my boss thinks he is a mayan shaman
Mar. 16th, 2026 02:59 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
askamanager_feedI was told to stay off screens for a few days last week due to a possible concussion (I’m fine), so today and tomorrow will include some posts from the archives. This was originally published in 2015.
A reader writes:
I took employment at a nonprofit as an economic researcher about seven months ago. Overall, I love my job and what I get to do and helping people, but there is one major issue: My boss, who is the founder and head of the organization, thinks he is a mayan shaman. I am not joking.
He spends crazy amounts of money (sometimes company money) to fund his “spiritual projects” and recently has been telling me to do ludicrous projects like comparing chakra colors in different cultures and staring at a candle to find a sacred angle. Seriously. I’ve been able to handle it just fine until now. He is getting crazier by the day and I don’t know how to handle it anymore because if I tell him anything, he will say the “darkness has possessed me” and then be uncommunicative when I need information.
What can I do? Is there anything, because I don’t want to quit my job but this is getting out of hand. He sends texts to us at the middle of the night with his “visions” and when one of our employees was pregnant he would call it the “christ child” and say that one quarter of the DNA must be his. I swear this is not a fake situation or question.
Shamans have to have day jobs, I guess.
And he’s welcome to believe he’s a shaman. Who knows, maybe he is. But the problem here is that he’s letting his spiritual beliefs interfere with work and apparently misusing the organization’s resources.
But I doubt there’s a lot you can do here. This is your boss, the head of the organization, and ultimately he’s calling the shots here. If you really wanted to try to get this addressed, you’d have two options: Talk to him directly, or talk to the board of directors.
If you talk to him directly, I’d say something like this: “Percival, I respect your religious beliefs, but I’m not comfortable discussing religion at work or being given religious assignments to work on. I was hired to do economic research and our organization isn’t religious in nature. Is there a way for us to work well together without bringing religion into it?” Ideally, you’d do this with a group of coworkers who feel the same rather than on your own; it’s harder to ignore a group of employees than one lone one — but either way, it’s a reasonable thing to say.
That said, will it work? I doubt it. This is a guy who’s telling you that darkness has possessed you and claiming some sort of parentage over a quarter of an employee’s baby. In other words, probably not open to reasoned conversation on these topics.
So that leaves you with the second option: Talk to the board. Every nonprofit is required to have a board of directors that serves as its ultimate governing body and which is responsible for ensuring that the organization is well managed and fiscally sound. The board is basically this guy’s boss — even though he’s the founder and even though he’s in charge of day-to-day operations. He might have a seat on the board, but there are presumably other board members, which means that he can be outvoted.
The board would presumably want to know that the head of the organization is using resources to find sacred candle angles and freezing out employees when he thinks the darkness has possessed them.
But that said … unless you care passionately about this organization and want to take an active role in getting this situation straightened out, your better bet might be to leave. This isn’t likely to change overnight, there’s likely to be some tension if you go to the board, and — maybe most importantly — do you really trust this guy’s leadership, even if he cools it with the shamanism talk at work? I mean, let’s say that the board puts a stop to all the behavior you’ve written about, and it even happens quickly — you’re still going to be working at an organization led by a guy who thought all of this was reasonable to begin with. Is that the job you want?
In light of that, it might make sense to skip past all these steps and just start working on leaving.
(Alternately, maybe just embrace the whole thing and have him influence the spirit world in your favor. That could be useful too.)
Read an update to this letter here.
The post my boss thinks he is a mayan shaman appeared first on Ask a Manager.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Under
Mar. 16th, 2026 11:20 amsmbc_comics_feed
Click here to go see the bonus panel!
Hovertext:
This is the best votey panel I will ever do.
Today's News:
“This Is Not The Computer For You”
Mar. 16th, 2026 03:11 pmkottke_org_feedMaybe it’s because I’m a little bit allergic to hype, but I just now got around to reading this review of the Macbook Neo by Sam Henri Gold that absolutely everyone has been recommending and, well, this might be the best product review ever written?
The consensus is reasonable: $599, A18 Pro, 8GB RAM, stripped-down I/O. A Chromebook killer, a first laptop, a sensible machine for sensible tasks. “If you are thinking about Xcode or Final Cut, this is not the computer for you.” The people saying this are not wrong. It is also not the point.
Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pressing on it until it either breaks or reveals something. The machine’s limits become a map of the territory. You learn what computing actually costs by paying too much of it on hardware that can barely afford it.
