After poking and prodding the capabilities of Micro.blog for the past 18 months, I have decided to consolidate my online writing on Wordpress where I’ve kept a blog for more than a decade.
This wasn’t an easy decision. Micro.blog is an innovative, capable, affordable service run by a smart, conscientious entrepreneur. It balances simplicity and power like no other blogging platform.
I’m always curious about why a blogger leaves a certain platform and moves to another. In case this is helpful to others, I’m sharing why I am making this change.
The main reason centers around reading tools. Almost 90% of what I posted on Micro.blog relates to books. Micro.blog has some good reading support, but can’t display thumbnail images of covers within posts or allow links from the bookshelf back to the post about the book. I tried many workarounds, but I could never find a solution that made sense. Wordpress, with all its complexity, made this pretty easy. Here’s a link to my bookshelf with the functionality in Wordpress I wasn’t able to implement in Micro.blog.
Further, I’m feeling less and less inclined to share or participate in social platforms of any kind. I am weaning myself off of anything with a time-sensitive feed, including even wholesome ones like Micro.blog. I prefer the more timeless approach of blogs, where the reader and the writer meet only when the time is right — through a fortuitous web search, a Sunday afternoon RSS digest, or a friendship forged in the ether through common interests.
Finally, I have a long history of writing and interacting with readers on Wordpress. Consolidating everything to Micro.blog would mean losing hundreds of comments over the years. For me, this felt like too great of a loss.
A quick word about how long posts and short posts coexist on Wordpress. I worried that a consolidated blog would see my longer essays overwhelmed by the avalanche of short posts. I solved this by creating a subdomain for shorter posts (blog.robertbreen.com), while continuing to publish essays and longer posts at robertbreen.com. This keeps the two types of posts segregated, yet still allowing seamless navigation for the reader. I like how it all came together.
While I won’t post here again, I will keep tabs on the many bloggers I met on Micro.blog through my RSS reader — please keep writing! And I tip my cap to Manton Reece, whose brilliance and heroics have provided an incredible voice and platform for so many.
This has been an eye-opening book for the ways that extroverts and introverts differ. Bloggers, who Cain suggests are almost all introverts, will share personal details with an online multitude they would never disclose at a cocktail party. This hits close to home!
Om Malik recently launched a separate “daily” blog, which looks like a subdomain off his Wordpress site. For folks who keep a Wordpress blog, have you considered this as an alternative to separate Wordpress/Micro.blog sites for short and long posts? Puzzling through a longer term solution to POSSE.
To solve the hard you must begin with the easy; To do something big you must start very small. All difficulties must be resolved through simple steps. All grand deeds must be performed through tiny details.
One of my minor complaints about the Matter read-it-later app was addressed in a big way today. “Co-Reader” provides AI assistance at the paragraph level. Tap any paragraph in an article and to see AI-generated questions and answers. All within the app. Immersive reading at its best.
Question for @manton: I notice that sometimes when I make small changes to my site, like changing the category of a post, my website won’t reflect the change. I’ve switched devices, browsers, etc. No difference. The only thing that works is rebuilding the site. Is this normal or a sign of a problem?
Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible, rather aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing.
Apple is launching a new product this week — probably an iPhone SE. But what if they unveil an e-reader and a subscription reading service? Books are in the cross-hairs of the intersection between arts and technology. Amazon and e-readers are ripe for Apple-style disruption. A man can dream!
I love my Kindle Oasis, but Amazon is sure making it hard to stay loyal. Maybe Kobo will save the day and release an updated black and white e-reader to replace its discontinued Libra 2. This should be the golden age for e-reader innovation. Kobo? Apple? Sony? Anyone?
An entertaining book filled with practical advice on how to improve your storytelling, whether in front of a live audience, on a date, or in a written essay. Dicks shares examples of his own stories, then breaks down why they work. ★★★★☆
<img src=“https://robertbreen.micro.blog/uploads/2025/dd54e41e-b5b4-42ca-bc9a-83d3b708188c.png" width=“600” height=“337” alt=“Quote from Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks: “Storytellers end their stories in the most advantageous place possible. They omit the endings that offer neat little bows and happily-ever-afters. The best stories are a little messy at the end. They offer small steps, marginal progress, questionable results."">
Incredible update to the Readwise app today. You can now “chat” with your highlights, which uses AI to find connections you probably overlooked or forgot from your reading. Since it only draws from the highlights you saved, the results are astonishingly personal. This is my kind of AI! 💙📚
In 208 eloquent pages, Durant shares his views on death, religion, education, war, politics, spirituality, and, through it all, the meaning of life. Truly a gift to humanity from a scholar who devoted his long life to the study of history. ★★★★★
Connor would have turned 23 today. The very prime of life. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss him, but these birthdays are tough. Hug your kids. #forever20
On a quest to read the few Stephen King books I missed along the way. I forgot how great of a short story writer King is. Probably some of his novels should have been short stories! Gingerbread Girl and N were my favorites in this collection.
Willa. A ghost story about people who died in a train wreck, but didn’t know it. Wistful. Sad.
The Gingerbread Girl. Woman in a marriage break up turns to running as outlet. Soon needs to use it to fun for her life. “Sooner or later even the fastest runners have to stand and fight.” Terrific suspense. Personal transformation. Good story.
Harvey’s Dream. Straight-laced Harvey has a dream that his daughter is killed.
Rest Stop. Author/professor uses alter-ego in confrontation late at night at a highway rest stop/
Stationary Bike. Fun story about the cardiac workers inside the protagonist’s body getting laid off after he decides to get fit.
The Things They Left Behind. 9-11 story.
Graduation Afternoon. New York is bombed.
N. Creepy epistolary story about a thin place where demons almost get through.
The Cat from Hell. Noir story about an evil cat. Least favorite.
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates. Another story about life after death.
Mute. Guy’s wife embezzles from her school, runs away with another man, loses the money on lottery tickets. Tells the story to a dumb mute he picks up hitchhiking, who then kills the wife and her lover.
Ayana. Regular people work miracles for those on their deathbeds. No reason. Just because.
A Very Tight Place. Gruesome story about a guy locked in a portapotty. Yuck.
I read the book during a recent visit to New York City and watched the movie on the plane ride home, which made for an immersive experience. The movie stayed very true to the book, though some big sections were left out. I loved reading the backstory of how young Vito Corleone eventually became the Don. Yes, some of it is dated, and yes, there were a few choppy parts that felt in need of editing, but I was pleasantly surprised by how really good this book was. If you loved the movie, you’ll enjoy the book.
Highlights
The word “reason” sounded so much better in Italian, ragione, to rejoin. The art of this was to ignore all insults, all threats; to turn the other cheek.
a friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults.
What a delightful book. The first chapter reeled me in with the story of how the Moleskin notebook exploded in popularity in the 1990s. The author clearly has been bitten by the same notebook fetish bug. He cites brand names of notebooks that are all too familiar to me. He decided to write a history of the notebook about ten years ago and proceeded to fill four or five notebooks with scribbles and quotes and references that ultimately became this book.
Allen used effective storytelling techniques to share dozens of examples of notebook usage over the past six hundred years from accounting ledgers in the 1400s, artist sketchbooks in the 1500s, Darwin’s field notes, to modern day journaling. Definitely a niche book, but great for any lover of notebooks and journals.
The tenth volume of the Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. This one provides an immensely readable history of Europe leading up to the French Revolution. This series has been such an education. ★★★★★
This one missed the mark for me. Too many characters — almost the entire town of Castle Rock. With so many, I had a hard time connecting with any of them. Any other author would get a two stars, but King gets a pass. ★★★☆☆
