Every once in awhile, I see a beautiful, minimalist blog with impeccable typography, like this one from Manuel Moreale, and think I should do something similar with Newsonaut.

But then I think Newsonaut is already minimalist. Take away the sun and stars and it’s especially minimalist. Try it for yourself with this button.

That will never work for me. If I’m going to turn my inner space into outer space, I need it to be in something that looks like outer space.

The good news is that Lemmy, the fediverse alternative to Reddit, has RSS feeds and likely always will. Lemmy usage has gone up substantially in recent years, so it’s not hard to find communities (their version of subreddits) with plenty of members and comments.

The bad news is that if you have a niche interest, there might not be an equivalent Lemmy community. Or if there is, it might not have much traction. Still, that could change if Lemmy’s growth continues.

If you’re up for giving it a try, here are instructions on how to do it.

In this example for the PC Gaming community, you would add “/feeds” after your Lemmy instance (mine is lemmy.ca), and tack “.xml” onto the end. Then copy and paste that into your feed reader.

https://lemmy.ca/c/pcgaming

https://lemmy.ca/feeds/c/pcgaming.xml

With my RSS app, Reeder, I just have to put in the name of a subreddit, and it does the rest. Not so for Lemmy. I have to put in the full URL.

I tried a bunch of communities using this method and they all worked with NetNewsWire on my Mac, with one heartbreaking exception — Star Trek. But there is a fix.

The Star Trek communities — there are a few of them — are on their own server at startrek.website. That means you need to use their instance instead of your own. So it comes out looking like this.

https://startrek.website/feeds/c/startrek.xml

There may be other communities like this, so it’s something to bear in mind.

Ideally, the makers of RSS apps would find a way of automating the process for us. I just might suggest that to some of them.

Yes, this is my 66th post of 2026. There has been a resurgence lately in the indie web, and I’m happy to be a part of it.

I was a little bit sad, though, to read Bryce Wray’s last post. He basically doesn’t feel like he has anything left to say that would be of interest to readers.

It hits close to home because it appears he is only a few years older than me. I know the down sides of growing old. Health issues you never knew existed suddenly become part of your everyday life. It’s not as easy to summon the energy you once took for granted.

I can’t predict where I’ll be in a couple of years. I never would have predicted where I am now. But I’m pretty sure this blog will last for a few more years, and I’m optimistic that it will last many more years.

Firefox 157 has a slick new interface. And the internet is losing its shit.

The updated interface has been dismissed as “round” and already you can find instructions on how to roll back to the old look. And that’s a mild insult compared with “needless and ugly.”

Such drama!

At first the only difference I noticed was the tabs. They are more of a pill shape now and have an outline around them. The background has a subtle gradient that you can customize.

After clicking around a bit, I discovered that some of the menus have more-pronounced round corners. I was disappointed that the bookmark manager hadn’t been similarly updated. Oh, and the search box at the bottom has a pill shape similar to the tabs.

I’m no power user, so maybe there are other design changes that I missed. And honestly, if I hadn’t been told there were changes, I might not even have spotted them — at least not right away.

If you watch the accompanying video, it’s obvious that Firefox is reaching out to new users. A shiny new interface might seem useless to crusty old-timers, but marketing has shown time and again that many people respond to this. A thing can’t just be new, it has to look new.

It remains to be seen whether these efforts will do anything for the Firefox market share, but I’m glad to see them at least making an effort.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an appreciation for lower case. In fact I downright prefer it.

Capital letters have a boring lack of variety. They’re all the same height and they’re all kind of blocky. Sure they should be used, but sparingly.

Lower case letters have so much more diversity: half height (like a, c or e), three-quarters height (like t), or full height (with an ascender like b or d). Or a descender that takes them below the line: g, j, p, q, y.

There’s a reason you never see an entire sentence written in all caps. It’s even harder to read than all lower case. Radio announcers write their copy in all caps for this very reason. It forces them slow down and enunciate.

Let’s check out some particularly appealing lower case letters. If you’re not using serifs, you should switch so you can see how beautiful letters can be.

Two of my favourites are the ones with a tittle: i and j. You won’t find any capital letters with dots over them — at least not in English.

Another favourite is g: I love the loop on the bottom and the stem poking out the top.

And look at this a: See how nicely it curves on the top and leaves a bowl underneath — all in the space of half a capital.

Then there are the ligatures. Two f’s join as ff. An f and an i become fi. This is artistry you won’t see among the upper case.

The only real competitor among the capitals is Q with its swooping tail.

