These links are cool / webby / reflective
Hit and Miss #424
Today’s meant to be a woodworking day, but I’ve spent the morning thinking, reading, and writing (the latter two, let’s be real, are just different versions of the former)—no complaints. I’ve realized in recent weeks, when this newsletter’s come out later in the day, that leaving it just leaves me feeling anxious and distracted. So, morning writing it is.
I wonder sometimes about how I show up for conversations. While the environment and ambient context of the day play a role, it’s also quite affected by how I “prep” beforehand, what I do before we speak.
Before, do I spend down time scrolling my phone, fragmenting my attention? What if, instead, I find a moment of calm, like cuddling a cat or sitting quietly?
How does one form of prep affect my presence versus the other? I can’t say for sure what are the effects of scrolling beforehand, but they’re probably not ideal.
It’s maybe a bigger point, about being conscious of and engaged with how we’ll show up in each thing we do in a day. Some of what we do is lower stakes, not worth as much consciousness. But being with other people, they deserve that attention.
Cool:
- Communauto has rolled out its FLEX service in Ottawa/Gatineau, complementing its station-based offering. As big Communauto fans, we’re pretty pumped. There’s lots of good detail in this article, including some of the main issues to sort out during the pilot period. I particularly liked this quote from Councillor Ariel Troster, responding to potential complaints about use of on-street parking: “The city owns the road, streets are for everyone, a parking spot that happens to be on a city road isn’t your personal property. People adjust!”
- An obituary and tribute to the slow steady work of building up a historical database, starting on index cards and becoming the Members of Parliament after 1832 tool.
- Behind the scenes research for a Linotype book.
Webby (lit. [per the Lucas Cherkewski dictionary]: “of the web”):
- Mita Williams on the how and why of ActivityPub (the protocol that powers the fediverse, including Mastodon).
- By contrast to social media, or maybe a “yes, and”, how conversations move in the blogosphere.
- A 2025 post from Paul Robert Lloyd linking to and commemorating a meetup twenty years prior—oh, for the days of meetup energy. Delightful. I particularly like Paul’s energy and enthusiasm in the 2005 post, the perhaps eternal observation (hope?) that “we are now seeing the web returning to the original vision of Tim Berners-Lee - that it’s about people and relationships”.
Reflective:
- Craig Mod’s Things Become Other Things book tour is available as a podcast. Good listening.
- Andy Glenn on iterating on furniture designs—the 5–10% rule of thumb feels widely applicable, to tweak features just a bit in each iteration.
- “Do I want to” vs “Should I”.
All the best for the week ahead!
Lucas