Upcoming consolidation and bone conduction headphones
Monday Dispatch - 2025/04/14
Welcome to Monday Dispatch, a bonus publication with follow ups, recommendations, personal stories, and other updates. This will be the last bonus dispatch for all subscribers. More on that soon.
Upcoming consolidation
It’s been four weeks since I returned to publishing after taking a break in June last year.
But while I might not have been publishing, I never stopped writing. It’s just that what I wrote were rough notes to myself, in a sort of Zettelkasten system.
Writing those notes is much easier than publishing here. Obviously, there’s no editing or proofreading involved. But the friction I experience is also related to my odd setup, with giolodi.com being the “real” site and this Substack a mirror I use to send out the newsletter and offer additional posts to paid supporters.
The reason for the setup is somewhat idealistic. I love the open web and want my site to exist on its own, not be on Substack. I’m also too cheap to pay for a newsletter service.
These days, I want to write like an explorer. I want to publish more to sharpen my thinking, consolidate my learning, and practice the craft.
The mixed setup is an annoying source of friction. I need to post on one site first, then copy-paste to another, then reformat the output because something always gets out of place. It’s time to be pragmatic and consolidate. I want to optimize for sharing ideas and putting in the reps.
I’ll soon be moving giolodi.com here. Something might break in the transition, and I apologize in advance.
Also in the spirit of reducing friction, I’ll be stopping the Friday Recap posts and send an email for every new post instead. I don’t expect to publish so frequently that it will be annoying for you, but do let me know if the output is too frequent and I might restore the weekly digests.
I’ll also restart the paid subscriptions, with a 50% off offer for the next month to celebrate. Your support would be very much appreciated.
Gear - OpenRun Pro 2
This is not a paid endorsement!
I lost my beloved AirPods Gen 3 last week. According to Find My, they are in my house but out of the case. They must have run out of battery because I can’t ping them. As for the case, nowhere to be found either.
I hope they’ll resurface, but in the meantime I decided to finally try a pair of bone conduction headphones to use when running.
If you’ve never heard of it, bone conduction is a technology to transmit sound through vibration in the skull instead of the ear drum. The experience is odd at first, like a telepath from the comics talking in your head, but it quickly feels natural and comfortable.
I went for the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 and I’m very happy with them so far.
I got the mini size because I didn’t like the idea of having the connecting part hanging behind my neck. I found them remarkably stable when running. The audio quality is excellent to my ears, though I’m no audiophile—so take that with a grain of salt.
I also tried them with a helmet and sunglasses on a bike ride. Here, too, they felt comfortable. However, as soon as I picked up some speed the wind in my ears mixed with the Shokz output and it became hard to focus on it. To be expected, I guess, and probably for the best—better staying focused on the road when on the bike.
I might still be in the honeymoon phase. I’ll report back in six months or so, with repeated use, battery life, etc.
I repeat, this is not a paid plug—just a piece of gear I’ve been liking and I thought you might like too.
I hope to get my AirPods back because of how convenient they are with Apple devices, but I can see myself using the Shokz as my primary listening device when on the go or doing chores around the house.
What are your favorite headphones? Have you tried bone conduction? If so, what do you think? Let me know.