The Weekly Review: Vol VII Issue 14
Hello dearest email readers,
My wife gave me an awfully nice gift for Father’s Day this year. She took the kids out of town for a week to visit her family, leaving me all alone at home for 6 days.
The irony of this being a Father’s Day gift is not lost on me. But to all the introverted dad’s out there who’ve been working at home along with your children for the past five months, I feel you ✊
I love ‘em all, but I was definitely looking forward to a lot more peace and quiet for a week!
But the funny thing is, doing nothing but what I’ve planned feels so bloody weird. I get up and plan my day, and there’s no one to alter the agenda. There are no unknown priorities that pop up, no extra messes to clean, and no conflicts to sort out. 1–2 days of that and I start to wig out a little.
As the days pass, I recognize how it’s good for me to have other people’s needs to consider. Thinking only of myself is not.
I did my best to enjoy the full 6 day break. To rest a little. But I also did a lot of household tasks that I normally wouldn’t. It was a bit of service I could give to my family (and to be honest, future me as well).
The best part was getting a chance to build a pergola for my wife as an anniversary gift. And I felt pretty refreshed from the break!
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Items of note
Some time around the point in my life where I started to actually use the internet — maybe late 1999 or early 2000 — I also started to get into electronic music. Previously, I was fully all into grunge (I was late to appreciate that whole genre, but purchasing Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins had changed that and I spent the second half of the 90’s listening to all that stuff).
Towards the end of the decade, I picked up a copy of Spin Magazine that highlighted the top 90 albums of the 90’s (see a synopsis and the full list here. So. Much. Good. Music. Although … Siamese Dream should have been much, much higher on the list). This was one of the biggest influences in getting me into more electronic/digital music (second only to Trent Reznor). One of the artists that helped me in this shift was Björk and Post was the album that did it for me.
This article from Pitchfork does an excellent job musing on what makes her so unique and so good.
Apple, Epic, and the App Store
As a fan of both Apple and Fortnite, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks. I’m not on either side here: both of these are big, massively profitable companies that could improve their overall impact on their world if they focused less on their own bottom line.
But I have enjoyed reading some people’s thinking on the topic. As usual, Ben Thompson gives an astute analysis.
What is troubling about this example, which also applies to Netflix, Spotify, and other so-called “Reader” apps, is that Apple’s aggressive integration up the stack isn’t really helping anyone. Users are confused, these big developers get fewer customers than they might have otherwise, while Apple’s overall iPhone experience is degraded. The ones that really lose out, though, are smaller developers whose cost structures cannot support Apple’s 30% cut, yet don’t have the brand awareness to enable customers to find their websites. In this way Apple is actually making dominant companies even stronger (much like they are Facebook).
I appreciate his focus on the user experience. For another good take, see the IA blog.
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Allbirds Tree Dashers
I recently picked up my first pair of Allbirds. If you’re not familiar, they’re a relatively new brand, but one focused on environmental impact. They make shoes from Merino wool, tree fibres, and sugar canes. And while they bill their product as “the world’s most comfortable shoe”, they are not known for their athletic focus.
Until they put out their Tree Dashers.
I decided to give these a try. I love a B-Corp that’s focused on reducing the carbon footprint of humankind, but I was sceptical about a company that had never created shoes for performance athletics. After a couple of months, I’m happy to say I’m wrong.
These shoes are very comfortable. But, more importantly, they’ve held up for my runs. Short runs, medium runs, and even long runs (for me, that’s anything over a half marathon). These shoes are different than the shoes I usually get, broader across the sole, and with laces I never untie (I simply slip them on like a pair of loafers). But they’re super comfortable at all times.
One word of warning: these should not be used on trails. The bottom is virtually dripless and getting wearing these on some fresh mud is a groin tear waiting to happen.
Apart from that, highly recommended!
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Quote of the week
It’s been powerfully animating to me to realize that, as a human being, I am destined to be a maker … So, we are all creators, makers, in some sense. Every time we act, every time we do anything, we make something into something else — some situation into something different than it was: a rocky field into a garden, a stick into a spear, a room into a home, a cow into a steak, flour and sugar and fruit into an apple pie, snow into a snowman, sounds into melody, fire into lamps and heaters and locomotion, eleven men into a football team, and on and on and on. We’re all makers.
John Piper, on the Ask Pastor John podcast discussing some rules for productivity
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Currently
Listening: As the article about the artist suggests, I’ve been giving a lot of Björk’s earlier albums a listen lately. As well as Johanne Brahms, my favorite composer of classical music.
Reading: Predictably, Starsight. It’s the second in the series from Brandon Sanderson that I mentioned in the previous email. All our kids are enjoying it, and I’m happy to report that I am as well.
Drinking: Kombucha. My wife was making this stuff before it became the hipster drink it is today, but somewhere over the years our scoby expired and she stopped. On our recent holiday, she picked up a sample from an old friend and got back into the habit. Mixed with some orange juice, I find it’s a nice afternoon drink.
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It’s a family affair
We finally had a chance to go to church IRL a couple weeks ago. Like so many, our church shutdown in-person services in mid-March and has conducted online services ever since. It’s been a blessing to enjoy good preaching on a weekly basis, but it’s not quite the same as attending a service at the building and seeing all the people.
But for the last 4–6 weeks, we’ve also had two other options. People can choose to visit on a Thursday night when the service is recorded. Or, they can visit on a Sunday morning where we play the recording. As a bonus, the pastor who preached on Thursday will preach the same sermon again to the group on Sunday morning,
And so we enjoyed seeing word preached live in front of us this week. But what really struck me was hearing the voices of others singing God’s praise. That has decidedly been missing for the past months and it’s something I never want to take for granted, yet somehow always do.
Although the social distancing in the sanctuary felt a little over done (groups were 10–20 feet apart and there was a total of maybe 30 people in a space that normally holds 250–300), the impact of seeing others and hearing their voices was a great reminder that we are adopted into a family.
Worshipping God on our own is not his design.
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Until next time…
