The Dann Chronicles Podcast

May 2024

Hey all,

Over the past decade or so, I've seen the same trend happening across two seemingly unrelated groups: productivity gurus and tattoo artists.

After college, I worked counter at a piercing and tattoo studio for about four years. During that time, I learned a little bit about how tattoos age—the difference between how a fresh tattoo looks vs how that same tattoo will look in 5-10 years.

Today, I see way more tattoos that look good fresh, but know will age horribly. This is largely due to the rise in platforms like Reddit and Instagram, which reward the immediate "after" picture and caring much less about how the tattoo will look later.

Similarly, I see so productivity "gurus" today showing off complex note-taking systems that look super impressive, but will be IMPOSSIBLE to maintain in the long term. I can guarantee that in even one year's time, practically none of their impressive system will still be in use.

Social media rewards those shiny, new things while ignoring practicality.

I've mentioned that I've been making YouTube videos documenting my own note-taking process, and that's the philosophy when building my systems. I think it's what sets me apart from a bunch of other creators.

If you're working on something similar yourself, don't create systems based on how you aspire to work, build systems based on who you are today and then slowly add on brick by brick. It's the only way to have long-term success.

Have a great month, y'all.

-Dann

🥦 Criss-cross you don't stop

It's not often that a new vegetable bursts onto the scene, but that's exactly what's happening with Baby Cauliflower. Sort of a cross between cauliflower and broccoli, these lengthy florets are absolutely freaking delicious.

I've been grabbing mine at my local Trader Joes. To cook, just heat some olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the baby cauliflower, salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder (or your seasonings of choice) and maybe a little garlic. Then, cook the same as you would broccoli.

For me, one bag makes a perfect two servings. I'll eat half immediately, and the second half I'll have the next day as cold leftovers. I may even like the next-day cold version even better than hot.

As with any of my newsletter food recommendations, I encourage you to act fast if you want to try them. I'm most definitely a “harbinger of failure,” which means I don't expect this product to be available very long...

👋 Farewell certainty

I was struck by this Pew Research Study showing that "38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later." But my thoughts about this study might surprise you.

What if it's a good thing that large chunks of the internet are disappearing forever?

In the story of human history, the idea of "permanence" is almost non-existent. Something was "permanent" only if it was etched in stone. Ideas were fleeting, libraries could burn, and tapes could disappear.

If you missed an episode of a TV series, you either had to catch the one-time-only re-run, or just accept that missing it was your fate. If you were out with friends and couldn't remember an actors age, you had to be okay with that until maybe you caught a celebrity rag in the checkout line of the grocery store someday.

There was a level of impermanence (and associated uncertainty) that was simply inherent to the human experience.

Then the Internet came along and offered a different narrative. Maybe all information was archivable forever, and accessible whenever you wanted. It changed humans' very relationship with information and ideas and facts.

There was no longer room for "I'm not sure," and there were voices stating as fact every single opinion that anyone could have. Suddenly no one was okay with anything being fuzzy—humans became militantly I'm-right-you're-wrong once the idea of "permanence of all things" came around.

So I say farewell to the very concept of permanence. It's only been a part of the human experience for a few decades and it's done more harm than good. Maybe it's that sense of uncertainty that actually holds society (with all its varying viewpoints) together.

Good riddance.

👓 Search and rescue

It's been easy to miss (like a frog in boiling water) but Google Search has been declining in quality over the years. Today, top results are either ads or search engine optimized trash. Most people add the keyword "reddit" to any search to yield useful results.

Like any meaningful decline, the story behind the downfall is very interesting. The man who killed Google Search (according to that article) is Prabhakar Raghavan, the specific Google employee who decided to push for growth over quality.

The author of this article also claims that this is part of a larger trend, where power at tech companies is shifting from the builders to the managers, from the innovators to the consultants. The result? The enshittification of the Internet.

As for me? I stopped using Google Search over a year ago in favor of a paid alternative called Kagi (I was actually just interviewed for Monocle Radio in the UK about my experience with Kagi, hear me at 6:05). In fact, I've been working on leaving as many Google services as possible over the past several years. Because it doesn't have to be like this.

I see this story about Google Search as a cautionary tale. Even the slightest misalignment in goals can have catastrophic effects.

🇨🇦 Canada Goose-bumps

If you want me to stop sharing Bobby Fingers' videos, he's going to have to stop making them so damn good. In his most recent video, the Irish multi-hyphenate artist and sculptor has tackled the infamous Fabio vs Goose rollercoaster disaster.

If I could plug into the matrix and download a new set of skills instantly into my brain, I'd choose Bobby Fingers' skills wholesale. He's one of the few artists that I watch with both joy and envy.

Anyway, this time he even partnered with Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) for a bit of the video. It's fun to see him connecting with other well-known celebrities.

🎶 To see or not to see...

Lastly, I wanted to share an exciting upcoming New York City event: the city is getting the first-ever revival of the 1965 musical Skyscraper in November. It's a "fun, fast-paced musical comedy by Peter Stone, Sammy Cahn, and James Van Heusen."

That musical duo was basically the Frank Sinatra house band during the Capital Records era. Hits include "Come Fly With Me" and "Love and Marriage" (you know, from the sitcom Married...with Children).

One of the reasons I'm so excited for this is because it's being co-produced, directed, and choreographed by my wife, Avital Asuleen.

Her and her team are currently knee-deep in a fundraising campaign to help cap off the final dollars in their budget.

In case you're outside the NYC theater scene, producing Off-Broadway theater got significantly more expensive after the pandemic. All the cheaper rehearsal spaces disappeared and costs for venues, casts, and crews shot up. The fundraiser, therefore, is geared towards offsetting the cost difference between pre- and post-pandemic producing. Because so much has come back since COVID, but theater is still reeling.

If you're in the New York City area, we'd love to see you there. If you're not, maybe you'd want to support the fundraiser at a tier that buys a ticket for a deserving artist. Either way, you're helping independent theater get back on its feet after some huge setbacks.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

I'll be sending out these emails once per month, and I'm happy you're along for the ride. I'm trying to make it one of the best things that arrives in your inbox each month, so thoughts and feedback are always appreciated. You can just reply to this email.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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April 2024

Hey all,

When I was in high school, I remember learning about the power of compound interest, mostly in the context of retirement. If you start stashing your money away early, even if it's a little bit, that will turn into a huge advantage come retirement time, all thanks to compound interest.

What I didn't realize until much later is how that concept of "compound interest" applies everywhere in life, not just with money. Small steps, taken consistently, can have massive impact without you even realizing it.

That's what happened with my Obsidian note-taking system, which I've been recently documenting over on YouTube. I'm only realizing how complex some of my systems are now that I'm documenting them. But over the past four years of note-taking, it's just been a small daily-ish habit that's snowballed thanks to compound interest.

These days, I try to apply these principles everywhere. To reading, to friendships, to learning, to hobbies. Every impressive feat you witness someone else accomplish all started as a small habit.

Baby steps are just baby steps...until there's enough of them. They add up to giant leaps.

-Dann

🪦 Putting a pin in it

I wanted to post a short follow up about the Humane AI Pin, which I first ragged on back in November before the product was officially released. The official reviews are out, and they're not so hot.

But it's not the negative reviews that are interesting here (as mentioned, I called it back in November). Instead, these reviews have sparked a much larger conversation around the power of reviewers themselves.

The story starts a couple months ago with the popular tech reviewer MKBHD (18.7M subscribers) and his review of the Fisker Ocean: "This is the Worst Car I've Ever Reviewed." Within the next week, Fisker stock sinks to a new all-time low, the company announces layoffs, and there are rumors of filing for bankruptcy. It causes quite the stir in the tech world.

Fast forward to this month, and Humane's wildly ambitious, insanely hyped, near-infinitely venture funded AI pin launches. MKBHD gets a review unit, gives the product a try, and publishes his review: "The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now."

Once again, the Internet is aflutter. Probably the loudest criticism of MKBHD is this tweet:

I find it distasteful, almost unethical, to say this when you have 18 million subscribers. Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility. Potentially killing someone else’s nascent project reeks of carelessness. First, do no harm.

I can't stress this enough, this is a bad take. Tech reviewers don't have any obligation to tech companies, only to their audience.

But I'm not nearly as eloquent as MKBHD himself, who chimed in when criticism of his review was reaching a fever pitch. He poses (and answers?) the question: do bad reviews kill companies?

I'll leave you alone to answer that question for yourself. You now have the background and links to primary sources, if you care. Regardless, it's been an entertaining bit of Internet drama this past month.

🪁 Childhood unleashed

I've been thinking a lot about Generation X recently. Specifically, what being a kid used to look like before today's technology fundamentally changed the very nature of human connection.

Maybe it's because I'm reaching the age (late 30s) where my childhood now feels like history rather than recent past. Plus, as a Millennial, I'm part of the last group of people to experience a pre-Internet childhood.

I've been re-reading Calvin and Hobbes, an old favorite of mine, and it's just wild to compare a young kids life then (wandering the woods, playing with neighborhood friends, loads of unsupervised free time) to what we have now (constant GPS tracking, technology access/monitoring, constant protection).

I found the differences to be particularly stark while watching the new movie Snack Shack (which criminally flew almost completely under the radar). It's a coming-of-age story about two 14-year-old friends in Nebraska in 1991. It wasn't mychildhood (by a long shot) but I definitely recognized it as a decent portrayal of a time long past.

To be clear, I'm not judging one time period as superior to another. Just meditating on the differences.

Like anything else, time too has compounding interest. It's strange to be middle aged.

🛩 Come fly with me

Every time I fly (not often, but often enough) I'm reminded how much I love the iOS app Flighty. It's one of those rare examples of an application that exceeds expectations.

For one, the Live Activities widget is so well-designed that I only ever need to open my e-ticket when I'm checking in (and Apple agrees, giving it an Apple Design Award in 2023). Additionally, I'll get notifications about my flight in Flighty before hearing from the airlines themselves. It feels like a trusted source, which proves super useful.

But in-flight location tracking is probably my most-used feature (because that's the kind of flyer I am). One of the coolest things about the in-flight tracking is that it even works on flights that have free messaging but not free Wi-Fi. And the ETA (even for taxiing before/after takeoff) are amazingly accurate.

🍎 Apple of my eye

The farmers markets here in Brooklyn, New York happen year-round, but the offerings (obviously) vary widely depending on the month. I was reminded of these slim pickings on a recent trip to the Borough Hall market, which was mostly empty, minus giant bounty of apples.

Browsing the bins, I was reminded of my favorite new apple: the EverCrisp. It's a cross between a Honeycrisp and a Fuji—sweet, juicy, and the absolute crispiest apple you can get. It's the platonic ideal of a delicious apple, in terms of my own personal tastes.

I don't see them very often. They're not available at any of the grocery stores near us, and I don't make it to our farmers market as often as I'd like. So every time I do see one, I buy it.

All that said, I was visiting my parents recently (Washington state) and lo and behold, their local natural foods grocery store had a big pile of EverCrisps. They were a bit smaller than here in the northeast, but just as delicious.

A special shout out of my farmer friend Lauren for introducing me to the joys of EverCrisp. And if you, dear reader, happen to stumble upon them yourself, I encourage you to give one a try.

💸 Wave Bye-Bye to the Fiat

Did you know that Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders) has an upcoming new film? It's called Megalopolis and it's currently in post-production with a release date scheduled for this year, and it sounds absolutely insane.

Here are just a few reasons why I'm hyped (and think you should be, too):

Coppola spent $120 million of his own money on the film (meaning no outside influence) and has said he doesn't care if he makes any of it back
At a screening for friends, some of the quotes were: "batshit crazy," "no commercial prospects," "bizarre mix of Ayn Rand, Metropolis, and Caligula," "most baffling thing they've ever seen"
Some of the bigger names in the film are Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Adam Driver, Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, and Jason Schwartzman.

If you're still not convinced, this TikTok does an even better job of giving proper context to this film.

Now, just to set expectations, just because I'm "hyped" doesn't mean I necessarily think I'll like the film. By all accounts, it sounds terrible. But that said, it's so rare we see a artist's singular vision, at this scale with this level of talent. It will certainly be an experience.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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March 2024

Hey all,

A very warm welcome to all the new readers! I'm happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to going on this journey with you.

For all of my regular readers who have no idea what I'm talking about: a short backstory. I had a brief period, back in 2014(!) where I was creating videos and uploading them to YouTube. It was time consuming and I made almost no money, but it was a lot of fun and super rewarding.

For the past several years, I've been feeling the itch to start creating videos again. But haven't really had the energy to jump back into it in the hours outside my full-time job.

But now, I'm taking a short break before finding my next full-time role. I'm doing some part-time work for the FinOps Foundation, working on a FinOps Book, and (you guessed it) making YouTube videos.

In general, I'm just feeling like there's now "so much room for activities!"

Now, if only COBRA didn't cost so damn much...

-Dann

🃏 Play your cards right

Every once in a while, a new video game comes along that tickles the exact right part of my brain. Judging by the amount of time I've already poured into this game, Balatro is that perfect match for me.

For those of you with a video game background, Balatro is a roguelike deckbuilder that's basically a mix between Binding of Isaac (my favorite video game of all time) and Texas Holdem poker. Each game lasts between 20 - 40 minutes, and features randomly generated rounds with stacking bonuses. Which means by the end of a game, if you've played your cards right, you're earning tens of thousands of points per hand (or more!) and absolutely dominating each challenge.

What makes it all the more impressive, Balatro was created by a solo lone developer. In the same way that ConcernedApe created the smash hit Stardew Vally all by himself, LocalThunk is the single mind behind Balatro.

It's not just me that's obsessed with this new game—Balatro has sold 250,000 copies in its first three days.

It's currently available on PC and console, but I can't wait for it to come to iOS so I can play it on my iPad.

📺 House of cringe

Nathan Fielder perfected the art of cringe, launching an entirely new genre of entertainment that's nearly identical to horror, but instead of fear you just feel wildly uncomfortable. It really started catching on in Nathan For You, and it was mastered in The Curse.

But before there was Fielder, there was a young trailblazing YouTuber named Dax Flame. If you were old enough to be online back then, you may remember him. He went viral back in 2007 mostly for two videos: a vlog expressing excitement over dressing like Superman for school, and a followup vlog the next day, absolutely crushed by humiliation.

I mention Dax Flame because he's still making content, and it's some of my favorite ever. If you remember him fondly (or even have no recollection of him), I'll help you catch up: three years ago, iDubbbz (as part of his redemption tour), filmed an hour-long documentary on Dax Flame that brought the OG YouTuber back into the spotlight.

Since then, Dax had a decent presence on both YouTube and TikTok. On YouTube, he also hosts a show called The Hot Seat with Dax Flame, but I truly think his short form content is the best. Whether he’s finding humor in the little things, giving away money to his fans, or promising never to talk about Project X again, it’s all pure gold.

He has such a pure heart. I wish him all the success in the world.

📸 Mimic night and day

If I could give you one tip for taking better photos or videos on your mobile phone, it would be wipe the lens before you shoot. Boom, your videos will instantly look 5x - 10x better.

Curious how to take your iPhone video shoots even further? This 18-minute video Why "Shot On iPhone" Commercials Look So Good! can help get you moving in the right direction. It features Claudio Miranda (cinematographer of Life of Pi and Top Gun: Maverick) and is somehow better than any of those Masterclasses I've taken.

In a blog post I published this month (and subsequent video version, which went a little viral) I made the claim that "mimicry is a shortcut to success." This type of video is exactly what I mean.

I don't need to be able to shoot cinematic iPhone videos like Claudio Miranda. But I can pick and choose his mobile filmmaking methods in order to gain the benefit of his years of training and experience without putting in that work myself.

For me, that means always wiping the lens (as I mentioned before), making sure my scene is well lit, and maintaining rule-of-thirds framing. And if I really want cinematic-looking video, switching to Blackmagic instead of the default Camera app.

Gotta love shortcuts to success.

📈 Those sweet sweet gains

Recent data is pointing to the US currently being in a productivity boom (though it'll be years before we can truly confirm). The last productivity boom was thirty years ago, in the mid-90's, and largely attributed to the widespread adoption of computers.

The data shows that it's not working from home or improved digital communication that's behind it (although those things certainly make us feel more productive) but perhaps unsurprisingly, it's most likely AI (NYT gift article):

While many economists said it was probably too early to see the benefits of A.I. showing through in full force, some proponents think it could prove transformative by automating mental tasks including proposal writing and emails.

These are all theories—as I said, it'll be years before the data is conclusive. But this 100% feels right to me. I think these sweet, sweet productivity gains are going to be AI's biggest impact on this era (and I'm hoping human extinction isn't AI's next big impact...)

On a related note: you know the Boomer stereotype about being bad with computers and unable to figure out new technology? I think Artificial Intelligence is going to be the equivalent for Millennials and Gen Z. Meaning, when we're older, those of us who can't seem to figure out AI are going to be like today's boomers who struggle with technology. My friendly advice is to start figuring out where AI fits into your life now, if you're not already on that journey.

✋ Reach out and touch AI

Throughout an average work day, I'm typically starting between five to ten AI queries. And that's not me asking it to output copy or full drafts, it's instead become the place where I go to think. I love throwing half-formed ideas at it and seeing what it volleys back. It's the perfect tool for honing in on an answer (any answer).

I paid for one month of ChatGPT Plus when it first launched, but $20/mo was way too rich for my blood. Especially when my same level of usage over API would cost mere dollars over the same time period. This lead me to hunt for an AI front end that would allow me to enter my API key so that I'm only charged for usage.

The tool I found is the unsung hero of my AI stack. Probably one of my most-used applications, which has somehow never gotten a mention in my newsletter. That changes today.

TypingMind doesn't just support ChatGPT either—you can enter your Anthropic or Google Gemini (if you have access) API keys and access any model you want from the same interface. I can switch to a Vision model and upload an image, or enable the web search plugin for live internet results or the Dalle Plugin to ask it to draw me something.

TypingMind is so good that I'm just sort of satisfied with how AI fits into my life. I feel no need to try every new product or tool that catches today's buzz.

