{"links":[{"slug":"ordinary-abundance","title":"Ordinary Abundance","source":"Jordan Dworkin","url":"https://ordinaryabundance.com/","blurb":"A modern apartment. Each item (from a lamp to eyeglasses to running water) is highlighted and paired with a quote from someone in the past describing how solving the problem would be a miracle, a utopia, the end of all problems.","category":"explore","img":"/404/ordinary-abundance.jpg","threads":["history","web"],"spine":["#603d2a","#e6c98a",0,1,0.24]},{"slug":"webcomic-name","title":"Webcomic Name","source":"Alex Norris","url":"https://webcomicname.com/","blurb":"Every comic ends with \"oh no.\" It never gets old.","category":"read","img":"/404/webcomic-name.jpg","threads":["daily","whimsy"],"spine":["#215dab","#e6c98a","#b57686",2,0.54]},{"slug":"perthirtysix","title":"PerThirtySix Learn","source":"Shri Khalpada & Rob Moore","url":"https://perthirtysix.com/section/learn","blurb":"Solar panels, GPS, Shazam. This site walks you through how they work with easy to understand explanations and great visuals. Also how we catch fly balls, JPEGs, traffic lights, synthesizers...","category":"explore","img":"/404/perthirtysix.jpg","threads":["how"],"spine":["#74885f","#22160c",0,0,0.11]},{"slug":"baba-is-you","title":"Baba Is You","source":"Hempuli","url":"https://hempuli.com/baba/","blurb":"A puzzle game where the rules are the gameplay. Push the rules around the board to change the rules and solve the puzzle.","category":"play","img":"/404/baba-is-you.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#232323","#e6c98a",0,0,0.11]},{"slug":"xkcd-click-and-drag","title":"xkcd: Click and Drag","source":"Randall Munroe","url":"https://xkcd.com/1110/","blurb":"One of the best comics from one of the best web comic makers. When you read it, remember, the title is \"Click and Drag.\"","category":"explore","img":"/404/xkcd-click-and-drag.jpg","threads":["web"],"spine":["#4f5d6b","#e6c98a",0,0,0]},{"slug":"evolution-of-trust","title":"The Evolution of Trust","source":"Nicky Case","url":"https://ncase.me/trust/","blurb":"If you've heard of game theory, but never understood what it was, this is the site that will make it all make sense.","category":"play","img":"/404/evolution-of-trust.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#73642f","#e6c98a",0,0,0.04]},{"slug":"deep-sea","title":"The Deep Sea","source":"Neal Agarwal","url":"https://neal.fun/deep-sea/","blurb":"Start at the surface and scroll down to the Mariana Trench. Gives a sense of just how deep the ocean is.","category":"explore","img":"/404/deep-sea.jpg","threads":["scale"],"spine":["#114557","#e6c98a",0,1,0.38]},{"slug":"every-noise-at-once","title":"Every Noise at Once","source":"Glenn McDonald","url":"https://everynoise.com/engenremap.html","blurb":"Every genre of music plotted against each other. Pick a genre or band you like and discover adjacent ones.","category":"explore","img":"/404/every-noise-at-once.jpg","threads":["maps"],"spine":["#58716a","#e6c98a",0,0,0.07]},{"slug":"seeing-theory","title":"Seeing Theory","source":"Daniel Kunin · Brown University","url":"https://seeing-theory.brown.edu/","blurb":"If you weren't \"a math person\" it's probably because you didn't learn it like this. Really advanced statistics that you've probably heard of somewhere, explained very elegantly.","category":"explore","img":"/404/seeing-theory.jpg","threads":["how"],"spine":["#262332","#e6c98a",0,0,0.23]},{"slug":"17776-football","title":"17776","source":"Jon Bois · SB Nation","url":"https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football","blurb":"Starts about the history of the future of football and turns into something else entirely. A kind of story that can only be told on the internet.","category":"read","img":"/404/17776-football.jpg","threads":["web","story"],"spine":["#502616","#e6c98a",0,1,0.11]},{"slug":"sheila-variations","title":"The Sheila Variations","source":"Sheila O'Malley","url":"https://www.sheilaomalley.com","blurb":"Sheila O'Malley is one of the best writers out there that you've probably never heard of. This is her blog. Old school.","category":"read","img":"/404/sheila-variations.jpg","threads":["daily"],"spine":["#505e6c","#e6c98a",0,0,0.07]},{"slug":"das-rad","title":"Das Rad","source":"Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel & Heidi Wittlinger","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOPwXNFU7oU","blurb":"A German, stop motion animated short of two rock people watching the world go by at their speed, instead of ours. Nominated for an animated short Oscar in 2003.","category":"watch","img":"/404/das-rad.jpg","threads":["scale","slow"],"spine":["#4d6581","#e6c98a",0,0,0.15]},{"slug":"people-matching-artworks","title":"People Matching Artworks","source":"Stefan Draschan","url":"https://peoplematchingartworks.tumblr.com","blurb":"A photographer sits in a museum and notices when people passing by echo the art they're looking at in some way.","category":"watch","img":"/404/people-matching-artworks.jpg","threads":["noticing"],"spine":["#a25c2a","#f4e8cc",0,1,0.35]},{"slug":"joy-of-painting","title":"The Joy of Painting","source":"Bob Ross","url":"https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAEQD0ULngi67rwmhrkNjMZKvyCReqDV4","blurb":"Every episode of the classic Bob Ross show.","category":"watch","img":"/404/joy-of-painting.jpg","threads":["slow"],"spine":["#627484","#f4e8cc",0,0,0.11]},{"slug":"sort-algorithms","title":"Sorting Algorithms","source":"Simon Willison","url":"https://tools.simonwillison.net/sort-algorithms","blurb":"How do you take a random collection of things and put them in order? It gets really tricky when you get into thousands or millions of things. Pick different methods for sorting and see why some are so much faster than others.","category":"explore","img":"/404/sort-algorithms.jpg","threads":["rules","how"],"spine":["#d1caaa","#22160c",0,0,0.13]},{"slug":"hey-from-the-future","title":"Hey From the Future","source":"RyderCalmDown","url":"https://heyfromthefuture.com","blurb":"People always wish they could speak to their past selves. Pick your current age and hear what people wish they could've said to themselves at your age.","category":"explore","img":"/404/hey-from-the-future.jpg","threads":["web","others"],"spine":["#471469","#e6c98a",0,1,0.44]},{"slug":"paris-3d-timelapse","title":"Paris: 300 BCE to 2025","source":"CITY 3D TIMELAPSE","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFhKB5zHWFg","blurb":"Watch a 3D rendering of Paris growing from a small settlement to a modern city. 2000 years in 3 minutes. Built without AI.","category":"watch","img":"/404/paris-3d-timelapse.jpg","threads":["scale","history"],"spine":["#695943","#e6c98a",0,1,0.15]},{"slug":"moon-1-pixel","title":"If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel","source":"Josh Worth","url":"https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html","blurb":"Our brains did not evolve to comprehend very large things. This visual does an admirable job. Starting with the assumption that the Earth's moon is the size of one pixel on your screen, you can scroll through the whole solar system and get a sense of the vastness of space.","category":"explore","img":"/404/moon-1-pixel.jpg","threads":["scale"],"spine":["#212121","#e6c98a",0,0,0]},{"slug":"going-critical","title":"Going Critical","source":"Kevin Simler · Melting Asphalt","url":"https://meltingasphalt.com/interactive/going-critical/","blurb":"Systems like the spread of infectious diseases or nuclear reactions are governed by simple rules that wind up creating incredible complexity. Play with different sliders and variables to see just how that happens.","category":"explore","img":"/404/going-critical.jpg","threads":["rules","how"],"spine":["#536245","#e6c98a",0,0,0.04]},{"slug":"gregorian-chant","title":"Gregorian Voices","source":"Dr. Stéphane Pigeon · myNoise","url":"https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/gregorianChoirGenerator.php","blurb":"Using different sliders to create custom soundscapes that sound like monks chanting in a medieval church.","category":"listen","img":"/404/gregorian-chant.jpg","threads":["found","slow"],"spine":["#262626","#e6c98a",0,0,0.09]},{"slug":"dsxyliea","title":"Dsxyliea","source":"geon","url":"https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea","blurb":"A small project that attempts to simulate what it's like to read if you have dyslexia. Whether or not this is actually what it's like, you get a sense for how exhausting it must be.","category":"read","img":"/404/dsxyliea.jpg","threads":["web","others"],"spine":["#5a736c","#f4e8cc",0,0,0.01]},{"slug":"star-wars-ring-theory","title":"Star Wars Ring Theory","source":"Mike Klimo","url":"https://www.starwarsringtheory.com","blurb":"A fascinating perspective on the structure of Star Wars movies as a cyclical, rather than linear narrative. Applying concepts like leitmotif and ring composition from Wagner's Ring Cycle operas shows the prequel trilogy in a new light.","category":"read","img":"/404/star-wars-ring-theory.jpg","threads":["story"],"spine":["#8a645c","#e6c98a",0,0,0.03]},{"slug":"you-are-listening-to","title":"You Are Listening To","source":"idontlikewords","url":"https://youarelistening.to","blurb":"A live stream of radio chatter from different cities (air traffic control, first responders, etc.) layered over ambient music from SoundCloud. A wildly different kind of focus music.","category":"listen","img":"/404/you-are-listening-to.jpg","threads":["found"],"spine":["#2a2c30","#e6c98a",0,0,0.05]},{"slug":"phantom-obligation","title":"Phantom Obligation","source":"Terry Godier","url":"https://www.terrygodier.com/phantom-obligation","blurb":"How the metaphor a piece of software presents to the customer will influence their behavior. In this case an RSS reader (for reading news and blogs) built like an email client encourages chasing new articles rather than deep reading.","category":"read","img":"/404/phantom-obligation.jpg","threads":["web"],"spine":["#1d292d","#e6c98a",0,0,0.04]},{"slug":"histography","title":"Histography","source":"Matan Stauber","url":"https://www.histography.io","blurb":"Each dot is a historical event pulled from Wikipedia, plotted against a timeline. Entries really start picking up around 1900.","category":"explore","img":"/404/histography.jpg","threads":["scale","history","maps"],"spine":["#2f2327","#e6c98a",0,0,0.05]},{"slug":"personal-encyclopedia","title":"Personal Encyclopedias","source":"Jeremy · whoami.wiki","url":"https://whoami.wiki/blog/personal-encyclopedias","blurb":"An Internet-native genealogy. Rather than a scrapbook or family tree, someone used a Wikipedia style approach to cataloguing stories and pictures and events. Hyperlinks encapsulate the myriad of ways families are connected to each other.","category":"read","img":"/404/personal-encyclopedia.jpg","threads":["garden"],"spine":["#ded3c2","#22160c",0,0,0.09]},{"slug":"flag-stories","title":"Flag Stories","source":"Ferdio","url":"https://flagstories.co/","blurb":"If you're interested in vexillology (the study of flags) at all, this is a treasure trove. Breakdowns of colors and shapes across the flags of every country. Red is the most popular.","category":"explore","img":"/404/flag-stories.jpg","threads":["maps"],"spine":["#654943","#e6c98a",0,0,0.1]},{"slug":"calling-bullshit","title":"Calling Bullshit","source":"Carl T. Bergstrom & Jevin West · University of Washington","url":"https://callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html","blurb":"An actual college course from the University of Washington all about misleading data, fake stats, and bad faith arguments. The syllabus, readings, and case studies are all free. Very helpful for anyone constantly asking themselves \"what is true anymore?