Trying a new post format. A sort of preemptive version of my old Browser Tab Amnesties.

Inspired by a slow building acceptance of the fact that the speed of my interest is faster than my ability to write long individual posts about everything that resonates with me.

Inspired also by the eternal niggle of how best to both keep a blog and a log of interesting and inspiring links (with the latter having been done with mymind.com for nearly a year now). Should they be separate, even?

Inspired also, and finally, buy all the weeknote people, and their modelling of self-care-like behaviour, in the act of just making notes for themselves.

Here’s what I read, heard, and watched today that my brain was particularly interested in.

The work is never just “the work”

A deep dive on why projects always take longer and a framework to improve future estimation, by Dave Stewart. I missed this when Dave wrote it, but I coincidentally wrote The job of doing design a little after it. Dave makes the point infinitely better than I did, and touches on a couple of my favourite ideas: The planning fallacy and There are unknown unknowns, which I often think of through the related concepts of Hofstadter’s law and the Johari window respectively.

The General Problem

“I know, I’m developing a system to pass you arbitrary condiments…” by XKCD. Dave links to this one in the comments of his piece. There’s always an XKCD. 

Montaigne allows users to create and publish websites using nothing but Apple Notes 

Can’t believe I’ve missed this (but somehow I sort of remember the related alto.so). Such a lovely idea that I hope to have a play with. Right up there with my feelings that the web and blogging are still not ‘easy’ for so many. I still see this being niche, but the idea of such a basic and accessible app being the interface to enable easy ownership of your own content online is encouraging. 

Matt Mullenweg: ‘WordPress.org just belongs to me’

This whole drama is rather interesting. I’m falling on the side of Matt in the issue so far, though I appreciate I’ve not read all that much from the WP Engine supporter perspective. Maybe they have a more community focused and philanthropic angle that I’m missing so far. I’ll keep reading. 

The web we want: A beginner’s guide to the IndieWeb

Would have loved to see this presented by Paul (images not loading at time of posting which is a shame as there’s a great table next to the part that starts “Services like pika.page …” that makes the ‘easy’ challenge mentioned above nice and clear). A great thing to link to for IndieWeb interested folk.

It should be easy to say “My bad, I was wrong”

More on the theme of ‘easy’ but in a different context: “There’s nothing bad in being wrong. We all are. We all make mistakes. Saying “I was wrong” is a sign you’re willing to get better and improve. Doubling down on your wrongness, not so much.”  

I like this piece from Manuel, and want to agree more than by half, but the sad reality is that humans on mass tend to shy away from people that admit when they’re wrong. Our cognitive trait to respect the revere the strong and confident type, over someone that’s more honest but openly mistaken, is a massive flaw that’s sadly not as easy to overcome with just “My bad, I was wrong”. 

slowcontent.org

I was wondering about the idea of ‘slow content’ as it’s not a thing I remember reading about. I’m more familiar with the slow web, slow food and the general slow movement though. Anyway, a search led me to this lovely site and manifesto, on which I also particularly like the use of ‘pillars’ instead of ‘principles’ (more on that another time). In turn I found this this slow content presentation that led to the site. 

Collecting ∞ Connecting by Sonia Turcotte

Not long after thinking about slow content, RSS served me this lovely post from Sonia on a slower web (this is the post that led me to Montaigne, above). Coincidentally the post also mentions Russell’s Do Interesting book which I’m in the middle of rereading to bolster my morale with some personal silly, odd, unusual, interesting projects. 

Why Happier Autonomous Teams Use One-Pagers by John Cutler

Also revisiting John Cutler on one-pagers, again to boost morale with a seemingly simple project. Easy to read single page documents – that outline shared understandings in a way that clearly communicates what a team is working on. I’m heavily invested in the idea that documentation like this is an incredibly valuable low hanging fruit for resolving a ton of issues with consultancy based projects. 

Private firms ran almost all care homes forced to shut for breaches in England

‘Study finds more than 90% of facilities for children and 98% of those for adults that were closed down were run for profit.’ This is one of those stories that I am so utterly unsurprised by, in fact, so head bangingly feeling should have been an utterly obvious result, that I can’t tell if I’m more angry or sad about it. Along with privatising Water and Railways in the UK, I just can’t believe how anyone honestly imagines that this operating model will ever produce the best social outcomes. 

The Bottom Line. How Smart Is the Smart Energy System?

An interesting listen. But as ever, in great part due to the brilliant host / interviewer / interrogator style of Evan Davis. He interviewed an old client of mine on The Bottom Line once, and asked her questions that I’m kicking myself I didn’t ask myself.

Every time I listen to this show I’m reminded of the idea that as consultants or partners in any work with a client, that it’s our duty to actually challenge what they say, not just accept it without challenge.

The value Evan gave my client with his pushing of their spiel would have been so much more helpful to our work if I had done the same. It’s not critical to ask clients questions. It’s crucial. Without hard questions we’re just operating as sycophants, and charging people for that services is more condescending than any challenging line of questioning. 

Beard Meats Food

‘Adam Moran (born July 8, 1985), better known as BeardMeatsFood, is a British competitive eater and YouTuber from Leeds.’ The fact people do this. That it’s a slim Brit that’s doing it, and apparently one of the best in the world. That he has nearly 4.5 million YouTube followers. That people find these videos of him (eating unimaginably enormous quantities of food in single settings) so entertaining that each new one gets well over a million views in a few months. The fact I’ve sort of become one of those people today. All these things have fascinated me today (along with what happened around this pub that he at at in one video… although, to be fair, it looks like it could have been worse and the pub could have been lost)

Torsten Bell talking with Krishnan Guru Murthy

Listened to this one over lunch. Some good points are made. Some I’d love to hear criticism of. Also, an interesting take about the need for everyone to just stop talking about universal basic income.

Has Generative AI Already Peaked? – Computerphile

4 months old, but holds up so far. One to revisit in a few years as he suggests!

Dandadan opening credits | Otonoke by Creepy Nuts

I actually watched the first episode of Dandadan on Netflix the other night but it’s firmly lodged in my brain so I had to rewatch the opening credits. Amazing anime and animation in general. Looking forward to seeing how it develops. This is a great tune also. Added to playlists alone with a few other Creepy Nuts tracks. Japanese band names are, interesting.