Interested in Calm Tech? Come to a special edition @metagov.bsky.social seminar on the Neuroscience of Calm on 11 Feb! Free and open. Just sign up below:

dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... A new method is presented for performing rapid and accurate numerical estimation.

It's not what the future *looks* like, but what the future *feels* like.

One of my favorite little domains is expiring. Rural.io. There's nothing on it now, but for many years I had fun using it as a private blog. If someone wants to buy it off of me, send me a message. .io domains renewals are a little pricier than others and I've been using pikapods now.

Dear Google Hangouts: Please Fix How Notetaker Bots Join Our Calls! Have you ever been on a work call which looks like this? You’re there to see one individual, but multiple chatbot notetakers have also joined! When a notetaker bot is joined to the Meeting, it’s the same size as a whole person!

Buildings isolate people more efficiently than villains. Digital buildings follow suit.

At first, the design feels clean and effortless. But the simplicity is doing more work than it lets on: much of the thinking has quietly been handed to the "user". There's no such thing as automation in a store. When we use self-checkout, we're performing that labor. And poorly, too.

In the beginning was the CD: material, bounded, complete. From completeness came ownership. From ownership came care. Now we have removed the boundary. The infinite patch, and the endless service.

The Thirty-Day Baptism Every so often you see it: this practice of "thirty days of code", or "30 days of design", in which a single person determines to build something - anything really - every day for 30 days.

In woodworking, there is a separate skill called finishing. Sanding, staining, sealing. Multiple coats. Waiting for each to cure. Buffing. These are techniques you must learn and practice. The finishing reveals flaws in the underlying work. You cannot hide poor joinery under polyurethane.

A chair maker finishes a chair. The chair holds you. It will hold your children. If it breaks, the break is visible. You can see a cracked spindle or a loose joint, and the chair can be repaired because all the information needed to repair it is present in the object itself.

When new technologies emerge, they conflict with the tech that already exists.

Excellent news, and what every company should do! Less E-Waste and more joy. Honestly, Bose makes excellent speakers, and allowing all of that engineering to go to waste is a real sad sack. Good on them! #calmtech www.theverge.com/news/858501/...

The future doesn't come from the front. It comes from the side. People who are stuck looking ahead have trouble seeing it because they're not using peripheral vision.

The pen might be mightier than the sword But is the pen mightier than the server?

one day, you will die, and your legacy will be washed away when someone forgets to renew the DNS. stillness.digital/posts/2021-1...

The Pulse-Pounding Origin Story of USB-C www.unsungscience.com/index.php/20...

www.designboom.com/design/fungi... The "79th Organ" is a speculative biodesign concept by Odette Dierkx, a conceptual prosthetic organ made from bioengineered fungi designed to filter and digest microplastics from the human bloodstream, acting as a living detox system for plastic pollution.

How We Lost Communication to Entertainment ploum.net/2025-12-15-c... "The main problem with reliable communication protocols? It is a mostly solved problem. Build simple websites, read RSS feeds, write emails. Use IRC and XMPP if you truly want real-time comms. Those are working and working great."

AI Fatigue VS the Executive Echo Chamber The backlash against "AI-in-everything" is rising. Only execs are surprised. productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/ai-fatigue...

Why is no one excited for details anymore? medium.com/user-experie... Although it’s impressive that Google’s team adds details, they don’t really think about making them contextually useful.

It's the end of 2025 and I've been slowly capturing the parts of the web that I like and ingesting them into Pikapods. My favorite app so far is readeck.org/en/ - it's a self-hosted bookmarking app and reader in one. No more ads or weird pop-overs. www.pikapods.com

Prove your humanity

It doesn't go back any further... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...

@case.bsky.social is Waiting for the Future to Load! Which also happens to be a mini test of the @leaflet.pub thread viewer.

No jobs for horses. alphorisms.medium.com/no-jobs-for-...

A growing movement of consumers are embracing popular products from the 90s and early 2000s. Here is a love letter to some products that we built beautifully and still work today. caseorganic.medium.com/what-compani...

Waiting for the Future to Load

edges.ideo.com/posts/the-am... really love @case.bsky.social's latest article aiming to build "pass-through extensions of human capability" is a really wonderful goal the emphasis on pass-through is 👌

Calm Tech Institute is now a year old! We're excited to announce the products that won certification this year. The Complete Calm Tech Certified™ Product List for 2025! A Guide to Products That Are a Joy to Use! www.calmtech.institute/post/the-com... #calmtech #calmtechinstitute

I'll be in Vienna for a few days (29 and 30) Sept! If anyone is around there, please let me know! I'd love to meet up.

I don't do SXSW much anymore, but we're working on a panel about Calm Tech in the Age of AI. If you have a SXSW, we'd really love a vote! participate.sxsw.com/flow/sxsw/sx...

🎨 What happens when we have more Chromebooks, but fewer paintbrushes in schools? A recent survey by Education Week found that 77 percent of educators reported young students having greater difficulties handling pencils, pens, and scissors. caseorganic.medium.com/when-swiping...

What if we can't do anything anymore because the moment we try to do anything we're constantly fixing the things that are breaking?

The Invisible Light That’s Harming Our Health — And How We Can Light Things Better caseorganic.medium.com/the-invisibl...

I'm excited to announce the pilot launch of Calm Tech Pre-Certified™. For the first time, companies can work with Calm Tech Institute at the early design stage of future products to help ensure they're built with Calm Tech-approved design standards! www.calmtech.institute/post/introdu...

"A bigger concern is that this light can change how drivers and pedestrians perceive their surroundings. That’s because different types of photoreceptors in the eyes are responsible for vision under different light conditions." www.scientificamerican.com/article/stre...

Giving a talk here at U Mass Amherst.

This group wants our gadgets to chill TF out! thehustle.co/news/this-gr...

My new horizon. It’s above a wetlands. Much easier to take calls here than on a video.

I wonder if there's a soundtrack that reduces the mind's propensity to click on emotionally-disregulating short form video content. endel.io might be in.

How to deal with the emotional slot machine: www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43t...

A couple of wetlands are walking distance from my place

What's the best tea kettle you've ever used?

We've filled our sleeping spaces with tiny blue suns, and then we wonder why we can't sleep.