Cool Things - February 25, 2026

Some tabs from the laptop and phone while I wait for the washing machine repair guy to come confirm what I already know – the bearing is going and unit needs replacing.

From Laptop

• Deep Dive: Why did eBay acquire Depop – and why did Etsy sell? – Part of me still wants Etsy to survive. Even if they have steered away from their original mandate, shops have mass produced crap, etc. etc..
• AI Mentions: How to Get Cited by LLMs and AI Overviews – I like the ‘AI CITE’ mnemonic
• Free resources to help you implement the ProductLed System. – I really like the ‘PLG Website Analyzer’. Not just because I was mostly doing them already.
• Fire Up the Wayback Machine – Reminds us one more that digital archives are anything but. And can go offline at a moment’s notice.
• I Can’t Afford This But Maybe She Can - Issue 27 – has a great interview with the creator the viral cat shoes
• Turn Dependabot Off – From Filippo Valsorda’s mailing list. Offers a solution to the noise it creates in the Go ecosystem. I wonder if there are similar things for PHP, etc. Seems like part of the elegance of the solution is due to their package infrastructure.
• What What Happened to Amazon, or “Don’t Put Down the Drone” – Hard to argue with a lot of this analysis

From Phone

• Micromosaic – My wife did a workshop last weekend on this. It is bonkers.
• Bobbin Lace – Lace manufacture is insane. Bobbin lace is insane-er.
• Startup Playbook – distilled advice from one of the YC founders
• Zeigarnik Effect – psychological phenomenon where people tend to remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed ones
• The Tampered Press - Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe – Mmmmm, cookie.
• This new documentary digs into the history of Doug and the Slugs — and the filmmaker grew up next door – Non-Canadians not of a certain age will have no idea who this is.
• We invested 10% to pay back tech debt; Here’s what happened – Tech debt is going to be the word of the year in 2027
• 1-on-1 Questions – Lots of questions to borrow if you are stuck for topics.
• The Arc of the Practical Creator – Creating meets Crossing The Chasm
• The Parlor – A classic
• The Daily Heller: George Giusti Designed With Heart – Back when publishing wasn’t scared to be weird