barnsworthburning.net
- What this site is
- Colophon
- Contact me
- Shortlist of interesting spaces
- Behind the scenes
Most likely to succeed in defining Japanese aesthetics is a net of associations composed of listings or jottings, connected intuitively, that fills in a background and renders the subject visible.
For a person just getting started in some area of natural history, and unabashed focus on list-chasing is a good thing, at least for a while. The trick is knowing when to stop.
Cover art for Alan Fletcher's wonderfully expansive commonplace book.
The idea of “evergreen” content naturally contrasts with its opposite. I am going to call that non-evergreen content “deciduous” because I wasn’t bullied enough as a child.
Once you see that an answer is not serving its question properly anymore, it should be tossed away. It's just their natural life cycle.
They usually kick and scream, raising one hell of a ruckus when we ask them to leave. Especially when they have been with us for a long time.
You see, too many actions have been based on those answers. Too much work and energy invested on them. They feel so important, so full of themselves. They will answer to no one. Not even to their initial question!
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.
Collect the Web,
Express Yourself.Collect what truly matters to you from the web. It's who you are. Like-minded people will find and learn from you.
Glasp is a social highlighting app that allows you to highlight and tag what you think is important while reading articles or watching videos on the web.
Cataloguing the underrated creativity of menus from around the world.
Assemblages are passional, they are compositions of desire. There is no desire but assembling, assembled desire.
Throughout his career, Wilson often answered fan mail and outside requests for his time with this form postcard:
Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him to: Read manuscripts, write books and articles to order, write forewords or introductions, make statements for publicity purposes, do any kind of editorial work, judge literary contests, give interviews, conduct educational courses, deliver lectures, give talks or make speeches, broadcast or appear on television, take part in writers' congresses, answer questionnaires, contribute to or take part in symposiums or 'panels' of any kind, contribute manuscripts for sales, donate copies of his books to libraries, autograph books for strangers, allow his name to be used on letterheads, supply personal information about himself, supply photographs of himself, supply opinions on literary or other subjects.
- Think like a gardener, not an architect: design beginnings, not endings
- Unfinished = fertile
- Artists are to cities what worms are to soil.
- A city’s waste should be on public display.
- Make places that are easy for people to change and adapt (wood and plaster, as opposed to steel and concrete.)
- Places which accommodate the very young and the very old are loved by everybody else too.
- Low rent = high life
- Make places for people to look at each other, to show off to each other.
- Shared public space is the crucible of community.
- A really smart city is the one that harnesses the intelligence and creativity of its inhabitants.
- The best way to improve software UX is regular direct observation, by everybody on the team, of the work done.
- Have some personality.
- Minimalism is garbage.
- Metaphors are fantastic.
- Naming things is fantastic.
- Try to write HTML that would make sense and be usable without the CSS.
- The buyer is quite often wrong. That fact never changes their mind.
- Working on a functioning app’s codebase does more to increase its quality than adding features.
- A good manager will debate you, and that’s awesome.
- The term ‘project’ is a poor metaphor for the horticultural activity that is software development.
Laurel’s birthday: March 15. [These are] a few of her favorite things.
I like words, and I note down ones that catch my eye as we cross paths.
Sometimes I read over the list, random access style, just to remind myself of forgotten thoughts. Each word is a bookmark into a little cascade of concepts in my brain.
So because I’d like to keep these words somewhere I can find them in the future, I’m putting them here.
Storm Doris Mimecom Cloudbleed Athleisure Cromwell H7N9 Trappist-1 ... (+448)
It’s frustrating to have done something really important and later realize that you didn’t get rewarded for it just because the people making the decision didn’t understand or remember what you did.
The tactic is pretty simple! Instead of trying to remember everything you did with your brain, maintain a “brag document” that lists everything so you can refer to it when you get to performance review season!
Things I‘ve read, people I‘ve tried to learn from, and things I‘ve done to become a better designer. This is an idiosyncratic list reflecting what has helped me along the way, rather than an exhaustive list of design classics.
Though the list leans toward theory — principles are more durable than technique — I offer a few ideas further down about how to practice design. It also leans toward information design, because the task of presenting rich, dense information in an accessible way is ultimately the task of any digital product.
A curated list of sites with an extra bit of fun.
- What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me?
- What will the use of this technology encourage me to notice?
- Does the use of this technology bring me joy?
- What limits does the use of this technology impose upon me?
- Upon what systems, technical or human, does my use of this technology depend? Are these systems just?
I've been fortunate enough to meet some of my heroes, but I still have a long way to go.
This is a list of people I'd like to high five IRL.
"Do you understand all the symbolism?"
"Not really, besides its being Venus and Cupid."
"I didn't even know that, so you're one up on me. I wish I'd read more about ancient mythology," she continued. "But actually, I like looking at things and not knowing quite what they mean."
We're not children, you know.
And with these words, she placed her lips on mine and we embarked on one of the longer and more beautiful kisses mankind has ever known.
Few things are as antithetical to sex as thought. Sex is instinctive, unreflective, and spontaneous, while thought is careful, uninvolved, and judgmental. To think during sex is to violate a fundamental law of intercourse.
