Paul Williams

I have no intention of getting an iPhone Duo, but the sheer amount of clever apps being released based on its foldable design has been fun to see. iA Writer’s cheeky takes on the typewriter and ‘presenter’ are great examples.

A great reminder from Patrick Rhone on thanking those who create software you use and enjoy: "I’m sure there is software and services you use daily that makes your life better. Remember that a human made that. If you ever get the opportunity, thank them."

Binged The Dropout before heading to the theater for You Can See Everything, and it functions like an 8-episode prequel. Sort of. Fielder put together a nice piece of work here. Can’t even fathom what footage was left out.

Been using a self-hosted instance of FreshRSS the last several weeks, and I’m not sure why it took me this long to switch. This is by far one of the better ways to retrieve feeds. Compile in an app of your choice (mine: NetNewsWire). Great experience setting up and running.

More video store love. As Racket reports, Vinegar Syndrome, an obscure film preservation label out of Connecticut, opens a shop in Minneapolis this week. Seems like the focus is on discovery here (leaning towards their deep catalog of films) vs offering a broader, general inventory.

There’s a difference between a site you can visit in Chrome and a site that’s part of the web.

The 4K release of Aliens is a spectacular transfer. The amount of detail is an astounding demonstration of the format, and the film still stands at the pinnacle of action-meets-horror. Hard to believe it’s had 40 years of impact on the genre aesthetics, costume design, and sets. (With restraint!)

For nearly two decades, live mussels have served as a little-known first line of defense for detecting pollution at the Minneapolis Public Works water treatment plant, which supplies water to nearly half a million people throughout the metro area.

Great artwork as you go down the quote-thread-hole. Need more of these!

Finished The Count of Monte Cristo yesterday. A fun, breezy 1,250-page read that satisfies in a way that feel-good films do, with a lean towards intellectual and historical depth, but a more plot-driven thriller than I expected.... https://defiantsloth.com/2026/10/10/finished-the-count-of-monte.html

It’s been thirty years since Amon Tobin released Adventures in Foam under the Cujo moniker. He returns to form with Paranova, his latest Cujo release, and it’s a splendid album (upon first listen). Let’s see if it holds up for another thirty years.

Discovered: Decoy Font, a TTF font that "attempts" to conceal what's written to AI. Clever idea, though I agree with Anthony Feint (original blogger by which I found this), who admits AI can be trained to read this, but… here we are, in 2026, wishing something like this could work.

Why the hell are things the way they are.

Jeff Atwood sharing an email response his piece on not being able to vibe code love, asserts some wisdom: "Perhaps the LLMs are a reminder that we should make an extra effort to cultivate relationships with each other and form... https://defiantsloth.com/2026/09/26/jeff-atwood-sharing-an-email.html

33 years ago today, the Stranger stepped onto the dock of Myst Island for the first time. We can still hear the water splashing against the pilings.

Neat new writing software NEO from the author Hugh Howey (Wool/Silo trilogy). His philosophy of hitting ‘Enter’ to move through text context formatting is super simple: "Hit ENTER once for a new paragraph. Hit it again for a new section break. A third ENTER gets you a new chapter."

Heard about Andrew W.K.’s new album (allegedly we’re calling this jazz-noir) in, of all places, a marketing email from Blackwing. Darcy Smyth describes it perfectly: "This is lounge music for a room that might not exist, all smo... https://defiantsloth.com/2026/09/23/heard-about-andrew-wks-new.html

✱ Reading is Important: https://defiantsloth.com/2026/09/22/reading-is-important.html

Nice episode of the Version History podcast, with a focus on The Oregon Trail videogame (from which I learned started as a text adventure game first). It was fun playing this at school growing up. I have no idea if they do anything like this in school these days, but it felt educational back then.

The False Chanterelle are popping up now. Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca. They look so pretty when they’re young… all fluffy and bright. 🧡 #MushroomMonday #FungiFriends

This candy store in Jordan, MN (allegedly the largest in the state, no way I’d argue against it), was a roadside spectacle. What’s in the dome? You could never guess.

The fusion of some of my favorite things: typography and Super Metroid. Incredible find by Marcin Wichary, in a topical piece on the challenges of fully justified text columns. (A mad genius wrote a 17k word guide to the game by simply selecting the right words to be perfectly justified on-page.)

Really appreciate Cyan doing another print run of their Myst trilogy. Without hesitation, I’ll be backing this.

A 45.7 percent jump in CD sales (year over year) joins the chorus of steaming backlash — the revenge of physical media continues.

Our outings to the MN State Fair were more subdued this year, but still great food at the classic spots (Baba and Midway Men’s Club forever), and this piece in the Fine Arts building really stuck with me.

These days, apps just casually have completely insane wording

The Minnesota State Fair, running now through Monday, is the greatest place on earth. We sent the reliably excellent BUMP OPERA to capture photographic evidence of that fact✨

Great exercise in de-enshittification of journalistic integrity: modify the headlines so they aren't engineered for click bait and intellectual malaise.

