collections: a weekly reset

It’s March 5th. I publish each edition later, and later. I might never catch up to a regular schedule. A little is always more than nothing.

  • human exhaust: it’s not zoom fatigue, but it’s not like talking to people is getting any easier.
  • kick it up a notch: the ugly duckling of smartphones, the display notch, has blossomed into a ubiquitous design pattern.


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human exhaust

it’s not zoom fatigue, but it’s not like talking to people is getting any easier

I know what running on fumes feels like. I’ve felt it so many times in my life; that constant falling apart and needing to put myself back together every morning. Humpty dumpty and the sisyphean struggle.. Eyes bloodshot, muscles weary. It feels terrible. This is not it.

This is nothing like it. This is a year of prolonged, silent suffering.

I’m tired of talking to people but I need to talk to people at the same time. That never-ending uphill battle of jumping from video call to video call because my entire existence has been tethered to moving faces in a resizeable browser window.

I’m tired of you, and thinking about you too. I’m not exhausted, but I feel wasted.

kick it up a notch

the ugly duckling of smartphones, the display notch, has blossomed into a ubiquitous design pattern.

Many, many years ago (closer to three years ago), the media went crazy over the unveiling of a sleek new iPhone model that courageously rendered the home button ancient history, and replaced it with an edge-to-edge display. Full display save for a singular black notch at the top.

They were a laughing stock for quite a while in the press until the tides turned and everybody bought the newest iPhone. Then they bought the next one. Then their competitors also began artificially integrating notches on their display, because somehow that became the newest digital normal.

Nowadays, any representation of a smartphone features a notch. The notch has become symbolic of a premium, luxurious, and high-quality screen experience. The narrative shifted in their favor. We don’t know why, but it did, and all of a sudden Apple owned the notch. Nobody is laughing now.

this past week