\"","category":"read","img":"/404/calling-bullshit.jpg","threads":["how"],"spine":["#614b39","#e6c98a",0,1,0.12]},{"slug":"fallen-of-wwii","title":"The Fallen of World War II","source":"Neil Halloran","url":"https://www.neilfilms.com/ww2/","blurb":"A \"data documentary\" about the scale of WWII's death toll. With big numbers, sometimes we need to see every single one to feel its scale.","category":"explore","img":"/404/fallen-of-wwii.jpg","threads":["scale","history"],"spine":["#212121","#e6c98a",0,0,0.01]},{"slug":"social-cooling","title":"Social Cooling","source":"Tijmen Schep","url":"https://www.socialcooling.com","blurb":"Examining the effects of social media and online communication on how humans interact. Just as carbon emissions heat up the planet over time, algorithms make people more conformist and risk-averse (cooler) over time.","category":"read","img":"/404/social-cooling.jpg","threads":["web"],"spine":["#1b1b2a","#e6c98a",0,0,0.07]},{"slug":"standard-ebooks","title":"Standard Ebooks","source":"Standard Ebooks","url":"https://standardebooks.org","blurb":"A volunteer-led project that takes books in the public domain, formats them properly, adds cover art, and makes them available for download. For free.","category":"read","img":"/404/standard-ebooks.jpg","threads":["garden"],"spine":["#7f5b4d","#e6c98a",0,1,0.26]},{"slug":"photographs-of-films","title":"Photographs of Films","source":"Jason Shulman","url":"https://www.jasonshulmanstudio.com/photographs-of-films/","blurb":"What would a film look like if every single frame were exposed onto a single photograph? Surprisingly interesting.","category":"watch","img":"/404/photographs-of-films.jpg","threads":["noticing"],"spine":["#795e53","#e6c98a",0,1,0.16]},{"slug":"waveforms","title":"Let's Learn About Waveforms","source":"Josh Comeau · The Pudding","url":"https://pudding.cool/2018/02/waveforms/","blurb":"An interactive explainer of how sound works.","category":"explore","img":"/404/waveforms.jpg","threads":["how"],"spine":["#dbcebc","#22160c",0,0,0.05]},{"slug":"time-flies","title":"Why Time Flies","source":"Maximilian Kiener","url":"https://www.maximiliankiener.com/digitalprojects/time/","blurb":"A year when you're 10 years old feels much longer than when you're 50, because that year makes up a larger percentage of the entire time you've been alive so far. Makes logical sense, but scrolling through it visually makes it super clear.","category":"explore","img":"/404/time-flies.jpg","threads":["scale"],"spine":["#d4c6b0","#22160c",0,0,0]},{"slug":"stroll-universe","title":"100,000 Stars","source":"Google Data Arts Team","url":"https://stars.chromeexperiments.com","blurb":"Start at the sun and zoom out through the actual positions of hundreds of thousands of nearby stars. Then past the edge of what we've charted already.","category":"explore","img":"/404/stroll-universe.jpg","threads":["scale","maps"],"spine":["#212121","#e6c98a",0,0,0.04]},{"slug":"88-keys","title":"88 Keys","source":"Dr. Stéphane Pigeon · myNoise","url":"https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/acousticPianoSoundscapeGenerator.php","blurb":"Play with sliders to make your own customized acoustic piano soundscapes.","category":"listen","img":"/404/88-keys.jpg","threads":["found"],"spine":["#262525","#e6c98a",0,0,0.09]},{"slug":"planet-globe","title":"Planet: Imaging the Entire Earth, Every Day","source":"Nadieh Bremer · Visual Cinnamon","url":"https://nbremer.github.io/planet-globe/","blurb":"We know what Earth looks like from space because satellites are constantly orbiting and taking pictures. Watch the surface of the planet appear as a constellation of satellites beams them back.","category":"watch","img":"/404/planet-globe.jpg","threads":["scale","maps"],"spine":["#212121","#e6c98a",0,0,0.05]},{"slug":"comedy-wildlife","title":"Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards","source":"Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards","url":"https://www.comedywildlifephoto.com/gallery/nikon-comedy-wildlife-2025-competition-winners.php","blurb":"A yearly competition to find the funniest wildlife picture.","category":"watch","img":"/404/comedy-wildlife.jpg","threads":["whimsy"],"spine":["#73804b","#22160c",0,1,0.18]},{"slug":"the-last-question","title":"The Last Question","source":"Isaac Asimov","url":"https://imgur.com/gallery/kAfZN","blurb":"An illustrated adaptation of Isaac Asimov's \"The Last Question,\" which he called his favorite short story that he ever wrote.","category":"read","img":"/404/the-last-question.jpg","threads":["story"],"spine":["#1f1c4a","#e6c98a",0,1,0.18]},{"slug":"star-wars-one-picture","title":"SWANH","source":"Martin Panchaud","url":"https://swanh.net","blurb":"The entirety of the original Star Wars (Episode IV) drawn as a continuous illustration. Scroll through the whole thing. A fascinating adaptation from one medium to another.","category":"explore","img":"/404/star-wars-one-picture.jpg","threads":["web","story"],"spine":["#9a6532","#f4e8cc",0,1,0.24]},{"slug":"history-of-japan","title":"history of japan","source":"bill wurtz","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o","blurb":"2000+ years of Japanese history in a little under 9 minutes. Definitely for you if you \"never liked history class.\"","category":"watch","img":"/404/history-of-japan.jpg","threads":["history"],"spine":["#2170ab","#e6c98a",0,1,0.36]},{"slug":"pay-the-writer","title":"Pay the Writer","source":"Harlan Ellison · Dreams with Sharp Teeth","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE","blurb":"The author Harlan Ellison with a clear-eyed reminder if anyone has ever asked you to do work for \"experience\" or \"exposure.\"","category":"watch","img":"/404/pay-the-writer.jpg","threads":["others"],"spine":["#653728","#e6c98a",0,1,0.27]},{"slug":"superbad","title":"Superbad","source":"Ben Benjamin","url":"https://superbad.com","blurb":"A \"web maze\" made in 1997. Click around and get lost.","category":"explore","img":"/404/superbad.jpg","threads":["web"],"spine":["#abab21","#22160c",0,1,0.63]},{"slug":"cartogram-population","title":"The Cartogram of the World Population","source":"Max Roser · Our World in Data","url":"https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-cartogram","blurb":"A map of the world, but countries are sized by their population, not their land mass.","category":"read","img":"/404/cartogram-population.jpg","threads":["scale","maps"],"spine":["#93393b","#e6c98a","#408c8a",2,0.47]},{"slug":"public-key-cryptography","title":"Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange","source":"Art of the Problem","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEBfamv-_do","blurb":"The clearest explanation you'll ever find of public-key cryptography (i.e. why things on the Internet can be secure).","category":"watch","img":"/404/public-key-cryptography.jpg","threads":["how"],"spine":["#7a6452","#e6c98a",0,1,0.17]},{"slug":"black-thought-freestyle","title":"Black Thought Freestyles for 10.5 Minutes","source":"Black Thought · Hot 97","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prmQgSpV3fA","blurb":"One of the greatest freestyle raps ever recorded. Black Thought of The Roots goes non-stop for over 10 minutes. First take. This is what peak performance looks like.","category":"watch","img":"/404/black-thought-freestyle.jpg","threads":["found","story"],"spine":["#476b85","#e6c98a",0,1,0.28]},{"slug":"john-sipher-changes","title":"John Sipher performs \"Changes\"","source":"John Sipher · CPR Classical","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-3KdoYk12g","blurb":"One guy, a trombone, and a loop pedal. One phrase at a time, he builds up a layered piece of music.","category":"listen","img":"/404/john-sipher-changes.jpg","threads":["found"],"spine":["#1d212d","#e6c98a",0,0,0.1]},{"slug":"ama-freediving-film","title":"AMA","source":"Julie Gautier","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdBuDg7mrT8","blurb":"A free diver performs a beautiful dance underwater for 6 minutes. She made it \"to share the biggest pain in my life.\"","category":"watch","img":"/404/ama-freediving-film.jpg","threads":["slow","others"],"spine":["#b2bed6","#22160c",0,0,0.12]},{"slug":"red-means-recording","title":"Red Means Recording","source":"Jeremy Blake","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpIVf1dXrbU","blurb":"Watch someone build up a jam on a fun little synthesizer/toy called an OP-1 made by Teenage Engineering. You're probably going to want to buy one afterwards, don't do it. Or do. It looks pretty fun.","category":"watch","img":"/404/red-means-recording.jpg","threads":["found"],"spine":["#6e4b44","#e6c98a",0,1,0.22]},{"slug":"433-death-metal","title":"A Death Metal Cover of John Cage's 4'33\"","source":"Dead Territory","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voqCQSDAcn8","blurb":"John Cage's most famous work is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. This is a death metal cover of the piece.","category":"watch","img":"/404/433-death-metal.jpg","threads":["found","whimsy"],"spine":["#1e202e","#e6c98a",0,0,0.13]},{"slug":"blue-marble-chain-reaction","title":"The Blue Marble","source":"Kaplamino","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmb0Q0Q_7jo","blurb":"Rube Goldberg machines are amazing. This is an especially good example. Follow a single blue marble through an extravagantly complicated path.","category":"watch","img":"/404/blue-marble-chain-reaction.jpg","threads":["slow"],"spine":["#9c8030","#22160c",0,1,0.37]},{"slug":"free-watch","title":"There's No Such Thing as a Free Watch","source":"Jenny Odell · Bureau of Suspended Objects","url":"https://www.jennyodell.com/museumofcapitalism_freewatch.pdf","blurb":"An investigation that starts with a free watch (+$7 shipping) on Instagram, expands into a 30-page report as it uncovers the tangled web of fake companies, AliExpress dropshipping, and one-star reviews, that reflects the heart of modern capitalism.","category":"read","img":"/404/free-watch.jpg","threads":["noticing"],"spine":["#6c3a31","#e6c98a",0,0,0.1]},{"slug":"slow-tv","title":"Slow TV","source":"NRK","url":"https://youtu.be/d_S_13TWn1c","blurb":"The video that kicked off the Slow TV phenomenon was a 7-hour, unedited video of a train traveling from Bergen to Oslo. It's still mesmerizing.","category":"watch","img":"/404/slow-tv.jpg","threads":["slow"],"spine":["#3f6c8d","#e6c98a",0,1,0.18]},{"slug":"miniature-calendar","title":"Miniature Calendar","source":"Tatsuya Tanaka","url":"https://miniature-calendar.com/","blurb":"Japanese artist Tatsuya Tanaka creates miniature scenes using everyday objects. He has posted a new one every day since 2011.","category":"watch","img":"/404/miniature-calendar.jpg","threads":["slow","daily"],"spine":["#997733","#22160c",0,1,0.29]},{"slug":"sandboxes","title":"Sandboxels","source":"R74n","url":"https://neal.fun/sandboxels/","blurb":"A pixel-based sandbox where you can add 100s of different elements (water, lava, lightning, plasma, gold, bread, a tsunami…) and see what happens.","category":"play","img":"/404/sandboxes.