Posts published in April 2013

What a stressful, paranoid, and unbridled week—in a terrible, awful, no good, very bad way. I like to think I’m still too stunned, but part of me doesn’t want to acknowledge my ability to feel incredible amounts of anger, fear, resentment, and fury towards what happened.

The first thing this made me think about the Unibomber, which felt so long ago. Remember the wait? The extended periods of unsurety? It took months, months.

This is so much faster, more brutal. We barely have time to process one horrifying event before the next begins. These are friends, parents, children, humans who have to deal with other people’s desperation and incomprehensible desires. I hurt for humanity. I ache for the future, and I lament this week’s cruelty for the people who found themselves directly in harm’s way. I could be that person, so could you. It is only by sheer improbability and luck that we follow along instead of finding ourselves so impacted that we cannot see beyond our immediate misfortune.

I didn’t mean to go on about Boston, but here we are. It was a weird week not just for life but also for reading. We’re all over the map, and hey, there’s nothing that I’m exceedingly ashamed of reading. smh

• Watched: Marfa, Texas: The capital of quirkiness
• If this True Blood rumor is true, we may have to burn down HBO on io9
• All great managers are alike by Tom Tunguz, “Work in every role within your team. … Be aggressive. Try new things. Allen is the most prolific filmmaker in history setting a pace of 1 movie per year for 40 years. Many of those films have been flops or failures. But he has a litany of awards including 4 Oscars. In his own words, he says he is unafraid to fail. … Build it because you love it. Despite his fame, Allen has never made movies that were certain to be commercially viable. Instead, he worked on projects that excited him.”
• Photos From the Manhunt in Boston
• A pair of 2011 blog comments by “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev”
• What We Know About Boston Marathon Bomb Suspects Dzhokhar And Tamerlan Tsarnaev
• Bombing Suspect After Killing First In Early Morning Shootout
• Boston Bomb Victim in Photo Helped Identify Suspects
• How Much Can You Receive? by Michele Lisenbury Christensen, “I jest, but really: experiment with catching your longings jumping into your pocket, and you, too, may notice your reluctance to receive them.”
• Parkinson’s law of triviality on Wikipedia
• 5 Hard Questions to Ask Yourself During a Conflict by Julie Zhuo, “Every conflict is, as they say, a two-way street. It can’t possibly always be the other person’s fault. And even if it is, or you aren’t sure if it is, why sit around waiting for things to get better? … This is the most important lesson I have learned about conflict: Separate the point from the person. Take the former as empirical, and respond first and foremost to that. … Would I be comfortable saying what I’m saying to the other person in front of a group? If the answer is “no,” I need to stop talking. Now. Immediately. … You can only influence the things you do and say, but that’s a whole lot of power.”
• Untitled Essay by Julien Smith, “An important part of discovering / creating your own future is to find out, or plan, who you are going to become. This sounds kind of obvious– doesn’t everyone think about this?– but in reality, it isn’t often done.”
• 100 questions to inspire rapid self-discovery by Alexandra Franzen, “What do you value most: free time, recognition, or money? … Where + when do you get your BEST IDEAS? … Do you have any habits or quirks you wish you could ERASE?”
• You are not confused. by Alexandra Franzen
• My (new) favorite question of all time by Alexandra Franzen, “What’s the EASIEST thing you could do, right now, that would have the BIGGEST positive impact on your life & others?”
• The Current State of Student Loans by Kristen Hawley
• Accused Nob Hill Murderer Is Psychic Craps Player on SFist
• Boston bomb suspect spotted on video, no arrest made
