Meditation and Routine:
I took time this morning to meditate. I noticed I was going to rush to make it to the bus, and decided to wait and take the one leaving 30 minutes later. It was a simple decision that has big impact for the day. I leave in a calmer state and am able to get more done in the morning (at a relaxed pace). If only I would wake up earlier to take advantage of the time with my scheduled routine. My alarm goes off just after 7am and the next 20-25 minutes are spent snoozing and scrolling on my phone. I should re-read my routine post.
Readings:
- Scott Kelly on Nat Geo
- Grand Challenge on Wired
- The management of whales 🐳 Seth Godin
- Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber (need to think more about this one)
Anil Dash on open space workplaces
Anil Dash is not a fan of open offices for programmers. Programmers need to get into a state of flow to focus on the work in front of them and go deep. This is difficult with constant visual and auditory distraction.
At home it is quiet and there is little going on. Because of this I am able to stay focused and get work done. Deep work can come at with a loss to collaboration, but Cal Newport details how deep collaboration can be done.
More on open space at Fog Creek.
1000 True Fans
I read this before,
“A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author—in other words, anyone producing works of art—needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.”
but it came up again (via Ryan Holiday)
“So don’t wait. Build your platform now. Build it before your first project, before your first great perennial seller comes out, so that you have a better chance of actually turning it into one. Build it now so that you might create multiple works like that. Build it so you can have a career—so you can be more than just a guy or gal with a book or movie or app. Because you’re more than that. You’re an entrepreneur, an author, a filmmaker, a journalist. You’re a mogul.”
Tuesday’s hard fork of bitcoin
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are fascinating. Some analysis on the bitcoin cash spinoff. I don’t know anything about it him, but I’ll have to read more from Matt Levine.
BCH spun off from BTC on Tuesday afternoon, and briefly traded over $700 on Wednesday (though it later fell significantly). But BTC hasn’t really lost any value since the spinoff, still trading at about $2,700. So just before the spinoff, if you had a bitcoin, you had a bitcoin worth about $2,700. Now, you have a BTC worth about $2,700, and also a BCH worth as much as $700. It’s weird free money, if you owned bitcoins yesterday.
Apple and the Oak Tree
The iPods Shuffle and Nano, the last two iTunes-dependent (i.e. non-iOS) MP3 players Apple sold, were quietly discontinued last Tuesday. The revelation two days later that Apple was, at the behest of the Chinese government, removing VPN apps from the App Store in China, drew considerably more interest
Podcasts
Long Distance
Wow. The two part episode lacks closure, but is a captivating detective story that spans the globe.
danah boyd — The Internet of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
“Even the most fleeting acquaintance with the history of information and communication technologies indicates that moral panics are episodic and should be taken with a grain of salt.”
danah boyd on why fake news is so easy to believe
“Give me more kale”
These interviews are so similar, it’s almost as if they are with the same person. Still, each interviewer provides their own color. Tippett takes a more human approach while Klein focuses on the news, but both are searching for truth
Interactive thingy
The Evolution of Trust
“We are punished by our sins, not for them.”
~ Elbert Hubbard
Almost as cool as the game. The history of making it: https://github.com/ncase/trust/commits/gh-pages
Movies
- Okja
- Kong Skull Island (Apocalypse Now crossed with Tropic Thunder crossed with Jurassic Park didn’t work)
- An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (Al Gore’s memoir of a resilient last few years educating people on climate change)
Earworms
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