Perspectives

Daily Reads:

Lightning Pathologist, a series that was referred to in Marc Abrams missive today, including a story about the autopsy of a man who was wearing 23 layers of clothing when he died "It took longer to take off his clothes than to perform the autopsy". It got me curious enough to save to watch later.

Ewan McIntosh describes the most beautiful world in the school. Probably. "The day we look like other schools, we close". Feels like there’s a lot to learn from that philosophy.

HT Nitin Khanna who pointed to the Tasks plugin in Obsidian’s community plugins in his post "My Obisidian Setup". I use many of the plugins and can attest to their utility in my own workflow. The Tasks plugin showed me that I have 1024 undone tasks, so I’m clearly either not doing stuff, or using the - [] feature incorrectly or both.

Paul Ford, in Wired: To Own the Future, Read Shakespeare, which to me is the QOTD too.

QOTD:

All you have to do is look at a tree—any tree will do—to see how badly our disciplines serve us. Evolutionary theory, botany, geography, physics, hydrology, countless poems, paintings, essays, and stories—all trying to make sense of the tree. We need them all, the whole fragile, interdependent ecosystem. No one has got it right yet.
-Paul Ford, writing in Wired, on being interdisciplinary.

Music:

Sheku Kenneh-Mason performs Elgar

Daily Reads:

I’ve been on a binge watch of Zsolt V’s Personal Knowledge Management YouTube series. He’s the developer integrating the fantastic Excalidraw tool into Obsidian. Of more interest to me has been his philosophy around how he made the tools and now the tools are making him.

The videos have jolted (pun intended) me into taking some action. The reminder about Richard Feynman’s 12 favourite problems for example got me writing out my own areas of interest, and how I could possibly turn them into open ended questions that circumscribe my crazy reading habits into something more focused. I’ve toyed with the idea of a visual + textual note taking for a long time, and the latest videos from both Zsolt and Nicole van her Hoeven on the topic got me taking the first step in making it work, at least within my Obsidian vault.

Not much else being read 🙂

QOTD:

The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.
-Madame de Stael, writer (22 Apr 1766-1817)

Music:

Glenn Campbell – Gentle on my mind with an alternate guitar solo.

Daily Reads:

List of sites that may help in any job hunt

Derek Thompson in the Atlantic: the 67 hour rule. The average workweek for American households seems to have held steady at 67 hours – over the last 120 years!

QOTD:

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.
-Josh Billings, columnist and humorist

Music:

Josh Turner: Red’s Favourite – Bert Jansch & John Renbourn. This young man is unreal in his talent, and I’m glad to have discovered his work.

Daily Reads:

Modern Git Commands. I moved my Obsidian vault out of iCloud to a local drive, after a week or more of slow or non-performance . I used to back up the vault to a git repository but moving the vault to a local drive messed something up. I wish I had this resource before I needed it. I ended up creating a new repository and starting all over, which in this case was the cleanest & quickest fix (that I know), but it won’t be always.

Mandy Brown What You See OMG! Inattentional Blindness. Curiosity. Feedback. So much goodness in this post.

Bob Ewing: How to replace your anxiety with awe.

Seth Godin: ChatGPT is dumber than it looks I’ve not used Generative AI tools in a few weeks now. Some of my trusted friends who are far more informed tell me that it feels like the firehose of new-ness in this world is exhausting them too. Seth’s final suggestion to using AI made me laugh out loud: Take advantage of the fact that it doesn’t have feelings, and use its honesty to get useful feedback.

Bob Ewing channeling Ethan Mollick in "The Best Way to Remember What You Learn"

QOTD:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
-Fred Brooks

Music:

Rex Holman – Red is the Apple

Daily Reads:

Bartleby in the Economist: Productivity Gurus Through Time compares James Clear and Arnold Bennett, separated by about a century.

QOTD:

"Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible."

• C. S. Lewis

Music:

The Poor Clares Of Arundel: My Peace I Give You

Daily Reads:

Molly White: AI Isn’t Useless …I’m glad that I took the time to experiment with AI tools, both because I understand them better and because I have found them to be useful in my day-to-day life. But even as someone who has used them and found them helpful, it’s remarkable to see the gap between what they can do and what their promoters promise they will someday be able to do. The benefits, though extant, seem to pale in comparison to the costs.

QOTD:

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.
-Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (18 Apr 1857-1938)

Music:

Mark Knopfler: One Deep River, the album

Daily Reads:

Ewan McIntosh: Design for the trickiest customer on the worst day. Think like an engineer, not like a shrewd accountant. Test the assumptions of what’s being done today.

Colin Newlyn: You are not your job. You are infinitely more than that.

Complement Colin’s post with Stowe Boyd’s "May No New Thing Arise" the executives who are so strongly motivated to undertake change initiatives — because it sends signals of action to shareholders and markets — are unlikely ever to cast themselves as an accounting clerk or an engineer, being made into mincemeat in the grinder of the newest grand change scheme.

QOTD:

Companies do not transform. People do.
-Rishad Tobaccowala

Music:

Mark Knopfler: From the new album One Deep River Tunnel 13. MK has a knack for making history accessible through verse and tune.

Daily Reads:

Dan Gilmor shares What’s next for him: I am absolutely convinced that journalism’s most essential role at this critical moment goes far, far beyond what it’s doing. The status quo in political (and related) coverage consists of sporadically noting that gosh-maybe-there’s-a-problem, while sticking mostly to journalistic business as usual. The status quo is journalistic malpractice.

Jillian Hess has a fantastic blog about Rachel Carson’s field notes for Silent Spring. Like Jill, I’m fascinated by how people take notes, and particularly the masters who have gone before us.

QOTD:

“If we continue to hold on to a dream for something in the future, we lose the present moment. And if we lose the present, we lose everything.”
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Music:

Paul Moseley does some thumb picking. Stunning work!

Daily Reads:

I should really call this section "Daily Consumption" 🙂

HT Marty for this link: Death of the Follower and the Future of Creativity on the Web, by Patreon co-founder Jack Conte at SXSW 2024.

Dave Snowden: How to create flow in complex environments in Part 1, Part 2

QOTD:

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
-Booker T. Washington

Music:

Mark Knopfler: Two Pairs of Hands is a new song that dropped today!

Daily Reads:

More podcast listening today – Cal Fussman asks Big Questions of Alan Stein Jr., a basketball coach turned keynote speaker.