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
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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
The Dann Chronicles: October 🎃