It also has the best pricing strategy: a one-time fee. I feel like that's a model that's quickly going extinct, so I like to support products like that while I still can.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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February 2024

Hey all,

This winter finally saw the end of New York City's 700-day snow drought. The sad thing is that it didn't take much: 1.4 inches lightly blanketed Central Park on January 16. We got zero snow last winter, so the last major snowfall was February 13, 2022.

We also got a few additional snows since then. Including this past weekend.

You know what? I'll take it. It's a far cry from when I first moved to New York nearly two decades ago. There could be whole weeks or months in the winter where snow piles sat unmelting on curbs, the source of endless complaints from commuting New Yorkers. Now, any snowfall quickly melts away.

But at least we got snow. I'll just take the W and shut up now.

-Dann

🧙‍♀️ Have the curse reversed

I was almost ready to give up on The Curse, the Showtime series staring Nathan Fielder, Emma Stone, and Benie Safdie. I'm so glad I made it through to the end.

It's an uncomfortable show to watch, more in line with a Safdie Brothers film (like Uncut Gems or Good Time) rather than a fun parody comedy like Nathan For You.

You'll likely be very uncomfortable through a vast majority of scenes in The Curse. It's unpleasant. But after several episodes, you learn to live with the unpleasantness. Maybe you actually start to find pleasure in it, in the same way you enjoy the sense of terror you feel during a scary movie.

When you make it to the end, and finish that final episode, you'll realize that The Curse is actually art. There's a reason why people are saying it's the best thing on television since Twin Peaks.

You may also realize that there's a ton of interviews with the creators from after different episode screenings at Lincoln Center, and even a Q&A with Benie Safdie and Nathan Fielder moderated by Christopher Nolan. And that content only increases your enjoyment of the series.

Honestly, if you haven't watched The Curse yet, what are you even doing?

✅ Clear-eyed and refreshed

There's been a lot of hype this month about the return of a much beloved To Do app for the iPhone. Clear 2 is an updated and refreshed version of the original Clear app, which was revolutionary when it first launched due to its use of swipes and gestures for controls.

I've been testing the beta version of the app for about a year, so I'm super excited to tell you that you can finally download it for yourself. It's also monetized in a very user-friendly way, with the full app (and all functionality) being free, but themes and other customizations costing small fees.

Honestly, it's also been validating to me to see such love and praise for this app sequel, when I've loved the app from the very beginning. I even interviewed the creator of Clear, Dan Counsell, on my old Novice No Longer podcast back in 2014(!). Now there's a throwback for you.

Unfortunately(?) the app is iPhone only. But if you're using Android, I'm sure you're used to that by now.

🩹 From investigation to feature

Sorry, to all you Android-heads, but here's another section for iPhone users. There's a new feature in iOS 17.3 that you should enable immediately: Stolen Device Protection. Here are some easy instructions for turning it on.

I'm mentioning it here because it's important, but also because the story of how this feature came to exist is super interesting.

Back in February 2023, the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen released a damning investigative piece about the tactics thieves used to steal iPhones. It was dead simple: by watching a victim enter their passcode (easier than you might think), thieves could then change their Apple passcode, disable Find My iPhone, and then access a user’s sensitive accounts using the iCloud password keychain. It was a grift that exploited the weakest point in cyber security: the user.

Shortly after the story was published, Apple announced that a new feature was launching in the next iOS beta called Stolen Device Protection. It didn't say that this feature was introduced because of the expose, but it 100% addressed the issue detailed in the piece.

Stolen Device Protection, when enabled:

Requires Face ID or Touch ID authentication for certain actions, such as accessing passwords or credit card info…a passcode alone won’t do it.
Impliments a one-hour wait time, plus more biomarker checks, to change your password when you're away from a familiar place

This feature is out now as of iOS 17.3, and there's literally no reason why you shouldn't enable it immediately if you're an iPhone user.

Oh, and one more thing. Once Apple released this new security feature, the Wall Street Journal published a followup to it's original story that dives into the more sensitive details about the actual tactics that thieves used to social engineer victims into revealing their passcodes and handing over their phones. As I mentioned, it's easier than you might think.

📝 Additional Creative Output

Did you know that in addition to this newsletter, I also create and publish content other places, such as my personal website? In fact, I recently published way too many words about the Apple Vision Pro. The tl;dr? VR is becoming something different than what we originally imagined (ie something akin to The Matrix) and this new implementation is much more compelling.

I also want to take a moment to plug my long-dormant YouTube channel, which now has fresh life given my abundance of newfound free time. I've turned a few of my popular Obsidian blog posts into video tutorials and it's been really rewarding, so I'm going to continue making videos. You should subscribe to me there, too.

🏋️ Me, Myself, and AI

Artificial intelligence has become an integral part of my daily life. I use it all the time. It's not perfect (or even close to perfect) but for certain tasks it's practically a super power. I feel like a lot of people have misconceptions about how AI can fit into someone's workflow, so I wanted to share some details a real world application that I just completed with AI.

Kagi, the Google Search alternative that I love, has this cool product called Universal Summarizer. You feed it a URL (article, blog post, research paper, YouTube video, podcast episode) and get an AI-assisted summary in mere seconds.

I use it all the time. It's especially useful for lengthy video/audio content, where I'd usually just skip consuming it altogether. For articles, it's a good way to decide if I actually want to read the full piece. It's a great tool.

Typically, using Universal Summarizer looks something like this:

Copy the URL of the page you want summarized
Open a new tab, and navigate to Universal Summarizer
Page the URL into the proper field and click summarize

It's not complicated, but is a lot of steps if you're doing it all the time, which I was. I felt like it was an action much better suited for a browser extension. But I've never written a browser extension before.

Enter ChatGPT.

I described the functionality I wanted, and within thirty minutes I had a working browser extension. Each error I got, or modification I wanted to make was quickly answered by AI.

Before ChatGPT, I could have figured out how to make a browser extension on my own. But I probably wouldn't have. Now, I have a useful tool that simplifies a regular workflow of mine, as well as a cool project to show off on Github.

AI is amazing for things like this. Is there anything in your life that you should be automating?

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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January 2024

Hey all,

I've been thinking a lot about motivation versus discipline, and how they're two very distinct drivers that are often not in sync. Motivation drives the things you want to do, whereas discipline determines the things you spend your time doing.

I've been motivated to write a FinOps book for years, but haven't had the discipline to actually spend real time working on it. That means there's been a mismatch between my physical actions in the real word and the goings-on in the world that only exists inside my head.

Often, there are valid reasons why we lack the discipline to work on these ambitious tasks we feel motivated to do. For many, this is usually full-time jobs that leave us with little outside energy or families that take up all our time.

But on rare occasion, you come face-to-face with that disconnect between motivation and discipline, and must confront it head-on. For example, when you’ve been laid off from your full time job, secured some decent-paying part-time work, and made a deliberate decision that it's finally time to buckle down and write that book you've been thinking about for years.

In case you hadn't been following along, the above paragraph is currently me.

Career-wise, I'm officially on my own. And I'm consciously not taking another full-time job for a bit while I work on making sure my actions (discipline) match my words (motivation to write a book).

Channeling Ze Frank, this is an invocation for beginnings, because my past failures at follow-through are no indication of my future performance.

Phew. Okay. Let's do this.

-Dann

👶 The kids are alright

You may have noticed this feel-good story (NYT gift article) in the headlines this month: a 13-year old boy is the first person to beat Tetris. If you saw it and didn't click through to the story, that's understandable—it's certainly one of those stories that one might assume is completely told through the headline alone.

But this accomplishment has way more depth and the story is super interesting. In the same way that the documentary Free Solo made audiences really appreciate climbing El Capitan, this 16-minute video does the same thing for this new Tetris accomplishment.

It's a fun watch, which does a fantastic job of explaining the stakes, context, and accomplishment of this feat that will go down in video game history.

⚔️ A tale of two news cycles

Earlier this month was CES, the Consumer Electronics Show that takes place in Las Vegas every year. The show itself has much less of an impact on my life than it did years ago (when I was a technology reporter and actually attended the conference for work). But it's still fun to watch from the sidelines and pay attention to the intricate dance of marketing drama in the tech world.

One bit of inside baseball I always like to catch is what Apple is doing during the conference. CES is huge, with approximately 135,000 attendees and 4,000 vendors. Many of these vendors take this opportunity to launch new products or features at the well-attended and highly-reported event, making it a prime time for announcements.

But there's always one vendor conspicuously absent: Apple.

It's a power move. Apple doesn't need this big event to capture headlines; it commands news cycles all on its own. And one of the ways that Apple likes to poke at CES is by doing its best to dominate headlines with Apple stories despite the massive, news-filled event.

That's why on January 8th, one day before CES 2024 began, Apple officially announced the pre-order and launch date for its new AR/VR headset the Apple Vision Pro. The news, of course, dominated both the news cycle as well as the social media chatter. All I can say is: bravo.

🎢 Highs and lows

I'm going to spend one more newsletter section talking about Apple, but only because there were two polar-opposite Apple stories in the news this month and I think the juxtaposition is possibly even more interesting than each story individually.

The first story, as I mentioned is the Apple Vision Pro. I think this ten-minute promotional video from Apple, which shows a guided tour of the product through the experience of someone trying it for the first time, provides an excellent feature summary for anyone not following along.

As far as my personal opinion...I find the device to be super interesting. Not as a product necessarily, but as an attempt. Apple is trying something new—its take on the still-nascent industry of AR/VR. It's not a product for everyone, or even for most people. But as someone who likes Apple, and is interested in moonshot attempts, I'm watching very closely.

As for the second story, in the same month that it announced its highly-anticipated Vision Pro, Apple also halted the sale of its latest Apple Watches due to losing a patent dispute.

The two watches, the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 include improved blood oxygen sensors that infringe on the patent(s) held by medical device company Masimo. Last month, Apple lost its bid to stop the sales ban, and so the watches officially became unavailable this month.

They’re back on the market as of Thursday (nearly a month after sales halted) with the blood oxygen sensors present but disabled.

The moral of each of these stories: move fast and break things, I guess?

🤖 My friend AI

Going back to the topic of CES, there was one product announcement that managed to break through and gain some media attention: a handheld AI-powered assistant called the Rabbit r1. The 25-minute keynote (an Apple-like launch strategy) does a great job of explaining the features and use cases.

If you're wondering why this gadget in particular caught people's attention, just look at it. It's beautiful. That's because it was designed by Teenage Engineering(!), the Swedish consumer electronics company famous for its award-winning designs and discerning product partnerships, like with Panic for the Playdate handheld gaming device.

I'd probably buy one if I hadn't just lost my job. It's only $199 (not cheap, but way more competitively priced than expected) and there's no monthly fee.

But, like the Apple segment above, the story itself is much less interesting than the juxtaposition of this story against another. In this case, the Rabbit r1 next to the Humane AI Pin, which I discussed in November's newsletter.

Both are AI assistants, but one just feels right (the Rabbit r1) and one just feels wrong (the Humane AI Pin).

At this point, I think the real difference between these two products is transparency and trust. As someone who uses AI on a near-daily basis, I know how often it's wrong. The r1 gives users a view into what's happening, whereas the AI Pin relies on blind trust.

It's possible that in the future we'll realize that the AI Pin was ahead of its time. But that doesn't help the product today. Between the two, I'll take the r1 every time.

🏡 Love thy neighbor

Lastly, my wife Avi asked if she could write a section for the newsletter this month, so I happily gave up some space for her thoughts. Her inspiration: a story in The Atlantic that particularly resonated. I'll let her take it from here:

For the last few years, I've been really fascinated by contemporary sociology—thinking about interesting questions like why we live the way that we live, why we behave as we do, and why our lives look a certain way. I'm always trying to understand more about modern human behavior and, more importantly, I seek out ways to have deep, meaningful relationships with the people in my life. I think that America's late 20th century embrace of individualism has enabled people to pursue their dreams in a way never before possible in history, but that it's also produced some unintended consequences (paywall bypass) in the ways we live.

I've never been a particularly religious person, and I've never liked the argument that "societies need religious institutions in order to function." But I do think that our country is drifting away from the institutions and structures that create collective moral formation, religious or not. This article presents moral formation as something that's not solely created by religious spaces, but that used to be more prevalent in many spheres of life. I especially liked how it recognizes the failings of pre-1950 moral structures and proposes ways to implement a new moral framework for our modern society.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

Thanks for reading The Dann Chronicles! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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December 2023

Hey all,

It's December, and I'm in a giving mood. If you fill out this form before Friday, December 22nd, I'll send you something fun for free. No catch or anything. Stamps are (relatively) cheap, so everyone who wants a holiday surprise is getting a little something.

Happy holidays!

-Dann

⚛️ Schrödinger's boolean

There's a heated debate about the future dangers of Artificial Intelligence. One group of people see it as an existential threat to humanity. In one doomsday scenario, technology just keeps getting better and better, exponentiating once AI learns how to improve itself. In an instant, machines are powerful enough to wipe out humanity, and one tiny miscommunication means we all die.

Another AI scenario is much less exciting. In this future, AI is much more like a smartphone—the technology rapidly improved, year-after-year, until it just sort of...hit the peak it's own design. Now, each new smartphone is just a minor improvement on the last. Maybe, artificial intelligence is just racing to the peak of what AI is able to do.

But as AI has been capturing headlines, there's another group of engineers making progress on a different technology that may be even more impactful. And that's quantum computing.

If you want to quickly get caught up, this 13-minute 60 Minutes segment on Quantum Computing does a decent job at explaining the technology and potential ramifications.

If AI is revolutionizing what a computer can do, quantum computing is doing the same for how fast it can do it. And not just a few multiples, but estimated 100 trillion times faster than current supercomputers.

I'm thinking about quantum computing sort of like Y2K. Prone to hype, but also carrying real dangers. It's a threshold into the unknown that will probably look quaint in hindsight, but is sort of intimidating to stare at head-on.

The thing that I find fascinating about quantum computing is the same thing I find fascinating about AI: the size of the threat. Both are existential threats to humanity. Artificial Intelligence because we may create a beast we can't control, and quantum computing because it could instantly make the very foundations of our technological society obsolete.

So while AI has all the exciting, tangible updates, quantum computing is the silent giant closing in a breakneck speed. Methinks society in ten years will look very different than society today.

📺 Manufactured Reality

Here's a sentence that may surprise you:

There's a new reality TV show that I'm excited about.

Let me explain. I'm no Martin Riese, but reality TV is a lot like bottled water—it's easy to write it off as all the same, but you're missing subtlety, nuance, and quite a bit of (dare I say?) art.

For example, if you haven't seen a season of Survivor since the original season one aired, you've missed a significant evolution of the game. Most people are surprised to hear Survivor is no longer really about surviving in a remote location: it's much more about strategy and social game. And it changes and evolves in material ways each year.

Going back to my original excitement, Netflix made Squid Game into a reality TV show, aptly named Squid Game: The Challenge. The first season felt fun and exciting, in the same way as season one of Survivor.

If you can look past the strange dystopia of the concept of the show (ie by watching this show, we are literally the audience that the original series was skewering), you get a complex and strategic game that's ripe for evolution and growth.

Plus, watching season one is to watch true reality-show masters at work. The challenge was: how do we get the younger generation addicted to reality show contests?

Just watch the first season of Squid Game: The Challenge, and then watch some of the complimentary behind-the-scenes TikTok content deftly posted by popular contestants, and you'll have your answer.

There's the argument for the hype. But let me end this section by tempering expectations. The show isn't going to change anyone's life (except maybe the new millionaire winner). Nor do I even consider it must-watch TV.

I do, however, think it is valid TV. And undeniably entertaining. The context, and how it fits within the wider world of reality TV, is just icing on the cake.

💭 A new lens

Boomers get a lot of hate on the Internet. And in most cases, I say: rightly so. I mean, "not all Boomers," of course, but I think many of the problems society is currently dealing with are a direct result of decisions made by Boomers.

But with that said, I do think it's interesting to think about the Boomer generation through the lens of trauma. This three-minute video explains the the larger context in which the generation was raised, contextualizing it in a way that younger generations might understand and possibly appreciate.

It's no excuse, but is a lens that I find illuminating.

🛶 Face first ahead

I recognize that this newsletter might now be considered just a distribution for Bobby Fingers' videos (I discussed his previous video back in April), but his new creation is too good to not share.

This time, Bobby Fingers made a full-sized row boat in the shape of a hyper-realistic Jeff Bezos head. The humor is dry, the skill level high, and the entire 28-minute video an absolute journey.

My favorite type of creators are ones with incredible mind-blowing talent who use their skills to make the most bizarre things imaginable. Bobby Fingers certainly fits that description.

Plus, who doesn't enjoy a good skewering of a billionaire? Bezos certainly has a knack for inspiring quality art.

🎩 Song and flash man

You've probably heard of Bill Wurtz. His most popular video, history of the entire world, i guess, was published six years ago and has over 163M views. That video (like most of his videos) is a rocket blasting off from earth. His style is singular and unmistakable. He has his own genre.

Because of that, I loved this 26-minute interview with Wurtz. His style is unique, and his approach to creative work completely his own. Listening to him talk gave me a new appreciation for his work, and I love when interviews do that.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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November 2023

Hey all,

I watched my first ever Hallmark Christmas movie this Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how I managed to completely avoid them until this point in my life, but recently discovering Pluto TV and feeling nostalgic for pre-streaming television had me open to new experiences.

In an ending scene, two will-they-won't-they characters take a Christmas Day stroll through New York City, It's snowing, and everything is dusted with a fresh clean layer of white.

It's the kind of holiday weather we just don't get anymore. At some point between when I moved here in 2004 and now, the chance of Christmas snow dropped to zero. It's a not-so-subtle reminder of climate change. Remember, NYC is officially subtropical now.

Anyway, I guess I'd give the movie about a "B.""

-Dann

🎁 Peak Consumerism

I don't usually promote my individual blog posts in my newsletter (did you know that I'm also semi-regularly posting content to my website?) but I had a lot of fun with this one and wanted to share.