Gold captures something here about every single person I’ve ever known who fell in love with computers as a kid in the 70s, 80s, and 90s experienced — the sense of tremendous possibility represented by these machines paired with the glorious struggle to push them beyond their limits. For many of us, it was our first glimpse of infinity — as long as your curiosity & obsession remained, you could keep going forever.
Unrelatedly-ish, it is also really interesting that Apple’s answer to the AI gold rush is a $499 laptop (Neo price w/ educational discount). I don’t know if it suggests that the multi-trillion dollar, multinational corporation that Apple has become retains some institutional memory of what computing used to mean to people, but it’s something.
Tags: Apple · computing · Macbook Neo · Sam Henri Gold
The Trump regime is deliberately destroying the...
Mar. 16th, 2026 02:31 pmkottke_org_feedThe Trump regime is deliberately destroying the scientific community in the US. “This is not efficiency. This is not streamlining. This is the systematic elimination of scientific stewardship at the world’s largest biomedical research funder.”
3D Print Your Own Lil Finder
Mar. 16th, 2026 01:34 pm512pixels_feedAfter a week of tinkering with design files and babysitting my 3D printer, I have an adorable new coworker. The final print took 20 hours, but I’m enamored with the results:
I was thrilled to collaborate with Basic Apple Guy on bringing Lil Finder to life. We both hope the Mac community enjoys this project.
If you want to print your own, I’ve uploaded a .3mf file here.
I ran mine on my Bambu P2S, with some fuzzy skin to give the final version a softer finish. On my example, the bright blue is Bambu’s Cyan PLA; the darker color is Overture’s Gray Blue PLA+. You may need to do some adjusting to get things dialed in for your setup.
We would love to see what you do with this, so be sure hit us up on social media:
- My Bluesky
- My Mastodon
- My Threads
- Basic Apple Guy on Bluesky
- Basic Apple Guy on Mastodon
- Basic Apple Guy on Threads
To head off some feedback: We are offering this file as-is, for free, and without any support. Feel free to make your own changes as you see fit! I’m just not in the position where I can help you with your own print, nor can I print one for you. Find a nerdy buddy with some free time and a 3D printer.
Josiah’s Monthly Board Game Round-Up – February 2026
Mar. 16th, 2026 12:00 pmopinionatedgamers_feedFebruary 2026 Games I played for the first time this month, from worst to best, along with my ratings and comments. Linko – 5/10 Linko belongs in the same category as games like Cabanga. Both are lightweight card games that … Continue reading
“Just because it’s consistent doesn’t mean it’s consistently right.”
Mar. 16th, 2026 10:59 amunsung_feedI mentioned before how the old-fashioned pixels on CRT screens have little in common with pixels of today. The old pixels were huge, imprecise, blending with each other, and requiring a very different design approach.
Some years ago, the always-excellent Tech Connections also had a great video about how in the era of analog television, pixels didn’t even exist.
But earlier this month, MattKC published a fun 8-minute video arguing that for early video games it wasn’t just pixels that were imprecise. It was also colors.
What was Mario’s original reference palette? Which shade of blue is the correct one? Turns out… there isn’t one.
Come to learn some details about how the American NTSC TV standard (“Never The Same Color”) worked, stay for a cruel twist about PAL, its European equivalent.
How to Share a Bad Idea
Mar. 16th, 2026 08:00 ambasicinstructions_feed
As always, thanks for considering joining my Patreon, where you can get early access to comics and exclusive commentaries; and for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada). As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Dale Yu: Review of Tulikko (Pandasaurus)
Mar. 16th, 2026 05:04 amopinionatedgamers_feedTulikko Designer: Jerome Soleil and Nicolas Melet Publisher: Studio H Players: 2-4 Age: 8+ Time: 20 mins Played with review copy provided by Pandasaurus Legend has it that Tulikko, the fire fox, lives hidden among the animal spirits in the … Continue reading
askamanager_feedIt’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Coworker sends emails with deadlines, then asks everyone to answer immediately
I work in an office and I have a coworker who is one of the few on the admin team with me. We’re peers; neither of us manages the other. She has a habit that I find frustrating: she will send out an email giving instructions and a deadline, then start following up immediately.
As just the latest example, today, it was wanting to know shirt sizes so she can buy company merch for employees and attendees of an event we’re having if they’re bringing family members or significant others. She put in the email that that we should send an answer by a deadline 12 days from now.