• Watched: The Needle Drop – Thee Oh Sees review
• Never-before-seen photos from 100 years ago tell vivid story of gritty New York City, “Over 800,000 color photographs were taken with 35-mm cameras for tax purposes. Every New York City building in the mid-1980s can be viewed in this collection.”
• Watched: Narduwar vs. Alt-J
• Coffee & Empathy: Why data without a soul is meaningless by Om Malik, “What will it take to build emotive-and-empathic data experiences? Less data science and more data art — which, in other words, means that data wranglers have to develop correlations between data much like the human brain finds context. It is actually not about building the fanciest machine, but instead about the ability to ask the human questions. It is not about just being data informed, but being data aware and data intelligent.”
• Watched: 2 People Described The Same Person To A Forensic Artist And This Is What Happened
• Watched: Video Demonstrates the Bizarre Visual Effect on a Woman’s Face From a Rotating Light Source
• Talking with Steve Egger on True Crime Diary
• Tavi Gevinson: ‘I Think Fashion And Feminism Can Be Friends’ “I even think that fashion can be a tool of feminism and of self-expression and individuality and empowerment. But clearly there are flaws with the industry that still really grind my gears.”
• This Is Bonkers: Video Proof Of R. Kelly’s Coachella Appearance
• Books About Color Every Designer (and Color Fan) Should Own
• False Things You Heard About the Boston Bombing on Mother Jones, “That’s inevitable during a breaking news event—and in this case, even some law enforcement officials did more to confuse than to clarify. But one day later, here’s a look at some early storylines that have fizzled upon further scrutiny”
• The 50 Best Things We Saw at Coachella on Spin.com
• At Home in the Modern World: Modern Design & Architecture
• Using Social Media to Build High Quality Relationships and Increase Sales, “Engage – create conversations with your target audience, offer value – aka Answer Questions that people are asking or Introduce people in your network that can help each other, sharing is caring – it’s easy to support related interests, brands etc. “Social Media is not difficult; it’s about building rapport and connection with your desired audience.” (Source: Meighan O’Toole)
• On Getting (and Using) Another Chance by Lisa Congdon, “There was a time when I asked the universe for “a lot of work.” I thought that’s what I wanted. When you are starting out as a freelancer and you have very little work and struggle to pay the bills, often times “a lot of work” is the goal. And, on top of that, you want great jobs and clients. Over time, I got all of that: a lot of work and amazing clients.”
• If you don’t A-S-K, you won’t G-E-T. by Wilson Miner, “One piece of advice I’ve given designers starting out is don’t put work in your portfolio that you don’t want to do again. It’s easy to feel pressure to “round out” your book, and make your skills look as broad as possible. But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy — the work you show is the kind of work people will ask you for. Typecasting is just human nature.”
• Featured Designing Mom: CleoMade, “The studio is my clean peaceful sanctuary; it is finally nearing completion after 15 years of DIY construction projects. Almost daily I fend off someone’s advise that it would be good for me to put their old couch in my studio. I try to keep up the impression that it is a special treat for the boys to work in the studio. It makes rainy days more exciting, and they have to be respectful of my “work” supplies. I do a lot of my computer work in the house though.”
• Do No Harm by Anil Ananthaswamy, “As it turns out, the brain maps far more than just the body’s outer surface. According to neuroscientists, the brain creates maps for everything we perceive, from our bodies (both the external surface and the interior tissues) to attributes of the external world. These maps compose the objects of consciousness.”

