Betterment

Here are some of the most interesting things I learned this year: 1. In 1992, Southwest Airlines and Stevens Aviation resolved a trademark dispute with an arm wrestling match between their CEOs. ("Armed and Dangerous: The Malice in Dallas") 2. Women are 1.8 times more likely to think the office is too cold. ("Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in thermal comfort") 3. By the time the Saturn V rocket clears the launch tower, it has burned 4% of its fuel. ("Rockets, SpaceX, and the quest for reusability") 4. In 1800, it took 10 minutes of human labor (harvesting milling, etc.) to produce one kilogram of wheat. By 2021, it took only 2 seconds, a decline of 99.7%. (How the World Really Works)

Compared to the overall population, virtually no one built Wikipedia, virtually no one voted for that senator and virtually no one starts a business. Virtually no one cares enough to help a strange…

Today is the first workday of the new year. For most of us, that means the slow roll of the holidays is over. Today we answer all those emails we left unattended, resume work we left on hold in ear…

“They can always say no” is the mantra of someone who is hustling for attention, promo or a sale. But when you hustle a colleague or a friend, they can tell. They can tell that you&#821…

Why do we stop improving? I discuss the research behind why skills stagnate and how to move past it.

Maggie's digital garden filled with visual essays on programming, design, and anthropology

Over the last few years, I have been finding ways to combat feelings of overwhelm. A big part of is has to do with setting up systems that work and are sustainable for my needs.

…is surprisingly easy. “We’ve done all this work and things haven’t gotten better,” so, apparently, we should stop trying and go back to what we were doing. “We&…

No one sees reality. It’s worth repeating: No one accurately sees the world as it is. A person with hearing loss doesn’t experience the world the same way a synesthete does. A rock clim…

We agree on so many things. Productive arguments are scarce, because they depend on shared constructs of reality. And arguments are a luxury, because they allow people to engage around ideas withou…

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Mixing PARA and Zettelkasten in Obsidian

Anyone who's ever tried to lose weight, curb their temper, quit smoking, or alter any habit in their lives knows that personal change is hard.

Someone’s not going to get it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t funny to you. It simply means that culture works because, for a moment, a group of people share a history, an understand…

Which quadrant is your goal? The industry giants want tonnage. Undifferentiated, commodity-priced, regularly delivered, consistent work for hire. They’re not going out of their way for freela…

He’s showing us an entirely different way to “step up.”

Disparate thoughts on personal information management after traversing the hype cycle.

School and work push us to avoid real dreams. Dreamers are dangerous, impatient and unwilling to tolerate the status quo. Existing systems would prefer we simply fit in. The dreams we need to teach…

What’s a car for? Transportation. With reliability. Status. A transaction with the bank. A transaction with the dealer. Your relationship with the neighbors. A statement about your style and …

Everyone has one. It’s the part of ourselves we won’t look at, acknowledge or risk disturbing. It’s the story or trauma or situation that must be avoided at all costs. People will…

Programming? isn't it for the smart people out there? Isn't it boring? If these are your thoughts about programming, you are probably not familiar with programming. Many people out there do programming as a hobby.

Mr. Bridge & The Foggy Morning. In my time writing about Silicon Valley, it has gone from being a place of naive curiosity to where posturing is everything. And the reason we have this state of…

It seems the entire world is talking about ChatGPT and it’s no wonder. Now you can integrate it into Obsidian.

The time we spend fretting over what just happened is time we’re not spending on addressing the problem itself. When your client or your boss turns down a great idea, it’s tempting to f…

Back in the Soviet Union (1917-1991), a lot of books were banned, especially Western ones. So if you wanted important but forbidden voices to be heard,

One of the things I love about the Iliad and the Odyssey is that I always notice new things when I re-read them.  During my last read-through, the importance of baths in both Homeric works stuck out to me.  In Homer, the bath serves as a ritual in several ways. In both the Iliad and […]

When a car is switching gears, the engine is providing no forward power. And it’s more difficult to steer, brake or otherwise control the forward motion of the car as you change it from one g…

If you want to review the grocery list to see if you’ve forgotten anything, alphabetical order is a lousy way to do it. Instead, organizing it by course and then by dish creates a grid and th…