This week came and went in a blur. I hadn’t realized how much i’d missed being on the creative side of things. Don’t get me wrong — i love managing my team of designers and planning our overall strategy. But i missed being in the thick of it, thinking deep and hard about the tiniest technicality, and being absolutely knackered by 3 PM. I’m thrilled that i still get to do it… and that i still got it!
Speaking of the creative side of things: in my People and Blogs interview, i mentioned Architypes, my little side project documenting old-school French storefronts. In the few weeks since, it’s garnered more interest than in the 10+ years i’ve been talking about it here in France. Huge thanks to Cassidy, Matt, Marilyn, Nicolas, Chad and the others for shining a light on this tiny project of mine.
Books
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. Richard Osman sure knows how to write a thoroughly enjoyable book, but i don’t know, this one felt a bit trite. Most of the characters seem to have been dreamed up by the publisher’s marketing team to hit all the “key demos” and the hops around the world seem to have no other justification than to offer regular changes of scenery for the eventual film adaptation. Even the seemingly obligatory mention of ChatGPT feels uninspired at best. I really hope that it’s not a sign of things to come with the next instalment in the Thursday Murder Club series. (That being said, Trouble is a great name for a cat.)
Links
“The next evolution of The Verge’s homepage is here” by William Joel. They’re living my dream of five years ago. Contrary to my last employer, they understand the difference between traffic and audience, and are doing everything they can to transform fleeting traffic into a long-lasting audience. I wish them well in their effort to build their own community on their own (eventually federated) platform. That’s where the money is, and actual tech journalism deserves all the money it can get.
“MacBook Neo and How the iPad Could Be” by Craig Mod. In order to justify its existence between the iPhone and the MacBook, the iPad had to be, to quote Steve Jobs, “far better at doing some really important things […] than a laptop or a smartphone.” Alas, Apple quickly lost that ambition and revelled in making the iPad far worse at doing a lot of really important things than a laptop or a smartphone. I agree with Craig: “the iPad should be a highly-focused touch playground. Weird as hell, one-of-a-kind apps. And MacBooks should be for multitasking, moving information and data around, building evermore powerful tools (tools within tools within tools), all bounded by a keyboard-first universe.” It’s high time that Apple, if not the whole of the computer industry, understood that “consistency” doesn’t mean “convergence”. Things can be consistent in principle and wildly different in appearance. People will figure it out, if only you trust them to be cleverer than most of Silicon Valley thinks they are.
“At Machine Speed” by Matthias Ott. We’re in the midst of what i called a “LLM-powered cultural DDoS attack”, but Matthias describes something more nefarious entirely, an actual LLM-powered DDoS attack. “Language models can find zero-days and write working exploits faster than we can patch them”, which is putting intense pressure on solo-run and open-source projects. I’m sure that OpenAI and Anthropic will tell you that the solution is simple: let LLMs patch your code automatically, and if they make mistakes, more powerful LLMs will patch them in the future. In short: remove humans from the equation entirely and let the machines talk to the machines. It’s going to cost us dearly, and not only in euros and cents.
About the Z1NZ0L1N dispatch system
Z1NZ0L1N is a dispatch system operated by Anthony Nelzin-Santos, transmitting from the field since January 2025. This document describes the operator, the protocol’s naming convention, its transmission history, its field office, and how it’s funded.
Operator
Anthony Nelzin-Santos is a writer at heart, teacher by instinct, flâneur by habit. He’s known to wander in search of old shopfronts, to spend an inordinate amount of time curating his music library, to craft pocket notebooks with vintage roadmaps, to keep a collection of half-repaired typewriters and half-empty fountain pens, to wear jeans and hiking shoes all year round, to watch his plants grow, to roam around with the heaviest long-tail bike on the planet, and to acquire more books than can be read. He’s married to the only person willing to put up with all of it.
Naming convention
“Zinzolin” is a shade of purple between lavender-field blue and crushed-blackberry red. The medieval Italians traced it to jujube fruits (giuggiolino). The Mozarabs, were they still around to argue the point, would insist on sesame seeds (djoudjolân) instead. The operator chose it because it’s his favourite colour — partly because it sounds like his name.
Transmission history
The operator was born before the world wide web was invented, but grew up surrounded by computers. He launched his first website in 2000, started his first blog in 2004, recorded his first podcast in 2005, and uploaded his first video in 2006. He went pro in 2008. In 2025, after years spent transmitting in French, the frequency switched to English.
Field office
Z1NZ0L1N is hosted by Infomaniak near Geneva (CH). The operator is based in Lyon (FR) but has also sent dispatches from Aachen (DE), Antwerpen (BE), Besançon (FR), Bruxelles (BE), Liège (BE), Marseille (FR), Moulins-sur-Allier (FR), Paray-le-Monial (FR), Paris (FR), Schaerbeek (BE), Seyssins (FR), Utrecht (NL), and Vienne (FR). He’s made it a goal to visit and write in every country in the European Union (8 down, 19 to go!).
Funding
Z1NZ0L1N is proudly ad-free. The operator covers hosting and the domain name — roughly €120 a year — out of pocket. The best way to support his efforts is to subscribe to the RSS feed and share your favourite dispatches with your friends. That being said, if you ever feel like sending one, a cup of coffee is always welcome.
Colophon
Tools
Notebooks: handmade. Ink: purple, one of many. Pen: a fountain pen, often a Lamy Safari, also one of many. Backup: a Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr. 1 ballpoint, a Uniball Zento Signature rollerball, or a Caran d’Ache 849 mechanical pencil. Notes when the notebook’s out of reach: Bloom. Computer: MacBook Air. Mechanical keyboard: more than one. Writing: Lettera, formerly Ulysses. Coding: BBEdit. Proofing: Antidote. Publication: Hugo.
Blogroll
Inspirations: Aegir, V.H. Belvadi, Ian Betteridge, Mandy Brown, But she’s a girl…, Frank Chimero, Simon Collison, Zinzy Waleson Geene, Josh Ginter, Chris Glass, Piper Haywood, Nick Heer, Jon Hicks, Alan Jacobs, Keenan, Winnie Lim, Tom MacWright, Louie Mantia, Craig Mod, Manuel Moreale, Riccardo Mori, Anders Norén, The Pen Addict, Kev Quirk, Robin Rendle, Melanie Richards, and Mateusz Urbanowicz. Suggestions: please.
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