2025-06-05

IA Writer has just been nominated for an Apple Design Award. The app being 15 years old, this is quite a coup. It has made me jump out of Ulysses and back into IA Writer this morning, to check it out. I used to use this app all the time, but haven't visited for a while. The design people are certainly right - if you're after a minimal, focused interface for prose with no bells and whistles, this certainly takes a lot of beating.

Tobias Van Schneider, the creator of MyMind (still the best bookmark app available) writes a newsletter that is always interesting. His latest piece, 3 Lessons from Jony Ive is worth reading. And, even though I'm not into motorbikes, it is always worth checking out Van Schneider's custom bike, which he calls The Escape Machine.

Messy Nessy Chic is a site I reference a lot on these pages, and Nessy's blog is never less than fascinating. She recently opened a shop in Paris, called Messy Nessy's Cabinet, which I plan to visit for the first time this summer.

While researching Chongqing for a thing yesterday, I went down a rabbit hole and ended up reading about the Giant Chinese Salamander. I had always thought salamanders were small...

Chongxing itself is fascinating and it is near to Xiaozhai Tiankeng, which is the world's deepest sinkhole. Here's a short BBC film about it:

And here are some lunatics visiting:

Following on from yesterday's piece on notebooks, Ali West, of this parish, alerted me to some amazing looking books from a company called Atoms to Astronauts.

Moving as far from analogue as it is possible to go, this conversation with ChatGPT highlights all the perils involved with relying on grift-tech to do your work for you.

And then, circling back again to design, this piece on the colour of objects and how those colours have changed over time is really interesting.

Have a good Thursday.