A collection of thoughts, ongoing projects, and the media I’m consuming – delivered every other week.
I stumbled upon a wonderful little app from the makers of Clear this week, called Web Roulette. The premise is simple – choose from a list of websites that you frequent, which then get served up to you in a random order as you swipe through them. But shake your phone and you get taken to a random webpage.
It brings back what I enjoyed most about the web – the joy of browsing, learning something new, possibly quirky, that you wouldn’t have otherwise.
So when The Browser Company’s, Arc browser (which I’ve been using for the past few months and can’t recommend highly enough) - released Boosts this past week, a trend began to emerge - what if the web was fun again?
Boosts is a feature unlike any. It allows you to customise any site, its colour, texture, typography, what buttons should or should not appear, the way you want it, with the simple click of a button.
It’s not the most productive feature but that misses the point. It changes your relationship with the web and how you interact with it, making it your own, making it personal.
Your home on the web, made just for you, by you.
It makes you rethink what a website is and instead consider what it can be.
In other news
For decades, two sherpas of rivaling expedition companies have been battling it out to see who can scale Everest more times.
The rivalry has heated up this year. Their series of climbs began on May 14, when Pasang Dawa Sherpa, 46, summited Everest for a record-tying 26th time. Days later, Kami Rita Sherpa, 53, regained the crown with his 27th ascent of the mountain.
Then, on Monday, Pasang Dawa Sherpa — eight days after his previous climb — did it again. A day later, Kami Rita Sherpa reached the top once more, for a new mark of 28 summits.
They summited Everest a combined 4 times in 10 days. It’s competition at the highest level, literally. (sorry)
Read more about it here.
I’m using a new email client for Mac called Mimestream. It’s like if the default Mac Mail app was actually good.
I’m mad at Twitter for not allowing Substack users to embed tweets anymore because Elon had a moment.
But here’s some fun stuff I stumbled upon this week:
This football stadium in Milan, where the walkways are spiral shaped and appear to be rotating as people walk.
Photoshop’s ‘generative fill’ which is still in beta – is already capable of impressive results, here’s an example.
This song, which is a banger.
Thanks for tuning in
It’s good to be writing again.
So thanks for making the time to read this.
Talk soon,
Vihan Shah
I like that I always learn something new when I read your newsletter.