Weekly Thing #194 / Writing, Playdate, OpenMoji
I’m Jamie Thingelstad, and this is the Weekly Thing. Check out previous issues at the archive.
We just arrived at a secluded cabin a couple miles north of Split Rock Lighthouse. We drove up a very steep dirt drive to get to this A-frame tucked away in the woods. We arrived at night so we have no idea what the area looks like. I’m eager to wake up in the morning and actually take in where we are. I believe we will have a view out to Lake Superior.
This weekend we commemorate 20 years since the attacks of 9/11. I can still recall that day so clearly. We all can. But my recent memories go to 2018 when Mazie and I visited the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. She was 13, and really didn’t know a lot about the events of that day. We walked the memorial and museum. I shared with her many stories of that day and the days after. It was a somber visit, but also brought stories of resilience and courage. I remember how hard my colleagues at the Wall Street Journal worked to publish the paper on that day. I remember how MarketWatch was able to get news online throughout the terrible events of that day. I’m going to highlight those stories as we remember 9/11 on this 20th year. 🙏
Featured
How doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us, but it should be | Cancer World Archive
End-of-life care is something that we don’t like to talk about, and it’s hurting us in many ways.
It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.
If this topic is even remotely interesting to you I strongly recommend reading “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande. Gawande dives deeply into this topic. It is an amazing read that encourages you to think very differently about quality of life at the end of ones life.
Dense forest of Birch Trees.
Sep 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM
Birchwood Acres, Wisconsin.
Notable
Parliament passes law to legalize cryptocurrency in Ukraine | KyivPost
I love seeing Ukraine taking a leadership role on crypto and explicitly supporting it in the law. There are very few countries that have done anything here yet. Ukraine rightly wants to create a welcome environment for companies building on crypto. It would be amazing if adopting crypto assets allowed the country to strengthen it’s independence 🇺🇦
POAP - “ANNOUNCING - The NFT Treasure Hunt!! 🏴☠️”
I love this idea, just from the headlines. It would be super cool to have POAP NFT treasure hunts in various cities. You have to find several POAP tokens over the course of some number of days. It would be great if you then got additional tokens when you collected all of them, like unlocking another NFT.
Making Sense Podcast #259 - The Reckoning to Come - A Conversation with Balaji Srinivasan | Sam Harris
It seems every podcast with Balaji Srinivasan is super long and this is no exception at 4 hours. It took me four separate sessions to listen to the entire thing. (Note: Making Sense episodes are limited to one hour unless you subscribe.) I have listened to Tim Ferris interview with Balaji and thought it was very interesting. I found this interview with Sam Harris more interesting because Harris challenged him more and engaged in real debate on several of the topics.
They discuss the evidence of American decline, the rise of India and China, centralizing and decentralizing trends in politics, the relationship between politics and technology, the failures of the FDA and TSA, how regulation preserves monopolies, the significance of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, the problem of cybersecurity, the Chinese government’s attack on Bitcoin, the threat of US regulation of cryptocurrency, blockchain scalability, creator coins, life in Singapore, virtual government, the future of decentralized journalism, independent replication in science, wealth inequality, ubiquitous investing, social status, non-zero-sum capitalism, “start-up countries”, and other topics.
The variety of topics is incredibly wide, and I think Balaji’s perspective is thought provoking. I don’t think he is right in all these regards, and some of his predictions I truly hope he is wrong, but either way I found my it invigorating and challenging through the whole discussion.
Those virtual battlegrounds…. I lost my country but I gained a big pile of virtual gold
Simon Wardley brings his mapping techniques to an interesting space.
Video games are now so widespread and immersive that they must be considered a powerful channel for spreading values rivalling that of radio, television and film. These are all enablement systems for values, allowing our values to diffuse throughout our own and other collectives.
I think you can extend this thinking in some interesting ways. Isn’t there something very similar to this in a meme like Qanon? Wardley extends this to digital sovereignty which starts to touch on the idea that some far reaching crypto enthusiasts suggest vis-a-vis creating new digital states.
🤔
Are you sure you are ready for hybrid meetings? - The Digital Workplace
Several good things to keep in mind as we all have many more hybrid meetings now. I found this note for leaders interesting.
If you are the leader, the single best thing you can do is log in from a distributed place. It solves most of the problems you might face:
- It makes it clear that it’s ok that others aren’t there.
- No one gets special access to you by cornering you after the meeting.
- You will learn what it’s like to experience being on the “outside” and make the changes.
