[[2026 Cafe Posts#^172725|2026 Cafe Posts]] I am a living human being, which means that I of course, hate email. I hate writing it, I hate checking it. Every time I have to do either I remember how much I miss Google Inbox. Y’all remember Inbox? It was a thing by Google that existed basically as an alternative to Gmail’s UI/UX. It would bundle emails based on the same topic or category, so all your newsletter would go in one place, and all your receipts, so on and so forth. I would automatically surface key details from messages. You could set reminders to get back to specific emails. It was so good for clearing your inbox at lightspeed. So of course Google killed it, like [all the other good shit it’s killed](https://killedbygoogle.com/). Some of those features got moved over to Gmail, but just like the killing of Google Play Music to be replaced with YouTube Music, it wasn’t all the features. And even the ones that got moved over were often broken. For a while [Shortwave](https://www.shortwave.com/) seemed like it was going to be a good replacement, but then it went whole-hog on the “““Artificial Intelligence””” shit, and you can’t even turn any of it off. So it seems like email will continue to be a pain in the ass to navigate. I just do it once a week now, to be honest. --- The beginning of the month brings with it a lot of anxiety, to be honest. Feels like every company on the planet is banging on the door and asking me to pay my bills. Could you spread the harassment out across the week please? Oh, and something wild that happened recently: after I got laid off, I was given access to a resource that paired me with a person that could help polish my resume, learn new skills and so on. Fun fact: the person that was assigned to me *also got laid off* as of this week. Cool future cool future cool future! All that said, I actually pushed past the executive dysfunction and sent off a 3D print for the trackball I mentioned [[2026-05-31 - Sleepy|last week]] to my local library! If it fits well I’ll order it. I like the idea of not having to move my hand to my mouse so much. These sorts of repetitive movements do, in fact, add up quite quickly. ### Media Check - Reading: **The Bright Sword** - Lev Grossman - Listening: **[Hitobito](https://album.link/i/1767977968)** - Rourourourous