I’ve been tracking it there and kinda really love how that is shaping up. Posting there also autoposts to the telegram group which is fun. It doesn’t autopost to other social feeds, at least not yet, not sure if I’ll change that or not, but it’s shipped. Thanks Claude Code. I don’t want to be too repetitive here, but as I mentioned earlier in the year vibe coding has really changed how I make and ship things, and the timelines associated with that. I really do recommend everyone try something to see how it’s playing out, because it’s moving so fast and I really think most people have no idea how this all works. My friend Ian Rogers has had a similar experience and just published some reflections on it. Seth Goldstein has also been talking about how it’s changed both his workflow and possibilities he can imagine, unfortunately those thoughts are spread across dozens of different comments and social posts so hard to link to but he did set up a discord server for “old new coders” as a place for people just dipping their toes in to find help and inspiration.
In very short order I’ve moved from vibe coding in the browser to the terminal, but also realizing this drags me back to my laptop which I’ve been trying for a long time to distance myself from. Not for any real reason, it’s at my desk and connected to a big monitor and it works and all that, but I never unplug it if I can avoid it. I travel with my iPad Pro and that’s what I take around the house and to coffee shops because if I’m writing, which is 99% of what I do, that’s more than enough. Vibe coding in the terminal changes that a bit especially if talking about traveling, so I found this reddit post about tunneling from an ipad to a laptop to be kind interesting. I don’t know if that’s the set up for me, and I haven’t gotten too deep into dictation yet though I know a few people who are loving WhisperFlow for such things. In the post I linked above Ian talks about being glad he started using Claude Code in 4.0 so that he could see how big the jump was to 4.5 and better understand how fast this is moving. I think the idea of just talking about what you want and then suddenly having a working app of code for it is a fast tract people who aren’t following along even a little bit are going to have a hard time understanding later.
Speaking of traveling I recently revisited this piece about what to expect/do when traveling to the US, because even though I’m a US Citizen I don’t live in the US which means I often have to cross the border. As things in the US seem to be escalating on a daily (if not hourly basis) it seems like a good idea to cover some bases. I decided the easiest thing to do us just dig an old phone out of the closet and set it up as a US phone, with a US eSIM and absolute bare bones apps as default with the ability to download/delete them in transit. Turns out this is trickier than I’d imagined as some apps like Signal which I’ve been trying to use more for messaging can only be installed on one phone at a time, meaning I’d need to fully remove it from my normal phone to set it up on the US phone which extreme. Other messaging apps like WhatsApp let you use multiple devices, but want you to have a main device in hand to verify the new device when you set it up. I get it, this is important to prevent a nefarious 3rd party from installing the app and monitoring your messaging, but it complicates things if you want to follow best practices of deleting apps before crossing a border and then reinstalling them later, as you’d need a device with them installed already to verify. I know some people who mail themselves a preloaded phone ahead of time, so once they arrive safe and sound it’s there waiting for them. That has other risks of course (things get lost in the mail still) but it’s another option.
The alternative of course is to have travel accounts and main accounts, which solves that conflict, but given I told people weeks ago I’d stopped using X and they keep messing me there, and how many emails I get to addresses I haven’t used in years, I can easily see getting to the US, not being able to contact anyone, not getting any messages, then getting home a few days later to find a flood of messages on the main accounts from people asking where you are.
So yeah, more thought needed on this one.
But yeah. America. What the fuck. Secret police grabbing US citizens off the street (or worse, shooting them in the face) is just… I don’t know how anyone thinks this is a good thing. Seems like at least some of the secret police themselves don’t even think it’s a good thing since a whistleblower just dumped the names of thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents. And wow, it’s about to get real interesting as I’ve already seen several journalists preparing to cross reference databases. And when you have not-secret police standing up to secret police (or at least being told to stand up to – I don’t know of a single case where police have intervened to stop ICE yet), this seems like new levels of fucked up. And even worse, you have the only people who can actually do anything about it, hemming and hawing about doing anything about it. It’s wild to me to watch politicians talk about how dire the situation is one day and then vote to continue supporting it and funding it the next. It’s wild to me to watch people who voted for those politicians, who literally put them in office, sit back and say they don’t like the situation or what the politicians are doing but there’s nothing they can do about it. Come fucking on, you voted for that person, it’s your obligation and responsibility to make sure they are representing you. You don’t just get to go “oh well” and let them sign off on everything you despise, and pretend like you are innocent. Call your mayors and governors and reps for fucks sake. Because seriously, you have DHS and the Whitehouse sending out blatant references to KKK anthems, this is well past “just wait till midterms, we’ll show ’em at the polls” territory. The politicians in office right now, need to do something right now.
In unrelated news, Heated Rivalry. I’m assuming I don’t need to say any more than that, but if you are one of the 5 or 6 people who hasn’t watched this yet, time to catch up. Yes it’s graphic, but it’s also incredibly moving and powerful. And I’m loving how many people are suddenly interested in hockey, and how many hockey fans are panicking and don’t know what to do about it. I’m living for instagram videos of people at at games, in the stands, yelling out “Kiss! Kiss!!” to the players and seeing even hockey podcast posts admit that this show has brought more attention to their game than anything the NHL has done in… well, maybe ever.
Funny thing, first time we watched it there was a problem and we couldn’t turn on subtitles, so we had half the story and assumed we could just guess the other parts in context. And boy were we wrong. Watching it the the second time (as multiple viewings are worth it) with subtitles opened up so many other levels. And yeah, given the chaos state of the world, a story about some people in love, fighting through their fears, finding happiness and being surrounded by people who support them is pretty awesome. Go watch it. Admittedly, when it was recommended to us we didn’t know what we were in for, and I dunno, maybe that’s better? Go in blind, and just be ready for a ride.
That’s all for now. Hope you are all safe and well.
-s