With the rise of GLP-1 drugs, there’s a trend that magnums are being ordered at clubs to meet minimums but left unfinished.

I think there’s a space for an ultra-high-end wellness drink at clubs. Imagine Erewhon meets Magic Mind meets Kin,  maybe with some effervescence. An elixir that comes out with sparklers but makes you feel great with nootropics not hungover. Priced at hundreds of dollars retail so thousands at a club. It could even be a cold chain, with the freshest ingredients that need to be preserved.

Let’s do some turmeric-ginger-cayenne shots and get crunk.

As I subscribe to more web feeds, I am starting to think about whether there are features that a “calm” web reader should have that are designed specifically for managing the number of posts in one’s reader.

I recently introduced Artemis roll-up to “roll up” a week’s posts from an author into a single list that is added to a user’s feed once per week. This was designed to help reduce the risk of feeling overwhelmed if you subscribe to authors that post several times per day.

Since then, I have had a few more ideas related to managing post volume in web readers. I have not yet added many of the ideas I have recently to Artemis, but I wanted to document my ideas so that I can: (i) share them with you, and; (ii) think through them a bit more. My ideas are below.

Timed subscriptions

I have noticed that I sometimes follow a website because I see a good blog post. I sometimes realise a week or two later that I am not interested in seeing all the posts from the website in my reader. After realising this, it sometimes takes me a few days to remove an author from my reader. It is only when I realise the number of posts in my reader is getting higher that I end up unsubscribing.

This gave me the idea of a “timed subscription”: a feature that would let you follow an author for a specified number of days and then receive a notification to ask whether you still want to follow the author. This would allow me to follow an author and also have a prompt to evaluate whether I still want to follow their website after a few days. For me, if I hadn’t read any of the posts from the author since I subscribed, this is a good signal I would want to end my timed subscription.

Pausing subscriptions

Sometimes I want a break from a web feed without having to unsubscribe. This made me think about the idea of “pausing” a subscription. I have since added this feature to Artemis, accessible in the Author settings page. When you pause a subscription, you will stop seeing posts from the paused author until either: (i) you unpause the subscription, or; (ii) the pause period is over. [^1]

Hide posts on the weekend

I had this idea earlier today so it is a bit raw. The premise is that you may not want to see some kinds of content on a weekend. For example, if you follow news sources you may want to hide them on the weekend so that personal websites can take up more space in your web reader interface. This idea related to the idea of a “paused” subscriptions, except this idea makes the pause recurring (i.e. every weekend).

Rate limiting

Back when I first made Artemis, I added a feature that would let you see only the top n most recent posts from a author published on a day (i.e. top post, top three posts, top ten posts), n random posts, or the top n posts in terms of how high they appear in the source feed file. The idea was to add a “rate limit” for web sources that publish regularly (i.e. Subreddit RSS feeds, which may publish dozens of posts in a day).

Artemis no longer supports this feature because it needed to be reworked after a refactor. But, I still like the idea. For example, I am following a Tumblr account that publishes pictures of paintings and art. I love the account. But it posts too frequently. Ideally, a random post or two is chosen every day to appear in my reader. I should be able to set how many posts I want to see.

Grouping by main post

This idea started with a narrow edge case. I saw someone whose blog I follow publish a blog post. I also follow their Mastodon account, where they posted an announcement for their post. Ideally, a web reader would group the announcement under the main post in the reader interface so that: (i) I still know there is some information on, for example, Mastodon, and; (ii) the blog post itself is prioritised in the reader interface.

Conclusion

This post summarises a few ideas I have had lately about what a web reader could do to help people manage the volume of posts in a web reader interface. As I reflect on this piece, I realise there is a relationship in my mind between a “calm” approach to a technology and user agency. All of the features above give a user control over what posts they see, when they see the posts, and for how long they may see posts from an author. Indeed, technology should be for people. The more control a user has over a technology, the more potential that technology has to feel calm. [^2]

[^1]: Artemis doesn’t technically have an “unpause” button yet; to unpause you need to set the paused date to any date in the past. I will need to add an “unpause” button explicitly so the user experience for unpausing a subscription is more explicit.

[^2]: The opposite – a technology where someone has little control, especially when control is wanted – feels restrictive at best; the downsides of a lack of control range from significant to chilling.

I’m kinda proud of the stars we’ve been bringing to our salon series here at Indiana University since 2021. And there are none I’m more excited to welcome than Helen Nissenbaum, who will be here on Tuesday to speak both in person and on Zoom. The title of her talk is “Why Obfuscation is (still) Needed (more than ever).”

Helen is the North Star of personal privacy—a role she earned by changing how the whole field understands what privacy is: specifically, that it’s not about secrecy or control, but about appropriate information flows. This was detailed in her landmark book, Privacy in Context, : Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life, and backed by her work on practical tools such as the Adnauseum browser extension.

Her day job is as Professor of Information Science and the founding director of the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech. Visit that page to get a small sense of her range of involvements and influences.

Helen has been an influence on my own privacy work, most notably with MyTerms. If privacy matters even a fraction as much to you as it does to me, come or tune in to her talk, and be prepared with questions.

That’s next Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern. You can register and join the crowd here.

