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Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-01-19T18:29:09.000Z

I just finished up this Weekly Thing adjacent project that I started over Christmas. Just a bit more to finalize distribution! I’m looking forward to sharing this. All the proceeds will be going to the Weekly Thing Supporting Membership program. 🙌

Blogging in a Stream - Barry Hess

2026-01-19T18:15:56.000Z

I’m going to try setting my blog to a stream layout for a while. In my blogging history I’ve always blogged with a list-of-posts style, which is where the original design of Pika came from. It was my preference: I have an idea and an idea fits nicely with a title and if the idea isn’t somewhat fully formed, why am I sharing it? At one point I even deemed that my blog was going to only contain deeply-considered, capital-E Essays, and so any sort of streamy vibe just didn’t make sense.

When my blog became about Essays, it may not surprise anyone to learn that within months I basically stopped blogging. Thankfully I’ve been off that trip for a long time. I’m a blogger, not an essayist, after all.

Maybe I’ll try this for all of 2026? Maybe I’ll actually write some short posts without titles? Maybe with this change I’ll blog most every day? I’m not sure, but I’m curious to experiment. I also think blogging in this way will lead to a lot of Pika feature refinement as I wrestle with any shortcomings I find.

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Weekly Thing 337 / Sunrise, Vision, Offline - Weekly Thing

2026-01-18T23:38:09.000Z

Hello there! 👋

Here I am with the first Weekly Thing of 2026! Yes it is a bit later in the day than planned, but better late than never, right?

I had a great Christmas, wonderful time over New Year's, celebrated my Birthday, and wished Mazie off on her semester abroad in Barcelona.

All of that was wonderful.

Sadly not everything is that way…

Minneapolis is again in the news. There is a huge federal presence in our city that is hard to make sense of. People are scared, and anxiety is high. Renee Good was killed. It is the kind of thing that changes how you go about your day. It makes folks who never expected to feel afraid wonder if they should be.

This is impacting our city and those who call it home. It is a good time to give people some extra grace, check in with friends, and find ways to support our communities.

Ducks finding a spot of warm water in the frozen winter. I only realized after the fact that I sent nearly the same photo in WT 335! The difference is the ice is completely in now.

January 03, 2026
Minneapolis, MN

Notable

You can discuss any of these links at the Weekly Thing 337 tag in r/WeeklyThing.

How Markdown took over the world - Anil Dash

Markdown really is everywhere. I write these emails in Markdown. Every comment I have about the links is written in Markdown. I take notes in Markdown. I blog in Markdown. And now every LLM thinks and writes in Markdown. It is literally everywhere. I particularly like the list of 10 reasons Markdown worked.

Open Infrastructure Map

This is a pretty incredible project. You can see power lines and electrical generation stations, oil pipelines, water infrastructure — all of it is just on a map that you can browse and explore as you wish. Amazing stuff.

Nine Years, One Sunrise Composition: A New Year’s Day Photo Project

I met Bryan Hansel when I took his Winter Along the Gunflint workshop in 2024. He is a great photographer, amazing post-production expert, and teacher. I subscribed to his newsletter and it is a treat. He sends amazing images and his writing along with it is great. Highly recommend. This most recent issue highlights a photo he's taken at sunrise, every day for the last nine years, in the exact same spot. What a great project and beautiful collection of images.

You probably don't need Oh My Zsh | Artem Golubin

Oh My Zsh is cool but I've always veered away from it because of the huge footprint. This post addresses that directly with recommendations to get the biggest value with the least performance hit. I would also add that your shell is probably something where you should really know what is happening, and turning it over to a bunch of stuff you aren't familiar with is perhaps not the best idea.

Don't fall into the anti-AI hype -

Salvatore Sanfilippo (aka antirez) is best know for writing Redis. Redis is this incredible vector database that is well known for being incredible performant, stable, and reliable. I still remember using Redis a long, long time ago when I had to download the tar-ball and build it myself. It was beautiful to watch because the code was so clean, and so well maintained that there were no compiler errors. The entire process gave you confidence in the software from the very beginning. Critical with a service like Redis.

