A TODO “App”

Podfriend. A “friendly podcast player app for mobile & desktop” (and in browser).

good personal blogs an Are.na channel. Fill thy feeds!

This Audio-Cassette-Shaped Object Lets You Stream to an Analog Boombox. “It’s essentially a Bluetooth receiver shaped like a cassette, and through some technical sorcery it can deliver audio through analog tape heads.” It’s like the modern version of this!

When my dad was sick, I started Googling grief. Then I couldn’t escape it. “There’s an assumption the industry makes that personalization is a positive thing.”

Northern lights over Virginia by Peter Forister.

principles.design is an “open source collection of Design Principles and methods.” Great looking site, content, and URL.

Some things:

• Pitchfork on the band 100 gecs: “Theirs is the sound of a zillion infostreams from the depths of your social feeds shooting into your eyes at once, both poisoned by irony and aware that if you follow irony into its own ouroboros, you will discover the antidote.” I’m in!
• Reading fiction can make you a better person: “Research suggests that fictional books may effectively be empathy-building tools, offering us the closest we can get to first-hand knowledge of someone else’s experience.”
• Meta Rediscovers the Cubicle: “To be fair, the company takes pains to argue that their solution is not cubicles, because, well, the walls are curved, and they are made out of fancier, sound-absorbing materials. Sure. Okay…” Solving a problem they made. The ultimate fireman/arsonist.
• Everything else!

Receiving the cash is also empowering. “There’s a wide body of research that if you give someone a larger sum of cash it triggers long-term thinking,” says Williams. Or as Ray puts it, ”that energy of believing in myself again.” The effect is: “These people trusted me. Let me prove to them that I can be successful,” Ray says. 

Source: Vancouver Gave Homeless People $5,800. It Changed Their Lives. /via Keeping it Integer

See also: What happened when people in this upstate New York town started getting monthly $500 checks and The mathematical case against blaming people for their misfortune