Or click on this to put it on your calendar:

I am interested in the field of content design, which thinks of information as not only what it represents (i.e. facts) but how that information is represented. The UK Government says:

Good content design allows people to find out what they need to know or do quickly.

When I am navigating the UK Government website, I feel like I can find what I am looking for. I feel the same way when I am looking through the NHS website, too.

This week I had an idea: what would a gov.uk-style website look like for getting people set up on the web?

This idea was explored in the IndieWebGuides project in 2017, although the project covered more of the technical aspects of setting up a website. I think such a resource would still be incredibly valuable today, but the lens through which I was thinking about the idea was more about helping people make informed choices about how to use the web.

I thought about a website that would cover things like:

• How to choose a browser (and why it matters)
• How to set up a web presence for a community (and why social media isn’t enough)
• How to use web readers like RSS readers (and why they are useful)
• How to choose a search engine (and why it matters)
• What does it mean for information to be online? (talk about public vs. private, how web pages can be archived, and more)

One piece of motivation was to have a place on the web that helps highlight why things like browser choice, search engine choice, and using open web technology matters, in as few words as possible, and written for an audience that doesn’t have a technical background.

I wrote a little sample of what such a guide might look like for choosing a web browser.

I thought it would be nice to have a site where information is concise, consistent, and where every word is scrutinised for its relevance and necessity. I also thought it would be nice for such a site to not take a position against a technology (i.e. social media) and instead show the benefits, downsides, and alternatives that are more of the spirit of the web.

I’m sure my idea needs more development; I registered a domain name for this project – yourweb.guide – way too early. This is not a project I plan to build right now. It may be the case that short, well-designed guides exist for all my ideas above; if so, perhaps a site that aggregates them would be nice. In any case, despite having no intentions to bring this idea to life right now, it is an idea I wanted to write down in case anyone else sees something in the idea and is inspired.

I am interested in how software feels to use. Back in 2024, I wrote:

I want to learn about design, I thought to myself, excitedly. I was interested in why some things feel better to use than others – why do some tools feel like a delight, while others feel rough around the edges?

Reading this back now, the word “feel” is more important than ever. Some tools feel like a joy to use, others are frustrating.

How a piece of software feels is not necessarily related to what the software does, rather the experience of using it. A piece of software may feel good if it:

• matches your expectations;
• works in the way you think, and;
• helps you efficiently complete the task you have in mind.

This is not an exhaustive list, but represents some of my higher-level thinking detached from specific design considerations that make a piece of software feel good.

A government web form might feel reassuring to use because it is clearly described and well-structured, for example, even if the subject matter of the form is stressful.

I recently tried using Instagram again to connect with a few people. I deleted the app several weeks later after realising I didn’t feel happy using it; the algorithmic recommendations were distracting, among other things. Indeed, if anything, I felt trapped: it should not be the case that I have to endure the infinite-scrolling feed as the default view just so that I can participate in one group chat.

In contrast, I have started using Signal and I am delighted by how focused it is. The tool matches my expectations, works how I think, and lets me do what I want to do. As a bonus, they have put a lot of thought into the concept of folders for grouping messages. The software feels good. And that’s not even to mention all of the security benefits.

While it may seem obvious that some tools feel better than others, I think the recognition of the extent to which a piece of software makes us feel a certain way is a starting point for further analysis. I also think it is a good heuristic in designing technology. If something doesn’t feel good, design tweaks may be needed. A software vendor may not be incentivised to make those design tweaks, but new software designers can use known frustrations to inform the design of better applications.

I use the word “feel” in my thinking intentionally because it grounds software in a more holistic context, recognising that software is not detached from our emotions. This is in part why I like the term “human interface design” – it puts our humanity at the centre of interface design. Words matter.

In “Graduating between mediums of communication”, I explored how we can move between mediums of communication to access different affordances. For example, you might “graduate” from a text chat – for example, a Slack thread – to a video conference in a professional context. This might be helpful when discussing a plan for a project where a video call might allow for more effective back-and-forth discussion.

I am fascinated by how we move between different contexts, and also between modalities, with technology.

With that in mind, I have been thinking more about the idea of "graduation" in the context of websites. Many of the single-purpose pages on my website (i.e. my ideas list) grow from my notes. I start taking notes in Apple Notes, then when I realise I am starting to collect a lot of notes on a topic I may opt to create a web page on the topic. Apple Notes is effective for capturing ideas, but my blog gives my ideas a permalink that I can share with others.

A version of this in professional contexts would be when notes graduate into a document that is shared with others internally for comment or reference.

Text chat to blog posts is also an instance of “graduation”. For example, I was having a discussion with a few people yesterday over text chat which gave me an idea for a blog post. After contributing to the discussion, I started writing a blog post so I could explore my ideas in more depth. Text chat allowed for group communication and brainstorming and sharing, blogging allowed for personal reflection and more in-depth exploration of the facets of the topic that interested me most.

Another instance of "graduation" that comes to mind is the change from being a reader to being a commenter (i.e. going from reading a blog post to emailing the author, or submitting a comment in a comment box). Commenting turns a piece of work from a piece in the void to a place of discussion.