I was waiting for Election Day to share this banger with Run the Jewels.
But today (with the twin firings of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon) was too perfect not to share.
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The Box, Marc Levinson, 2016
I’m only a third through The Box, but I can already recommend it.
A good history book creates context and energizes the mind. As we wrestle with the advent of AI, Levinson tells a a story of disruption that rhymes with what I fear we will see in the coming years.
The world of shipping was completely different up through the first half of the 20th century before the invention and adoption of containers. Then the 50’s and 60’s flipped it upside down.
- It’s mindblowing that we had a world of international trade with individually packed ships. How did we supply two world wars on opposite oceans merely with muscling things in and out holds?
- What American doesn’t feel some sense of pride at a crazy innovator- entrepreneur stumbling into the creation of a new system to revolutionize the world?
- The next chapter tells the utter devastation that this change wrought upon New York City. But was it ultimately for the better?
- And chapter 6 details the struggles of the Longshoremen unions grappling with this change. (Good luck to us white collars, without any union support!)
I’m curious what the next chapters will bring. It’s already been well worth the time. So surprising that the boring shipping container is the center of such a riveting narrative!
~
Here’s a gratuitous plug for the boardgame Container by Franz-Benno Delonge. It’s one of my favorite games — a basic ruleset for a brainbursting experience. It’s been out of print for a while but can be easily DIY’ed.
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The Tracks, 2000
I snuck out of Berkeley with an architecture degree even though I only completed one architecture studio (while dropping out of a second architecture studio, taking three visual studies studios and one landscape architecture studio).
The landscape studio consisted of a series of quick projects, including this exploration of remediating an abandoned rail line using plants to pull heavy chemicals out of the soil.
It seemed fitting to share this long buried project for Earth Day.
This studio was as much an art studio as a design studio, which isn’t a surprise when you check out Professor Chip Sullivan. This piece was an homage to old science fair presentations, with infographics and drawings, using oil pastels and ink.
With the re-discovery of my old fountain pen late last year, I am now finally finishing the very last of that red ink, twenty three years later.
Over a cup of coffee, my friend defined a group of design students who are basically art majors. There is much appeal to straddling both worlds. What can be better than savoring a creation with no “ifs” about how it might actually be in “real life”? To make is the most primal human activity. Yet “to make” also encompasses “to imagine”. To think a drawing represents a viable space 57,600 times its size, to believe “these” certain lines will best direct the movement of hundreds of people over the next fifty years — that demands imagination. A design education challenges and refines raw imagination. For those who cannot rise above the flatland of pure art or refuse to descend from a theoretical ivory tower, let them remain trapped. While the opportunity remains, I will precariously attempt to scale both worlds high on caffeine.
It’s a bit cringe to read what you wrote as a 20 year old.~
Hindu thought includes a roadmap of life with four stages. These college drawings were the climax of my work as a Student.
In their system, I should be wrapping up my time as a Householder, but I’ve got another fifteen years before Retirement (I doubt the ancient system expected folks to be making babies in their late thirties…or Social Security age limits).
Even though I might be late on the ancient Hindu time schedule, I’ve noticed that my attitude has changed towards work in the past eighteen months. I’ve lost appetite for business books. I still think about my role as a project manager, but I no longer study “leadership”. I work a hard 40 hours, but I’m not turning that dial up to 11.
I wonder if that next stage in life will be in letters, as with my little library, or if it will be a return to making art.
If it’s the latter, I need to make some space to get messy. It’s been much too long since I’ve gotten my hands dirty.
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My Little Library
At the end of 2022, I started a rotation of books and essays to re-read regularly.
I’m slowly going through them on this first pass, but in the future I plan on just reading selected passages.
And yes, I’m open to suggestions!
A spreadsheet with 45 books with their publication dates. Cells are colored by the region of origin. ~
Main List
- The Art of War
- The Wisdom Books (Job thru Qohelet)
- Tao Te Ching
- Analects of Confucius
- The Way of Chuang Tzu
- Mencius
- Dhammapada
- Letter to Menoceus, Epicurus
- Bhagavad Gita
- Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius
- The Gospels and the Epistle to the Romans
- The Book of Lieh-Tzu
- The Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton
- Bodhicarayvatara, Santideva
- Havamal
- The Book of Rumi:105 Stories (Masnavi)
- Narrow Road to the Deep North, Basho
- US Constitution
- Gettysburg Address
- Nevada Constitution
- The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka
- Letter from the Birmingham Jail
- Labyrinths, Borges
- Invisible Cities, Calvino
- 5000 B.C., Smullyan
- 8 Pieces of Brocade
- Opus, Satoshi Kon
- Fail Safe Investing
- Bed of Procrustes
- Vis for Vulnerable
- Several Short Sentences about Writing
- Salt Fat Acid Heat
- Creativity, John Cleese
- Smart Brevity
Maybes
- Upanishads
- Socratic Dialogues, Plato
- Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
- Quran
- The Journey to the West
- Self Reliance, Emerson
- Civil Disobedience, Thoreau
- Essays and Aphorisms, Schopenhauer
- Species of Spaces, Perec
- Amusing Ourselves to Death
- Radically Short Instructions, Matthews
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Unimportant Politics
Living in a democracy is a great privilege, but most of human history developed in tyrannies that we would find unbearable. And yet, our ancestors persisted to create a society with the rich cultural heritage that we enjoy today.
We should fight hard to protect our freedoms and improve the world. But I hope that our legacy will be more than a properly functioning government.