She sent this email at 8:03 this morning and at 8:11 one of the other admin employees walked near her desk on his way to somewhere else and she said, “Hey, did you get my email? Do you know when you can let me know your shirt sizes?” She then asked me and another admin the same question around 10:00. (I understand it’s just shirt sizes here and it should be reflexive for most people to answer, but some people don’t want to answer right away for various reasons. For instance, I’m losing weight and want to try on the shirt at home I had from last year’s event to see how big/small it is on me.)
This is today’s example, but this issue has surfaced many times. If she needs to know immediately, that’s fine. If there’s a deadline, that’s fine. And I could understand if it were, say, two days before the deadline and she reminded people. But this is a lot more frustrating.
How do I respond? I don’t think it’s any of her business why I don’t want to say right away, but I also don’t want to be rude and I’d like to point out her own deadline.
“Oh, do you need to know now? I thought the email said March 20.”
Or: “I’m not sure yet, but I’ll get back to you before the deadline.”
Or: “Haven’t had a chance to think about it yet, but I’ll let you know before the deadline.”
Related:
my coworker follows up on projects way too much
2. Do I really have to mention my divorce at work?
I work in a profession where having a polished, professional appearance is crucial to maintaining your upward career trajectory. The basic ethos is that if you can’t keep your home life in order, you can’t be expected to manage high-profile “cases” (while I’m not a lawyer, I am in a legal-adjacent field). Getting divorced brings up questions about distractibility and bandwidth to handle a moderately heavy workload (ie 50-60 hours a week in a typical week, 70+ in the quarter leading up to a big case) where there are often last-minute changes in schedule (i.e., a request comes in at 3 pm with a legally mandated response time of 24 hours later). I’ve seen this come up before in the field with friends who have gotten divorced, so this isn’t me overthinking.
None of this was an issue for me until I recently realized that I’m likely to be getting a divorce and will end up a single mother. I have a lot of support in place, but will be paying significant alimony and child support to my ex-husband so I couldn’t leave the career that I love and have a graduate degree in, even if I wanted to.
My plan has been to simply not mention the divorce at work; I’m senior enough that I can take time out during the day for attorney calls and to handle any issues. At work, I think I can get away with just calling my ex-husband by his name and/or saying “the kids’ father.”
My issue is that I’ve mentioned this to several friends who aren’t in my field and each of them thinks that this is a terrible lie by omission. One in particular is beside herself; she was also the one who was very upset when I didn’t tell my office that I was engaged because she thought it was essential information for them. I hadn’t told the office because I didn’t have a traditional proposal or engagement ring; we simply decided over a series of discussions to get legally wed after moving in together and set a date. People expressed mild surprise when I told them about the marriage and started wearing a wedding ring set, but it did not seem to be a scandal.
Since I’m not some sort of monarch or public figure, disclosing this information does not seem to be material to the company or have any financial effects to it, so why would they care? But am I off-base with this?
You are not off-base. Your friends are being really weird, especially the friend who thought it was a terrible crime not to share your engagement at work! Your coworkers are not entitled to the details of your personal life; yes, most people share at least the basics like marital status because it comes up during normal chit chat and getting to know people, but when you have a specific reason not to want to share a change, you’re not morally obligated to!
It might come up if you have to take your ex’s name off specific benefits like health insurance, but otherwise you’re allowed to keep this private if you prefer to. And it sounds like you have more reason than most to prefer it; it’s bizarre that your field passes professional judgment on people who get divorced! (What about people who started out and stayed single? What if you were widowed? It’s pretty absurd.)
3. When should you escalate issues to HR?
I work at a company with a fully staffed employee relations/EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) team. The team I work on is a dysfunctional nightmare and I’m actively interviewing to get out.
Over the past year, complaints to the EEO team have exploded. Our organization now seems to use the EEO team either as a mediator for every little problem or as a tool for revenge over perceived slights.
Of course, employees should have a mechanism to address harassment and misconduct. But I’ve been a witness in over 10 investigations and have been the target of one myself. The one against me was a false accusation, and I was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Obviously I’m angry that someone lied and tried to damage my reputation and career. But I’m also tired of being roped into investigations that seem petty and minor. (Think: differences of opinion about work processes.) These issues could be resolved in one conversation by people communicating like adults. I can’t trust a good portion of my coworkers or my own supervisor because any little upset seems to trigger another investigation.
I am way too in the mud here so I need an outside perspective. When is it actually appropriate to escalate issues to EEO?
When there are good-faith concerns about harassment or discrimination or managerial misconduct. Differences of opinion about work processes and things of that nature should be discussed directly with the other person and then, if they can’t be resolved that way and are important enough not to drop, they should be escalated to the relevant managers.
