Got energy, got mood, got links
Hit and Miss #401
These are some of the best weeks.
During the day, you can be outside almost indefinitely, enjoying the excitement of all living things, human, plant, and animal alike. Trees and flowers are in bloom, but you can still catch flashes of so many birds between the buds.
The birding’s good, and not just for us bipeds. Pema has been reliving her glory days of hunting backyard birds by smacking her head against the window whenever a goldfinch at the nearby feeder gets too brave gorging itself.
And during the night? Well, you don’t quite notice that it’s night, because the sun deigns to linger, longer and longer each day.
I went for a long bike ride this morning, with no real goal other than to go. I was saying to a friend earlier this week, I too easily come to view my bike as a mode of transportation (to and from work, errands, and the like) instead of as the thing itself—the point is to move, bikes are a wonderfully mechanically efficient way to move, and this is one of the best times of year to be moving.
So basically, things are good.
Sliiiiightly different format for links this week, because there were lots of bits I wanted to quote. Also, there are a bunch, and they’re wide ranging, but I’ve tried to loosely bunch them together. I hope you find something you enjoy.
And so I worried about that for the rest of the day. But then again, I came here knowing I needed to find myself in this situation in order to grow.
“Another step taken”, by Simon Collison
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So when it came to the end of the month I didn’t want to even make this note because according to my brain I had frittered the entire thing away building a Royal Kingdom. However, after consulting my (very brief) journal entries I recalled that we went on a whole-ass holiday to the Gold Coast, created lots of mems with extended family at Easter time, and I deep cleaned whole sections of the house. It felt like all of that happened months ago, not weeks! I probably got less creative practice in, but I had not in fact ruined my life.
So, shout out to my journal. And, NO THANKS to my catastrophising, hyper-critical inner narrative.
“Month notes & numbers №14”, by Rach Smith
I believe the best way to fix this is to get off our phones and meet our neighbours in person, to talk face-to-face about our challenges and hopes. Unfortunately, that same vibrant diversity I love about Toronto can also feel overwhelming and alienating.
“manifesto for the toronto that could be”, by Jenny Zhang, introducing her new project, Show Up Toronto. (Which can be accessed entirely via RSS, if that’s your thing! It’s most definitely mine!)
More quotations for this one:
This is not an apolitical project. There is no such thing as an apolitical project, only a project that does not acknowledge its politics.
If the long arc of history ever bent towards justice it’s only because ordinary people like you and I have gotten our hands dirty and pulled. If our collective power were not so frightening, the billionaires would not need to spend so much money and energy convincing us we’re powerless.
I found Show Up Toronto via Sameer’s “The messiness of civic life and showing up”.
Rachel Andrew on how the internet changed genealogy, as someone who’s been an amateur genealogist since “before the internet existed”.
Reservoir sampling is a technique for selecting a fair random sample when you don’t know the size of the set you’re sampling from.
This sounds like the introduction to a dull Wikipedia article that introduces an important statistical method in an impenetrable way, except it’s an interactive explainer that’s written much better than that. (via Simon Willison)
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For another good example of presenting basic stats (sums, really!) in an accessible, meaningful way, check out “Post-COVID University Surpluses (Deficits)”, by Alex Usher.
But it does imply that we should be humble in enforcing changes to the way work is done, because the way that work is done today actually leads to good outcomes most of the time. If you don’t understand how things normally work well, you won’t see how your intervention might make things worse.
“On work processes and outcomes”, by Lorin Hochstein
It’s mentioned briefly, but the other essential part of “Mother of all knives” (on the mom and/or grandma and/or nonna knife, depending on your inclination) is that, with a nonna knife, your thumb is the cutting board. Legends.
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Have you ever wondered about the legal status of emoji? 😅⚖️, a recent 99pi episode, has you covered. (My favourite part? The law must confront tricky technical realities like how emoji render differently on different platforms, so the sender may see a different symbol than the receiver.)
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Yes, the King will be delivering the Speech from the Throne, but did you know that the Letters Patent for the Governor General didn’t delegate all powers, some remained into the 70s? (And that the Queen still performed some substantive roles into the 90s!?)
“A new chapter in Canadian constitutional history? The King’s return to Parliament”, by Jason Loch
“Wood: It comes from trees” is the first episode of a new project, Finished, a series on wood finishes and finishing. This episode starts broad, explaining wood itself as a material, really elegantly connecting how it grows to how it’s used in a woodworking project. A good watch, whether into woodworking or not.
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For some furniture inspiration, check out these three beautiful cabinets, built as a set. The door technique (no hinges!) is particularly neat—watch the included video to see it.
~16 links? Now I want to re-run my Hit and Miss five-year anniversary quantitative analysis and see where that falls. One day. For now, all the best for the week ahead!
Lucas