While browsing Substack yesterday and this morning, I stumbled upon a writer from Ukraine that I’m eager to follow. Isn’t it surprising that I can’t subscribe to his content via an RSS feed? I’m quite impressed by how this platform is so tightly controlled. It’s too bad.

Emails Shuffle

I’m making progress in cleaning up my email mess. I closed my Yahoo Mail account, which I only used for Flickr when the authentication backend moved from Flickr to Yahoo1. I closed two Gmail accounts: one of the two was used when I was developing iPhone apps between 2009 and 2013. This means I have three fewer email redirections for HEY Mail. Most of my newsletter subscriptions are now redirected to Inoreader, which is another dependency removed from HEY Mail.

So, what’s left in HEY Mail? Two email redirections: one .me email account1 and my primary iCloud mail account. These are my biggest email accounts. Of course, I also have my HEY Mail account that I use in a few dozen places. That’s the last part to move out. The question is: which email account should I use instead of my HEY Mail? Is this where Fastmail comes into play? Or should I merge them into one of my Apple-hosted mail accounts? If I choose the latter, I don’t see the point of using Fastmail unless I want to replicate the Paper Trail functionality of HEY Mail. Even then, Apple’s latest updates to Mail offer something similar. I should probably try the latest betas on my Mac and see how well it performs. Stay tuned for the next update on my emails shuffle.

  1. I also officially closed my Flickr account. ↩︎ ↩︎

There is something so satisfying in closing online accounts and deleting data. It’s really hard to explain. This process only happens when moving things around (like moving from one email provider to another).

I think I found a viable way to replace Readwise with Craft1. The fun thing is that I found this while recording my next video. It’s possible because of a recently launched browser extension that saves an article into Craft. More details in my upcoming video. Here’s a sneak peek.

  1. I cancelled my Readwise subscription today. ↩︎

I logged into my Substack account today because I’m working on something and I couldn’t believe how different it is from a few years ago. I don’t even recognize it anymore. Are they trying to become another LinkedIn or Facebook? Or maybe they’re chasing TikTok or YouTube? What is going on?

Another pricey subscription cancelled: Timing.app. After the initial excitement to learn about how I spend my time on my computer, I think it’s time to conclude: I spend a lot of time on a computer for doing a lot of different things. There is a cheaper alternative called Currentkey, that I plan to test in the near future, though.

Bye Bye Readwise?

Just got a reminder to close my Readwise account, probably because the subscription renewal is coming soon. That’s not a cheap one. Beyond serving as a repo for text highlights from Micro.blog and Inoreader, I don’t really have a meaningful use for it. I don’t use the Readwise Reader either. I export highlights into Bear from time to time as markdown files. I almost never search them. Sometimes I’ll read a few highlights with amusement or nostalgia, but nothing more. Why am I doing all this, then? 🧐🤷🏻‍♂️

Posting to Pixelfed from Micro.blog is cool on paper but can be very frustrating to see that the cross-post action didn’t pan out… no clue as to why, unless doing some digging in the account logs… no easy way to “try again” either. Reconsidering my approach. Again.

I don’t care if Reddit offers a paywall option for Subreddits. Unless I’m missing something: I could create and built a community over there and at some point ask for a paid subscription, right? What is the difference then compared with Substack or Ghost?