When we look at someone (an angel) from a position of unrequited love and imagine the pleasures that being in heaven with them might bring us, we are prone to overlook a significant danger: how soon their attractions might pale if they began to love us back. We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as ideal as we are corrupt. But what if such a being were one day to turn around and love us back? We can only be shocked. How could they be as divine as we had hoped when they have the bad taste to approve of someone like us? If in order to love we must believe that the beloved surpasses us in some way, does not a cruel paradox emerge when we witness this love returned? "If s/he really is so wonderful, how could s/he love someone like me?"
It was perhaps a pedantic matter over which to come to such a decision, but shoes are supreme symbols of aesthetic, and hence by extension psychological, compatibility. Certain areas and coverings of the body say more about a person than others: shoes suggest more than pullovers, thumbs more than elbows, underwear more than overcoats, ankles more than shoulders.
Then I noticed a small plate of complimentary marshmallows near Chloe's elbow and it suddenly seemed clear that I didn't love Chloe so much as marshmallow her. What it was about a marshmallow that should suddenly have accorded so perfectly with my feelings toward her, I will never know, but the word seemed to capture the essence of my amorous state with an accuracy that the word 'love', weary with overuse, simply could not aspire to.
From then on, love was, for Chloe and me at least, no longer simply love, it was a sugary, puffy object a few millimeters in diameter that melts deliciously in the mouth.
What does it mean that man is a "social animal"? Only that humans need one another in order to define themselves and achieve self-consciousness, in a way that mollusks and earthworms do not. We cannot come to a proper sense of ourselves if there aren't others around to show us what we're like.
"A man can acquire anything in solitude except a character," wrote Stendhal.
Watching Alice talk, light a candle that had blown out, rush into the kitchen with the plates, or brush a strand of blonde hair from her face, I found myself falling victim to romantic nostalgia, which descends whenever we are faced with those who might have been our lovers, but whom chance has decreed we will never properly know. The possibility of an alternative love story is a reminder that the life we are leading is only one of a myriad of possible lives, and it is the impossibility of leading them all that plunges us into sadness.
Dr. Saavedra had diagnosed a case of anhedonia, a disease defined by the British Medical Association as a reaction remarkably close to mountain sickness resulting from the sudden terror brought on by the threat of happiness. It was a common disease among tourists in this region of Spain, faced in these idyllic surroundings with the sudden realization that earthly happiness might be within their grasp, and prey therefore to a violent physiological reaction designed to counteract such a daunting possibility.
"I don't know, really. It's just a sense I have that ever since about the middle of September, we haven't really been communicating. It's like there's a wall between us and you're refusing to acknowledge it's there."
"I don't see a wall."
"That's what I mean. You're refusing to admit there was ever anything other than this."
"Than what?"
Once a partner has begun to lose interest, there is apparently little the other can do to arrest the process. Like seduction, withdrawal suffers under a blanket of reticence. The very breakdown of communication is hard to discuss, unless both parties have a desire to see it restored.
This leaves the lover in a desperate situation. Honest dialogue seems to produce only irritation and smothers love in the attempt to revive it. Desperate to woo the partner back at any cost, the lover might at this point be tempted to turn to romantic terrorism, the product of irredeemable situations, a gamut of tricks (sulking, jealousy, guilt) that attempt to force the partner to return love, by blowing up (in fits of tears, rage, or otherwise) in front of the loved one. The terroristic partner knows he cannot realistically hope to see his love reciprocated, but the futility of something is not always (in love or in politics) a sufficient argument against it.
Certain things are said not because they will be heard, but because it is important to speak.
As the plane pierced through the clouds, I tried to imagine a future: a period of life was coming brutally to an end, and I had nothing to replace it with, only a terrifying absence.
What would life mean from now on? Though we continued holding hands, I knew how Chloe and I would watch our bodies grow foreign to each other. Walls would be build up, the separation would be institutionalized, I would meet her in a few months or years, we would be light, jovial, masked, dressed for business, ordering a salad in a restaurant—unable to touch what we were now revealing: the sheer human drama, the nakedness, the dependency, the unalterable loss. We would be like an audience emerging from a heart-wrenching play but unable to communicate any of the emotions they had felt inside, able only to head for a drink at the bar, knowing there was more, but unable to touch it.
No philosophy is further from the thought that what happens to us is random than psychoanalysis. I did not simply love Chloe and then she left me. I loved Chloe in order that she would leave me. It was not for the shape of her smile or the liveliness of her mind that I had chosen Chloe. It was because the unconscious, perverse casting director of my life had recognized in her a suitable character to leave the stage after inflicting the requisite amount of suffering.
There is an Arabic saying that the soul travels at the pace of a camel. While most of our self is led by the strict demands of timetables and diaries, our soul, the seat of the heart, trails nostalgically behind, burdened by the weight of memory. If every love affair adds a certain weight to the camel's load, then we can expect the soul to slow according to the significance of love's burden.
We start trying to be wise when we realize that we are not born knowing how to live, that living one's life is a skill that has to be acquired, like learning to ride a bicycle or play the piano. But what does wisdom counsel us to do? It tells us to aim for tranquility and inner peace, a life free from anxiety, fear, idolatry, and harmful passions. Wisdom teaches us that our first impulses may not always be trustworthy, and that our appetites will lead us astray if we do not train reason to separate vain from genuine needs.
Such lessons appeared all the more relevant when Rachel accepted my invitation for dinner the following week, and the very thought of her began sending tremors through the region the poets have called the heart, tremors that I knew could have meant one thing only—that I had once again begun to fall.