I have certainly changed my thinking on bigger team meetings where we have over 100 people on. I think of it more like a realtime podcast, with production aspects, a green screen, and I look for digital ways to engage the audience. Stuff that I can’t do in other venues.
Improve your business writing with the TL;DR principle - without bullshit
I like his recipe to follow when you feel an urge to add a TL;DR section to something you have written.
Why does this improve things? Because it focuses on the true meaning of what you are writing — the meaning that you only realize when you embrace the TL;DR idea. By forcing that meaning directly into the title and lead, you inform the reader up front what to expect. And by shaping the narrative around that meaning, you make the piece shorter, more pointed, less distracting, and easier to follow.
Add this to the bucket of things to be a better writer.
Litecoin Smart Contracts, DAOs, Tokenised Assets and NFT’s Are Here!
Many core Ethereum innovations now showing up on Litecoin. I’ve long held Litecoin and find it an interesting project, but this project seems very far away from the core focus. Also, there is already Cardano and Solana in this space. I’m a bit bearish on this for Litecoin, but it’s still good to see them innovating.
Jade’s Monthly Reflections: 6 Major Keys to Building A Successful Career! » MnTech
Great suggestions from Jade Denson for those beginning their careers in technology. I particularly like her 2nd suggestion “Identify your personal superpower”. If you can align your energy with the things you are naturally good at you will have a tailwind that will put you further ahead.
The Trouble with Due Dates - OmniFocus — MyProductiveMac
I made this same change several years ago and it is a huge deal. I cannot imagine using a task management system without deferral dates. And due dates are constantly used for ‘fake dates’. Only use them when the due date is real.
Meet Callin, the First Social Podcasting Platform by David Sacks | Callin | Medium
There is a lot of innovation happening around voice apps and podcasts. Clubhouse kind of kicked it all into overdrive. This seems like an interesting app with some solid features.
Playdate Pulp: Zero to video game in 60 Seconds
I have my Playdate on order (early order so I will get it in 2021) and Tyler and I have been talking about making a game for it. That is one of the reasons I wanted to get it. This writeup on Playdate Pulp was great and Pulp will definitely have the capabilities we want to create Magic Pines, the Game. 🤩
OpenMoji
It is surprising how much effort different platform providers put into creating the thousands of emoji images that are required. They even have pretty radical different interpretations of the same emoji at times. It seems like a great idea to have an open source collection of emoji images. This project reminds me a tiny bit of OpenStreetMap.
Journal
We watched Luca tonight for Family Movie night. It was a good story and endearing characters. 🍿
We had a delicious lunch at Home Plate Grill in Red Wing today. The Dugout burger was a great rendition of a smashburger. And the pretzel is giant and very good! 🥨
Had a fun family hike on Barn Bluff trail in Red Wing, MN today. We took the South Trail up and the Midland Trail offshoot on the way down. A bit over 300 feet of elevation gain.
Tonights plan: Old Fashioned and Romeo y Julieta. 🥃
Time to play some Kubb at Birchwood Acres! Lake Pepin in the background.
Tammy made a themed scavenger hunt / puzzle for Olson Family Vacation 18. One clue for each year. Everyone had to think hard. Each family won a custom Wicky Thing candle when they discovered the answer, and presents for the kids.
Briefly
Interesting approach to branching for code that I have not seen before. → Ship / Show / Ask
Whoa! 🤯 I had to try this, and it works just great. Even supports RSS! → sheet-posting
Great use of several AWS capabilities to make it easy and very cheap to run your own Minecraft server. → minecraft-ondemand: Templates to deploy a serverless Minecraft Server on demand in AWS
Having just been to Vermont on vacation I’m not surprised it has the lowest amount of 5G coverage. Minnesota is in the upper quarter. → How the 5G experience compares across 50 states and 250 US cities | Opensignal
It makes complete sense that a more technical audience would be using tools to protect their privacy. → 58% of Hacker News, Reddit and tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics | Plausible Analytics
Fortune
Here is your fortune…
There is a 20% chance of tomorrow.
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About
I’ve been an active blogger since 2004. I’ve been microblogging via Twitter and my websites since 2006. My link blog goes back to 2005. I think about the Internet and our use of it over decades and am focused on preserving the personal and non-commercial parts of the Internet as well as the corporate and governmental parts. I’m a long-time supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons and Internet Archive as well as other organizations that work on this.
This work by Jamie Thingelstad is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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