I share this just to say that Sanfilippo is a craftsman. This is someone that cares deeply about software and the craft that goes into making it. He has been blogging about his use of LLMs lately and I've followed his experience closely because of his focus on craft. I know many engineers who have scoffed and written LLM coding agents off. I think this is a huge mistake. Writing software is so incredibly complicated and difficult, and using LLM's will allow us to create so much better solutions than before. His call to action is a good one.

Anyway, back to programming. I have a single suggestion for you, my friend. Whatever you believe about what the Right Thing should be, you can't control it by refusing what is happening right now. Skipping AI is not going to help you or your career. Think about it. Test these new tools, with care, with weeks of work, not in a five minutes test where you can just reinforce your own beliefs. Find a way to multiply yourself, and if it does not work for you, try again every few months.

I have always embraced the word "builder." I think of myself as a builder. Ultimately I find working with LLM's amazing because it helps me build more things better. His final paragraph resonates so strongly with me. (emphasis is mine)

Yes, maybe you think that you worked so hard to learn coding, and now machines are doing it for you. But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. And now you can build more and better, if you find your way to use AI effectively. The fun is still there, untouched.

What is your why? Is it to be the best coder, or the best builder?

ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree | Electronic Frontier Foundation

This is an incredible amount of surveillance infrastructure and capability.

A 2022 report by Georgetown Law's Center for Privacy and Technology found the following:

ICE had scanned the driver's license photos of 1 in 3 adults.

ICE had access to the driver's license data of 3 in 4 adults.

ICE was tracking the movements of drivers in cities home to 3 in 4 adults.

ICE could locate 3 in 4 adults through their utility records.

ICE built its surveillance dragnet by tapping data from private companies and state and local bureaucracies.

ICE spent approximately $2.8 billion between 2008 and 2021 on new surveillance, data collection and data-sharing programs.

With a budget for 2025 that is 10 times the size of the agency's total surveillance spending over the last 13 years, ICE is going on a shopping spree, creating one of the largest, most comprehensive domestic surveillance machines in history.

The ICE budget has nearly tripled in just the last two years, and some chunk of that is going to building an incredible surveillance network. And you might think no big deal since the FBI and CIA have huge surveillance functions, but those are entirely different as they are in the intelligence community. This surveillance is less regulated.

MCP is a fad | Tom Bedor's Blog

I’m skeptical of the assertion but it is notable that LLM's have proven already to be very adaptive to interfacing with different protocols. So, will MCP last a long time and do I need to care? My bet is that it will. Its simplicity is a feature not a bug. I think it may be like RSS, around for a very long time and just the glue that makes things work.

Apple: You (Still) Don’t Understand the Vision Pro – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Thompson shares his reaction to the first live broadcast Vision Pro basketball game. He's critical but not of the technology, more of the way it was produced. From my own usage of the Vision Pro it is clear that you have to think about production in a very different way. Cutting from one camera to another in a VR experience is jarring and not like anything on a regular TV. I was hopeful that Apple would do some innovative things like this with MLS coverage, and that never did happen. Now my hope is that the deal with F1 will be where we see this attempted. I want to feel like I’m driving the Ferrari as it races around the track. This should be entirely possible with the Vision Pro and the content rights must be in place now. F1 may be the best sport to learn how to create these experiences. I’m hopeful.

Introducing Cowork | Claude

I've been using Claude Code for a bunch of different projects. I've also been telling everyone that will listen that even though "Code" is in the title, know that Claude Code can do so much other than code. Truly, Claude Code is just a way to work with collections of files in a directory. You can do whatever you want beyond that. However, this is still limiting since folks that are not comfortable in a terminal are going to get scared away. Now enter Claude Cowork!

With Cowork you can create a "Task" (I would have used the term project) and associate a variety of files with it, and Claude can do very complicated actions across all of that. Simon Willison has a first impression write-up on this that is worth reading. I tried this with a number of things and it was super-easy to use. Additionally, Cowork seems to put each of these tasks in a protected container which protects other files on your computer.

