It took me less that two hours with Google Gemini to create microblog.el, a micro.blog manager for Emacs which can edit old posts, create new ones (even with images), auto-complete tags and perform lightning-fast full text search. What a time to be alive!

I have a bias towards action, so when an idea forms with a clear path forward and little if any downside I tend to go for it. Now, the plan to detach from Apple will take years to fully implement, but stage 1 is well under way: to find and use workable Linux parallels to every app I’ve come to learn and love over the years. Some of those I have already replaced (goodbye, OmniFocus, hello, Emacs org-mode) and some are still a work in progress (you won’t believe what will end up replacing MarsEdit), but before all that here are a few things about replacing the OS.

I was worried that I would be lost between having to choose between various distributions of Linux, each with its own set of trade-offs, but having an M1 Macbook Air significantly limited my choices which in this case was a good thing. Asahi is a project to bring Linux to Apple Silicon chips and so far M1 and M2 series are almost fully supported. And Asahi chose Fedora as its flagship distrbution, so Fedora Asahi Remix was the obvious choice, though several other distribution since then have become available on Apple Silicon thanks to Asahi.

Still, there were two more choices to make: what desktop environment (KDE Plasma or GNOME), and how to actually run the thing (via Parallels or actual dual-booting). It seems like the Asahi people would want me to chose KDE — it was the default choice during setup and they highlight it on the Fedora Asahi page. Alas, it just looked to much like Windows and the configurability they touted as a feature also gave me pause: how much fiddling would I do as a procrastination mechanism? GNOME looked sort-of like MacOS but was clearly its own thing and dare I say was even more polished than Liquid Glass. So I picked GNOME.

As for the booting mechanism, Parallels or some other method of virtualization would 1) have been a cop-out, 2) still have me exposed to the disaster that is MacOS 26 Tahoe, and 3) not be representative of the actual experience once the M1 Air kicks the dust and I have to find a new laptop. So I dual booted. Fedora Asahi makes this incredibly easy, with a single incantation at the Terminal shrine:

curl https://alx.sh | sh

This downloads the entire thing, partitions the drive, installs the new OS via a MacOS Recovery drive (don’t ask me how this works, but it work it did) and changes the boot sequence to default to Linux. It would have been magic if not for the partitioning part, during which I found out that no I do not actually have 300+ Gb of free space on my 1 Tb SSD as MacOS doesn’t count the space used by temporary and cash files as occupied and would rather users don’t know about them at all.

Fortunately there is DaisyDisk which was one of my first Mac App Store purchases back in 2012, only the App Store version also doesn’t have access to these hidden files because why would people know what is on the hardware they paid for, so I had to re-purchase the app from the developer’s website. On one hand no harm no foul — I’ve had and use the software for more than a decade — but on the other this kind of shenanigans is exactly why I’m skipping Appletown.

So if I had to order how much time things took: partitioning was the longest and most tedious part owing completely to Apple’s opaqueness, writing this section comes after that, and the actual Fedora Asahi install was by far the quickest. The last time I dealt with Linux before this was when I installed Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon back in 2008 to dual-boot with Windows XP or what not (I was never a Linux maximalist), and oh my how things have changed.

A few things you should know before you type the incantation in your own terminal: Thunderbolt is not supported so no chance of a second display unless you find a Linux-compatible dock; touch ID doesn’t work and I doubt that it ever will; sleep mode is not fully baked so if your workflow involved leaving the laptop on for days relying on power management magic you should be prepared to switch back to turning the thing off at the end of a work day, which hey may actually not be a bad thing if it makes you less tempted to just take a quick peek at the work email during a movie watching night bio break, right?

The first one was almost a deal-breaker for me since I have grown attached to the LG 5K Ultrafine display, but everything else brought enough relief — even joy — for me to stick to the program. Now, for the Linux apps that brought joy back into my laptop use you will need to come back later this week, as this post has already gotten longer than planned. So it goes when you’re having fun.

23 hours after receiving an email from someone US-based: “Dear Milos, I still haven’t heard back from you so I wanted to bring it back to the top of your inbox…”

3 days after responding to someone from Europe, 7 days after their initial email: “Dear Dr. Miljković, thank you for your quick reply…”

Last month I linked to two things that are now worth following up on:

• John Nerst’s book “Competitive Sensemaking” is out. The only non-Amazon option is an ebook, so I will leave this one for the Daylight tablet.
• Steven Johnson’s NotebookLM project “Planet Of The Barbarians” is also live, accompanying the newsletter series of the same name. Even more interesting to me are [the notebook][3b] and [newsletter post][3c] titled “The Architecture of Ideas”, referencing Johnson’s work on tools and workflows for writing. Warning: both are full of rabbit holes.