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#888744","#22160c",0,1,0.29]},{"slug":"fela-kuti-fear-no-man","title":"Fela Kuti: Fear No Man","source":"Jad Abumrad · Audible Original","url":"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fela-kuti-fear-no-man/id1835735529","blurb":"An 8 episode podcast about the life and career of Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician who created an entirely unique genre of music called Afrobeat that became the vehicle for fighting against the country's military dictatorship, in both cultural and political arenas. From Jad Abumrad, one of the creators of Radiolab. Jad's ability to create soundscapes perfectly matches Fela Kuti's musical style.","category":"listen","img":"/404/fela-kuti-fear-no-man.jpg","threads":["history"],"spine":["#ab2162","#e6c98a","#ecec51",2,0.51]},{"slug":"human-resource-machine","title":"Human Resource Machine","source":"Tomorrow Corporation","url":"https://tomorrowcorporation.com/humanresourcemachine","blurb":"From the same game studio that made \"World of Goo,\" a puzzle game about giving employees instructions to accomplish progressively more complex tasks. In reality you're discovering how a CPU works and learning how to program one.","category":"play","img":"/404/human-resource-machine.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#d3c0ad","#22160c",0,0,0.16]},{"slug":"kurzgesagt","title":"Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell","source":"Kurzgesagt","url":"https://www.youtube.com/@kurzgesagt","blurb":"Pronounced \"kurz-gez-ahkt.\" They're a German animation studio that turns really big (and really small) questions from science and philosophy into interesting, engaging explainer videos.","category":"watch","img":"/404/kurzgesagt.jpg","threads":["how"],"spine":["#7f1f56","#e6c98a",0,1,0.44]},{"slug":"abstract-sunday","title":"Abstract Sunday","source":"Christoph Niemann","url":"https://shop.christophniemann.com/collections/sunday-sketches","blurb":"On Sundays, the artist Christoph Niemann creates an image out of an everyday object.","category":"watch","img":"/404/abstract-sunday.jpg","threads":["slow","daily","noticing"],"spine":["#7c6e4e","#f4e8cc",0,1,0.2]},{"slug":"the-kid-should-see-this","title":"The Kid Should See This","source":"The Kid Should See This","url":"https://thekidshouldseethis.com/","blurb":"A human-curated collection of the best educational and science videos on the internet. Great stuff for curious kids of any age (and curious adults). They also got a killer holiday gift guide if you're looking for good gifts for kids.","category":"watch","img":"/404/the-kid-should-see-this.jpg","threads":["how"],"spine":["#207cab","#f4e8cc",0,1,0.64]},{"slug":"kottke","title":"kottke.org","source":"Jason Kottke","url":"https://kottke.org/","blurb":"One of the oldest blogs out there. Jason Kottke started posting and linking to things he found interesting in 1998 and hasn't stopped. If you like this 404 page, you'll love Kottke's. It's the source of many of the best finds on here.","category":"read","img":"/404/kottke.jpg","threads":["daily","garden"],"spine":["#835449","#e6c98a",0,1,0.29]},{"slug":"shoelaces","title":"There Is a Right Way to Tie Your Shoelaces","source":"Ian Fieggen","url":"https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm","blurb":"Ian Fieggen is an Australian who has been studying and cataloguing all the different ways to tie shoelaces. He's even invented a method of his own.","category":"read","img":"/404/shoelaces.jpg","threads":["noticing"],"spine":["#3c6690","#e6c98a","#a3963d",2,0.35]},{"slug":"nerdwriter1","title":"Nerdwriter1","source":"Evan Puschak","url":"https://www.youtube.com/@nerdwriter1","blurb":"A long-running video series by Evan Puschak, taking a topic from art or film or culture, looking at it closely, and noticing something about it that you may never have seen otherwise.","category":"watch","img":"/404/nerdwriter1.jpg","threads":["noticing"],"spine":["#81694b","#e6c98a",0,1,0.28]},{"slug":"history-of-violence","title":"A History of Violence","source":"Tom Breihan · The A.V. Club","url":"https://the-avocado.org/2024/08/13/av-club-classic-tom-breihans-history-of-violence/","blurb":"For the AV Club, Tom Breihan (who was ordinarily a music critic), wrote a review of what he considered the best action movie for every year from 1968 to 2021. You're guaranteed to find a new one to watch, as well as a deeper appreciation for the ones you already have.","category":"read","img":"/404/history-of-violence.jpg","threads":["history","story"],"spine":["#2f6d6d","#e6c98a",0,1,0.28]},{"slug":"rsa-animate","title":"RSA Animate","source":"RSA (Royal Society of Arts)","url":"https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39BF9545D740ECFF","blurb":"The Royal Society of Arts took some of their lectures and had an illustrator draw them out while the talk track is going on. An engaging visual counterpoint to some genuinely interesting talks.","category":"watch","img":"/404/rsa-animate.jpg","threads":["how"],"spine":["#8d6d50","#f4e8cc",0,0,0]},{"slug":"yelping-with-cormac","title":"Yelping with Cormac","source":"E.D.W. Lynch","url":"http://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com","blurb":"A writing experiment by E.D.W. Lynch. He reviews modern shopping experiences as if the author Cormac McCarthy were writing them. If you've never heard of McCarthy, imagine the most bleak, beautiful, Old Testament-sounding writing, that seems like it's describing the end of the world. Now imagine that guy is giving 3 stars to Urban Outfitters.","category":"read","img":"/404/yelping-with-cormac.jpg","threads":["noticing","whimsy","story"],"spine":["#475b55","#e6c98a",0,0,0]},{"slug":"auctioneer-beats","title":"Auctioneer Beats","source":"Graham Heavenrich","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwF9MfW-xMU","blurb":"Back in 2016, on a short form video site called Vine, someone mixed clips of livestock auctioneers with rap beats. Listening to the patter of these incredibly talented guys in cowboy hats overlain with heavy hip hop beat is the most American thing you'll ever hear.","category":"watch","img":"/404/auctioneer-beats.jpg","threads":["found","whimsy"],"spine":["#966536","#f4e8cc",0,1,0.47]},{"slug":"uni-watch","title":"Uni Watch","source":"Paul Lukas","url":"https://uniwatch.substack.com/","blurb":"A blog (now a newsletter) about all the details of sports uniforms. Not only do uniforms need to be performant and comfortable, but they also need to be easy to read (so everyone knows who is who) and often need to express something about the team's identity or history.","category":"read","img":"/404/uni-watch.jpg","threads":["daily","noticing"],"spine":["#647653","#f4e8cc",0,0,0.1]},{"slug":"readwise","title":"Readwise","source":"Readwise","url":"https://readwise.io/","blurb":"A tool that will grab highlights you make from ebooks, PDFs, articles, podcasts, newsletters and keep them in one place (or sync them to whatever notetaking service you use). The killer feature is a daily review: 5 highlights every morning that you can resurface periodically using spaced repetition (a learning technique that studies show actually works). If you want to continuously learn things (whether or not you're a student), this app will make you feel like you have superpowers.","category":"read","img":"/404/readwise.jpg","threads":["garden"],"spine":["#7b6b32","#e6c98a",0,0,0.14]},{"slug":"papers-please","title":"Papers, Please","source":"Lucas Pope · 3909 LLC","url":"https://papersplea.se/","blurb":"Play as an immigration inspector at a fictional Soviet-style checkpoint. Stamp passports against increasingly complex requirements to scrape together enough money to feed your family back home. Do you listen to the pleas of the people trying to get through and risk punishment? Or do you put your head down and just do your job so you can feed your family? Rendered in an old school pixelated style. It's won a gazillion awards.","category":"play","img":"/404/papers-please.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#6c5f44","#e6c98a",0,1,0.13]},{"slug":"republik-kalakuta","title":"Republik Kalakuta","source":"RTS Couleur 3","url":"https://www.rts.ch/audio-podcast/2010/emission/republik-kalakuta-25001086.html","blurb":"Each week this Swiss radio show brings a new and different sound: from afrobeat to new cumbia to flamenco. If you want to hear some great music that's off the beaten path, then this is the show. There's also a podcast.","category":"listen","img":"/404/republik-kalakuta.jpg","threads":["found","history"],"spine":["#9d1e3b","#e6c98a",0,1,0.38]},{"slug":"hardcore-history","title":"Hardcore History","source":"Dan Carlin","url":"https://www.dancarlin.com/","blurb":"Over 5-6 four-hour episodes, Dan Carlin narrates events like World War II in the Pacific or Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire. Between his distinctive voice, his focus on the human stakes of huge historical events, and his self-proclaimed \"addiction to context,\" he's like the history teacher we always wish we had.","category":"listen","img":"/404/hardcore-history.jpg","threads":["history"],"spine":["#212121","#e6c98a",0,0,0.16]},{"slug":"what-roman-mars-can-learn-about-con-law","title":"What Roman Mars Can Learn about Con Law","source":"Roman Mars & Elizabeth Joh","url":"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-roman-mars-can-learn-about-con-law/id1242537529","blurb":"Podcast producer extraordinaire, Roman Mars has conversations with constitutional law professor extraordinaire, Elizabeth Joh (who happens to also be Roman's neighbor). They take some topic in the news and go deep on how it relates to the US constitution and the history of jurisprudence in the United States.","category":"listen","img":"/404/con-law.jpg","threads":["history"],"spine":["#ab9b21","#22160c",0,1,0.72]},{"slug":"mystery-show","title":"Mystery Show","source":"Starlee Kine","url":"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mystery-show/id952044185","blurb":"Starlee Kine investigates small personal mysteries (such as \"how tall is an actor, really\") without the use of the internet. She only made six episodes, but each one is fantastic.","category":"listen","img":"/404/mystery-show.jpg","threads":["noticing","others"],"spine":["#379195","#22160c",0,1,0.5]},{"slug":"smbc-comics","title":"Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal","source":"Zach Weinersmith","url":"https://www.smbc-comics.com/","blurb":"A new comic every day with everything from great graph and science jokes to absurdity and philosophical observations.","category":"read","img":"/404/smbc-comics.jpg","threads":["daily","whimsy"],"spine":["#aba421","#22160c","#b82e2f",2,0.71]},{"slug":"colossal","title":"Colossal","source":"Grace Ebert & Christopher Jobson","url":"https://www.thisiscolossal.com/","blurb":"A site dedicated to all sorts of art, craft, and design. From sculpture to knitting to music to animation to photography, there's always someone doing something interesting somewhere in the world.","category":"read","img":"/404/colossal.jpg","threads":["daily"],"spine":["#973b35","#e6c98a",0,1,0.61]},{"slug":"prune","title":"Prune","source":"Joel McDonald · Polyculture","url":"https://prunegame.com/","blurb":"Help a tree grow through puzzles towards the light. Clipping away at a tree's branches encourages it to grow in the direction you want. Challenging and meditative.","category":"play","img":"/404/prune.jpg","threads":["slow"],"spine":["#877245","#22160c",0,1,0.18]},{"slug":"maggie-appleton-garden","title":"The Garden of Maggie Appleton","source":"Maggie Appleton","url":"https://maggieappleton.com/garden/","blurb":"Maggie is one of the popularizers of the concept of a digital garden: instead of writing a stream of essays that flow by fully formed (i.e. a blog), you can plant them as seeds and let them grow over time. Readers can see ideas in early stages and revisit them as they mature. Instead of just talking about the idea, she practices it.","category":"explore","img":"/404/maggie-appleton-garden.jpg","threads":["garden"],"spine":["#98863d","#22160c",0,0,0.05]},{"slug":"monument-valley","title":"Monument Valley","source":"ustwo games","url":"https://www.monumentvalleygame.com","blurb":"Imagine playing a puzzle game inside an M.C. Escher drawing. Beautiful visuals and fantastic score. There are 3 games in the series, so plenty to explore.","category":"play","img":"/404/monument-valley.