February 2010
36 posts
A Drought of Tears →
The most touching account of the aftermath in Haiti that I have come across yet:
Their rote, emotionless descriptions of their loved ones who were crushed remind me of other tragedies I have covered. The causes of death are always somewhat different. But the people of Darfur, the people of Congo, the people of Kosovo were similarly stoic and emotionless when they told me the awful, awful things...
January 2010
123 posts
“I ask everybody to write down on Sunday night or Monday morning what are your...”
– Mark Pincus on running Zynga
Catatumbo Lightning →
There’s something strange in the air where the Catatumbo River flows into Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela…
For 140 to 160 nights out of the year, for 10 hours at a time, the sky above the river is pierced by almost constant lightning, producing as many as 280 strikes per hour. Known as the “Relampago del Catatumbo,” this lightning storm has been raging, on and off, for as...
Confessions of a Book Pirate →
The Millions has an interesting interview with someone who scans and posts books on bittorrent:
I do not pretend that uploading or downloading unpurchased electronic books is morally correct, but I do think it is more of a grey area than some of your readers may. Perhaps this will change as the Kindle and other e-ink readers make electronic books more convenient, but the Baen Free Library is an...
“The world is split into two different kinds of people. When I moved into my...”
– China Mieville (via)
“Work begets work. Never say no.”
– Laura Linney
The XX - Shelter
“You will never be prepared for the things you are capable of doing. You will...”
– Matt Nowack
The 37% Rule →
This is for sequential choices, where each option must be accepted or rejected in turn – as in flat-hunting, where an option may vanish if you hesitate, or, say, choosing where to picnic while hiking (assuming you don’t want to retrace your steps). Provided you can estimate the total number of options – the number of flats you’re prepared to look at, the number of potential picnic...
Controlled Serendipity →
Surfing the Web has become even more of a challenge as more content appears online. We are asked to navigate any number of new obstacles when finding new content: which site should I click through to read the latest earthquake news? How many blogs should I check on a daily basis? What if I miss something?
But we are solving the problem, through our aggregation. We’ve reduced the fear of missing...
Both Sides Now →
On understanding the opposing side in politics:
In a situation like that, it is natural to despair that those who oppose you have made a tragic error. But if you want to rage, rage against the universe that provides us too little information, and too limited brains, to make perfect choices every time. […] I don’t need to go inventing evils where none exist, for the sheer joy of...
Stock and Flow →
Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist.
Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.
This is an interesting way to...
On Vacation →
It almost seems like a dream from long ago, but I can remember coming back from vacation and sitting at my desk that first day and doing nothing but catching up — on my mail, on the back newspapers, on office politics. Nor did anyone press me. It was understood: I was in a 24-hour vacation decompression zone.
Now, we keep up on vacation, we keep up on weekends (my incoming work e-mail suggests...
Au Revoir Simone - Lark
A Profile of Neil Gaiman →
After winning [an award for Sandman], Gaiman went to a party in the desert to celebrate, and happened to see a shooting star. Watching it fall, he says, “I just did that thing where you’re following a chain of thought, and you go, That looked like it was really near. What if I went and it wasn’t a meteorite but it was actually like a big diamond or something? Wouldn’t that be cool? And I...
WatchMalcom Gladwell on spaghetti sauce and happiness (via Barking up the wrong tree)
“The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale...”
– Brian Eno
Mom Takes Children's Songs Literally →
From McSweeney’s:
What are you talking about, “how I wonder what you are”? It’s a star. You just said it was a star.
(via TMN)
The End of Videogame Endings →
Games have become so huge, that even story-led titles need scores of subplots and diversions to keep things interesting. It seems nowadays developers are stuck between a rock and a hard place - make a single, satisfying narrative and the game will be accused of being too short. Make something sprawling and huge, and any sense of momentum of the primary narrative is completely lost.
The...
Princeton - Calypso Gold
“You’ll never have finished learning programming, so learn to enjoy...”
– Bryan Woods