And on the abandoning Apple front:

• Matt Gemmell has concerns about Apple much better baked than my own. He also has thoughts on detaching but seems less willing to give up on the ecosystem than I am. (ᔥJohn Brady)
• My own toe in the Apple-less pool is giving up on the essential Mac-only apps. OmniFocus was the first on the chopping block, replaced by Emacs org-mode, though instead of going through now pretty dated tutorials behind that link I just asked Google Gemini how best to convert Kurosh Dini’s Creating Flow with OmniFocus into Org. And it worked! The idea is be to keep replacing apps with open-source equivalents until making the switch becomes easy. It will probably take years but you have to start somewhere.

• Technology Connections on YouTube: You are being misled about renewable energy technology.
• Silje Grytli Tveten: Pretty soon, heat pumps will be able to store and distribute heat as needed
• Das Surma: Ditherpunk — The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering
• Christopher Schwarz: Free Now & Forever: ‘Campaign Furniture’
• Doug Belshaw: The strange magic of the third week

OK, these two are included more for saliency than positivity, but they are also good!

• Michael Lopp: I Hate Fish. Because I am in the middle of a gtd identity crisis
• Akash Bhat: Curate or die. Which is about this very post, and those like it.

Update: Adam Mastroianni’s latest post fits here like a glove.

The final (?) update on my use of the service formerly known as Twitter: I have locked the account and logged out. I shied away from deleting it completely to prevent username squatting. All the posts are still available (and searchable!) thanks to micro.blog’s wonderful import function.

A day full of meetings, so pointing out the update to my now page will likely be my only contribution. Busy times, still.

• Dan Frank: 15 theses on the optimization crisis: or why so many are dissatisfied with society, despite our prosperity. I can but nod along, as I have noted these soul-deadening tendencies myself a few times before. Point number 9 was particularly salient as I read about Robert De Niro’s hotel chains and George Clooney’s old tequila business, perpetuating the cycle of greed and envy.
• David Cain: Maybe the Default Settings Are Too High. An argument for slowing down most things you do, with an emphasis of reading. Pairs nicely with Alan Jacobs' advice on reading, particularly the second paragraph.
• Andrew Gelman: How much of an NBA team’s won-loss record is from skill and how much is luck? Gelman provides a neat step-by-step account of a statistical exploration which you will appreciate even if you are not a basketball fan. Note his advice on slowing down and thinking about what to expect before performing an analysis. After this you will have an idea of how much the practitioners of journalist science leave out in their final write-ups.
• Steve Dylan: How Gemini Gives Me Hope for a Future Internet. No, not Google’s LLM, but a text-based protocol that reimagines how hypertext on the Internet could work. And if it seems cumbersome compared to even “surfing the web” — let alone mindlessly thumbing down a social feed — well, there lies much of the point!
• Charlie Buckland for BBC Wales: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years. Just a feel-good story for the holiday season, to be read slowly and enjoyed.

Bret Terpstra’s Marked 3 Beta is out. As powerful as BBEdit is, I still have to deal with many .docx documents without any reliable way to convert heavily tracked and commented versions to markdown and back. After a quick test, Marked 3 seems to fit the bill. I will happily be a paying customer as soon as Terpstra gives me the opportunity, so here is to a successful launch!

• Adam Mastroianni: So you wanna de-bog yourself. Mastroianni has a playful way with words that is a joy to read regardless of the topic, but this one in particular fits nicely in the New Year resolution-making season. It is Oliver Burkeman-like advice condensed into shorter snippets, for those who have not yet reached middle age.
• David Allen (or whoever writes his newsletter): The biggest secret about goal setting. Note that there is a big difference between setting your own personal goals and the several steps-removed goals that management gives to their teams. The bit about changing the saliency landscape applies to both.
• Yann LeCun: “the concept (of general intelligence) is compete BS”; the Nobel prize winner Demis Hassabis disagrees. But the fourth paragraph of that rebuttal is precisely what LeCun was talking about (mistaking specific for the general because it has “general” in the name).
• Karl Schroeder: Stop Thinking. ⊕ ᔥJohn Naughton On the difference between “understanding” — which is the analytical method that the people in the rationalist community, LLMs, and Mr. Spock do extremely well — and “reasoning”, which I understand (hah!) to be more akin to Charlie Munger’s mental models, applied intuitively, fluidly, and to the rationalist’s eyes haphazardly. Feel free to apply this distinction to the debate one bullet point above.
• Lily Lynch: Serbia’s Vučić Enters Deeper International Isolation. Could not have happened to a more deserving person! Although of course this means nothing but bad news for my fatherland so I wish El Presidente all the best in the New Year and may what is left of his reign be peaceful if not very long.