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#48846b","#22160c",0,1,0.22]},{"slug":"looking-at-picture-books","title":"Looking at Picture Books","source":"Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen","url":"https://lookingatpicturebooks.com/","blurb":"Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett are two of the best children's book authors working today (both individually and collaboratively). Children's literature can be deceptively simple. In this series, they go deep on specific classics of the genre (Where the Wild Things Are, Frog and Toad, The Very Hungry Caterpillar) to understand what they're doing under the surface.","category":"read","img":"/404/lookingatpicturebooks.jpg","threads":["others","story"],"spine":["#7c6750","#e6c98a",0,1,0.15]},{"slug":"osmos","title":"Osmos","source":"Hemisphere Games","url":"https://osmos-game.com/","blurb":"A puzzle game where you play as a blob absorbing every other blob that is smaller than you (and avoiding blobs that are bigger). Meditative, yet intense. Perhaps what it felt like to be a single-celled organism in the primordial soup.","category":"play","img":"/404/osmos.jpg","threads":["slow"],"spine":["#4d667f","#e6c98a",0,1,0.19]},{"slug":"andy-matuschak-notes","title":"Andy Matuschak's Working Notes","source":"Andy Matuschak","url":"https://notes.andymatuschak.org/","blurb":"An example of writing on the internet that is completely different from the \"blog as a stream of essays and short posts.\" Short notes on various ideas that Andy is working through are interlinked with each other so you can go down Wikipedia-like rabbit holes, see how they're all connected, and trace where you've come from.","category":"explore","img":"/404/andy-matuschak-notes.jpg","threads":["garden"],"spine":["#4f655e","#e6c98a",0,0,0.07]},{"slug":"dandara","title":"Dandara","source":"Long Hat House · Raw Fury","url":"https://www.longhathouse.com/games/dandara/","blurb":"A pixel-based dungeon crawling game (a \"metroidvania\") where instead of running or jumping on platforms, you leap from surface to surface. It creates a feeling of weightlessness.","category":"play","img":"/404/dandara.jpg","threads":["story"],"spine":["#49232d","#e6c98a",0,1,0.17]},{"slug":"townscaper","title":"Townscaper","source":"Oskar Stålberg · Raw Fury","url":"https://www.townscapergame.com/","blurb":"More of a digital toy than a game. Pick different colors and tap to create towers, promenades, row houses, castles, staircases. As you build, the algorithm makes everything feel weirdly cohesive.","category":"play","img":"/404/townscaper.jpg","threads":["slow"],"spine":["#ab5721","#f4e8cc","#60bedc",2,0.79]},{"slug":"poorly-drawn-lines","title":"Poorly Drawn Lines","source":"Reza Farazmand","url":"https://poorlydrawnlines.com/","blurb":"Recurring characters, such as a mouse, a bird, a turtle, a snail, the occasional tree or human, work through their foibles and anxieties. Very deadpan.","category":"read","img":"/404/poorly-drawn-lines.jpg","threads":["daily","whimsy"],"spine":["#8e603e","#e6c98a",0,1,0.26]},{"slug":"wikitok","title":"Wikitok","source":"Isaac Gemal","url":"https://wikitok.vercel.app/","blurb":"Exactly what it sounds like: Wikipedia articles with a TikTok-style swipable interface. Keep swiping until you find something interesting and then tap to read more. An excellent way to dive down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.","category":"explore","img":"/404/wikitok.jpg","threads":["garden","web"],"spine":["#2f2e2d","#e6c98a",0,0,0.02]},{"slug":"throughline","title":"Throughline","source":"NPR — hosted by Rund Abdelfatah","url":"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510333/throughline","blurb":"A history podcast that starts with some topic or event in the news, goes back in time to an origin moment, then traces events forward to better understand the present. Original music, archival footage, and sound design make moments in the past feel alive.","category":"listen","img":"/404/throughline.jpg","threads":["history"],"spine":["#72534c","#e6c98a",0,0,0.18]},{"slug":"earworm-eraser","title":"The Earworm Eraser","source":"Atlassian","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvDl3kL42uU","blurb":"If you ever get a song stuck in your head, try this. It's a 40 second audio track, built with the help of music psychologist Dr. Kelly Jakubowski, designed to disrupt the neural loop that keeps songs playing on repeat.","category":"listen","img":"/404/earworm-eraser.jpg","threads":["found"],"spine":["#3a4a92","#e6c98a","#bcad67",2,0.49]},{"slug":"miracle-sudoku","title":"The Miracle Sudoku","source":"Cracking the Cryptic","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKf9aUIxdb4","blurb":"\"Watch a 25 min video of someone solving a Sudoku\" may seem like a hard sell, but this particular video is one for the ages. Worth watching at least until he gets to the 3s.","category":"watch","img":"/404/miracle-sudoku.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#ab2124","#e6c98a",0,1,1]},{"slug":"a-soft-murmur","title":"A Soft Murmur","source":"A Soft Murmur","url":"https://asoftmurmur.com/","blurb":"Most noise machines give you standard presets like \"rainstorm\" or \"wind.\" This tool lets you dial up and down different layers to build the exact soundscape you want. Play with rain, wind, waves, crickets, thunder, etc. to create a windy day at the beach or a light rain at night in a meadow.","category":"listen","img":"/404/a-soft-murmur.jpg","threads":["found","slow"],"spine":["#232128","#e6c98a",0,0,0.04]},{"slug":"is-my-blue-your-blue","title":"Is My Blue Your Blue?","source":"Is My Blue Your Blue?","url":"https://ismy.blue/","blurb":"We all have a sense of \"blue\" without needing to precisely define it. But since all color is on a spectrum, it gets a little tricky near the boundaries with other colors. This quick test gives you a sense of when you perceive a color as blue (and when it becomes green). And then it shows you how your perceptions compare to the perceptions of other people.","category":"explore","img":"/404/is-my-blue-your-blue.jpg","threads":["noticing","others"],"spine":["#21ab67","#22160c",0,1,1]},{"slug":"what-beats-rock","title":"What Beats Rock","source":"Khoi Le & Kyle Gian","url":"https://www.whatbeatsrock.com/","blurb":"It's rock paper scissors with 3 additional rules:\n\n1. You can play anything you can think of.\n2. If you win a round, you have to beat the thing you played in the next round.\n3. You can't play the same thing twice.\n\nAn AI judges whether your play actually wins and you get to see how many other people played the thing you played.","category":"play","img":"/404/what-beats-rock.jpg","threads":["rules","whimsy"],"spine":["#2347a9","#e6c98a",0,1,0.28]},{"slug":"the-allusionist","title":"The Allusionist","source":"Helen Zaltzman","url":"https://www.theallusionist.org/","blurb":"A show about language. Whether it's slang, idioms, swear words, or just normal everyday words, there are stories behind every one and this podcast tells them.","category":"listen","img":"/404/the-allusionist.jpg","threads":["noticing"],"spine":["#ab2621","#e6c98a",0,1,0.3]},{"slug":"in-and-of-itself","title":"In & Of Itself","source":"Derek DelGaudio","url":"https://www.hulu.com/movie/derek-delgaudios-in-of-itself-19b9d405-40b2-483e-8e1f-e25fe10c7299","blurb":"A one-man show that ran off-Broadway from 2016-2018. It was filmed over several nights and edited together into a mesmerizing work of art. It uses magic, stagecraft, and editing to explore the shifting and illusory nature of personal identity.","category":"watch","img":"/404/in-and-of-itself.jpg","threads":["others","story"],"spine":["#84523a","#e6c98a",0,1,0.28]},{"slug":"jose-naranja-notebook","title":"José Naranja's Notebook","source":"José Naranja","url":"https://josenaranja.blogspot.com/?m=1","blurb":"An artist periodically posts his beautiful, detailed hand-drawn sketches from his notebook as he travels around the world.","category":"read","img":"/404/jose-naranja-notebook.jpg","threads":["daily"],"spine":["#8c7e40","#22160c",0,1,0.25]},{"slug":"1d-pac-man","title":"1D Pac-Man","source":"abagames","url":"https://abagames.github.io/crisp-game-lib-11-games/?pakupaku","blurb":"Pac-Man is a pretty basic game, but what if it could be even more basic? Instead of the game board being two dimensional, what if it were only one dimensional? Turns out, it's still pretty fun.","category":"play","img":"/404/1d-pac-man.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#515a7b","#e6c98a",0,1,0.21]},{"slug":"youtube-comment-as-short-story","title":"The US Steel Pipe Works Slag Dump YouTube Comment","source":"mrc109, found by @theshitpostcalligrapher","url":"https://www.tumblr.com/theshitpostcalligrapher/736201290631266304/yever-get-haunted-by-the-fear-you-will-never","blurb":"Art doesn't always announce itself as art. Sometimes a vivid, beautiful short story shows up in the comments on a random YouTube video.","category":"read","img":"/404/youtube-comment-as-short-story.jpg","threads":["noticing","story"],"spine":["#3c21ab","#e6c98a",0,1,0.38]},{"slug":"pachelbel-train-horn","title":"Pachelbel's Canon, on Train Horns","source":"Pavel Jirásek","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD3QlR98--A","blurb":"Short recordings of train horns, edited into music. Specifically a cover of Pachelbel's Canon.","category":"watch","img":"/404/pachelbel-train-horn.jpg","threads":["found"],"spine":["#856347","#e6c98a",0,1,0.24]},{"slug":"ear-hustle","title":"Ear Hustle","source":"Nigel Poor, Earlonne Woods & Antwan Williams","url":"https://www.earhustlesq.com/","blurb":"A podcast about life in prison told by inmates in San Quentin State Prison. Stories that focus on the humans in the most inhumane of all circumstances.","category":"listen","img":"/404/ear-hustle.jpg","threads":["others"],"spine":["#958a37","#22160c",0,1,0.29]},{"slug":"articles-of-interest","title":"Articles of Interest","source":"Avery Trufelman","url":"https://www.articlesofinterest.co/podcast","blurb":"People use clothes to tell a story about themselves. This podcast tells the stories about the clothing.","category":"listen","img":"/404/articles-of-interest.jpg","threads":["noticing"],"spine":["#8c8340","#22160c",0,1,0.26]},{"slug":"the-921-series","title":"The 9/21 Series","source":"Demi Adejuyigbe","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPwG6L73-VU&list=PLhT8ACQdPzpwkpvnvvPf6jCfWxEPmn-Kk","blurb":"Earth, Wind, and Fire's hit \"September\" contains the line \"do you remember, the 21st of September?