But we didn’t take any photos of that bullock. You rarely do, when something comes of nowhere and flabbergasts you with its simplistic beauty. Everything moves on, a different picture moves in to occupy the frame, as the rules of the universe dictate, and it’s often in those moments, directly after the flabbergasting, beautiful thing has been witnessed, when the bittersweet fact of that seems most apparent.

• Tom Cox, The Man With A Bull In His Living Room

Man does not create, he discovers.

• Antoni Gaudi

It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

• E.B. White, March 30, 1973

Putting small things into words can create connection - The Reader recognizes a feeling or a moment that seemed too insignificant to dwell in til they discovered the writer was dwelling in it too. In my experience, little can be translated from the life’s monumental joys and tragedies. An extraordinary love rendered ordinary when you name it. Or else the dull, incurable ache that a life could have gone differently, but didn’t.

• Hallie Haglund, Oversharing, What Is It?

Major inventions don’t have some inherent nature that tends towards improving life or enriching humanity. More often than not, they worsen life and deepen inequality because elites hoard their benefits and tightly dictate the terms of technological deployment. So when technological breakthroughs do yield positive outcomes, it’s because those with power are forced into an agreement that distributes resources more equally.

• Edward Ongweso Jr - AI, Life, Engineering, and Digital Hygene

There’s no accident that there’s a lot of overlap between the book banners and the people who want to automate creativity using fake AI. The creative process is full of trial, uncertainty, and error in dialogue with other artists. That is basically antithetical to certainty and authority.

• Charlie Jane Anders, Community is made out of the ephemeral, XOXO 2024

We need to diversify the kinds of people who make software, the kinds of problems they’re solving, and the philosophies and worldviews that govern how they build. Putting every software creator inside a tiny, privileged bubble that’s awash in VC cash and obsessed with hierarchical status games isn’t going to give us novel, “innovative”, or diverse software that serves the needs of everyone.

• Maggie Appleton, Leaving Elicit

Remote work isn’t, by definition, better or worse than IRL work. But it is different, and it is a necessary adaptation in an era marked by climate change and the slow collapse of long-neglected infrastructures. It’s past time to engage with its flaws directly, instead of always harking back to a fabricated office history we never lived in and cannot return to.

• Mandy Brown, Official Myths

I can’t overstate how beneficial working fully remote for the past four years has been for myself and my family.

Part of what makes art special is that it’s difficult to make, even with all the tools right in front of you. It takes practice, it takes skill, and every time you do it, you expand on that skill. […] Generative AI is only about the end product, but it won’t teach you anything about the process it would take to get there.

• Drew Gooden, AI is Ruining the Internet YouTube

Gen AI is a bad middle-manager trying harder than ever to convince people that its stolen output isn’t bad.

I definitely do not want small talk and relationships outsourced to server farms. This stuff shouldn’t feel hard or taxing; it’s what our presence here on Earth is mostly made up of. The effort, the clumsiness, and the time invested are where humanity is stored.

• Neven Mrgan, How it feels to get an AI email from a friend

Ecology knows that shifting baselines dampen collective urgency and deepen generational divides. People who care about internet monoculture and control are often told they’re nostalgists harkening back to a pioneer era. It’s fiendishly hard to regenerate an open and competitive infrastructure for younger generations who’ve been raised to assume that two or three platforms, two app stores, two operating systems, two browsers, one cloud/mega-store and a single search engine for the world comprise the internet.

• We Need to Rewild The Internet

Twitter’s dead carcass could feed many new blooms.

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success. (…) Something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success. I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

• brightwanderer, tumblr post

Defining success as “do it forever” is a very capitalistic view of the human creative process.

Most truths are like that, easy to hear or recite, hard to live in the sense that slowness is hard for most of us, requiring commitment, perseverance, and return after you stray. Because the job is not to know; it’s to become. A sociopath knows what kindness is and how to weaponize it; a saint becomes it.

• Rebecca Solnit, Slow Change Can Be Radical Change

Rebecca focuses this around political change but I feel like it applies to personal growth and development just as well. Want to loose weight? Write or draw more? Be a better friend? Take the slower, grace-filled path of becoming.

Just because something’s good doesn’t mean we don’t deserve other options, and just because something is good for most people doesn’t mean there aren’t people who would benefit from something else.

• Matt Birchler, An app that’s good enough for most people still benefits from competition

True fandom is sharing your love, not judging. It’s about expanding, growing, and learning. And if you’re not enjoying it, why are you a fan? I don’t see how you can call yourself a fan if you’re focused on being miserly just hoarding every scrap of knowledge, because then, when you die, it dies. You want this to go on, right?

• Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, The Verge interview

No matter what you’re doing, it can be something positive or negative, if you can’t say stop, bad things will happen. Try to go for a run, and don’t stop. Ever. Or try to drink water, and don’t stop. Ever.

• Manuel Moreale, Growth is a mind cancer

Constant growth is a human-created cult that continues to harm the world and the life attempting to thrive within it. Even trees and mountains know there’s a time to stop.

You can get into deep debates about the role of language in the human mind, but no one would suggest that it represents the totality of our experience. Humans obviously enjoy a rich sensorium — one that goes way beyond the “big five”, by the way. Our language draws on these sensations; vibrates against them.

We have a world to use language in, a world to compare language against.

• Robin Sloan, Are AI language Models in Hell?

“I’ve grown to think that keeping your desk clean is actually probably a sign that you’re not being effective.”

• Joel Spolsky, Set Your Priorities

Tiny excerpt from an excellent article @manton was kind enough to pass forward. I read it about three times already.