Things I have been reading recently.
If you’re not family, she’s not Mom
That kind of over-familiarity — assuming that we’re so close we can both call her Mom — is all over the place in banner ads, email subject lines, and app notifications this time of year. It’s annoying and gross at best, and deeply upsetting and triggering to some people at worst. And many of the people doing it know exactly what they’re doing.
Figma Dreamweaver
The failure of Figma Sites to engage with concepts that are decades old really makes me feel like we are at an inflection point for what it means to do UX design. If tools like this take off, the nature of the job will shift irrevocably from making a website to making website-shaped outputs; something that looks good enough at first glance for out stakeholders who will not need to use it themselves.
Redesigning the housing market and alternative models
Is housing really best left to market alone? Turns out there are many models for financing housing. Urban designer Andy Fergus shares his research into alternative housing models, from for-profit to non-profit.
Co-ops and resistance in Rojava
Despite these challenges, the co-op movement in Rojava continues to grow. The region is home to women-led agricultural projects, worker-run bakeries, and community-based energy initiatives. The women’s economy committee, which operates under the broader women’s organisation Kongra Star, has been instrumental in developing these economic models.
Watching Christians Celebrate Killing
It’s worth wondering if anyone in this group of people who run American foreign policy have reflected on what counts as victory. Other than a vague need to “send a message” there is no indication that anyone in the chat ever wondered if killing people with airstrikes actually accomplishes anything. Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel have been bombing the Houthis for a decade now without meaningful effect. The Houthis have been bombing ships in the Red Sea and launching missiles at Israel itself, trying to force Israel to change its actions in Gaza, also with no effect. Same for Hamas and Hezbollah rocket attacks. Zooming out, the last several decades have seen a seemingly endless cycle of countries launching airstrikes against each other and non-state groups, killing lots of people but almost never actually changing how the targets act.
What Do US Vehicle Regulators Have Against Tiny Cars?
The rigidity of NHTSA categorizations for four-wheeled vehicles — car, LSV, or nothing — leaves little space for many minicars that are popular abroad. Outside the US, most minicars can exceed the 25-mph LSV maximum, and they typically lack the airbags and other costly safety equipment required to meet federal crash standards. (A rare exception, the Smart ForTwo, left the US market in 2019.) In 2008, NHTSA rejected a petition to create a new category of “medium speed vehicles” traveling at up to 35 mph, which would have accommodated many of the quadricycles popular in Europe.
While Democracy Burns, Democrats Prioritize… Demolishing Section 230?
Durbin’s fundamental mischaracterization of Section 230 as mere “legal immunity for big tech” betrays either willful ignorance or calculated misdirection. Section 230 is, at its core, a shield for speech – your speech, my speech, everyone’s speech. It protects individuals and small websites far more than it protects Silicon Valley giants. It’s what keeps you safe when you forward an email or share a post. It’s what enables sites for people to review doctors or mechanics or employers. It’s what makes it possible for Wikipedia to exist. It’s what enables the very digital discourse we need to maintain democracy.
Chopstick Sleeves as Emissaries of Japanese Typography and Culture
Despite the fact that single-use chopsticks are temporal by design, Mr. Kitagawa nonetheless succeeded in amassing over 800 chopstick sleeves from the 1970s through the 2000s. (The bulk of his collection is now housed at the Archive thanks to his granddaughter Taiyo’s donation.) What were once disposable have become unintentional repositories of information; of entwined histories of people, places, and Japanese culture.
We Found the $2 Trillion
Maybe it seems too parochial to suggest that the “government efficiency” effort is simply cover for defunding Elon Musk’s regulatory police, steering more contracts his way, depriving rivals of the same treatment he gets, and building oligarchy in America. Maybe Musk is a real efficiency expert who wants to bring his style of business cuts to government as a public service. Maybe he’s truly concerned about burdens being left to his children and grandchildren. Maybe he will nobly share in the sacrifice. Color me unconvinced. And let me submit as evidence a litany of items that DOGE is likely to leave mostly untouched in its drive for austerity.