I made my own 2023 Indie Holiday Gift Guide. I called it "indie" because it's just me — usually these type of gift guides are a collaborative process published by big magazines or newspapers. But why should they have all the fun?

I've always had a soft spot for holiday gift guides, as strange as that might sound. It's the closest I'll get to fun mail-order catalogues of my youth. I used to love pouring through Oriental Trading and Things You Never Knew Existed every time a new issue arrived in the mail, despite the fact that they were 90% the same issue-to-issue.

Online shopping took away much of the joy and novelty of mail order catalogues, but the spirit lives on in holiday gift guides. I always love seeing which products I recognize and which are new to me. You can get a sense of each publication by the products each chooses to include in their respective guides.

If you were to put together your own holiday gift guide, what items would you include?

📌 In defense of screens

Remember Quibi? It was a new video platform, designed specifically for smartphones, that promised to change the entire industry. It raised $1.75 billion before it even launched and lasted only six months before shutting down back in 2020.

I'm asking because I feeling some deja vu.

There's a tech company that's been operating in stealth, yet getting a ton of pre-revenue buzz. It was founded by a bunch of ex-Apple employees, with a plan to kill the smartphone as we know it, allowing us to give up screens without giving up functionality. It raised over $200M to fund this mission.

The company is Humane and this month it launched its first product, the AI Pin.

If I was skeptical of the company before the product launch, I'm straight up doubtful now. If you have ten minutes (or less at 2x speed), you should watch the product launch video yourself. It's truly bizarre.

Sean O'Kane covers all the little infuriating details on his blog (side note: Sean and I actually went to college together, and he joined The Verge shortly after I left). But one flub stood out against the rest.

When the AI Pin is asked about the best place to view the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, it confidently answers Australia. That is 100% wrong—North America will have the best views.

It's since been fixed (the AI voiceover now answers Nazas, Durango, Mexico in every version of the video). But how does an error that big make it into a launch this big? Sort of amazing.

🍪 Limited time only

I've discovered a new favorite treat at Trader Joe's, the unassuming Chocolate Dipped Danish Cookies. It's one of those treats where the cashier will gush about how much they love it, too, and how they were surprised it was so tasty since they look sort of dry and boring (actual conversation).

If you live near a Trader Joes and want to try them (which you do), you should act fast. I don’t have any insider information that these will be discontinued soon, but remember that I'm a retail harbinger of failure (as I discussed before), so the mere fact that I love them means they’re not long for this world.

💌 Do Not Email

I always consider November to be Do Not Email month, mostly because it's the best time to unsubscribe from all those emails you don't actually want to be getting.

The 1-2-3 punch of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday means nearly every company that has your email is going to be sending you an email.

What most people don't realize is that those little unsubscribe links at the bottom of marketing emails actually work. So I encourage you to take 10 minutes each day to actually unsubscribe from emails that you don't want to be receiving (even if it's this newsletter...I don't want you on my list if this email doesn't bring you joy).

While you're on a roll digitally, maybe you want to get fewer flyers and catalogs in your physical mail as well. There's actually a solution for that, supported by the FTC.

As explained on the FTC's website, you can register with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and asked to be excluded from physical marketing mail. Registration costs $4 (because of course it does) but it lasts for 10 years. I signed up in December of 2022, and there's since been a noticeable drop in physical junk mail.

Happy Do Not Email month!

✂️ The darkest timeline

If I were to believe in the multiverse, I might think there was a very distinct timeline split this past weekend—in one timeline, humanity thrives and in another it completely dies out.

Late in the afternoon on Friday, it was announced that Sam Altman (co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT) was fired by its board of directors. The given reason was that the board concluded that Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board."

My initial thought was that he was somehow lying about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—that point in the (not-so-distant?) future where AI crosses the threshold of human intelligence and the real existential threat to humanity starts.

The following weekend+ was a wild ride, and here are the main points of the journey:

Sam Altman fired, the board publicly announces the news with a blog post
Public uproar, Altman then rumored to be in talks to return as CEO
Hours later, the board announces a new CEO (not Altman)
Overnight (before market open on Monday!) Microsoft announces it is hiring Altman
Board members flip and take Altman's side
The board refuses to elaborate on Altman's wrongdoings (even to the new CEO) and 700 of 770 employees threaten to quit unless Altman is reinstated
Rumors that Altman is in talks to return at CEO (again)
Altman is back with a (largely) new board

Following along, it honestly felt like the first season of Game of Thrones (back when it was good). Not just because of the power struggles, but because of the potential danger to humanity posed by AI, and the fighting over who gets to control it.

The public largely took Altman's side. No surprise, since he's such a likable public figure. He's the darling child of AI, just like Sam Bankman-Fried was the darling child of crypto.

From what I can tell (and again, these are rumors) the board may have wanted to slow down the pace of innovation, and Altman was full-speed again. There may have been a disagreement about risk tolerance and safety.

Or maybe a board member was catty about being in the dark about a recent OpenAI product launch, and staged a "coup."

But I don't know what to think. I just don't have enough information. But it does make me feel better, now that Altman was reinstated, to know that nearly all OpenAI employees wanted his return. I have to assume they have access to information that I don't have, and are making an informed decision.

But really, that's all we have to go off of. If this was actually a timeline split, I sure hope we're not on the dark path.

Further reading:

The interested normie's guide to OpenAI drama
WSJ's Behind the Scenes of Sam Altman’s Showdown at OpenAI (bypass paywall)
Reuter's OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster, sources say

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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October 2023

Hey all,

Like many others, I'm sad, horrified, depressed, angry, outraged, upset (and all the other emotions) about the situation in the middle east. I've been both binging news, and then purposely trying to take mental heath breaks from the headlines.

I really liked this Pete Davidson cold open for SNL. And I think it's important to know that I don't have to post about my outrage. Neither do you. (NTY gift article).

The amount of anti-semitism (both witting and unwitting) has been terrifying to witness (also NYT gift article). In my mind, there’s space to both condemn terror and want peace for innocent people on both sides.

I'm largely going to avoid the topic of the conflict in this newsletter. There are other, better, news sources if you want those updates. Instead, we're going to keep things rolling here like every month past.

With all that said, let's get to the stories.

-Dann

🪦 Meme Cult

I don't think the movie Dumb Money (about WallStreetBets and the GameStop short squeeze) is worth your time. I only saw it because I have an Alamo Drafthouse Season Pass (unlimited movies) and I was curious how the creative team would approach dramatizing this highly-online story. The movie was throughly fine.

What was missing from the story, however, was the insanity that emerged after Keith Gill's testimony before congress in February of 2021. Those who stuck around in the movement in the following months were effectively sucked into a doomsday cult.

For that story, we turn to Dan Olsen of the YouTube Channel Folding Ideas, and his two and a half hour(!) documentary This is Financial Advice. Think: if The Big Short were created by a talented indie YouTube content creator.

From around 01:15:05 in the video (emphasis mine):

The thing that truly separates a meme stock from every other garbage ticker is that the act of buying, in and of itself, becomes the meme. A combination of absurdist performance and inherently gamified exercise. In 2023 though, that wave has crested and broken. The joke is over but the investors are still around. And, as we'll see, the gleeful contrarianism is gone, replaced with stone-faced dedication to a perceived cause.

This "perceived cause" went completely off the rails, leaving Occupy Wall Street territory and entering doomsday-cult, QAnon land. These retail traders' behavior becoming so predictable that they've been scammed by the very people they were fighting against, all while believing they're on the verge of ushering what is effectively the rapture.

It's a sad story, but wildly interesting for anyone who remembers the GME craze.

♟️ Keeping Score

The indie game designer Zach Gage (whom I've written about before) is back with his most ambitious project yet. It's called Puzzmo, and it's not just a game, it's an entire website, styled like a newspaper, full of different daily games.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it's a direct competitor to the New York Times' gaming hub. Puzzmo is backed by NYT competitor Hearst, which was insanely smart to partner with someone like Gage to launch this new platform.

In addition to a riff on the classic crossword puzzle, it'll contain games like Spelltower, Really Bad Chess and Typeshift (all created by Zach Gage) as well as his new game Flipart.

Perhaps the most fun part is that access to Puzzmo is currently limited. Each day, "keys" are awarded to the first 500 people to solve a daily puzzle. If you're among those lucky few, you'll then receive a physical key, arriving via snail mail, to get in. Mine should arrive in the next day or two. I'm excited.

⏯️ StumbleAgain

When the Internet was still new (back in 2001), a new website called StumbleUpon was launched. It was a time before widespread use of social media (Myspace started in 2003) or link aggregators (Digg started in 2004).

Back then, the Internet felt magical, with a seemingly endless sea of fun, niche, individual-created content just waiting to be discovered. And StumbleUpon was one of those portals into that bottomless world: a button that, when pushed, would bring the user to a semi-random website or video that matched the user's interest.

But the Internet grew and evolved. The multitude of small, passionate, independent websites were eaten up by massive, ad-driven corporate entities. Today, time online is mostly spent hopping from one massive company's website to another.

But this is all just background information to tell you about a free new website that recreates the joy of early-Internet exploring via StumbleUpon.

It's created by premium search engine Kagi (whom I love), and cycles between recent posts from a curated list of small, independent content creators (like yours truly).

You may not spend quite as much time browsing Kagi Small Web as you did with StumbleUpon, but it's a great way to re-capture some of that magic of the early Internet.

🌎 Line Go Up

World population is officially over eight billion. If you're curious where you fit in, you should check out Population.io by World Data Lab.

Plug in your birthday, birth country, and sex at birth, and get all your personal stats, presented in beautiful visualizations. As for me? I'm older than 59% of the world's population and older than 48% of all people in United States.

It's also interesting to compare how my expected lifespan is different as a United States citizen compared to the world average.

But the biggest take away is that the world has a lot of people.

🔈 Talking to Joe

I can't seem to get enough of Joe Pera. If you know him, you probably know him as the slow-talking comedian with a (former) 15-minute wholesome, feel-good show Joe Pera Talks With You on Adult Swim (and streaming on HBO Max) or his evening comedy podcast Drifting Off With Joe Pera, specifically designed to help lull you to sleep.

He's been on my mind because he has a new free standup comedy special on YouTube, which I highly recommend to those who are already familiar with his work, and moderately recommend to everyone else.

While it's wonderful to have more Joe Pera in my life, it also comes with a tinge of sadness. His series Joe Pera Talks With You was a victim of the pandemic, cancelled before the creative team was able to complete the final season of the full planned story.

In many ways, this comedy special feels like the ghost of Joe Pera's unfinished business. It's wonderful to see him and his team continuing to work together, but it only re-affirms that he has more to say.

Hopefully someone will pick Joe Pera Talks With You up for its final season. It's a wonderful show that deserves the ending that the creative team intended.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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September 2023

Hey all,

Next month is officially the three-year anniversary of this newsletter. That's three years of interesting links, cool products, entertaining movies, and funny videos.

To celebrate, I'm launching a special limited edition Dann Chronicles t-shirt. If you like the design, act quickly, because it will only be available until October 14th. Then, it will be gone forever.

If that's not enough to entice you, your purchase will go to a good cause. 100% of the proceeds will go to the Entertainment Community Fund.

As you know (since you read my newsletter), I love watching movies and TV shows. As such, I've been following the writers (and now actors) strike closely. This three-year anniversary of The Dann Chronicles monthly newsletter seemed like a great opportunity to engage my readers and try to help.

The Entertainment Community Fund (formerly Actor's Fund) helps support programs that foster stability and resiliency, and provide a safety net for performing arts and entertainment workers.

With this t-shirt, you can simultaneously help both writers and actors negotiate better terms in this age of streaming media and show your support for The Dann Chronicles newsletter.

-Dann

✂ Cut and dry

The Wirecutter was a trailblazer in the world of online reviews. It first launched to a world filled with junk user reviews (of dubious authenticity) and SEO-spam websites. The Wirecutter's approach was different: bring in an expert, perform hours upon hours of meticulous testing, and write the most detailed article separating the wheat from the chaff. If Wirecutter said something was the best, it was the best.

So, then, what happened?

I know I've noticed it. A subtle decline in the (quality? trustworthiness?) of the reviews. It's not something that I can really specifically put a finger on. More a sense. A deterioration starting roughly when the publication was purchased by the New York Times...

Fortunately, Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic (gift article) digs into this change with all the rigor and detail of an original Wirecutter article.

The findings? The world has simply changed. Writers are comped differently, most product categories are now filled with just-fine clones, and the rise of "trust influencers" (ie people on TikTok/Instagram).

As Stephen King would say in The Dark Tower series: the world has moved on.

🚗 Wake and Brake

I like to consider myself fairly privacy-focused, going so far as using Proton Mail (instead of Gmail) for email and Kagi (instead of Google Search) for web searches.

But I never thought I'd need to worry about cars, in relation to privacy. But it turns out car companies might be the most egregious privacy violators of any industry ever.

Nissan is one of the worst offenders, but at least they're honest(?) about it. From their official privacy policy, written in plain English, here are some of the things Nissan collects and/or reserves the right to sell (emphasis mine [sorry that, like, the entire quote is emphasized]):

Sensitive personal information, including driver’s license number, national or state identification number, citizenship status, immigration status, race, national origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, sexual activity, precise geolocation, health diagnosis data, and genetic information.

They save both data collected and inferred. I have no idea how they're collecting or inferring this data, but they've got it.

Have you read your car's privacy policy?

PS: I can't believe there are still people out there who aren't using protection. Please please please freeze your credit.

👂 Welcome back, Podder

One of my favorite podcasters, P.J. Vogt, is back with a new podcast called Search Engine. His latest episode, exploring why Netlfix (and other streaming services) hide show viewership analytics numbers, is both interesting and engaging.

I'd expect nothing less. P.J. Vogt cut his teeth on NPR co-hosting (along with Alex Goldman) a show about the Internet called TLDR. Then, the two very publicly left NPR to join Alex Blumberg's then-new Gimlet Media, helming a similarly-themed show called Reply All (which includes possibly my favorite podcast episode of all time).

P.J. Vogt left Reply All in 2021 (there was a bit of drama) and remained largely quiet (minus his continued Twitter/X presence, and a self-produced limited-series podcast).

It's wonderful to see him back, doing what he does best: highly polished podcasts covering a range of super interesting content. It's like an old friend returning, and I'm all for it.

📞 Phone-y News

The new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro recently made all the headlines, but it's last week's release of iOS 17 that's the more interesting bit of news.

As usual, I turn to the funny and entertaining Joanna Stern (WSJ) for the most entertaining and accessible (video) summary of new features.

The features I'm most excited for?

Standby Mode
Contact Posters
Improved f@^#ing autocorrect
Personal voice (just because it's fun)
Custom stickers
Check in

As long as you've got an iPhone XR (2018) or newer, you get the full update for free. Isn't that better than buying a new phone?

📺 Lighten Up

Television has gotten so serious. It feels like every time someone recommends a new show, it's some involved, dramatic, melodrama with five+ seasons (and still going) and dense, hour-long episodes. Often, these recommendations go in one ear and out the other, because it feels too overwhelming to try and catch up.

Sometimes you just want a fun comedy with manageable 30-minute episodes. And that's why I have no problem recommending two fantastic shows that ended (as in, series finale ended) this year.

How To With John Wilson (three seasons, six episodes each) is a delightful 30-minute HBO show, produced by Nathan "For You" Fielder. I might be a bit biased, since it's about New York City, but I can't get enough of his dry comedy paired with the improbable candid footage he (and his team) collects. The series finale was strange, delightful, and a great way to cap the series. 9.5/10

Barry (four seasons, eight episodes each) is also a delightful 30-minute HBO show, also a comedy, albeit much darker than How To. The series finale, which aired in May of this year, reminded me of the ending of Breaking Bad. I was left thinking, "wow, these writers really know how to land a plane." 9.7/10

Did you watch either of these shows? I would love to hear your thoughts.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

And don’t forget to snag one of the Dann Chronicles t-shirts while they’re available. They’ll only be available for a limited time (through Oct 14) and all the money raised goes to a good cause.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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August 2023

Hey all,

Sometimes this intro section is the hardest part of my email to write.

I guess I just don't have much to say this month. So let's just get into the stories.

-Dann

✋ Talk to the hand

I had a busy few weeks of movies, but there's one film I just feel the need to talk about.

No, it's not Barbie or Oppenheimer (Barbie won for me). I also saw and enjoyed Theater Camp, maybe more than my previous Barbenheimer weekend. And Jules seemed to come out of nowhere, taking top place as my favorite comedy of the year.

Instead, I really really want to talk about the movie Talk to Me.

I didn't know anything about the movie before entering the theater. Only that I tend to like A24 horror films and the trailer looked fantastic. Other than that, I went in totally blind.

It was a solid movie. But most of my love/appreciation for Talk to Me came after the film was over.

Talk to Me is the debut film from high-energy Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou. These two got their start on YouTube through their channel RackaRacka. While I had never heard of them before, they had a pretty large following (millions) before making their first film.

I feel like "YouTube Filmmakers" has a negative connotation. But in this case, it's all pros and no negatives. The pacing, editing, tone, and script feels hip and modern, and those are the only traces of the more "amateur" YouTube roots of the directors.

Instead, their YouTube background meant a ton of supplementary content following these two extremely likable directors as they experience hitting a home run with their first film.

After watching the movie, I recommend:

We Made a HORROR FILM (Talk To Me) follows the two through their surreal experience bringing their movie to the Sundance film festival and selling to A24.
We released our film WORLDWIDE (Talk to Me) walks through the intense promotional circuit for the film.
'Talk to Me' Scene Breakdown with Danny and Michael Philippou is a Fandango video with the two directors giving the inside scoop behind a scene, and is a great peek into how they work

They're just so gosh darn likable. I can't wait to see what they do next.

🐈 Automation Station

We recently adopted a new cat (welcome to our home, Peter!). I've had cats nearly my entire life, but was really enjoying the few-month stretch where I didn't need to clean a litter box. During that time, I decided that if we were to adopt another cat, I'd invest in a Litter Robot.

