Some time around the point in my life where I started to actually use the internet — maybe late 1999 or early 2000 — I also started to get into electronic music. Previously, I was fully all into grunge (I was late to appreciate that whole genre, but purchasing Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins had changed that and I spent the second half of the 90’s listening to all that stuff). Towards the end of the decade, I picked up a copy of Spin Magazine [https://www.spin.com] that highlighted the t…
I’ve tried to keep things positive in my writing and social presence. But as we move forward in 2020, although I know I should be focusing on how to move things forward on the unjust treatment of black and indigenous people, and that I should help people see the importance of remaining diligent with social distancing and similar measures, I must confess … I’m really tired. It’s been almost five months of living full time at home with our children. And although we’ve had a lot of great days, and…
I mentioned Andy in the last issue. If you spend any time in the Roam community, you've heard of this fellow. And it's due in large part to his own "Digital garden" and his public notes. How and where he stores those notes aside, I spent a lot of time going over this note, plus all its offshoots. > My practice of writing Evergreen notes is heavily inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten practice and its contemporary advocates. I use a different term both because there are some distinctions a…
I very much enjoyed this longer essay from Andy Matuschak on people truly learn. He makes the case that lectures do not work for the transfer of knowledge. > Lectures, as a medium, have no carefully-considered cognitive model at their foundation. Yet if we were aliens observing typical lectures from afar, we might notice the implicit model they appear to share: “the lecturer says words describing an idea; the class hears the words and maybe scribbles in a notebook; then the class understands th…
It's been a while in the making, but I finally finished the move to Ghost [https://ghost.org] this past week. Earlier this year, I started to have a couple of issues with Kirby. And since I was a couple of versions behind, the thought of paying for another license and updating was feeling like a chore. When we added Ghost to People-First Jobs, I started to consider the idea of using a hosted service again. While using Digital Ocean was a good learning experience, I don't have a lot of time or i…
If you’ve read any of the newsletters I’ve sent in 2020, you know I have a lot of great things to say about Drew Coffman. He’s an awful smart chap, and seems to have that magical touch with whatever he makes (videos, podcasts, websites…). But he said something a few weeks back [https://twitter.com/DrewCoffman/status/1263944528005754881] that sat wrong with me. > A real bummer about not attending a church is that when you tell that to Christians they assume you’re a burnout. > What if you just…d…
A few years back, on a trip to see the Wildbit team in Philly, I had the chance to meet Jeff Sheldon in person. I believe it was at that time that he shared the beginnings of an idea for a paper-based productivity tool. Months and months later, Jeff finally shared that idea with the world. I’ve had the chance to try a few different versions of the cards he designed during those months, and I can say they were good from the start. If you like paper, and you enjoy uncomplicated ways to manage you…
On the theme of music, I loved this overview of the life and times of Weird Al. > As his name suggested, Weird Al’s comedy operated right at the hot spot of my childhood agonies: weirdness versus normalcy, insider versus outsider. What a Weird Al parody did was enact a tiny revolution. It took the whole glamorous architecture of American mainstream cool — Michael Jackson’s otherworldly moves, Madonna’s sexual taboos — and extracted all of the coolness. Into that void, Weird Al inserted the leas…