Isaac Su

John Gruber has been going on about how X remains the platform where all the interesting action still happens. That the worst of the rank muskiness has receded. That playing host to Barack’s thoughtful, sharp and eloquent essay is reason enough to reconsider the platform.

I was convinced. So I spent Saturday afternoon culling down my Following list with the help of DS V4.1 Flash in the OpenChamber browser. I took down all the “find me on mastodon” links on my profile. I waited 24 hours to download a full archive of my past life there (pre-2022), and as I write, tweetXer is wrestling with the rate limit in a background tab to wipe down my feed for that fresh new account feeling.

First impressions: the ads are annoying. But then I remembered that in 2026 everyone’s penny pinching on compute, storage, bandwidth to fund their token obsessions.

Next, the For you is a standard-issue dopamine-adrenaline inducer feed. Thankfully Following tab does exactly what it says, no more, no less. Even better, when I return to Home after clicking around, it remembers my preference for Following instead of defaulting to For you. How very mature.

Anyway, I’m giving this a shot, and I come across (ironically from the For you feed) Lex Friedman’s take on John’s optimism about X.

It gave me pause and reminded me that it’s not Jan 2022 anymore when I tweeted:

nor Jul 2017:

nor Nov 2007 when it was all still statuses, 140 characters apiece:

No, it’s way more complicated now. But I’ll be good and careful. Promise.

I’ve been looking for ways to write more and better. Since my last “proper” piece, blogging has been one false start after another where I would embark on an idea but fail to develop it beyond much more than a handful of catchy phrases wrapped up in fillers.

I did, however, stumble upon the practice of free writing where you suspend all inhibitions (editorial or otherwise) and simply write whatever comes to mind for a set period of time. Along the way I found Dangerous Writing App and Nothing to Say. Both employ similar techniques to keep you writing, with the severest consequence being the complete deletion of your text if you stop writing for more than five seconds. I rose to their challenges and found that I could write Dangerously and I did have Something to say.

So that was fun. But I wanted something that could help me develop a habit, which led me to 4thewords. Rather than once-off writing sprints against a ticking timer, 4thewords cleverly frames the practice of writing in an extensive RPG experience where you defeat monsters by writing some amount of words within an allotted amount of time.

Defeating monsters earns you loot, increases your experience points and helps you progress on various quests. There’s also a daily streak tracker, bright casino-esque colours and animations, equipment that help you “fight” more effectively, and a fantasy character that you can customise with spoils from your battles.

I was skeptical at first, but having just completed the “Sign of the Times” side quest that required a ten-day streak of 444 words a day and 10,000 words in total, I think it works.

While only a fraction of what I write in their quaint little word processor will ever see the light of day, writing is writing. I’m hoping, over time, the consistent reps will increase my ability to elaborate and wordify ideas that I come upon. We’ll see.

I stumbled upon sippey.com. Five of the seven most recent posts there are links and quotes of interesting things. Also, no titles and just relative timestamps. Almost like some kind of log… on the web – like a weblog.

Like – that’s okay? I am so inspired to blog while I figure out essay writing on the side! Stay tuned.

There’s so much fear going around about how AI will take over the world and subjugate humanity with its impending superhuman powers.

Two essays that I read last week cut through the drivel with thoughtful analysis and reasoning, pushing back on the hyperbole peddled by those whose valuations depend on keeping everyone on edge.

• No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious by Ted Chiang (via A Lovely Harmless Monster)

• The Myth, the Mythos and the Man by Om Malik (via Daring Fireball)

Pause your notifications for half an hour, settle in with warm beverage and have a read. It’ll be worth it.

Someone on HN pointed out how clever it is, as an advertising strategy, for Claude Code to claim co-authorship over commits that it generates, given the exposure it would garner on GitHub and the like.

It reminded me of the Sent from my iPhone sign-off that Apple’s mobile Mail app would eagerly tack on to emails that you send.

Back when smartphones were first emerging, emailing from one meant that you were on the bleeding edge. But with a screen and keyboard no larger than a humble postcard, the writing rarely surpassed the courtesy or the polish found on one.

The solution we collectively settled on was to apologise for these shortcomings with signatures ranging from please excuse any typos and the brevity of this message to iPhone. iTypos. iApologize. Apple’s was an adaptation of Sent from my Blackberry. Characteristically restrained and implicit, it rode the iPhone’s dominance to cement itself as the cultural shorthand that we know and love.

While Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 5 almost certainly takes a page out of Apple’s branding playbook, we’re still discovering the breadth of concessions that it implicitly demands of its human collaborators.