Clean the tabs, share the links
Hit and Miss #346
Ahhh.
That feeling of relief, of deepest contentment. The shoulders unhunch, the jaw unclenches, the body rests.
What, dear reader, did I do to earn such bliss? Why, I closed many windows of long languishing tabs, freeing my and my computer’s memory from their heavy burden.
Relatedly / unrelatedly, this was a very fruitful week for reading and linking, so here are a series of vaguely grouped links!
- Craig Mod on the importance of experiencing, of the transcendental quality of, e.g., a long walk—some things we truly can’t know except by living them.
- Kale Vogt, on the completion of their first stick chair, on being dissatisfied with what we make, as a sign of learning and growing.
- Echoing 1913, a contractor was called to the bar of the House of Commons this week and admonished for their lack of responsiveness at committee. Watching felt a bit surreal, not only for the historical significance, but also, as I’ve written previously, because this is but one example of a broader pattern, and, perhaps more importantly, one encouraged by the nature of government procurement, and its appetite for risk. I have a sinking sense that whatever systemic change comes out of this—if any—may simply reinforce the incentives that cause cases like this.
- The Jane Philpott conversation with Paul Wells I mentioned last week is now out (the Substack audio is paid, but you can listen to the interview under The Paul Wells Show wherever you get your podcasts).
- I like Paul Wells’s focus on the importance of talking things out (since, absent that, the tools we have left get decidedly uglier), but despair a bit (as he does) at the state of our talk.
- I’ve long been conscious of “just” as a potentially problematic word, one I try to avoid, but this week John Cutler expanded on that thinking, contrasting “just” and “but” and the mindsets they sometimes represent.
- Sent this to a few folks from whom I’ve learned about feedback, but a worthwhile read for anyone, Mandy Brown on feedback and attention: paying attention to what we jump to provide feedback to others on is important feedback for ourselves; the importance of curiosity about those around us, to explore.
- The effects of smartphone use in childhood, ah! (via Sameer) This had me thinking, too, about how an asynchronous conversation can be one of many threads, woven back and forth with each flurry of replies—each thread, though, can have its own colour, sometimes differing quite significantly in their emotional weight. In one set of replies, I move from consoling to cheering—all with the same person, but speaking of very different contexts. A spoken conversation doesn’t go that way as often—its emotions are better grouped, versus having a series of sub-conversations at once.
- Paul Robert Lloyd with an update on his Indiekit project—yay Indiekit! (A good reminder that I need to reboot my setup of this great little tool.)
- The Venona project, an early and lengthy US cryptanalysis initiative, led by and with a number of women in key roles.
- Birds are so cool, holy cow (err, holy flying cow). (via Jason Kottke)
- Dan Pashman voyaged to Italy to learn more about Italian pasta, to inform his new cookbook, Anything’s Pastable. (via 99% Invisible)
- A few things I appreciated about this: challenging the idea that Italy is stuck in traditional ways, doing things now as they’ve always been done; pointing out Italy’s intense regionality, how its relative youth as a country and nation manifest in its hugely varied cuisine.
- But what I maybe appreciated most was the focus on Puglia, the region where my family’s from: less often visited by the usual tourist circuit, but no less full of interesting and rewarding places to go—and dishes to eat! (Puglia also offers a great example of that regionality: my family’s town speaks a dialect entirely different from that of the next town 6 km away.)
Okay, time for me to finish tuning up the jointer plane I dropped on my face yesterday. (lol) All the best for the week ahead!
Lucas