That container part also caused issues for me since Claude created new files for me that I couldn't get to. They were locked in the container and inaccessible. I’m sure that will be fixed soon enough, but I did find the familiar directory and non-containerized approach of Claude Code a little simpler.

I think this points to a much more powerful way for us to engage with LLMs for more project-centric activities.

Reading across books with Claude Code | Pieter Maes

Reading How to Read a Book was my first exposure to the concept of Syntopic Reading:

When you're reading at the Syntopic level, you're working to synthesise material across a discipline (most of the time). Syntopic reading itself has five levels, requires a different approach to inspection, and is the point at which you make the authors work for you rather than you interpreting them.

This article explores using Claude Code to assist in syntopic reading across a collection of books. It would be interesting to build a librarian like agent capability like this, that could hold broad conversations across a variety of books you've read as well as extending into ones that are adjacent. This is from the same person that created the Hacker News Book Map.

Photos Backup Anywhere

I wonder if this is just a nice UI in front of PhotosExport which I recently discovered as well. Either way, these are great options to make sure that you are completely backing up your iCloud Photo Library. This is going on my to do list to setup and use regularly. I would trust this a lot more than just doing an Export.

Patricio Worthalter (POAP): The impossible balance between culture alignment and survival - YouTube

Great presentation from the founder of POAP sharing some of what he sees in Ethereum and the future of blockchain applications. I loved how he shared the impact of his "You've Met Patricio" POAPs. It inspired me to get back to those and commit to doing them in an ongoing manner.

sitemaptorss - Convert Sitemaps to RSS Feeds

Justin at Buttondown recently made the incredibly useful rssrssrssrss service that lets you combine multiple RSS feeds into one. I love how this fully embraces a Unix-like approach of doing one single thing and doing it well. It is a tool. I didn’t know he also created caltorss to transform an iCal feed into RSS. That isn't a use case I've ever considered but I dig it! Then he rolled out this one and I again smirked as I had never considered it either. I wasn't sure what I would use it for and then I realized there are sites I would like to follow that do not publish RSS feeds, but they do have sitemaps! It isn't a particularly nice feed, but in a last ditch attempt this is a cool way to get updates from sites.

Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy | Cornell Chronicle

Interesting data on the impact of food spending when people start taking a GLP-1.

Within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3%. Among higher-income households, the drop is even steeper, at more than 8%. Spending at fast-food restaurants, coffee shops and other limited-service eateries falls by about 8%.

And it isn't just the total spend, but he category of food is also impacted.

Ultra-processed, calorie-dense foods -- the kinds most closely associated with cravings -- saw the sharpest declines. Spending on savory snacks dropped by about 10%, with similarly large decreases in sweets, baked goods and cookies. Even staples like bread, meat and eggs declined.

Only a handful of categories showed increases. Yogurt rose the most, followed by fresh fruit, nutrition bars and meat snacks.

I've been taking Zepbound (GLP-1) for about nine months now and one of the most notable changes for me has been a desire to share a meal with Tammy, instead of getting my own. And appetizers are very rare since it is just too much food.

Journal

Jan 9, 2026 at 5:16 PM

Stone Pit Old Fashioned (bourbon, apricot, demerara, peach tincture) at Animale's. Tasty. 🥃

Jan 10, 2026 at 9:43 AM

I’ve always thought it would be amazing to go to a World Cup match and with the 2026 FIFA World Cup being in North America it is time! Tammy did the research and Tyler and I will be at Lumen Field in Seattle on July 6th watching W81 v W82 in the Round of 16! ⚽️

Jan 10, 2026 at 5:17 PM

We had a great time solving the Scooby-Doo™ and the Spooky Castle Adventure room at Escapology today. It was our first room at Escapology and we'll be back. Finished in 39m 46s -- very fast for us! Room 86!

Escape Rooms of 2025

Jan 10, 2026 at 6:10 PM

This year we jumped way into our Escape Room adventures, more than any previous year. We completed 25 rooms in 2025!

