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For those who have found their meaning, their place in the world, and what they feel they want to live for, death is just one part - inevitable, but not frightening - of a good life—a death all woven with life, which has the smile and soft touch of a newfound embrace. I wish myself, anyone, such a death. – Benedetta Tobagi, La Resistenza delle donne

I just came across this tweet by Aaron Levie: The best founders I know — no matter their company’s scale — thrive on doing customer support directly. There’s literally no better way to understand the pulse of your customer base, what features to build next, or where systems are breaking down. It’s always upside. It profoundly resonates with me. For context, we’ve been a small company in the market since 1991, making us quite the rare bird (we have seen so many software companies come and go that it is unbelievable). ...

Thanks to Giovanni Ansaldo’s convincing review on yesterday’s issue of Il Mondo podcast, my first Bandcamp purchase1 is the recently released Astral Gold album by Dean McPhee, a British guitarist who combines folk with experimental music and jazz using his telecaster guitar to create endless landscapes. As the title suggests, McPhee’s latest album is a journey into outer space. The album consists of six instrumental pieces, all captivating, enjoyable, and cohesive; they all serve as each other’s natural continuation. Along with the sound of his guitar, the musician uses tape loops, small percussion sounds, and a few synthesizers here and there. The result is a hypnotic moonscape reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey2. ...

I’m growing sick and tired of Spotify’s music-consuming model. There are many compelling and sometimes conflicting reasons, most perfectly outlined in The day I canceled my Spotify subscription on Raed’s blog. I used to cherish music, I used to religiously collect, catalog and enjoy every album on my iPod. I could navigate the endless folders and find that exact song that I needed for that precise moment. Spotify killed that, I listen to what it suggests and just accept that it will go away when it decides to rotate it out. Spotify trained me not to look too hard, to let the flow be, and if that awesome song is gone or removed, don’t worry, we still have a million more. ...

Jordan Mechner (@jmechner, creator of Prince of Persia) has written and drawn a graphic novel memoir, REPLAY. It’s out in French and will be released in English on March 19. I pre-ordered a signed English copy. More info here.

“Coding” was never the source of value, and people shouldn’t get overly attached to it. Problem solving is the core skill. The discipline and precision demanded by traditional programming will remain valuable transferable attributes, but they won’t be a barrier to entry. – John Carmack I’d be tempted to call bullshit on this one, but it’s coming from Carmack, so hey, let me think about it for a minute (it’s not the first time I’ve caught him endorsing AI). ...

In a brigh Sunday morning, we went on a lonely beach walk Our third kid turned eighteen yesterday; she’s an adult now, and we’re left with no teenagers in our family. She is on a celebrative short trip to Barcelona so we are alone at home, for the first time. It’s only temporary, but it’ll become the norm in just over a year when she leaves for University. What a strange feeling; the nest is going to be empty soon. It will take a while before we get used to it. ...

There’s a common belief that suffering is necessary for pleasure, or that evil is necessary for good, like the change of the seasons. It’s one of those ideas that sounds like wisdom, but when you think about it, it’s not actually true. There are some people who are happy all the time, and other people who are miserable all the time. I think suffering and evil are like taking a wrong turn on a journey. Taking a wrong turn sometimes happens, and some good can come of it. But it’s never necessary. ...

Today, I learned that SQLite only enforces foreign-key constraints if explicitly instructed. I imagine this is well-known and trivial for the SQLite initiated, but we’re a Postgres shop; I have used SQLite sporadically, primarily for experiments like today’s, and this one amenity was certainly unexpected. Anyways. I had all my ON DELETE CASCADE constraints nicely configured, but related records in child tables were not being deleted when I deleted the parent. Perplexed, I looked it up. ...