But what about headings? Write them like you would a sentence, but without a period at the end — no capitals unless necessary. And that includes what is known as title case.

With title case, pretty much every word is capitalized with the exception of some shorter words. The trouble with writing a heading as if it were a title is that real titles get lost in them. Suppose you want to put the title of book in your heading. If all the words are capitalized, it’s hard to know where the book title begins and ends.

A great use of lower case is Apple’s naming of some of its products with lower case letters at the beginning. For example, I’m writing this on an iMac, which runs on macOS. Do not be one of those pedants who insist on writing “MacOS.” I have no idea what they are trying to prove.

In a recent post at Skuthus, Skyler points out that the Bear Discover “trending list is full of naysayers, warnings, dire laments, and gripes.”

For those of taking us refuge in the indie web to get away from all that, Skyler’s conclusion hits hard.

“I just think the mudslinging should be minimized or the big guys will win, having proven that it's not them who are spreading the hate and negativity — it's US.”

The algorithm tries to feed us what we want. And if it’s feeding us negativity, we might want to reflect on that.

I looked at some trending posts on Bear Discover, and came up with positive alternatives. Would you have upvoted these, or would you have preferred the originals? I have to admit the negative versions do seem more compelling.

Original: F*ck Omarchy and right wing populism
Alternative: Check out this awesome alternative to Omarchy

Original: For the last time I’m not downloading your stupid app
Alternative: Use these browser extensions to avoid app requests from social media

Original: How to endure Instagram
Alternative: How to enjoy Instagram

The officer gets out and comes over to your window.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?”

“I had to pull you over because I noticed you used the word ‘lay’ incorrectly in one of your blog posts.

“You wrote that you were going to ‘lay low over the weekend’ when you should have written ‘lie low.’ Lay is a transitive verb, which means you’re doing something to something else. Examples would be ‘lay some bricks’ or ‘lay an egg.’ If you’re doing something on your own, you need an intransitive verb — in this case ‘lie.’ You can ‘lie on the couch,’ for example, or ‘lie low.’

“Every time I see someone write ‘lay’ when they mean ‘lie,’ I wonder what it is they are laying. So when you wrote ‘lay low,’ I had crazy thoughts about you laying some low bricks.

“When Bob Dylan sings, ‘Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big, brass bed,’ I ask myself what she could possibly be laying.

“It makes no sense.”

“Sorry, officer. It’s tricky trying to remember the difference between ‘lay’ and ‘lie,’ but I’ll try to do better in the future.”

“OK, I’ll let you off with a warning this time, but if it happens again you might get a ticket.”

“I’ll do my best!”

There are four sites I occasionally check to catch up on what’s happening in the indieweb world: Bubbles, Bear Discover, Pika Pulse and Pagecord.

In two of them you find posts about people’s hobbies, things that interest them, updates on their lives. And that’s about it. Very chill.

In two them you’re more likely to get drama about fascists, Internet police, algorithms, toxicity, dystopia and so on. You’re also more likely to see “dialogue” where people respond to one another’s posts, and not always in a friendly manner.

Two of them have upvotes, two of them don’t. Can you guess which is which?

The upvote systems at Bubbles and Bear Discovery encourage a mindset of trying to get attention with controversy. This exact thing happens in almost all social media. How do you stand out from the thousands of other bloggers on these platforms? Polemic is the quick and easy way to do it.

They say that every successful story since humans started telling stories has had four elements: love and hate, life and death. The Odyssey is a perfect example. I literally see all four of these words in post headings on Bubbles. This is what we crave, this is what we gravitate toward. It takes a real effort to steer away from it.

In the end, though, this is not a complaint — more like an observation. I actually found it quite entertaining to read about the Internet police.

The iPhone Duo display is 7.6 inches, while the iPad mini display is a bit bigger at 8.3 inches.

And then there’s the price. The iPad mini, with cellular, comes to about one third of the price of an iPhone Duo.

Granted, there are things the Duo can do that the mini can’t, chief among them being the ability to fold. It has more screens and a better camera.

Still, with the iPhone’s screen size now approaching that of an iPad mini, you might want to look at this much less expensive alternative.

Star Trek is now a Canadian enterprise. Here’s what made it so

In the summer, I sometimes take a kayak out for a visit. No matter what is on my mind, no matter what is troubling me, I always get the same answer.

“Have faith.”

