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📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Carousel is still a thing in some public places, like in Park Monceau. That was a nice one. And just imagine some circus’s music to go with it. Follow the trail.

wwwww

I wrote countless pages in my journal about this topic. It kept overtaking my daily entries. Whenever something even remotely connected to addiction, understanding, or behavior came up, I was in a trance. After successful detox and finishing therapy, I think every person starts noticing huge flaws in how we teach (or rather, don’t teach) addiction. There are many schools of thought on how to discuss addiction and how to prevent people from falling into it.Don’t get me wrong — most therapies available today are well designed and, when executed properly, they save lives. But I think they all miss one core element that could save even more lives and make the time after detox dramatically easier. Without understanding how addiction works, I would not be able to stay clean. And I mean real understanding — biochemical, neurobiological understanding. It sounds complicated, but when the teacher is right, it can...

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Getting ready for vacation. I guess all new trails should start with the flight path. Here's today's flight path to Paris. Follow the trail.

Wow... so Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder is Real

For years now, I've joked about having Reverse SAD. You know how some folks get depressed in the winter? Well, I get depressed in the summer. The heat, humidity, and long hours of light bum me out, and I don't want to leave my apartment. It's miserable outside, and I'd much rather stay in the confines of an air-conditioned room. My temper shortens significantly and I'm quite irritable. Despite running a portable A/C in my bedroom (on top of my regular air conditioner) I struggle to sleep. My daily commute goes from "I can handle this" to "I hate everyone on this entire planet and I wish an asteroid would hurry up and end this mistake we call humanity." The thing is... I didn't realize that Reverse SAD was a real thing. I was just observing that as the summer gets hotter, I become more unhappy. So much so, I've...

Walking home from watching the England vs. Croatia match last night, a very clear crescent moon and Venus.

Bill always likes to find the sun.

Strangeflock has a new website

Over the last few months, we re-designed Strangeflock's website. So far, I'm happy how it turned out. https://strangeflock.com

Some smaller tweaks and fixes for you today, and as always, appreciate all the feedback and suggestions — I know that sometimes I do not reply. Know that I read and know about all. • 🌄 You can now upload multiple images into the editor at once to create galleries in a series, instead of one by one. The lightbox on your blog post will then also show you a next arrow to cycle through these. • 🌄x2 Following on with images, you can now drag and drop them and change their positions more easily. • ✍️ Multiple upgrades to the text editor in general to make everything work much nicer and smoother — please let me know any changes that don't look correct to you. • ✨ Added an option, on your account settings page, to disable sticky notes if they are not your thing. Of note, I should...

Thoughts on the role of education in addiction prevention and harm reduction

I wrote countless pages in my journal about this topic. It kept overtaking my daily entries. Whenever something even remotely connected to addiction, understanding, or behavior came up, I was in a trance. After successful detox and finishing therapy, I think every person starts noticing huge flaws in how we teach (or rather, don’t teach) addiction. There are many schools of thought on how to discuss addiction and how to prevent people from falling into it.Don’t get me wrong — most therapies available today are well designed and, when executed properly, they save lives. But I think they all miss one core element that could save even more lives and make the time after detox dramatically easier. Without understanding how addiction works, I would not be able to stay clean. And I mean real understanding — biochemical, neurobiological understanding. It sounds complicated, but when the teacher is right, it can...

The Map Is the Thinking

Why I created Amethyst MapperIf I look honestly at where all of this started, not just Amethyst Mapper, not just this new phase of building tools for other people, but the whole way I learned to work with my own brain instead of constantly fighting it, then it starts with mind mapping. I do not think in straight lines. I never did, and I do not think I ever will. My thoughts do not come one after another like soldiers in a queue, nice and organized, waiting politely for their turn. They come as fragments, side roads, associations, unfinished tasks, images, fears, ideas, memories, patterns, things I forgot, things I suddenly remember, things that seem urgent for no reason, and things that actually are urgent but are buried under ten other signals screaming just as loudly. For a long time I called that chaos, because what else are you supposed...

Health

Yesterday I did something to my knee while running. I can walk but slowly. Going up and down steps and inclines are painful. Health is good right up until it isn’t. I am, however, having a rather more leisurely dog walk this morning. Lots of pauses and a prolonged stop for coffee at the local garage. Bill, the dog, takes an unusual dislike to a passing dog and gives a few hearty barks. A rare occurrence for him. A Red Kite circles overhead. And another, and another. They are so common in these parts it’s easy to take them for granted. Even the roaring din of a bunch of motorbikes turning up can’t disturb this peace.

A seat? A bed? An altar?