This year we went through all of our records and made sure we had a complete inventory of all of our rooms, resulting in our Escape Rooms list. We are getting close to having 100 rooms so that we can become TERPECA voters! Speaking of TERPECA, we did seven rooms that were in the top 100 for 2024 of the Top Escape Rooms Project. Note the ⭐️ next to those rooms in the list.

It was a super fun year for escape rooms! 🤩

Our log for 2025 was…

Copper Cat Escape - Granny's Recipe Rescue in Brainerd, MN. See post!
Copper Cat Escape - Deep Woods Cabin in Brainerd, MN. See post!
Puzzleworks - The Museum in St. Paul, MN. See post!
No Esc Puzzle Collective - Sherwood Forest in Shakopee, MN. See post!
Enigma Adventures - The Istanbul Gambit in Bloomington, MN. See post!
Puzzleworks - The Hospital in St. Pual, MN. See post!
Doldrick's Escape Room - Crazy Train ⭐️ in Orlando, FL. See post!
Puzzleworks - The Dungeon in St. Paul, MN. See post!
Puzzleworks - The Anomaly in St. Paul, MN. See post!
Enigma Adventures - Pirates of the Spanish Main in Maple Grove, MN. See post!
Escape City - Mindmaster Industries in Calgary. See post!
Solve Escape Rooms - Caper in the Escape Room in Waukesha, WI.
Solve Escape Rooms - 14 Floors Below in Waukesha, WI.
Escape in Time - Gold Rush in Madison, WI. See post!
Cabinet Mysteriis - The Dreamwalkers ⭐️ in Quebec. See post!
Cabinet Mysteriis - 2002: The Bovine Odyssey ⭐️ in Quebec. See post!
Cabinet Mysterlis - Screaming Metal ⭐️ in Quebec. See post!
Escaparium - Lost Island of the Voodoo Queen ⭐️ in Quebec. See post!
Escaparium - Wardrobe for sale ⭐️ in Quebec. See post!
Escaparium - Magnifico ⭐️ in Quebec. See post! Number 1 on TERPECA 2024 and 2025!
Escape Room Alexandria - The Experiment in Alexandria. See post!
Puzzled Escape Rooms - Time Machine in Fargo. See post!
Breakout ND - Gemini Quantum Quest in Bismarck. See post!
Escape Game - Ruins: Forbidden Treasure in Nashville. See post!
Escape Game - Yeti Escape Room in Nashville. See post!

Jan 10, 2026 at 7:57 PM

Mazie is doing her final packing and preparation to depart tomorrow for her semester abroad in Barcelona. I'm excited and proud of her, and as her Dad nervous and hopeful, as she embarks on her biggest excursion yet. Starting tomorrow I’ll be counting the days until we visit her. 🇪🇸✈️

Jan 10, 2026 at 11:04 PM

Excited to see the MSP airport has been added to the Airport POAP Rally! Follow the Rally. ✈️

Jan 11, 2026 at 5:02 PM

I’ve been having fun playing Clash Royale with Tyler -- he’s my coach and is really good at the game! The game had some big changes recently that are not being well received by the community. He wrote up where he thinks Supercell is going wrong. Spot on! 🎯

Jan 13, 2026 at 8:42 AM

POAP 7550517 at TeamSPS Cyberweek 2025.

Jan 13, 2026 at 6:09 PM

At our very first Minnesota Gophers basketball game in the Barn Lofts! 🏀

Jan 15, 2026 at 9:53 PM

POAP 7552077 at You've met Jamie Thingelstad in Winter 2026.

Supporting Membership

Hey there, Weekly Thing enthusiasts! 🌟 We're on an exciting mission to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), champions of digital freedom, and we need your awesome energy to make it happen! So far, we've rallied together to raise an impressive $692.97, but with your help, we can soar even higher. With 16 weeks to go until we send every cent to the EFF, imagine the impact we could make by boosting our Supporting Member count from 23 to something spectacular! By becoming a Supporting Member, you're not just joining a community—you're directly fueling the fight for online privacy and innovation. Let's make waves and show the world what we can achieve together. Ready to take the leap? Jump in and become a Supporting Member today!