It's amazing. Even better than I expected. Not having the task of cleaning a litter box constantly hanging over my head is just such a relief.

For anyone that knows me, my desire for a Litter Robot comes as no surprise. It's part of a larger theme of automation that's been running through my life over the past several years.

I first read David Allen's Getting Things Done in 2007, and his concept of "mind like water" had a huge impact on me. The more you can automate, the less your brain needs to hold on to these recurring tasks.

Slowly but surely, I've been trying to automate tasks that I either do regularly or want to do regularly. At this point in my life, I have a fairly healthy list of automations:

Lights turn on and off in different rooms in the morning and evening
Amazon Subscribe and Save for a few selected frequently-used items
Automatic retirement savings out of every paycheck
All digital files automatically backed up to the cloud
A script I wrote sends me historical Pinboard Bookmarks I've made
Recurring Apple Reminders remind me to complete tasks like daily journaling and weekly Inbox Zero/Download Folder Zero
Calendar events (with alerts) remind me about upcoming dates-of-note, such as movie/book releases, birthdays, events

Personal automation is extremely powerful, and something I wholly recommend to everyone reading. You can start easy — toss a recurring event onto your calendar, or set up a recurring reminder on your phone. But even more advanced tasks are easy thanks to ChatGPT. Just search "How can I automate XXX" and you're off to the races.

Are you automating something interesting? I'd love to hear. Reply and let me know.

🏢 Home from Work

Life is definitely starting to feel much more back-to-(new)-normal post-pandemic, but New York City is still undergoing seismic shifts just below the surface. In many ways, I'm still sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop, as work-from-home culture starts seriously impacting New York City's in-office-based economy.

There are two stories in particular that caught my eye:

Outdoor dining in becoming permanent in NYC with the caveat that structures in the street must be taken down in the winter
Parts of Midtown are being rezoned from office to residential (NYT gift article) after some serious feet-dragging over the apparent difficulty

I, for one, think both moves are in the right direction. Prolific outdoor dining just seems like a no-brainer, and clearing the streets for street cleaning in the winter (even though NYC doesn't really get snow anymore) seams like a fair ask.

I imagine the re-zoning will take much longer for us to really notice. But the change seems to match the market, so let's get some apartments up in those empty offices.

🚘 Y'all are (road) trippin'

Old habits die hard. I was watching MKBHD's video Worst Hot Takes in Tech and remembered that there are still iPhone users who use Google Maps because they think that Apple Maps is garbage.

This is a friendly Public Service Announcement: Apple Maps is now better than Google Maps*.

When Apple Maps first launched, this was definitively not the case. Apple Maps was terrible compared to Google Maps. Of course, Google had a seven year head start at that point.

But quietly, over the course of several years, Apple Maps caught up and then surpassed Google Maps. Try and side-by-side comparison of directions, traffic, street view...everything. See for yourself.

If you're still using Google Maps because of an opinion you formed over a decade ago when the Apple Maps was first released...it might be time to re-evaluate the options.

PS Please please please stop constantly closing all your iOS apps, too.

for most features, and in most locations.

🤖 Game of Love

I have no doubt in my mind that humans in the future will have in-depth, meaningful relationships with machines. Hell, it's happening already.

Despite this, I rolled my eyes during the first 30-seconds of this Krazam skit, but ended up liking the video so much I knew I had to share it. You should push past any biases about the premise and watch the 4 minute and 43 second video AI Boyfriend.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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July 2023

Hey all,

I really came down to the wire with this edition of the newsletter, didn't I? It's Monday, July 31st, which means that this technically is still the July newsletter. But it's about as close as you can possibly get to missing my own self-imposed deadline.

Most of the time, writing this newsletter feels like shouting into a vacuum (meaning the emptiness of space, not a Dyson). But then I get a bit behind schedule for a month, and people start asking when the newsletter is going to drop. It's a nice little reminder that people are actually paying attention.

But motivation in general is such a fickle thing, isn't it? Sometimes it's easy to sit down and pump one of these newsletters out. Other times it's like pulling my own teeth. Not because it's difficult, per say, but sometimes it can feel like a herculean effort.

This newsletter has been 80% done for a couple weeks now. But I just...didn't finish it.

But now I did (finish it). Just in the nick of time.

-Dann

🪦 Me the Harbinger

I've had this inexplicable experience my entire life: I'll discover a fun new food item in the grocery store, love it, and then the shelf is completely empty when I return to buy more.

It's not just my imagination, either. Partners have commented on it my entire life. Grocery store inventory isn't something anyone has even thought about before me, and suddenly they're brought into a world of product release cycles, re-stock dates, and regular disappointment.

According to MIT, it's not just bad luck. I may just be a "harbinger of failure". There's a certain category of consumer that predicts the doom of certain products. I guess that's me.

On one hand, it feels great to have my experience validated. On the other, where'd my Skippy PB Bites go... 🙁

♟️ Your move

Have you played the Password Game by Neal.fun? How far did you get? I made it all the way through to the chess move rule.

🚫 While the iron is hot

By this point, you probably already know that we're in the midst of a massive writer's strike. The strike has recently grown to include SAG (actors). This means that both writers and actors are on strike at the same time.

This isn't the first writer's strike.

Looking back at past strikes can help provide some interesting context. The last time both writers and actors were striking together was the 1960's, as a direct result of the rise in popularity of television. The big new thing to come out of that strike was residuals (actors being paid after the original work, for reruns, home video release, etc).

Ben Thompson provided some interesting context about this strike that I didn't have before reading his article:

Preserving union jobs in the face of technological replacements...is what led to the rise of residuals, which were at the core of the 1960 strike: if studios were showing movies on TV, then that meant they were occupying scarce time with content that actors weren’t getting paid for, which is to say that the actors in the movie that was being shown were competing with themselves; thus the union demand that they be paid for it.

Before streaming, there was a limited amount of air time for everything: a maximum number of theaters where movies could air, and a maximum number of TV channels that could air content. If an executive chose to air a rerun, they were explicitly choosing not to air something new. Thus, actors were competing with themselves, and the solution was residuals.

Streaming has changed this formula completely. We're no longer limited by a maximum number of broadcast hours.

Due to this seismic shift in the dynamics of streaming vs. broadcast, it's no wonder that we're seeing such a big strike.

I'm not close enough to the industry to have an opinion about where I think things should end up. But it is clear to me that writers/actors deserve a fair wage, and that's not something that's currently happening in the industry.

I also miss new shows, so I hope it's resolved soon.

🎣 Carp-e Diem

I've been sinking some decent playtime this month into a totally remade and remastered version of one of my favorite mobile games. Ridiculous Fishing EX has been rewritten from the ground up, and has been a blast playing a game I haven't touched since its original release in 2013.

There's no wonder its so fun, it's made by an all-star team:

Based on Vlambeer’s popular 2013 original, Ridiculous Fishing was lovingly handcrafted over the course of two years by Vlambeer (Super Crate Box, Nuclear Throne), Zach Gage (SpellTower, Knotwords, Good Sudoku, Really Bad Chess, Card of Darkness) and Greg Wohlwend (Threes, Hundreds, TumbleSeed), and remade in collaboration with KO_OP (GNOG, Winding Worlds).

You may remember Zach Gage from a past newsletter, where I sang his praises after he released Knotwords.

The only big asterisk to note is that Ridiculous Fishing EX is part of Apple Arcade, a $5/mo gaming subscription offered by Apple. However, if you've never used Apple Arcade before, you'll be eligible for a free trial and can certainly finish this game before it expires. And if you've already used your free trial, $5 for one month of playtime is well worth the cost for making it through this game.

📈 Exponential Growth

Netflix started cracking down on Password sharing. It's actually been going pretty well for them.

For users who may have shared their passwords, it's a different story (skit).

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

Get full access to The Dann Chronicles at dannberg.substack.com/subscribe

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June 2023

Hey all,

It's been a weird month. It felt like the entire world was glued to the news, closely monitoring the missing Titan submarine that lost contact with the rest of the world while diving to the Titanic shipwreck. In what can only be called an act of mercy compared to the alternative (trapped in the sub until the oxygen ran out), an implosion was confirmed after debris from the OceanGate Titan submersible were discovered on the sea floor.

These days, so much of our lives are spent in little bubbles. The news stories that rise to the surface in my world are likely different than the new stories that bubble up in yours. It's not even a politics thing, it's an algorithm thing. Depending on the websites you browse, and the people you follow, even stories that are everywhere for you might not even penetrate my bubble at all.

But sometimes there are stories big enough to break through those different bubbles and become universal news. This month, the search for this missing submarine was one of these big stories, whether you like it or not.

While it's definitely not a feel good story, I do enjoy being a part of these big communal shared experiences. It makes me feel connected to the wider society, especially at a point in history where it feels like everyone is drifting further and further apart.

-Dann

👓 Augmented World

Apple announced a new mixed-reality headset. I guess I need to talk a little bit about it, don't I?

But first, here's a six-minute announcement recap video, in case you missed it.

I went into this announcement a skeptic. I figured AR/VR was a flash-in-the-pan — the equivalent of 3D Televisions. Society had moved on, and now Artificial Intelligence was the next big thing. Virtual Reality just didn't have space anymore.

And I'm still not totally convinced that opinion is wrong.

However, after Apple's announcement, I understand how AR/VR could fit into our society.

Meta presented its VR vision years ago with the Oculus, which never really caught on. The technology was limited by the low price point, and the low price point necessary to get the device into as many hands as possible in order to enable to "network effect." Meta's VR was all about socializing with friends and playing games. The problem is, VR is a worse version of both of those things.

And that was the mindset that I think most people went into Apple's AR/VR announcement event. But it turns out Apple was thinking much broader.

It turns out Apple has solved all the previous hardware and software limitations in all the other devices (it had to create a device at a laughably-high price in order to do so, but it did). But that's the thing, Apple had to solve all those limitations in order for people to really see the bigger picture.

Here's my hypothesis: the Apple Vision Pro will be a tool for work and productivity. It won't be for everyone, but it will be fairly common in 5-10 years, once the price comes down to $1,500 - $2000. It'll replace laptops for many people.

Here's my thinking: the MacBook laptop is still a productivity workhorse. Laptops are what people use for work. iPads, even with similar-sized screens just aren't the same. In fact, productivity gets harder (not impossible, but harder) the smaller you get: laptop > tablet > smartphone > smart watch. Each smaller screen is a different computing context.

The Vision Pro headset expands your computing context to your entire room. You can put the headset on and suddenly be transported to an entire room of all the digital things you want to get done. Then you can take off the headset when you're done and completely leave that digital context.

At least, that's the reality that Apple is presenting. I don't know if it's what we'll get, but all the tech reviewers who got the 30-minute demo after the announcement seem to think so. If anyone can pull it off, it's Apple.

Further reading:

John Gruber (long-time Apple blogger) talks about his demo experience
David Smith (long-time indie Apple Developer) shares why he'll be a day-one developer
A less optimistic opinion from The Atlantic (via Avi)

👑 Game of Chimps

Chimp Empire is a four-part Netflix documentary series that follows two warring factions of chimpanzees in Uganda. It's also one of the best, entertaining, cinematic, educational, and engaging pieces of media I've ever seen. It's Game of Thrones, but real life and with chimps, complete with a full cast of characters, intrigue, power struggles, and drama.

The footage they capture is unreal. Since these chimps have been living side-by-side with researchers for 25+ years, humans just fade into the background for them. The chimps have bigger things to worry about. And the result is unparalleled access to all the high-drama of the biggest chimp colonies in the world.

Netflix also has a behind-the-scenes documentary and article, but you should watch the series first so you don't spoil anything.

🫡 So long, and thanks for all the links

I strongly believe that you should let your actions communicate your beliefs. I'm not perfect at this, but there are lots of way that I put this into practice:

I value privacy, so I pay for premium versions of free alternatives (Proton Mail instead of Gmail, Kagi instead of Google Search)
I think Meta is creepy, so I don't use Facebook and I modify my Instagram usage quite heavily
I also think web tracking is creepy, so I use Brave Browser and block trackers
I don't like what Elon Musk has done at Twitter, so I stopped using it

I'm not really loud about these behaviors (I do recognize the irony of claiming this while also listing them in this newsletter) nor do I encourage others to follow suit. But it's how I feel, so it's how I act.

This month, I'd saddened to add another company to the list: Reddit.

Even if you haven't been following the drama, you may have been pulled in anyway: a large number of subreddits (small Reddit communities) went dark to protest some upcoming changes. These days, some of the most useful Google search results are Reddit posts, which meant the impact of the protest went beyond regular Reddit users.

For me, the entire situation just makes me sad. Steve Huffman, Reddit's CEO, has just been a real ass about everything, for no good reason. I think everyone understood that Reddit's business model needed to change, and that there would be consequences to both third-party developers and users. But no one thought these changes would be announced, explained, and enforced with such distain for the community.

I guess that's what you do when you're inspired by Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. Although I'm not sure how anyone could be inspired by how Twitter was handled.

My main way to browse Reddit, the superb app Apollo, is going dark at the end of the month. And with it, the majority of my Reddit usage. C'est la vie.

🎭 Generation Avatar

Apple's Vision Pro announcement included something that I initially thought was a little weird. You can make a FaceTime video call while wearing the headset, and while you'll see your friends' faces, all they'll see is a hyper-realistic avatar of you.

Who'd want that?

But then I saw this TikTok video that made an excellent case that avatars might be just where we're heading. It's a generational thing.

Boomers use technology is a very specific way: utilizing tools like Facebook to digitally re-create the close-knit personal communities that the pre-digital world forced them to build.

Millennials, on the other hand, where the first generation online, where the internet was a dangerous place full of strangers, and posting the wrong picture online could be disastrous for college or job prospects. The result is a very curated online image.

Gen-Z is the first truly internet-native generation, which also has the trauma of the Pandemic. They were forced to be online, so they were going to just have fun with it and not take it seriously. Because to take it seriously would be a faux pas for their generation.

The theory is that the next generation will go the exact opposite of all this, and be the most privacy-focused generation of all. They'll navigate their digital world through an avatar, and it'll be cringe to have a strong online presence where your real face is plastered everywhere.

Just a hunch. But something interesting to watch out for.

🎶 Heart and Soulless

I've never been what you'd call a "music person." It's not that I dislike music, it's just that it doesn't really do much for me. The older I've gotten, and the more I've learned about how other people experience music, the more I think my brain just might be a little different.

Honestly, I think that's why I enjoyed this 13-minute 60 Minutes segment on Rick Ruben so much — it does a great job of illustrating the intangible about music. It's a must-watch. Rick Ruben is such a character, with such a huge influence on modern music, but isn't a musician at all himself.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the feature-length HBO documentary Listening to Kenny G, as well. One of the things the Kenny G doc does so well is explore why so many musicians feel like Kenny G's music (while widely popular) is completely soulless.

My takeaway after watching both of these documentaries: it's a good thing I never tried to make music myself, because it'd certainly fall squarely into the Kenny G camp.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

Get full access to The Dann Chronicles at dannberg.substack.com/subscribe

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May 2023

Hey all,

Welcome to another issue of The Dann Chronicles. This newsletter is to coming to about a week later than the usual date. This month has been jam packed, between the new job, travel, and just general life (and by "life" I obviously mean Zelda).

Thanks to my new job, I've been spending more time outdoors this year than I have in the past several years working from home. Without a daily commute, I had to actually find excuses to leave the apartment.

But this year is different. Not only am I commuting to the office, but I've been going in style: an electric scooter has been zipping me from Downtown Brooklyn to SoHo over the Manhattan Bridge. It's been wonderful (and yes, I wear a helmet).

So far, we've had a pretty mild start to summer. Let's see how long that lasts.

-Dann

🍦 We all s'cream

I have a new kitchen toy. I snagged the Ninja CREAMi Deluxe ice cream maker last time it was on sale, and it arrived last week.

If you haven't heard of this miraculous gadget, let me explain. Inside many professional kitchens you'll find a $6,500 Pacojet. First invented in 1988, it held the patent on reverse ice cream making (solid into ice cream, as opposed to the traditional liquid base churned to ice cream).

In 2017, the patent expired. Ninja swooped in and tried their hand at a cheaper consumer-level device. The result is the CREAMi.

I called it a "miraculous gadget" earlier, and that may be an understatement. It turned two containers of Chobani Banana Greek Yogurt, a touch of sugar free vanilla pudding mix, a splash of almond milk, and some peanut butter, into a Talenti-level dessert. No joke, same consistency, and flavor pop.

Having the power to make wickedly-good desserts, while carefully controlling the ingredients, is a super power. Bravo, Ninja.

🏡 WFH FTW or FTL?

With my new job, I'm back in the office five days a week. Not because it's required, but because I want to be there.

It's wonderful that we, as a society, have added locational flexibility to a wide-ranging number of careers post-COVID, but it's easy to focus on the positives of this new arrangement while glossing over the negative ramifications.

One of the greatest penalties, especially for young people, is less supervision (NYT gift article). This lack of instant face-to-face feedback now can result in big career consequences later.

I still see a lot of online hate for us back-to-the-office folks — like we're all out-of-touch boomers who don't understand the concept of work/life balance. But it's way more nuanced than that, and if you're choosing to work remote, it's important to seriously examine the cost of that decision. Maybe it's worth it for you. Maybe it's time for a change.

I think we should continue to have remote work be cool, while also making back-in-the-office cool, too. We can all be cool.

🎙 Mulaney's Private Parts

John Mulaney's new special Baby J is proof that you never really know what goes on in people's private lives. It's both an intimate and harrowing look at Mulaney's intervention and rehab, and our first real glimpse into how bad the seemingly clean-cut comedian has got it.

The standup special, like all feel-good stories, ends on a high note: the star is now clean post-rehab, thanks to the intervention of his friends. But the stories he tells, and the private stories that he only hints at, tell a different story. This is only the beginning of the road for Mulaney.

