tommaxwelll - Tumblr blog

[tommaxwelll]

Go deeper

Anyone who knows me well understands that I have a philosophy regarding the things I share online — which is that I rarely delete any of it. Instagram photos, blog posts, whatever. 

There are multiple reasons for this. One, to use this blog as an example, if I allowed myself to delete things willy nilly then my expectations for every new blog post would be too high and I’d never publish anything at all. Instead you simply let the bad posts fall down below the fold by adding new, better ones. And I’d say that for every 10 posts I’ve written, there’s at least one I can look back on years later and still appreciate. That’s pretty good! 

But also by preserving everything I have an easier time measuring my improvement. We all get down on ourselves sometimes, thinking that we haven’t made enough progress towards our goals. 

When that happens it can help to go deeper, look further beyond the past month or year of effort. Then I see in fact that I’ve changed and improved myself quite a lot. 

There are exceptions to this rule but in general, I don’t delete anything. 

[tommaxwelll]

Mr. Rogers’ Words of Kindness

Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.

One of my favorites from Fred Rogers.

[tommaxwelll]

Apple Music Web Player

I was a Spotify loyalist -- ahem, stan -- for a long time, going back to before the service even launched here in the states. I actually used a VPN to download and run Spotify on my computer, playing cat and mouse with the company as they kept recognizing me as an American and restricting my IP addresses from using the app. But these days I’m an Apple Music person, mainly because my family signed up for the family plan so I saw no point in spending money where I didn’t need to.

Say what you will about Apple Music but honestly it gets the job done. I wouldn’t say Spotify’s curated playlists are worth an extra $10 to me, although the integrations it has into Instagram Stories do tempt me at times.

The only problem is that I switch computers a lot and loathe iTunes, so I usually stream from my phone even when I’m at my desk, which isn’t ideal because my job involves sifting through videos on my computer. I also just generally complete most tasks from the web browser. It’d be nice if I could stream Apple Music from the web, but Apple doesn’t have a web app for it.

Fortunately, I found one that an indie developer built using APIs that Apple provides for Apple Music, and it’s pretty good. You can access it here: music.zacharyseguin.ca. Once you authenticate with your Apple account it will present you with all your playlists, and even a lot of Apple’s human/computer curated ones. It’s a pretty slick app for what it is, and I plan on continuing to use it myself.

[tommaxwelll]

The Body Is A Blade - Japanese Breakfast

I discovered Japanese Breakfast recently and absolutely love this music video. It's really sad but beautiful once you know what it's about.

[tommaxwelll]

Another Birthday

Today’s my birthday. I’m nursing a lunchtime drink and I’ll probably have a relaxed evening, nothing crazy. I haven’t been able to think of much else I’d like to do with the day.

I don’t really use my birthday as a day of reflection on life. Birthdays fall on random days throughout the year and they usually sneak up on you, whereas everyone works in unison towards the finale of each passing year. So for me, the change of the year is when I look back and measure my progress.

That being said I do recognize changes that have occurred within me more recently. Primarily that I like myself much more than I can ever remember. I take pictures of myself, which I used to never do, and I’m not very anxious in the presence of strangers anymore. I’m in a relationship now and began 2018 by fixing my teeth and hitting the gym harder. These things surely helped.

I don’t define my worth by my professional career as much as I used to, either. That used to be a big thing for me, comparing myself to these young wunderkinds who joined Facebook or raised a big round of funding at a young age. What’s really the difference between getting the job of your dreams at 23 versus 24? Being a kind, well-balanced person is essential for a fulfilling life too, and for me it took pulling back from the race a little bit to get there. Everyone is on their own timeline so I don’t really care anymore.

If I can say there’s anything I’ve learned this year, it would be that.