Employee relations/EEO staff aren’t there to referee minor disputes. They’re there for potential legal issues or other significant inequities.
Related:
when should you go to HR?
4. Do my multiple layoffs make me look like a job hopper?
Like lots of other professionals the past few years, I’ve experienced layoffs — three times in the past three years. I was at these jobs for anywhere from five months to almost three years, and my gaps between employment range from one to nine months. I’ve seen a lot of posts on your site about perceived job hopping on resumes, and how you should stay on a role for a few years to prove you won’t just up and leave … but how do you do this if the leaving was out of your control?
For the past six months, I’ve taken on a role that is giving me great experience but is not ideal in a lot of other respects (commute, pay, the chance of moving up in the company) and I’m starting to look for other roles again, and I would really like to clean up my disaster of a resume before I do.
Employers understand that layoffs are different than you deciding to leave all your jobs after very short stays (or being fired for performance from a bunch of them).
It’s also true that if a job is short (when not intended from the start to be short-term), it can be hard to have the kind of impressive accomplishments that will help you get hired for a job you really want. But if two of those three jobs were more toward the three-year end of the spectrum, I’m less concerned than if two of them were closer to the five-month end of it.
If it is an issue, the only real way to clean it up is to stay at jobs longer when given the chance to. So, ideally, you’d stay at your current one for at least a few years before you start looking again. But whether that actually makes sense to do has to be balanced against other factors, like how significant the gap is between what it pays versus what you could earn somewhere else (if it’s a small gap, it might make sense to stay for a while so your resume is more appealing the next time you’re looking), how awful the commute is, etc. You could also just start looking now but only accept a job that you’re very confident you’ll be able to stay at for at least a few years — but you also need to factor in that that’s not always in your control, and if you get laid off from the next one, you’ll have added two more short stays to a resume that’s already very choppy, and at some point it’s going to get harder to be hired by the sort of good job that you’d want to stay at longer-term and so it can become a self-perpetuating problem.
Caveat: there are some fields where this kind of resume is no big deal! You probably know if you’re in one of them, though.
Related:
is job-hopping still a bad thing?
5. Declining a job because of the health insurance provider
I’ve been working with a recruiter who I really like in my job search. Recently he sent me a role that at first I was excited about. He also sent me a link to their benefits package, and I saw that the healthcare provider was UnitedHealthcare.
They are notoriously difficult to work with, and I know with my health situation, it would be a nightmare. I did not approve of their business practices before their CEO was killed, but my reasons for not wanting to deal with them are because of my own health, not primarily because of moral reasons (although that plays in as well).
I sent a response to the recruiter saying that although the role sounded otherwise great, I could not take a role where UnitedHealthcare was the provider. My goal was to be purposely vague to not disclose private health information, but also so they can provide feedback to their client if needed, and so he knows that this is a requirement for me.
My question is how best to handle this if it comes up in the future. I want to stay vague as to my own health status, but also want to make it clear that is a deal-breaker on a job.
In the future, I would add slightly more to the statement you sent so it’s clear where you’re coming from — something like, “Unfortunately in the past I’ve found UnitedHealthcare to be difficult to work with to the point that having insurance with them again would be prohibitive for me. I understand there’s always a risk a company I’m working for might switch to them, but I can’t knowingly come on board with them as the insurance provider.”
That last part feels important to say because the reality is that you could take a job somewhere that then decides to switch to them — but that’s different than deliberately signing on for them when you can preemptively opt out.
The post coworker follows up way before deadlines, do I really have to mention my divorce at work, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
Incremental Progress
Mar. 15th, 2026 09:34 pmquestionable_content_feed
the second generation Moray units smelled like a Red Lobster dumpster
3D-printed handpainted Jennifer figurine
Mar. 16th, 2026 12:15 amdumbing_of_age_feed
If you’ve been paying attention to me on Bluesky, (in between avalanches of Transformers posts) I’ve been relearning 3D modeling by rendering my characters in Blender and 3D-printing them and painting them! And I’ve started reworking older models as I’ve upped my skill level and… realizing I have a few extra painted figurines that I don’t want to display anymore but also don’t want to throw away! And so I’m gonna start selling ’em.
