The journey should be the only reward

My sister, who discovered water painting late in life, is part of a group of artists who share the same passion for art and painting in general. She is really good. She has taken many art courses since COVID. Now, she’s part of a Facebook Group, and when she mentioned it, I suggested creating a website for her to showcase her work, separate from platforms like Meta. She inquired about discoverability. What can I say to her? Is discoverability always tied to rewards? Are likes part of a validation process? Can we be on the web without seeking discoverability or rewards (likes, reblogs, etc.)?

Incogni value proposition and contradictory policy

For the second time in as many days, I’ve seen paid promotion from Incogni (one in a YouTube video and on the 9to5Mac website). According to the Incogni website:

Incogni is a personal data removal service that automatically removes your information from data broker websites, significantly reducing your digital footprint. Anyone can get instant access to personal data online—Incogni makes sure it stays private.

I was curious and headed to their website, where you can enter your email address to test the service. The problem is that, according to their ToS and privacy policy, they collect email addresses this way so they can bug you with promotions and all that. I find this against their value proposition and it weakens their credibility. People willing to pay for such a service are probably protective of their email address, and yet, this is the first thing Incogni collects. If they offered a way to test the service, albeit in a limited way, while saying they don’t collect email addresses to perform these tests, it would be quite another matter, and I would be more willing to test and maybe even subscribe! But no. Bummer. I’ll pass.

This morning, I spent some time revisiting my RSS feeds and blogroll, and I was sad to delete the RSS feed pointing to Om Malik’s website. Such a loss. 😔

Adding an MCP endpoint is...

My bookmarking web app is now mature, but one thing was missing: an MCP endpoint. I wasn’t sure whether I could add that feature while running on Vercel. Well, after less than an hour, Claude Code helped me get my MCP endpoint running smoothly and responding to all sorts of prompts! I was expecting a much more challenging journey. 😅

Mid-August

There are so many small things that differ in August and make this month one of the most enjoyable: the hours of sunlight, the angle of the shadows, the outdoor temperature at sunrise, the reduced humidity, the chirping of crickets in the evening, the air smell, the mild temperature, the vegetation gradually transforming into mature growth that begins to decline. I love everything about August.

It’s fun to go back in time and look at content I’ve previously published. Here’s an example: a Create Summary newsletter issue published two years ago. I still have a newsletter; the name is different, the content format is similar but more mature, and the motivation to put it together regularly is the same.