Things I Like
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We’re not absolutists about it. Authenticity is a relative term. Most people don’t undergo mild epistemological queasiness while they’re looking at a conventionally restored Rothko. We look at restored art in museums all the time, and we rarely worry that it’s insufficiently authentic. In the case of the Harvard Rothkos, though, the fact that the faded painting and the faked painting are in front of us at the same time somehow makes for a discordant aesthetic experience. It’s as though, at four o’clock every day, Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes turned into the ordinary Brillo cartons of which they were designed to be simulacra. You would no longer be sure what you were looking at.
I'm a massive Rothko lover, his work was very influential while I was working on my BFA in drawing and painting and I could sit for hours in front of his paintings. But this piece was also intriguing for the ideas of authenticity and what makes art art. I'm still thinking about a lot of this still.
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Those folks tend to avoid straw man/hypothetical arguments, provide more thoughtful and weighted opinions, share work and projects they’ve built, don’t pick fights, and don’t feel the need to chime in on every bit of drama. There’s a high signal-vs-noise. Realizing this spun me off on a bit of self-discovery thinking about the parts of development that I enjoy and I’ve been peeking at new technologies that I think might suit my ethos.
I'm with Dave, I want to write about the things I'm excited about and today I opened up Byword and started an outline for one such thing. There is a lot of room for criticism, but I'm tired of all of that and would rather talk about the good things going on.
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The theme of the past century of Western fashion is this: We take clothes designed for activity, and we adapt them for inactivity. And that’s true beyond the world of sports. For decades, Levi Strauss jeans were worn mostly by men working in factories and farms; today, denim is for loungers. Wristwatches were pioneered in World War I to keep soldiers punctual; today, we embrace them as peacetime jewelry.
The history in this piece is fascinating. If you like it, you should listen to 99 Percent Invisible which did a series on clothes.
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What’s required to build a good design system is a new set of habits. When someone asks a question like “how does component X work?” they might not know that documentation exists. So, yes, sharing your docs regularly is important but being the public face of your system is just as important as the docs. Evangelizing the design system with every opportunity you get and making sure that all this doesn’t feel like a burden — that’s vital for the effectiveness of a system to scale in the long run.
Robin's writing about design systems and what they're learning at Gusto so great in showing not only what's working for them but also what things you may want to think about when working with your team on a system.
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Some issues can be solved with better tools or better processes. In most of our workplaces, we tend to reach for tools and processes by default, because they feel easier to implement. But as often as not, it’s not a technology problem. It’s a people problem. And the solution actually involves communication skills, or effective dialogue.
This is a really great article about all the problems that come when trying to work with people and make things and make sure all the possibilities are covered and thought about. So often in our teams we overlap, we need to work together, or we won't be able to get the work done. Yet, so often, our organization isn't set up to be able to deal with that, it's a lot of what I do in my work, trying to get people to work across the silos. I lvoe the way it's talked about in this piece.
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And right now there are glaring gaps in our methods, our experience, and our team dynamics that let through unethical products. I heard about usability while I was still in college, in the early 90s, before the web was mainstream. It’s been around for a while. And we’ve spent so much time and energy on ensuring things are usable. We should perhaps turn our attention to make sure our products are not abusable.
Really glad to see someone talking about this and to see some ideas for how to do it as well. (Via Lisa Marie Martin's fantastic newsletter.)
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I feel like I taught myself to draw by looking at comics and cartoons when I was younger and looking at art on the internet when I was a bit older. Just getting slowly better over the years with practice.
This is a really delightful interview with the creater of the Hilda comics which I just posted about over in my reading section. Mark sent me this link and I'm so glad, it was a ray of sunshine that I needed, plus I love seeing the in progress illustrations.
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The writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ once said that, in Africa, when an old person dies, it is like a library has been burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize that it was perfect. Our minds and our souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories catalogued and stored inside, a private library of a life lived. It is something that no one else can entirely share; it burns down and disappears when we die. But if you can take something from your internal collection and share it—with one person or with the larger world, on the page or in a story told—it takes on a life of its own.
If you've been reading my site for any period of time, you know that I love libraries and I'm an avid library user. I love this piece so much and I can't wait to read her book.
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Goodness is a notoriously difficult topic — a tangled knot at which religions and philosophers have been picking for all of human history. A 22-minute network comedy seems like exactly the wrong tool for the job. It’s like trying to hammer a nail with a banana peel. And yet that was the tool that Michael Schur had. So he was going to try.
I've only watched season one of “The Good Place”, but I loved it and will soon be sitting down to watch season two. This article made me love it more, that there is so much thought behind the ideas and I'm now excited to see where it goes.
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The light changed, and I ran on. I stepped in a puddle, and I ran on. I shook my head to clear out visions of the news, nearly tripping as I did, but I ran on. I took circuitous, rambling routes, exploring hills I’d never climbed, running down side streets I’d never seen. I ran on.
Beautiful writing.
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Focusing the conversation on the ethics of disseminating speech rather than the actual content of that speech is hugely useful for the far right for three reasons. Firstly, it allows them to paint themselves as the wronged party — the martyrs and victims. Secondly, it stops people from talking about the actual wronged parties, the real lives at risk. And thirdly, of course, it’s an enormous diversion tactic, a shout of “Fire!” in the crowded theatre of politics. But Liberals don’t want to feel like bad people, so this impossible choice — betray the letter of your principles, or betray the spirit — leaves everyone feeling filthy.
Lots to ponder and think about in here about how we interact with people spouting ideas that are awful. I had a hard time picking what to pull out, because as I read it just kept getting better. (Via Rob's fantastic links newsletter.)
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Developing a design system takes collaboration between the makers of the design systems and the different users of the system. It’s a continual process that doesn’t have to require a huge investment in new departments or massive restructuring.
I think a lot about this part of design, the system that can scale. And again and again I keep coming back to the fact that each company and team are unique and the system that they use and maintain should be also. That runs contrary to a lot of the way we want to solve these problems, but a tool isn't going to replace the hard work of a team figuring it out for themselves.
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Together, Solid and inrupt will provide new experiences benefitting every web user - and that are impossible on the web today. Where individuals, developers and businesses create and find innovative, life- and business-enriching, applications and services. Where we all find trusted services for storing, securing and managing personal data.
This look interesting, I'll be keeping an eye on it to see where it goes.
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This Steve Jobs-esque fantasy to be at the very heart of things and to rule the world is the stuff of kings and backwater monarchies. And wanting to be an Uber or a Facebook or a whatever feels like anti-government sentiment to me. And I hate that recent events have led us all to point at those government institutions and sneer at them. Government might be broken, yes. But it’s fixable. We just need to reimagine what government is for. That’s the hard part.
I love a good rant and Robin doesn't disappoint with this one. The collective we seems to want to put our hope in tech companies (whose goal is to make money and grow, not do the best for society) rather than government. I know several folks working in the civic tech world and I would love to work on project in that world as well, government can do great things if we give it the same attention and time that we do to building the next great tech company.
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Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it. Hobbies, let me remind you, are supposed to be something different from work. But alien values like “the pursuit of excellence” have crept into and corrupted what was once the realm of leisure, leaving little room for the true amateur.
This piece is so great. I've been talking to people lately and many have said they don't have hobbies. Part of this is because we don't see things as hobbies that I think actually are (film buff is a hobby, reading is a hobby) but also because the sharing world of social media is intimidating. How can I draw if it doesn't look like that professional illustrator's work I love? I run, I do it for my health, I'm trying to get better at it, but I have absolutely no desire to run a marathon or even run in a 5K race. It's a hobby, I do it, I'm not great at it.