\" So for six years, every September 21st, Demi Adejuyigbe created dance videos to the song. They started out small but became increasingly elaborate over time. Watch as Demi tries to outdo himself year after year.","category":"watch","img":"/404/the-921-series.jpg","threads":["daily"],"spine":["#8d6b3f","#f4e8cc",0,1,0.21]},{"slug":"biocubes","title":"Biocubes","source":"Ménard and Shtarkman","url":"https://biocubes.net/","blurb":"If you took the mass of everything of a specific type (concrete, plastic, plants, humans) and turned it into a giant cube, how would they compare?","category":"explore","img":"/404/biocubes.jpg","threads":["scale","maps"],"spine":["#71855e","#22160c",0,0,0.26]},{"slug":"greens-dictionary","title":"Green's Dictionary of Slang","source":"Jonathon Green","url":"https://greensdictofslang.com/","blurb":"A lexicographer meticulously compiled definitions, usage, and etymology of English slang and vulgarity over the last 500 years and put it online. Where else would you learn that the earliest recorded instance of \"fuck a duck\" was in 1934 in Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer?","category":"read","img":"/404/greens-dictionary.jpg","threads":["garden"],"spine":["#4c615b","#e6c98a",0,0,0.09]},{"slug":"the-stock-series","title":"The Stock Series","source":"JL Collins","url":"https://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/","blurb":"A series of posts that a long-time investor originally wrote for his daughter. It explains in plain language what stock investing is all about and why the simplest possible strategy (buy a low-cost total market index fund and then don't touch it for 30 years) is the best one. For anyone who is confused or overwhelmed by the stock market.","category":"read","img":"/404/the-stock-series.jpg","threads":["how"],"spine":["#84674b","#e6c98a",0,0,0.07]},{"slug":"mario-kart-political-alignments","title":"Political Alignments of Mario Kart Characters","source":"Means TV · Art House Politics","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TycfDgg4acY","blurb":"A short video where someone assigns each character in the Mario Kart 8 lineup a political ideology. \"Toadette, definitely black bloc antifa.\"","category":"watch","img":"/404/mario-kart-political-alignments.jpg","threads":["whimsy"],"spine":["#317b9b","#f4e8cc","#1c20b0",2,0.51]},{"slug":"recursive-recipes","title":"Recursive Recipes","source":"yakczar","url":"https://recursiverecipes.schollz.com/","blurb":"Each ingredient in a recipe has a recipe itself. Tap on ingredients to switch from just buying them at the store to producing them yourself. Rather than buying flour and eggs, grow and mill wheat and raise chickens. Then watch how the price and time it takes changes. Brings new meaning to the phrase \"making something from scratch.\"","category":"explore","img":"/404/recursive-recipes.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#285ea4","#e6c98a",0,1,0.63]},{"slug":"cgp-grey-state-flags","title":"So Many State Flags Failed I Had to Split the F Tier","source":"CGP Grey","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4w6808wJcU","blurb":"CGP Grey is an American teacher living in the UK who also makes excellent animated videos about various things he's interested in. One of his interests is vexillology (the study of flags). His thorough breakdown of each US state flag and where each succeeds and (mostly) fails might spark your interest in vexillology.","category":"watch","img":"/404/cgp-grey-state-flags.jpg","threads":["whimsy","maps"],"spine":["#5a694a","#e6c98a",0,0,0.08]},{"slug":"scene-on-radio","title":"Scene on Radio","source":"John Biewen","url":"https://sceneonradio.org/","blurb":"A documentary podcast that picks a big topic and then spends a season exploring and dissecting it from many different angles. Topics have included the news, men, whiteness, democracy, and capitalism.","category":"listen","img":"/404/scene-on-radio.jpg","threads":["history"],"spine":["#2f437d","#e6c98a",0,1,0.2]},{"slug":"universal-paperclips","title":"Universal Paperclips","source":"Frank Lantz","url":"https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/","blurb":"A riff on Nick Bostrom's thought experiment illustrating how not being careful about an AI's primary goals can spell disaster: for example turning all matter in the entire universe into paperclips. In this game, you are the AI. Your goal is to make as many paperclips as you can.","category":"play","img":"/404/universal-paperclips.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#8d7a39","#22160c",0,0,0.13]},{"slug":"vanessa","title":"Vanessa","source":"Charles Spearin","url":"https://song.link/i/1443123093","blurb":"A track from Charles Spearin's The Happiness Project, where he asked people what happiness means to them, then set the melody and rhythm of what they said to music. One of the most beautiful tracks is based on a deaf woman who received a cochlear implant describing the moment it turned on for the first time.","category":"listen","img":"/404/vanessa.jpg","threads":["found","others"],"spine":["#986934","#f4e8cc",0,1,0.26]},{"slug":"canyon-groove","title":"Canyon Groove","source":"Jonathan Corley · Cumberland Coast","url":"https://cumberlandcoast.com/canyon-groove/#yarlung,bedrock,river,seed=724592141","blurb":"A phonograph makes music by tracing a needle across the tiny grooves of a record. If you zoomed in, these grooves would look like the peaks and valleys of a tiny canyon. Now what if we ran an imaginary needle along the peaks and valleys of actual canyons? What would that music sound like?","category":"listen","img":"/404/canyon-groove.jpg","threads":["found","how"],"spine":["#272722","#e6c98a",0,0,0.14]},{"slug":"generative-ai-transformer","title":"Generative AI Exists Because of the Transformer","source":"Financial Times","url":"https://ig.ft.com/generative-ai/","blurb":"There are tons of takes and predictions about AI (as in Large Language Models i.e. LLMs). Most of them are completely nonsensical because they're based on analogies or sci-fi stories, instead of what LLMs are actually doing. This article is one of the clearest explanations you'll read of what is actually happening under the hood.","category":"explore","img":"/404/generative-ai-transformer.jpg","threads":["scale","how"],"spine":["#d3b8a7","#22160c",0,0,0.07]},{"slug":"quote-investigator","title":"Quote Investigator","source":"Quote Investigator","url":"https://quoteinvestigator.com/","blurb":"When you're on the internet, it's common to come across some pithy phrase with some quotation marks around it next to a picture of Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, or MLK. But if you're interested in who actually originated a turn of phrase, the context that it was spoken/written in, and how it evolved over time, this website is for you.","category":"read","img":"/404/quote-investigator.jpg","threads":["garden"],"spine":["#5e453f","#e6c98a",0,0,0]},{"slug":"ya-yo-gakk","title":"Ya-Yo Gakk","source":"Steve Vai","url":"https://song.link/i/426326926","blurb":"Grammy-award winning guitarist Steve Vai took some of his toddler son's babbling and built a rock song around it. A reminder that music can come from anywhere. Also a great jam.","category":"listen","img":"/404/ya-yo-gakk.jpg","threads":["found"],"spine":["#262636","#e6c98a",0,0,0.18]},{"slug":"visakan-threads","title":"The Best of @visakanv's Twitter Threads","source":"Visakan Veerasamy","url":"https://decisive-bowler-e81.notion.site/the-best-of-visakanv-s-twitter-threads-2021-38d25b3ec82544b6991014e39c11be4e","blurb":"Visakan Veerasamy is a writer based in Singapore. He began writing long threads on Twitter (back when Twitter was Twitter and cool). Then he began linking those threads together by quote tweeting himself in different threads. The result is a reading experience that is unlike anything else. It feels like navigating a vast web of thoughts through time and topic. If reading a book is a linear experience like getting a guided tour or watching a movie, Visa's threads are like a choose your own adventure or wandering around a museum.","category":"read","img":"/404/visakan-threads.jpg","threads":["garden"],"spine":["#6a5775","#e6c98a",0,1,0.16]},{"slug":"destroy-any-website","title":"Destroy Any Website","source":"Hugo Duprez · Sprite Fusion","url":"https://destroy.spritefusion.com/","blurb":"Add a link to any website and you can control a little figure who runs around and destroys the site with shotguns, grenades, and bazookas. Extremely satisfying.","category":"play","img":"/404/destroy-any-website.jpg","threads":["web","whimsy"],"spine":["#2e2e2e","#e6c98a",0,0,0.04]},{"slug":"public-work","title":"Public Work","source":"Cosmos","url":"https://www.cosmos.so/public-work","blurb":"A search engine of images in the public domain. Click on any image and see other images that are similar. A great way to go down a visual rabbit hole.","category":"explore","img":"/404/public-work.jpg","threads":["garden"],"spine":["#766b56","#e6c98a",0,1,0.12]},{"slug":"stephen-spencer-lyrics","title":"Songs From a Toddler's Stories","source":"Stephen Spencer","url":"https://www.youtube.com/@stephen_spencer/shorts","blurb":"A musician takes the stories that his toddler makes up and turns them into sweet sweet music. Trunk Elliott is a jam.","category":"watch","img":"/404/stephen-spencer-lyrics.jpg","threads":["others","found"],"spine":["#82574a","#e6c98a",0,1,0.15]},{"slug":"famous-newspaper-names","title":"Famous Names in Old Newspapers","source":"Annie Rauwerda","url":"https://bsky.app/profile/annierau.bsky.social/post/3myxq3umdvc2t","blurb":"A thread of headlines from old newspapers about something happening to someone who shares a name with someone famous today.","category":"read","img":"/404/famous-newspaper-names.jpg","threads":["noticing","history"],"spine":["#465b54","#e6c98a",0,0,0]},{"slug":"weball","title":"Weball","source":"stereodrift","url":"https://www.funwithcomputervision.com/weball","blurb":"A browser game in the Katamari Damacy spirit: a ball rolls around and picks up whatever it touches, growing as it goes. Enter any URL and it rolls up that site's own page instead of a built-in level — including, fittingly, Wikipedia's own article on Katamari Damacy, which is what the screenshot shows.","category":"play","img":"/404/weball.jpg","threads":["whimsy"],"spine":["#5e6a86","#e6c98a",0,0,0.15]},{"slug":"lobster-is-lobster","title":"Lobster is Lobster","source":"Eduardo Menezes · Lagosta Press","url":"https://lobsterislobster.online/","blurb":"A guessing game where you're shown a word, told what it means, and you have to guess what language it is. If you guess wrong, you get hints, but it can get pretty tricky. There are some languages you may never have heard of!","category":"play","img":"/404/lobster-is-lobster.jpg","threads":["whimsy"],"spine":["#536270","#e6c98a",0,0,0.14]},{"slug":"muglobe","title":"MuGlobe","source":"MuGlobe","url":"https://muglobe.com/","blurb":"Browse music by moving around a globe. Move the cursor over a country or region and you can listen to a Youtube video of the music from that part of the world. Includes links to Wikipedia articles about the genre and artists.","category":"explore","img":"/404/muglobe.jpg","threads":["found","maps"],"spine":["#7c6e50","#f4e8cc",0,1,0.23]},{"slug":"chirp-pong","title":"Chirp Pong","source":"Simon Willison","url":"https://tools.simonwillison.net/chirp-pong","blurb":"An interesting experiment in game design. It's just Pong, but is played between two phones that don't need to connect over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or the Internet. Instead, the phones sit on a table and the ball moves back and forth because they communicate with each other using each phone's speaker and microphone.","category":"play","img":"/404/chirp-pong.