The Sunday Edition — 07.13.25

Happy Sunday evening everyone! This one comes a little later than normal. I hope everyone's first full week of July was everything it was chalked up to be. We're still looking for some truly hot weather here in Southern Manitoba — seems like that hot weather is being hogged by everyone else across this continent.

I spent the week in a tax seminar, learning from some of the leading minds in the country and speaking with a number of tax specialists for 10 hours a day. Sounds fun right? Honestly, it was an absolute blast. It's amazing how intelligent and refined some professionals are in this industry — the way the facilitators and lecturers talk about Canadian tax and their on-the-spot knowledge is truly jaw-dropping. I've spent 10-12 years studying accounting and now more specifically tax, and these folks mop the floor with anyone at my stage in the game. It's impressive.

I also installed the third developer beta of iPadOS 26 and iOS 26 when it was released. Overall, things are running pretty smoothly on both iPhone and iPad. I still truly love the glassy look throughout.

Some of the novelty is wearing off, though.

I adore the new iOS 26 icons for Notes, Reminders, Calendar, and more, and like any beta, I found myself using the stock Apple apps while on beta as they are the only apps updated. Like every other year, though, I am back to my favourite apps: Things, Carrot Weather, and largely Notion Calendar. Reminders has come a long way — this was the longest Reminders test-drive I've ever undergone. Weather has a wonderful icon, but I continue to appreciate Carrot's next level widgets. And I'm still using Calendar on iPad because Notion Calendar isn't available on iPad.

I fear I'm turning into an "old man", however. At least technologically. I'm falling into my set ways. I can't escape Things — I know the shortcuts like the back of my hand and it's truly the only way I seem to be able to capture tasks to do throughout the day. My entire life seems to be humming through Notion right now. Every time I try to escape Carrot's subscription pricing, I'm reminded how much better its radar and widgets are than every other weather app out there, and I jump back to my habitual favourites.

It's impressive how some app reviewers can stay app reviewers for so long. Some of the best reviewers have been writing about software applications for decades and have no bones about uprooting their entire workflow to try something new.

Creation for the Sake of Consumption

Keith Hodder, a writer I have discovered thanks to my friend Marius, writing about the intersection of art and commerce:

YouTube has made us complacent. They might be the worst offender. Of course, there are filmmakers and creators there who work hard to make something special, but content creators (a term which I abhor) are doing everything they can to create the antithesis of something special - content. Stuff to generate clicks, to be stuffed like a turkey with advertisements, and all so they can make a profit. It’s pure junk food, both for the mind and the soul, empty calories devoid of nutrients. They have no choice but to keep creating to survive. There’s little to no time to make something worthwhile. They have to churn it out on a factory line because there’s an insatiable demand.

I don’t spend much time consuming Hollywood-level films. I used to, though. Somewhere in the late 2010s, I just sort of stopped watching movies. It could have been the fact we had our first child. Or that I was hardcore studying.

But I also haven’t picked up movie-watching now that study has slowed.

I find movies so uninspiring right now. Most TV, too. I blame it on poor writing and an obsession with immorality. Every main character has to be smashed to bits and be built back up to a fraction of what they were when the story started. It has become so normal to know exactly where a movie is going within five minutes of starting.

(In my little movie viewing world, this started with Luke Skywalker tossing his lightsaber off the edge of a cliff.)

Though I know next to nothing about Hollywood, I know what’s being pumped out feels uninspiring and bloated. Disney is so lacklustre right now — they have to produce live action remakes of their most-loved kids stories rather than produce new amazing stories. And they have to add a darker tone than the original movie, because “that’s the world we live in.” As if the world has never been darker or something. (Side note: If this is how you feel about the world, read some history. I couldn’t imagine having been born in 1905 and seeing the horrors of the first 40 years of your life.)

It’s so predictable. It’s so uninspiring.

My Quick Thoughts on Biblical Geneology

I posted these two short thoughts on Twitter last week:

If my math is right — Noah was alive when Abram was born. In fact, Abram will have been about 60 years old when Noah died.

That’s a lot of time to tell some crazy flood stories from an eye-witness.

And Adam was alive during Methusaleh’s life. Methusaleh is Noah’s grandpa.

And this:

It’s not that crazy to think Noah passed on only one-generation-removed conversations from Adam himself, and this was passed on to Abraham, who we know lived around 2,200 BC.

Shivers.

This is really close proximity. These are more than stories.

And this doesn’t account for the time between Abraham and Moses, which is also a lot closer than you might initially expect.

Oral history is the core method for how so many ancient stories have been written down and passed on. To contemplate 2,000 years of oral history being passed down through 2 generations is, well, seemingly impossible. But our tiny human minds struggle with the passage of time and things that don’t fit within our 5 senses.