I find this essay beautiful in a way I find difficult to describe. It’s a sort of ‘Zen and the Art if Picture Framing’, I guess. But more personal, more lyrical. I love this genre of personal essay combining memoir with vividly material reflection on the smaller or more obscure parts of life and work. Found via a 2024 year-end top 10 list by the Electric Typewriter.

On ‘biological dark matter’, ‘obelisks’, and other utter mysteries in biology at the molecular scale.

This essay was resurfaced for me by The Browser. I don't think I agree with its analysis and conclusions, but it's difficult to put my finger onto why, exactly. Which is to say: a good bit of thought-provoking writing. On a fun topic.

The theory in question is Jevon's paradox. If you've never heard this term, go read this article.

An old school collection for use on websites or slides. Wonderful. I like 'Basketball', 'Food', and 'Shattered (Dark)'. All textures are CC-BY 3.0, according to an HN comment by the creator.

A browser extension that auto-answers cookie popups. Including the ones where you need to uncheck 20 separate options. Nice.

Regardless of how well this works, it's a great example of the kind of countercultural engineering I’d love to see more of at universities - but that almost can’t happen there due to their reliance on industry funding.

Well, duh.

A nice set of parenting ideas. Cultivating family traditions instead of defaulting to hap-hazard parenting is something I struggle with.

An exhaustive (?) collection 324 design manifestos.

Sara Hendren is one of those thinkers who, for me, bring deep and surprising insight to whatever they turn their attention to. Here she summarizes a series of blog posts considering what college she would like her children to attend – and in doing so develops a compelling and refreshing vision of what it is that higher education should strive for.

It's funny 'cause it's true.

45 subscriber YouTube channel. I was view nr. 2 on this video. Be nr. more! Come for this tragic character of a brush. Click though to the channel for 'Sharpener'. And 'TSCHK V.0.5'. Like Simone Giertz' crappy robots but art.

It's fascinating to me how some of the machines that modern technology relies on are so few in number. And how they can be in operation for more than half a century and still be critically important after all that time.

As I head back to work in a bullshit-infested university, this analysis serves as a valuable reminder and a practical inventory of everything to look out for in its statements and policies.

“It’s time to move beyond the debate between passive and active voice in favor of something more responsive to the fluid nature of contemporary political language.”

“The bureaucratic voice makes use of both active and passive constructions, but its purpose is uniform: to erase and efface any active agent on the part of the bureaucracy.”

“While the bureaucratic voice works to present governments and corporations as placid, apologetic, and unmovable, it also works to make their victims as active and vital as possible.”

“The bureaucratic state never acts of its own volition; it is always reactionary, and it always acts because the victim leaves it no choice.”

In contrast to the abuses of language that Orwell was concerned with, “the purpose of the bureaucratic voice is less to shape our thoughts or how we see the external world, but to reward incuriosity.”

I already knew carbon credits were fraudulent and neocolonial bullshit. But this is a stark reminder. And I was not aware that it's specifically the Dubai, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia were going all-in on this.