Readit News A new report, titled “Foundations,” captures the country’s economic malaise in detail.
Any policy suggestions need to show how they'll urgently remedy the serious issues with energy, housing, and infrastructure detailed in the report -- or make the case that this issues don't matter.
Here's the direct link:
idea capture is upstream of everything else. you can do drafting or editing a month later or a year later, when the mood comes
I wrote a Colophon recently about my blog tech stack. it includes a "Writing" section which touches on how I start with idea capture (and also the psychological blockers about doing everything else)
I've learnt that blogging is a necessary part of my practice for finding and exploring new ideas. It's brought me work and friends. And there's especially a place for blogging today: no platform will value your words like you will yourself.
For those who never played it, Battle Chess was a chess game from 1988. It had one different: when a piece took another piece, it would play a canned animation (gruesome, funny)
Wildly popular at the time. Some screenshots:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/1950/battle-chess/screenshots...
I originally had a specific agenda - to get a perspective on a core project with moral considerations. In between booking and having the call the project was written off. I kept the call.
It gave me the option, as someone currently freelancing and consulting, to talk to someone in a different boat, going to a different place, on the same sea.
Impactfully he gave me some simple advice that I struggle with - paraphrased "act in the open / people will find you". I've spent a great deal of time since struggling with it - it is a loss of control when being perceived, and flies in the face of a lifetime of believing in internet anonynimity!
There have been some really unusual moments -- like reviewing the pitch deck of a monk, or being suddenly involved in a design crit for a class of masters students.
And some are extraordinary. Last week I spoke with a hugely successful children's book author who has just opened a kids' playground that builds familiarity with the fundamentals of computing!
Sometimes I feel like I'm able to help. By being a second pair of eyes on what the other person sees as ordinary, or even tangled and overwhelming, we can identify a way forward or point of focus for a project or artistic practice.
But my favourites are the everyday conversations where we find common ground, and I learn something and they learn something too in the exchange.
I find that when I'm required to explain an opinion or some knowledge that I take for granted, the act of verbalising it illuminates new ideas, and talking to somebody else about it helps me find new perspectives.
It's the highlight of my week, and has been for 4 years now!
This doesn't work for all use cases but data extraction is pretty safe. Treat it like a database query -- a slow but high availability and relatively cheap call.