The author who comes to mind is Corey Doctorow. I mostly like his science fiction and I resonate with his essays on modern technology. My main fear is that I would not be able to hold my own, and he would soon be bored. The only well-known author I have spoken to was Timothy Findley, and I do believe he was bored though too polite to say so. I once exchanged emails with Andy Weir, who somehow seemed like just a regular guy.

WHAT – What genre do you most gravitate to?

If you go by sheer volume, the answer would have to be science fiction. But it’s the realm of speculative fiction that has the most power to pull me in. I’m fascinated by books like Piranesi, The Memory Police and The Other Valley. They take me to an impossible place and make me believe it’s real.

WHERE – Where do you prefer to read?

I mostly like to lounge on the couch and it needs to be quiet.

WHEN – What time of day do you prefer to read?

It seems to happen more in the afternoon and evening. It’s almost like I have to work my way up to reading because it feels like a commitment.

WHY – Why is your favourite book your favourite book?

I appreciate the way The Lord of the Rings takes me into another world complete with its own history, languages and peoples. It’s an epic where good wins but at a cost. That would be the one book I would take to a desert island because I would never tire of reading it.

BONUS — How do you go about selecting what you will read next?

I follow a lot of RSS feeds about books or where books are likely to be mentioned. If one of them catches my interest, I see if it’s in Libby and go from there. I’ve been gravitating toward Canadian writers because I like the feeling of stories in familiar places involving familiar people. Here are a bunch I have read in recent years.

Other posts on this theme

• Noisy Deadlines
• Thomas Rigby
• The Wry Writer
• Frances Crossley
• Explicating Elle
• David Meissner

The top comment (as of this writing) summed things up well: “It's exactly because Firefox is so important that you'll see people here complaining when Firefox does things to push away users . . .”

Overall, the passion for Firefox was on full display. I hope Mozilla staffers take this thread as feedback and use it to improve Firefox in ways that boost market share.

I kind of regret my reference to “over thinkers on Hacker News” because it could be taken as an insult. A casual glance around this site, though, will show that I do plenty of overthinking myself.

I recall one time when someone accused me of overthinking something, I shot back that he was underthinking it. Ah, those were the days.

A comment about the moving background being “nauseating” caught my attention. It didn’t exactly move, but the stars fading in and out for a twinkling effect could give that impression.

I myself found the twinkling stars distracting, not just because of the twinkles but also because it is improbable that stars would appear this way in outer space, which is what this is supposed to depict.

So I’ve commented out a couple of lines of CSS and stopped the twinkling. I also stopped the barely perceptible wisps of cloud from blowing by.

The stars are based, by the way, on a video by Carla Notarobot. This was from six years ago, so chances are Carla really was not a robot.

Finally, it’s comments like these that make me love Hacker News:

“wait, is this a thing? firefox is the only mainstream browser with an rcfile, that alone gives you incredible powers. I hope one day it also grows something like chrome's CDP. What is everyone so upset about?”

I checked the Wikipedia article, and still only have a vague idea of what an rcfile is.

According to Wikipedia, it’s an adage that goes back to 1512 in Germany. People have known for hundreds of years that you should be careful not to throw out a good and vital thing in your zeal to get rid of a minor annoyance.

I think about this when I see people dumping on Firefox.

The latest was a post from a prolific blogger who has switched to Vivaldi because Firefox is now on X. He is somehow able to reconcile this with the fact that Vivaldi is also on X — not to mention Meta’s Threads, Facebook and Instagram, along with Google’s YouTube.

Meanwhile, the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises. It makes me wonder if it’s a bot campaign by Google — except, why would they bother?

Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition. Without it we would be stuck with Google Chrome and its spinoffs everywhere (including Vivaldi). The only holdout would be Apple Safari, hanging in there only because it’s the enforced default on iPhones.

I’m sure the reason Firefox is on X is because they’re hoping to reach out to new users. Considering their small and diminishing market share worldwide, they desperately need to reach out wherever they can.

And you desperately need to help them.

Read more: Competition, Innovation, and the Future of the Web – Why Independent Browser Engines Matter

Although I’m on macOS myself, I’m glad to see that my small indie contribution is making headway among Linux users. I respect their do-it-yourself spirit.

I was a little disappointed, though, to see that Chrome is the top browser with 60 per cent. I’d love to see Firefox doing better than a measly 12 per cent. Still, it’s pretty decent compared with the tiny 3.3 per cent worldwide in July.

By the way, I’m getting these stats from GoatCounter, a donation-supported open source analytics platform that I use to satisfy my curiosity. It’s all general stuff, nothing about individual visitors.