This Week’s Music Sampler Playlist:

https://tidal.com/playlist/92ca14a6-7a23-40f1-90d5-fac94edf12e9

Pic of the Week:

Chocolate mint and Kentucky Colonel Spearmint – because you need variety in your cocktails right? These are coming along nicely from what I put in a planter outside last year.

RSS Readers:

I realized I haven’t covered rss readers yet but use them a LOT.

Each of these is available cross-platform (ios, android, computer browser):

• Feedly https://feedly.com/ (what I’ve used since Google Reader was sunset)
• Inoreader https://www.inoreader.com/
• Flipboard https://flipboard.com/
• Netnewswire https://netnewswire.com/
• Readwise Reader (though I use this as my read/watch later so rss feeds would clutter it.)  https://readwise.io/read

There are some selfhosted options but they take more effort. I may write up something more in depth soon because they aren’t all exactly the same. And maybe cover some more of my workflow?

Links to interesting things this week:

• Have I mentioned Lightening Sprite here yet? It’s something I would love to see IRL or even photograph. They’re really cool and creepy looking: https://petapixel.com/2026/05/06/photographers-epic-journey-to-capture-stunning-image-of-rare-lightning-sprite/

• iPhone photography:
  • I think apple is about the Sherlock Mention’s app or Hallide maybe? https://petapixel.com/2026/05/13/apples-ios-27-may-let-photographers-fully-customize-the-iphone-camera-app/
  • Halide is coming out with a new version (though I suspect I still prefer what Mention’s app has done) https://petapixel.com/2026/05/27/halide-mark-iii-promises-most-beautiful-photos-possible-on-iphone/
    
• Factoid: Meta has lost 20 million users: https://petapixel.com/2026/05/01/meta-says-it-lost-20-million-users-at-the-beginning-of-the-year/
  
• Intel macs won’t get another OS: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/03/macos-27-wont-run-on-these-macs
  
• Painful truth about Long Covid (if you have MCAS or some other autoimmune disorders this might be worth a read too): https://www.wired.com/story/the-painful-truth-about-long-covid/
  
• Distilleries naming stills: ?https://vinepair.com/articles/distillers-favorite-still-names

• Affinity (layouts, vector, photo editing – InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator alts) https://www.affinity.studio/
• Davinci Resolve (video editing, photo editing – Premier / Lightroom alts) https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/
• Calvary (motion design – After Effects alt) https://cavalry.studio/en/
• Autograph (also motion graphics & vfx workflows) https://www.maxon.net/en/autograph
• Blender (3d work) https://www.blender.org/

NOTE: I’m still concerned about proprietary file formats which is where and why I would rather use Adobe products in a number of scenarios still. Additionally both Affinity AND Calvary were bought by Canva which could bring us back to the same type of monopolistic problems.

More thoughts on Podcasts (for the podcasters this time):

An argument for having your podcast on Youtube:

(Even if you have to use a static image and it’s just audio in video format.)

Part of my current workflow involves having some of the podcasts that I don’t want to listen to EVERY episode in my feed reader. SOME audio podcasts will Huffduffer or Podqueue just fine but many won’t.

BECAUSE so many of the podcast feeds are difficult to get one off into other systems,  I’ve started hunting down episodes or full channels on Youtube.

I can take a single episode and send it to Readwise Reader (or any other watch / listen system you might be using.)

As much as I want to decentralize things, there are some things that don’t interoperate well yet. Maybe eventually I can recommend something like AtProto or spectra.video but it’s not there yet.

Also if you have a reason to change the title of your podcast episode on different platforms, PLEASE at least include an episode number. It’s INSANELY HARD to find the right one when all of it is different across different things.

And I opened a slew of podcasts that took me directly to the mp3 file and ZERO info … and I have no idea who I just listened to. I don’t want a long thing to forward through but I don’t understand why there isn’t some sort of quick identifier in the audio files of so many.

Maybe I should have labeled this “some Podcast best practices” or something.