The Latest Articles, Ideas, Musings, & Rants
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How do we know we are in a bubble? Wait until it Pops
I follow economics and the stock market in the periphery. It does not affect me directly, but it certainly affects me indirectly, so I pay as much attention as I think it deserves, which ebbs and flows with the highs and lows. The way in which the past few years has made me feel like it is all built on vibes seems to have come to a head. It sounds indeed like it is actually built on vibes, and people...
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The Tyranny of the Default
Its difficult to talk about virtual tyranny when real tyranny is knocking on the country’s door — if its not already made itself very comfortable in our favorite chair. But this feels relevant to me as I think more about being a creative person with no creative practice. I feel as though mentoring others and directing others has left me with no creativity of my own. I also know that is probably not true, and just my pessimistic tendencies talking, but...
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Make Things Happen
This article made me think about some of the designers I have worked with in the past. There are not many — I have not made many career moves and have worked for small agencies less than 50 people. Even fewer were on the design side of the house. They have all made impressions. As the article says, some of the ability to take something that is not initially glamorous and turn it into a jewel. > What made those projects...
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Your Ignorance Doesn't Make You An Expert
Wow. Love this article so much. Long read, but full of humor and biting observation. > To position yourself as the arbiter of a reality that is right in front of you, and to reject that reality simply because you don’t get it, to infer that the vast sea of human knowledge on the topic is nothing next to the thimble of your ignorant skepticism, to demand that the giants of human awareness who have come before you and upon...
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To be a small thing bobbing in the Ocean
I am so damn lucky to live in New England, in the Ocean State, close to the Atlantic. Could I be in Hawaii or some warmer clime that also has ocean access? Sure, but I would likely have the same problems I have now. My problem is that while the nicest beaches that RI has to offer are at most 60 minutes away when traffic is bad, I do not go as often as that would imply. As with most...
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Managing my Political and our Collective Depression
Such a good article that captures much of what I have been feeling. > Political depression was a term I’d stumbled towards in trying to name the mixture of sorrow, distress, numbness, and nihilism that I was seeing again and again in flashes in the leftist and left-leaning people around me. It was marked by a sense of system immovability and stasis, a deeply-felt understanding that bad things were happening and would continue inexorably to happen, and most of all,...
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Self Censorship is Empathy, and that’s Not a Bad Thing
While the example this author uses is a weak one, in my opinion — I think the co-worker needed to hear that her husband has a problem, and needs support to help work through that — I do think he has a great point. Free Speech does not mean we should say any hurtful thing we want to the detriment of others. Its not a free pass to hurl expletives, racist slurs, or misogynistic diatribes about how typically you, a white...
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The AI discourse, or lack of
Why is there not a middle-ground when it comes to AI? Ai is either the worst thing in the world — burning our planet, making us all dumber, and sucking up all the venture cap money ever created (all true to a degree) or it is the best thing ever, replacing humans and doing the jobs we don’t want to do and leading us to a global renaissance where cancer is cured and people live free off guaranteed basic incomes (less...
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Zero Trust Internet
AI-generated content has gotten too good, and it happened faster than society can keep up with. A lack of media literacy which perpetuates misinformation is already a massive problem. It’s only going to get worse. Images and videos and audio are too convincing. It’s easy to have anyone, even non-celebrities, say and do anything you want. Not surprisingly, even our dumb President and the official White House account have shared AI-slop, some of it depicting the president as a dark...
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Thoughts on Thinking
I am feeling this statement and this article **hard**. > Developing a prompt is like scrolling Netflix, and reading the output is like watching a TV show. Intellectual rigor comes from the journey: the dead ends, the uncertainty, and the internal debate. Skip that, and you might still get the insight–but you’ll have lost the infrastructure for meaningful understanding. Learning by reading LLM output is cheap. Real exercise for your mind comes from building the output yourself. I don’t presently...
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Polymaths For the Win, or Generalists over Specialists
I have long been convinced that people who know a little bit about a lot of things are positioned to be more creative. The multiple perspectives and wide experience gives them much to draw from when crafting approaches to problems. I like to think I have broad knowledge, but know that compared to most creatives, I am more of a specialist than I might desire to be. That all said, this talk from Mr. Bechtel hit home in a few...
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Personalization or Commodification
These two articles go great together, but not like peanut butter and chocolate. More like oil and vinegar — two great tastes that don’t easily mix but go make leaves taste better. Lemme explain. The first article opens like this: Every moment, behind the scenes, the products you use are getting better at anticipating your needs and desires. Your Netflix homepage updates in real time, your food delivery app predicts what you’re craving, and your fitness app fine-tunes recommendations based on...
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Personalization might be the Biggest Problem
A recent article in my feed communicated something that I have been thinking pretty well, so I reproduce it here: …modern maps put everyone at the centre of the world. […] countries put themselves at the centre of world maps. The artefact and its perspective becomes defined by who commissioned or owned it. […] With being the centre of our own worlds, the products we buy are increasingly more personal or tailored to us. We also live in our own...
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Old Men at Rock Shows Part II
Where two men in their 40s (ahem) see bands reunite and play together with members who are in their 50s and 60s. ## War on Women, Slomosa, and Helmet at the Paradise, Boston Ugh. Parking in Boston. This is why old men like us dislike going to shows. Something as trivial as parking looms large when you are traveling over an hour and guiltily spending money on yourself. But the rock gods were shining down upon us because we happened...
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UX Is Dead, Long Live UX
A clickbait title. Sigh. Another screed claiming that such and such is dead but actually, no, its not, its very much alive for this and this reason. The shift in mindset, from UX as a deliverable and business bottom line, to something else, is disingenuous. I think this was always what UX should be, and it was our fault that we made it a speciality that practiced very narrow processes and created narrow deliverables. The whole that UX was serving...
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The End of Programming as We Know It
[Tim O’Reilly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_O%27Reilly), founder of O’Reilly media, is someone to listen to. He popularized the term “open source” and ”Web 2.0” and has been in the industry for over 40 years. His observations about the changing landscape of programming and the web are a techo-optimist’s viewpoint backed by his deep experience. The article talks about how programming has already drastically changed. The first wave of computers required programmers to connect physical circuits to perform calculations. Then machine instructions replaced that tedious...