↑ 9-eyes.com

• I created a Spotify playlist of mostly instrumental music. Not saying it’s great, but maybe you’ll find something to add to your own “Please Lord, just let me string together an hour of focus time today” playlist.
• Kevin Kelley’s 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice is chocked full of great advice, but I think I like this one the best: “Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.”
• Times Like These performed by Live Lounge Allstars (and the Foo Fighters) is great.
• Balsamiq Sans, the base font used in the venerable wireframing app of the same name, is now available as a Google Font.
• Some things to love
• An abandoned church
• An indoor garden
• “At its worst and at its best, the internet extracts humanity from users and serves it back to other users.” - Lurking

I was reading my state’s Covid-19 recovery plan and was curious about the contact tracing part. Specifically, the job of contact tracing, so I looked up the job posting:

Are you a self-motivated, people person looking to make meaningful contributions through work that impacts the nation? NORC is hiring interviewers to serve as Contact Tracers for the Maryland COVID Link initiative. These Contact Tracers will play a key role in the state’s effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This opportunity will allow interviewers to contribute to the fight against the disease while working from home as part of the Contact Tracing Call Team.

I’ve always been interested in how “things” (organizations, tools, industries, processes) work. I suppose that is why I dig my job so much. Curiosity aside, this “thing” may save our collective asses in the coming months.

↑ Current mood, photo by Patrick Joust

• I just finished The Winter People, a creepy book that toggles between two families, one in 1908 and one in modern times, living in the same haunted/cursed farm house.

• I just started Terriers on Hulu. It’s like a less psychedelic Big Lebowski meets 80s/90s detective show.

• These little animated excercising stick figures are awesome, bonus points for an excercise regime you can do in a “postage-stamp flat”

• I wonder if I could get a bunch of these mini-offices, one for each family member

• The humble text field gets some design love

• Whereby, a Zoom alternative

• A rainy night in some Portuguese village

• Stories to wash your hands by

• What a strange sea beast

“These days do feel long, but the year will be short.” - Emmet Connolly

Just doing my part to prevent doomscrolling with these short videos and pretty pictures:

Nightime in Pittsburgh // wave forms from a drawing machine // one foggy night // shaking nails, stick with it // tracing murmations

Peel Tridents are tiny little cars from the 60s // a map showing river basins in Florida // photos of the remote town of Norilsk in Siberia // tiny 3D scenes from pop culture // MD Eight is a font that seems to go with clackity keyboards + beeps and boops // commuting now