One of my favorite pastimes is falling deeply in love with an album then looking at Pitchfork’s review calling it a “5 out of 10”.

My most recent example is The Crux by Djo (Joe Keery). It’s catchy and has obvious influences from Billy Joel, Bowie, Queen, to name a few. What’s not to love?

Wild “this is the future” experience thanks to Shellfish for iPhone, tmux, and Claude Code: while making coffee this morning I had an idea for an app I’m building. I dictated the idea to my phone, hit send, and my Mac and Claude started churning away in my office. A bit later I put the build on my phone and there it was. Magic.

Alex Pretti

Just weeks after a masked ICE agent killed Renée Good, second person has been killed by our government. You would think Renée’s killing would have caused Trump to end his occupation of Minneapolis. You would think it would have been a sign to stop the madness.

I’m somehow both shocked this has not ended and unsurprised given the brutality of this president.

Paul Kafasis:

I, Too, Am Heartbroken and Very Angry. We all should be.

Alex Pretti lived a life of service. He was an ICU nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs. His last act was helping a woman up after she’d been assaulted.

Now, Alex Pretti is dead, gunned down by poorly trained ICE thugs. It’s the second horrific killing in Minnesota this month, and I fear it won’t be the last. I don’t know what it will take to end this madness. But at the very least, let us refuse to accept the despicable smear campaigns being attempted by craven officials and bootlicking apologists.

Hank Green, in a post on YouTube:

Another person, Alex Pretti, was killed by ICE agents today. Stephen Miller says he was a “terrorist” and an “assassin.” The Department of Homeland Security said that he approached ICE agents with a 9mm handgun and he wanted to “massacre law enforcement”.

Videos from three angles show Alex, a 37 year old ICU nurse, holding his phone and his other hand empty. He may have been armed, which is legal in Minnesota, but his gun is never visible. An ICE agent shoves a woman to the ground. Alex tries to help her up but is pepper sprayed. He is pulled to the ground by three ICE agents and hit repeatedly with a pepper spray canister. More officers approach, some with guns drawn. An agent appears to be moving away from the scrum with a gun, possibly Alex’s.

And then a shot is fired and then around ten more shots are fired by two officers.

Again, I ask people who disagree with me on the politics of these things not whether you think the officers were justified or made an understandable mistake or should have been trained better. I ask you only whether you think it is acceptable for the leaders of our country to tell us careful, intentional, and obvious lies about people killed by ICE.

And, if so, why?

Louie Mantia, in a post on Mastodon:

News outlets really gotta stop qualifying people who get killed by the state.

“No criminal record” is irrelevant, because the state shouldn’t be killing anyone. Specifying this indicates that the writer—and to the reader—that this detail makes a difference. It does not.

404’s investigation into “ELITE” tool Palantir built for ICE to locate “targets” was illuminating. This company is despicable. It made me sad knowing that there are designers out there willing to spend their precious time and talents working on such a tool — shame on you!

What’s Happening in Minnesota is Terrible

What’s happening in Minnesota is terrible. Trump’s occupation of these cities is an act of war against people on American soil. What gives me hope are the grassroots efforts like Stand With Minnesota to collect resources and fight back. A few stories I’ve encountered this week (via Kottke) I thought I’d share:

From Margaret Killjoy:

Half the street corners around here have people — from every walk of life, including republicans — standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes responders.

And from Email from Family in Minnesota by Jen and Pete (via Brent Simmons):

The people here are subdued, but not hopeless. Defiant, but not violent. We are doing our best to protest peacefully as this is what our constitution allows.

No matter where you fall on the political spectrum I believe we can all agree that we have rights in this country: free speech, the right to peacefully protest, the right to due process to name a few.

I choose to believe this will end soon.

Thinking a lot about Micro Apps after reading about Matt Birchler’s Yearly Run Tracker. It has inspired me to work on a few ideas.

I showed the post to my wife and she loved it. She had this goal once, figured it’d be easy, but didn’t hit it due to off-days. An app would have helped!

Our kiddo got her cleanliness from her mom and clinginess from her dad.

All the movies and TV I watched in 2025

Special Callouts: In the spring I was enthralled by Severance season 2 and Pluribus season 1 in the winter. Incredible television. I cannot stop thinking about these shows.

I also made a special effort to see movies in theaters: Phoenician Scheme, Jaws (50th Anniversary), F1, and the incredible work of art, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Notes:

  • ⭐︎ Great.
  • ⭐︎⭐︎ Loved.
  • All links point to my beloved The Movie Database, an alternative to the international one.
  • Shows and movies were tracked using Sofa.

Got a Series 11 Apple Watch

I picked up an Apple Watch Series 11 at Target for $300 yesterday after hemming and hawing (as I am wont to do) after seeing it on sale ($100 off) for the past month or so.

I’m upgrading from a stainless Series 7 so I’m looking forward to faster, on-device Siri and the bigger screen. I’m curious if the stronger glass on the aluminum model will hold up as well as the sapphire screen on the 7: that screen is still in pristine condition. I only upgraded because the battery was consistently hitting 10% around 6 PM — I wish these things had user-replaceable batteries.

During this battery drought I considered ditching the Apple Watch altogether for the Pebble Round 2 with its e-ink display, custom watch faces, open source software, and longer battery life. As I mulled this over I started thinking about how I use my Watch and it just seemed untenable to switch. Here’s my top uses for Apple Watch that wouldn’t be possible on Pebble:

  • Siri: while Siri sucks, I rely on it to set reminders, timers, and turn off lights with HomeKit.
  • Notifications: I disable most notifications and despise the remaining ones. Yet… it’s handy to pick up a call from my wife even though my phone is across the house. Live activities are fun way to keep track of a sportsball game while it’s going on.

