✈️ Travel day today, from Serbia to the US of A. From an authoritarian regime in its terminal stages to one that is just starting out.

Regardless, after 7 weeks away and living out of suitcases we can’t wait to go back home.

🍿 Black Bag (2025) was a breath of fresh air: sleek, well-written, well-acted, well-executed, vintage Soderbergh.

This week was a good one for learning about new apps:

• Zen browser puts an Arc skin over a Firefox core. It has already become my default browser. (ᔥBen Werdmuller)
• Macrowave enables AV streaming to anyone. I do plan on using it to stream but for now I am just marveling at the WinAmp esthetics. (ᔥGus Mueller)
• Inksightful digitizes paper notes. I am on the waitlist for the beta. (ᔥThe Iconfactory)

On the topic of apps, here are some fairly new ones (i.e. I have been using them for less than 5 years) that are passing the test of time, with honors:

• Tot, which is still my default for digital note-taking on the both the Mac and on iOS
• Flighty, which is invaluable for those flying in the US. Alas, it is not as useful, I have been finding out this summer, for travel in Europe. Those Europeans are not very good at updating their systems.
• The Cardhop/Fantastical combo, without which I could not imagine juggling between four different contact lists and a half-dozen calendars.
• MarsEdit, which I missed out on listing initially even as I was using it to write this very post. It is that essential that I consider it a part of the OS at this point.

And the apps that make me stick to the Mac even though I entertain from time to time the possibility of switching over to Linux:

• MailMate (since 2013)
• DEVONthink (since 2015)
• OmniFocus (since 2016)
• Tinderbox (since 2017)
• Audio Hijack and Sound Source (since 2020)

As much as I like the Mac hardware and the sleek aluminum esthetics, it is the software listed above that keeps me in the ecosystem. None of it is made by Apple.

What I found at this newsstand in Serbia did not give me hope for the future:

• Exhibit A: an Italian Brainrot sticker book.
• Exhibit B: “How to help a child who wants to be an influencer” as a front-page headline in Serbia’s oldest daily. And no, it is not about counseling.

• Nick Maggiulli: Optimizing Ourselves to Death. This is nothing new, of course. Modus omnibus in rebus was first written down some 2600 years ago and has withstood the test of time. It is good to have an occasional reminder.
• Joe Stone: A moment that changed me: I resolved to reduce my screen time – and it was a big mistake. Case in point to the above. Smartphones are magical, when you remember to tone them down.
• Dwarkesh Patel: Lessons from The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro. Moderation in everything, even in moderation. Here are two examples of people, Johnson and Caro, who did not hold back on their own thing, with great success.

Robert Caro’s books are about formidable, single-mindedly devoted characters with storybook life arcs. It may be the case, then, that the only person who could write the biography of Robert Caro is the man himself.

• John Gruber: Gold, Frankincense, and Silicon. The amount of money and power one obtains in life are proportional to the size of frogs — or, if you are feeling less charitable, turds — one swallows throughout life, and at some point you either acquire a taste for frogs (maybe you’ve always liked them!), spend a lot of money on therapy and/or drugs, or drop out. And Tim Apple hasn’t dropped out just yet.
• John Gruber again: OpenAI Brings Back Legacy ChatGPT 4o Model in Response to Outcry From Users Who Find GPT-5 Emotionally Unsatisfying. To quote Gruber, “These people need help, and that help isn’t going to come from a chatbot.”
• Duncan McClements: The Sun Never Leaves. The subtitle is “How emigration ended the British Empire”, and it could not have happened to a nicer bunch of overindulgent cut-throats.

Happy reading.

The FT Editorial board says it’s time to stop indulging Serbia’s authoritarian president:

America seems to have left the Balkan pitch for now. But the UK and the EU have not. They should act and use their economic leverage. If they do not and Serbia heads further down the authoritarian path, it will be not just Vučić but also his gaze-averting western backers who are to blame.

“Economic leverage” sounds suspiciously like sanctions, which would be the exact wrong move to take and would only strengthen the president’s hand. Just ghost him — it would infuriate his small narcissistic mind.

Alex Tabarrok wrote a brief comment on why America always wins in the global superpower game:

Double down on immigration, entrepreneurship, innovation, building for tomorrow, free markets, free speech and individualism and America will take all new competitors as it has taken all comers in the past.

Funny how each and every of these reasons of America’s dominance is not only under threat — they always have been — but is being actively dismantled by the state itself. This time may truly be different.

Whatever you think of medicalization of moderate obesity, the GLP-1 inhibitors semaglutide and tirzeparide (aka Ozempic, Wegowy and Zepbound) are truly groundbreaking. It takes a lot for me to admit something approaches imatinib in innovation and importance, and they are there! Incredibly, the drug companies that developed them are considered losers in the upside-down world of American finance:

Since their peak last year, the decline is more pronounced. Novo Nordisk has lost $367bn in value since its peak in June 2024, a fall of more than two-thirds, while Lilly has fallen 29 per cent from a record valuation last year, wiping $250bn off its market capitalisation.

In a decision that was short-termist and reactionary to the extreme, Novo Nordisk even fired their longstanding CEO over it.

The kicker comes from a healthcare fund manager quoted near the end of the article:

“If you’re a generalist investor, why are you putting money here, versus buying an AI stock, [given] the headwinds of both tariffs and the most favoured nation policy?” he added.

What are we even doing here?