[tommaxwelll]

Twitter, Locked

Like many of my friends, I was a relatively early adopter of Twitter, signing up in 2008 when I was just 12-years old. Technically speaking this is a violation of the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), but that law is so weakly enforced that most people don’t even think about it. Unfortunately, however, my age became a problem for me last night, despite the fact that today I’m 22, not 12. I updated my date of birth on Twitter to reflect my correct age and my account was promptly “locked.” This is what I see now when I open the app:

Besides being immediately horrified I searched Google and, lo and behold, this is such a widespread problem that Twitter responded to complaints about it on their official @TwitterSupport account. They say the locks are not related to COPPA but rather the result of recent “product changes tied to new privacy laws (GDPR),” an early example of how the EU’s new law and strict enforcement is influencing the internet globally. The exact article about consent under GDPR is here. Put simply, Twitter is vanquishing the accounts of surely many valuable users worldwide because they chose to provide the company with data which shows they happened to be under 13 when they created their accounts years in the past. Such a user “contract” with anyone under 13 is invalid without parental permission for any company operating within EU borders at all.

To Twitter’s credit, in their statement on the matter they acknowledge the absurdity of this situation, and indicate these accounts will be reinstated. But the statement was made in early June and indicates they were still building capabilities to make this work. Twitter says the biggest issue is that in order to ensure compliance they have to delete data they collected (read: tweets) before the user was 13, and that they don’t have this capability ready yet.

Considering that we’re talking about Twitter of all companies here I have little faith that I’ll get my account back soon. On June 12th they stated that instructions on reinstating accounts would arrive “during the coming week” and yet one of my friends who had the same thing happen to his account over two months ago is still waiting.

This is a perfect reminder of why it’s good to have your own personal, non-commercialized corner on the internet — a blog in my case. What is a blog really but a domain and collection of text entries? Both of these are easily portable meaning even if a CMS back-end such as Tumblr or Wordpress.com folds you can just move to a different provider. The reader doesn’t have to notice a thing.

Every third-party platform you provide content to has the potential to disappear in an instant and then everything you created (35,000 tweets in my case) is gone, just like that. Don’t get me wrong though, I love Twitter and desperately want my account back. What’s a journalist without a Twitter presence these days? It’s where I get all my inspiration, my ideas.

#FreeTom2018

[tommaxwelll]

Interview with Bad Blood’s author John Carreyrou

The story of Theranos as reported by John Carreyrou in his new book Bad Blood is truly something. Read it, then watch this.

[tommaxwelll]

The 19-Year Old Prodigy Chef

I dislike the fetishization of outsized success from a young age because I believe that it — along with social media apps like Instagram — can make people wrongly feel they’re lacking. The truth is that everyone is on their own timeline and there’s never a wrong time at which to accomplish different goals in life. Furthermore with a little research you often find that the stories of many of these “youth prodigies” isn’t exactly clear cut.

Case in point, Flynn McGarry, the 19-year old with his own restaurant who’s been making the rounds online recently. His restaurant, Gem, is located in New York’s Lower East Side and notably sells only a $155 tasting menu, although there’s also a small café located in the front for the plebeians who can afford only a mere peak at the dining room.

This 19-year-old opened a restaurant with a $155 tasting menu 👨‍🍳 pic.twitter.com/SI31qYKoTl

— INSIDER (@thisisinsider)

June 4, 2018

I’m sure the restaurant is good! By the looks of the reviews online it’s very good, in fact. But as Slate found back in 2014, Flynn pursued his dream with the full emotional and, importantly, financial backing of his parents. In fact, as The New York Times Magazine wrote at the time, his parents not only purchased for him thousands of dollars worth of kitchen equipment, they also built a fully customized kitchen in Flynn’s bedroom:

His parents encouraged his desire to become a serious chef. When the counters in the kitchen proved too high, they made him a prep kitchen in the dining room that was modeled after Keller’s at French Laundry. When McGarry decided he wanted a private space to create menu ideas, his dad constructed a kitchen in his bedroom to resemble Alinea’s in Chicago. They redid the electricity, built the tables and removed the closet doors to convert it to a pantry; McGarry would get an induction burner for a birthday, a vacuum sealer for Christmas. When McGarry eventually visited the restaurant, he remarked, “This is what I put in my bedroom!”

This all makes me think back to the post I wrote last year about basic income proposals. Flynn’s story is a clear example of how socioeconomic status impacts education, work, entrepreneurship, and other areas of life. Proponents of a basic income believe it would result in everyone growing up with the same support as the middle class. As automation consumes more rote jobs, the thinking goes, those with financial support will have the time and resources to pursue their interests long enough to start earning money from them. It’s already happening today, clearly.

