So far, liking the new format. Feels more flexible for the very open nature of my days these…days. Yeah. Anyhow, onward!
Inputs
1: First up, this Twitter thread from @patio11, about gumption, operations, and institutional helplessness (my summary, not his).
Patrick talks about the nature of strategic thinking and the nature of organizations to not actually act from a strategic mindset from an instinct towards safety, an assumption of a lack of agency, and the ways in which large institutions turn any decision into the problem of an entire committee, to both ensure no credit goes below a certain level and that no blame rises above it.
I’ve sat in these same meetings, asked these same open questions, had these same teeth-grinding revelations. It’s somewhat cathartic, while simultaneously being maddening at the ubiquity of incentivized inaction.1Which also led me to this important tweet: https://x.com/patio11/status/1739810622357844021?s=20 and then to cold emailing a director at a company I’d like to work for who’ve had a job opening for a role I’d be a great fit for open since at least October out of, honestly, who knows, but I’m betting the same weird culture around hiring that has seemingly poisoned the entire working world lately.
2: I watched this documentary a while ago, but got to recommend to a friend2Hi Casey! with a shared interest in the wild history of Apple: General Magic.3That link goes to Kanopy, which is a favorite streaming service of mine, in that its content is parceled out via your membership to your local library. Support local libraries! This is the kind of great shit they do! General Magic itself was a sort of external spinoff operation of Apple during the Sculley years, who were given the rein to try new and inventive things, which resulted most obviously outwardly in the Newton, but also to “USB, software modems, small touchscreens, touchscreen controller ICs, ASICs, multimedia email, networked games, streaming TV, and early e-commerce notions.” It was an experiment involving some of the most weighty names of the personal computing revolution, including Andy Hertzfeld, Susan Kare, Joanna Hoffman, and Tony Fadell.
Watching the documentary, you get a real sense of the vision of Silicon Valley and the giant dreams colliding with economic realities. It’s an inspiration filled with lessons and admiration for those willing to do the wild, necessary things to move the world forward, inch by inch.
3: Caught the finale of Slow Horses season 3, which felt slightly abrupt but entertaining throughout and climactic at multiple moments. One thing among many I’ll praise about the show is that it refuses to be too precious with any character, which doesn’t allow for the sort of psychological safety built into most shows, where one never really believes the stakes because it’s not going to end in the ultimate consequence for the characters involved. Slow Horses is happy to kill off whoever it needs to to make clear that such safety is an illusion, one that kept alive by the work of imperfect people making hard choices in a messy world.
Projects In Progress
Webapp: Put some work in researching headless CMS systems, because I am all too generally eager to not only reinvent the wheel, but to drag things along the dirt my entire life rather than try someone else’s interesting round contraption. And I’m trying to fight that. So, yeah. Checking out Strapi, among others, and I’m intrigued, if curious about how things fit together. The work continues apace.
Other: I’ve put the rest of my creative outputs on a bit of a back burner, which is not overall great, but is keeping them simmering to hopefully, eventually, coalesce into a more interesting stew. Or at least less of a pot full of bits and liquids rather than a soup.4And of course now I’m wondering what the dividing line is between some junk in some liquid and a soup. Is it seasoning? A minimum amount of simmering? Surely it’s not soup if I just throw scraps of meat and vegetables into hot water. There’s got to be more of a transition point than that, right? But where is it?
Notes:
- 1Which also led me to this important tweet: https://x.com/patio11/status/1739810622357844021?s=20 and then to cold emailing a director at a company I’d like to work for who’ve had a job opening for a role I’d be a great fit for open since at least October out of, honestly, who knows, but I’m betting the same weird culture around hiring that has seemingly poisoned the entire working world lately.
- 2Hi Casey!
- 3That link goes to Kanopy, which is a favorite streaming service of mine, in that its content is parceled out via your membership to your local library. Support local libraries! This is the kind of great shit they do!
- 4And of course now I’m wondering what the dividing line is between some junk in some liquid and a soup. Is it seasoning? A minimum amount of simmering? Surely it’s not soup if I just throw scraps of meat and vegetables into hot water. There’s got to be more of a transition point than that, right? But where is it?