$4 monthly

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Briefly

This drives me crazy when I’m using my Mac. 😡 → The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – no.heger

A wild social infinite word find. Lovely little project. → WORDS.ZIP - Infinite Collaborative Word Search Game Online

Terpstra makes some powerful Markdown tools. I wasn't familiar with this one. → A quick Markdown Fixup update - BrettTerpstra.com

When the authenticity of digital assets cannot be proven, "in real life" gains a new value. I'd love to see blockchains help this. → offline regains its value | ava's blog

Lessons from an indie game creator. → 15 Years of Indie Dev In 4 Bits of Advice - Tom Francis

Huge set of improvements and updates. → Claude Code 2.1.0 arrives with smoother workflows and smarter agents | VentureBeat

George Orwell, in 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” → Daring Fireball: Let’s Call a Murder a Murder

Basic introduction to Claude Code and how you can work with it on non-code projects. Good read if you are looking to just get started. → Claude Code and What Comes Next - Ethan Mollick

Birthday reflections. → Matt 4.2 | Matt Mullenweg

Feels a lot like Maps and the initial iPhone. → Joint statement from Google and Apple

There are plenty of folks looking at LLMs for building software, but they are also really good at doing system administration tasks too. Maybe before it was too much to run some of your own services locally, but what if an LLM was doing the setup for you? → 2026 is the year of self-hosting

"The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President." → Statement from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell - Federal Reserve Board

Round-up of various reactions to news that Apple and Google have a deal and Gemini will be used for various AI features. There has to be some familiarity here since Apple has relied on Google so much for Search (and continues), Maps (less so now), and now AI. → Apple Picks Gemini - Michael Tsai

Interesting visualization of the 1,000 most commonly referenced books on Hacker News along with clustering. The site is slow to load but an interesting reference, particularly if lookin for reading ideas. → Hacker News Book Map

Well done Anthropic! 👏 → Python Software Foundation News: Anthropic invests $1.5 million in the Python Software Foundation and open source security

It is crazy how frustrating it can be to deal with date and time in software, particularly when you need to calculate things. Bring on the vibe coding, and good frameworks like this one. → Date is out, Temporal is in - Piccalilli

Mesmerizing. → ASCII Clouds

Happy Birthday Wikipedia! 🥳 → Wikipedia at 25: What the web can be - Anil Dash

Fun little URL shortener that makes links that look incredibly suspicious. I made one to go to the Weekly Thing landing page and it definitely looks like something you shouldn't click on. I’m not going to add it here as it would certainly cause this email to get flagged as suspicious. 😬 → CreepyLink

A haiku to leave you with…

Markdown rules the land,
Code whispers in silent lines—
Pens weep in defeat. 📝

Would you like to discuss the topics in the Weekly Thing further? Check out the Weekly Thing on Reddit. 👋

Want to share this issue with others? The link is…

👨‍💻

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-01-17T15:24:25.000Z

Delicious Gingerbread Latte and breakfast at Mon Petit Cheri in Stillwater.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-01-17T02:00:10.000Z

Tammy and I had a delicious evening at Rio 1854 — the Surf & Turf for two was amazing. Recommended!

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-01-16T03:53:00.000Z

POAP 7552077 at You've met Jamie Thingelstad in Winter 2026.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-01-16T00:49:12.000Z

Bandits on the Run

We’re encouraging all our beloved friends, fans, and family to listen to all of our upcoming music on Bandcamp! For those of you who might not know yet, Bandcamp has banned AI music and has been keeping artists at the center of their platform for a long time now (unlike…well, most other streaming platforms ).

One of my favorite bands has released a new song!

Lovely people, beautiful voices in harmony, full of love and joy and all the things you need right now.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-01-16T00:27:48.000Z

The Comment

I figured that, so long as I didn’t eat up too much of his morning time, I could expand my queries beyond the sartorial. Money, local personalities, the proper way to gain respect (“competence is a great long-term attractor”), I would just pepper him with questions over early morning black coffees.

Yet, I never called him a mentor until years later. I never uttered the question, “would you be my mentor?” or anything like that.

