February 2011
56 posts
January 2011
57 posts
“The biggest design decision I’ve made is more of a continuous philosophy: do as few extremely time-consuming features as possible. As a result, Instapaper is a collection of a bunch of very easy things and only a handful of semi-hard things.
“This philosophy sounds simple, but it isn’t: geeks like us are always tempted to implement very complex, never-ending features because they’re...
China Initiates Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor... →
From Reddit, “A moden day Sputnik moment.”
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is...”
– Mark Twain
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the...”
– C.S. Lewis
“Good designers must always be avant-gardists, always one step ahead of the...”
– Dieter Rams
First Tunisia, then Egypt, now Yemen →
Demand the freedom that is your right
Un-Manage Your Employees →
On the idea of self-organized teams:
When you hire people who do nothing but manage, you implicitly say to the rest of your employees, “Don’t worry about the coordination or structure of your work—all these concerns now belong to the manager.” When people don’t have to think about the totality of their work environment, because that’s now the manager’s job, they’re less engaged, less motivated...
“Many times, action is non-action; but you believe within your belief systems...”
– Elias Session 151
To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test →
Test taking is more effective than just studying because you get feedback. We ought to leverage this psychological reality with electronic tools.
Can you do nothing for 2 minutes? — A game →
Six Keys to Changing Almost Anything →
In 1911, the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead intuited what researchers would confirm nearly a century later. “It is a profoundly erroneous truism,” he wrote, “that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about...
“Be yourself, and you allow others to do the same. Honest self-expression creates...”
– Dorothy Mendoza Row
We think we're protecting our kids by treating all... →
WSJ opinion piece on the harm done by assuming men are pedophiles first, normal second.
“You’re alive. Act like it.”
– Kennedy Brock
“The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules,...”
– Banksy
Tunisians have sent a message to the Arab world,... →
The Tunisian uprising, which succeeded in toppling Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian president, has brought down the walls of fear, erected by repression and marginalisation, thus restoring the Arab peoples’ faith in their ability to demand social justice and end tyranny.
Activists across the region have called for the “Tunisation” of the Arab street - taking Tunis as a...
Solitude and Leadership →
William Deresiewicz delivers a fantastic lecture to West Point (of all places) on the importance of thinking for oneself in leadership.
“Thought, you may say, will not stop a war—yet what do you think started such a...”
– Seth Session 800
“It must be obvious… that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly...”
– Alan Watts
