Cassette Futurism-style poster from Fox Rocket Studio
It’s the hot days of summer. As I write this, my dog lays on the floor next to me, belly up, snout draped across an air conditioning vent. Fortunately, I found a few links to cool you down.
This time we’re colliding bookpiles, messages at the speed of birds, tiny awards, dungeon crawling and questions vs. answers. More on that last one next.
Please skip around, read what you want to. Find something interesting in your own internet travels? Send me a link
—JH
Article from Us
10 curious links that would have killed the cat
🐦 Roost is a messaging app that travels at the speed of birds. “Every message in Roost is delivered by a bird. Write your note, choose which bird should carry it, and send. Before your bird takes off, Roost shows you how long the trip will take.”
Roost ∙ Message App
📚 Bookpile gives you a landing page for any book by ISBN and shows where to get it. A really nice-looking alternative to Goodreads, Amazon, etc. Local buying support is limited to a few major cities right now but it’s still very useful. Here’s an example.
Bookpile ∙ Book Sharer
💿 I’m trying out Record Club, basically Letterboxd for music. I like that it’s service-agnostic and helps me record what I’m really listening to vs. just what’s been playing in my Apple Music if that makes sense. I’m here in case you’re trying it too.
Record Club ∙ Music Tracker
🤖 CrankGPT is an offline, off-the-grid AI box you turn a crank to operate. “Provided the electronics are kept dry and at a reasonable temperature, there’s no reason this thing won’t still work in a hundred years, though you’ll definitely need a fresh SD card.” Technical info here.
Squeez Labs ∙ Off-Grid LLM
🏆 The Tiny Awards is back. Nominations for the best non-commercial, creative websites made in the last year are open. Judging is next month.
Tiny Awards ∙ Web Awards
Retractible pen illustration
🖊️ Illustrations of how a retractible pen, mechanical pencil, lighter and PEZ dispenser work. I used to take apart my ballpoints during 3rd period history to see how they worked but this is much better.
Bryan Macomber ∙ Technical Illustrations
👀 There’s something living inside fog, scientists find. Look, it’s just bacteria. But it seems the bacteria is growing and may eating pollutants to do so. Thanks, fog!
Futurism ∙ Article
🤔 WhatCable is a Mac app that tells you in plain English what a connected USB-C cable can actually do/not do. Good, because they all do different things!
WhatCable ∙ Mac App
📕 I’m currently reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. I gave up 1/3 of the way into Katabasis (I almost never quit books, that one just really didn’t work for me) and jumped into a different kind of dungeon crawl. This one’s a perfect summer read imo.
Book ∙ Recommendation
📺 At home we’ve been watching Widow’s Bay on Apple TV. It’s part spooky, part workplace comedy in the vein of Parks & Rec. The setup—mayor of small seaside New England town refuses to acknowledge problems that would get in the way of tourism—reminds me of Jaws. A great summer watch that really hit its stride in episode three.
TV Show ∙ Recommendation
in Greenville, SC
A week from tomorrow is our first PathCamp session for this year. Join us for The Fundamentals of LX Design with my pal and coworker Christian. He’ll teach you the framework our own LX team has used since 2011. See you there!
Well that’s enough internet for me right now. Time to close my laptop and read by spiderlight.
High five,
Justin Hall
Editor, Partner at Pathwright