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Redundancy Reconsidered
We somehow appreciate the inherent comedy in how engineers systematically over-provision, create fallbacks, fail-safes and redundancies at every possible corner.
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A River Of Tears
I remember one of my first hangovers. I was on a beautiful beach surrounded by friends. They’d baked me a cake, but I didn’t have the stomach for it.
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The Funny Thing With Smart
When the thermometer was invented, nobody really understood what temperature was. The same is now true of intelligence; we can measure it, but remains a mystery.
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One Hell of a Book
Learning to love yourself in a country where your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it – learning to love yourself in the middle of all that? Hell, that’s a goddamn miracle.
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Why We Keep Referencing The Past To Feel Good About the Future, or: A Brief History of Skeuomorphism
Why did the disciples of Bauhaus hate Parisian metro stations? And is VR really virtual?
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The Cost of Optimism
I recently read two novels about gay men in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. Their reluctance to take the test reminds me of my own feelings with regards to global warming.
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Disruption Disrupted : How Big Tech Keeps Innovative Startups at Bay
Everyone who read Clayton Christensen *knows* that startups will eat incumbents for breakfast. That’s why they call it disruption!
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Preparing For the Next War
Reading Carlota Perez feels like looking at one of those images doctors use to diagnose colour blindness; where before there was just a jumble of dots, patterns emerge.
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What Doing Looks Like
I’d like to be a bit like Mrs. Whiting myself. She knows where she wants to go and she can turn that crystal clear vision into manageable chunks of action.
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Making Sense of the World
Two of the best science books I’ve come across in a good while: Explaining Humans by Camilla Pang, and Skönheten i Kaos by Julia Ravanis. Reading them back to back created an impression of perfect symmetry.
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The Subtle Art of Giving a F*ck
A good boss have to offer very direct feedback. For that not to be brutal, you must invest in the relationship beyond what’s often thought of as professional.
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Life in the Machine
Close to the Machine : Technophilia and its discontents by Ellen Ullman chronicles the dawn of the Internet from the point of view of a freelance programmer. I loved it intensely.
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Girly Stuff
The system has always worked hard to hide the fact that women are just as brilliantly ingenious innovators as men are.
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Creative Doesn’t Mean Nice
Culture can be a company’s most valuable asset, but creative a good one is hard.
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Product Spells D-E-V-I-C-E + S-E-R-V-I-C-E
Segmentation is marketing’s most discussed and least understood concept.