Latest bookmarks (page 1 of 3)

"The gap between your abilities and your taste is not a gap to be crossed but one to be cultivated. As you build your craft, whether it’s writing or radio or glass blowing or leading a team, you develop ever more ideas about what’s possible in your work. As your skill grows, so too do your ambitions, such that your taste always and forever outstrips your abilities. For every increment of improvement, you extend your desires out that much further. "

"My favorite aspect of websites is their duality: they’re both subject and object at once. In other words, a website creator becomes both author and architect simultaneously. There are endless possibilities as to what a website could be. What kind of room is a website? Or is a website more like a house? A boat? A cloud? A garden? A puddle? Whatever it is, there’s potential for a self-reflexive feedback loop: when you put energy into a website, in turn the website helps form your own identity."

"Despite being a Kennywood fan and a lover of theme parks in general, I had never seen WQED's Kennywood Memories. For the few who might be unfamiliar, the hour-long documentary special from 1988, produced, written, and narrated by Rick Sebak, is considered a classic, capturing not only Kennywood but Pittsburgh life itself."

"By 43, Mary HK Choi had come up with many explanations for her strangeness around other people. Was it something else all along?"

"Every summer, my parents used to physically drag my little sister and me on long bike rides. [...] A couple miles in, he’d chant, 'Don’t cheat your body! Don’t cheat your body!' as if he could feel my scrawny legs quivering up the hills. I’d roll my eyes."

"Something I spend a lot of time reiterating is that one of the key things that you pay a large class of professionals for is their judgement."

"Who gets to define the future? I have some notes."

"Programmers are people who can endure an endless parade of tedious obstacles. Imagine explaining to a [novice] how to assemble furniture over the phone, with no pictures, in a language you barely speak. Imagine, too, that the only response you ever get is that you’ve suggested an absurdity and the whole thing has gone awry. All the sweeter, then, when you manage to get something assembled."

"Accessing personal information from customers is a serious matter. With the launch of HEY in 2020, we developed some technology and processes to support a very simple principle: employees shouldn’t have access — intentionally or unintentionally — to personal information from our users without their explicit consent."

"Every time I pick this thing up though I can’t help think about that future-of-the-book stuff. The annoying what-if stuff. Like, what if ebooks were just a little better? What if the physical design of the Kobo was a little more Teenage Engineering and less generic, throw-away-able plastic? Where is the fun in the interface? Where is the (ugh) delight in the heft of this thing as an object? Why can’t I quickly pull in every book from Project Gutenberg? Why can’t I navigate the web but in a super-focused, monochromatic way?"