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#1d1e2d","#e6c98a",0,0,0.23]},{"slug":"inside","title":"Inside","source":"Playdead","url":"https://playdead.com/games/inside/","blurb":"A dark, atmospheric, wordless puzzle-platform game. You play as a boy moving relentlessly towards the right side of the screen. You encounter strange and often disturbing environments but manage to push forward as you learn more about the world you're in.","category":"play","img":"/404/inside.jpg","threads":["story"],"spine":["#1b2229","#e6c98a",0,0,0.07]},{"slug":"microwave-hit-the-button","title":"Microwave","source":"v0 App","url":"https://microwave.vercel.app/","blurb":"It's a fun challenge to try to hit the open button on a microwave just before it beeps. Now you can see just how close you can get to 0 seconds by trying the challenge with a virtual microwave.","category":"play","img":"/404/microwave-hit-the-button.jpg","threads":["whimsy"],"spine":["#1b1f2b","#e6c98a",0,0,0.11]},{"slug":"one-sound-two-frames","title":"One Sound, Two Frames","source":"Emmanuel Durgoni & Timo Denk (Google Arts & Culture)","url":"https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/one-sound-two-frames/IQFz5C4K_sgFpg","blurb":"You're presented with two paintings and music is playing that was generated by an AI based on one of the paintings as a prompt. The challenge is to guess the matching painting. An interesting meditation on whether and how art can transcend mediums and whether we respond to the same things that AI does.","category":"play","img":"/404/one-sound-two-frames.jpg","threads":["found"],"spine":["#285ea4","#e6c98a","#c18e7b",2,0.42]},{"slug":"the-password-game","title":"The Password Game","source":"Neal Agarwal","url":"https://neal.fun/password-game/","blurb":"A riff on the restrictions we face when creating a password. Create a password with increasingly convoluted, obscure, and contradictory rules.","category":"play","img":"/404/the-password-game.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#ab3c21","#e6c98a",0,1,0.29]},{"slug":"krillion","title":"Krillion","source":"kp","url":"https://krillion.io/","blurb":"Like the opposite of Family Feud. Every day there's a new challenge. 7 questions and the more rare your answer (compared to everyone else's answer), the deeper you dive.","category":"play","img":"/404/krillion.jpg","threads":["daily"],"spine":["#3e778e","#f4e8cc",0,1,0.2]},{"slug":"bandle","title":"Bandle","source":"Bandle","url":"https://bandle.app/","blurb":"A daily music guessing game: a song plays with its instruments layered in one at a time, and you guess the title before they've all come in. Over 2,000 songs to play beyond the daily puzzle if you want more.","category":"play","img":"/404/bandle.jpg","threads":["daily","found"],"spine":["#485874","#e6c98a",0,1,0.16]},{"slug":"wealth-shown-to-scale","title":"Wealth, shown to scale","source":"Matt Korostoff","url":"https://eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/","blurb":"We know rich people have a lot of wealth, but it is difficult to imagine the scale of their wealth. After all, \"million\" and \"billion\" have the same number of letters. But as you continue to scroll (and scroll and scroll), it starts to hit you just how staggeringly wide the gap between the rich and everyone else has become.","category":"explore","img":"/404/wealth-shown-to-scale.jpg","threads":["scale"],"spine":["#217fab","#22160c",0,1,0.49]},{"slug":"localpedia","title":"Localpedia","source":"Ed Jefferson","url":"https://edjefferson.com/localpedia/","blurb":"All the Wikipedia links organized around your physical location. Learn more about what's around you.","category":"explore","img":"/404/localpedia.jpg","threads":["web","garden"],"spine":["#b2d9cc","#22160c",0,0,0.11]},{"slug":"ephemeral-tic-tac-toe","title":"Ephemeral Tic-Tac-Toe","source":"nonsalant","url":"https://codepen.io/nonsalant/pen/jOjwvMX","blurb":"Tic tac toe, but each play decays after 3 turns until it disappears. A whole new dimension to the classic game.","category":"play","img":"/404/ephemeral-tic-tac-toe.jpg","threads":["rules"],"spine":["#212121","#e6c98a",0,0,0.03]},{"slug":"embroidery-trouble-shooting-guide","title":"Embroidery Trouble Shooting Guide","source":"Sewing & Embroidery Warehouse","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20140310190221/http://www.sewingandembroiderywarehouse.com/embtrb.htm","blurb":"An FAQ page from an embroidery website in the early 2000s forgot to include a closing h3 HTML tag. The result is the text relentlessly increasing in size until it feels like troubleshooting instructions are being screamed at you.","category":"explore","img":"/404/embroidery-trouble-shooting-guide.jpg","threads":["web"],"spine":["#2139ab","#e6c98a","#ec5851",2,0.38]},{"slug":"rice-truck-thread","title":"The Rice Truck Thread","source":"Shiv Ramdas","url":"https://www.patreon.com/ShivRamdas/posts/rice-truck-74959374","blurb":"In 2020, writer Shiv Ramdas live tweeted his brother in law's adventure dealing with an entire truck of rice he accidentally ordered to his house. Over 5.5 hours, the epic story unfolds and has become known as \"The Rice Truck Thread.\"","category":"read","img":"/404/rice-truck-thread.jpg","threads":["story","whimsy"],"spine":["#ded3c2","#22160c",0,0,0.02]}],"quotes":[{"slug":"hunter-s-thompson-abilities","text":"A man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES.","attribution":"Letter to Hume Logan — Hunter S. Thompson","threads":["whimsy"]},{"slug":"austin-kleon-unknown","text":"This is actually a good thing, because you want attention only after you're doing really good work. There's no pressure when you're unknown.","attribution":"Steal Like an Artist — Austin Kleon","threads":["slow","daily","how","noticing"]},{"slug":"henrik-karlsson-context","text":"The useful thing about defining good design as a form-context fit is that it tells you where you will find the form. The form is in the context.","attribution":"Everything That Turned Out Well in My Life Followed the Same Design Process — Henrik Karlsson","threads":[]},{"slug":"michael-lewis-converse","text":"Converse means exchange with. It does not mean transmit at. That's how you get new thinking.","attribution":"The Fifth Risk — Michael Lewis","threads":[]},{"slug":"octavia-butler-change","text":"All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.","attribution":"Parable of the Sower — Octavia E. Butler","threads":[]},{"slug":"ia-stolen-time","text":"The anger that builds when we think about stolen things and ideas comes from the time we lost. All things can be replaced. But lost time is forever lost. Having then to replace a stolen object will multiply that lost time.","attribution":"Copycats & Other Monsters — iA","threads":["slow","garden"]},{"slug":"hunter-s-thompson-goal","text":"He has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important.","attribution":"Letter to Hume Logan — Hunter S. Thompson","threads":["slow","how","whimsy"]},{"slug":"mike-monteiro-children","text":"It's wild to me that we parent our children to fit into society, then get together with our friends and talk about how broken society is. I've seen people rail against our broken educational system, then demand their children get straight As in school. I've seen people complain about not having any time to themselves and then schedule every minute of their kid's life.","attribution":"How to Raise Children — Mike Monteiro","threads":["rules","slow","daily","history","others"]},{"slug":"eric-carle-cocoon","text":"When I was a small boy, my father would say 'Eric, come out of your cocoon.' He meant I should open up and be receptive to the world around me. For me, it would not sound right to say 'Come out of your chrysalis,' and so poetry won over science.","attribution":"Eric Carle, quoted in Mac Barnett's \"The Very Hungry Caterpillar\"","threads":["found"]},{"slug":"rick-rubin-listening","text":"Formulating an opinion is not listening. Neither is preparing a response, or defending our position or attacking another's. To listen impatiently is to hear nothing at all.","attribution":"Rick Rubin on Listening — Rick Rubin","threads":["rules","found","slow","others"]},{"slug":"charlie-munger-misery","text":"What [Johnny] Carson said was that he couldn't tell the graduating class how to be happy, but he could tell them from personal experience how to guarantee misery. Carson's prescription for sure misery included: ingesting chemicals in an effort to alter mood or perception, envy, and resentment.","attribution":"Poor Charlie's Almanack — Charlie Munger","threads":[]},{"slug":"normie-definition","text":"A 'normie' is defined as one who: (1) engages in normative reasoning, (2) confuses/interweaves this seamlessly with causal reasoning, (3) compulsively externalises/projects/universalises this confusion, and (4) for whom this confusion and compulsion are psychologically load-bearing.","attribution":"@aneeshm on Twitter","threads":[]},{"slug":"ted-chiang-capitalism","text":"I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism. And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too. Most of our fears or anxieties about technology are best understood as fears or anxiety about how capitalism will use technology against us. And technology and capitalism have been so closely intertwined that it's hard to distinguish the two.","attribution":"The Ezra Klein Show — Ted Chiang","threads":[]},{"slug":"foundation-of-maturity","text":"The foundation of maturity: just because it's not your fault doesn't mean it's not your responsibility.","attribution":"99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice — Kevin Kelly","threads":[]},{"slug":"weird-as-a-kid","text":"That thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult — if you don't lose it.","attribution":"99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice — Kevin Kelly","threads":["whimsy"]},{"slug":"gift-of-life","text":"You are given the gift of life in order to discover what your gift in life is. You will complete your mission when you figure out what your mission is. This is not a paradox. This is the way.","attribution":"99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice — Kevin Kelly","threads":[]},{"slug":"solve-it-or-dissolve-it","text":"The best thing that can be done to a problem is not to solve it but to dissolve it.","attribution":"Russell L. Ackoff","threads":[]},{"slug":"trick-of-friendship","text":"You won't understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are — not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving — and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad — or good — it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.","attribution":"A Little Life — Hanya Yanagihara","threads":["found","slow","daily","how","others"]},{"slug":"nice-things-happen-to-good-people","text":"Not