Lisa Sieverts

I’ve been a MailMate user for several years but have only recently personalized it to the point where email has become easy to manage.

Trick #1: when I look at my email, it always looks like this: completely empty, a veritable ocean of calm.

This is a two-step process.

First, I created a Smart Mailbox which has filters such that it is always empty. For example, if you have a Smart Mailbox set to show everything with a specific tag, then set the Empty Smart Mailbox to show everything in that mailbox which doesn’t have that tag.

Whenever I’m done looking at email, I make sure that I leave MailMate with that Empty Mailbox highlighted. Thus, it always appears that I have no mail.

Second, I use the built-in MailMate keyboard shortcut ⌃⌥⌘D which hides the sidebar that shows all the mailboxes.

By always having MailMate in this calm, empty state, when I need to write an email I can do so without being distracted due to seeing the new messages in my Inbox.

Here’s what MailMate looks like normally, when I haven’t done this trick.

Kenneth Rogoff assesses the state of the U.S. economy – Harvard Gazette

A third thing is that the stock market disproportionately represents larger companies. Small businesses aren’t in the major indexes. Sole proprietors are certainly not included. Yet, these are a major part of the economy and the part that is getting slaughtered. In fact, many large firms will see their monopoly power go up as smaller competitors and potential future competitors are going bankrupt because they don’t have the cash reserves to survive a shock of this magnitude.

I’m very curious about Andy Matuschak and his method of digital gardening. The new MB features around bookmarking and highlighting seem like an easy way of doing this. Here’s just one plant from Andy’s digital garden:

Write about what you read

Method

Our broad approach is an alternating cycle:

Collect passages that seem interesting and thoughts that emerge while reading

Process clusters of those passages and thoughts into lasting notes

Currently reading: Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot 📚

Stopped reading: Bone Rattler: A Mystery of Colonial America by Eliot Pattison 📚 Started and stopped in the same night. Read the first 30 pages, skipped to the last 10, said “Nope I don’t want to read this.”

Very excited about NK Jemisin receiving a MacArthur grant. Wondering what this amazing world builder will create.

MacArthur Foundation Announces 21 ‘Genius’ Grant Winners - The New York Times

Ms. Jemisin, 48, said she typically writes under contract, meaning that her books are held to an agreed-upon timeline. But with the financial freedom that the grant offers, she said that she now has the option to forgo those strictures and write on her own schedule.

“I will write my books first and sell them as I feel like selling them,” she said. “It presents me with a lot of freedom.”

Finished reading: Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin 📚And Nabokov as translator redeems himself in my eyes with his excellent notes. Now I need to find a version in verse in English.

My very sane brother is suffering 6 months post-COVID

Nearly One-Third of Covid-19 Patients in Study Had Altered Mental State - The New York Times nytimes.com

Finished reading: Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike 📚

Currently reading: Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin 📚

Started and stopped reading: Hyperion by Dan Simmons 📚 When the 6 main characters were introduced and 5 were men and the only woman was immediately subjected to the male gaze, I said “life is too short to read this garbage” and quit.

Finished reading: The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd 📚 I didn’t love it. The main character is so self-absorbed that she barely seems human.

Inktober day 2 wisp. So far it’s mostly about workflow

Inktober

Super annoyed to have had to do this

If you’re missing Workout GPS routes or Health data after updating to iOS 14 and watchOS 7 – Apple Support

which involves a FULL RESET of Phone and Watch including hours of re-downloading apps.

Problems were no GPS tracking, high battery use

Currently reading: Gertrude and Claudius: A Novel by John Updike 📚

Finished reading: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri 📚 Excellent book. More sad than uplifting, but definitely worth the read. Crossings of cultures, crossings of politics, crossings of children. The ways in which history does and does not matter.

Can you imagine getting a thank you card from Twitter or FB? Thank YOU @macgenie

A bright Fall, after all, despite the New England drought

Currently reading: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri 📚

Finished reading: The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food by Adam Gopnik 📚

Internet is down, must be time for lunch. On the positive side, CCI is putting in fiber on my street RIGHT NOW! Can’t wait to have awesome internet.

Hey, in all of my research around Mailmate and the 5 months it took me to figure out how to make my own key bindings work (problem was an unmatched parenthesis, ain’t it always), I never found this page until I was today years old and it’s so useful that I’m sharing it here. MailMate All Key Binding Selectors

Remember my web scraping project? I’ve read 8 chapters of Python Crash Course and have written a script that successfully loads BeautifulSoup and requests. Remembering how to use vi. But I still have a long way to go.

Currently Reading: The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food by Adam Gopnik 📚