Things I Like
-
To write down your rawest thoughts in a notebook is like putting a wild, unknown beast into a holding cell for further observation. Here, you can safely discover what the beast is and figure out what to do with it. Sometimes the beast needs indefinite incarceration, sometimes it needs rehabilitation, sometimes it’s ready for release into the wild, and sometimes it just needs to be put down. But to let it escape at whim is rarely a good idea.
This, this, this! This is why I started journaling so heavily last fall. I backed away from sharing as much online and I started writing things out. It's freeing to write the stuff down that may be things you aren't comfortable sharing or shouldn't share. Holding my tongue can be a good thing and getting it into my notebook to think about later or abandon is helping me do that.
-
The responsibility toward other people’s stories is real and inescapable, but that doesn’t mean that appropriation is the way to satisfy that responsibility. In fact, the opposite is true: Telling the stories in which we are complicit outsiders has to be done with imagination and skepticism. It might require us not to give up our freedom, but to prioritize justice over freedom.
Teju Cole's monthly column in the New York Times Magazine is always worth your time, this month is no exception.
-
That’s because the culture was mostly about the business of software, how you build it, how you sell it, how you support it. If you were excited about that, you automatically belonged. You didn’t need to stay late, or drink alcohol, or play Rock Band, or play board games, or not have kids to pick up, or go to church, or not go to church, or do anything except show up 9-to-5 and care a lot about good software.
This article was interesting because it points to one of the reasons why I prefer remote work. I often don't have a lot in common with the people I work with, because I don't necessarily fit into the stereotype of what a person who writes code for the web is like. And that's fine with me, but when I go into an office, I feel pressure to be "one of the group" and to do the social activities I may not enjoy. Remote work takes all of that pressure away, since you aren't physically located together.
-
A more granular understanding of who—or what—will access your pattern library can better inform its design, ensuring it’s used by as many people—or products—as possible.
I believe quite strongly that pattern libraries should be custom and unique for each team, so they reflect the needs of the organization. And thinking about the consumers of your library is part of that, making sure that everyone (and everything) who needs to use it can do so easily.
-
Equality keeps us honest. Our peers tell us who we are and how we are doing, providing that service in personal life that a free press does in a functioning society. Inequality creates liars and delusion. The powerless need to dissemble—that’s how slaves, servants, and women got the reputation of being liars—and the powerful grow stupid on the lies they require from their subordinates and on the lack of need to know about others who are nobody, who don’t count, who’ve been silenced or trained to please. This is why I always pair privilege with obliviousness; obliviousness is privilege’s form of deprivation. When you don’t hear others, you don’t imagine them, they become unreal, and you are left in the wasteland of a world with only yourself in it, and that surely makes you starving, though you know not for what, if you have ceased to imagine others exist in any true deep way that matters. This is about a need for which we hardly have language or at least not a familiar conversation.
This piece is really great and it's about way more than what the title may lead you to believe. I was skeptical, but I love it and will be rereading it.
-
More than anything else, my break from social media reinforced my belief in the importance of traditional journalism, where (ideally) facts are verified and follow-up questions are asked before a story is published. Without social media focusing me on the news of the instant, I consumed news in a slower, less frantic fashion. I read second-day stories and deep dives that put news in context, and I came away feeling better informed.
This was an interesting read because it's from the perspective of a journalist, but she echoed a lot of what I've really come to hate about social media and the way it handles news. Often, on Twitter the story isn't the whole story or it's half baked or something else about it is off. The next day when I read an article I get the entire story, which she points to with a few particular incidents. And that's the reason I'm following very few people on Twitter and I read news in a more deliberate way, RSS is still my go to.
-
A nice collection of quotes compiled by Kleon about how much drawing can be a cure, and in fact can be a way to survive.
-
I took a harder look around my home and answered. Boxes of novel manuscripts that were never published did not spark joy. Designer shoes I bought at sample sales but never wore because they pinched my feet did not spark joy. My husband confessed that his inheritance of Greek doilies and paintings of fishing boats from his grandmother did not spark joy. So out it all went.