Real, actual books:

• Wolf Hall
• Bird by Bird

Last week was the first ever What I Read This Week; it was the first of what I hope to be many. The long and short of it is I spend a teensy bit more than I’d like reading pixels, and I’d like to be accountable to what I spend my time ingesting. So: this. The tradition continues. This week was lighter — hooray moderation! Here goes…

• My So-Called ‘Post-Feminist’ Life in Arts and Letters by Deborah Copaken Kogan, “I consider throwing in the towel. The lack of respectful coverage, the slut-shaming and name-calling, all the girly book covers and not-my-titles despite high literary aspirations, has worn me down, made me question everything: my abilities, my future, my life. This is what sexism does best: it makes you feel crazy for desiring parity and hopeless about ever achieving it.” (Source: @sw)
• One cool, life-shaping fact about me: All my childhood friends are dead. from Jessica Suarez, “As a consequence, I didn’t have any childhood friends. These neighbors I hung out with, they were in their 70s when I was a kid. When we visited my old house years later, we tried knocking on their doors, but all of my neighbors had already died.”
• New York vs. San Francisco – Disposition Statistics
• Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in? by Kate Losse, “But the company promoted Sandberg to the Facebook board the day before Boy Kings was published. Sandberg along with many other business women had been qualified to be a board member for years.
• Worst Baby Names for San Franciscans
• Life In Your Early Twenties Vs. Your Late Twenties on Buzzfeed, “It’s hell getting old. Well, not always.”
• How not to say the wrong thing by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman, “Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens…Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings. When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you’re going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support. If it isn’t, don’t say it.”
• How to get LESS EMAIL (praise God & hallelujah!) by Alexandra Franzen, “Other days, email is not my (best) friend — more like a problem to solve, or a mole to be whacked. And other days, I feel like throwing my laptop out the window & making a home for myself inside a tree by Walden Pond.” Send less email. Be freakishly succinct. Respond with declarations, not questions.
• Healthy Eating on Just $300 a Day by “One critic wrote that it takes “laughable Hollywood neuroticism about eating to the next level.” (source: Amateur Gourmet tweet)
• Photo essay on the Coveteur: Linda Rodin – Founder an Creator, Rodin Olio Lusso.
• The iPhone Killed My Creativity. What About Yours? [Poll], “By burning through my life’s many empty, wasted moments, however, I am probably diminishing my creative potential. As I wrote in an earlier post: Numerous studies and much accepted wisdom suggest that time spent doing nothing, being bored, is beneficial for sparking and sustaining creativity.”
• friday’s confesssion: my dreams changed by Tiffany Han, “If you were to ask me today what my dream is, I’d say that I want to change the world. I want to inspire EVERYONE to live the shit out of their lives – in the big moments and in the every day. Starting now. If you ask me next year, I might have a new dream. One that’s so different, I can’t even imagine it right now. And that’s what happens – dreams change.”
• Tips for Being an Organized Blogger
• The Illuminated Purposepreneur: Tiffany Han interview, “There’s also a myth that you have to be 110% certain about what it is you want to be doing before you start. I’ve been in business for myself for years and I’m constantly gaining clarity around who I want to work with and the projects I want to take on. Understanding up front that it’s an evolution can help you start taking the first steps. The key is to do something. Anything. You’ll figure out the rest as you go along. Especially if you have that pesky doubt thing in control.”

Real, actual books:

• Still going: Wolf Hall
• Started: Bird by bird : some instructions on writing and life
• Looking at: The Provensen Book of Fairy Tales
• Looking at: Lee Bailey’s The Way I Cook

I read. A lot. All the time. Too much.

I read to be entertained, to fight off boredom, as a means of avoiding dreadful work. I read to escape, to learn, and to be inspired. There used to be a lot more junk. Nowadays, it’s heavy on the inspiration, learning, and lighter on mindless entertainment. But it’s still too much. It’s a crutch an escape mechanize and I believe it’s one of the things preventing me from really doing things.

Instead of knowing, really understanding something, I get the cliff notes version of life, news, pop culture. While I believe reading on the internet can contribute, sway, and alter my perspective, it also keeps me from going deeper.

Sometimes reading takes my focus. Sometimes reading makes me feel bad. And sometimes reading is just procrastination.

I’d like to be held accountable. While I’m not longer hitting refresh on celebrity gossip blogs, I read a lot of things that should really fall under “April, mind your own business.”

In an effort to track how much I read, there is a google doc that I update with the article name, URL, and a quote. I am now going to share a week’s update with you all. Here we go.

