Category: Links

David Carr:

There is a visceral quality to Twitter that can bring stories to a boiling point. Ron Mott, an NBC correspondent and a social media skeptic, watched Twitter turn up the heat on Wednesday and tweeted, “As powerful as our press have been through years of our democracy, social media raises temp on public officials like never before.”

When I came back on to Twitter I mentioned three reasons why, but I left off one important reason: when news breaks, Twitter is the best place to learn about it. Whether it’s an accident on a local highway, or something as tragic as Ferguson, Twitter is where the latest information resides.

Maureen Dowd:

“It’s hypocritical,” [James] Risen said. “A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin. They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistle-blowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”

This is one of the last things I would have pegged Obama as being, but thus far his administration has been aggressive at pursuing “leaks” — which would be fine, but he doesn’t seem overly concerned at respecting journalism.

Josh Ginter writing about Vesper:

If I find myself without a pen and memo book and I have a thought or journal idea, I quickly jot it down in Vesper. Once I get back to my written journal, I can write the contents of the note in my book and expand on them if necessary.

As I talked about with Patrick Rhone on my podcast, I will simply never understand this mindset of analog first tools. To me it is backwards: notes should be flowing back into apps like Vesper, not the other way around.

But all of that is beside the point of this link.

Because the point of this link is two-fold:

1. Ginter has written an excellent review, and the accompanying photography is outstanding. If he keeps up this level of work I’m out of a gig.
2. He makes some really good points about Vesper in general, which is worth reading if Vesper makes you scratch your head.

Ginter clearly loves the app, and it’s an odd app to love because on ‘paper’ there are so many better options (Simplenote to name one).

But as I said in my review of the app: “You either are compelled to use things you love because of practicality or because of the way they make you feel.”

Vesper sits next to Simplenote on my iPhone and I use Vesper for everything — unless I absolutely know I need that info back on my Mac. Simplenote is really only used to receive things from my Mac, because most of the time I just don’t need notes on all my devices, as I mostly just need them on a device I have with me.

An outstanding post from John Carey on the state of photography:

Your tool of choice is your choice. Spend money on a camera, or not, but don’t do it to feel more confident or to fit in. Buy a camera that suits your lifestyle.

Really love this, be sure to make time to soak it all in.

Angelica Asadi:

I grew up imagining I could do anything that any one of my brothers could do. Society decided to disagree with me and threw obstacles in my way. A person was at every corner telling me that I could not achieve all that I dream of because I was born the wrong gender. The truth is, I could have taken every single obstacle and turned them all into a stepping stone to get me where I wanted, if the one man in my life who I trusted more than anyone else believed in me. Instead, I hid from the world, I hid from the challenges, and brought up every excuse for not pushing the boundaries, because deep down inside, I began to believe I was not good enough.

The scariest thing in the world to me is not properly supporting my two little girls so that they never feel held back by stupid bullshit — coming from me or anyone else.

Very cool tool (see Patrick Welker’s description). The main reason I like this over Geektool: I can style it using CSS and that is awesome.

Nice video talking about the two most important features of a to-do list app: adding tasks and checking them off.

Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux:

“We’re getting into Minority Report territory when being friends with the wrong person can mean the government puts you in a database and adds DMV photos, iris scans, and face recognition technology to track you secretly and without your knowledge,” says Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The fact that this information can be shared with agencies from the CIA to the NYPD, which are not known for protecting civil liberties, brings us closer to an invasive and rights-violating government surveillance society at home and abroad.”

Think of this like a personal, self-hosted, version of Day One. It’s really nice, and really neat. In particular I like that I can have different projects to organize.

Right off the bat I created a “shots” project to save snapshots of the kids that I like, and a “thoughts” project to save snippets of things I am wondering about.

Very neat, very simple to install.

Alex Mayyasi:

It seems counterintuitive, but it’s a formula Americans should love: Raise speed limits, make roads safer.
Interesting read on how speed limits are set. I’d also point out that people perceive driving faster as more dangerous so a couple factors of faster speed limits could also come into play:

1. Better focus when on highways (e.g. No cell phone use.)
2. Slower drivers avoiding faster highways when not needed.

I’m a fan all around of faster speed limits.

Glad this exists, I get a lot of questions everyday about how to do just this.

Tim Carmody on OKCupid fuckery:

You can't on one hand tell us to pay no attention when you change these things on us, and with the other insist that this is what we've really wanted to do all along. I mean, fuck me over, but don't tell me that I really wanted you to fuck me over all along.

Nate Barham on Begin:

Begin sees its list (rightly) in a different way. There are things that need doing today, and you’ll be reminded of those at the start of your day (or your decided time). From there, it’s your responsibility to return to the app and check those items off as the day goes on.

MG Siegler:

I’ve been thinking about this recently when wondering why I like to write on my iPad so much more than my computer. It’s not that the iPad is “better” for writing, it’s that it’s decidedly less distracting. Yes, you still have access to Twitter, Facebook, and the like.

Read the entire post, I'm right there with him. Now all I need to do is figure out how to use this setup comfortably at my office.

I’ve long struggled with developing the journaling habit, but I love this method from Jasdev Singh:

I also set out with the goal of attaching an image to each day that passed. While this seems hard, I’ve found that screenshots are an easy way accomplish this. Small digital moments make great memories.

Maria Konnikova:

The researchers found that each trait was moderately heritable: about forty-six per cent of the tendency to procrastinate, and forty-nine per cent of the tendency toward impulsiveness, was attributable to genes. But the estimated genetic correlation between the two traits was one—that is, perfect—or at least as close to perfect as you can get. What’s more, Friedman’s team found that both traits could, in turn, be linked to goal-management ability: the same shared genetic variation overlapped substantially (at sixty-eight per cent) with a tendency toward goal failure.

So basically if you are prone to procrastination you are like impulsive as well. I do like the advice near the end:

“The problem with a goal we’re avoiding is that we’ve already built into our minds how awful it’s going to be,” he [Steel] said. “So it’s like diving into a cold pool: the first few seconds are terrible, but soon it feels great.” So, set the goal of working on a task for a short time, and then reassess.

In other words just getting started, and using realistic goals is a massive help.