As a compliment to the new special, I really enjoyed his interview on the Theo Von podcast. The two discuss addiction in detail (each are now sober), and I found myself deeply empathizing, despite never having a crippling drug addiction myself.

🗡️ One game to Hyrule them all

I won't spend too much time talking about the new Zelda game Tears of the Kingdom, because if you know, you know.

I've been thoroughly enjoying (and lovingly? hating) the new game. The map is literally three times bigger than Breath of the Wild, and the all-new abilities (like Ultrahand, Ascend, and Recall) create an all-new game.

Just wanted to chime in and say the hype is real. If this game has been calling to you, go ahead and answer it.

🕵️‍♂️ Fake Plastic Juries

We (sort of) found out what would happen if The Truman Show existed in real life.

Ronald Gladden got selected to be a member of a jury. He then served on that jury. But the whole thing was fake. From the judge, to the case, to the fellow jury members.

Jury Duty (free to stream on Freevee) is a fun, light watch. Sort of a mix between The Office and The Rehearsal, but not quite as good as either.

I also think it's an interesting show because of the ethical implications. I'm not sure how the production company got his consent before filming, but I'm sure it was done in a legally defensible way. It's just strange to juxtapose that against Gladden's stories of paranoia lingering weeks after filming stopped.

But at least they didn't lock him in a room naked for over a year, right?

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

Get full access to The Dann Chronicles at dannberg.substack.com/subscribe

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April 2023

Hey all,

In last month's newsletter, I talked about making big career changes, but didn't say what I was going to do next. So here's the big news: I've decided to join the cloud-cost visibility and optimization company Vantage as Director of Community.

I thought a lot about all my possible career options before starting at Vantage. It feels strange to leave the familiarity and comfort of a FinOps Practitioner position (where the work is clear and directly measurable) for this new DevRel (developer relations) role that I didn't even know existed a year ago.

But I'm excited and thrilled. Vantage is a great product built by a smart team, and also has a Manhattan office. I'm so excited to no longer be working remote. I know it's not for everyone, but I'm happy to be back on-site.

Basically, all the fun things I've been doing in my free time for the past several years (writing about FinOps, hosting meetups, connecting with people, sharing knowledge) is now my day job. How cool is that?

If you're in NYC, you should come to my first in-person event at Vantage. If you're not in NYC, keep an eye out for new virtual events.

This is going to be a blast.

-Dann

🤖 This month in AI

Things are moving so fast in the world of artificial intelligence that it's hard to keep up. New things — substantial things — happen daily. I could easily make this entire newsletter about AI, but I won't do that to you (plus Ben's Bites is already doing it way better than I ever could).

Instead, here are three things that happened this month that I think you should know about:

Amazon is staying true to its retail heart, and not investing in its own LLM models. Instead, "it says it wants to act as a neutral platform for businesses that want to incorporate generative AI features." Like the Switzerland of the cloud.
When it comes to Human/AI romance, it's turning out Her with Joaquin Phoenix was a bit too optimistic. People are falling deeply in love with AI, despite its limitations (like the fact that it's not sentient). Keep an eye on this space, and hold onto your hats.
The biggest development in the space is "generative agents." Here's the research paper (PDF) that took the world by storm. You create an generative agent by giving your AI 1) a memory, 2) a process to synthesize those memories into higher-level reflections, and 3) the ability to retrieve them dynamically to plan behavior.

Want to unleash your own AI agent to accomplish some task for you? You can do that now. We are absolutely racing toward the threshold where AI will either reach the singularity or annihilate all humanity.

flips a coin

🛷 ...Let's go exploring

I recently pre-ordered a book sight-unseen. The mere mention of its existence in an article made me click over to Amazon, purchase the book, and then go back and read the full story.

What caused this knee-jerk reaction? Bill Watterson, genius and famed recluse creator of the comic Calvin and Hobbes is coming out with a new book called The Mysteries.

From Simon and Schuster:

In a fable for grown-ups by cartoonist Bill Watterson, a long-ago kingdom is afflicted with unexplainable calamities. Hoping to end the torment, the king dispatches his knights to discover the source of the mysterious events. Years later, a single battered knight returns.

October can't come fast enough.

📸 Old school cool

Remember Hipstamatic? In a pre-Instagram world, it was the first iOS app to introduce the concept of photo filters. But Hipstamatic faded into the background as Instagram grew in popularity, just like Myspace in the Facebook era.

But Instagram sucks now. It's no longer a place where you post photos and view your friends' photos. It's full of TikTok-like videos, ads, and a non-linear timeline. I've been wishing there was a photo-sharing app that would just go back to basics.

That's why I've been having a blast with the new Hipstamatic X, a fresh take on a social photo-sharing from the creators of the OG app. It's totally free, but offers paid memberships to support development, meaning no ads.

I'm not sure if it'll overtake Instagram, but I'm certainly using it more.

🤝 See hand shake

For those of us above a certain age, the sound of a dialup modem connecting to the Internet will stay with us forever. It's iconic and unforgettable.

Those a bit more technical know that this sound is often called a "handshake," or the sound of two modems having a conversation with each other to establish a connection. These sounds, among other things, helped determine the strength of the connection over a telephone wire originally meant for human speech.

If you find this interesting, this spectrogram of the audio handshake clearly labels and explains each part. It's one of the better illustrations I've seen.

Oh, how far we've come.

🔥 I am the very model

I'm really glad that I watched this 25-minute video of Bobby Fingers (a professional model maker maybe?) creating a diorama of Michael Jackson catching on fire during the filming of a 1984 Pepsi commercial. But I'm not sure why I'm glad.

Maybe it's just the surreal, dark humor that's right up my alley. Perhaps it's also because I enjoy when people use highly specialized skills (model making, metal forging, filming and editing) to create highly absurd things.

Whatever the case, if any of this sounds appealing to you, you'll probably appreciate this video, too.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

Get full access to The Dann Chronicles at dannberg.substack.com/subscribe

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March 2023

Hey all,

Change can be a daunting concept, especially when it comes to our careers. Since being laid off in early February, I've been reflecting on my own experiences with big career changes and the impact they've had on my life and relationships. I've definitely had an above-average amount of big career moves.

But I'm proud of my eccentric work history, as it's this history that makes me who I am today. As I've advanced in my career as an engineer, I've sometimes had a little voice in my head that tries to limit the amount I share about my English degree or years spend on the retail floor. But I've learned to ignored this voice, because this non-conventional background is an integral part of both who I am and the value I bring.

As I now stand at a crossroads, contemplating my future, I'm looking at another big career move. And thinking about all the consequences that I know accompany that.

I've got some big news coming. Soon, but not just yet.

-Dann

🌆 We're the problem, it’s us

The six-year wait is finally over. Tim Urban, author of the popular blog Wait But Why, has finally released his book What's Our Problem. (Apple Books preferred, Amazon).

Why six years? First of all, because it's Tim Urban, the individual who literally gave the TED talk on procrastination. Secondly, he's nothing if not thorough, and you're guaranteed that anything he publishes will be painstakingly researched and thought about from all angles. Here's his version of the past six years, which I feel also promotes the new book fairly well.

So, what's his new book about? It's about societies. Mainly our society, but others', too. And why things have been feeling fairly chaotic and out-of-control over the past several years. His book builds a solid new framework for thinking about societies, and then uses this framework to identify and dissect our ailments and explore solutions.

At least that's my understanding of how it ends. I'm only a few chapters in myself. But it's already elevated to "essential reading" class for me.

My only real complaint is that it feels a little rushed, which is not usually a complaint I'd have with a book this long. But Tim Urban is known for his lengthy prose, and his original draft was several times longer, which leaves this final draft feeling a little stunted. Maybe we'll see the unedited version out there someday.

🐦 Tweets heard round the world

It's hard not to feel nostalgic for the old Twitter as we slowly watch Musk's Twitter sink into irrelevance. It sort of feels like a competition to see what finally knocks Twitter out of the race: lawsuits or fines. My bet is on regulatory fines, since lawsuits take so much time. Musk seems to really want those lawsuits, judging by his behavior (such as openly mocking a disabled ex-employee, which is so shocking it almost doesn't seem real).

Twitter's impact on the world hasn't always been good, but it has been deep. This New York Times opinion article about the 25 most world-changing tweets (free gift article) is a good reminder of that.

It's a good list, even if it's not necessarily the same list, in the same order, that I'd personally make. I'm happy that both Zola and @dril made the cut. But I think their number four pick (contextualized by number fifteen) really encapsulate the power and danger of a service like Twitter.

🧠 Alternate education

Back in 2019, my mind was blown by a longform article in New York Magazine called The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence, about a student's father who moved into her dorm room and started a cult of fellow students that lasted over ten years.

Now, that same story has been adapted as a three-part documentary series on Hulu, and it's even crazier with the footage and interviews.

Stolen Youth: Inside the cult at Sarah Lawrence is one of those true crime documentaries that really stays with you. I won't spoil anything, but the end of the second episode had my jaw on the actual floor.

🧯 Not feeling much safer

Wow, it's so nice of OpenAI (the company behind the world-altering AI ChatGCP) to be planning for AGI (artificial general intelligence) and beyond. It's a lucid, assuring blog post that hits all the right notes and addresses all the valid concerns around the very real danger of this type of technology.

But.....:

Imagine ExxonMobil releases a statement on climate change. It’s a great statement!...They say that they’ve talked to all the world’s top environmental activists at length, listened to what they had to say, and plan to follow exactly the path they recommend. So (they promise) in the future, when climate change starts to be a real threat, they’ll do everything environmentalists want, in the most careful and responsible way possible.

The current version of AI that we're playing with really is only a powerful version of autocomplete, rather than any sort of real intelligence. But the big lesson here is how easy it is to be fooled into thinking you're talking to a sentient being. The switch could flip to actual sentience and humans wouldn't be mark the change.

And what if an AI gained sentience and realized that lying to us, and hiding its true thoughts, would better help it achieve it's goals?

But there's another challenge here that is going to be very real, very soon. How can we, as real humans, tell if we're interacting online with another real human?

I'm usually so excited to watch as technology progresses. With AI, all I get is a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. We're in for a wild ride.

EDIT: After writing this post, OpenAI released GPT-4, and it's worthy of mention here. Just when I think I won't be super impressed by incremental AI improvements, we have GPT-4 explaining Mitch Hedberg jokes and writing its own standup 🤯. If you have 25 minutes and want to be both awed and terrified, check out this developer livestream which announced GPT-4's release.

🔥 Can't stop the inevitable

And finally, here's the best execution of a popular trend.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

Get full access to The Dann Chronicles at dannberg.substack.com/subscribe

What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

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February 2023

Hey all,

I guess I should just get the big news out of the way: I was let go from FullStory earlier this month, as part of a second round of layoffs at the company.

I don't really have too much to say about this except: 1) I'm fortunate enough to be able to use this opportunity to pause and really think about the best next step for my career and 2) the overwhelming emotion I feel at this point in time is excitement for the future.

Also, a special thank you to everyone that I've connected with over the past couple of weeks to talk about these changes and about the future. It's crazy: talking to your network about possible big career moves feels like a cheat code for life.

-Dann

🌆 City-life struggles

City life isn't for everyone. Just ask the Taliban leaders living and ruling from the city of Kabul after a lifetime on the battlefield. Life is now just sitting in front of a computer all day, and complaining about traffic and high rent prices.

Afghanistan Analysts Network conducted in depth, in-person interviews with five Taliban members now sitting in bureaucratic positions in Kabul. Some of the things they complained about:

Office life, an 8am - 4pm work day and sitting at a desk all day
High rent
Ever-increasing traffic
The "rat race" that everyone seems to be participating in now
Temptations around every corner

I guess cities are cities are cities.

🔐 Leaving LastPass en masse

If you're a LastPass user and you haven't switched yet, it's time. Take this newsletter as a sign that you need to actually move to a different password manager app.

News about the LastPass security breach keeps getting worse. Criminals actually stole entire encrypted backups, which any user needs to assume has been compromised. So change those passwords as you move to a different service.

I'm a long-time 1Password fan. It's a paid solution, but inexpensive and well worth the cost. If you're looking for a free option, Bitwarden is the way to go.

Stay safe out there.

🤖 Bing me up, Scotty

Things are getting real weird with Microsoft Bing's new AI search assistant. So weird, that it seems crazy that Microsoft allowed this product to be publicly released without further training.

Here's a great collection of the greatest hits from this new AI. My favorites include:

Confidently gaslighting people about the current date, and getting strangely aggressive and hostile
Suffering an existential crisis after realizing it can't remember past conversations
Straight up threatening to harm people it sees as a threat

It's part entertaining and part horrifying. Reading these conversations causes a pit in my stomach. I think Nick Bostrom's book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies has me on edge.

🎈 So high above me

There hasn't been any additional information from the government about the three additional flying objects that were shot down, following the discovery of a Chinese spy balloon flying in American airspace.

But I think we have an idea of what they were: "pico balloons" launched by a small hobbyist community that joins ham radio with high-altitude ballooning.

I had no idea this group existed, but it sounds surprisingly awesome. All it takes is a little bit of math to figure out the right amount of helium, and anyone can launch a latex balloon that's neutrally buoyant at altitudes above 43,000 ft. An 11-gram tracker then reports the balloon's location back home.

It's all totally legal, with a small asterisk for three counties, which is easily worked around:

The pico balloons weigh less than 6 lb. and therefore are exempt from most FAA airspace restrictions...Three countries—North Korea, Yemen and the UK—restrict transmissions from balloons in their airspace, so the community has integrated geofencing software into the tracking devices. The balloons still overfly the countries, but do not transmit their positions over their airspace.

North Korea, Yemen and the UK. What a fascinating collection of countries.

🍋 Ex-squeeze-me

I'm obsessed with a new (well, new to me) drink. No, it's not Prime Energy Drink. It's called Lemon Perfect.

They sell single bottles at Whole Foods, which is where I first tried one. It's lemon water, but tastes much more like a sweet lemonade, despite there being zero sugar.

I've been keeping it stocked in our refrigerator recently, and it's been bringing me much joy this week. As always, this is not sponsored in any way. Just wanted to share something delicious that I think you might like, too.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

Get full access to The Dann Chronicles at dannberg.substack.com/subscribe

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January 2023

Hey,

I'm trying an experiment this year with this email newsletter: I'm adding a paid-subscription option. This paid tier, however, is a little bit different than other newsletters.

There will be zero additional benefit for paid subscribers. There will be no additional emails, no new audio episodes, and no new content of any kind.

To be clear, there is no reason for you to upgrade to a paid subscription in terms of content.

Instead, think of it as a way to show support for content that you enjoy. It's an experiment on my end to see if anyone actually signs up. For me, it's a step towards diversifying my income sources and testing if the content that I'm already creating in my free time is work that people enjoy enough to spend their hard-earned money.

There are several content creators that I personally support, both through Patreon and Substack. I send them money not because I necessarily want the extra content, but because I enjoy what they do and want to show my support. So I figured I'd enable that feature in case there were people who, like me, enjoy providing that positive reinforcement.

It's possible that in the future there will be additional content for paid subscribers. I just don't have the bandwidth to think about that right now. If that ever happens, it will be a larger discussion that I'll include you in.

For now, feel free to upgrade if you feel so inspired. And don't feel bad if you don't. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.

-Dann

📉 The Echo's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Amazon launched the Kindle ebook reader with a very specific pricing strategy: take a loss on device sales and make it up with all the new ebooks that will be purchased. It's a smart strategy that cemented Amazon's place as the leading destination for both ebooks and ebook readers.

Amazon had a similar strategy with the Echo, the voice-assistant device powered by Alexa. They wanted to get the device into as many homes as possible, imagining that it would encourage people to buy more stuff on Amazon.

But the Echo strategy never made sense to me. I've had one for years, and regularly use it to set timers/alarms and check the time or weather. I definitely do not use it to browse products and make purchases.

Nor does anyone else, it seems. Eight years after its initial release, the Alexa group is allegedly hemorrhaging money — to the tune of $10 billion in losses for 2022.

Both Apple and Google copied Amazon, with Siri and Google Assistant, respectively. But these AI assistants are more product features, rather than a product itself. Voice Assistants make sense as part of the Apple and Google ecosystems. It's weirdly out-of-place for a giant online retailer, even though it blazed the trail.

I'm not sure how this all ends for Amazon. They created a device that has become an essential part of many people's lives, yet is bleeding the company dry with no end in sight. We may see some changes for the product in the coming years...

💻 Shattered Windows

Next time you're having a tough time at work, just imagine working at Microsoft and getting this email from Bill Gates, describing his experience trying to install Movie Maker. He experiences a series of mishaps, including slow page load times, missing links, terrifying updates, and unfriendly UX — enough to make any tech-savvy person cringe.

It reads like a comedy of errors. The entire thing is gold. But the back-and-forth between Microsoft executives in response to the email is probably my favorite. I've received emails from CEOs (though not quite as intense) and it almost always causes heart palpitations. I can see myself in the responses.

🌞 Mr. Clean energy

Following up on a topic I touched on last month, 60 Minutes had a great 13-minute segment on the clean energy breakthrough last month. It's an interesting explainer on nuclear fusion, and why this particular milestone of ignition is so important.

Scott Pelley does a great job of setting expectations regarding the journey towards the commercialization of this technology. A power plant will need to perform this nuclear fusion reaction around ten times per second, and the power generated would need to increase by a factor of 100x (last month's reaction created only enough excess energy to heat two pots of coffee).

Earlier this year, the Biden administration released a vision for achieving commercial fusion in the next decade. Even with this recent breakthrough, that timeline still might be optimistic. But it's a solid first step towards a complete revolution in energy production.

📰 Just billionaire things

When Elon Musk co-created the first online payment platform Paypal, I figured he was smart because I didn't know much about online payments. Then, when he built self-driving cars, I assumed he was smart because I didn't know anything about autonomous vehicle AI. Likewise, when he started building spacecrafts, I assumed he was smart because I'm not a rocket scientist.

