Something For the Weekend #49
Sweet Thing, ADHD 2.0 and Todoist: selections from the weird and wonderful for the week ending May 29, 2026
Team,
We are back with your weekly three, and I thank you for reading! As ever, you can support my work by taking out a paid subscription for the cost of a small potted succulent from a hardware store garden section—just $6 a month.
Have an amazing weekend!
Loving your work!
Benj
Top 5 this week from the Daily Active User:
When I arrived in Boston at Berklee College of Music for my first year, I got to pick my roommate, as the two assigned to my room never showed up. I was 17 and had just come in from Los Angeles. My only belongings were a duffel bag of clothes and two guitars—a Fender Stratocaster and my Martin D-28 (my same age, and still with me). It was a rude awakening to realize I’d need blankets and other basics to make life livable, but my roommate was a wonderful chap who got me into reading: lots of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Kerouac, and Basho, even a smidge of Shelley. Although I was already into Van Morrison, he pushed me to dig deeply into the marvel that is Astral Weeks—and boy, did I have a long way to go. I love the album, but it was “Sweet Thing” that came to mind as I was running along the piers in Brooklyn earlier this week. Remastered, for some reason—according to Qobuz—in 2013 and 2015, it sounds fantastic indeed. There are so many great things to pick out from this record, but for this weekend I recommend melting into “Sweet Thing” and trying, if you can, “just to dig it all and not to wonder, that’s just right/And I’ll be satisfied not to read in between the lines.” What a song. Thanks, Ken, wherever you are!
I’ve been on quite the journey these last months into ADHD, which it turns out I have, and have had since I was a kid. The book ADHD 2.0 has been a revelation as to how brains like mine and so many like mine work. The book is short and caring, and written with practical usage in mind, which I really appreciate. It brought up a lot of strong feelings, as recognizing your younger self and their struggles is always revealing, and even a little painful. The correlation to addiction, which, as I approach my eighteenth year of sobriety, was striking. Thank goodness there are multiple treatment options now available.
One idea that stayed with me from the book, as relates to us DAUs, is VAST or Variable Attention Stimulus Trait. As they describe it, VAST isn’t the same thing as ADHD; it’s more a set of ADHD-like symptoms that can be induced by living in a high-stimulation environment (constant pings, feeds, tabs, dopamine drip/slot machines in your pocket). In other words: attention can start to look “disordered” because the world has become extraordinarily good at fragmenting it. The hopeful part is that, unlike ADHD, VAST is often responsive to changing the inputs, like removing the constant stimulation, adding friction, (Light Phone anyone) and giving the brain room to settle. In any case the data are fascinating and the book is a wonderful read. Since ADHD is so prevalent and misunderstood it could be an important read if you or someone you know is living with it.
I used Things 3, the splendid Mac app, for many years and loved it, but realized that in order to track all that life has been throwing at me lately, I needed a little more firepower, and so moved back to Todoist. And yes, before you ask, I did go down multiple rabbit holes about the optimal ADHD setups, etc., and when comparing it all, this one felt good, can be highly customized, and has a nice cross-platform coverage. Because it's so customizable, you can really do a lot with it, which can be dangerous for those who like to tinker. But it can also be used simply and powerfully, and so far I am loving it.
Mokkiri-zake:
New research has revealed that one in five boys aged 12-16 is either in or knows of a boy their age who is in a romantic relationship with an AI companion. - The terrifying rise of schoolboys making AI girlfriends - The Telegraph - Nicole Mowbray
Am I alone out here? Something’s happened to the world; it’s all gone flimsy. Reality is a scarce resource. - If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you - substack.com - Sam Kriss
Much that we take for granted about the desirability of work is derived from this system and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world. Modern technic has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery. - In Praise of Idleness - Harper’s Magazine - Bertrand Russell
John Muir’s observation that “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” - The Log from the Sea of Cortez: John Steinbeck’s Forgotten Masterpiece on How to Think and the Art of Seeing the Pattern Beyond the Particular - The Marginalian - Maria Popova
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”Haruki Murakami - 65 of My Favorite Quotations - by Ted Gioia - honest-broker.com - Ted Gioia
Momentum means the population will keep growing for 15 to 30 years after you fall below the replacement rate. Let me give a simple example. Imagine you have a spouse and only one kid. You are below replacement rate, but you are two. You have two parents, your spouse has two parents. You are not replacing yourselves, but your parents have not died yet. The fact that you have one kid still increases the population. The problem is when your parents die, we have not replaced them. - Why the Whole World Stopped Having Babies - derekthompson.org - Derek Thompson