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A friend’s email said, “I know many of my readers aren’t techies and you’re thinking of putting this newsletter aside…” We should get clear about what we’re talking about when we say “techie.” I’m going to argue that involves a combination of two things: But someone who says, “I’m not a techie” might actually be […]
over a year ago

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More from Seth's Blog

Resilience is a practice

It’s easy to imagine that we should do our work and then, when it doesn’t work as we hope, improvise to fix it. But perhaps our work is to show up ready and willing to deal with a future we didn’t expect. I keep writing about it because we all need to keep thinking about […]

22 hours ago 2 votes
Lunging

A useful metaphor from juggling: When you find yourself lunging for a ball or club, let it drop. Lunging will always lead to a drop sooner or later, and it pays to skip the lunge and simply begin again, on better terms.

2 days ago 3 votes
Finding the difficult work

It’s tempting to seek out the easy gigs and the straightforward projects. But of course, if they’re the easy ones, there’s probably quite a few people eager to do them. So your ability to add unique value goes down. The alternative is to find and focus on the projects that take insight, guts and a […]

3 days ago 4 votes
On reading the Terms of Service

Should you have to? I made a mistake. I used a QR code service a year ago, and now that my year’s payment is up, they’re going to delete the code. It turns out I wasn’t buying what they promised, and the fine print of their terms of service back them up. I won’t be […]

4 days ago 4 votes
Tasks and projects

School is a training ground for task-based thinking. “Will this be on the test?” You finish your homework and then you can go out and play. This is one reason educators are flummoxed by chatGPT–it upsets the calibrated balance of effort in the task of homework and essays. The essay was not the point, the […]

4 days ago 5 votes

More in creative

The Devilish History of the 1980s Parental Advisory Sticker: When Heavy Metal & Satanic Lyrics Collided with the Religious Right

Frank Zappa called them the “Mothers of Prevention,” the group of wives married to members of Congress who decided in the mid-80s to go to war against rock lyrics and whip up some good ol’ conservative hysteria. We’ve talked about this time before on this site, especially as Zappa himself testified in front of Congress […]

23 hours ago 2 votes
Resilience is a practice

It’s easy to imagine that we should do our work and then, when it doesn’t work as we hope, improvise to fix it. But perhaps our work is to show up ready and willing to deal with a future we didn’t expect. I keep writing about it because we all need to keep thinking about […]

22 hours ago 2 votes
The Real Science Experiments That Inspired Frankenstein

With the Halloween season mere months away, the time has come to start thinking about what frightening reads to line up for ourselves this year. Some of us may reach for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a story we all think we know. But a look into its context reveals that what’s now […]

22 hours ago 2 votes
Lunging

A useful metaphor from juggling: When you find yourself lunging for a ball or club, let it drop. Lunging will always lead to a drop sooner or later, and it pays to skip the lunge and simply begin again, on better terms.

2 days ago 3 votes
And around we go... Making We're So Over, We're So Back

The process of making an single purpose art PC that uses an aluminum casting as the radiator for a water-cooling loop.

4 days ago 7 votes