A few things that could be poetry An Article by Wesley Aptekar-Cassels notebook.wesleyac.com The right combination of street signs, viewed from a artful vantage point Words on bit of packaging, torn to reveal and conceal as needed The output of a command line tool, perhaps unexpectedly Overheard words, drifting along, liberated from their initial context A form, at first appearing bureaucratic, revealing humanity on deeper reflection An idea, if you consider it divine enough poetrychancewordseuphony
Rewarding Curation An Article by Wesley Aptekar-Cassels notebook.wesleyac.com Something interesting about the design of Twitter is that it doesn’t have much of a way of rewarding curation, only authorship. ...I’m inclined to think that the mechanisms of distribution of information are very important, and I think figuring out ways to reward good curation is probably an important thing. ...I don’t really know what the solution is here, but I do think that finding and curating good links and bits of information is useful, and something that should be rewarded more than it currently is. organizationcollectionscontent
How Websites Die An Article by Wesley Aptekar-Cassels notebook.wesleyac.com I recently started compiling a list of defunct blogging platforms. It’s been interesting to see how websites die — from domain parking pages to timeouts to blank pages to outdated TLS cipher errors, there are a multitude of different ways. It leaves no sign of its past self behindThis obsession with permanence
The Japanese Perspective An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi Sōetsu Generally speaking, the Western perception of art has its roots in Greece. For a long time its goal was perfection, which is particularly noticeable in Greek sculpture. This was in keeping with Western scientific thinking; there are no painters like Andrea Mantegna in the East. I am tempted to call such art ‘the art of even numbers’. In contrast to this, what the Japanese eye sought was the beauty of imperfection, which I would call ‘the art of odd numbers’. No other country has pursued the art of imperfection as eagerly as Japan. The true meaning of teaOne receives with an empty handOnly when it has ceased to be a pattern The beauty of odd numbers imperfections
The true meaning of tea There is no true deformation that does not follow the laws of necessity. In later years, when deformation came to be consciously created, when the rejection of perfection became a matter of deliberate manipulation, the true meaning of tea began to be lost. To put it in somewhat contradictory terms, true tea existed only before the advent of the tea ceremony. After the coming of tea, when deformation came to be consciously sought, common everyday beauty disappeared and unnatural manipulation began. food
One receives with an empty hand Intuition means to see immediately, directly. Considered as a form of activity, the seeing eye and the seen object are one, not two. One is embedded in the other. People who know with the intellect before seeing with the eyes cannot be said to be truly seeing. With intuition, time is not a factor. It takes place immediately, so there is no hesitation. It is instantaneous. Since there is no hesitation, intuition doesn’t harbour doubt. It is accompanied by conviction. Seeing and believing are close brothers. seeingintuition
Only when it has ceased to be a pattern Here I would like to append three lines in praise of muji: A pattern that is not a pattern is a true pattern. Create patterns until they are no longer patterns. The true pattern is a patternless pattern. When creating a pattern, one’s heart must also be muji. A pattern must be followed through until it is no longer a pattern. It is a true pattern only when it has ceased to be a pattern. zenpatterns