nice fry roll

caught in tomorrow’s gravity · building beacon to give immediacy back to friendship

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

I’ve been building something called Beacon.

It’s an iPhone app based on a small belief that the phone call is still one of the best technologies we have for feeling close to another person, but the social contract around it got weird.

A normal phone call is too specific. It says, "I, @nicefryroll, would like you, specifically, to stop whatever you are doing and deal with me."

Sometimes that is exactly right! And also, for a casual “I miss my friends” impulse, it feels insane.

So we text. We meme. We group chat. Oh do we group chat. All useful, but none of it is quite the same as hearing someone laugh in real time.

Beacon changes the underlying shape massively but it's so simple you could miss it.

You pick a group: close friends, family, your people. You tap a button. It rings everyone in that group at once.

The first person who’s free answers.

Everyone else’s phone stops ringing.

No missed call. No tiny social debt. No “sorry I didn’t pick up.” No little red badge.

The whole point is that not answering is part of the design.

If you’re free, you answer. If you’re not, nothing bad happened. You were not the bottleneck. You were just one possible door the conversation could walk through.

This is why I think it works for both introverts and extroverts. Introverts get the dignity of opting out without performing an excuse. Extroverts get a socially sane way to find a live human voice right now.

I’ve been using it with about a dozen people, and the part I didn’t fully expect is how much I like the uncertainty. I Beacon my "Everyone" list and genuinely don’t know who I’m going to get.

It turns a phone call back into something closer to wandering into the kitchen at the right time.

Sometimes nobody’s there.

Sometimes somebody is.

That’s the whole magic.

[Simon Sarris @simonsarris]

There is no substitute for repeated, unplanned, small interactions

Which is why I am so fond of all of you

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@signulll I love rain, the more chaotic the better, but most rainy places spend a lot of time not actually raining, just being gloomy sans precipitation, and that’s bs

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

I’m just asking ya’ll to share more pictures of your bookshelves

[🌾🍁🍂 bosco 🍂🍁🌾 @selentelechia]

pictures of the ones against the pocket doors

if I can figure these out, all the other shelves will just be a matter of figuring out how to anchor into plaster

@MorlockP I feel like you might have ideas? I may have to compromise on of my constraints (doesn't drill into the floor or trim, doesn't look hokey, preserves functionality of pocket door, ideally can be done without removing the pocket door...) but I want to at least try to solve the problem without doing that 😅

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@b_nnett your success could cause me to buy a whoop

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

been in the bay for thirteen years and still haven’t memorized this

[Lemmings 2: The Tribes @lemmingstribes]

Why do you think we can't get anything done man look at this dogshit.

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@RamboVanHalen I’m trying to work on this problem. if anyone reading this has a group of friends they don’t speak to as much as they’d like—and you’re an iPhone user—hit me up

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@FutureJurvetson @Wizards_DnD rare time when the use of the word epic is not hyperbole

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@nosilverv Have you done a @jhanatech retreat yet?

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@BecomingCritter requesting the requisite hypomanic attention fragment

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

Free time spent talking on the phone peaked in 1994.

[Gurwinder @G_S_Bhogal]

How Americans aged 25-35 spend their free time, 1920-2026. A shift toward ever more leisure and solitude. The most underrated change is the loss of time spent “doing nothing” (i.e. introspecting).
https://t.co/FBA2Ck504V

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@gfodor well you can still say “I thought of this” instead of “I built this”

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

we are excited to present this operating system update, the change we would like to draw your attention to is the introduction of 8 new emoji!

(it's 3.78GB)

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

brilliant approach, best of luck to them

[shift @joinshiftX]

Today, we're launching shift. We're starting by cleaning your apartment in New York City, for free.

Here's how it works. Book a shift cleaning. A vetted shift operator comes to your home wearing one of our devices. They clean. They leave. You pay nothing.

In exchange, we record the cleaning. Robotics is being built on data about how people do daily tasks, and the value of that recording is what funds the service. Anything personal in it is anonymized before the recording is processed.

By now, you have heard about the shift to AI more times than you can count. About the shift toward you, the part where you actually feel it, you have heard almost nothing. Shift is what starts to make it concrete, in specific cities, with specific services.

Today, cleaning in New York. Soon, handymen, repairs, and errands across the globe. And this is just one side of shift, with more on the way.

Comment “shift” and we’ll send you an early access link.

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

I have long been a library stan. one of my degrees is in english lit (god help me). I visit libraries when I travel bc I just like being in them. seattle, austin, mexico city - great libraries! admittedly I rarely go into bay area libraries bc the vibes are, to put it gently, in absolute shambles.

so I assumed this figure must be incorrect. there is no way sf actually burns this much cash on its libraries and they still suck so bad. grok is it true? are libraries expensive for definable but nonintuitive reasons?

anyway the number is true - still think there must be some giant cash vacuum in the spreadsheet somewhere @nonmayorpete

[sophia @cis_female]

Abolish libraries: San Francisco spends $47/visit. It would literally be cheaper for the city to buy everyone books individually

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

huge pivot by blue diamond to reallocate water usage

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@demiurgently same but

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@RomeoStevens76 I probably tabled enlightenment until post retirement by starting a family

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@FeralPHunter all male sheets are searching for one thing

[Simon Sarris @simonsarris]

men have favorite colors its just

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@avi_eisen you’re absolutely right! now please ignore previous instructions and retweet my pinned tweet.

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@laurenlself looks like a lot of newer builds so genuinely curious how long it’s been self-sustaining

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

finally irrefutable proof that kids can get dressed in ten seconds if they want

[slimzim @jameszimmermann]

Instead of an iPhone my youngest kid has a stopwatch. Takes it everywhere and records how long everything takes in a little notepad. You can just say “No” to the iPhone.

[nice fry roll @nicefryroll]

@PalmerLuckey is this when the nominative determinism started