Things I Like
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Regardless of what you or I might believe about the merits of online advertising, or the ethics of surveillance capitalism, that code keeps the lights on. A beacon might have to be included because of an advertising partner’s contract. A script might load in content because it’s syndicating sponsored content from a third-party source. And we might lecture a working web developer about the ethics of shipping a web page with tracking scripts, those scripts very likely help pay their salary.
Ethan brings up an extremely relevant point when it comes to all the talk about performance these days. Yes, a performant web is important, but that is often at odds with how the revenue of a site is generated. When sales is telling you they have several million dollars on the line and you only need to add one more tracker, what do you do?
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I still find value in being on Twitter (just yesterday I learned about a new-to-me artist from a follower) but it is increasingly hard to justify much time spent there and on other social media sites, like Instagram. (I have not deleted my Facebook account, but I rarely sign in there.) That’s why I continue to write here every day and keep up my weekly newsletter, both of which produce better thinking and better work from me and give me a stronger, more deeper connection to my audience.
I too subscribe to Warren Ellis' newsletter and love it and I love the way Kleon expands on the ideas that Ellis talks about a lot about how to live your life and how much to share. I'm struggling right now because I need to find new projects, but I also am careful with what I share online, so it's a balancing act and I'm not quite sure I'm getting it right yet.
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Part of this is convincing myself that I have something worthwhile to say again. That sharing something cool or posting the odd thought doesn’t mean I’m arrogant and think the world needs to hear me. I’m just craving connection over shared experiences.
I relate so much to this post of Laura's and the struggle with how and what to share. I've time and time again come back to this site, but in some ways it isn't perfect either. I'm working right now on a Microblog to be able to share easier and more quickly, maybe that will help me out.
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“If passions are things found fully formed, and your job is to look around the world for your passion—it’s a crazy thought,” Walton told me. “It doesn’t reflect the way I or my students experience school, where you go to a class and have a lecture or a conversation, and you think, That’s interesting. It’s through a process of investment and development that you develop an abiding passion in a field.”
What I really liked about this article is the role that researching and a wide array of experiences plays into how you can find and develop a passion for something. As an example: I have a degree in art, but I didn't draw everyday growing up as a child, I never felt like I was good at it. Then in a high school art class I took on a whim, the teacher told me I had real potential. When my first idea of studying international relations turned out to be the wrong thing for me, I fell back on that comment, took some courses, and found something I love. And if you never give things a chance or you want them to be easy, you'll never do that.
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He said the results of Perpetual Guardian’s trial showed that when hiring staff, supervisors should negotiate tasks to be performed, rather than basing contracts on hours new employees spent in the office.
A lot in this article falls into the "No Shit, Sherlock" category for me. BUT it's so great to see a company doing a study on this with their employees and going public with the results. I firmly believe that for knowledge work we need to stop treating it like factory work, this isn't about time spent, this about getting things done.
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What I’ve found through random experimentation is that in proportional typefaces,
1chis usually wider than the average character width, usually by around 20-30%. But there are at least a few typefaces where the zero symbol is skinny with respect to the other letterforms; in such a case, 1ch is narrower than the average character width.I learned about the
chunit a few years ago and found it super interesting. Eric's work is really helpful for how to think about it and use it depending on the typeface with which you use it. -
Amidst all the political outrage, turmoil, and hyperbole of 2017 I found myself wanting to truly understand the difference between Liberals and Conservatives and why they get together like oil and water. I needed a framework for understanding the differences so that I could explore and feel confident in my own political viewpoints.
I love reading book reviews and Dave's doing interesting thoughts on books he's read, this book got added to my reading list and I can't wait to read it myself after reading what Dave had to say.
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We talked for a couple of hours and at one point he dryly said that “eventually humans will be living in a sustainable way.” Implying of course that we get to do that the easy way (we change our economic policies to prevent an apocalypse in the future) or the hard way (we don’t do anything and our species potentially goes extinct or so many of us are destroyed that the rest get to live happy lives without us).