Reflections on the Disrupt Land Forces campaign: Melbourne September 2024
As Robert Fisk, the well-known but now deceased fearless English war correspondent said, “Follow the weapons. If you do not cut the weapons off, wars will never end.” We know our efforts are miniscule but we also know our brothers and sisters in those countries and communities who are the victims of war and conflict take strength from our actions, and sense our solidarity. It gives hope, it proves the effectiveness of citizen-based protest – the power of standing firm and raising the voice of dissent. Truth-telling and for the Quaker contingent – living out our Peace Testimony. We are compelled to act, to bear witness, to be the best we can be and never give up.
Understanding and wielding power in local government
I founded a civic school called Maximum New York, and the idea is our existing systems for training people on how the government works either don’t exist or they get you further away from the truth than closer to it. So for example, if you get a political science degree, almost everyone who graduates with that degree cannot tell you what a statute is. They can’t define it with confidence. That’s terrifying.
Filed under:link dumps
Things I have been reading recently.
Illustrated edition of Margaret Cavendish, the Blazing-world, 1666 (also as a thread on Bluesky)
The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World is commonly considered a very early SF novel. It has strong elements of the fantastical as well as science and engages with and criticizes science. It is also unique with centering on women characters.
Sydney apartment layouts don’t suit families, study suggests
“Generally, developers focus more on the number of bedrooms and location than on architectural design or room layout,” says Prof. Oldfield. “They prefer generic, standardised apartment layouts that meet the minimum regulations because they’re cheaper to make and easier to sell, but that is fundamentally mismatched with what families want.”
Voters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, create a local clean energy utility
The most radical dimension of the plan is to use the city’s utility franchise rights to build wires between properties, so that they can share excess solar power locally. Most everywhere in the country, customer-led upgrades have to stay on the customer side of the utility meter; crossing that boundary to sell power to a neighbor violates the utility’s legally enforced monopoly. This stands in the way of visions for interconnected neighborhoods generating and selling power with each other based on who needs it at a given moment.
Spirit Airlines CEO Got A $3.8 Million Bonus A Week Before Its Bankruptcy
Is the bankruptcy actually bad? Sure shareholders will get wiped out. Guess what? GOOD. They deserve it. They opted for an illegal deal instead of a legal one. Plus Spirit will keep flying as a competitive airline, at least for now. This particular kind of bankruptcy isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just means you reorganize the creditor relationships but keep the entity as a going concern.
I’ve Stopped Using Box Plots. Should You?
These alternatives to box plots can be used to communicate a wide variety of useful insights, don’t require the audience to understand complex concepts like quartiles, and show distribution shapes clearly (i.e., they don’t make everything look bell shaped). More to the point, they make more visual sense than box plots, so audiences grasp them in seconds instead of minutes, and they’re less prone to misinterpretation. Ultimately, this means that using these chart types instead of box plots substantially improves the odds that your audience will understand and act on your distribution-based insights.
The decline of disruptive science and technology
Theories of scientific and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes, wherein prior accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton’s words, “stand on the shoulders of giants”. Recent decades have witnessed exponential growth in the volume of new scientific and technological knowledge, thereby creating conditions that should be ripe for major advances. Yet contrary to this view, studies suggest that progress is slowing in several major fields of science and technology.
The Social Dynamics of Programming Together in Dynamicland
Virginia has no prior programming experience but has started combining code she finds around the space into her own creations. Here’s part of a birthday surprise she left me over winter break. Even our visiting ethnographer Goetz created a great spatial music game in Dynamicland (also no prior programming experience). Like learning French by going to France, people in Dynamicland learn programming through immersion.
What the Myth of the Coffee Cup Mass Gets Wrong - and Why It Matters
What Day learned from the “Coffee Cup Mass” was that the ceramic cup from which the homeless Christ sips her morning coffee is no less holy and no more profane than the gold chalice that holds Christ’s blood in the form of wine at the Mass: “There Christ is with the poor, the suffering, even in the cup we share together, in the bread we eat.”
To Hell With Good Intentions, Silicon Valley Edition
Part of the problem in the case of these Americans in Mexico is that they could not understand the language. But that is only part of the problem. The more significant issue is a deeper incapacity to listen to others not because you do not speak the language but because you have already decided that you know what is best for them. Then, convinced of your wisdom and goodness, you are prepared to impose your will on the other.