📡✨ Indexing Process Completed

I’m not sure how this will improve my Apple Intelligence usage or Siri AI processing, but indexing is now completely done on my iPhone after eight days. 📲

It’s important to know where your energy is best spent. It has taken me many years, trials and tribulations to understand that mine is best spent caring and contemplating. I have learned how wasteful it is to spend energy and attention on matters over which I have no control or influence.

SupaSidebar Boosts Privacy and Productivity

Most technically oriented people who value privacy do so because privacy is, and should be, a human right, not because they have something to hide. Maintaining privacy in the current technical environment requires a real strategy and almost constant attention to an evolving landscape. It is no longer enough to block trackers, ads, and cookies. Browser fingerprinting has become one of the primary privacy-violating mechanisms used by companies that want to identify, profile, and monetize you across the web. One strategy many people use is spreading their work across multiple browsers. That has a second benefit: it lets you match the strengths of a particular browser to the task at hand. Privacy and ProductivityThe downside becomes obvious pretty quickly: you take a real productivity hit when your history, bookmarks, and open tabs are scattered across multiple places. There are several tools that try to help with this. The one I...

Sunlight

I’m sitting on a sofa at work. A shard of warm sunlight is shinning across my shoulder and on to the floor through a window behind me. It comes and goes, slowly pulsing to the flow of intermittent clouds as they drift over. The day of people, work, plans and schedules is waiting to begin but the birds and breeze don’t know. Suddenly the radio bursts into life, triggered by the reconnection of the faulty wifi, and world out there invades the space in here and so we start.

Krishnamurti was right about many things but he knew f*ck all about human psychology.

“The human mind is not primarily designed to recognize reality. It is designed to preserve psychological continuity. The priority is not truth. The priority is survivability. People often say they want honesty. What they usually want is a version of reality that does not destroy their current identity.” — The Virginia Truth

📡✨ Boom, Done!

And just like that, using a simple prompt, I created a Safari Extension to save bookmarks to my custom-built, private bookmarking application! What else can be created this way? A lot!

"These Days I'd Rather Read a Book"

You ever dread writing a sentence because you know its going to ruffle some feathers? I've been debating on exactly how to approach this for a while now, but I'm just going to go ahead and say it. I'm not a Quentin Tarantino fan. Sure, I liked his first few movies, but I feel like he peaked at Reservoir Dogs and honestly its a struggle for me to get through anything after Jackie Brown. I won't go into all the details, because I'm not looking to tear down anyone who is a fan, but his films just aren't for me. Not only do I not love his movies, but his opinions rub me wrong often. He's a loud-mouth, and always has been and that's part of his image. But sometimes he says stuff and I just sit back and think, "Who are you?" Then five minutes later he'll say something...

“At a certain point in life one stops saying Hi and starts saying Bye.” — Martin Amis

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → Impressive building close to my downtown office. Follow the trail.

ブログに文章を書くのが楽しくなってきた時にライティングアプリに課金したんだけど。そのあと急に冷めてしまってほとんど使わずじまい。

The morning

I’m up early as usual. My alarm is set for 6.30am but I mostly wake up before, switch the alarm off and get up. I move slowly and quietly so as not to disturb my wife in bed beside me or the dog in its bed on the floor. I’ve been an early riser all my life. I believe I inherited the trait from my father as he did from his father before him. Aside from the two or three days a week I don’t work I’m out the door on my way to work soon after getting up. Whether I’m on a train, walking or driving, this early morning period between waking and working has become something sacred for me. There is a solitude in this pause between potential and actuality. A moment when the day is still gestating, pregnant with potential. It is a time for contemplation. Nothing...

→ Links 🔗 Craig's Reluctance

Great interview with Craig and Woz from Apple. Craig shares an interesting perspective on his childhood encounter with computers (40:42-43:49). Initially, as a 10-year-old, he was deeply skeptical of computer classes, believing they were for "posers" who just wanted to look cool. Craig, according to rumours, was reluctant to talk about generative AI until OpenAI popularized it as a product. Is this a character trait? His change of heart about generative AI looks promising and I like the way he talks about AI in general. https://youtu.be/qoUnUYAFNEU?si=O7JOazUt8inBb-XQ

"You can’t advertise people out of reacting to their own experiences"

This terrific editorial from Nilay Patel has been making the rounds, and with good reason. An important read, especially for those of us working in tech. Here’s what I highlighted: “If you want to meaningfully oppose AI in a way that lasts, you should speak loudly with your dollars in the market and your attention online, and you should speak loudly with your votes. You should participate in a democratic regulatory and political process. Anything else will get dismissed and perpetuate the cycle.” “I also think it’s incredibly important for our politicians and tech executives to make sure our political process makes people feel empowered, not helpless, which is a specific kind of nihilism they have all greatly contributed to. The violence is a result of that helplessness and nihilism. And the most powerful people in our society ought to reckon with that, especially as they run around saying AI...

