Adrian’s Microblog

The Oura Ring provides you with a “sleep score” so you can track how well you, um, slept (yes, you read that right). But before you shell out $500 (yes, you read that right), there’s another way to approach this head-scratcher. It’s called “seeing how you feel.” Here’s how it works: If you wake up in the morning and feel like roadkill, you didn’t sleep well; if you feel like dew-kissed grass on a bright spring morning, you did.

Strapping a FitBit on your wrist is like slapping reading glasses on the James Webb Space Telescope — it’s a solution in search of a problem. Our bodies have been honed over millions of years, stress-tested over millennia in every conceivable way. We’re good here, folks.

The health tech crew has found a way to monetize our heartbeat, God b less ’em. But there’s another way. Nicholas Thompson writes about his experience turning off his smartwatch during an ultramarathon: “I stopped worrying about everything I normally worry about and instead tried to imagine that I was a young boy, bounding through the forests of New England, where I grew up. I let go of my concerns about time, my heart rate and cadence. I didn’t worry how many miles had passed or how many there were to go. … I knew I had learned an entirely new way to run.” Turns out, it’s the old way. And it sounds a lot like freedom and fun.

Zach Przystup in Baltimore Sun in 19 Feb 2026 op-ed

Reposting this from @manton:

Stunning quote in this report from The New York Times about Meta’s plans to add facial recognition to their Ray-Bans: “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

😦

How is it that Thomas Merton could have in 1961 so accurately nailed modern society?:

The great temptation of modern Man is not physical solitude, but immersion in the mass of other men … escape into the great formless sea of irresponsibility, which is the crowd. There is actually no more dangerous solitude than that of the man who is lost in a crowd, who does not know he is alone and who does not function as a person in a community either.

Where men live huddled together without true communication, there seems to be greater sharing, and a more genuine communion. But this is not communion, only immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and clichés repeated over and over again so that in the end one listens without hearing and responds without thinking. The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible. Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t hear, he doesn’t think. He does not act, he is pushed. He does not talk, he produces conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. He does not think, he secretes clichés.

(from New Seeds of Contemplation, in chapter titled Solitude is not Separation)

Biscotti are my kryptonite … although I’m not sure what that makes my superpower … :/

I’ve ordered from StickerMule in the past and always appreciated good results.

Bookmarking here also some of their free side-tools that can helpful for those edge cases where you just need something ‘simple’ done:

  • Upscale images without loss in quality

  • Upgrade images to vector graphics

  • Run online giveaways

  • Remove the background from photos

  • Online graphic design software

  • and a few more

With a recent snow in town, an old video came to mind from years past … turns out it was 15 years. ;)

In my mind, I had remembered it as a Field Notes quarterly edition promo vid, but after on-and-off searching over a couple days, including YouTube, I wasn’t getting anywhere. :/

Then from the faded corners of my mind I started to think it may have been done by Jim Coudal’s marketing company, Coudal Partners, before they were fully in the Field Notes project. And that was on Vimeo.

The video’s description:

After the great Chicago Blizzard of 2011, thousands of pounds of snow were removed from city’s downtown streets. Loaded by bulldozers and heavy trucks, much of the snow was piled in the empty lot between our studio and the railroad tracks.

In a collaborative effort between Coudal Partners and The Explorers of the New World Society, an expedition was immediately formed. The goal; a bold assault aiming to place the very first men upon the summit of this peak. Known for their dexterity and grit, Dawson and Matt were selected for the dangerous undertaking. This is their story.

Herewith, the daring arctic adventure titled, Above the Sun:

“Big Tech billionaires spur exodus from Calif.”

I started anecdotally seeing this 5-10 years ago at a smaller scale, and now even the big names (Sacks, Thiel, & others) are moving to Miami, Austin, and destinations outside California.

There definitely has been a change in the playing board among states since 2020.

Dew Point vs. Humidity (via weather.gov)

The dew point is the temperature the air needs to be cooled to (at constant pressure) in order to achieve a relative humidity (RH) of 100%. At this point the air cannot hold more water in the gas form. If the air were to be cooled even more, water vapor would have to come out of the atmosphere in the liquid form, usually as fog or precipitation.

The higher the dew point rises, the greater the amount of moisture in the air. This directly affects how “comfortable” it will feel outside. Many times, relative humidity can be misleading. For example, a temperature of 30 and a dew point of 30 will give you a relative humidity of 100%, but a temperature of 80 and a dew point of 60 produces a relative humidity of 50%. It would feel much more “humid” on the 80 degree day with 50% relative humidity than on the 30 degree day with a 100% relative humidity. This is because of the higher dew point.

So if you want a real judge of just how “dry” or “humid” it will feel outside, look at the dew point instead of the RH. The higher the dew point, the muggier it will feel. General comfort levels USING DEW POINT that can be expected during the summer months:

  • less than or equal to 55: dry and comfortable

  • between 55 and 65: becoming “sticky” with muggy evenings

  • greater than or equal to 65: lots of moisture in the air, becoming oppressive