This is the question that underscores all the subsequent ones:

[S]hould we be trying to appease Google?

Also, I hope I'm not the only one to be grateful that the article is from Anil Dash.

This one is really interesting, and had never occurred to me. Not that I have much choice when changing continents.

PROPERLY BREAKING UP A FLIGHT JOURNEY

Simple rule, I’ve learned the hard way: 2 equal length legs of a journey are far better than one long leg and one short one. If the entire world is conspiring against you, and you cannot get a non-stop flight, pick the one with the most equal durations of flying times and try to get a 2 hour layover. That’s enough to pee, stretch, eat, and not stress if your incoming flight is delayed. Also: it’s always better to fly in and out of larger airports as there’s far better food options.

Duncan says:

(Researchers themselves are sometimes the most reluctant to undertake user research before spending serious amounts of money on ineffective websites.)

Strange, isn't it.

(The 9 rules themselves are at Medium and, I hope, somewhere else too. Because you never know.)

The principle puzzle of podcasting lies in the fact that because it has an extremely low barrier to entry, it has an extremely high barrier to scale.

I've never done this myself, honest, but I can understand that it is tempting for a whole reason. And I like both ends of the spectrum of justification:

The authors further proposed that retailers bore some blame for the problem. In their zeal to cut labor costs, the study said, supermarkets could be seen as having created “a crime-generating environment” that promotes profit “above social responsibility.”

... and ...

“Anyone who pays for more than half of their stuff in self checkout is a total moron,” reads one of the more militant comments in a Reddit discussion on the subject. “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.”

The white man, Tocqueville wrote as he observed race relations in America, ‘is to the men of other races what man himself is to the animals’, in the sense that he ‘makes them serve his purposes, and when he cannot make them bend, he destroys them.’ A social order built on systemic violence made the black man, Tocqueville recognised, an ever present menace in his white master’s imagination. 

Still I find it hard to internalise this understanding, no matter how much I may "know" it.

“Years later I can hear the sizzle of my right retina as the burning ember connected with the delicate, light-sensitive tissue”

Not to defend the special hell that is a cruise, but is there not one person in the editorial chain of that piece who actually understands the anatomy of the eyeball?

I want to make listening to or subscribing to a podcast as easy as sending an email. Or easier!

A very worthy goal, I don't doubt it. Sounds a bit like the universal Subscribe button that some people think is needed to get #IndieWeb writing going again. 

In any event, I wish them much luck and will be attempting to keep an eye on podTo.

Gavin belonged to a school of one. Throughout most of his career – which was a vocation conducted on his own terms – it was evident to anyone of the slightest sentience that he was the eminent architectural writer of his generation. During much of that time architectural criticism in Ingerlandlandland was no such thing; it was a matter of giving great forelock to a few big names, it was fawning, anilingual sycophancy, a barely dissembled form of PR.

He also, and this may be a little-known fact, designed letterheads for like-minded colleagues, myself included.