Jamie Thingelstad

Kai Brach at Dense Discovery just launched the DD Lounge for his Friends of DD (subscribers) and I am impressed with how he did it. I’ve been a subscriber since 2020 because I like the newsletter itself and I find Kai’s approach to the medium interesting. He built the DD Lounge himself and I’m impressed with how integrated the experience is.

Some notes:

• The DD Lounge actions are integrated right into the newsletter and just a click away. You are automatically logged in. This comes with a tradeoff. You cannot forward your copy of Dense Discovery since it has magic links that will get into your profile. However the reduced friction is worth it in my opinion and Kai provides a way to reset your link if you do this by accident.
• You create your profile on the Lounge and there are multiple ways to encourage connection inside the Friends of DD group. You can discover people by shared interests, location, and which issues of DD you liked the most. You can directly engage other members of the community through the “Meet” section.
• All the while the entire experience feels calm and relaxed. The fit and finish on the user experience is impressive for a v1.0 release. Everything feels consistent from email to the web. As someone who publishes a newsletter myself, I find this incredibly difficult with any of the “off the shelf” solutions out there today.

All of that and the lowest membership fee is just $22 which is very accessible compared to nearly any other newsletter or podcast I subscribe to. Congratulations to Kai on the launch! 🎉

I just sent Weekly Thing 291 / Ireland 🇮🇪 as a special issue all about Ireland. This issue didn’t follow my usual structure so I did all the assembly by hand. It took me about 2 hours just to get the sections, links, headers, images, and outline together. Then I could start the actual writing!

It was illuminating to show how important my automation is to successfully sending my newsletter each week. Everything I did in those two hours is done with automation and takes just a few seconds each week. Without that capability It would at least double the time it takes me to send each Weekly Thing.

Gonna be a hot day today — agenda is chilling in the pool and celebrating my sisters birthday! 😎🎉☀️

I realized tonight that with fiber at our cabin the very old Apple TVs I have are limited by their Ethernet ports — can’t exceed 100 Mbps!

Ordered two new Apple TVs to put in next weekend. 🎉

Today I Learned: Culver’s has a thing called a Pup Cup that is a free treat for your dog.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing the Foo Fighters at Target Field for months now. I got tickets the first day of the pre-sale. This was even a bit more special because Mazie has become a bit of a fan of the Foo’s and wanted to come as well. What a treat it was to sing (scream?) along to “My Hero” with her at the show.

Setlist for the show:

1. All My Life
2. No Son of Mine (with snippets of “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath and “Enter Sandman” by Metallica)
3. Rescued
4. The Pretender
5. Walk
6. Times Like These
7. Generator
8. La Dee Da
9. Breakout
10. Snippets while introducing the band: Eruption / Thunderstruck / Sabotage / Keyboard Solo / Blitzkrieg Bop / March of the Pigs
11. My Hero (dedicated to Hüsker Dü)
12. The Sky Is a Neighborhood
13. Learn to Fly
14. Arlandria
15. These Days
16. Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin cover) (partial; acoustic; Dave on guitar, Rami on accordion)
17. Skin and Bones (acoustic, Dave on guitar; Rami on accordion)
18. Under You (Dave solo acoustic)
19. Nothing at All (with “Blackbird” snippet)
20. This Is a Call
21. Show Me How (with Violet Grohl)
22. Monkey Wrench
23. Aurora (dedicated to Taylor Hawkins)
24. Best of You

Encore:

25. The Teacher
26. Everlong