I used to have subscriptions to The Atlantic and the New York Times. I read a lot. Then at some point I realized I wasn't reading—I was doom-scrolling with better typography.
So I stepped back. Cancelled the subscriptions, stopped the daily habit. It helped.
But I still work in tech, and AI is moving fast enough that I actually need to stay informed on a few things. Not the daily churn, but the occasional deep piece that's worth sitting with. The problem is, reading those articles in a browser feels like visiting a casino when you're trying to quit gambling. One article becomes three becomes an hour of "just checking" the news.
The Kindle is my answer. No notifications, no tabs, no algorithmic sidebar of doom. Just words on e-ink.
The tool
I built Keen, a macOS menu bar app that sends web articles to my Kindle. Copy a URL, click the icon, done. The article shows up on my Kindle a minute later, stripped of ads and formatted for focused reading.
The core is simple: Trafilatura extracts the article content, I wrap it in clean HTML, and send it to the Kindle's email address. Amazon's servers handle the conversion. About 80 lines of Python for the original CLI version; a bit more for the menu bar app with settings and notifications.
Why it works for me
The friction is the feature. I have to deliberately choose to send something to my Kindle. That tiny barrier is enough to make me ask: is this actually worth reading, or am I just anxious?
Most of the time, the answer is no. I close the tab and move on.
But a few times a month, something is worth it—a deep dive on AI policy, a technical breakdown, an essay that needs more than a skim. Those go to the Kindle, where I can read them without the rest of the internet tugging at my attention.
The code
It's on GitHub. The CLI works if you prefer that. The menu bar app is macOS-only.
I'm not trying to read more. I'm trying to read better.