Ephemerality in User Interfaces
The constraints of hypermedia, and the desktop form factor, created empowering software. The keyboard and mouse allow high-bandwidth, high-frequency interaction. They permit creation. Users were expected to be “computer literate”, to learn to operate the computer before a specific software program. Desktops are interactive. Phones are cramped, bad at multitasking, impossible to type on. Nothing is expected of mobile users. Phones can only be interpassive.
Filed under:link dumps
Things I have been reading recently.
Want fewer car accidents? Remove traffic signals and road signs
Monderman’s philosophy, popularly called “shared space,” as coined by the English urban designer Ben Hamilton-Baillie, has been implemented in cities around the world. It seems to be working. Instead of causing chaos and collisions, the “red-light-removal schemes” almost always result in improved sociability and traffic flow, and fewer accidents in some cases. A study of center-line removal in Wiltshire, U.K., for instance, found that people drove more safely without the markings and the number of accidents decreased by 35 percent.
My 2024 thoughts on the state of social media
One of the things I like about Bluesky is its use of an open protocol, which reduces the chances that it will follow the fate that befell Twitter. I’ve set my domain for Bluesky, so hopefully even if bad things happen to Bluesky itself, the AT protocol will live on.
Haka erupts in Parliament before Treaty Principles Bill passes first reading
During the count of votes for and against the bill, Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke stood up from her seat starting a haka directed at Seymour, which her colleagues and MPs from the Greens and Labour joined. When people in the public gallery above joined in loudly, Speaker Gerry Brownlee suspended Parliament for an hour until the gallery was cleared.
How Double-Loaded Sidewalks Bring Safety, Comfort, and Joy to Our Streets
Double loading a sidewalk is when you put amenities or features on both sides of the pedestrian walkway, such as outdoor seating, street trees, kiosks, and dining sheds. This makes the walkway feel like a kind of “safe zone” drawing people in large numbers to gather and enjoy the stretches where everyone feels safe. This leads to a much more enjoyable, safer, and more relaxed experience than walking right alongside traffic. It turns the sidewalk from an afterthought of the street’s design into the main attraction.
Deus Ex Aesthetics
Deus Ex (Ion Storm Austin, released June 23, 2000) is often considered one of the greatest games of all time. Its story is centered around real world conspiracy theories in the year 2052, which informs an aesthetic characterized as near future cyberpunk. The setting combines and contrasts recognizable real-world architecture and set dressing with futuristic Sci-Fi technology.
Why I Will Always Be Angry About Software Engineering
To put it very simply, the little things matter. The sandwiches that get sent to hospitals matter. Ritalin supply chains matter, lumbar support in chairs matter, and yes, stupid React widgets matter. They go out into society, and every time someone says “Ah, I just want to get paid”, we get another terrible intersection that haunts the community for five generations. I’m going to stay angry about bad software engineering.
World’s first wooden satellite, built in Japan, heads to International Space Station on SpaceX mission
The researchers found that honoki, a kind of magnolia tree native in Japan and traditionally used for sword sheaths, is most suited for spacecraft, after a 10-month experiment aboard the International Space Station. LignoSat is made of honoki, using a traditional Japanese crafts technique without screws or glue. Once deployed, LignoSat will stay in orbit for six months, with the electronic components onboard measuring how wood endures the extreme environment of space, where temperatures fluctuate from -100 to 100 degrees Celsius every 45 minutes as it orbits from darkness to sunlight.
Denver rideshare drivers just launched a worker-owned co-op
Getting there had required relentless organizing, and fundraising, as well as reassuring skeptical rideshare drivers, who doubted that a worker-owned co-op could challenge the Uber-Lyft duopoly – which controls 98% of the U.S. rideshare market. It is also a software-engineering feat: Theirs is the first driver-owned rideshare app in the US to offer both on-demand and pre-scheduled rides. There were also legislative hurdles, such as the law that required “transportation network companies” to pay an annual permit fee of $111,250 to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.
Filed under:link dumps