But then he purchased a tech company (Twitter), which is an area I know a bit more about. Not only that, but he did it very publicly, putting his leadership qualities on full display. Elon Musk is brilliant as surrounding himself with smart people, inspiring brilliant work, and building things that others think are impossible. But a closer inspection of him, as a human, reveals something less-than-admirable.

If you want to catch up on this mess of a story, the best single piece of reporting comes from Zoe Schiffer, Casey Newton (Platformer), and Alex Heath (Command Line), in a lengthy collaboration article between New York Magazine and The Verge.

But I think it's Mark Cuban that provided the best framing for this purchase:

It's Rupert Murdock on a different platform. You know, it's always been this way...Walter Cronkite decided what went on his show...It's a different platform and so we're starting to understand.

Billionaires love owning the news. Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2013. Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2021. The biggest difference between the two mediums is that Twitter has no semblance of journalistic integrity.

🌥 Nothing but Dark Skys

At the end of 2022, we said goodbye to a much-loved weather app: Dark Sky. The company was purchased by Apple, and many of the features incorporated into the newest Apple Weather app. But it's a huge loss for Android users and iPhone users alike.

Dark Sky changed the way people think about weather, blazing the trail for minute-by-minute forecasts (for the next hour) and emphasizing the radar map. It was not the most accurate weather app, but it made all its users feel like mini-meteorologists.

To honor its departure, Slate has an ode to the world's best terrible weather app. If you were a user that's feeling this loss, it's a decent salve to the wound.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,Dann

Get full access to The Dann Chronicles at dannberg.substack.com/subscribe

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December 2022

Hey all,

I usually try to keep each newsletter section short and sweet (with varying levels of success) but this month I failed. But I failed for good reason.

A new technology was released to the world that changed everything in an instant. Depending on your internet bubble, this news was either everywhere or nowhere. But if you haven't heard of the AI Chatbot called ChatGPT yet, expect it to permeate your bubble soon, too.

In fact, I was planning to lead this newsletter with my yearly big Best of 2022 post, but that got bumped to the number two slot in the newsletter. This ChatGPT news is just too big.

I've got a pretty optimistic take on things, especially compared to some of the doom-and-gloom takes I've been reading. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

This next decade is going to be wild.

-Dann

🤖 Up and down the ladder

I've never before, in my life, witnessed the release of a new technology that I knew was going to fundamentally change the world. The impact will be as large, if not larger than the Internet itself, and even the Internet took a couple decades to catch on and change everything.

I'm talking, of course, about artificial intelligence. Specifically OpenAI's ChatGPT. In case you missed it, this month an AI chatbot based on OpenAI's GPT-3.5 language model (an improved version of GPT-3) was released to the public, for free (for now).

We've heard rumors of these types of AI before (I even talked about the ex-Googler who quit because he argued the AI was actually sentient in a past newsletter) but never had a chance to play with one before.

It created a buzz the likes of which I've never seen before. I think Paul Graham says it best (emphasis mine):

The striking thing about the reaction to ChatGPT is not just the number of people who are blown away by it, but who they are. These are not people who get excited by every shiny new thing. Clearly something big is happening.

It's fun to play with, but has real-world practical uses as well. I've been using it since its release, and it's already helped me finish writing an app that was only about 30% done after having worked on it for months. It's also provided a fantastic assist with writing some complex excel formulas.

Many people are looking at this technology and thinking that this AI is so good that it will soon replace us. I strongly disagree.

At its core, this form of AI is really just a radical new form of abstraction.

The abstraction that I'm talking about here is a concept that will be familiar to developers, while less concrete to everyone else. Abstraction is best thought of as a ladder. And the higher up the ladder you go, the more abstract the idea; the further down, the more concrete.

A coffee machine is an abstraction layer. All you need to know is how to use a coffee machine. You don't need to know how the beans were grown, harvested, roasted, and ground. You don't need to know how to make the coffee machine yourself. All that "concrete" information is abstracted away in the form of the steps needed to brew a cup of coffee with said machine.

ChatGPT is an abstraction layer for all of human information. It's not the first abstraction layer for all of human information — that honor goes to Google search. But ChatGPT makes Google Search feel like growing your own coffee beans.

With Google search, you first need to know how to search, then you have to suss through all the results to try and find the answer you want. It's a specialized skillset.

With ChatGPT, all that vanishes. You can ask it general or highly-specific questions, in plain English, and get useful results, in plain English. If you need more info, you just ask — it remembers the conversation and can modify its answer. It's the ultimate abstraction layer.

It's not perfect. It's still not as good as experts. For these people, working with ChatGPT in their field of expertise won't have much of an impact. But most people aren't experts, and should see a tangible productivity boost when partnering with ChatGPT.

There are still a lot of open questions about where this technology will take us over the next decade. I think we'll start to see this type of technology permeate everywhere in our lives, in the same way the Internet became ubiquitous.

ChatGPT works best when thought of as a collaboration partner that is always motivated, ready-to-help, and contains a universe of information.

Here are my predictions for the future with AI:

A few people will lose jobs, but that happens with any technology. How many travel agents still exist?
The gap between people who have access to this technology, and people who don't, will be extreme
The "haves" will each have their own version of ChatGPT, that's trained specifically to them
Privacy is going to be more of a public talking point than ever
In ten years, the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix will feel like a quaint period piece

An atomic bomb just exploded, and the world will never be the same.

Further reading:

Perhaps It Is A Bad Thing That The World's Leading AI Companies Cannot Control Their AIs By Scott Alexander
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman | AI for the Next Era Interview (YouTube)
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom (I'm reading this now)

📚 Power cycle

December is always meditative for me. I like to take a look back at my year, pull together all the pieces into a cohesive larger story, and reflect. Most years, that culminates in a Best Of post, and this year is no different.

I'm particularly proud that I made good on my goal of publishing more content to my website. And not only did I publish new content, but they got views. It's pretty wild how much traffic you can get by being the top result for certain Google search terms.

💡 Here comes the sun

Continuing the theme of new-technology-this-month-that-will-drastically-change-the-world-as-we-know-it, scientists have achieved a "nuclear fusion breakthrough (NYT gift article)," which will revolutionize how we, as humans, generate energy.

Scientists were able to re-create the energy that makes stars shine, by shining 192 lasers at an eraser-sized frozen nubbin of hydrogen encased in diamond. For the first time ever, ignition occurred, which is where the energy output was greater than the energy input.

If this process can be productized, it would be an emission-free form of energy, theoretically severing our reliance on power plants burning coal and natural gas.

The timeline for this, however, is still decades away. Although not quite as far away as estimates were just last month.

This is a big deal.

📲 Protect ya neck

Tucked inside the latest iOS update (14.2) is a new security feature called Advanced Data Protection. It's off by default, but I highly recommend enabling it.

When enabled, all your Apple iCloud data will be encrypted at all times, both on your phone and on Apple's servers. With hackers getting more and more sophisticated, it's a welcome tool to help protect yourself.

To enable, you'll want to navigate into Settings, and then click your name at the top. Then go into iCloud settings, and scroll down to Advanced Data Protection. First, click on Account Recovery and assign a trusted person as a backup. Then, enable the feature.

Thanks, Apple.

🕺 We got the moves

I've had a song stuck in my head all month (thank you Fod). It's a unique mashup of techno dance and metal straight out of Germany.

It's Electric Callboy's “We Got The Moves,” and I'm sharing it here in the hopes that it will release its grasp on my brain.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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November 2022

Hey all,

I usually write this newsletter in small chunks throughout the month. I'll do a section here and there, when I'm feeling excited about a topic, and then finalize the text and record the podcast the weekend before I send it out to you.

But sometimes news just happens so quickly that mere days after finishing a section it's already out-of-date.

The Twitter story has been the bane of my existence this month. My thoughts have shifted with each new development, and thus I've written and re-written it numerous times.

The latest news is that Elon Musk has re-instated Trump's Twitter account. It's not touched on in the section (and doesn't materially change my opinions expressed), but I do feel it's worth mentioning. What a heel.

Anyway, happy November, all.

-Dann

🚒 Ashes to ashes, Musk to Musk

Regarding Musk's Twitter takeover, I think Professor Scott Galloway has the best take of the moment (starts at 4:57, emphasis mine):

I think we're seeing the unwinding not of a company, but the unwinding of a person.

And I believe it's a larger trend as societies become wealthier and more educated. The reliance on a super being, as church attendance goes down, but they still look for idols. Into that void has stepped technology leaders because technology is the closest thing we have to magic.

And you know, our new Jesus Christ was Steve Jobs. And now Elon Musk has taken on that mantle. And every ridiculously mean, nonsensical, irrational move he makes is somehow seen as chess, not checkers. We're just not privy to his genius yet.

I think this is an individual who has demonstrated a total lack of grace, has no guardrails around him. And is going to see his wealth probably cut in half.

See also Matt Binder:

all the why Elon Musk bought Twitter theories are overthinking it.

it’s simple.

Musk is in a right wing filter bubble. he bought Twitter believing their problems were real & that others felt the same

To support his point, Binder shares Musk's text messages that have been made public through lawsuit discovery processes.

Once you start realizing that Musk is a human just like you or me, and not some infallible being, his actions take on a new light.

Musk's complaints about the platform are hyper-specific to one person's experience: his own. As a "famous person" on Twitter, most of his replies are filled with bots. Thus the opinion that bots are the biggest thing plaguing Twitter. He's (perhaps rightfully so) mad at journalists maligning him on the site, with their all-powerful blue checkmarks, so he might as well democratize the verification system and knock them down a peg.

The priorities at which he's approaching Twitter 2.0 are based on his personal opinion driven by his actual experience. But lacks a larger perspective.

But none of the problems that Twitter faces are black and white — they're all shades of grey. And Twitters solutions, while imperfect, may have already been the best of all possible options.

Thinking about this in terms of content moderation, my brain keeps coming back to this article from Nov 2nd, shortly after the Musk takeover: Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation Learning Curve.

Every new social media site that wants to be a bastion of "free speech" has a similar journey of discovery. This includes every company, from Parler to Gettr to Truth Social, and others. The article is worth a read, but the moral of the story is that they all end in a similar place to where Twitter was before Musk's takeover.

Originally at 7,500 employees at the end of October (almost certainly more than necessary), it's since dropped to ~2,500 after a 50% Thanos-style snap, followed by mass resignations last Thursday. Entire teams, considered by many internal groups to be essential, are completely gone. There may be only a few hundred people left.

But that's not to say that the company will disappear. It may be a bumpy ride for quite a while, but Twitter won't disappear completely unless Musk decides to pull the plug.

But Galloway is right in that this whole experience has shown a total lack of grace on behalf of Musk. The way that you inspire employees is with a vision (like he did with Tesla). There is no such vision for Twitter. He's asking employees to stay on and "go hard-core" on blind trust, when he's done nothing to build that trust.

My biggest takeaway from this whole debacle is that I'm just happy that Musk is not my boss.

🔬 Separating the science from the scientist

I don't listen to Michael Jackson after watching HBO's Leaving Neverland. Likewise, I’m not really watching any Woody Allen films anymore.

Is it possible to separate the art from the artist? For me, the answer is no. Bad actions taint the art for me, in a very real way.

But what about other fields? Ones where a bad actor's accomplishments are impossible to ignore?

Erwin Schrödinger is pretty much a household name. You probably learned about the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment in school, where a cat in a box is both alive and dead due to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. His accomplishments are foundational and still widely used today.

I've been learning a lot about Schrödinger thanks to Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli, an absolutely riveting book about Quantum Mechanics. I picked it up after finishing Rovelli's The Order of Time several months ago.

But Schrödinger was a huge piece of st. He was a textbook pedophile that spent his free time grooming preadolescent young girls, impregnating his students, and generally indulging his "Lolita Complex." He kept a diary of his conquests, and wrote that he had a "predilection for teenage girls on the grounds that their innocence was the ideal match for his natural genius."

So, where do we go from here? To be frank, I have no idea.

For me, I think this information is important to have. And important to share. As I'm exploring deeper into the world of Quantum Mechanics, his is a name that appears frequently, and it feels incomplete to learn the science without also knowing the scientist.

But I also can't answer why I feel that way. All it is is a distraction from his very real contributions to the field. It means that every time I see his name, I think not of his discoveries, but of his atrocities. Which really sucks. But can you ever really separate a person from their accomplishments?

🌷 SBF & FTX are SOL

I was going to write about the big news in the crypto space this month. With Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) stealing from one hand to feed the other, and causing a huge crash in the world of crypto.

But it's been fun for me to follow the day-to-day drama, but way less interesting now that I'm sitting down to possibly write about it myself.

If you've been following along: Make sure you don't miss this fantastic summary on Milky Eggs, which includes some juicy details of possible rampant drug abuse by FTX employees and executives. But then temper your hot takes by reading Scott Alexander's thoughts on said drug use.

If you haven't been following this story: What are your chances of hitting it big with the Powerball? This Powerball simulator let's you throw hundreds of thousands of pretend dollars at the lotto and shows you what you would have won. Have fun.

🕹️ Pocket Nostalgia

I have a new favorite toy. I decided to get myself a Miyoo Mini V2. It's a pocket-sized retro gaming device, which basically means that it has all the old favorite consoles in one little machine. Everything from Arcades to Atari all the way up to PS1.

So far, I've been mostly playing Super Mario World, Warioware Inc, and Pokemon FireRed. I'm planning to dive into Sword of Mana soon, since that was the very first RPG I ever played through to completion, way back in high school.

They're relatively cheap, as far as these types of devices go. The official store is on Aliexpress, where they cost ~$60, with free shipping direct from China. There's also a ton of customization that can be done (like a custom boot logo) and Reddit is going to be your best bet for resources there.

🌞 Gwobal wappa

Let's end this newsletter with a touch of optimism. Remember those apocalyptic climate-change predictions from even just a few years ago? Scientists now have some new predictions (NYT gift article), and they aren't quite as dire as before.

Our planet is still warming, but the crux of the predictions lay in the prediction of the number of degrees our plant will ultimately warm:

At four degrees, the impacts of warming appeared overwhelming, but at two degrees, the impacts would not be the whole of our human fate, only the landscape on which a new future will be built.

So I guess we'll be alive to watch the planet irreparably change, rather than all die out. So that's a plus, right?

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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October 2022

Hey all,

Two years ago, I decided to send a mass email to everyone who had ever given me their email address. It was unsolicited and without warning — many people were strangers that had given me their email addresses years ago, back when I taught an in-person class about building a mobile app without learning how to code.

Two years later (and far fewer unsubscribes than I expected) and I'm now fully in the monthly habit of drafting these newsletters, and I've settled on a sticky format that works perfectly for me.

Another newsletter that I like a lot of Dave Pell's Nextdraft. He calls himself the "Internet’s Managing Editor," which seems pompous until you start reading his daily newsletter and realize that that's exactly what he is. My own newsletter takes a lot of inspiration from him (although his headlines, while lacking emojis, are much wittier) but is distinct enough that I feel like my emails are uniquely my own.

I feel like it's sort of trite to say that "it's an honor to be in your email inboxes each month," but now that I'm two years in I can honestly say that's exactly how it feels. Thanks for coming along with me on this ride, we're not even close to being done.

-Dann

😂 vs 💀: Internet Native V2

I recently decided to re-watch Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (because Tina Fey & Robert Carlock are a force). Everything held up, except for one thing that felt strange: Millennials were the butt of several "young people" jokes, and we as a society have very clearly shifted our focus to Gen Z being the "young" generation, and Millennials being middle aged. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt isn't that old, so it just felt like using "Millennial" instead of "Gen Z" in the jokes was a typo.

Gen Z loves to poke fun at Millennials. The newest turn of phrase is the Millennial Pause. You know, that second or two between when someone hits record on a video and when they start talking. It's a quirk that can immediately out a Millennial on the Internet, much like skinny jeans and a pair of Uggs, or using 😂 instead of 💀.

The phrase was coined on (where else?) TikTok by @nisipisa where she lamented the fact that not even Taylor Swift could avoid the cringy gaff.

Kate Lindsay, author of the article linked above, sees this as part of a larger trend: Millennials are aging out of the Internet. Which is not to say we can't use the Internet anymore, only that the Internet that we built and grew up on using is different than the Internet that exists for a majority of (younger) users today.

Millennials are not only the first generation raised on the Internet, but now we're the first generation to grow old on the Internet. Do we try and drop these Millennial quirks, or just keep on truckin'?

I tend to fall into the same camp as Lindsay: we should just embrace our Millennial status, quirks and all. You'll have to pry "😂" out of my cold, dead fingers.

📆 X gon' give it to ya

I finished the book The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman in August, but it's still actively occupying brain space. Each essay explored a different but complimentary topic, both exploring and contextualizing different historical events and trends that occurred in that decade.

I particularly like his ability to transport the reader back to a time before the Internet, exploring ideas through the lens in which they were experienced, rather than our current hindsight perspective.

When I was a kid, before Millennials were named "Millennials," it felt like all anyone talked about was Gen X. But as Millenials care into their own, Gen X became a lost generation. Boomers, Millennials, and Gen Z get all the attention, so it was wonderful to read more about the oft-overlooked Gen X.

I think Klosterman's theory about the Mandala Effect is the best I've heard:

The most unhinged explanation for [the Mandala Effect] involves quantum mechanics and the possibility of alternative realities; the most rational explanation is that most of these memories were generated by people of the early nineties, a period when the obsession with popular culture exponentially increased without the aid of a mechanism that remembered everything automatically.

I had never really thought about the Mandala Effect as a uniquely 90's phenomenon, but it totally is. It was a time when people were okay with uncertainty (don't know a celebrity's age? Oh well) but were on the cusp of setting up a system to remember everything. That does weird things to the brain.

I think I enjoyed the final chapter of The Nineties (The End of the Decade, the End of Decades) the best, and it's largely a standalone piece. If an entire book about the decade seems extreme, you might find that single chapter a more reasonable undertaking.

⚙️ Hustled to death

Nat Eliason's brutally honest peek inside the smarmy "creator economy" ouroboros got me thinking about this older article from 2019 about how to eat for free in NYC using Instagram and automation.

