Matt Fantinel.

Never thought I’d be linking to Einstein here, but this is a great essay about what constitutes humankind and society, how they differ, and how they mold each other (though this relationship is far from balanced).

The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society.

Still a great read even if “socialism” is a trigger word for you, by the way.

If you drive, you’ve probably hopped around between Waze, Google Maps and even Apple Maps at some point. Each has their own pros and cons, and while Waze used to have the edge on real-time information, that edge was stolen by Google Maps (not literally stolen; they’re literally developed by the same team).

But besides that, this case study goes into the differences between the 3 apps and how each displays similar things differently in order to highlight their own strengths.

Not that you asked, but my favorites are Apple Maps for actual navigation and Google Maps for everything else.

Incredible video essay going deep into the use of George Orwell’s 1984 by the entire political spectrum as something that validates their ideals. It also goes a bit into Orwell’s life explaining the context around the book’s original publication and how it was never prophetic, but reflective of a perpetual feeling in Orwell’s mind (and ours).

If you use a Mac, you probably know that Spotlight (the search box/launcher that opens when you press ⌘+Space) is shit. It’s slow, inconsistent, slow, and tries to do too much at once. (did I say it’s slow?)

TinyStart strips out all the useless stuff and keeps just the essentials, which means it’s really fast. You can launch apps, links and folders, and also pick emojis (it’s better than the built-in emoji picker too!). It’s a €5 one-time purchase, with free updates forever.

It does less than alternatives like Raycast (which is free) on purpose, but has the added bonus of never having to deal with features you’re not interested in, because it’s not trying to sell you anything extra. (plus, it’s just inevitable that Raycast will enshittify eventually…)

A great explainer (as always) from Josh Comeau going over the now safe-to-use CSS Scroll-Driven animations, which allow animating elements based on their scroll position on a page, such as entry/exit animations, scroll progress and more, without a single line of JavaScript!

I tried this out a while ago and loved how simple it is, but I always feel like those kind of animations are a bit too much for the type of stuff I build. 😅 Good to have the know-how, though.

… and glass breaks (or scratches). Short and sweet video by MKBHD explaining how smartphone brands achieve their yearly “more scratch resistance” or “more shatter resistance” claims, while the end product always seems the exact same.

If you don’t feel like watching the video, here’s a spoiler: Glass cannot be both more resistant to scratches and to shattering, they gotta choose one. So they just alternate every year to be able to make one of those two claims.

I think it’s worth noting that when people don’t seem interested in the distinction between real and not real it may not be that they don’t care about what’s real. It may be that their capacity, their energy, their ability to distinguish is less than yours.

A very heartfelt piece about information burnout.