Starting with Jennifer! She’s nearly 6 inches tall (apparently I’ve whiffed on doing these precisely in 6″ scale), she’s printed out of PLA plastic, and she’s been hand-painted by me. And I guess you can bid on her. Jennifer’s auction ends in 6 days.
oh also i should probably mention that if you have a 3d printer you can just grab the file yourself, but i will not handpaint it for you
A leap year inequality
Mar. 15th, 2026 11:22 pmdr_drang_feed[Equations in this post may not look right (or appear at all) in your RSS reader. Go to the original article to see them rendered properly.]
I’ve been working my way through the fourth edition of Reingold and Dershowitz’s Calendrical Calculations, and I want to talk about something I learned.
It’s a simple inequality that initially appears in the first chapter of the book and gets used several times thereafter. Here it is:
It’s first presented as a way to figure out how leap years are distributed. In some calendars—not the Gregorian—there’s a repeating cycle of years in which years are leap years. If the leap years are distributed as evenly as possible, then the years in which satisfies the inequality are the leap years. The is a sort of offset that determines the position within the cycle associated with Year 0, and the operator represents modulo division. In Python, that’s the % operator.
It’s helpful to look at examples. Let’s say we have a 7-year cycle with 2 leap years and 5 normal years in each cycle. The leap years have to be either 3 or 4 years apart. Here’s an example showing three cycles:
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2
Year 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
Type N N N L N N L N N N L N N L N N N L N N L
For this, , , and . You can plug the values into the inequality to show that it’s satisfied for years 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, 21, and so on.
Here’s a similar example. The only difference is the offset. In this case, , and the leap years are years 2, 5, 9, 12, 16, 19, and so on.
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2
Year 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
Type N L N N L N N N L N N L N N N L N N L N N
A practical example of this formula is with the Hebrew calendar. It has a 19-year cycle () with 7 leap years (), and the offset is 11 years (). The current year is 5786, for which
so this is not a leap year. But for next year,
so it is a leap year and will have 13 months instead of 12. You can confirm this on any number of websites; the key is to note that 5787 has both an Adar I and an Adar II.
The Gregorian calendar has a 400-year cycle with 97 leap years, but those leap years are not distributed as evenly as possible, so the formula can’t be used. If it had been used, we’d have leap years typically every fourth year but occasionally every fifth year. Pope Gregory and his people must’ve thought that would be too tricky to deal with.
Surprisingly (to me, anyway), Reingold and Dershowitz do use this formula with the Gregorian calendar, but they use it with months instead of years. Think of the months in the Gregorian calendar as being either short or long. In a year, there are 5 short months and 7 long months, and they’re distributed like this:
1 1 1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2
Month J F M A M J J A S O N D
Length L S L S L S L L S L S L
The positions of the long months correspond to our inequality with , , and . Plug in those values, and you’ll see that the long months are 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 12.
To calculate the day number within a year, it’s usually easiest to calculate the number of days in the preceding months and then add the day number within the current month. Today is March 15, so it’s Day of the year.
Instead of looping through the lengths of the preceding months, R&D use a formula based on our inequality to count the number of long months before the current month. That formula is
where the brackets without tops represent the floor function, i.e., the integer equal to or just below what’s inside the brackets.
Plugging in our values for , , and and doing some algebra, we get
This is the number of long months in the year before the current month .
If February had 30 days, the number of days in the months before the current month would be
So to get the (Gregorian) day of the year, R&D calculate the day number as if February had 30 days and then subtract (if necessary) to account for February’s deficiency. In Python, the code looks like this:
python:
def day_of_year(year, month, day):
year_day = (367 * month - 362) // 12 + day
if month <= 2:
return year_day
elif leap_year(year):
return year_day - 1
else:
return year_day - 2
where I’m assuming we already have a Boolean function leap_year to determine whether it’s a leap year or not. That’s not necessarily the most obvious code in the world, but it makes sense if you’ve gone through the derivation.
One last thing. Reingold is the co-author of a paper in which our inequality is connected to Euclid’s algorithm for calculating the greatest common divisor and Bresenham’s algorithm for plotting lines on bitmaps. Which is pretty cool.
CHM Live: Apple at 50
Mar. 15th, 2026 11:00 pmdaringfireball_feedDavid Pogue absolutely killed it hosting this live event last week. Glad I saved it to watch on my TV. Special guests include Chris Espinosa, John Sculley, and Avie Tevanian. A legit treat.
Adjust in smaller steps
Mar. 15th, 2026 10:10 pmunsung_feedIn the video linked in the previous post, one of the hosts mentions at one point:
The biggest rebuttal is that the greatest audio engine of all time, the one baked into all Apple products, has 16 volume steps. And no one has ever been like, “My iPhone doesn’t have enough granularity to the volume.”