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → Nice backyard view at sunset while taking a walk. Follow the trail.

→ Links 🔗 Every Frame Perfect

Cool little blog post about animating UI elements or UI state transitions. Sometimes, when using an app, there is a weird feeling that something is wrong. It might come from bad animations. Apple, are you reading this post? https://tonsky.me/blog/every-frame-perfect/

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → From the coffee shop where I’m often creating something besides drinking coffee! It’s a converted train factory. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → Poor little and just-opened Apple Store on Ste-Catherine surrounded by road construction! This could last more than a year… Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → A nice illuminated foot pathway. Follow the trail.

📡✨ Indexing

It's been ongoing for six days now. I didn't know it took so long to index my digital life.

📡✨ I'm in!

Finally! Five days after installing beta 1, I received a notification that my iPhone can now be used to test Apple Siri, Siri AI, and/or Apple Intelligence. That's a tricky naming convention, right? As a side note: Siri AI is better than expected on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, but I don't like the big blob popping out of the Dynamic Island when invoking its service.

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → A modern office building near my home. Follow the trail.

📡✨ Golden Gate Gated

Well, after many, many tries, macOS 27 Golden Gate refuses to install on my M2 MacBook Air. The last try was to boot in safe mode and then start the update process from the Settings app, and yet, the same error still occurs. I'll wait for beta 2. Sigh. 😮‍💨

USF Turns 70

Celebrating 70 years of USF's rich history and vibrant campus life, where tradition meets innovation under the open skies. As you get older, anniversaries and milestones hit you differently. I don't know why. I don't regret anything in my life, but I do feel nostalgic sometimes. The other day, driving to work, I learned that the University of South Florida is celebrating 70 years this year. That surprised me, because the first founding class attended in 1960, so the 70th anniversary is actually a few years off. I attended USF from 1987 to 1990. I didn't graduate; I would have had about two years left. 1991 would have been my graduation year, but I was taking it nice and slow. Most people were taking five years, so 1992 would have been my year if I had stayed on track. What would have been my degree? Hold your chair and keep...

🕖 Now — My Foursquare

You may have seen a post title "I was there" recently floating around this blog. This post included a reference like "Follow the trail". Let me explain what this is all about. I created a custom web application inspired by Foursquare and Path. The former is quite different today than it was in 2009, while the latter is what is the closest to what I wanted to create: an app for sharing check-ins while I travel or visit places. It's my first public-facing web application, called "Numeric Citizen Trails". When posting a new check-in, I can optionally enable cross-posting here on Scribbles.page. These posts will be marked as "📡✨ I was there" with the "Blips" tag, including a link to the original check-in post (I use three tags here, and "Blips" best fits the idea that each check-in is a blip in a journey). This also means, per Scribbles.page configuration,...

📡✨ I Was There

Montreal, June 2026 → While taking a walk in my neighbourhood after a rainy day. Follow the trail.

"Applying sound methods to stupid projects"

Adam remains one of the most engaging writers in my feed. This post covers a lot of ground, but it does a great job of highlighting that while AI has been developing intelligence quickly along one axis, there's another branch of intelligence that current methods still haven't conjured in these models. This is one reason skeptics think the approach the frontier labs are pursuing is unlikely to lead to Artificial General Intelligence (or the Singularity, or Superintelligence, or whichever label and loose definition you prefer). Here’s what I highlighted: “Some problems have clear boundaries and verifiable solutions, like “What’s the cube root of 38,126?”. These problems require objective intelligence. Other problems are vague and squishy and it’s not clear whether you’ve solved them, or whether they exist at all, like “How do I live a good life?”. These problems require subjective intelligence. Objective intelligence can be trained, reinforced, and validated....

By the Numbers: A Look at My Digital Movie Collection

After I posted How Much is Too Much which discussed my feeling overwhelmed with the amount of media I have to consume, my buddy Michael wrote a post about Fanflix has been a bad thing for him. Almost daily, Michael and I exchange texts on whatever Fanflix's latest deal is. We've both have built up our digital collections, thanks in part to these discounted titles, and it made me wonder exactly how many digital movie titles I own. So, this morning, I cross references Fandango at Home, Apple TV, and YouTube to see the number. Now, before I unveil this I do need to preface it with a few facts. 1. Most of my digital copies originated from the old Vudu Disc to Digital (Note: Apparently this still exists!). Back years ago, you could take your DVD or blu-ray, put it in your computer, and then pay $1-$2 to obtain...

“What is, is, and in this moment cannot be different. Resisting that is psychological suffering. Things are as they are. If suffering is involved, it is until it isn’t.” — Robert Saltzman

📡✨ Liquid Glass Level

Here is my Liquid Glass toning-down level, which I find perfect for me. What's yours?