An unscheduled break

I've been ill just about all week. Monday was sort of fine, no planned work, with picking up the new car as the only thing on the agenda. I woke up with a racing heart on Tuesday, and while that's nothing new, I just felt something was off. So, I decided to take a couple of days off, and luckily, this coincided with a downperiod at Hedengren Agency (we're waiting for feedback on a report). This in turn led to my first week truly off in years.

I feel better now, but there'll be no essay this week, just the links. I even managed to put my projects aside to rest up, which I'm particularly proud of. That is also why there's no essay this week. Plenty of things to read, though.

Linkage

👹 Substack continues to promote and make money on white supremacists, fascists, and nazis. Free speech isn’t just about being able to speak your mind without prosecution, it’s the choice to not allow it, too. This is a company that actively promotes, and makes money on, despicable views. Substack is an accomplice to everything that’s bad with the web. If you’re on there, leave.

🤡 It’s hilarious: Tesla sues Sweden (through state-owned companies and institutions) because of the labor strike effects it has on delivery of license plates. That means no new Teslas can ship in Sweden. Elon Musk obviously talks about this being insane and whatnot, but this is labor disputes and if your company wasn’t behaving badly it wouldn’t have come to this.

🚮 Elon Musk continues to kill his dumpster fire site, X, by telling advertisers to go fuck themselves, and apologizing but not really apologizing for highlighting an antisemitic post. Maybe he should join Substack?

📧 Sad to see Mailchimp closing down TinyLetter. I recommend Buttondown if you’re in the market, it’s very much tailored to writers.

😒 I’m with Chris Coiyer on this one: Everything about SEO is obnoxious, horrible, evil, and trash. I might’ve added some of those…

🤖 Great piece on AI art, with thoughts and comments from artists and the more technologically minded. There’s a larger thought here, I’ll return to it.

🧟‍♀️ It seems some users are losing files on Google Drive, which is terrible, but warrants the following mantra: Sync is not a backup.

🤦 Futurism caught Sports Illustrated publishing AI generated articles with fake attribution. Baffling, but not surprising — there’s bound to be a lot of this out there.

🙅 Crossover is a fun site, answering the questions Where else have you seen that actor?

🧑‍💻 People and Blogs is a great interview newsletter about people blogging. I've enjoyed every issue thus far, and since you didn't get an essay this week, I recommend you hit the archives here instead.

Got something I should read? Send it to me, either by replying to this letter, hitting up tdh.me on Bluesky, or any of the other means that appeal to you. Thanks!

Currently

📚 You'd think I'd be reading a lot when taking it easy, but nope, nothing really.

🎵 Lana Del Rey has a new song out, a cover of "Take Me Home, Country Roads", which sounds as expected. Yes, that's a good thing, albeit perhaps a bit boring.

📺 Just wrapped season 3 of Yellowstone. What a great show. Other than that, I've been watching the snooker UK Championship. The final's coming up as I'm writing this.

🎮 I had planned to start Starfield, and I did, but I also wanted to dip into Elder Scrolls Online. The latter hooked me, I've tens of hours of the game this week. Runs well on my ROG Ally, but obviously tremendously so on my new gaming PC.

That's it for this week. Remember to listen to your body. If it tells you to rest in the most aggressive manner, you should do so. Regular service return next week.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