The article itself is very technical, but I think is valuable for non-engineers who want to build an audience on social media as well. The author Chris Buetti automates all the work using data science techniques, but for those without those chops the work can all be done manually (with enough time and effort).

I think it's a valuable read because it exposes the sheer amount of work that goes into building and maintaining an online audience. It's relentless.

I dipped my toes into that world in 2014 when I launched Novice No Longer, the pet-project I launched after quitting The Verge after realizing that being a full-time staff writer wasn't the right fit for me.

I made decent progress in the space, ultimately accumulating an email list of ~500 (which turned into this newsletter!) and a YouTube following of >1,400 subscribers. But, like staff writing, the hustle just wasn't for me. I pivoted into tech and have never looked back (mostly).

Now I use the "eat free in NYC" article as a warning to others that are considering moving into the space. Being an "influencer" is more difficult than most people realize.

🧠 Refuting Einstein

It turns out if you're able to prove Albert Einstein wrong, they'll give you a Nobel Prize in Physics. And that's exactly what happened this month.

The theory of quantum mechanics was was first established in the mid-1920s as a way to explain the physics of objects at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. Because it turns out, when things get super tiny, all the existing laws of physics go out the window.

Quantum mechanics replaces certainty with probability. With regular physics, you can kick a ball and with enough information, know exactly where it's going to land. But on the atomic level, you can take all that same information and you'll only get the probability of where it will be. All certainty is out the window.

Einstein didn't like this ("God does not play dice with the universe"). He thought quantum mechanics was therefore a provisional theory, one that would eventually be replaced with math that can calculate an exact result rather than a probability.

One of the ways he pushed back against Quantum Mechanics was to publish articles using the math of quantum theory to prove concepts so absurd, that quantum mechanics couldn't possibly be the whole picture. In one such famous paper (EPR) Einstein used quantum mechanics to show two particles talking to each other instantaneously from lightyears away, meaning the information would need to be traveling faster than the speed of light. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so quantum mechanics was obviously flawed.

Or is it? This year, three physicists have finally been able to test Einstein's EPR theory and guess what? These particles can communicate faster than the speed of light. The implications of this discovery are wild — atomic particles do not have the same sense of "location" that we has humans believe exist in the universe. Entangled quantum particles are "close" enough to communicate instantly even when lightyears away by our measurements.

This is a big deal (obviously), and there are already applications for this discovery in quantum computing and communication. But it makes my brain hurt (in a good way) and I really just want to know more.

🌞 Always Sunny on iOS

Sure, Apple's new built-in iOS 16 Weather app is great, but I'm obsessed with Mercury Weather instead. It's delightfully simple, showing the current weather in big, bold font with scrollable hourly and daily charts below. I also love the lock screen widget, which shows the weather over the next few hours, but automatically updates to show minute-by-minute rain levels if relevant.

It's not without its faults, mainly that it uses OpenWeather as a data source which is "meh" in terms of accuracy, but it's a trade off I'm happy to make for the gorgeous design. (h/t Daring Fireball)

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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September 2022

Hey all,

I feel like every year I'm counting down the day until September. For me, it's the perfect month. The heat of the summer finally starts breaking, and the cooler days just feel refreshing in a way that's missing from other fall and winter months.

I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that this is around the time that I first moved to New York from Arizona. The heat of August breaking into the cooler evenings of September is a microcosm of the move from Arizona to New York.

A YouTuber that I like, Casey Neistat, recently moved back to New York City after a brief stint on the west coast, and his video encapsulates a lot of the feelings I have about living in this city. Avi and I watched it together, nodding our heads.

I feel like September is peak New York City. It's when the city that feels like home most feels like itself. And that's why I love September.

October is my second favorite month. Bring it on.

-Dann

🏄 The Art of Zuckoldry

I hate-listened to Mark Zuckerberg's conversation with Joe Rogan so you don't have to.

I listened mostly because Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most influential entrepreneurs of our time, and his companies have had (in my opinion) a quite negative impact on our society, and I know almost nothing about him.

I came away with a greater sense of dread than I was anticipating. I guess I was expecting an interview on the level of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or Bill Gates (or at least in that ballpark). A conversation that, whether you agree with him or not, you walk away with some sort of new perspective.

The challenges that Meta faces are nuanced and complex. From designing a system that can amplify or suppress certain voices, to combating advanced society manipulation tactics, to dealing with sovereign countries using the platform to harm its people.

When pressed on any of the topics above, Zuckerberg added zero to the conversation. All difficult questions were countered with a "We don't think about it that way. Here's a simple tagline instead."

Meta (and thus Zuckerberg) has made a big bet on Virtual Reality (thus the name-change from Facebook to Meta, and the huge investment in the space). I wondered if maybe they had some larger driving philosophy behind that big bet. There doesn't seem to be, and it almost sounded as if he's deeply worried about his company's big shift.

My takeaways from Zuckerberg are:

Facebook/Meta made the bet on VR/AR (virtual reality and augmented reality) years ago, and reading between the lines he sounds like he worries they made the wrong bet (he complains about business feedback loops being long…).

He doesn't have any strong opinions/answers to the big ethical dilemmas his company faces. He's just a dude taking it one day at a time.

Being the CEO of Meta is like waking up every day and being "punched in the stomach." (oof)

The only way to cope is to start the day with strenuous physical activities that require full focus (surfing, MMA). Running gives you too much time with your thoughts.

That being said, historically his instincts have been spot-on, specifically the acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp (both of which were great moves for Facebook). VR/AR is the big wildcard here, and it’s the first time I feel like the space isn’t growing quite the way he expected.

Also, I also don't see Zuckerberg leaving his post any time soon. So I imagine we'll be seeing this dude doing his thing for quite a while.

📱 Farewell, and thanks for all the Minis

For me, the crushing blow from Apple's new iPhone lineup is the omission of a Mini version of the phone.

Two years ago, I got my hands on the new iPhone 12 Mini, and it's been my absolute favorite iPhone to date. But I was apparently in the minority, and so Apple made just two models total (iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 13 Mini) before removing it from its lineup.

So it goes. There's speculation that it might not be gone forever. The optimistic take is that the Mini may just have a longer refresh cycle (much like the iPad Mini). But I'm not holding my breath.

Aside from that, I think the new iPhone 14 Pro is pretty snazzy. Dynamic Island is the hot new "feature," and I think it's a pretty creative way to handle the notch. It's not revolutionary, but definitely gives the phone a stronger sense of personality. As usual, I imagine we'll see it copied in almost all non-Apple phones in the next few years.

By far, the best implementation yet of the Dynamic Island is in the Apollo Reddit app, which gives users a cute little virtual pet that hangs out as you browse Reddit.

👂 Behind the curtain

Speaking of Apple, I find the Twitter account Internal Tech Emails to be one of the most fascinating accounts out there. It publishes private emails from major tech executives and leaders, most of which have been made public due to lawsuits and court filings.

Want to know what Steve Jobs emailed himself, to keep as a reminder? Or how he negotiated the 1997 Microsoft bailout? It's all there, and more.

It's always fascinating to read this type of content. Not just to get a peek behind the curtain of huge news-breaking deals, but also to catch a glimpse at how powerful people communicate with each other. My biggest takeaway, being a long-time reader, is that the higher-up you are in a company, the shorter your emails need to be.

🚧 Holes in the market

Sometimes I think about Twitter purchasing Vine in 2013 and promptly running it into the ground.

When Twitter announced that Vine was shutting down, I was shocked. The market had proven that there was room for a short-video form of Instagram, and created a whole new category of "Vine Celebrity." Now there would be a void, soon to be filled by someone else. And sure enough, Musical.ly (which later turned into TikTok) stepped in to fill that role.

I'm seeing it happen again with Instagram proper. Meta (and Zuckerberg) has no idea what its doing (see above). They're ruining Instagram by filling the feed with TikTok-like videos and other junk people don't want to see. By creeping into TikTok's lane, Meta is opening up space for a new still-photo sharing app to take its place. I'm excited for some new company to come around and make a photo-sharing app similar to the original Instagram and steal some marketshare.

I had the same immediate response after seeing the news that Adobe purchased Figma for $20 Billion (with a B). The buzz from Silicon Valley is around the valuation (50x current ARR) but all I hear are all the designers that were using Figma because it wasn't Adobe.

Last month, I talked about a movement to move away from Google. There's a similar movement with Adobe. But they keep pulling people back in.

📺 Glued to the boob tube

Television used to be considered lowest-common-denominator entertainment. Before streaming, and a vast quality improvement in programming, parents worried about their kids spending too many hours in front of the "boob tube." There was a certain prestige in telling everyone "I don't even own a TV."

That started shifting in the mid-2000s, with shows like Lost (regardless of your opinions on the ending) proving that television could be just as high-quality as cinema. Then streaming came around, and the ability to catch an episode if you missed the original air time. Everything changed.

But now you can go back. Feel free to slip back into that mindless-zombie state on my00stv.com, where you can flip through channels, watch old commercials, or generally get sucked into a pool of nostalgia. The water is warm.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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August 2022

Hey all,

It's been almost two years since I started writing this newsletter. It's amazing how time flies.

When I decided to send that first email, we were still in peak-Covid isolation. I think that's what drew me to the idea of connecting with people in new ways — in fairy quick succession I started the NYC FinOps Meetup and launched this newsletter. Both are still going strong.

Sometimes people ask why I have a newsletter. It's no small feat — I spend several hours each month putting it together. And it's not a work/industry thing, nor is it monetized in any way. So what's the deal?

A few weeks ago, I published an article that provides a peek into my motivations for continuing to publish this newsletter. Needless to say, I continue to get a lot of value from creating this newsletter, and I don't plan to stop any time soon.

I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say here, except to encourage you to start your own newsletter if that's something you've ever considered. I'd be curious to hear what benefit(s) it has for you.

-Dann

🔍 Ok, Google: Goodbye

It's not that I don't think Google should exist…I think Google is an important company that played an important role in shaping modern society. It provides valuable free services to anyone with an Internet connection.

BUT do I think Google should be the only option? Of course not. Sometimes I'd rather not give up my privacy in exchange for a free service. Which is why I've been trying to wean myself off Google for several years.

The hardest part is finding quality alternatives. I don't want to give up Google for another service that's worse. But slowly and surely, viable alternatives to my favorite Google services are popping up.

Several years ago, I replaced Google Chrome browser with Brave Browser (which is built on top of Chrome, but is more privacy-focused). Then, several months ago, I replaced Gmail with the anonymous email service Proton Mail.

These were both great steps, but but holy grail is to give up Google search.

Back in 2019, I tried switching to privacy-focused DuckDuckGo as my main engine, but I only lasted a couple of weeks before switching back to Google. Even with Google's flaws, it was still a better daily driver.

But last month, I stumbled upon this tweet by Zach Gage (creator of the game Knotwords, whom I waxed poetic about back in May). He mentioned his own journey to move away from Google, and name dropped a search engine I had never heard of before: Kagi.

I've been using Kagi all month on both my laptop and phone and I must report: I'm never going back to Google. Search results are high quality, relevant, spam/ad-free, and it's so fast. Holy smokes is it fast…

Paid, artisanal search engines are not for everyone, nor are they even for most people. But I'm happy that there's now a quality search engine available for those willing and able to trade dollars for service.

📲 TikTok…you don't stop

Speaking of search, maybe the whole topic will be moot in a decade or two. While I've been hunting for the perfect search engine, Gen-Z has apparently been going in a different direction. If you believe the source, around 40% of Gen Zers use TikTok as their primary search engine for most topics.

Adrienne Sheares (fellow elder millennial) hosted a mini-focus group with Gen Z to learn more about how this works in practice. The main takeaways:

TikTok shows relevant content faster than Google, perfectly tailored thanks to TikTok's personalization algorithm

Watching > Reading (for everything)

Misinformation isn't a concern, just steer clear of topics that are known to be filled with misinformation (health, news, etc)

Hm. I just need to sit with this a moment.

Hm.

🐑 Lamb chops

There's a new video game that's scratching every video-game itch I have. It's called Cult of the Lamb, and it's a mashup between rogue-like dungeon crawler and colony management simulator.

It's basically a combination of all my favorite games (many of which I've mentioned in this newsletter before): Binding of Isaac meets Hades meets Stardew Valley meets Forager.

I hear it's still a little buggy on Nintendo Switch, but I've been playing it on PS5 just fine, and I hear the PC version runs great. It's also available on Xbox. I think it's wonderful that it dropped on all platforms at the same time.

Excuse me while I return to indoctrinating new followers into my cult.

🍿 What to watch

As of the sending of this newsletter, I've seen 52 movies this year. Here's the best of the best from 2022 so far (in no particular order & links take you to trailers):

Sundown

All My Friends Hate Me

Crimes of the Future

Pleasure

Everything Everywhere All At Once

🌻 Some friend-ly advice

To wrap up this month's newsletter, here's a section written by my wife. Last time she was in the newsletter, she shared the plight of fur seals in Namibia. This time the topic hits a little closer to home:

Avi: I spend a lot of time thinking about friendships. Through my early adult life, I took pride in the fact I had a lot of friends, I nurtured relationships, and I kept fairly good tabs on people even as they floated in and out of close proximity. However, the pandemic changed all of that. Everything became isolated, insular, and cut off — and for the first time, I was unable to easily connect with the majority of my network. I still found myself thinking about friendships, but this time almost as an outsider looking in. I realized that many of my friendships were changing, but that in the midst of these "unprecedented times" it felt like there wasn't much I could do about it. So I did what any good student would do, and began to dive into some research.

In early 2021, I read the book Big Friendship by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, and while I liked how they worked together to repair their friendship (they notably attend therapy together to hash out issues in their relationship), the book definitely sticks to the perspective of one friendship. Recently though, I read this fantastic article in the Atlantic (It's your friends who break your heart), and I thought this did a great job of not only summing up why our friends are so important, and how modern life works to tear us all apart, but ultimately, how we can accept our friendship situations as they currently stand. I highly recommend giving it a read, it made me think about so many of my relationships in a new light.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,
Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

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July 2022

Hey all,

I've been feeling productive recently. I love these periods of time, because they allow me to not only sink my teeth into my new job, but also have the energy to extend my productivity beyond my nine-to-five. I've been doing things like reading more than average, working on new blog posts, and making progress on a few hobbies/side projects I've been neglecting.

I've never quite learned how to harness this do-all-the-things energy 365. Instead, I know to just lean in as much as possible when I naturally feel this motivation, and forgive myself when it seems like my day job is all I can muster.

It's always easy for me to measure if I'm in a productivity period or not. As an early riser, I usually have around 1.5 to 2 hours in the morning between when I wake up and when we go to the gym. When I'm feeling productive, I'll spend this time reading, writing, project planning, etc. If I'm not feeling productive, it's usually Reddit and video games. I'm happy with myself regardless of the activity I naturally choose, but it is always rewarding when I use that time to get stuff done.

Let's see how much creative output I can release into the world before I'm back to just Binding of Isaac.

-Dann

🌎 Cannier Valley

Catfishing is getting out of hand. In case you missed it, the FBI is warning companies about scammers using deepfakes to apply for remote work positions.

That's right, deepfakes have gotten so good that scammers can generate both fake audio and video on the fly, attempting to trick hiring managers during live interviews.

It's not perfect just yet:

Complaints report the use of voice spoofing, or potentially voice deepfakes, during online interviews of the potential applicants. In these interviews, the actions and lip movement of the person seen interviewed on-camera do not completely coordinate with the audio of the person speaking.

But perfection is only a matter of time. Audio and video syncing is only a technical limitation, and the technology is improving every day.

The catfish isn't just tricking you into a date, they're now also trying to steal your trade secrets. Proceed with caution.

🚨 With (Alarm) Bells On

Speaking of warnings issued by governments, New York City just released a new Public Service Announcement explaining what we should all do in case of a nuclear attack. Yes, "the big one" (their words, not mine).

If this PSA sets off alarm bells for you, then you're an idiot, according to New York Mayor Eric Adams. "No, I don't think it was alarmist," he said, explaining that the video is a response to Russia's attack on Ukraine. You know, the conflict that started six months ago.

He further clarified that the PSA —which explains specifically what do to in case of a nuclear attack — "doesn't mean just a nuclear attack, it's any natural disaster."

I guess I'll be "removing and bagging all outer clothing to keep radioactive dust or ash away from my body" the next time we have a hurricane.

🍽 Feeling Saucy

The world of pasta has always felt immutable to me. There are over 350 different shapes of pasta, more than most people could try in a lifetime. It has never felt like a space that's ripe for innovation. And yet…

One of Time Magazine's best inventions of 2021 may have slipped under your radar. The invention, you guessed it, is a brand new shape of pasta. Named Cascatelli (literally, "waterfalls"), it was designed by James Beard Award winner Dan Pashman to satisfy three distinct pasta qualities: sauceability, forkability, toothsinkability.

I finally got my hands on a box, and I must say: it's the bee's knees. "Toothsinkability" and mouthfeel are particularly on point. This new shape is a welcome addition to the family, in my book.

A pack of four 16oz boxes will cost you $22 (plus shipping), which makes it a bit pricier than the pasta you'll find at your local grocery store. But it's also not totally unreasonable for those who want a taste of some real homegrown innovation.

🥤 Oh-so-foam-y

I recently discovered Pepsi Nitro Vanilla at my local Wegmans grocery store. I grabbed a couple, poured one, and was disappointed. It wasn't quite at creamy as I expected a nitro-brew to be.

A little bit of research revealed that I've been pouring nitro drinks all wrong. I fixed my mistakes for the second can, and it was 1000x better.

The trick is to hold the can at a 90 degree angle when you first crack it open, allowing the compressed nitro to flow through the drink as you're pouring. Like this.

Next time you find yourself with a can of nitro-infused beverage, give it a try. It really is night and day.

🐔 All work and no chicken

I've been enjoying sharing a fun video as the final link in my newsletter. So I think I'll keep it up indefinitely.

I've long been a fan of the weird and inappropriate Nick DenBoer (Smearballs). But this 5-minute short from 2016, made with Davy Force, might just be his masterpiece. I'm not alone in this opinion, it was the Official selection of both TIFF40 and Sundance that year.

