The Paper Trail

Scraps and leftovers from The Local Yarn

[joeld]

Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom. Once this Pavlovian connection is solidified, it becomes hard to give difficult tasks the unbroken concentration they require, and your brain simply won’t tolerate such a long period without a fix. Indeed, part of my own rejection of social media comes from this fear that these services will diminish my ability to concentrate — the skill on which I make my living. The idea of purposefully introducing into my life a service designed to fragment my attention is as scary to me as the idea of smoking would be to an endurance athlete, and it should be to you if you’re serious about creating things that matter.

Cal Newport, Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It.

[joeld]

It’s possible, in other words, to start a tech company that runs more like a normal business than a debt-fueled rocket ship careening out of control.

My favorite line from Farhad Manjoo's article MailChimp and the Un-Silicon Valley Way to Make It as a Start-Up in today's NYT.

[joeld]

Eventually, some lawyer is going to convince a judge that, say, 1% of the victims of a deep-pocketed company’s breach will end up losing their houses to identity thieves as a result of the data that the company has leaked, and that the damages should be equal to 1% of all the property owned by a 53 million (or 500 million!) customers whom the company has wronged. It will take down a Fortune 100 company, and transfer billions from investors and insurers to lawyers and their clients. When that day comes, there’ll be blood in the boardroom. Every major investor will want to know that the company is insured for a potential award of 500X the company’s net worth. Every re-insurer and underwriter will want to know exactly what data-collection practices they’re insuring. (Indeed, even a good scare will likely bring both circumstances to reality, even if the decision is successfully appealed). The danger, of course, is the terms of service. If every ‘‘agreement’’ you click past or flee from includes forced arbitration – that is, a surrender of your right to sue or join a class action – then there’s no class to join the class action.

Cory Doctorow, The Privacy Wars Are About To Get A Whole Lot Worse

[thingsmagazine]

“Shaded Rocks, West Texas”, woodcut, Max-Karl Winkler

[joeld]

Writing for the press cannot be recommended as a permanent resource to anyone qualified to accomplish anything in the higher departments of literature or thought: not only on account of the uncertainty of this means of livelihood, especially if the writer has a conscience, and will not consent to serve any opinions except his own; but also because the writings by which one can live are not the writings which themselves live, and are never those in which the writer does his best. Books destined to form future thinkers take too much time to write, and when written come, in general, too slowly into notice and repute, to be relied on for subsistence. Those who have to support themselves by their pen must depend on literary drudgery, or at best on writings addressed to the multitude; and can employ in the pursuits of their own choice, only such time as they can spare from those of necessity; which is generally less than the leisure allowed by office occupations, while the effect on the mind is far more enervating and fatiguing. **For my own part I have, through life, found office duties an actual rest from the other mental occupations which I have carried on simultaneously with them.** They were sufficiently intellectual not to be a distasteful drudgery, without being such as to cause any strain upon the mental powers of a person used to abstract thought, or to the labour of careful literary composition.

From the autobiography of John Stuart Mill. (via Alan Jacobs)

[joeld]

Dividend of the Social Opt Out

How lovely it is not to go.

great poem by Jennifer Moxley, who also blogs

[doktorphil]

Bertie and the Glossops.

[joeld]

The Architecture of Radio — app by Richard Vijgen.

[casket-of-beauty]

[joeld]

Pretty sure this was taken at the Conservatory in St Paul, MN

[joeld]

The key bias at Facebook is not towards political liberalism, but rather towards whatever will keep you on Facebook rather than turning your attention elsewhere.

Prof. Alan Jacobs, nicely summarizing a point made by Zeynep Tufekci.

[classicprogrammerpaintings]

“Consultant shows Clojure code sample to VBA team”, Rembrandt, Oil on canvas, 1635

[joeld]

How does a song work? What does it actually do? It doesn’t instruct, exactly, or teach, necessarily. A song, I’d say, causes the listener to assume a certain stance. Through some intersection of melody/lyrics/arrangement, it causes a shadow-being within us to get a certain expression on its face and fall into a certain posture. In my favorite songs, this stance-causation is essentially moral-ethical — it makes me feel more able to go out and live. In the current bombastic and frightening political moment, I find myself listening obsessively to Wilco’s 12-minute opus, “One Sunday Morning,” which induces in me, reliably, a suite of feelings I might describe as *patient quiet-mindedness + firm resolve to love better*, and serves as an antidote to the harshness of the moment; a reminder that, with enough patience and fellow-feeling, things can sometimes prove workable between people, even if they disagree.

George Saunders, regarding Wilco’s One Sunday Morning in the NYT.

[joeld]

Both of us when we were young subscribed to *great visions* […] But not anymore. Surely?’ I urged him just to answer me this: did it not occur to him that he and I by different routes might well have reached the same conclusions about life? Even if my conclusions were hat he would call unliberated, surely our workings were identical? Did he not believe, for example, that the political generality was meaningless? That only the particular in life had value for him now? That in the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery?

John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

[joeld]

Republicans by their nature have difficulty grasping collective-action problems, which form the philosophical basis for much government action. If they fail, it will be because they placed too much faith in the invisible hand to sort it out.

This isn't strictly true; these days, Republicans and Democrats are equally ready to grasp the need for collective action when it comes to starting wars of choice in third-world countries. But it does highlight a severe schizophrenia unique to Republicans, who use "evil government" very selectively as a foil for policies they don't like, and as an excuse for inaction on problems they would prefer to ignore. For comparison, see this exchange between Matt Fronts and Michael Dougherty, both conservatives.

[robertogreco]

“Hot Rock, Lost Rock, Router”:

This past summer, Aram Bartholl installed a project called Keepalive in the woods of Neuenkirchen, Germany. Keepalive was a hollow boulder that contained “a thermoelectric generator which converts heat directly into electricity.”

Visitors are invited to make a fire next to the boulder to power up the wifi router in the stone which then reveals a large collection of PDF survival guides. The piratebox.cc-inspired router which is NOT connected to the Internet offers the users [an opportunity] to download the guides and upload any content they like to the stone database. As long as the fire produces enough heat the router will stay switched on.

[…]

Finally, a small campfire was started—and, lo and behold, the secret documents made their electromagnetic way to a nearby iPhone, as if conjured into digital existence through the most primitive means of a campfire.

It’s a kind of library in waiting.

[tofuttibreak]

[joeld]

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.

Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 24, 1855. The Know-Nothings were an anti-immigrant political party that believed the influx of German and Irish Catholic Immigrants posed a threat to national security and would result in cultural suicide for America.