“Life is a never-ending succession of NFL teams adding ping pong tables w/stories about how they’re finally coming together as a family and enjoying each other’s company, and NFL teams removing ping pong tables w/stories about how they’re finally taking football seriously.” - Dan Steinberg
Baugespanne is the practice of visualizing “… future urban developments in scale 1:1 by an inflated balloon-structure.” Filing under the word of the day.
Recommended dosage of work: “to get the mental wellbeing benefits of paid work, the most “effective dose” is only around one day a week – as anything more makes little difference.” Not an Onion article.
A blog doesn’t need to be profound: it just needs to be a place to post some text you want to share.
Ramana Sivaranjan on his 20 year old blog A Funkaoshi Production
We can engage with people outside the rule-bound linear progression of offline relationships, and discover information about another person, miles and years from the person they were when they were posted it. Try responding to a post on a message board dated a while ago, maybe 10 years or more. That person might have lived in five cities between then and now, and fallen in and out of love three times, but the person they once were remains a notational snapshot trace, as if it were yesterday, offering thoughts on gardens, allergies, movies, or recipe ingredients.
From Lurking: How a Person Became a User by Joanne McNeil. I’m only through the Introduction of this book and I’m already all 👀!
Deepening a relationship. Visiting a sick friend. Serving at a soup kitchen. Andreessen’s “techno-optimist” mindset is confounded by acts of love. They don’t make money, they don’t supercharge a market, and perhaps most heretically, they’re typically low-tech or even involve no technology at all. What is a techno-optimist supposed to do with this “love” idea, this thing that keeps people out of markets and off the internet? It literally doesn’t compute.
the Dolphins hired McDaniel, and in came a philosophy that’s unusual in this business — albeit less and less in the rest of society. Miami’s rise comes amid a cultural reexamination of leadership, people management and parenting, a growing belief that successful, confident people should be neither brutalized nor micromanaged. That it’s possible to be good at your job and be happy.
From Mike McDaniel Needs a Reboot (gift link). Even if you’re not into football, it’s really interesting to see how a non-traditional coach is succeeding in the NFL.
There were devices that simply did what they were for, without demanding attention. For their makers, they had some real problems. They had moving parts, which meant that they required more factory tooling and had more warranty returns. They were terrible for displaying advertisements. Without always-on internet connections, they were really bad for buying other things with.
From Glow by Tom MacWright.
Some of my favorite non-glowing devices that are still in use:
Kinder To Do Lists. I like this idea of using a different phrasing for your to do lists. Example: “When checking off an item that begins with “You promised to email Maria…” I feel as though I’m being a person who follows up on her promises. When checking off “Email Maria,” I feel as though I’ve just won another round of whack-a-mole.”