Lars-Christian's website - Notes

Volume control innovation

2026-09-09T00:00:09+00:00

Fabricio Teixeira in The worst volume control UI in the world:

A group of bored developers and designers has decided to start a thread on reddit to figure out who can come up with the worst volume control interface in the world

Some absolute bangers here.

Chuck Ragan in concert

2026-09-15T00:00:08+00:00

‘Do my damnedest to make mistakes but once’

Just a man and his guitar putting on a show for a couple hundred people. Last night at John Dee.

How often does a man know?

2026-09-23T00:00:07+00:00

‘How often does a man know, without question, that he has done well? I do not think it happens often in anyone's life, and it becomes even rarer once one has a child.’

Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

On the network

2026-09-26T00:00:06+00:00

Mat Duggan in I’m Tired of Being on the Network:

Now the smartphone is a tax. I get to choose my tax collector be it Apple, Samsung, Google, Nothing, Fairphone, but I don't get to choose whether to pay. In Denmark I'm expected to carry the Aula app for school, the Rejsekort app for trains, MitID to prove to the state that I am me, and e-Boks for official messages from the government and its authorized friends. I need the thing at the airport, at the hotel, at the gym. All of this, I'm told, is a choice.

Me too, Mat. Me too.

WU LYF in concert

2026-09-28T00:00:05+00:00

Been a while since I had as much fun at a concert as I did during WU LYF's show last night.

Mildly disappointed they didn't give us the ‘We Bros’ encore.

Brain fitness

2026-09-29T00:00:04+00:00

Sid in I Judged My Mum for Overusing AI, Until I Caught Myself Doing Worse:

Exercise is the exact same kind of boring upkeep as changing a car's oil and replacing worn brake pads. We gotta do it because ignoring it guarantees the machine breaks down way before it should. Whether we make it fun or thoroughly routine is entirely up to us. The brain, like any machine or muscle, needs resistance and friction to maintain the status quo, let alone get stronger. And without this deliberate training, AI is going to do to our minds what machines did to our bodies.

Strong analogy from Sid. And I think it holds true. The counterpoint of Plato's complaints about how the invention of writing will produce forgetfulness is also important nuance. As are the simple things you can do to make sure your brain doesn't wither away.

I think we'll be alright. We just need to be mindful, is all.

Measuring nothing (with great accuracy)

2026-09-30T00:00:03+00:00

Seth Godin in Measuring nothing (with great accuracy):

We keep coming up with new things to measure (like processor speed, heat output, column inches) but it's pretty rare that those measurements are actually a proxy for the impact or quality we care about. It takes a lot of guts to stop measuring things that are measurable, and even more guts to create things that don't measure well by conventional means.

May have shared this before. Seth wrote it more than a decade ago. But when I came across it again in Jim's notes it felt more relevant than ever before.

Robin Hobb writes characters

2026-10-08T00:00:02+00:00

Halfway through the Fool's Quest, the second book of Robin Hobb's (as of right now) final trilogy in the Elderling series.

I feel it speaks to her elaborate style of storytelling that, upon considering how the plot will play out, I find myself thinking ‘a book and a half is nowhere near long enough to develop that storyline‘. The depth of her characters is second to none that I've ever read. Admittedly, that's a fairly small base of comparison. Nevertheless.

A particular aspect that sets her writing apart, is the wealth of social and cultural context she provides to give the reader an understanding of why they are who they are and do what they do.

Refueling an EV

2026-10-09T00:00:01+00:00

Thomas Steiner in Refueling an EV be like:

When you arrive at the designated point, imagine that the gas pump is somewhere randomly hidden in a sparely lit industrial area parking lot. To start fueling, imagine you needed that random gas station brand's own RFID card that of course you don't have, or an app. Fine, imagine you scanned the QR code on the pump to download the app, only to find that the app isn't available in the country your phone's app store is registered in.

Am reminded of a road trip we did a few years back. A three and a half hour drive took the better part of 10 hours! Thomas manages to perfectly capture the experience of trying to ‘fuel’ an electrical vehicle on the road.

The best thing about a Tesla is never having to deal with all this ever. It just tells me where I should stop and charge. I stop and plug in, and the app notifies me when I'm ready to go again. One of the few truly amazingly simple and functional tech experiences I've had in the last few years.

Everybody's angry all the time

2026-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

Colin Devroe in John Gruber on X:

I post seldomly. I never said anything because everybody online is angry at every single thing these days. It is unbearable. I almost cannot take it.

This isn't confined to engagement farming social platforms. I feel like it's permeated the entire fabric of online life. Niche forums and even personal blogs to some extent.

Lately I've been diligent about culling my feed reader to get rid of anyone who's mostly writing about how bad things are. Colin almost cannot take it. I can't. It's an infectious disease. The more anger to which I'm exposed, the angrier I feel myself.

Maybe I should sign up for X. LOL! But seriously. Guys. Gals. Colin quotes John Gruber in that post:

If you think the world is full of fun and amazing people and things, that humanity’s defining feature is our collective ability to solve any problem, that the only time better to be alive than today is tomorrow

This is it.