tg

unmitigated wank! adding this to my linkedin

thank you for reading! i really feel there's a lot of value in conversations with smart folks, or comedy podcasts, or whatever, but the typical interface isn't really conducive to that.

Phantom Fluency Why listening to smart people doesn't make you more thoughtful. You're not bad at remembering podcasts. Podcasts are bad at being remembered.

New essay:

Phantom Fluency

Why listening to smart people doesn't make you more thoughtful. You're not bad at remembering podcasts. Podcasts are bad at being remembered.

www.terrygodier.com/phantom-flue...

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading!

🙌

Genuine question for the RSS folks who found me this week:

What's the feeling you want when you open your feed reader?

Not the features. The feeling. One word is fine :)

(building something and trying to get this right.)

Thank you for reading and the kind words!

🫡

Would you want to read in there or just pop a browser window?

Literally 100% true in this case 😂

A baker’s dozen? Gotta be at least a bakers dozen

Phantom Obligation Why RSS readers look like email clients, and what that’s doing to us.

Why do RSS readers look like email clients? “When we applied that same visual language to RSS (the unread counts, the bold text for new items, the sense of a backlog accumulating) we imported the anxiety without the cause.” [terrygodier.com]

Phantom Obligation Why RSS readers look like email clients, and what that's doing to us.

Yesterday I wondered aloud why RSS readers look like email clients.

Brent Simmons replied. Turns out he borrowed that layout for NetNewsWire in 2002 — and twenty years later, he's asking why no one's tried something different.

That conversation became an essay.

a man wearing a beanie and a jacket says you have to trust me ALT: a man wearing a beanie and a jacket says you have to trust me

I find stuff all the time in other apps where the UI is asserting something (no unread! can't undo! can undo!) that is clearly not true.

Not saying I'm perfect, but man do I give a strong shit about earning and keeping user trust.

Weird that RSS readers look like email clients. Inbox on the left, message on the right, unread counts everywhere.

There's no reply expected. It's a completely different relationship.

Why did we borrow the inbox metaphor for something that isn't mail?

#rss

“When experimentation becomes the primary decision-making tool, a strong product vision becomes optional.”

blog.mikeswanson.com/backseat-sof...

I’ve used a lot of systems to “keep track” of what I read and listen to, and almost none of them have helped me return to what mattered.

I keep noticing how many tools promise calm but quietly add pressure.

Still trying to understand where that line is.