Politics is a worthy vocation for those who are called. Thank to all who fight the good fight. As citizens, we have a responsibility to vote intelligently, so we can’t just completely tune out current events.
But there is no duty to give our lives to the news entertainment complex elevating politics into pomp, circumstance, and an unending string of existential crises.
There’s more to life than politics. It’s not everything. Hell, it might not even be the most important thing (even for a cold materialist like me!)
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You’re the Knight in Shining Armour
I get the disappointment in the Dominion settlement. But $787M is an ungodly sum of money.
As someone who manages capital improvement projects for the State, I’m the guy who naturally abbreviates $787,000,000.00 to $787M. I know what that kind of money can do. It’s our Division’s project budget — for half a decade! Or 10 university buildings. Or a hospital with a thousand psychiatric beds. Or a million square feet of office space, including land, fully updated.
You can’t walk away from that. Dominion didn’t.
A preacher is prophesying that god will strike down Trump’s enemies this May.
Everybody is looking for their silver bullet. Nobody gonna fire that magic AR15.
Democracy is going to be saved by changing hearts and minds one vote at a time.
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Infected Mushroom, Guitarmass
My musical secret is that I’m a sucker for EDM.
When the deadline is threatening, I’ll be jamming to the heavy beat.
When a deadline isn’t threatening, I enjoy the candy of the lighter stuff filling the background.
My tastes vary wildly with no depth. To be honest, I don’t follow Infected Mushroom, but I did listen to Converting Vegetarians on repeat in the mid 00’s when my wife (then girlfriend) gave me a copy that a studio-mate had shared with her. Almost two decades later, that album might have been our only successful cross-pollination in our wildly divergent musical tastes.
For Monday Night Music I’m sharing a recent song that I’ve been running on repeat. Here is an interesting reaction/analysis video of Guitarmass.
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Monday Night Music
A few months ago, I started sharing a song on youtube every Monday on Post.News
I just transferred the archives back here onto Grizzly Pear under its own WordPress Category.
I’m also tracking it on Youtube as its own playlist.
At the start of the year, I also culled my subscriptions. Youtube is an amazing platform … and incredible timesuck. I also blocked channels from the recommendation algorithm, especially the ones with entertaining videos.
In making Youtube boring, the algorithm was freed to unearth richer content. The latest random viral video pales against all the musical output that’s being shared at scale.
Youtube may be the best music provider on the internet, you just have to get rid of all the other videos.
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Digital Signatures
When I joined the State, we processed physical paperwork.
- Vendor mails Invoice to Accounting in Carson City
- Accounting interdepartmental mails invoice to Public Works
- Public Works admin mails invoice down to Las Vegas
- Project Manager mails signed invoice up to Public Works in Carson City
- Deputy Administrator mails signed invoice across the street to Accounting
- Accounting mails check to Vendor.
Paper shuffled across our state 6 (SIX!) times to pay a simple invoice.
Fortunately, a Management Analyst joined the State the same day that I started. One of his goals was to implement digital signatures.
I eagerly volunteered.
Ten months later, we finally contracted with a vendor. It took another half year of brainstorming and pushing management before we were approved to process invoices on Adobe Sign.
The vendor emails their invoice to the PM. It takes five minutes to send it out for approvals and payment. A couple months later, COVID happened.
We were fortunate to have gotten past the fear of digital approvals before the pandemic hit. The calamity actually accelerated the adoption of digital signatures for rest of our documents.
I also discovered that Adobe Sign can automate much of the process — a godsend for complicated agreements which consistently go to the same individuals. Being an evangelist for of this initiative has been my most tangible accomplishment within the State.
Sometimes it’s just lucky to be new at the right time!
Hopefully I’ll discover other awesome process improvements to share over my next two decades!
~
On net, this digital process is an absolute winner for the State and our partners. However, I must note that has resulted in a perverse dynamic where a PM spends more time processing paperwork than in the past. The cloud stole tasks from administrative assistants and put it on licensed engineers and architects.
The next step would be free up the licensed professionals to return their focus on their professional expertise. Cal Newport discusses this issue in his book “A World Without Email”, but the path forward is still murky.
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PS: You can “add” email addresses in Google with a “+” (plus sign). If your gmail is “sample@gmail.com” then you can create a limitless sub-email addresses like “sample+vendor@gmail.com” and “sample+chief@gmail.com”… All those emails will just land in your main gmail inbox. It’s an invaluable hack to testing all sorts of digital systems.
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402 (on Post.news)
It’s fitting that this centennial post doesn’t land on a ’00 because I rePosted right past the landmark this morning.
It’s been crazy busy at work for the past month. Good busy, but it takes a toll on creative output outside of work. (And inside work too!)
Hopefully things will slow down in a month.
In the meantime I’ve been happy finding (and sharing) the cool things everyone else are making. I’ve been using RP’s as bookmarks. Before posting, I enjoyed a quick stroll through through the recent past.
I hope to return to a half-half equilibrium between original posts versus sharing other people’s work, but that might be after the next centenary.
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On Post in general, it feels that this place is going through a lull.
The platform is still young, but no longer new. The limitless promise has worn off so the rough edges have become irritants.
When are we going to get global notifications on comments? How much longer for lists! Why does rePosting something send me back to the top of the feed? Ugh, three columns. Bugs!
I know, #StillinBeta! It helps to feel that management cares. Hopefully the doldrums are just a phase as it matures into a richer platform.
It’s still a great crowd here. And I’ll be here as long as y’all are here.
Here’s to more 00’s!
~
Though you never know…which is why I believe everyone should keep their own website as an archive beyond of the whims of others…like here!