Brent Simmons has the big bugs fixed in Net News Wire, and is thinking about new features. inessential.com

The Fair opens today, and so it’s only right to link to an article about the Giant Slide’s family legacy. It also has their lemonade recipe, with the secret ingredient (the “entire lemon, rind and all”), which is used at their Fresh Lemonade stand on the west side of Nelson Street at Dan Patch Ave.

Clouds, mushrooms, trees. Vantage point: biking.

Incredible growth story for a once-beleaguered toy maker: Lego has seen a 10× increase in revenues over the past 20 years, amid growing changes in its core customers’ attentions (obviously: screens). While I don’t get the new Lego floral arrangements, it’s good to see physical toys still sell well.

A lot of these cukes just hanging over the edge, hiding in plain site.

Ah, a nice morning run around the lake, with a beach stop through the woods before wrapping up. I like to do this pitstop on occasion, as the wooded area offers a welcome sound bath before grinding back into the work day in front of a screen.

The idea of over-optimized everyday life and business, in all facets, has been banging around in my head for years. Fortunately, Daniel Frank put it into words with fifteen theses on what's going on. Just about every point is quotable.

Another reason I don’t want to “upgrade” to fully unlimited Internet data on Comcast by using their router and modem system: they’re remote-activating motion sensing inside of the homes that have their devices. And yes, they cap you at 1.2TB/month if you bring your own system.

Minnesota Reformer posted a retelling of events during Operation Metro Surge (earlier this year) from the experience of Nazra Ahmed, a home care worker and member of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa. "The only way you can win, with the cowards, is by showing them strength"

In a thoroughly documented post on building the music app of his dream, Jon Hicks has a well-appointed vision in Jacket. He’s upfront about it being built with Claude, and adamant it’s “just for him”, but it looks like a via... https://defiantsloth.com/2026/08/13/in-a-thoroughly-documented-post.html

Still thinking about this… watched Resurrection a few months ago, and have been meaning to re-watch Holy Motors. As these churn over in my memory, they feel like cinematic siblings. Also, that last act of Resurrection is in my permanent memory. So beautiful.

Love to see a turnout record for the Minnesota primaries yesterday (1.1 million), about a quarter of eligible voters in the state. There also seems to be a collective reckoning that primary polls are terrible.

Neon lighting. We all love it. WSJ with a nice dive into maintaining the format, and reformulating an historically terminated (due to cost effectiveness) color of neon, cyan green. Nice cinematic call-outs to Casablanca and Eyes Wide Shut, too. [Photo mine, unrelated; gift link URL]

Ben Thompson and John Gruber discuss immersive sports on the latest Dithering, and I couldn’t agree more: Apple should just try setting up spatial recording in a courtside and/or elite seats in a sports arena for Apple Vision to see if it’s a better experience than the current “broadcast version”.

Keep it coming: the video store resurrection continues. The Video Store Minneapolis kicks off its physical store fundraiser and clinches the base goal in two days Joshua M. Greenberg ponders video stores as a lost third place I recall the iconic Video Update logo adorning my old local spot (’90s)

Damn this is spot on. It’s a long read and you’ll get the gist a fifth of the way through, but Aeon has a highly astute take down of the technocrats’ misinterpretation of our literary science fiction past, darkly reflecting on their actions and ambitions.

I didn’t realize regrinding old vinyl records was possible, but in the face of our climate crisis, it’s another trick the resuscitated industry has focused on. Good piece by Kyle Devine — Longreads link here, which is an excerpt from his book.

I fully support local coffee shops deploying canned brews, giving us a choice against (usually) poorly executed, mass-produced offerings at most grocers. SK Coffee released theirs earlier in the summer, and it’s an excellent first offering; alas, just wish it was more widely available at retail.

The Economist’s Big Mac index, a PPP analysis hitting its 40th year of kicking ass, demonstrates just how difficult it is to track the timely parity of global currencies. "…for as long as currencies remain unmoored, and the Bi... https://defiantsloth.com/2026/08/05/the-economists-big-mac-index.html

✱ A Pacific Northwest Jaunt: https://defiantsloth.com/2026/08/04/a-pacific-northwest-jaunt.html We decided to return to the Pacific Northwest for our summer trip, three years after our last excursion… ➔

Thinking back a month and a half about my first attempted pizza in an outdoor oven. Kept it sliding on a mountain of semolina for the launch, it turned out well, and now I’m ripping a few of these every week for us. These pizzas can be elite, and with care, anyone can (probably) do them.

While I should have known, I wasn’t prepared for how much of a summer banger Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo is. I may only be a fourth of the way through this opus, but it’s one of the breeziest 19th century reads I’ve wrangled, and so far, a pitch perfect swashbuckling adventure.