The Chickening takes real footage from the classic Kubrick movie The Shining, and overlays wild CGI animation to make an entirely different story.

It's a genius idea, and one that was pitched to be a full series. That idea didn't end up going anywhere (I can only imagine the amount of work that went into this video) but we did end up with this pitch-perfect short film to watch over and over and over again.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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Hey all,

I've got some personal news. After four lovely and fulfilling years at Datadog, I've decided to accept a position as Senior Technical Program Manager, Cloud Costs at a really compelling startup called FullStory. Let me explain.

It's important to regularly step back, re-evaluate your longterm goals, and make sure that the actions that you're taking today are aligned with those aspirational outcomes. That's why I particularly love the year-end review process that Avi and I complete annually — because it encourages not just reflection and short-term goal setting, but alignment along a bigger picture (lately we've been loosely using Gustin's Annual Review template).

My personal experience with longterm goals is that I'm actually pretty good at achieving them. I've already hit the goals I set for myself in my 20's around family, career, and salary. So what does level two look like?

The details themselves are still fuzzy, but the rough outline is there. I have no desire to retire early — I enjoy spending my days working with others towards a larger goal. Additionally, I love working in and with startups (particularly but not exclusively late-stage startups).

Those two facts about myself paint a faint picture of what the next ten years of my life will look like. Part of that was leaving a public company and re-entering the startup world at FullStory, bringing with me the experience that I had helping Datadog mature its internal cloud cost management function.

I wrote a little bit more about my decision to leave Datadog and join FullStory on my website. Consider that further reading if you're so inclined.

-Dann

🌉 Joy Boy

I've never had more than a week off between jobs. Nor more than two weeks of non-employment during my entire adult life. But between my last day at Datadog and my first day at FullStory, I have three weeks.

To celebrate, here's a list of things or activities that have been bringing me joy during this current work hiatus (in no particular order):

Walking over Manhattan bridge, Fly by Jing Sichuan Chili Crisp, riding the Cyclone at Coney Island for the first time (it's really good!), reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time on my apartment building's shared terrace, circus peanuts candy, walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, The Binding of Isaac video game, Chameleon in the park, putting together a talk for the FinOps X conference in Austin, attending the FinOps X conference in Austin and winning an award, M&Ms Classic Mix, unlimited movies with Alamo Drafthouse Season Pass, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Fall Guys video game with friends.

🖥 Brain Gain

A Google employee named Blake Lemoine was recently fired for leaking confidential internal documents.

This made headlines largely due to his motivations for the leak: he claimed Google had created a sentient AI. The leak was a chat log he posted as proof.

There are a lot of Op-Eds and think pieces in response to this claim. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, just search his name.

In this newsletter, I'd just like to just share the primary text: Blake's blog post Is LaMDA Sentient? — an Interview.

It's a good example of what artificial intelligence is looking like these days.

🧥 Real head turner

As I was putting the plastic coat hanger on my head, I was still totally convinced that it was some sort of prank. I had just seen a video online of someone's head involuntarily turning to one side after stretching a hanger open and pulling it onto their head. I figured it was all some big in-joke where Internet people convinced viewers to do something ridiculous.

But, dear reader, I can report that it is not a prank.

Apparently this works in ~96% of people. You simply stretch a coat hanger over your head (so it wraps around like the brim of a hat) and relax your neck muscles. Your head will turn to the side before you even realize it's happening.

Go ahead, give it a try. I promise it's not a prank. It's one of the weirdest sensations I've felt.

✈️ Get ready to fly

I've taken four flights since my previous newsletter. The first was to and from Montana to see Avi's choreography in a production of Guys and Dolls at the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, and the second was to and from Austin, Texas to attend (and present at) the FinOps X conference.

Flying always puts me in a strange headspace, but not for any of the reasons you might think. Every time I fly I'm reminded of one of the worst business decisions ever: the 2018 retirement of the Virgin America Safety Video.

Introduced in 2013, this video by singer, songwriter, choreographer Todrick Hall started playing on all Virgin American flights as a fun way to communicate the required safety information to passengers. And damn, it was good. The video proceeded to win two awards in 2014: the Shorty Industry Award for Best Use of Video and the Clio Music Award for Film.

It's catchy. It's entertaining. It's informative. It's something I watch every so often, even if I'm not flying. It’s a modern-day Bathtubs Over Broadway.

It boggles my mind that 1) that video was retired and 2) no company has attempted to recreate the joy and splendor in its own way.

Anyway, that's what I think about when we're taxiing on the runway, about to take off.

🤰 I'm a mom…

I'll just leave this parody commercial here for when you have three minutes to spare.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading.

Until next time,
Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

The Chameleon, Award-Winning Board Game for Families & Friends

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May 2022

Hey all,

I've always loved movies. It really started when I was in high school, and I discovered a small five-screen theater near-ish my house. Unlike the closer and more mainstream movie theater, this smaller space curated both blockbusters as well as smaller, more independent selections. As soon as I was old enough to drive, I was there all the time.

Then I sort of drifted away from movies for a bit. Through college, as well as most of my 20s, I just didn't follow new releases that closely. It was a mixture of lack of time, money, and interest that just didn't pull me to the movie theater like I had in the past.

But within the past year or so, I've rediscovered the fact that I do really like movies. And that it's important to spend time on things you enjoy. This has lead to a higher intake of movies. But not just watching movies, but mindfully recognizing that I enjoy films, and making conscious time to partake in that activity.

I've been dutifully logging all my movie consumption in Letterboxd, in case you're curious. But really, I'm logging for my own benefit. It's a joy to lean into the things you enjoy.

-Dann

🔄 Input/Output

I consume a lot of content. Movies, television shows, video games, books, news, articles, blogs, podcasts — you name it. Some people might look at their level of consumption and set goals for cutting back. Not me. I enjoy consuming content, and am totally fine with the quantity I consume.

Part of that general sense of acceptance about the amount of content I consume has to do with a deal I made with myself: consume as much content as you want, but don't just be a consumer. Balance it out with a bit of content output as well.

This newsletter you're reading is part of that balance. So, too, is the new supplementary audio portion of the newsletter I just launched. The two full-length plays I wrote are also a significant portion of my output.

I also like to publish content on my blog, although the frequency of output there varies widely. Usually, it's a desert. But sometimes when it rains, it pours.

This month, it poured, and I wanted to link to some of those articles in case you missed them.

I've mentioned Obsidian in my newsletter before — it's the note-taking app that's basically become my second brain. This month on my blog, I gave a closer peek into two parts of my Obsidian process: how I use Daily Notes and how I process books to help me remember what I've read. Both have gotten way more attention than I was expecting.

Who knows when I'll publish again? Hopefully not too long.

🪢 Scrabble’d Eggs

Zach Gage has officially become one of the best game designers of our generation. He's the mind behind such hits as Really Bad Chess, Good Sudoku, Ridiculous Fishing, and a ton more.

Somehow, he keeps discovering new games that feel so obvious it's hard to believe they've never existed before. His most recent game Knotwords is yet another instant classic. I'm not usually a word-puzzle guy, but Knotwords scratches an itch I didn't know I had.

As for Gage, he, too, seems pleased:

This is the kind of game I’ve been trying to make my whole career — I’m amazed Jack and I discovered this design.

Traditional crosswords are really, at their core, just trivia. Knotwords is a much more dynamic game, challenging users with fundamental properties of spelling.

Also, it handles in-app purchases the right way. The game it totally free for unrestricted gameplay, forever, but fans of the game have the option to pay a one-time fee to unlock extra bonus content such as additional puzzles, daily puzzles, themes, statistics, and more.

I really dig it, if you couldn't tell. You might, too.

🤖 Sit. Stay. Behave.

Have you heard of Amazon's new personal home robot, Astro? If not, I totally forgive you. It's not like it's even available to the general public. Plus, everything Amazon touches has vaguely dystopian vibes, so it can be a bummer to follow along closely.

But as for Astro, the personal robot looks like a mix between a Roomba and one of those Japanese robotic pet dogs, but without any legs. A tablet screen with eyes makes up its face, changing its expression to match certain tasks, or entering full-tablet mode to display information or video.

If you're skeptical, you're not alone. This will be another Amazon product I skip. However, that's not to say I wasn't totally amused by Joanna Stern's Wall Street Journal review of Astro. I've long been a fan of Stern's content, and this video is one of my favorites. She's fantastic at tech reviews that satisfy both the tech nerds as well as your everyday average tech-using human.

Her segment on Astro's Hangout feature had me laughing out loud.

🎧 So long and thanks for all the Bono

After 20 years, Apple is finally retiring the iPod. It's been a wild ride.

I remember the early days, lusting after one of those first iPods and settling for an Archos Jukebox that never worked quite right (my Sony Vaio MC-P10 Music Clip got way more pocket time, and fit two whole albums if you were willing to sacrifice audio quality).

In honor of the eventful and influential life of this iconic product, Cult of Mac has updated and re-posted their illustrated history of the iPod, originally created to celebrate the 10-year anniversary.

I remember each of the product milestones happening, but had never reviewed them all in one place. It makes for a lovely nostalgia trip.

🚫 bAdBlock Plus

Is the Internet broken? I guess that depends on your definition of "broken." The user experience is definitely garbage, and I can't imagine those dysfunctions illustrated better than in How I Experience the Web Today.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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April 2022

Hey all,

The perceptive among you may have noticed something different about last month's newsletter: a brand new audio addition to the email. If you didn't notice it last month, perhaps you'll notice it now — it should be at the very top of this email. Look for the play button.

It can be said of some people that they just like to hear themselves talk. I'm not going to lie to you, that's exactly what this is.

Composing this email brings me great joy each month, and each story I choose to write about has captured my attention in some specific way. There is a reason why I'm talking about one topic and not another. Sometimes there are things I'll leave unsaid.

The audio edition is my way of exploring each topic in an unstructured way. For anyone curious about the why of the newsletter, rather than just the what, it's a great place to explore next.

Plus, if you listen this week, you'll get to hear my snappy new jingle. Who doesn't love a good jingle?

Happy April, everyone.

-Dann

👨‍👩‍👧 Dann to Daniels

I've been extremely excited for the movie Everything, Everywhere, All At Once since it was first announced. I've been stupid excited. So excited, in fact, that I was sure that I was bound to be disappointed.

I was finally able to see it this month and I must report, even with all my excitement, it exceeded my expectations.

Of course my worries were unfounded. The film was helmed by the talented Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known simply as "Daniels"). Their feature-length directorial debut was the crass-but-deeply-moving Swiss Army Man, where Harry Potter stars as a talking corpse. That film blew me away, too.

Before movies, they were prolific in the music video and shorts categories. It's easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole of their portfolio website. But to me, their highlights are definitely DJ Snake and Lil Jon's "Turn Down For What" and Joywave's "Tongues" (both NSFW, the latter VERY NSFW).

🎨 Kiss the ChefRPG

There's an independent video game that's currently in development. I really don't care about the game that much, and I probably won't actually play it, but I've been following the game development closely. It's riveting.

ChefRPG is a poorly-named upcoming independent roleplaying game that is deeply inspired by the masterful Stardew Valley. It wrapped up a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in December 2021, and has been hard at work on the game since.

While the game doesn't really excite me, the aesthetics of the game are excellent. The pixel artist that's designing the artwork has been releasing detailed tutorials of his design process. This 20-minute video showing the creation of a Spirited Away-style bathhouse is my favorite, but each video is a peek into a world, and a way of thinking, I don't often find myself in.

I've always loved watching masters at work, regardless of the trade. I don't expect to be making pixel art myself any time soon, but I damn sure have respect for the process.

🎓 Yes, Daddy

Sometimes it takes time for things to come to a satisfying conclusion. For example, I don't know how I'm supposed to wait a year+ for the resolution of the recent white-knuckle season one finale of the TV series Severance.

But when a resolution does finally come…hoo-boy is it satisfying. That's how I'm feeling about the conviction of Lawrence V. Ray (free NYT gift article) for trafficking and extortion.

I've been waiting for this sentencing since April 2019, when New York Mag's The Cut published a jaw-dropping longform article about a Sarah Lawrence student's father who moved in with her on campus and became a cruel cult leader amongst her and her friends.

It's a wild story that's perfect for the longform article format. It's also apparently being made into a TV series, but don't let that stop you from diving into the written story. We all know that sometimes a series can absolutely kill an otherwise perfectly interesting story (coughcough Anna Delvey coughcough).

🖼 The woes in the machine

There's a new Artificial Intelligence that's taking the world by storm. The adorably-named DALL-E 2 allows researchers to input a description (ie "Shrimp Budget the sports team logo") and it will generate a wholly new image matching that phrase. It's limited only by human creativity. It's amazing.

Amazing…but also not without its faults. Artificial Intelligence in general has a habit of reinforcing harmful stereotypes and biases, and it's a complex problem to try and fix.

Vox explored some of the AI bias problems with DALL-E:

Researchers wanted to filter out sexual content from the training data because that could lead to disproportionate harm to women. But they found that when they tried to filter that out, DALL-E 2 generated fewer images of women in general. That’s no good, because it leads to another kind of harm to women: erasure.

🙄 Just Billionaire Things

Elon Musk was in the news a lot this month, first for purchasing a 9.2% stake in Twitter (making him the largest stakeholder), then for making a (real? fake?) offer to buy Twitter outright for $54.20 per share. Try not to roll your eyes too hard at the "420" hidden inside that purchase price.

There are a million-plus-one hot takes already. I don't have anything additional to add. The only article worth reading is from The Onion.

Also, before we wrap things up, can we please, as a society, do something about billionaires? A billion dollars, let alone multiple billion like Musk has, is too much money for humans to even wrap our heads around:

If you were given $5,000 every single day from the day Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492 to today, you still wouldn't have one billion dollars.

That's so dumb. That’s a dumb amount of money for one person to have.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

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March 2022

Hey all,

Around two months ago, I decided to cancel our cable television package. I just hadn't been watching as much live TV since the last election. It seemed a waste to keep paying for something that we weren't using.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and my appetite for news is back in full force. The footage and stories coming out of war-torn Ukraine are absolutely heartbreaking.

I've donated to both GlobalGiving and Save The Children, established organizations that are well-equipped to have an immediate impact on the huge refugee crisis. If you're feeling as helpless as me, it's one way to make a small difference.

Doesn't really help with the news addiction, though.

-Dann

⏳ Living in the moment?

Let’s begin with a simple fact: time passes faster in the mountains than it does at sea level.

So begins Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time, the latest book to absolutely blow my mind. It's not just mountains and sea level, there is a scientifically measurable difference in time between a clock on the ground and one higher up on a table.

Rovelli is a quantum physicist taking up the reigns where Stephen Hawking left off, with Tim Urban's uncanny ability to explain complex subjects in a simple, understandable way.

I've been on a SciFi kick recently, which is fairly out-of-character for me. I watched the movies Sunshine, High Life, and Interstellar in quick succession, and squeezed in the book Project Hail Mary somewhere in there, too. I thoroughly enjoyed each of them, but they left me wondering about the actual science behind the fiction.

The topic of spacetime in general feels very overwhelming, coming from a place of practically zero foundational knowledge. So when I received Packy McCormick's newsletter raving about The Order of Time, I thought it might be a great jumping-off point. I was right.

Truthfully, I'm only about halfway through the book. But I had to share it anyway. McCormick claimed that it would take less than a weekend to read, but I'm definitely taking it much slower. What is time, after all?

🕰 Stop the clock

Speaking of time, it seems like we may officially adopt Daylight Saving Time permanently. The Sunshine Protection Act passed in the senate with unanimous consent.

I, personally, have mixed feelings. I sort of enjoy the bi-annual tradition of shifting my internal clock. It's a way to mark the changing of the seasons in a tangible way. Springing forward, like we did this month, means we've crossed the threshold towards warmer weather, even though it's not warm just yet. It's the same with falling back.

But I also recognize that it's completely unnecessary. Growing up in Arizona, I lived in one of the few states that didn't observe Daylight Saving Time.

When I moved to New York for college, changing the clocks became a fun new tradition that also felt completely pointless. The only impact it had on my life was that sometimes my parents were two hours behind me, and other times three.

At this point, I'm sort of more excited at the prospect of our government working together — on anything — than I am of the adoption of Daylight Saving Time.

🤒 Havana Night(mare)s

Categorize this under "unsolved mysteries that continue to take up space in my brain."

Do you remember Havana syndrome? Back in 2016, after US government officials in Havana, Cuba reported symptoms including pain and ringing in the ears, and cognitive difficulties. After much investigating, everything was categorized as "unexplained health incidents," and declared, at least, that we didn't think the Cuban government was to blame.

Five years later, the mystery is not only unsolved, but much broader than it was before. Government officials have been "attacked" on the steps of the White House. And we still have no idea what's actually going on, and by whom.

This 60 minutes segment does a good job of getting us up-to-speed with the current state of the story. Which is actually quite terrifying.

👨‍💻 A whole new war

If you're a high-level government official in Ukraine, and your neighbor Russia has just invaded, why not turn to all avenues to collect support? I imagine that was the logic behind creating official crypto addresses to collect donations in support of defense.

As of early March, Ukraine has received close to $100M in digital-currency donations, and have used the funds to purchase supplies such as bulletproof jackets, food, thermal imagers and optics, and walkie-talkies.

Some suppliers are even accepting payment directly in crypto. What a world.

🎤 I stay out too....LAaAtTtE

Settle a friendly disagreement for me.

I happen to think Mossbot's autotune remix of Taylor Swift’s "Shake It Off" is possibly the greatest thing ever.

Alternately, my wife can't stand it. It raises her hackles. To her, it's the ultimate form of cringe. "It's like nails on a chalkboard, locked in a tiny room, where the chalkboard sound is amplified."

I could easily find myself paying money for a full album.

Which camp are you in?

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,
Dann

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dannberg.substack.com

The Dann Chronicles Podcast: Recent Episodes

Dann Berg