The Urgent Goes Away
Seth Godin on emergencies:
Those emergencies from a year ago (and a month ago), they’re gone.Always good to remember. And yes, it does make it easier to recognize the problem.Either they were solved, or they became things to live with. But emergencies don’t last. They fade.
Knowing that, knowing that you will outlast them, every single one of them, does it make it easier to see the problem, not the panic?
The Value of Bryce Harper
Ben Godar of Viva El Birdos outlines the immense value “off the field” of Bryce Harper joining the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s an excellent angle that I haven’t seen in regards to other free agents. Harper is, of course, a unique snowflake in this off season.
I hope the Cardinals go all out to get him.
The Power-Idea Gap
Michael Wade often drops smart thoughts. This one is freaking brilliant.
Significant power brings greater responsibilities and greater responsibilities consume vast amounts of time and limited time pushes out opportunities for new ideas. Less power has fewer responsibilities and more time for ideas but getting the ideas into action can be difficult because there is a shortage of power.Wherever we may be on that scale, it is wise to keep the power-idea gap in mind.
Salt
Rob Savage’s Salt is a two-minute roller coaster ride of tense visuals and suspense. It features a mother and daughter and demons. And, of course, the salt that keeps the demons away. Both the fan and the end made me jolt.
Excellent all around.
Daily Shutdown Routines
Curtis McHale uses Things 3 as his productivity system. He has created checklists to help him be mindful of what needs to be done so he doesn’t skip an important step.
One of the best things I’ve added to my productivity system lately is the idea of a daily shutdown routine. Currently I have one for the end of the workday shutdown. I have one for the end of the day house shutdown and a set for Friday shutdown and Monday startup.These are interesting ideas and I might have to incorporate something like this in my life more.
The Big iPad
Matt Gemmell provides a thorough and deep dive into his tech choices as an author. This time, it’s the new iPad Pro.
I want one, but I don’t think my writing workflow is conducive for iPad writing. I do far too much copy and pasting and that just doesn’t work on an iPad. I need a mouse.
Still, I love writing on the iPad.
Ten Reasons Why Bryce Harper Isn’t Worth the Money
Bernie Miklasz, writing for The Athletic, provides ten excellent reasons why the St. Louis Cardinals should avoid the Bryce Harper bonanza. I think all his points are valid.
I have no idea what’s going to happen, but the Cardinals had better make some franchise changing moves.
RIP Excelsior!
The avuncular, controversial longtime writer and publisher of Marvel Comics died on Monday in Los Angeles. Stan Lee was the Walt Disney of my generation. His creations will live on forever.
From Wired:
His creativity and ideas cast a mystical field over the popular culture of the 20th and 21st centuries, and taught generations of nerds of every flavor and stripe about responsibility, morality, and love. And in a sense, his death can’t be any more permanent than one he might have written for a comic-book character, because the stories he began are all to be continued, forever.
Dangerous Precedent
Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker pretty much nails what I think most Americans feel about this past election and getting it right. It’s too bad it has to be considered satire.
Calling for an “immediate end” to the recount in Florida, Donald J. Trump warned on Monday that it could set a dangerous precedent of the person with the most votes winning.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said that those in favor of the recount had a “sick obsession with finding out which candidate got the most votes.”
“Democrats are going on and on about counting every last vote until they find out who got the most,” Trump said. “Since when does getting the most votes mean you win?”
This is well written overall, but I think I’d change Trump’s last quote to be, “The cheating Democrats are counting votes from people who voted. Why would they do that? SAD!”
All of Borwitz’s columns strike a chord with smart people. Of course, dumb people don’t read The New Yorker.
The Never-Ending Story
Amanda Hess in The New York Times has a piece that examines how nothing ever ends anymore in regards to intellectual property. Movies go on forever in sequels, prequels, and other adaptions. Cancelled television shows come back. The dead never stay dead.
We needed stories to end so we could make sense of them. We needed characters to die so we could make sense of ourselves.
It’s an amazing essay.
Stop Watching the News
When you completely stop watching the news for a substantial period of time, the world becomes a much better place.
Post-Election
In the days after the 2016 election, I was mentally and physically exhausted. I was about two rungs above being curled up in a corner in the fetal position. A few days after the 2018 election, I feel… better? The results seemed disappointing because all the big national-profile races were losses: Andrew Gillum in Florida, possibly Stacey Abrams in Georgia, and Beto O’Rourke in Texas.
My wife reminded me good things happened all over the place — first openly gay governor, first Muslim women in Congress, a record number of women and women of color winning. And most importantly the House of Representatives is back in control of the Democrats.
I can breath. And Beto can drop F-Bombs.
What I’m waiting for now is for Nancy Pelosi, after winning the Speakership, to announce, “Our first priority is to make this president a one-term president” and for Mitch McConnell to say what a sleazy, unAmerican thing that is to say.
