Types of Fun

Kelly Cordes, who seems to know what he’s talking about:

Type 1 Fun is enjoyable while it’s happening

Type 2 Fun is miserable while it’s happening, but fun in retrospect.

Type 3 Fun is not fun at all. Not even in retrospect. Afterward, you think, What in the hell was I doing? If I ever come up with another idea that stupid, somebody slap some sense into me.”

August 16, 2021

Coffee?

Michael Pollan, on Coffee:

Few of us even think of it as a drug, much less our daily use of it as an addiction. It’s so pervasive that it’s easy to overlook the fact that to be caffeinated is not baseline consciousness but, in fact, an altered state. It just happens to be a state that virtually all of us share, rendering it invisible.

Its mode of action, or pharmacodynamics”, mesh so perfectly with the rhythms of the human body that the morning cup of coffee arrives just in time to head off the looming mental distress set in motion by yesterday’s cup of coffee. Daily, caffeine proposes itself as the optimal solution to the problem caffeine creates.

I’m generally against altered mental states, so this is problematic.

I’ll ponder it over a good flat white.

August 10, 2021

You need more slack than you expect

In general, you need more slack than you expect. Unless you have a lot of practice, your estimations of how long things will take or how difficult they are will almost always be on the low end. Most of us treat best-case scenarios as if they are the most likely scenarios and will inevitably come to pass, but they rarely do.

– Farnam Street, Efficiency is the Enemy

August 3, 2021

Dried Pasta and Garden Gnomes

I look at the weather, here, and think of the ancient viruses being thawed out in the permafrost, a thousand miles away, and this is basically the rest of my life now isn’t it. Always keep a cache of dried pasta and garden gnomes in the back room, you never know.

– Matt Webb, Welcome to the Entroposcene

August 1, 2021

Stewards of Complex Social Systems

July 26, 2021

Iterative mindset

Fascinating thing just now — I’m writing a usability testing report with a client. We had a prototype, tested it, made changes to the prototype and then tested it again. He pointed out that his stakeholders would not read we made changes after round 1” as normal iteration.

Instead, they would see any instance of we made changes” as we made an error and we needed to correct it”.

July 11, 2021

On Twitter

Some users think they’re in a global Slack room for journalists, creatives, and other media people to share ideas and pass the time and many others believe they’re in a 24/7 info war for digital supremacy.

– Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day

July 11, 2021

One Billion Machines

The next whatever you buy should be more carbon-conscious. If we do that, we could probably be ok.

June 26, 2021

Deeply curious, easily bored and highly suspicious

My friend Anne spoke at a graduate students conference recently.

I’d like to think I approach my work that way.

June 25, 2021

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