Reading, public service reform, diagetic theme songs

Hello! It’s been a very full week, with some ups and downs. We’re looking forward to a few weeks of much-needed vacation, time just to be together and away from the normal responsibilities and worries of life. The next few weeks around here may be a bit quieter and lighter as a result—one of my goals is to be reading more books and fewer links during our time away. (As always, we shall see! 😅)

• A tribute to reading as a hard, but rewarding activity (hard compared to, say, scrolling). It connected to some related thoughts I’ve been exploring around mindfulness and attention: to win back attention, it helps to develop the discipline to notice when we’re doing things that, in the bigger picture, aren’t what we’d prefer to be doing—and to then redirect our attention toward ones that are what we want to be doing (even if they’re harder!). Discipline demands mindfulness. I also liked the distinction between technologies that provide or enable other activities (even with downsides) versus those that don’t. (via Alan Jacobs)
• Speaking of Alan Jacobs, I enjoyed his frequently asked questions from students. Reminds me of some good professors I had.
• Following last week’s issue, some more on 18F:
  • I missed Hillary Hartley’s reflection, but it’s well worth your time: ‘Make no mistake — this inclusive approach to both team culture and service delivery is the real target of today’s “deletion.”’
  • Brian Merchant, building on that point, reported on the spiteful politics behind 18F’s closure.
  • For more from this side of the border, Sameer and Sean offered their reflections. Both spoke to the broader trend of tearing down efforts at public service reform, “poisoning the well” for this work.
  • Glad to see that 18F.org now includes copies of the 18F guides, so you don’t have to rely on sneakernet Git clones as I’d started pondering last week.
• While we’re on the subject of, let’s (very generously) call it “public service reform”, some good reporting from The Tyee on Canadian tech leaders getting excited by (charitably, parts of) what DOGE is doing. This introduced me to Canada Spends, a project to surface hard-to-find government spending and other data. The article points out that the project’s supposedly neutral stance is probably a bit of a misnomer, but it doesn’t take much poking around to see that. For those interested in this problem space, there’s good reporting available through InfoBase, which consolidates data from the (pretty gnarly!) array of public reports that the government produces. (Look, I have many, many qualms with what’s publicly available on government spending, people, and operations, but there are more detailed sources available, is what I’m saying.)
• A thing I learned this week, you need a license to play music in public in the UK (e.g., playing the radio at your business). (via Katie Clapham’s Receipt from the Bookshop newsletter)
• Jason Kottke shared a few Star Trek “Diagetic Theme Songs” videos by “Craven In Outer Space” (described by the creator as “Theme songs being played by things in the theme song.”). Kottke embedded the TNG one, but the jokey details in the DS9 one are even better, to me.
• In book news, this week I finished reading both Menewood and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Both great. Hild’s world (Hild, Menewood) is one I want to keep inhabiting; I look forward to an eventual sequel. And, who knows, maybe the weeks ahead will include some running.

All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas