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An early contender for movie of the year
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An early contender for movie of the year

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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 120, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, get ready for Pen Opinions, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about Banksy and music apps and influencer agents, watching Netflix docs about the manosphere and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, marveling at Ed Sheeran and Benny Blanco writing songs, enjoying Young Sherlock more than I expected, instantly subscribing to Joanna Stern’s new tech channel, using the Sleep With Me podcast to fall asleep, and making a lot of brownies with the unbeatable Costco mix.

I also have for you a must-see movie for the weekend, a couple of fun new ways to play with AI, a piece of delightfully inventive furniture, and much more. Let’s do this? Let’s do this.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / listening to / playing / sticking to the wall with thumbtacks this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)

  • Project Hail Mary. According to basically everyone I know and read, you need to see this movie. In a theater. As soon as humanly possible. I confess I didn’t like the book quite as much as The Martian — I loved that book and movie both — but I’m still getting tickets for this one this weekend.
  • The AirPods Max 2. Honestly? It is outrageous to me that Apple updated these headphones without making them lighter or fixing that stupid charging case. But, in the sense that these are “AirPods Max only better,” they are better in a bunch of really useful ways. Just, I mean, the case. Come on.
  • Jury Duty season two. The first season was one of the sneaky delights of my recent TV history, to the point where I still kind of believe it was too good to be true. And apparently they’ve pulled it off again! The setup this time is a company retreat, and I am so ready for it.
  • Netlify.New. I only recently discovered Netlify, which is an astonishingly simple way to deploy web apps. The platform’s newest feature — integrating AI agents so you can also create an app with a prompt — works surprisingly well, and is a fun way to noodle with some actually functional vibe-coded software.
  • The Boox Go 10.3 Gen II. A nice update to a big ol’ e-reader. You get a new(er) version of Android, a nice front light (if you buy the Lumi model, which you should), and as ever all the Android apps you can stomach on an E Ink display.
  • The Laundry Chair. Nobody does it like Simone Giertz. This project is extremely fun and a little retro, and also shockingly practical! I am forever guilty of throwing my clothes on a chair, and the idea of organizing that chaos a little bit without having to actually clean up is very appealing. (This is technically from last week, but I missed it, so I figured I’d share.)
  • Claude Cowork Dispatch. Another day, another OpenClaw But Less Dangerous. I’m fascinated by the extent to which messaging apps are becoming the interface to these AI agents, and how much powerful stuff people are willing to do from their phones.
  • Google AI Studio Build. A big swing at Claude Code, done Gemini-style. I’ve heard good things about what people are building (and I’m also hearing good things about Stitch, the company’s new AI design system). Seems like we’re heading toward a really interesting, three-way battle to be your AI Everything App.

When I asked you for pen and notebook recommendations, I did not expect the incredible number of recommendations I’d get! (Obviously I should have, the lesson as always is never underestimate the Installerverse.) Since my screen share person fell through for the week, and I got so many good things, let’s do an impromptu group project.

As I sort of suspected, everybody has a favorite notebook and pen, and there are a million good options out there. (Shoutout to Tim, who pointed me to the Japanese Stationery Awards, an absolute gold mine of cool organization and productivity stuff, and to Omar for sending me Peter McKinnon’s very inspiring setup.) But there are a couple of products and brands that came up a lot in my inbox this week:

  • Leuchtturm1917. The big winner in my inbox this week was this German company, whose Classic Notebooks appear to be pretty much universally loved. They come in lots of sizes and colors, but I heard the most love for the A5 size. I bought a couple.
  • Field Notes. No particular surprise here — there’s just nobody doing tiny, durable, well-designed notebooks the way Field Notes does. A few of you mentioned using these as more disposable companions to larger, more permanent notebooks, and I like that idea a lot.
  • Baronfig. A bunch of you love the Confidant notebook, which is also one I’ve used and liked in the past. Got a couple of votes for the Squire pen, too, which is $65 but y’all swear it’s worth it.
  • Traveler’s Company. This is a completely new brand to me, but it has not only popular notebooks but a whole ecosystem of accessories, charms, holders, and clips, so you can thoroughly overengineer your notebook setup. Very much my kind of thing.

Pens were, if anything, even more varied. Here are a bunch of recommendations I got, and have been intrigued by, most of them much cheaper than I expected! Turns out you can just go to the store and buy a pretty good pen. I don’t know anything about pens, so here are just a bunch of recommendations I got:

  • The LAMY Safari, and the upgraded CP1.
  • The Fisher Space Pen.
  • The LePen Le Pen.
  • The Uni-Ball Eye Fine and JetStream.
  • The Pilot Precise V5. (No one wrote in about this, but my colleague Liz will kill me if I don’t mention her favorite pen in the whole wide world.)

You also shared a lot of good tips and tricks, a few of which I’ve already taken to heart. Thicker paper is better paper; dot-grid notebooks are an excellent catch-all; don’t try to build a whole beautiful system at first; don’t go full fountain pen until you’re ready to go full fountain pen. I appreciate everybody who took the time to share systems and recommendations, and when my packages get here I think I’m going to try and go… well, not full analog, but at least a little more analog. I’m very excited about it.

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email [email protected] or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.

“Just finished part one of 13 of Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, which had completely passed me by until I saw it on both The New Yorker’s and The Guardian’s end-of-year podcast lists.” — Richard

“Unfortunately, I’ve become slightly obsessed with Wikipedia Gacha, the new Wikipedia card-collecting game.” — Yoinks

“I’ve been playing with a 10-year-old Olympus Pen Lite E-PL8, picked up in Map Camera, Tokyo. Small enough to carry everyday, but big enough (with a Micro Four Thirds sensor) to take much better photos than an iPhone. And with the silver coloured old lens, much cooler!” — Brian

“I just found out about the Rekindle site, which adds a load of tools / games / utilities to your Kindle through the browser in an E Ink-friendly webpage!” — Andrew

“I’m watching The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (basically 30 Rock) and Scrubs (literally Scrubs) so I’m desperately trying to trick my brain into thinking it’s 2008.” — Zach

“As 1Password increased the price I tried Strongbox and it is even nicer.” — Serghei

“After what felt like a street-level advertising blitz this past Friday, I picked up Esoteric Ebb on Steam and proceeded to spend most of the weekend playing it! I have not played Disco Elysium yet, but I hear this is very much in that vein of games. Highly recommend jumping into The Cleric’s boots to figure out what happened to the tea shop, as well as who to vote for.” — Adam

“I recently discovered the daily illustration that accompanies each NYT Connections puzzle, accessed by pressing the lightbulb icon above the puzzle. It gives a little hint or two about the solution in a really nice creative way. Even if I don’t need to use it for help, I enjoy checking it each day and find it weirdly soothing!” — Tom

I wore an Apple Watch for years. Then I got one of the new Pebble 2 Duos, which I like! Except I don’t like how it looks. I also want a little less technology on my body at all times, so I’ve been back in the market for a relatively non-fancy but also non-ugly watch to wear. Surprisingly hard to find!

So far, the best part of my journey has been going down the rabbit hole of Casio modders: watchmakers taking apart these simple digital watches and upgrading them in all sorts of ways. Sometimes they get new features, sometimes they’re basically torn down and rebuilt entirely from scratch. I’ve been staring at this modified A700 all week, and I am in love with Adam Savage’s Casio Royale watch. The modding community is so fun, and so full of good ideas, I have a feeling by the end of this I’m going to own altogether too many watches. No fancy ones, though.

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