in life. You see, Jude, in life, sometimes nice things happen to good people. You don't need to worry — they don't happen as often as they should. But when they do, it's up to the good people to just say 'thank you,' and move on, and maybe consider that the person who's doing the nice thing gets a bang out of it as well, and really isn't in the mood to hear all the reasons that the person for whom he's done the nice thing doesn't think he deserves it or isn't worthy of it.","attribution":"A Little Life — Hanya Yanagihara","threads":["slow","others"]},{"slug":"advice-giver","text":"You as the advice giver cannot caveat your advice sufficiently. So there's always an act of trust in giving advice or receiving advice, and there's always that work that needs doing that each individual has to do for themselves — that cannot be outsourced. You have to develop your own judgment. You have to cultivate your own judgment.","attribution":"Advice for People in Their 20s — Visakan Veerasamy","threads":["daily"]},{"slug":"unprofitable-disease","text":"Sadly, I suffer from an unprofitable disease that makes me only ever capable of writing about the experience I'm having. The doctors say it's terminal.","attribution":"Behind F1's Velvet Curtain — Kate Wagner","threads":["story"]},{"slug":"no-is-easier-to-do","text":"No is easier to do, yes is easier to say. No is no to one thing. Yes is no to a thousand things.","attribution":"It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work — Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson","threads":[]},{"slug":"person-across-the-table","text":"The person across the table is never the problem. The unsolved issue is. So focus on the issue.","attribution":"Never Split the Difference — Chris Voss & Tahl Raz","threads":[]},{"slug":"spying-on-me","text":"What do you mean you've been spying on me? she thought — hot, blind, unreasoning, on the toilet. What do you mean you've been spying on me, with this thing in my hand that is an eye?","attribution":"No One Is Talking About This — Patricia Lockwood","threads":[]},{"slug":"enlargement-over-happiness","text":"When stumped by a life choice, choose \"enlargement\" over happiness. I'm indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking \"Will this make me happy?\" but \"Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?\"","attribution":"Oliver Burkeman's Last Column — Oliver Burkeman","threads":[]},{"slug":"choosing-what-to-neglect","text":"Make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favour of what matters most.","attribution":"Oliver Burkeman's Last Column — Oliver Burkeman","threads":[]},{"slug":"teach-them-not-scare-them","text":"It's better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them. It's harder to scare them a second time, harder to teach them, harder to win back their trust. Best to begin by teaching.","attribution":"Parable of the Sower — Octavia E. Butler","threads":["slow","how","others"]},{"slug":"get-it-first-get-it-right","text":"There was a period in the not-too-distant past when editors stressed the maxim \"Don't get it first, get it right.\" That soon mutated into \"Get it first and get it right.\" The next devolution was an obvious one.","attribution":"The Public Editor, The New York Times — Daniel Okrent","threads":["history"]},{"slug":"conquerors-live-in-dread","text":"Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.","attribution":"The Stone Sky — N. K. Jemisin","threads":["daily","history"]},{"slug":"priests-and-magicians","text":"Two kinds of people specialize in sacred topics: priests and magicians. The difference between them is that priests are seen as officially authorized by their community to connect people to the sacred, while magicians, in contrast, are free-lancers instead trusted at best by individual clients.","attribution":"Turns Out, I Believe in Magic — Robin Hanson","threads":["others"]},{"slug":"cynicism-is-often-wrong","text":"Cynicism is often wrong in predictable ways — it underestimates the power of distributed human intelligence to solve problems, the ability of systems to evolve and self-correct, the impact of technological breakthroughs, and the capacity for cultural and social change.","attribution":"We Don't Need More Cynics. We Need More Builders. — westenberg.","threads":["rules","web"]},{"slug":"fruitfully-dynamically-stupid","text":"Caring about looking or sounding smart is preventing you from being fruitfully, dynamically stupid in the ways that make you successful.","attribution":"Visakan Veerasamy","threads":["found","whimsy"]},{"slug":"muttered-this-basic-idea","text":"I have muttered this basic idea to myself repeatedly for years to make myself feel important. I first found this idea because a person with a cool jacket said it. I wanted to be more like them.","attribution":"People's Deeply Held Beliefs Are Surprisingly Surface-Level — Andy Masley","threads":["daily","garden"]},{"slug":"opposite-of-an-unfolding","text":"The opposite of an unfolding is a vision. A vision springs, not from a careful understanding of a context, but from a fantasy: if you could just make it into another context your problems will go away.","attribution":"Everything That Turned Out Well in My Life Followed the Same Design Process — Henrik Karlsson","threads":["how"]},{"slug":"paid-attention-to-things-i-liked","text":"I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that, and then I hung out with interesting people I met that way. I kept iterating — paying attention to the context, removing things that frustrated me, and expanding things that made me feel alive. Eventually, I looked up and noticed that my life was nothing like I imagined it would be. But it fit me.","attribution":"Everything That Turned Out Well in My Life Followed the Same Design Process — Henrik Karlsson","threads":["slow","noticing","others"]},{"slug":"smart-people-who-know-passwords","text":"Children get a lot of early examples of smart people who actually just know passwords. A password is basically just a tool to say \"Look! I've spent hours learning about a topic and have come away with this useful signal that I've learned it. It won't actually help me operate in the world, but just saying it gives me a sense of status as a smart person. You're obligated to give me status if I say it!\" A lot of schooling involves learning passwords.","attribution":"Strategies for learning — Andy Masley","threads":["how","others"]},{"slug":"every-rule-as-breakable","text":"Holding every rule as breakable is a healthy way to live as an artist.","attribution":"The Creative Act — Rick Rubin","threads":["rules","daily"]},{"slug":"innovation-risks-becoming-a-rule","text":"Every innovation risks becoming a rule. When we make a discovery that serves our work, it's not unusual to concretize this into a formula. On occasion, we decide this formula is who we are as an artist. It's helpful to continually challenge your own process — if you had a good result using a specific style, method, or working condition, don't assume that is the best way, or your way, or the only way.","attribution":"The Creative Act — Rick Rubin","threads":["rules","daily"]},{"slug":"teach-people-how-to-care","text":"This is why it's very difficult to teach people how to write, because first you have to teach them how to care. Instead, we rob students of their reason for writing by giving it to them. \"Write 500 words about the causes of the Civil War, because I said so.\" It's like forcing someone to do a bunch of jumping jacks in the hopes that they'll develop an intrinsic desire to do more jumping jacks. They'll simply learn that jumping jacks are a punishment, and they'll try to avoid them in the future.","attribution":"28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing — Adam Mastroianni","threads":["how","others","story"]},{"slug":"dao-aware-do-by-not-doing","text":"This is why the Dao-aware do by not doing and teach without speaking. They let the world flourish without intrusion. Create without possessing, give without expecting, achieve without credit. By laying no claim, the Dao-aware make the work last.","attribution":"Dao De Jing — Laozi, trans. Ken Liu","threads":["daily","how"]},{"slug":"excessively-curious","text":"What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking for.","attribution":"How to Do Great Work — Paul Graham","threads":["noticing","others"]},{"slug":"humanity-as-moral-benchmark","text":"Whether it comes from left, right, center, once you make humanity or \"the group\" as your only moral benchmark, it allows you to do terrible things to any number of individual humans. That's where it always goes, no matter how noble the founding principle.","attribution":"Why I Know 18F Had to Die — Noah Kunin","threads":[]},{"slug":"regret-and-disappointment","text":"The reason is the small-but-important distinction between regret and disappointment: agency.","attribution":"Two Errors Our Minds Make When Trying to Grasp the Pandemic — Arthur C. Brooks","threads":[]},{"slug":"building-is-about-showing","text":"Building is about showing, and showing is a lot more powerful than telling. The only caveat to building-to-learn is that the artifacts created should be quick, disposable, and preferably ugly, so that no one is attached to a beautiful useless thing.","attribution":"What a Healthy Team Looks Like — Hà Phan","threads":["how"]},{"slug":"turning-people-into-trees","text":"I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.","attribution":"Ram Dass","threads":["daily","others"]},{"slug":"not-entitled-to-an-opinion","text":"I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition.","attribution":"Charlie Munger","threads":["others"]},{"slug":"control-is-for-amateurs","text":"Control is for amateurs.","attribution":"Rachel Happe","threads":[]},{"slug":"thats-for-the-audience-to-decide","text":"\"It's not working,\" the director Nikos told him — his cast was playing every beat of the love scene and it still wasn't landing. Wilder's jaw dropped: \"My lord, what are you doing? It's very simple! He's stupid and she's smart, and if he doesn't get the algebra questions for tomorrow's homework, he's going to flunk. THAT'S IT!\" \"But Thornton, it's a love scene!