But of course they have. And the solution is easy: on both the iPhone and Mac you can grab one of the many volume sliders and immediately get a lot more precision:
(Can’t help but notice this volume control has a nice set of notches, too!)
But if I told you that you can actually also increase the precision from 16 to 64 stops using the volume up/down keys, would you know how to do it?
Occam’s Razor: it must be a modifier key. So let’s go through them all.
Pressing ⌥ and brightness up/down opens the Displays settings pane, and consequently, pressing ⌥ and any of the three volume keys gives you the Sound settings pane. (This convention, however, isn’t followed for other keys. ⌥ and Mission Control only opens top level of Settings, and ⌥ and other function keys like Spotlight, Dictation, or media transport doesn’t do anything. My guess is that someone simply forgot about this over time which is a pity, because one of the best ways to teach people about a power-user shortcut is to make it as transferrable as possible, to allow motor memory to blossom.)
So ⌥ is out. ⌃ and brightness keys changes the brightness on the external display, and even though that doesn’t really apply to volume, it’s safe to stay away.
⇧ + volume keys reverses the meaning of this toggle below, making ping sounds if the toggle is off, or suppressing them if the toggle is on. This is nice.
That only leaves Fn/Globe which already reverses top-row keys into function keys, and ⌘. But ⌘ is inert. Instead, the combination to add precision is ⌥ + ⇧ + volume keys. (Same with brightness, which can be useful e.g. on a very dark plane.)
I don’t understand this, and I wonder what is the reason it got this way. Modifier keys are generally tricky, but this doesn’t follow any of the go-to rules I would try in this situation:
- Reuse an existing convention for consistency: I don’t think anywhere else ⌥⇧ means “precision.”
- Follow naturally from existing UI building blocks: ⌥ and ⇧ do different things and this is not an intuitive combination of what they do independently.
- Use mnemonics: This doesn’t feel like it’s doing that at all.
- Failing everything else, make it pleasant to press: ⌥ and ⇧ is possibly the least ergonomic two-modifier-key combination.
This shortcut has another problem, which is that it is the only two-modifier-key option here. If you don’t use it often, you might only remember it as “two modifier keys” without further detail, which actually ends up being 10 possible combinations of keys! So if you’re like me, you always awkwardly button mash a bunch of them before rediscovering ⌥⇧.
My recommendation for a small tweak here?
- ⇧ and brightness/volume: Secondary display/Add pings (both are most important; Shift is nice to press and the “default” modifier key).
- ⌃ and brightness/volume: Add extra precision (as that gives you more control).
- ⌥ and brightness/volume/other keys: Open the relevant Settings pane.
Obviously, I might not have all the information that led to the current situation (and it’s possible I don’t even understand it fully), plus changing any long-existing shortcuts is hard. But as above, ⌥⇧ is so peculiar, and it also misses out on the last important consideration: I don’t think anyone would ever discover it by mistake or out of curiosity.
Finalist 3.6
Mar. 15th, 2026 05:36 pmdaringfireball_feedMy thanks to Finalist for sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. Finalist is a remarkable, ambitious, and novel app for iPhone, iPad, and the Mac from indie developer Slaven Radic. It’s a planner — a digital take on traditional paper planners — that (with permission) pulls in your calendars, reminders, and health data. Its motto: “Most productivity apps help you organize tasks. Finalist helps you finish them.”
Finalist first sponsored DF back in December, and I wrote quite a bit about it then. You should read that post. I’ve continued using Finalist, day in, day out, since then. It’s open on my Mac and on my first iPhone home screen. I’m even on the TestFlight beta list, using new builds as Radic releases them. Finalist was good enough back in December that I started relying on it, and it’s gotten even better in the three months since. It’s a great app, period, but it’s really fun to use an app that is getting better so quickly. Radic is cooking with gas. It’s just so obvious, just using it, that Finalist is his own dream app for daily productivity. Here’s a fun one-minute video showing what’s new in version 3.6.
Recent features include subtasks, calendar bookmarks, HealthKit data in Finalist’s journal, and a spoken daily briefing you can trigger from your Lock Screen. You can (and I do) run Finalist alongside the apps you already use. E.g., Finalist hasn’t replaced Fantastical for me — they just work great together because they both show me the same calendar events. Same goes for Apple Reminders. If you took a look back in December, you should check out what’s new. If you haven’t tried Finalist yet, you definitely should. Free trial from the App Store, with both subscription pricing and a one-time lifetime purchase.