In line with my thoughts on mentors.

Mentors don’t have to know they are your mentors. You don’t have to let them know, either. Just let them mentor.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-01-14T19:01:56.000Z

Inbox Zero.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-01-14T13:13:43.000Z

A Productive Conversation | PM Talks S3E1: Honesty

We talk about honesty not as a moral stance, but as a practical one—especially when it comes to time, commitments, and the stories we tell ourselves about why things don’t happen. January has a way of inviting big intentions, and this discussion is a timely reminder that clarity begins with truth.

My regular podcast guest stint with Mike Vardy is now posted. If you listen to any of them, listen to this one. Because the worst lies you regularly tell are likely to yourself.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-01-14T00:09:35.000Z

At our very first Minnesota Gophers basketball game in the Barn Lofts! 🏀

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-01-12T14:41:18.000Z

Get to know the 2×2 Matrix

The 2×2 matrix, two axes (one vertical and one horizontal) creating four quadrants, is the most straightforward and most powerful tool for decision-making and prioritization.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-01-12T14:07:20.000Z

Today is apparently National Clean Off Your Desk Day.

I have a pretty packed day today but will put this on the calendar for tomorrow.

Bónus poetry - Barry Hess

2026-01-12T13:28:10.000Z

When we visited Iceland a few years ago, I ran into the fascinating existence of a poetry book branded by Bónus, one of the grocery stores that we frequented. Paging through Bónus poetry by Andri Snær Magnason, it seemed to be a legitimate book with some light theming around a grocery store and the consumerism it can represent (and Dante). It made me giggle that such a thing existed and was sold in the grocery store. Though it made sense, as learned through that trip that the Icelandic population is famous for how prolifically it writes. I couldn’t stop commenting on the book to my family.

For some reason I didn’t buy the book while we were there, but when my birthday arrived after the trip, there it was wrapped as a gift. Thank you!

It turns out this book of poetry has a lot of edgy humor. By the time the series of “You Are What You Eat” poems ends, the protagonist is stuck on his ancestral farm with only Ikea Allen wrenches as tools and driftwood to eat. Their fate is sealed. The series of poems entitled “Couple” is filled with double entendres that would make anyone blush at the checkout.

A taste Bónus poetry:

All Off

The slogan across the can of the All Off oven
cleaner says that it works better than in the
fairytales but I don’t think my storybooks
told me how Hansel and Gretel cleaned the
oven.

The book is very sharp in its critique of the products being sold in modern, consumerist societies:

Honour

My ancestors ate everything
They ate the blood and the brain
the spleen and the spine
and the fat and the feet
and the marrow

In their honor,
I reach for McNuggets

Yeah, this is a great collection of poetry!

Paradiso, Inferno, Purgatorio

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Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-01-12T01:04:32.000Z

Update on Lucio: He has a wife who is 5 months pregnant at home. She was contacted about what happened. Immigrant rights groups/attorneys have his info. He’s likely already been disappeared into the detention system or deported. Who knows if he’ll see his child born… So angering and heartbreaking.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-01-11T23:02:04.000Z

I’ve been having fun playing Clash Royale with Tyler — he’s my coach and is really good at the game! The game had some big changes recently that are not being well received by the community. He wrote up where he thinks Supercell is going wrong. Spot on! 🎯

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-01-11T14:31:41.000Z

Kurt gets to cleaning out the closets

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-01-11T05:04:43.000Z

Excited to see the MSP airport has been added to the Airport POAP Rally! Follow the Rally. ✈️

Turning an Old MacBook Into a Minimal Writing Workstation - Barry Hess

2026-01-11T04:19:59.000Z

In the past I’ve mused about getting a writing-only workstation. This led to explorations into things like the Freewrite, AlphaSmart, or searching for “the best laptop keyboard” and buying some old, used machine from 2010.

Meanwhile, I’ve been selling older and unused electronics (etc) on eBay this winter. As I was preparing an old MacBook Air that I expected to sell for $150 (at best), I realized this was probably a great test machine to see if I enjoyed writing away from my primary workstation (potentially with wifi turned off).

