Words: Phantom Obligation: the guilt you feel for something no one asked you to do. (terrygodier.com)

Tools: What are you favourite well-made apps or sites? (unsung.aresluna.org)

Music: A collection of found cassette tapes. (intertapes.net)

Music: A Charlie Brown Christmas: Live at The Jazz Estate. (youtube.com, 58:20)

Slow: What podcasts do to our brains. “Silence activates the brain’s “default mode” — and that’s good. Quiet time makes space for self-reflection, planning, and daydreaming.” (vox.com)

Slow: Recipe for a good week /via Chris Glass. An ingredient that works for me: take a bit of time to just stare out the window, drinking some coffee, checking in with the locals (birds, bunnies, and squirrels). (tracydurnell.com)

Slow: Radiant Computer. “We believe the current trajectory of personal computing is leading us to a less free world, and that only a new computing movement rooted in human dignity and creativity can change its course.” (radiant.computer)

Civic: The Resonant Computing Manifesto. “… rethinking the system architectures, design patterns, and business models that have undergirded the tech industry for decades.” (resonantcomputing.org)

Music: Best Songs of 2025. “Songs I love more than demon-hunters, damselflies and the numbers six or seven.” (saidthegramophone.com)

Look: Somewhere in Utah (flickr.com)

Funny: What is My Cookie Cutter (reddit.com)

Look: Red nose studio’s puppets. (rednosestudio.com)

Read: The Argument for Letting AI Burn It All Down. “But maybe when the crash comes it’ll look like the dotcom crash: A Pets.com or two gets razed to the ground, but the new infrastructure remains, and we humans spend years—decades—weaving it into our systems. I was there for the dotcom crash. I could barely make rent, but it was delightful. I attended tech salons at people’s apartments. The price of admission was a six-pack. I switched to Linux and no one cared. I blogged day and night, as free as a bee. All I could do was read O’Reilly books, learn to code, and hang with friends. What a slice of heaven. And tech became less magical—more normal, more boring. Not driving culture, but reflecting it.” Emphasis mine. (wired.com)

Slow: We used to look forward to things. “I hope we will either begin to detach ourselves from instant tech or find ways to use tech more intentionally to deliver a more immersive experience. To give us back time… porous time. Time to spend with a piece of art. Time to listen deeply. Time to world build.” (blobzine.substack.com)

Look: The story behind this photo is really great. (instagram.com)

Sites I like: Antic Bikes. I dig their brand and the bikes are pretty cool too. (anticbikes.com)

Look: Last Light On The Creek by Steven Weinberg. (stevenweinbergstudio.com)

Books: Orbital. “…without earth we are all finished. We couldn’t survive a second without its grace, we are sailors on a ship on a deep, dark unswimmable sea.” (wikipedia.org)

Design: The Fundamentals Problem. “Anyone can make something that looks designed, but that doesn’t mean that design has happened.” (chrbutler.com)

Look: Trees and Shore by Claire Sherman. (clairesherman.com)

Words: Pebbling. “… the new term for when people share memes and gifs to those they are thinking of.” (redsetteragency.com)

Happy Halloween everyone! If you’re looking for something to get you through the day, here is an ongoing collection of spooky art, podcast episodes, videos, and articles.

Read: Personal Business

The type of business that both sustains and is sustained by a community.

Civic: Personal Business. “The type of business that both sustains and is sustained by a community.” (are.na)

The not-so-spooky origins of ‘ghost’ — and why the word still haunts our language (npr.org)