Robin's been writing about books he's read and then how they take his thoughts in other directions, and I love these posts. I aspire to write more like this about the books I've read. I've slowed up my review pace so that I can see what the books bring about after I'm done and how they pop up in my thoughts in the days and weeks after I've finished them.
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In fact, the greatest success of Keep America Beautiful has been to shift the onus of environmental responsibility onto the public while simultaneously becoming a trusted name in the environmental movement. This psychological misdirect has built public support for a legal framework that punishes individual litterers with hefty fines or jail time, while imposing almost no responsibility on plastic manufacturers for the numerous environmental, economic and health hazards imposed by their products.
Just the yesterday I was reading an article in the Washington Post about ideas for reducing use of plastic and tin foil in the kitchen. This is a thing I think about a lot, ways to reduce our waste and make sure we're bringing less into the house, but also recycling what we can. And this article points out something I've thought about and gotten frustrated with a lot. It's hard to not accumulate waste because so much of our packaging and how we sell things is in plastic. I try hard, but it is way harder than it should be and I'm glad to see an article that points that out.
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In other words: when I started working for myself, it felt easier to distinguish the companies I’d work with from the companies I wouldn’t. Now, there’s no longer a clear boundary between a given software company and, say, one of the American government’s more inhumane agencies. And as a small business owner, I’m not sure what to do with that. How do I screen a potential client for something I’d consider unethical—or worse, immoral?
As I look for new projects and think about the types of clients I want to work with, I think about this a lot. How do I make sure I'm working with people I feel comfortable with and that aren't doing evil? Is it possible? I'm not sure, but I'm thankful for Ethan's post and for putting into words things I've been thinking about recently as well.
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This is a great resource that is divided up into the roles that different people play on a team. I love that. And I love that this is a government link, that our government is sharing these types of resources so that we can all make the web better.
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When we write HTML we give content structure. We define things like paragraphs, lists, tables and headings. Writing semantic code means choosing the most appropriate element to define the required structure. This helps interoperability.
I'm currently writing about accessibility and I really love this short and well written article on HTML and how using it properly is so important.
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Another much maligned food these days is butter. In the world of chefs, however, butter is in everything. Even non-French restaurants—the Northern Italian; the new American, the ones where the chef brags about how he’s “getting away from butter and cream”—throw butter around like crazy. In almost every restaurant worth patronizing, sauces are enriched with mellowing, emulsifying butter. Pastas are tightened with it. Meat and fish are seared with a mixture of butter and oil. Shallots and chicken are caramelized with butter. It’s the first and last thing in almost every pan: the final hit is called “monter au beurre.” In a good restaurant, what this all adds up to is that you could be putting away almost a stick of butter with every meal.
I never read or watched any of Bourdain's work, but I'm catching up now and he's funny and a damn good writer.
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Some of the ideas and techniques explored here may not be applicable to your particular card designs; others will. I'm not here to tell you how exactly you should design a 'card' because I don't know your requirements. But I hope I've given you some ideas about how to solve problems you might encounter, and how to enhance the interface in ways that are sensitive to a broad range of users.
What I like most about the way Pickering writes about inclusive design is all the options he gives you and he doesn't assume what will be right for you, he's merely showing you a bunch of different ways to do something and do it accessibly.
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I’ve been thinking about this because many of the Grid resources I’ve seen have focused on the third step. Not all of them, mind you—far from it. But much of what I’ve seen recently focuses on the third step, aimed at folks who’ve mastered the fundamentals, and looking to do considerably more. And just to be clear, that’s marvelous! It’s downright exciting to think about what these technologies could do for us, and how they’ll change the way that we work. But when we’re producing these tutorials, or writing those talks, maybe it’s worth including a few pointers for those who aren’t quite as far along in the process.
I love that Ethan wrote this piece. I'm in agreement with both the steps (I'm still very much on #2) and on the fact that so many who understand grid well are sharing a lot of step 3. I'll also admit, I see a lot of demos of amazing grid designs, which is step 3, but I don't see as much of that in the wild in actual production sites. But I certainly may be missing something as I can't keep up with everything all the time.