8. “Funk is the opposite of magic,” he said. “Funk is about rules.”
“I want something that’s passed around from friend to friend, like—do you know ‘Waking Life’?
The only thing that interests me about Burning Man is Tycho’s sunrise DJ sets. And I don’t really have anything against him, but it does go both ways. Seriously, the only thing that actually interests me about Tycho is his Burning Man sunrise DJ sets.
Here’s this year’s. And some others:
This isn’t meant to come off like a “I’ve been listening to these before they were cool”, but when I saw the title of that 2014 one, I yelled “oh my god” out loud, because I had a really visceral memory of listening to it while walking home one day in 2014. Music’s really cool like that.
Smoots Manuva
XKCD author Randall Monroe’s new book How To is out. In this one he explains how to do really quotidian tasks using science in ridiculously extravagant ways. Sign me up!
Here’s an interactive comic he made to illustrate what I assume is a very funny chapter on throwing things. A really tiny aspect of that comic is that the units of measurement change with every throw.
One of them is the Smoot, the only unit of measurement created as created as a joke. In my last year at university I did this enormous English essay on measurement, and it took me a long time, and the Smoot played a major role. I love that Randall Munroe just casually uses a hard-won bit of knowledge on my part as like a fourth-level joke in a really clever interactive comic.
How To also reminded me of How To With Charles Duhigg, a very good podcast where Charles Duhigg helps people solve personal problems using his powers as a journalist. It’s really fun to listen to! I have yet to learn anything from it, aside from an episode on robbing a bank where I learned I could not rob a bank.
Day In, Day Out
Check Out This Thing
A pure CSS commuter falls asleep on his way to work
Leon Sans is a geometric sans-serif typeface made with code to celebrate the birth of the designer’s son.
A Low Point
Try/Learn This Thing
Moving a design system from Sketch to Figma. A lot of this going on, I would’ve thought.
How to rotate the cursor via CSS.
How Slack uses Service Workers.
When You Were Mine
Some silly things
What’s the worst possible way to input your phone number into an online form? Some ideas.
A thread of people answering the question: what are some good art apps for iOS?
A very important case-study of a very important product.
A really nice little look at an old-fashioned California type foundry.
This is what it feels like when Prince asks you to write his autobiography.
Sorry, this next link isn’t anything special really: just a standard modular paper organ.
———
Two More
Some lovely things
(These weren’t really “silly”, so I made a section specifically for them.)
This is just stunning writing: Waiting for the Monsoon, Discovering a Brain Tumor Instead.
Finally, let’s all just watch this video of the Earth rotating while the Milky Way stays stationary. We’re small, huh?
Just imagine that video with a Tycho sunrise set on in the background…
Call to Action
Please send this to someone you think may enjoy it, as long as they’re cool. I would love to have more of y’all on the team. No haters.