Tools

Election

The right answer for the wrong reason is not anything to be proud of.

 Half of the voting population of the U.S. still voted for a guy whose numbers didn't even remotely add up. I'm glad that the least-bad guy won the presidency, but it's going to be an ugly 4 years with a House of Representatives full of old white men from a party that thinks you can create jobs by firing people and that rape is an act of God.

Busy Bee

I haven't written anything for a while because I've been stupid busy. I would like to take this opportunity to plug one of the things I've been busy with: opening an Etsy store called The EmBoss. I have always enjoyed making personalized hand-embossed greeting cards for special occasions and holidays. It's a nice creative release and people really seem to appreciate them.

It turns out to be quite difficult to convey a complex idea with a few simple shapes. Over the years I've managed to get it down to a fine art and I think I can consistently produce attractive, elegant, minimalist cards. So I thought I'd see if other people liked them to.

Right now I've got 8 designs, covering weddings, baby showers, birthdays and blanks greetings cards for no reason at all, but I will be increasing this as I get more ideas and more time to implement them. Take a look at my store. For the next little while I'm having a grand opening free shipping sale; just use the coupon code GRANDOPENING

Friendly Reminder

I see a lot of people complaining on the Facebox about how underappreciated they feel; "I always doing nice things for other people, but no one ever does nice things for me." It's possible that there is a small group of people who are on the receiving end of all of everyone else's good deeds and so these complaints are warranted. However, I suspect the real explanation is a lot simpler than that: it's a lot easier to notice the nice thing you did for someone else than to notice the nice thing someone else did for you. Next time you're feeling underappreciated, try to remember this. The point is,

1. keep doing nice things for people but don't expect them to notice and,
2. try harder to notice nice things people have done for you (and when you do, express your gratitude overtly).

Post-scarcity

Proof that we live in a post-scarcity world: Someone built this. And I, and half-a-million other people, spent 7 minutes watching it. Remind me again why you like working so hard?

The more you know…

Did you know that the yarmulke is the closest living relative of the headphone?

Fossil evidence has been found for 5 intermediate lifeforms (b-f) between the most recent common ancestor (a) and the modern headphone (g).*



* This figure is actually from Pruppacher & Klett, 2004. Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation, Kluwer Academic Publishers. It shows how large raindrops can break up as they are subjected to drag forces while falling. Apparently in low-turbulence falls, drops can get up to about 4.5mm before this breakup mechanism kicks in.

Recurring

Remember that old video-clip-mix music video I posted a while ago?  Turns out that guy did a music video for Norwegian band Katzenjammer a few years ago. Somehow I hadn't heard this song til yesterday, but I really like the song and the video. I especially like the percussive thunder clouds. So, enjoy!