good examples

"It’s always a sign of trouble when you’ve built something you don’t want to use yourself."

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:44:45 -0700

“It’s always a sign of trouble when you’ve built something you don’t want to use yourself.”

- John Gruber, Facebook Home and Dogfooding

"Most of the stuff in a backpack is carried to overcome a lack of knowledge."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:13:02 -0700

“Most of the stuff in a backpack is carried to overcome a lack of knowledge.”

- Kevin Kelly, Cool Tools Review of Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips

"One recipe for Internet success seems to be this: Start at the bottom, at the most awful,..."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:09:24 -0700

“One recipe for Internet success seems to be this: Start at the bottom, at the most awful, ridiculous, essential idea, and own it. Promote it breathlessly, until you’re acquired or you take over the world. Bitcoin is playing out in a similar way. It asks its users to forget about central banking in the same way Steve Jobs asked iPhone users to forget about the mouse.”

- Paul Ford, Bitcoin May Be the Global Economy’s Last Safe Haven

"It’s a desperate thing to need everybody to be really happy with everything you say"

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 11:31:15 -0700

“It’s a desperate thing to need everybody to be really happy with everything you say”

- Louis C.K., quoted in The Joke’s on Louis C.K.

"One of the things that struck me very early on and that continues to puzzle me is the way in which..."

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 16:33:30 -0700

“One of the things that struck me very early on and that continues to puzzle me is the way in which some forms of knowledge are considered more valuable than others, and they tend to break along educational lines. College education is considered of higher status than the kind of education that lets a person know how to repair an engine, or design a truck that’s going to be safer for the workers, or organize things.”

- Robin Nagle, quoted in The Secret World of ‘Garbagemen’

"Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions never lie to you."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 23:40:22 -0700

“Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions never lie to you.”

- Roger Ebert, quoted in Roger Ebert, Movie Critic of the Mainstream, Dies at 70

"Big data is what happened when the cost of storing information became less than the cost of throwing..."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:23:13 -0700

“Big data is what happened when the cost of storing information became less than the cost of throwing it away.”

- George Dyson, The digital big bang

"Management only exists to compensate for its own poor hiring decisions."

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:51:46 -0700

“Management only exists to compensate for its own poor hiring decisions.”

- Scott Adams, The Management-free Organization

"When you share a smile or laugh with someone face to face, a discernible synchrony emerges between..."

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:21:24 -0700

“When you share a smile or laugh with someone face to face, a discernible synchrony emerges between you, as your gestures and biochemistries, even your respective neural firings, come to mirror each other. It’s micro-moments like these, in which a wave of good feeling rolls through two brains and bodies at once, that build your capacity to empathize as well as to improve your health. If you don’t regularly exercise this capacity, it withers.”

- Barbara L. Frederickson, Your Phone vs. Your Heart

"You reflect on older times. Passwords were forgotten once, and forgotten again — the next day, the..."

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:39:00 -0700

“You reflect on older times. Passwords were forgotten once, and forgotten again — the next day, the next week, the next month. The thought seems idyllic. A life where small errors are experienced in lovely, small scales — one at a time.”

- Liz Danzico, Big

"If I could bring all of my students back into the classroom, I would remind them of David..."

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:06:41 -0700

“If I could bring all of my students back into the classroom, I would remind them of David Packard’s admonition that in the long run, “more companies die of indigestion than starvation.” If a company focuses on making creative contributions that fall in the middle of three intersecting circles—what it is passionate about, what it can be the best in the world at, and what best drives a sustained profitable economic engine—then growth will likely follow.”

- Jim Collins, The Secret Life of the CEO

"Simplicity is not about making something without ornament, but rather about making something very..."

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 09:51:00 -0700

“Simplicity is not about making something without ornament, but rather about making something very complex, then slicing elements away, until you reveal the very essence. After all the slicing away, you may realize, now that you can clearly see the idea, that it’s actually not very good.”

- Christoph Niemann, The Story of My App

"To be a futurist, in pursuit of improving reality, is not to have your face continually turned..."

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:43:47 -0800

“To be a futurist, in pursuit of improving reality, is not to have your face continually turned upstream, waiting for the future to come. To improve reality is to clearly see where you are, and then wonder how to make that better.”

- Warren Ellis, How To See The Future

"You should make something. You should bring something into the world that wasn’t in the world..."

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:24:47 -0800

“You should make something. You should bring something into the world that wasn’t in the world before. It doesn’t matter what that is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a table or a film or gardening — everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, ‘I did that.’”

- Ricky Gervais, The Esquire Interview

"To answer a question starting with “well” suggests you are still considering it, don’t know fully..."

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 08:01:47 -0800

“To answer a question starting with “well” suggests you are still considering it, don’t know fully but are getting there. To answer with “so” better suits the age, perhaps: A Google-glued generation can look it up where their parents would have said “I don’t know,” Facebook and Twitter encourage ordinary people and not just politicians to stay on message, and we gravitate toward declamatory blogs and away from down-the-middle reporting.”

- Anand Giridharadas, ‘So’ Pushes to the Head of the Line

"I’ve slowly learned, the hard way, that my best writing comes when I’m not thinking about writing..."

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 08:53:00 -0800

“I’ve slowly learned, the hard way, that my best writing comes when I’m not thinking about writing and am far from desk or conscious intention. But then the clouds gather above the sea, and my idle mind conjures up bad possibilities the way one might dream of chocolate cake. We worry only about exactly those things we can never do anything about. And then that very fact becomes something else we worry about. The cycle goes on and on until we let the mind give over to something larger — wiser — than itself.”

- Pico Iyer, The Snake in the Garden

"It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t..."

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 23:42:57 -0800

“It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book. A book is a book is a book. I know that’s terribly old-fashioned. I’m old, and when I’m gone they’ll probably try to make my books on all these things, but I’m going to fight it like hell. I can’t believe I’ve turned into a typical old man. I can’t believe it. I was young just minutes ago.”

- Interview with Maurice Sendak

"Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always..."

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:18:01 -0700

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

- Neil Gaiman, Ten rules for writing fiction

"In politics, for example, candidates often start out idealistically, with more extreme positions..."

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:32:30 -0700

“In politics, for example, candidates often start out idealistically, with more extreme positions that they later temper to gain more votes in the general election; this serves to effect policy that works for the whole electorate. But making creative product is very different than politics and too much consensus building just dulls a project’s vision, making it mushy and less bold.”

- Gavin Polone, Why TV Is Now Better Than Movies

"While we wait for science to catch up, we sometimes still cling to magic because it’s the only way..."

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 09:49:00 -0700

“While we wait for science to catch up, we sometimes still cling to magic because it’s the only way we can tell ourselves that the world makes sense. We turn to magic because sometimes it’s all we have; in the face of things beyond our control, magical thinking remains that last bit of hope that we’ll always have at our disposal.”

- Colin Dickey, Very Superstitious