I don’t begrudge Flynn for seizing the opportunities he’s been given. Many other kids from the same means squander it. I just think nobody should be unfairly comparing themselves to people like him either. And it’s okay for kids to just be kids.

[tommaxwelll]

Facebook Dating

In January I went on my first Tinder date. My first ever digitally-mediated date, in fact. Like many others I'd used the app for a long time but never put much effort into actually landing dates, and when I did try I got nowhere fast because who can talk to strangers? So Tinder alleviated boredom and provided validation.

Somehow 2018 began with a stroke of luck though and I actually put together the right combination of words to get myself a date. And it went well! So well, in fact, that just this past week I accompanied the date in question to her college graduation ball. I guess that leaves me one-for-one with dating apps.

Wholesome experiences such as this one are a rare thing on social media so perhaps that's why Facebook is getting into dating. After all I'm much more endeared to Tinder now that it's provided me with such a positive experience. Facebook wants and needs that kind of association right now with all the scandals it's embroiled in, and Zuckerberg apparently monitors public sentiment surrounding the company like a hawk. People who meet their life partners on Facebook will probably become very loyal to the company.

That being said I wouldn't be surprised if the pool skewed older since youth are spending progressively less time on Facebook proper. Besides that I hear anecdotally that older folks who've gone through fresh divorces will use Facebook to try and reignite old flames. That divergence is okay though because millennials today are meeting their partners elsewhere in the Facebook ecosystem anyway — by sliding into DMs on Instagram. The company has in essence locked down all the core demographics, just through different apps.

I doubt Facebook will be a successful matchmaker but good on them for trying. They certainly have the data to compete in this space. 

[tommaxwelll]

iPad Pro Smart Keyboard Connectivity Woes

I was a huge fan of the iPad Pro when I got it a year ago. That’s a big departure from my prior sentiment on the iPad, as all my previous ones ended up collecting dust within weeks. I still love the iPad Pro. Multitasking is a breeze in split-screen mode and since I no longer code I can accomplish all but a few edge-case tasks on the Pro.

The Smart Keyboard that Apple sells alongside it, however, is a much different story. It’s a necessary purchase to fully take advantage of the Pro and yet using it is a capital-A awful experience. Considering the lengths Apple has gone to push the iPad Pro as the future of mass-market computing, it’s shocking how bad things have gotten with the keyboard.

How is it bad? My frustration with the Smart Keyboard doesn’t concern the size or spacing of the keys, or any other design and ergonomics decision for that matter. No, something in the hardware or software chain is just faulty and causing it to be unusable. Mine in particular just isn’t recognized by my iPad anymore. You can see in the picture above that it’s connected and yet the software keyboard is open. At some point, I can’t remember when, the software keyboard starting popping up sporadically while I was typing on the Smart Keyboard. Now the Smart Keyboard just doesn’t work ever.

Except that’s not entirely true — oddly enough it does work whenever I factory reset my iPad Pro, but then only for a few hours before it stops again.  

I hadn’t heard much about this from others until today when Om Malik mentioned it and others chimed in:

Actually you are typing on the keyboard and suddenly you are forced to use on screen keyboard. I thought i had a buggy keyboard. Bought a new one. Same problem. Tried it on a colleague’s keyboard. Same problem. Sigh.

— OM (@om)

May 2, 2018

Did the replacement work for you? I am on my third replacement and very flakey.

— Bijan Sabet (@bijan) May 2, 2018

Clearly this issue is more widespread than I thought. I’m assuming that since replacements face the same issue the problem must lie with the iPad Pro itself, not the keyboard. It’s almost as if the iPad forgets that there’s a keyboard connected to it at all. Either way Apple really needs to address this because it totally ruins the iPad Pro experience, especially as a productivity device.

[tommaxwelll]

Podcast Pause

I’m taking a temporary break from podcasts. I removed Overcast from my iPad and iPhone, and the only audio content I’ll be listening to for now is NPR. 

Like many others I started listening to podcasts with the release of Serial and have been addicted ever since. It’s just that at this point I’m oversaturated with good audio content and it’s becoming a real problem. My queue usually contains upwards of 10 hour-length podcasts ready for my listening. I just don’t have the time for that! I sort of think I was making more excuses to listen than I should have — there are only so many errands that deserve priority over everything else. 