Lastly, I’m stepping away from politics as much as possible. The run up to the midterms were just as bad as the weeks directly after the 2016 election. It’s not good for my physical and mental health to follow everything so closely.
So, I’ll leave you with one simple thought… Kamala-Beto 2020.
The Walls Have Crumbled
Political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf says Trump’s days in the White House are numbered. Here are a few of the points he made in his Twitter thread:
No one knows the skeletons in Donald Trump’s closet better than Donald Trump. No one knows the crimes he has committed, aided or abetted so well. No one has such a firm grasp on the wrong-doing that was the daily bread of the Trump Organization, his children & close associates.It can’t happen soon enough.The world ridicules and rejects him. They have figured out his games. They see through his lies and his racism. He himself knows his base of bases is comprised not of America’s best but of its worst. He calls them the “super-elite” but he can smell his own BS.
He hides himself away as he does in the White House every day now, going out into public only into meetings where the crowds can be counted on to cheer. And that is fewer and fewer places these days.
Abraham Lincoln once said the only way America could be brought down is from within. Trump’s presidency has been cited frequently as the greatest example of such a threat in modern times. But Lincoln’s warning can be extended further.
Ultimately Trump too will be brought down from within, by the ghosts of his own past, by the secrets only he knows. The walls have crumbled. So too, very soon, will this weak, corrupted, cowardly, ignorant, racist, incompetent, pathetic excuse for a man.
First Impressions of the New 12.9 iPad Pro
Over at The Sweet Setup, Shawn Blanc writes his first impressions about the new 12.9″ iPad Pro as it relates to his personal workflows for writing and photo editing.
I was mostly interested in his writing workflows. I’m really interested in the focus-ness of using an iPad for my computing. Still, I do far too much copy and pasting to make the switch full time.
From what Blanc writes, I think I’m going to have to go out and test it.
The Curse of the Honeycrisp Apple
After my dental surgery (I had loose congenital teeth replaced), I can now truly eat an apple the way it was meant to be, biting right into it instead of cutting it up into slices. My favorite is everyone’s favorite apple — the Honeycrisp.
Deena Shanker of Bloomberg explains why the Honeycrisp is killing Northeastern growers.
Unlike the vast majority of modern commercial produce, the Honeycrisp apple wasn’t bred to grow, store or ship well. It was bred for taste: crisp, with balanced sweetness and acidity. Though it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, along the way it became a nightmare for some producers.I had no idea about the history of the Honeycrisp.
Do the Verb
Austin Kleon talks about titles versus doing the work.
So many people think you have to first call yourself an artist, know who you are and what you’re about, and then you can start making art. No, no, no. You do the stuff first, then you can worry about what it is, who you are. The important thing is the practice. The doing. The verb.His whole point is to forget trying to be a thing and just do the work that needs to be done. Doing the work gets you further than just wanting to be the thing.We aren’t nouns, we are verbs. Forget the nouns, do the verbs.
For me it’s saying I’m a writer, but haven’t really written. I mean, I have written and self-published some cool stuff, but I get that imposter syndrome sneaking in sometimes too.
Ultimately, I should just write and forget about being a writer.
You should do the verb too.
Why the Cardinals Need Bryce Harper
And so it begins.
Fans screaming for the Cardinals to acquire Harper is right on the cusp of reaching a fever pitch. This breakdown by Will Leitch outlines all the advantages the Cardinals have and why exactly they are in this position.
The Cardinals knew they had five years to reconstruct their roster in order to have enough money to ensure that Pujols re-signed with them, so Mozeliak, who took over as GM in 2007, and owner Bill DeWitt made some changes. They brought in new head of amateur scouting Jeff Luhnow and reconstructed the entire Minor League system with a clear mandate: Produce enough cheap talent that we don’t have to pay free-agent money that we’ve earmarked for Pujols to other players. And it worked, extravagantly, in every imaginable way but one.
I hope they get him.
Go Vote
Inspiring piece by Roger Angell in The New Yorker.
What we can all do at this moment is vote — get up, brush our teeth, go to the polling place, and get in line. I was never in combat as a soldier, but now I am. Those of you who haven’t quite been getting to your polling place lately, who want better candidates or a clearer system of making yourself heard, or who just aren’t in the habit, need to get it done this time around. If you stay home, count yourself among the hundreds of thousands now being disenfranchised by the relentless parade of restrictions that Republicans everywhere are imposing and enforcing. If you don’t vote, they have won, and you are a captive, one of their prizes.When you do go to vote on Tuesday, take a friend, a nephew, a neighbor, or a partner, and be patient when in line. Just up ahead of you, the old guy in a sailing cap, leaning on his cane and accompanied by his wife, is me, again not minding the wait, and again enthralled by the moment and its meaning.
Please vote.