I’ve been building something called Beacon. It’s an iPhone app based on a small belief that the phone call is still one of the best technologies we have for feeling close to another person, but the social contract around it got weird. A normal phone call is too specific. It says, "I, @nicefryroll, would like you, specifically, to stop whatever you are doing and deal with me." Sometimes that is exactly right! And also, for a casual “I miss my friends” impulse, it feels insane. So we text. We meme. We group chat. Oh do we group chat. All useful, but none of it is quite the same as hearing someone laugh in real time. Beacon changes the underlying shape massively but it's so simple you could miss it. You pick a group: close friends, family, your people. You tap a button. It rings everyone in that group at once. The first person who’s free answers. Everyone else’s phone stops ringing. No missed call. No tiny social debt. No “sorry I didn’t pick up.” No little red badge. The whole point is that not answering is part of the design. If you’re free, you answer. If you’re not, nothing bad happened. You were not the bottleneck. You were just one possible door the conversation could walk through. This is why I think it works for both introverts and extroverts. Introverts get the dignity of opting out without performing an excuse. Extroverts get a socially sane way to find a live human voice right now. I’ve been using it with about a dozen people, and the part I didn’t fully expect is how much I like the uncertainty. I Beacon my "Everyone" list and genuinely don’t know who I’m going to get. It turns a phone call back into something closer to wandering into the kitchen at the right time. Sometimes nobody’s there. Sometimes somebody is. That’s the whole magic.

some people don’t get why I made beacon. then you see this kind of thing go viral again and again.

it’s pre-dawn, the child’s eyes shoot open, the world is dark, the world is still, including her. there has been no action nor reaction. into this darkness her tiny voice sings the morning song, “uh-ohhhhhhhh!!”

see also: jhana meditation

I’m just asking ya’ll to share more pictures of your bookshelves

been in the bay for thirteen years and still haven’t memorized this

Free time spent talking on the phone peaked in 1994.

we are excited to present this operating system update, the change we would like to draw your attention to is the introduction of 8 new emoji! (it's 3.78GB)

brilliant approach, best of luck to them

I have long been a library stan. one of my degrees is in english lit (god help me). I visit libraries when I travel bc I just like being in them. seattle, austin, mexico city - great libraries! admittedly I rarely go into bay area libraries bc the vibes are, to put it gently, in absolute shambles. so I assumed this figure must be incorrect. there is no way sf actually burns this much cash on its libraries and they still suck so bad. grok is it true? are libraries expensive for definable but nonintuitive reasons? anyway the number is true - still think there must be some giant cash vacuum in the spreadsheet somewhere @nonmayorpete

huge pivot by blue diamond to reallocate water usage

finally irrefutable proof that kids can get dressed in ten seconds if they want

For the record Beacon will add value to your life with as little as three other friends. Gets exponentially more interesting of course.

for her entire life my 1yo has had a singular quest, to acquire from me a can of Celsius energy drink. This morning she finally succeeded in her quest and immediately spilled the entirety on her Skip n Hop play center, the largest of all the toy-adjacent objects we own at her behest, an object with untold inner channels of molded plastic in which liquid can settle and escape the standard level of paternal cleaning. some are transparent so the, let's call it "straw" colored, liquid from the poorly placed Costco-discounted Retro Vibe can taunt me. and so it will come to pass that when the sun finally shines again on this wreckage a full disassembly and hosing must occur. an effort that can only be fueled by a new can of Celsius.

"wait so you're telling me...in the future everyone has there own phone and they use it to type messages instead of call, and if someone calls you without typing it first it's considered...rude?"

I figured it out

literally and non-ironically reverse engineering this

much of parenting is a test of your ability to, regularly and under duress, simulate classical mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, optics, acoustics, and fluid dynamics

micro case study on frame control

we’ll finish painting it by July 4th

I have never entered a jhanic state without caffeine