Finished reading：Surface Detail by Iain M．Banks 💙📚My 2nd or 3rd Culture book．Interesting 2025 parallels．Lots of ships／AIs to keep track of．🔥Hell🔥 plays a big role．A gripping read w／v．grim backstory；I would not start here if toe dipping into Culture series
An occasional reminder: Detroit -vs- Everybody t-shirts＆the whole bullshit concept is totally fucking stupid＆self defeating．It says the city doesn’t need anyone; outsiders aren’t welcome．Cut it out already＆let it the fuck go；stop mythologizing．Embrace what makes Detroit great for all
via Laura Olin:
“There are only three possible explanations as to why Americans voted for this man: they wanted what he promised; they didn’t believe what he promised; or they didn’t understand what he promised. Pick whichever rationale you want, because it doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason was, it exposed half of the electorate—the 77 million people who voted for Trump—as either fundamentally unserious, decadent, or weak. And no empire can survive the degeneration of its people.”
if i had one piece of advice for everyone, but that i need to take myself, it’s “you can acknowledge your weaknesses while also being kind to yourself”.
She exhales. “That natural human proclivity to say, ‘Hmm, that doesn’t feel right’ – he doesn’t have it. Trump doesn’t have it. They’re spending no time in shame, and shame is a righteous emotion. It’s not an emotion you want to live in, but it’s an emotion you want as a motivator sometimes. And where is it? Where’s the shame?”
— Abigail Disney via John Harris via The Guardian
Periodic reminder that it is at least a million times harder to build something valuable than it is to destroy it.
And social media … has gone from a wellspring of deeply reported storytelling to what feels like a video-infested wasteland devoid of clear thinking, curiosity or compassion.
What is the opposite of fascism? Living freely, colorfully, openly. Humanizing. Connecting with others. Gathering. Hoping. Following your dreams. Communing. Nurturing. Refusing despair. Laughing loudly.
– via Kottke
🔗
Fuck it man. Just put on some Grateful Dead. Put on some Aretha. Print some kind of zine. Paint a sign. Start a band. Write a manifesto. Bootleg a t-shirt. Hand out stickers. Throw a party. Keep it weird.
Finished reading: In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki 📚💙 great read on design and light. Reminds me of Alton Brown when he talks about heat
Finished reading: Humble Leadership, Second Edition by Edgar H. Schein 📚💙 another strong read from a class I finished. Being a humble leader isn’t being a weak leader. Strength comes from humility, as does earned confidence and honesty
Finished reading: Introduction to Leadership by Peter G. Northouse 📚💙A book leaders should read, reference, and return to. I learned a lot from it and the class I took.
Finished reading: How to Be an Inclusive Leader, Second Edition by Jennifer Brown 📚💙 finished this class. It’s another small book with actionable steps to being truly inclusive, not performative. It’s about taking personal risk if you’re coming from a place of privilege to make the workplace better. I learned a lot
Finished reading: Diversity in the Workplace by Bärí A. Williams 📚💙I did not like this book. It’s all anecdotes with a lot of interviewee ego stroking and self promotion. Waste of money
Finished reading: Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by 📚 💙 Finished my class. EQ is something everyone can work on, and this book offers excellent actionable steps.
Finished reading: Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson 📚💙 Felt like the Mistborn books with different physics. I appreciate his books offering insights into how people operate. Lots of practical philosophy
Ugh. Digg: So much garbage, now with AI. Follow your joy; mine is elsewhere.
The Digital Packrat Manifesto by Janus Rose:
Amazon’s recent decision to stop allowing people to download copies of their Kindle e-books to a computer has vindicated some of my longstanding beliefs about digital media．Specifically，that it doesn’t exist and you don’t own it unless you can copy and access it without being connected to the internet
Let’s not call it content to start，shall we all？It is art，be it literature or music or cinema or TV or a podcast or whatnot.
Second，let’s stop renting our lives．So much of what we do and enjoy is licensed to us．Stand up＆take it back．Viva libraries!
Reminder: doesn’t❤️you, nor does any corporate entity or 1%er or tyrant, benevolent-ish or otherwise
Our changing relationship with Apple:
Apple’s going to do what it’s going to do. Mostly, all we get to decide is whether or not we want to play in their sandbox. If you do, make it about the satisfaction of what you’re building and about serving your customers and a community that shares your values. Apple should be seen as a tool to those ends, not as a parent or partner or religion. Such expectations will only lead to disappointment.
Friends, family, people treated kindly — they’ll❤️you
10 Observations About Tokyo - by Quico Toro - Persuasion
In fifteen years … it had never once occurred to us to move to Japan. Yes, my wife grew up in the Kyoto ‘burbs but she left in 2004 and had zero interest in going back. But … a too-good-to-pass-up job opportunity came her way last summer, and we soon found ourselves packing up our lives and moving to a city we’d only known as tourists.
Six months on, here are ten observations on life here.
Matches my experience nearly spot-on. They live near where I used to work: Nihonbashi (Hakozaki-cho, for those playing along at home).
A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
– John Burroughs (h/t Mitigating Chaos)
I’d buy that for a $. The double down is when one fails, then blames others & calls them failures. 🤔 I wonder what orange-faced octogenarian incompetent does that 🤔
This isn’t just an issue of forcing users to cede ownership and keep everything within Amazon systems — Amazon has demonstrated in the past that it’s not a trustworthy librarian. The company has deleted books that it said were offered for sale by mistake or replaced books with new versions without alerting readers. Amazon’s also not interested in selling their ebooks or audiobooks to libraries, keeping a monopolistic hold on some titles. This is most egregiously the case for “Audible Exclusive” audiobooks, which won’t be available to borrow from libraries or to purchase from other services.Tech companies selling books, music, and movies have long treated digital purchases more like rental agreements, which is nice for saving space on shelves and hard drives, but means that you’re locked in a strange, almost feudal relationship. The solution is to not give them your business — services like Bookshop.org and Libro.fm not only let you download your own, non-DRM-locked copies of what you buy, but also let you support independent bookstores with your purchases.
Skepticism becomes closed-mindedness when its categories calcify and become exclusively outward-directed; skepticism can be open-minded when it operates flexibly and leaves space to be reflexively inward-directed. “You don’t know” versus “I don’t know.”
The problem with the internet ＆social media is that they require incredibly sophisticated information literacy ＆critical thinking skills to use effectively；the powers that control them deliberately engineer to bypass the formation of information literacy ＆critical thinking skills
😖So frustrated with pihole’s breaking changes, esp the Docker container. Only recently got v5 working as I wanted; now redo the whole thing for v6. Need to figure out how they broke DHCPd; reverted back to my router to get things talking