Everybody's working for the weekend!  Does that line remind you of red leather pants?  If it does, we know how old you are!  Today we talk about hard things, doing hard things, thinking about hard things, and sometimes figuring out how to install new icons on the phone… you know, hard things.  After all this challenging talk, science, and technology, you can listen to a long weekend playlist starter. 

On Thursday, September 15th, 2022, I stopped talking about being a published writer and started publishing this newsletter.  Four months and 120 letters down, and another 353 to do this year.  Writing the newsletter is not hard; doing it every day is really hard.  Pushing this out to the public this year will also be hard.  Creating a space for subscribers and fans without advertising, sponsorships, affiliates, and referrals will be hard.  I am in for every minute of it this year. 

Publishing this letter every day is why this will work.  Knowing that it has to go out each day prioritizes everything I do.  It also reduces the time I have to overthink and overproduce the letter.  It goes out daily, and there will be a few errors; some of the writing could be improved, some newsletters will be longer than others, and some better than others, but every day, I will get into writing mode and produce this newsletter. 

Changing the Night Journal post, ask yourself the same three questions, throw your answers into the comments, and we will highlight some of the responses.

We figured everything out; the scientists can all go home.  That's a possible assumption based on new research that suggests that even as the number of research papers has increased, the 'disruptiveness' of the findings those papers report has dropped.  Scientists and researchers have not determined any one cause of the decline.  The drop from 1945 to the present is massive; it can't get much lower.  The article from Nature Portfolio does say more research papers are being written and admits that there are more people in the research field.  It does not mention the speed with which new technologies and communications tools have helped scientific study. 

Forty years ago, scientific research and papers were the primary means of getting your information out to others for review and response.  Do researchers rely on papers and reviews?  When you can work with teams around the globe in real-time, it makes you wonder if the research paper system has become less relevant and not the scientific discovery.

Here comes a story with a weird balance.  For anyone who uses a camera phone for more than selfies or to take a picture of a song on the car radio as a reminder to add it to a playlist - Wired did you a favor.  In this article, Wired gathered gear for professional or advanced hobbyist photographers.  With an assortment of lenses, lights, and batteries, this list has something for anyone interested in taking advantage of innovative phone camera technology.

In a related craze, we have now heard from more than one source that a movement is taking place, and people are starting to find and use old (older) digital cameras.  Casey Newton and Kevin Roose discussed it on their podcast Hard Fork, and several stories are running along the wires.  The younger generations who only know camera phones are drawn to the archaic megapixel digital camera and the often gritty pictures in lousy lighting you can generate.  Instead of the miracle social media filter, the next craze will be "low-fi" pictures?

As the middle of the year's first month fast approaches, we can add the need to expand our use of icons to our many challenges. If the Muppet yellow-colored thumbs-up remains one of your most used texting icons, it might be time to look around.  Helena Zhang, a designer and Medium writer put together a piece on new icons from 2022.  We are fans of the simplicity of Heroicons by Steve Schoger, and according to the article, Microsoft open-sourced their 3D emojis.  Wasn't that nice of them!

Now we need to figure out how to get them on our phones.

Social House Entertainment is bringing a new Pop Punk concert to Kansas City in 2023. As festivals start to gain traction post-pandemic, this new festival is smaller and more focused on the local scene.

Words | Music | Art | Unknown

Guitars are magic - saudade.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

X/O