You may be surprised to see that step counts or workout tracking was not mentioned. The rings and keeping a streak never appealed to me. I enjoy that this data is collected passively without effort on my end, but it’s not a killer feature for me.

At the end of the day I know I can’t get a better wearable experience elsewhere with an iPhone. I hope Apple will create more 3rd-party APIs so competing watches have a fighting chance in this market (as they’ve started doing in the EU).

Lastly, just a note on my upgrade pattern: I won the original Apple Watch in some raffle online and have been wearing one since 2014. I bought the 4, then 7, now 11. I bought my stainless 7 for like $300 on Woot shortly after the 8 was released. These watches do not change much annually and they frequently go on sale just a few months after launch. Be patient and wait for a deal.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Sometimes I have to crack open a pistachio with a screwdriver and I feel like a nut.

If Christmas Vacation was remade in 2025 I could see Clark Griswold getting onto the roof to clear the snow from his solar panels while putting up the lights.

This idea came to me this weekend while shoveling snow from my solar panels and wondering if I’d gone insane.

A Call for Better Duplicate Management in Apple Photos

Apple Photos should be way better at duplicate detection (and other library cleanup features). Here’s how Apple describes their duplicate detection in the Photos app (and knowledge base article):

Duplicates are classified both as exact copies that may have different metadata, as well as photos that appear to be the same, but may have unique resolutions, file formats, or other slight differences.

The Duplicates tool is a permanent sidebar item on Mac (no clue where this lives on iPhone) but it doesn’t seem to detect “like-photos” which I would define as: I just took 10 very similar pictures of my kid at the playground and please please please phone help me choose the best 1 or 2 to keep in my library until the end of time (and throw away the rest).

Aside from the passive Duplicates tool, it would be great if Apple introduced a “daily cleanup” reminder with suggestions on the photos to clean up. After having a kid my spouse and I created a Shared Photo Library and now we have so many cute photos of our kid each day.

Like a garden, tending to a photo library is best done frequently! At the end of most days my wife culls the photos and deletes “like-photos”. I am terrible at this task as I worry about accidentally deleting “a good one”. It’d be fantastic if the Photos app would have a cleanup suggestion at the end of the day to identify “like-photos” and even zoom in on aspects that differ (ex. eyes open vs shut, smiling vs not) so you can quickly and confidently clean up. This could be a great ritual for people to recount the day, see pictures of your loved ones, and tidy up your library.

This feature would provide plenty of control to the user by leaving them in charge of which photos get discarded. Or you could ignore these suggestions entirely and keep your library as messy as the old shoe boxes of yore.

While expensive and hard to buy, I’m excited to receive my Analogue 3D soon. It warmed my heart seeing a bunch of kids playing N64 Super Smash Bros in Russ’ review.

I fell in love with video games after seeing Samus Aran do a beam charge in that game. Totally blew my mind as a kid.

We lost power for an hour right around sunset today with 30°F weather and it highlighted just how underprepared I am for these situations. We almost had to order delivery and I almost bought a big battery.

Very much enjoying Pluribus on Apple TV. Fascinating premise. You know you’re in good hands with Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seahorn.

Bravo 404 Media, bravo.

Nancy Pelosi, one of Wall Street’s all time great investors, announced her retirement Thursday. … Pelosi’s portfolio returned an incredible 816%, according to public disclosure records. The S&P 500, meanwhile, has returned roughly 229%.

In an interview with Jon Stewart, Pelosi said that money absolutely corrupts. When Stewart asked if money corrupts Democrats she simply said no.

Regardless of what you think of Pelosi, her policies and legacy, let’s all agree there’s a some detachment from reality occurring. Of course money corrupts. You think you’re impervious?

Reversing Enshittification

I loved hearing Cory Doctorow going off on everything wrong in the tech industry on Decoder while promoting his new Enshittification book.

I want to work on projects that are part of the antidote — open source, fun, free, and built to solve problems not be gross and make billionaires richer.

My History with Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro’s CBS interview is incredible and well worth your time if you create (or want to create). He puts everything into his projects and it’s incredibly inspiring to hear about why he loves Frankenstein so much.

You are born to sing one or two songs in your lifetime. This is my song.

And:

What is beautiful about monsters is they become patron saints of imperfection.

I saw Guillermo speak at the Roger Ebert Festival during a Q&A session after a showing of Crimson Peak at the Virginia Theater and I’ve been a huge fan ever since. His films like Nightmare Alley, Pinocchio, The Shape of Water, and Pan’s Labyrinth are incredible and so I was thrilled when I learned he was making Frankenstein.

Last Thursday night, on Halloween Eve, no less, I drove an hour to see Frankenstein in theaters (curse you Netflix for your limited theatrical runs!) and absolutely loved it. The sets, performances, costumes — it is clearly the work of an auteur who loves this story and it’s a beautiful rendition of a story so seeped into our collective minds.

I came to the movie a bit naive to the myth and story of Frankenstein. I read Mary Shelley’s 1818 book (did you know Shelley was 19 when she wrote it?) on the original 3.5” iPhone when I was 16 and I’ve seen Young Frankenstein a dozen times (and even performed in Young Frankenstein in group interpretation in high school) but somehow I had never seen a true Frankenstein movie before Guillermo’s.

I highly recommend seeing it in theaters. But if you’re not near a major city I guess just stream it on Netflix on Friday? Highly recommended.

I cannot find the quote now, but I heard Guillermo say something like:

My entire life I dreamed I could make the best Frankenstein movie. Now that I’ve made the movie — I don’t know if I achieved that goal — but it’s no longer a dream, I did it.

I say “would you like to watch a slow horse?” instead of “would you like to watch an episode of Slow Horses?” and luckily my spouse gets what I mean.

Today I bought Nova on sale. I just want to support the good people at Panic making great Mac apps.