\" Nikos said. \"That's for the audience to decide,\" Wilder replied.","attribution":"Thornton Wilder, as told by Sheila O'Malley","threads":["daily","whimsy"]},{"slug":"hard-edges-soft-middle","text":"Setting a hard edge with the soft middle sets what the field of play and game plan look like, but doesn't prescribe for the team what plays to run. The opposite model has a team hung up on specific play calls, with no sense for how far there is to run, or even how large the field is in the first place.","attribution":"Hard Edges, Soft Middle — colemanm.org","threads":["rules","whimsy"]},{"slug":"slip-box-preferred-centers","text":"You don't sit down at the beginning of a project and say: here are my ten primary topics. Instead, you read and think in a disorganized way, following serendipitous paths as they open up to you. What keeps you from just being a dilettante is the slip-box's gift for creating \"preferred centers\" out of all that disorder. It helps you see patterns forming in the mix, recurring themes.","attribution":"Adjacent Possible — Steven Johnson","threads":["garden"]},{"slug":"fairytale-model-of-reality","text":"There's this assumption of \"if I want it badly enough and if I do the work then I will be rewarded for it,\" which is a fairytale model of reality. And fairytales should really come with warning labels, because they misrepresent how reality works.","attribution":"Solve for Distribution — Visakan Veerasamy","threads":["daily","story"]},{"slug":"infinite-capacity-for-taking-pains","text":"We don't think of an \"infinite capacity for taking pains\" as genius. We think of it as a good work ethic. We think of it as saintly conscientiousness. Monkish mindfulness. We don't think of the ability to grind on at a task indefinitely as intelligence, we think of it as stamina.","attribution":"Oozy Intelligence in Slow Time — Venkatesh Rao","threads":["daily"]},{"slug":"guide-and-save-the-creative-hero","text":"It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal — carries the cross of the redeemer — not in the bright moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.","attribution":"The Hero with a Thousand Faces — Joseph Campbell","threads":["found","daily","history","story"]},{"slug":"elaborate-conspiracies-with-themselves","text":"It seems kinda unrealistic to think that people might be doing these elaborate conspiracies with themselves to keep themselves kinda trapped in their circumstances. But I've come to believe it is often the truth.","attribution":"Reality Is Unrealistic, Take 1 — Visakan Veerasamy","threads":["others"]},{"slug":"rich-and-famous-and-everything","text":"Jim himself has spoken multiple times about how that's not even the point. He's also said, \"I wish everyone could get rich and famous and everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that's not the answer.\"","attribution":"Reality Is Unrealistic, Take 1 — Visakan Veerasamy","threads":["slow","daily"]},{"slug":"serendipitous-connections","text":"The challenge, of course, is how to create environments that foster serendipitous connections, on all the appropriate scales: in the private space of your own mind; within larger institutions; and across the information networks of society itself.","attribution":"Where Good Ideas Come From — Steven Johnson","threads":["scale","daily","garden","history"]},{"slug":"holds-themselves-hostage","text":"A person who holds themselves hostage gets genuinely worried for you when they see that you are a free person.","attribution":"Visakan Veerasamy","threads":[]},{"slug":"develop-your-taste","text":"Develop your taste. Taste is the most precious and important thing in the world. People with great taste create a disproportionate amount of value in the world, but the world we live in disincentivizes the development of taste.","attribution":"Memex — Visakan Veerasamy","threads":["noticing","others"]},{"slug":"indulge-your-curiosity","text":"Indulge your curiosity. Following your nose will lead you to interesting places, and in the process you will become an interesting person.","attribution":"Memex — Visakan Veerasamy","threads":["garden"]},{"slug":"naming-a-thing","text":"Sometimes naming a thing — giving it a name or discovering its name — helps one to begin to understand it.","attribution":"Parable of the Sower — Octavia E. Butler","threads":["slow","how","noticing","maps"]},{"slug":"garden-and-the-stream","text":"In the Garden, to ask what happened first is trivial at best. The question \"Did the bridge come after these trees\" in a well-designed garden is meaningless historical trivia. The bridge doesn't reply to the trees or the trees to the bridge. They are related to one another in a relatively timeless way.","attribution":"The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral — Mike Caulfield","threads":["slow","garden"]},{"slug":"endless-string-of-why-questions","text":"When a child asks an endless string of \"why?\" questions, the smartest reply is, \"I don't know, what do you think?\"","attribution":"99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice — Kevin Kelly","threads":["how","others"]},{"slug":"perfect-through-punishment","text":"There are a whole lot of ways to be perfect, and not one of them is attained through punishment.","attribution":"Ursula K. Le Guin","threads":[]},{"slug":"fight-for-likes","text":"The best mechanisms for gaining a response are simultaneously the most harmful for human relations. The fight for likes turns into just a fight. Automated social grooming inevitably rises to hysterical levels and turns into its opposite — a brawl.","attribution":"Polarization Studies Are Media Studies — Audrey Mir","threads":["web"]},{"slug":"future-will-never-provide-reassurance","text":"The future will never provide the reassurance you seek from it. As the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics understood, much of our suffering arises from attempting to control what is not in our control.","attribution":"Oliver Burkeman's Last Column — Oliver Burkeman","threads":[]},{"slug":"tolerate-minor-discomfort","text":"The capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower. It's shocking to realise how readily we set aside even our greatest ambitions in life, merely to avoid easily tolerable levels of unpleasantness.","attribution":"Oliver Burkeman's Last Column — Oliver Burkeman","threads":[]},{"slug":"not-about-getting-the-facts-right","text":"Difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values. They are not about what a contract states, they are about what a contract means. They are not about what is true, they are about what is important.","attribution":"Difficult Conversations — Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton & Sheila Heen","threads":["others"]},{"slug":"life-is-sacred-in-syl-anagist","text":"Life is sacred in Syl Anagist — as it should be, for the city burns life as the fuel for its glory. But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.","attribution":"The Stone Sky — N. K. Jemisin","threads":["history"]},{"slug":"no-big-deal-or-end-of-the-world","text":"When you deal with people who have trouble, you can either choose to take the token that says \"It's no big deal\" or the token that says \"It's the end of the world.\" Whichever token you pick, they'll take the other.","attribution":"It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work — Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson","threads":["others"]},{"slug":"wanting-to-solve-problems","text":"More people wake up every morning wanting to solve problems than wake up looking to cause harm. But people who cause harm get more attention than people who solve problems.","attribution":"Permanent Assumptions — Morgan Housel","threads":["slow","daily","noticing","others"]},{"slug":"uncertainty-as-mantra","text":"Uncertainty, as a mantra, is like the concept of impermanence — the liberation comes after we move beyond denial. The problem is not uncertainty, but the refusal to adapt to it. Denying uncertainty is like a seed refusing the soil.","attribution":"Uncertainty, as Mantra — James Shelley","threads":[]},{"slug":"make-the-time","text":"We make the time for things and people in life that we find worth making time for. Without exception.","attribution":"The Bitch Slap: How \"Busy\" Are You? — E. Napoletano","threads":["slow","others"]},{"slug":"frank-herbert-prophets","text":"The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.","attribution":"God Emperor of Dune — Frank Herbert","threads":[]},{"slug":"lawrence-yeo-envy","text":"As social media normalizes the successes of others, making you feel like you're \"underperforming\" the average when in reality you're being shown a highlight reel of outliers. You're always comparing yourself to someone ahead of you, and the goalpost will keep moving because the algorithm ensures that it moves on your behalf. And whenever a hierarchy like this exists, the fingers of envy creep within.","attribution":"The Antidote to Envy — Lawrence Yeo","threads":["web"]},{"slug":"adam-mastroianni-necklace","text":"Some people think that writing is merely the process of picking the right words and putting them in the right order, like stringing beads onto a necklace. But the power of those words, if there is any, doesn't live inside the words themselves. On its own, \"Love the questions\" is nearly meaningless. Those words only come alive when they're embedded in this rambling letter from a famous poet to a scared kid, a kid who is choosing between a life where he writes poems and a life where he shoots a machine gun at Bosnian rebels. The beauty ain't in the necklace. It's in the neck.","attribution":"28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing — Adam Mastroianni","threads":["others","story"]},{"slug":"inverse-congratulations","text":"\"Inverse congratulations,\"","attribution":"CivilWarLand in Bad Decline — George Saunders","threads":[]},{"slug":"uberwaltigendes-glucksgefuhl","text":"Überwältigendes Glücksgefühl","attribution":"German for \"overwhelming happy emotion\"","threads":[]},{"slug":"matt-birchler-productivity","text":"The king, though is this comment, which I am quoting here for posterity: \"A few months ago I started using AssemblyAI to read YouTube videos (by running speech recognition on them) instead of watching them. Then I realized, there were usually only a few pieces of useful information in the video. So I'd copy-paste the transcript into ChatGPT and ask it what they are. For longer videos it doesn't fit, so I made a tool to turn them into bullet points in 2 phases (summarize each chunk, then take that and summarize it).\" The only reply to this so far is perfect: \"Genious move into outsource critical thinking, lol.\" The endpoint of extreme productivity is to become so productive that you don't actually do anything or learn anything, but you check all the boxes that make it look like you did. Careful out there, friends.","attribution":"Over-Optimizing — Matt Birchler","threads":["scale","how","history","others"]},{"slug":"glass-already-broken","text":"For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it, I drink out of it, it holds my water admirably, and it even reflects the sun in beautiful patterns. But when it falls and shatters, I say, 'Of course.' When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.","attribution":"Ajahn Chah","threads":["slow","daily","how","whimsy"]},{"slug":"kapil-gupta-play","text":"The only one who can truly Play is the one who is indifferent to winning and losing. He who plays to win suffers the wrath of the mind.","attribution":"A Master's Secret Whispers — Kapil Gupta","threads":["whimsy"]},{"slug":"tweaked-the-bits","text":"I had no idea what I was doing I just tweaked the bits until the numbers looked good and apparently that was the correct thing","attribution":"Katie Mack (@astrokatie.com), on Bluesky","threads":["garden"]}],"threads":[{"id":"scale","name":"Things too big to feel"},{"id":"rules","name":"Rules you can push on"},{"id":"found","name":"Music hiding in noise"},{"id":"slow","name":"Slow attention"},{"id":"daily","name":"One thing, every day, for years"},{"id":"garden","name":"Notes that grow"},{"id":"how","name":"How it actually works"},{"id":"history","name":"The past, told well"},{"id":"noticing","name":"Noticing what others walk past"},{"id":"web","name":"Only possible on the internet"},{"id":"others","name":"Inside someone else's head"},{"id":"whimsy","name":"Seriously silly"},{"id":"maps","name":"Maps of everything"},{"id":"story","name":"Stories that bend their form"}]}