💼 A 2020 Retrospective on the History of Work
🎞 Why ‘The Mandalorian’ cites Fortnite dev Epic Games in its credits
Hilleman created 9 of 14 commonly given vaccine
A podcast from the Smithsonian with small stories about a piece from their archives. Well told stories.
🏉 Fox redesigns NFL graphics for point-your-phone-at-the-TV era
An exhaustive archive of Apple marketing and PR material throughout the years and decades.
✒️ Location Based Haiku Generator
🤠 Continuing with Country albums from the 20th Critics’ Poll.
🎵 Country Squire - Tyler Childers
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🔮 AT&T predicted the future in 1993
With tons of predictions about cell phones and network communication. Some of these were spot on.
This sound engineer made high fidelity recordings of street artists across Europe. Some of these are excellent, and seeing them on video really brings it together. The website, with purchasable album, is here.
😃 2020: What a Time To Be Alive · Collaborative Fund
A few highlights of the long-term improvements made to safety, health, and financial success across the world and the United States.
Many more of these at Beautiful News
An instrument to create sounds specifically for horror movies.
🎲 ICECOOL2
Played this game last week with some friends. Really enjoyed the fast paced play with short turns that gets everyone moving around the table. It has a nice balance of randomness and “skill”. Even thought we’ve only played once, I felt myself improving on my flicking technique and can’t wait to play again!
📺 Servant
Amy and I have really been enjoying this series. It’s probably one of our top 2 Apple TV+ shows; maybe slightly behind For All Mankind.
Just as crazy as the preview made it seem. I thought it was a little over the top but not all that scary. Definitely has some gorgeous cinemotagraphy and settings.
🎵Faulkner County - Erin Enderlin
I don’t usually listen to Country Music but I’ve been picking through this list of albums from the 20th Critics’ Poll
I started a new job with Automattic at the beginning of this month and started my own small Blue Tape List to be revisited in a month or two.
Creeping design decisions have led to a world where our constant presence is expected, friends can look up your location at the press of a button, and interruptions abound. The post provides some interesting historical context about these features. Product designers should consider the dichotomy between privacy and engagement in modern products. Perhaps more importantly, users should be aware of these issues so they know of the alternatives.
The story of the online status, typing indicators, and read receipts is a story about the unresolved and ever ongoing tension between privacy and engagement.
I believe most products we use today are designed with good intentions. But I also believe that designing with good intentions is no longer enough.
It’s knowing you can go online without having to fear what our online status may reveal about you. It’s about liking someone’s photo without the anxiety of being called out for it. And above anything, it’s about reading a message, without feeling guilty of not sending an immediate response.
📱 Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy
The insights gleaned from the phone location data NYTimes obtained are astonishing. There are also good tips to protect yourself, including limiting ad tracking, which is off by default on iOS. I hope Apple continues to provide additional features that enhance privacy.
Between this story and Micro-Privacy above, no one should be advocating for further encroachments on Privacy and it should be up to the platforms to enforce these limitations. Product designers simply have no incentive to do so.
📼 136 Internet Videos That Blew My Mind
Video recommendations from Joe Sabia a video producer who created several YouTube video series including Wired’s Autocomplete Interviews
Some of my favorites of these:
I’d add Tim Rogers’ Kotaku reviews to this list (in particular Dragon Quest XI review and Games of the Decade).
📖 Finished A Little History of Economics on audiobook.
A nice short summary of some of the key ideas throughout the development of Economics.
🙇🏻♂️ No More Gurus
There is a difference between an expert, whose talent should always be celebrated, and a guru, whose bad ideas should never be questioned.
With few exceptions we should praise e`xperts but be terrified of gurus.
Success has a way of making those around you question whether they should point out your flaws or question your crazy ideas.
🔬 Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher by Richard Feynman
Should we teach the correct but unfamiliar law with its strange and difficult conceptual ideas, for example the theory of relativity, four-dimensional space-time, and so on? Or should we first teach the simple “constant-mass” law, which is only approximate, but does not involve such difficult ideas? The first is more exciting, more wonderful, and more fun, but the second is easier to get at first, and is a first step to a real understanding of the first idea. This point arises again and again in teaching physics. At different times we shall have to resolve it in different ways, but at each stage it is worth learning what is now known, how accurate it is, how it fits into everything else, and how it may be changed when we learn more.
🏛 The 7 Wonders of the Ancient World, reconstructed
📺 Watching Watchmen on HBO