A blog & newsletter about creativity over productivity, by Gina Trapani.
Link: Diddit — A simple, shareable logbook for iPhone I’ll always be a sucker for great software tools that help people get things done together. Diddit is a new one from Chris I’ve been using for awhile now. It’s a log of stuff you need get done every so often. The ones you’d ask a partner, “When was the last time we….?” As in: changed the sheets,…
Six months ago, life threw me for a loop and I dropped everything. Blogging and coding went out the window, as did social media and any sort of speaking. Doing anything in public felt intolerable while my private life was a tornado. I did keep making stuff, and thinking about how I’d write about that stuff someday. Someday is now. Thanks to friends, family, lifting , and therapy, I’m feeling human…
Link: Forevergreen — Academy Award®–Nominated Animated Short Film | Now Streaming for a Limited Time This 13-minute animated short film Forevergreen is delightful food for the soul. The filmmakers released this digital book on the art that made up the film . The porcupines are my favorite. Tags: #animation #short-film #art
Link: 3D Printed Whistles I got a 3D printer for fun and making stuff and now it’s my whole personality. (More on this soon.) It is also an outlet for dealing with my rage and heartbreak about the horrific murders and actions by ICE, Border Patrol, and federal agents here in the U.S. I’ve been printing and distributing community protection whistles in bulk with this incredible crew .…
Gina Trapani The most common piece of personal finance advice out there is to “know your net worth”—the number that represents your assets minus your liabilities. As a money nerd supporting a family in an expensive city, for years I viewed that number as a measure of how well we were doing. It’s easy to make a number more important than it is. When the number went up, I…
I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it. — Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird…
January 1st may be an arbitrary Gregorian boundary condition, but I love an annual moment to take stock and plan change. This year I’m focusing less on resolutions to achieve ambitious goals—write a book, run a marathon, drop 40 pounds—and more on intentions to improve my daily habits in small ways. Things like: plug my phone in another room before I go to bed, start my day with…
Link: AI CEO ( via ) AI CEO generates corporate executive thought leadership at the push of a button. “We’re not destroying habitats, we’re creating urban opportunities for wildlife.” Tags: #llms #work #humor
Gina Trapani Happy New Year! My favorite January tradition is treating myself to a fresh new notebook. A friend asked our group what our best notebooks are, and that question was a gift because I have thoughts. Here’s what I said. How do you use your notebook and what do you need from it? When my notebook is my daily driver, I am really hard on it. I take it with me everywhere and fill it…
Netflix What do you like, and why do you like it? Personally, I have to practice answering this question. I get influenced by what others like. I have an internal judge telling me what I should and shouldn’t like. When I do know I like a thing, it’s not easy to quantify why I enjoyed feeling whatever it made me feel. This past year, to practice figuring out what I like and why I like…
Link: Our interfaces have lost their senses Digital tech has flattened our experience of the world to text under a glass touchscreen, writes Amelia Wattenberger in a beautifully-illustrated essay. We should build more computer interfaces that serve the way humans experience the world—through their five senses. I think about this idea in terms of how my kid sees me get stuff done. When I was…
Link: The Art of KPop Demon Hunters Netflix released 142 gorgeous pages of digital art and behind-the-scenes stories about the making of KPop Demon Hunters, its most-watched film of all time. Writer/director Maggie Kang: “I knew I wanted to see female superheroes who were a lot more relatable, who like to eat and make silly faces….not just being pretty, sexy and cool, but with real…
Link: How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life ( via ) I can’t get this lovely second-half story out of my head: Paul Lundy, a man in his mid-50s, left his lucrative and unfulfilling corporate career behind to repair typewriters. There’s just something irresistible about fixing things with your own two hands . Tags: #second-half #hardware #diy
Gina Trapani Last weekend’s Black Friday deals lured me to my local computer superstore, where I picked up a bunch of parts, went home, unboxed them all, plugged them into one another, pressed the power button, and crossed my fingers. Beep! My new server booted up, in all its redundant storage glory. Now I have enough room to store and search all my photos and videos and files, without…
It’s the easiest it’s ever been to make software–especially simple apps, single-serving websites, and scripts. This year I’ve been having a blast programming again and I’ve really embraced the idea: Software is useful even if it has just one user. This year I put together a few small apps for a single user: myself. They’re not scalable or secure or written to…
Link: Jmail, logged in as jeevacation@gmail.com ( via ) Search and read Jeffrey Epstein’s email as if you were logged into his Google account with Jmail. Luke Igel and Riley Walz converted the House Oversight release PDFs to structured text using an LLM, and made the message threads available in this convincing Gmail clone. Be sure to check out starred messages, and click on the contact list…
Link: Busy Simulator ( via ) Brian Moore ’s Busy Simulator makes repeating app sounds that make you seem incredibly busy. Fun exercise: observe how your body feels when you hear these sounds. I have different reactions to different apps. Tags: #productivity-detox #art
Link: Tai Ericson on Instagram Tai Ericson is using donated Harry Potter books to make portraits of transgender people who have been murdered, including Sam Nordquist and Ra’Lasia Wright . “The author [of Harry Potter] has contributed purposefully and relentlessly to a culture that vilifies and endangers trans people around the world. The portrait destroys her work, replacing it with a…
Be bored. Be by yourself. Let your mind wander. Let your imagination breathe and watch what comes. Watch what comes and have the courage and the audacity to just try. Try it out. Whatever comes into your head, try it out. — Rosie Perez ’s advice to young people in this NYT Magazine feature on Gen X , “the last generation that wasn’t online until adulthood.” Tags:…
High achievers are perhaps the most insecure people among us. Competitive people behave the way they do because without those daily victories they struggle to accept themselves. They need constant reminders, promotions, or media attention to feel good about who they are. Despite how much public praise they receive, for many, achievement is a way to mask self-loathing, depression, anxiety or shame.…