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<p>I&rsquo;m very interested in Brett Terpstra&rsquo;s Mac app, <a href="https://markedapp.com">Marked3</a>, launched today on <a href="https://www.producthunt.com/products/marked-2">Product Hunt</a>.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a utility that gives markdown documents superpowers. I&rsquo;m testing this out for a week but already expect to be buying it. Anyone else using it?</p> <p>#Markdown #MacApps #WritingTools</p>

<blockquote> <p>We are very close to a prompt to fan fiction model of publishing.</p> </blockquote> <p>I heard this on the <em>Author Update Podcast</em> and it&rsquo;s a shift I predicted at the start of 2024: <a href="https://writingslowly.com/2024/01/27/soon-well-all.html">Soon we&rsquo;ll all be writing the books we want to read</a>.</p>

<p>📷 Stormy weather is a great time to take photographs.</p> <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/97469/2026/stormy-coastline.jpg" width="600" height="337" alt="Waves wash onto a sandy beach under a cloudy sky at dusk, with a distant rocky headland and the scattered lights of houses clinging to the cliffs.">

<p>Two fascinating articles show quite different sides to Japan:</p> <p><a href="https://davidoks.blog/p/why-japanese-companies-do-so-many">Why Japanese companies do so many different things. The internal logic of the world’s strangest corporations</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.obayashi.co.jp/en/kikan_obayashi/detail/kikan_64_project.html">Deciphering the Hashihara Castle Town Map: The Imaginary Town of MOTOORI Norinaga</a></p> <p>#CorporateCulture #JapaneseHistory #LongReads</p>

<p>Watched: <a href="https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/878608">Resurrection</a> 🍿</p> <p>An amazing experience. More fragmented than Bi Gan&rsquo;s previous movies, but easily as engaging. There were many nods to cinema history, and an article by <a href="https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/feature-articles/cinema-disembodied-bi-gan-revisiting-the-death-of-cinema-cliche-with-resurrection/">Xinyuan Wang</a> helped. Essential viewing, and not just for the virtuoso 30-minute-long single shot near the end.</p>

<img src="https://cdn.micro.blog/books/9780241655672/cover.jpg" align="left" class="microblog_book" style="max-width: 60px; margin-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> <p>Some books on writing:</p> <p>Hidalgo, César A. 2025. <a href="https://micro.blog/books/9780241655672">Infinite Alphabet: and The Laws Of Knowledge</a>. Allen lane.</p> <p>Fletcher, Angus. 2022. <a href="https://micro.blog/books/9781800750234">WonderWorks: Literary Invention and the Science of Stories</a>. London: Swift Press.</p> <p>Smith, Emma. 2023. <a href="https://micro.blog/books/9781524749101">Portable…

<blockquote> <p>The expert&rsquo;s trap is where you start thinking of yourself as having gone beyond the need to learn anything new.</p> </blockquote> <p>What did the legendary Zen maverick Ikkyū Sōjun teach about overcoming the expert&rsquo;s trap? Find out in <a href="https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/18/the-paradox-of-mastery-why.html">The Paradox of Mastery</a>.</p> <p>#ShuHaRi #Learning #Buddhism #ContinuousLearning #Japan</p>

<blockquote> <p>A Zen Buddhist master hands his successor a formal certificate of mastery. The successor burns it. Why?</p> </blockquote> <p>No, it&rsquo;s not a Zen koan but it almost could be.</p> <p>The name for such a certificate in Japanese is inka. This word might be translated as a &lsquo;seal of approval&rsquo;,…

<p>On Friday we learned our cat, who has <a href="https://writingslowly.com/2023/03/01/march-microblog-photo.html">visited</a> <em>Writing Slowly</em> <a href="https://writingslowly.com/2023/03/01/march-microblog-photo.html">several</a> <a href="https://writingslowly.com/2026/04/06/make-youtube-videos-and-youll.html">times</a>, has a terminal illness, with just weeks to live.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m deeply sad. He has been my close companion through years of working from home. To discover I could feel this way about a cat…

<blockquote> <p>💬 “Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For <strong>the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.</strong>”…