A funny look at marriage, clutter, and habits. I laughed several times out loud as I read this.
-
Because for me, the real value of a device lab isn’t in testing, as such: a device lab is a design tool. It’s a great way to remind myself that some of the assumptions I might be making about the design need to be tested on something other than my laptop or my phone. While I’m designing, I might assume web fonts will always render flawlessly, that JavaScript will download and execute perfectly every time, or that the user’s got enough bandwidth to download the art on the page. But all of those assumptions need to be checked.
Ethan hits the nail on the head again. Assumptions are killers, and it's hard to get away from them, but testing on devices that we don't normally use, being on slow internet, and other habits can shake us out of those assumptions fairly quickly.
-
When we think about caring for our neighbors, we think about local churches, and charities—systems embedded in our communities. But I see these technological systems as one of the main ways that we take care of each other at scale. It’s how Americans care for all three hundred million of our neighbors, rich or poor, spread over four million square miles, embedded in global supply chains.
The US likes to hide all the ways in which government makes our lives better and Chachra points out that if they were more visible maybe more people would be grateful for them and value what they do.
-
Lincoln’s scenario does not reflect the way most people work today. Yet the “small business owner” endures as an American stock character, conjured by politicians to push through deregulatory measures that benefit large corporations. In reality, thanks to a lack of guaranteed, nationalized health care and threadbare welfare benefits, setting up a small business is simply too risky a venture for many Americans, who must rely on their employers for health insurance and income. These conditions render long-term employment more palatable than a precarious existence of freelance gigs, which further gives companies license to oppress their employees.
I know, I know, more about how we work in this culture, but holy cow it is screwed up. And this piece highlights two books I now want to read. And I have a longer post brewing in my head about it all.
-
Get a book-size (or paperback-size)d sketchbook. Write your name and date on an early page and maybe think of a name for it — and if you want, write the book’s name there at the front. Make it into your little painful pal. The pain goes away slowly page by page. Fill it up and do another one. It can be hard to get started. Don’t flunk yourself before you get the ball rolling.
Thanks to my coworker Sue I've discovered Lynda Barry and holy shit her book Syllabus is changing how I think about drawing and writing so much (review will be coming). But in the meantime, the original link to Gary Panter's sketchbook tips isn't working, but I found this instead. I hope this one stays up, but I may print it just in case.
-
Even before smartphones, this country’s professional culture had come to venerate freneticism. How often do you hear somebody humble-brag about how busy they are? The saddest version, and I’ve heard it more than once, is the story of people who send work emails on their wedding day or from the hospital room where their child is born — and are proud of it.
I link to a lot of articles that talk about disconnecting and slowing down and this one isn't even that controversial, taking one hour a week to unplug and be uninterrupted. I realized in the last week or so that I want a simple, un-busy life, and I realize it's a privilege to even think about that.
-
To emphasize: CSS isn't a programming language. It's a stylesheet language. We shouldn't expect it to behave like a programming language. It has its own unique landscape and structures, ones that people with programming language mental maps might not expect.
This article is so good. And I've heard similar sentiments before, but this says it the best I've ever seen. Thank you Danielle.
-
“This is not a question of expect,” she said. “It is a question of hope. It is a question of faith rather than knowledge. You wouldn’t do it unless you thought there was a chance.” Humans, she said, “have hope built in,” adding, “If our ancestors had not had that component, they would not have bothered getting up in the morning. You are always going to have hope that today there will be a giraffe, where yesterday there wasn’t one.” At the same time, Atwood loves to entertain notions of how degraded our future might become, and what effect that might have on the human race. She speculates that, if our atmosphere becomes too carbon-heavy, with a dwindling in the oxygen supply, one of the first things that will happen is that we will become a lot less intelligent.
I've been reading a lot of Atwood lately, mostly her novels, and I really enjoyed this profile. I haven't read The Handmaid's Tale yet, mostly because it's a bit too real and too much for me. But I love her work and this profile is a great way to get to know more about her.