David Eisinger

Dispatch #7 (September 2023) (2023-09-08)

We were down at Lake Norman for the long weekend, and as I was pulling up the kayaks this morning, I couldn’t help but feel like I was also sort of putting away the summer – what a summer though. The last few weeks of August were pretty wall-to-wall. I went up to the Eastern Shore in Virginia to spend a long weekend with some old friends. Our rental was right on an inlet off the Chesapeake, and they had a stand-up paddleboard I was able to take out.

Dispatch #6 (August 2023) (2023-08-06)

Nice to have a quieter month, though we still managed to spend a weekend at Lake Norman and took Nev on her first camping trip at Carolina Hemlocks Recreation Area. We also had a nice visit from my folks to celebrate my mom’s birthday.

A Month With Helix (2023-08-03)

As mentioned in last month’s dispatch, inspired by a post from Tim Hårek, I’ve been using Helix exclusively for the last month. I’m using it right now to write this! It rips!

Dispatch #5 (July 2023) (2023-07-02)

June was dominated by work and travel. Weekdays were filled up with a client project we were working hard to wrap, weekends by plans with friends and both of our families: Running of the Bulls, canoe camping near Saxapahaw, our yearly trip to Beaufort with Claire’s college friends, and then a cruise in the Caribbean with Claire’s family followed immediately by a trip up to DC to see mine.

Dispatch #4 (June 2023) (2023-06-01)

We spent Memorial Day weekend at Lake Norman, but it was like 55° and rainy the whole time. I’ve been loving the mild weather for the most part, but I was definitely looking forward to some kayaking and dock jumping.

Dispatch #3 (May 2023) (2023-04-30)

Another month in the books. Man, year’s flying by. We filled it up though: went down to the lake for Easter weekend, took the kayaks out on the Catawba. Claire went out to California to visit a friend, so I got to spend a lot of one-on-one time with Nev and made a big dent in the closet project. The first unit is done and installed. Claire seems really happy with it. The second unit should go a lot quicker since most of the thought work is done.

Dispatch #2 (April 2023) (2023-04-03)

March was great – took a two night/one day work retreat, spent a weekend out in the woods with the family, had my annual trip to Las Vegas, and participated in Viget’s Pointless Week. Also got to spend some quality time with Nevie; she’s a great kid and it’s amazing to see her personality come out.

Dispatch #1 (March 2023) (2023-03-02)

With the warm winter we’ve been having in NC, I’ve gotten to take Nev to and from daycare on the e-bike a whole bunch, which has been just fantastic. I’m wary of becoming too much of an evangelist, but it really does feel like they can replace cars for a lot of folks, and they’re fun as hell.

Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competence of critical ignoring—choosing what to ignore and where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities.

I don’t recommend being a hoarder (even a digital one), but Birchler and Morehead are right, you should keep copies of things you cherish.

Please, for the love of all things web-related, if you decide to do anything online, get yourself a domain name. Don't rely on the 3rd party domain provided by services like Blogger, Substack, Tumblr, whatever.

Today let’s step outside the news cycle and turn our attention toward a topic I’m deeply invested in but only rarely write about: productivity platforms. For decades now, software tools have promised to make working life easier. But on one critical dimension — their ability to improve our thinking — they don’t seem to be making much progress at all.

By far, not allowing screens in the bedroom has been the most effective method for managing my kids' online lives in a constructive way. It's a simple rule that everyone can get onboard with while avoiding a whole lot of problems and confrontations. We were initially introduced this rule for online safety reasons, but I have found that having all screens in the communal spaces helps with discussions about operating systems, software, passwords and online accounts.

OpenAI’s chatbot offers paraphrases, whereas Google offers quotes. Which do we prefer?

Over time I shifted on the matter a little, but when I look back on it I realize I wasn’t really evolving my attitude toward conflict, I was just evolving my response to its existence, while still believing that being in a state of conflict is a problem. I just got better at keeping my blood pressure low and gritting through it. I think I was looking at conflict as a thing that you have to acknowledge exists, but that you need to get through as quickly as possible, because it’s a bad place to be.

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom. File over app is an appeal to tool makers: accept that all software is ephemeral, and give people ownership over their data.

That is to say, I’ve come to believe the era typified by the enthusiast programmer—autodidactic, obsessive, and antisocial—is drawing to a close.

What could I do with a universal function — a tool for turning just about any X into just about any Y with plain language instructions? I don’t pose that question with any sense of wide-eyed expectation; a reasonable answer might be, eh, nothing much. Not everything in the world depends on the transformation of symbols. But I think that IS the question, and I think it takes some legitimate work, some strenuous imagination, to push yourself to believe it really will be “just about any X” into “just about any Y”.