When I do return to podcasts though I’m going to start clean by deleting all my subscriptions and adding ones back as I want to listen to them. Podcasts like Planet Money are best because they’re only ever 20-25 minutes in length and have a clear narrative structure. Those will probably be the first to return. 

[tommaxwelll]

A Better Son/Daughter by Rilo Kiley

[tommaxwelll]

YouTube

I got thinking about the tragic shooting at YouTube last week and something occurred to me about that event. The shooter was a YouTube creator who monetized her videos and, of course, she’s not representative of the YouTube community. But she was essentially paid by YouTube and so in a way this was an act of workplace violence.

YouTube has so many making a living from its platform, so many people to please, and I just don’t think they’re ever going to be able to make everyone happy. Every algorithm change can result in the total upending of someone’s life. I was a participant in YouTube’s partner program back when monetization was first introduced and offered to a select few creators. At one point the privilege was stripped from me and I can still remember how devastated I was. And I didn’t even rely on that money to survive. Some people do. 

YouTube has a tremendous burden to live with and these are some crazy times we’re living in.  

[tommaxwelll]

Invisalign

Entering 2018 I decided it was finally time to do something about the underbite I have (wear your retainer, kids!) and begin an Invisalign treatment. I have to make monthly visits to my dentist now but otherwise it’s been a very easy procedure.

When I went in for an initial consultation they took scans of my teeth so they could assess their state and calculate a “predicted” outcome by using Invisalign. I snapped a picture of that:

The first model on the left is an accurate 3D rendering of what my teeth actually look like right now. Each little gap and curve on my teeth is there. And this model was created in minutes using a small probing device that was placed inside my mouth and moved along my teeth. 

I’m still amazed sometimes by what technology can do. 

[tommaxwelll]

Waybots and Other Dockless Scooters

There’s been much press coverage of the dockless bicycles starting to crowd up sidewalks in many cities in the U.S. and abroad. But as I recently discovered in Washington DC’s Georgetown neighborhood, there are also dockless electric scooters now, and honestly they’re way better.

Most of these electrified scooters are supplied by the same players that offer dockless bikes — LimeBike, Ofo, Mobike, etc. The scooter I tried was from a company called Waybots but besides supply each of these brands offers an undifferentiated experience. Just counting by the sheer amount of people I see zipping through DC on the scooters, though, I’d say there’s a bigger market for them than the bicycles anyway.

It’s not hard to understand why either. The scooters are more agile and frankly, much more fun! They have some real get-up — the Waybots scooters have a maximum speed of 15mph — and you can weave through stop-and-go traffic with ease. Moreover you aren’t working up a sweat if you’re, say, on the way to a meeting.

There’s Uber, sure, but for short distances it’s faster and cheaper to use one of these scooters. It’s cleaner, if that makes sense.

As I’ve written here before, the best, most progressive cities offer a mix of urban transportation options that can be used in tandem (each suited for different distance and cost considerations) to get around. Ideally ones that can reduce the awful congestion caused by cars. Maybe these dockless scooters and bikes will be more than just a fad and instead actually help us progress towards that type of world. I don’t know, but I hope so!

[tommaxwelll]

CafeX

Last week I happened upon this automated coffee shop of sorts that started as a chain in San Francisco called CafeX.

I had to give it a try, of course, especially when I saw that CafeX was serving Ritual coffee (okay, and also Intelligentsia). In the video I filmed above you can see a robotic arm in a glass container swinging between two coffee machines, and then placing a finished cup in the serving area from where it’s dispensed. 

Frankly the cappuccino I got wasn’t anything special — definitely better than what the standard cappuccino machine can do, but not amazing. The robotic arm is probably a bit superfluous. Though I think the point is that this is more efficient than a barista because it never has to stop for breaks and doesn’t take a salary (more immigrants stealing our jobs, not quite…). That just about balances out the quality aspect for me, if I can get a decent enough cappuccino whenever I want, and at a lower cost.

[tommaxwelll]

On Homesickness

From the film Brooklyn: 

There's nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won't kill you. And one day, the sun will come out and... you'll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who's only yours. And you'll realize that this is where your life is.

It takes time, but the wave pulling you down always rises eventually.