Add any public Instagram profile, YouTube channel or X account to quickly get an RSS feed for your favorite reader.
I feel like I've seen a few of these tools before. I'm always skeptical that following something like Instagram through an RSS feed won't break eventually, but this one does look like one of the more well-polished versions, so I'm not opposed to giving it a try.
Adam Jacobs, an avid concertgoer and once casual, later committed, concert archivist, began recording the concerts he attended in 1984 to tape. He went on to record over 10,000 concerts
I've seen this floating around for a bit, but you should also make sure you're familiar with the Relisten app. It's on iOS and Android, and it pulls concert recordings from the Internet Archive. I imagine these 10,000 concerts will eventually make their way there, which will be a huge boon on top of the already incredible number of concert tapes on the app.
Unfolder is a 3D model unfolding tool for creating papercraft.
I haven’t given it a spin yet, but this looks incredibly cool.
“The system ingests 100-plus data streams simultaneously,” Habib notes. The result is a constantly updating map of global tensions: conflict zones with escalation scores, military aircraft broadcasting positions through ADS-B transponders, ship movements tracked through AIS signals, nuclear installations, submarine cables, internet outages and satellite fire detections.
This is incredibly cool.
The visual is stunning, and the whole idea of just having a dashboard of all major events happening across the globe is insane.
From conflicts to extreme weather and other major events; having a complete view pulling from so many sources and doing multiple source checks is awesome. Clicking into one provides points of context, headlines, key developments, facts and figures, and more.
To top it off, it was built by a music‑streaming CEO in India, which is wild to me.
I just learned that friend of the Variable, Lucas, developer extraordinaire, developed the Monologue app for iOS, taking the initial concept and prototype that was vibe-coded based on the Mac app and turning it into an absolutely killer iPhone app. Still not a huge fan of the extremely AI bullish Every, but knowing that a developer like Lucas, who puts time, care, and attention into everything he does, is working on it now means this app should progress and only improve for the better. I’ve now switched to it from SuperWhisper for all my transcription needs.
The fact that the Commission said TikTok should change the basic design of its service is “ground-breaking for the business model fueled by surveillance and advertising," said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish civil society group.
Honestly, I really love this idea. It’s so easy to just fall into doom scrolling and go down a never-ending rabbit hole. So forcing some kind of decision-making to continue is a good idea, given some of the addiction we’ve seen arise from these types of apps.
I’ve also been thinking defaulting to an algorithmic timeline should be nixed. If a user wants to make that decision and switch over, let ’em. But even on Instagram, where you have the following feed, you have to switch to it every single time—that should be the default. Then you can switch to a discover feed or the algorithm or whatever if you so choose.
Or maybe I’m just a weak human being with no self-control. But both could be true.
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