To prepare for sale, I had restored this 2018 MacBook Air to factory settings. In the time it took to install iA Writer I already was asking myself, “Why is this machine so slow? It didn’t feel slow when I bought it!” So I set about minimizing the things running on the machine, which definitely isn’t the first thing I should have tried! Here’s what you should do first if you want to get an old MacBook moving quickly…

Installing an older version of macOS

The reason the MacBook Air felt so quick when I bought it, and so slow when I reset it, is that it had two different versions of macOS installed. When I purchased the computer it had El Capitan (10.11) installed, while the factory reset installs the most-recent macOS one’s computer supports, which in this case was Sonoma (14.8.3).

So I thought things through a bit and decided to click the link at Apple support to install Big Sur (11.7). This took me to the App Store and started downloading that version, which eventually finished and told me I can’t install an older macOS version on a Mac with a newer version. Bah!

I restarted the Mac and held down Command-R to go into recovery mode. Unfortunately, this mode would only allow me to install the latest version, Sonoma. So then I restarted and held down Option-Shift-Command-R, which allows you to install “the version of macOS that came with your Mac or the closest version that’s still available.” For me, that’s El Capitan.

I had some trouble getting El Capitan to install in recovery mode. At one point I read something about El Capitan not working on the latest Apple filesystem, APFS, so I reformatted the hard drive to an older file system. Then I was given a warning that El Capitan must install on APFS, I reformatted back to APFS, and things seemed to work. 🤷‍♂️

At this point I figured I’d just roll with El Capitan. In my ideal world this computer would use iA Writer full screen, an occasional web browser and that’s about it. As of this writing, iA Writer’s documentation says it supports macOS version 10.11, El Capitan, so all good!

In reality, when I went to install iA Writer from the App Store, I was given a warning that iA Writer only works on macOS 10.15+ (Catalina). So back I went to the Apple support link to install Catalina. From there, things have been working well. (Though I’ve found the version of Safari I get with Catalina, version 13.1.3, isn’t rendering the web well, so I’ve installed Firefox for now. Funny that I can get the latest Firefox on an old version of macOS.)

Other things I changed

I was reading an old article about a mnmlist mac setup and I updated some things:

Hid the dock, which I do on my primary machine as well. I also hid the menu bar.
Disabled Spotlight, including running sudo mdutil -i off in Terminal. This should speed up the system by avoiding Spotlight’s indexing. I installed Alfred, which I’ve used for many years.
Disabled Spaces by unchecking System Preferences > Mission Control > Displays have separate Spaces
Installed uBlock Origin on Firefox. Every time I accidentally hit a browser without ad blocker I’m completely aghast. (And a bit surprised that Pika isn’t more popular than it is, honestly.)
Added a nice desktop wallpaper.

I’m sure there are other things I can to make this computer feel even more minimalist and focused. Let me know if you have any suggestions!

Let’s see how it goes

I’m writing this blog post in iA Writer right now. While I love the Pika editor, I want to try writing in a focused mode. (I was also going to say that I want to write offline, but opening Pika, turning off wifi, and writing in the Pika editor be fine, especially because Pika saves one’s writing in browser local storage). Will I really pull this computer out to write? Will it really help to focus my mind? Will I like the copy-paste workflow? We’ll see.

The only real challenge with this experiment going forward is that my old MacBook is one of the last ones with a butterfly keyboard. Even ignoring the double- and missing-key mistakes it makes (thank goodness for auto-correction), I hate the feeling of typing on this thing enough that I’m considering an inexpensive Keychron keyboard to sit on my lap while I write. That doesn’t seem conducive to actually writing, though. And if I’m doing that, maybe an iPad with a keyboard makes more sense.

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Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-01-11T01:57:38.000Z

Mazie is doing her final packing and preparation to depart tomorrow for her semester abroad in Barcelona. I’m excited and proud of her, and as her Dad nervous and hopeful, as she embarks on her biggest excursion yet. Starting tomorrow I’ll be counting the days until we visit her. 🇪🇸✈️