• Productivity Playlist, aka How a college drinking game inspires my productivity. by Tiffany Han, “Y’all know I’m a huge fan of the Pomodoro Technique – as a way to remian productive, you break your work into 25-minute sections, taking a 5-minute break after each burst of work.”
• On Owning All of It by Lisa Congdon, “Another thing I learned from Cheryl Strayed last night is that the pain of editing a book is necessary, just like the pain of editing your life (your relationships, your work) is necessary. I am learning that owning the entire experience of my life, even the really hard and shameful parts, is critical, not just to being a good writer, but also to being a good human.”
• 5 Tips for Apartment Hunting in San Francisco + Our Story on Oh Happy Day, “We wanted to give up, but then I tried looking for 1 bedroom apartments with bonus rooms. I found a vague listing that was half the price of the two bedroom apartments we were looking at. It was located on the best street in San Francisco but there weren’t clear pictures or many details.”
• Why You Should Fire Yourself on Copyblogger, “There are two essential ways a small business owner works — in their business or on their business. Working on the business means stepping away from the daily grind to do some planning and strategic thinking… Most small business owners get caught up in working in their business all the time, and never working on their business.“So,” I said to Alex, “fire yourself as the copywriter and hire yourself as CEO.” …Make sure to think completely objectively about your business, and be prepared to make hard decisions. Push yourself to think creatively and strategically… A good rule of thumb is to fire yourself for a day or two every quarter.”
• If You Want to Be Married Young, You Should Marry While Young on The Atlantic, “To decide to romantically cohabitate with another person for the rest of your life, to make a family with that person, is to go to war. To borrow the language of my mother — you had best love their dirty drawers, because you will be seeing them…The dynamics of power — societal and personal — are inseparable from marriage.”
• Nora Ephron’s Rule of Four: How To Intrigue and Satisfy Your Dinner Guests on Apartment Therapy, “In particular she talks about meeting Lee Bailey, who more than anyone else inspired her to find her own unique, personal style of cooking and entertaining. It’s from him that she learned what she says is one of the key elements to a successful dinner party: having a fourth food on the plate that’s unexpected and delicious.”
• Rick Ross, Don Draper, and the fantasy world of masculinity on Feministing, “It finally hit me: Rick Ross is basically hip-hop’s version of Don Draper… They are both products of fiction. They’re both identity thieves whose actual life stories hold the potential to ostracize them from their chosen communities. But more importantly, they both have constructed elaborate fantasy worlds around an idea of masculinity they know isn’t true to who they are.”
• Fired SendGrid Developer Evangelist Adria Richards Speaks Out on All Things D, “And I do believe there is good to be found in this situation. Debate and recrimination can and must give way to dialog that explores the root causes of these issues in the tech industry.”
• How to Get a Black Woman Fired in Six Tired Steps by Channing Kennedy, “let’s look at the other side and examine how trolls, mansplainers, amateur Internet career counselors — plus some self-identified feminists and well-meaning types — willfully or unwittingly contribute to a pattern that just so happens to rescue large groups of professional white men from the unchecked tyranny of individuals who aren’t professional white men.”
• Tyler, the Creator – Wolf review on Pitchfork
• MISS MANNERS: Thank You Notes – Courtney Khail stops by to teach the art of thank you notes. on Rue Mag, “Thank them for the gift. Let them know how you will use it… Reference the past and look forward to the future.
• The Anti-Social Era: Lessons Learned from Vimeo Founder Jake Lodwick on PandoDaily, “Millions of people use Vimeo. How many people use NowDoThis, his personal task app that never gained popularity? It doesn’t matter, because the product’s success is contingent only upon Jake finding it valuable. If that is the philosophy by which you approach entrepreneurship, you will succeed. … Lesson 2: Coming to terms with failure is not enough — you must learn to ignore shame… Life lasts a long time. You can disappear or be useless for weeks. Lesson 3: Sometimes it is ok to be nobody, useless, anti-social, and alone. If you are coming off several years of hard work, you can disappear and be useless for months… and the only impact that it will have on your success is that it will make you more successful. You are missing out on nothing.”
• America is raising a generation of interns on The Week, “There has been a cultural shift toward something more sinister — that you have to invest in yourself and we are each out there on our own,” Perlin explains. “There is no idea of a social investment in our promising young people. Increasingly, you invest in your own human capital or your family does. There is no sense of shared responsibility.”
• The Joke’s On Us? by Fictive Kin, “Yesterday, on the heels of its acquisition, popular recipe site Punchfork closed its doors. This kind of acquisition / shutdown combo is increasingly common these days, but there were some things about the way Punchfork bowed out that caught our eye: The fairly callous exit post, The ominous shutdown banner. The complete lack of any communication about what would happen to user data.”

And the real, actual books…
– Finished: Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti
– Started: Wolf Hall