Lost Change

"Telling the news on Twitter is different than telling the news in a magazine or newspaper. I realize..."

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:10:47 -0700

“Telling the news on Twitter is different than telling the news in a magazine or newspaper. I realize journalists have a difficult job these days. The way mistakes are made and disseminated and the way they are corrected, is utterly different on Twitter than at a magazine like Wired or a newspaper like the New York Times. This places unfamiliar demands on journalists and novel demands on consumers of news. And the bigger burden is on the consumers, which I imagine makes the journalists especially cross. Because if we consumers want to have a real-time account of events—and we do, it really makes us a better informed citizenry—we have to understand how to deal better with ambiguity.”

- Nick Kallen, on Mat Honan’s desire for the ability to edit tweets

"Whimsy is not a quality we usually associate with computer programs. We tend to think of software in..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:15:08 -0700

“Whimsy is not a quality we usually associate with computer programs. We tend to think of software in terms of the function it fulfills. For example, a spreadsheet helps us do our work. A game of Tetris provides a means of procrastination. Social media reconnects us with our high school nemeses. But what about computer code that serves no inherent purpose in itself?”

- Jacob Harris on the quirky yet delightful Times Haiku

San Francisco as a treasure map. I unsurprisingly love the...

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 22:52:22 -0700

San Francisco as a treasure map. I unsurprisingly love the rendering of Sutro Tower.

At Chambers eat + drink in The Phoenix Hotel

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 23:36:12 -0700

At Chambers eat + drink in The Phoenix Hotel

The ride up to Hawk Hill this morning with Naz was pretty...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:40:00 -0700

The ride up to Hawk Hill this morning with Naz was pretty special.

Sidewalk engraving on Valencia St., outside Four Barrel, in San...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:33:00 -0800

Sidewalk engraving on Valencia St., outside Four Barrel, in San Francisco’s Mission District.

"Listen to your users more than the press. Don’t get sucked into the gravity hole between you..."

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:19:12 -0800

“Listen to your users more than the press. Don’t get sucked into the gravity hole between you and your competition. Ruthlessly run your own path, not someone else’s.”

- Josh Williams, on his experience taking Gowalla off the ground, and eventually setting it back down

"That’s how My Bloody Valentine’s deeply destabilizing queasiness, amplified here to a..."

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 19:39:48 -0800

“That’s how My Bloody Valentine’s deeply destabilizing queasiness, amplified here to a frightening degree, has always struck me: There’s a rush of feeling inside their music so intense it creates a kind of paralysis. Music swirls and moves in and out of phase, voices float by, half memory and half anticipation, and you’re never quite sure how all the parts fit together. You get lost in it, and if you’re wired a certain way that mixture of desire and confusion is easy to map on to the wider world.”

- Mark Richardson, on the new My Bloody Valentine album, mbv

"Writing a novel is like writing a computer program. The goal of this program is to create an output..."

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 17:43:00 -0800

“Writing a novel is like writing a computer program. The goal of this program is to create an output (the actual words of the book) of a certain nature (the theme of the book). But to generate it, you fiddle with the functions/methods within the program (characters), the order in which you call them up, and the parameters you assign them (plot, conflict, setting). The source code requires less memory than the output. It’s algorithmic, generative. And when written well, it can lead to an end result that’s wonderfully complex, that takes on a life of its own.”

- An update from Jack Cheng about his experience of writing his first novel, These Days. I suspect it will be wonderful, but that really won’t matter because it’s been worth it just to follow along with him in the process.

I'm smitten with Vine

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:23:19 -0800

Bernal fireworks vine.co/v/bJh0qUdKF1x
— Bill Couch (@couch) January 27, 2013

Portait by Naz from a night in Berkeley for Indonesian and boba...

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:39:00 -0800

Portait by Naz from a night in Berkeley for Indonesian and boba with him and Jen.

"It was while standing at the Embarcadero a few years ago, imagining concrete sentinels and road..."

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 14:22:20 -0800

“It was while standing at the Embarcadero a few years ago, imagining concrete sentinels and road decks shooting up into the sky, when perhaps for the first time I thought of cities as truly malleable, entities unfrozen in time, possible to be shaped—and also misshaped—by ourselves.”

- From Marcin Wichary’s beautiful and eloquent piece on why he chose to become a Code for America fellow this year.

Solve your first-world problem

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 14:17:00 -0800

Solve your first-world problem:

I’m generally quite bothered/fatigued by people using reductive phrases like “first-world problem,” “humblebrag,” and “white people,” but there are some truly abhorrent sites featured in this, many of which I had never heard. Pitchbox and Sparkology are especially grating, and generally represent much of what I hate about Silicon Valley. When motives are rooted in status and wealth and not meaning and progress, it pushes this industry further from its roots and more towards the vapid vanity of Hollywood.

The ability of Instagram’s filters to subtlety create...

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:36:18 -0800

The ability of Instagram’s filters to subtlety create striking photos keeps drawing me in.

From California City in the Mojave Desert.

I can tell I’ve found my people when a group of four...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:50:00 -0800

I can tell I’ve found my people when a group of four friends are down for a weekend road trip to an unfulfilled promise in the form of California City in the Mojave Desert.

Photos from Kim, Bill, Dustin, Kim, Bill, Kim, Bill, Dustin, Kim, Bill, (Marcin isn’t a big Instagram user).

"There is a digital noise surrounding us, invisible chatter, and we spend time listening to this in..."

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:38:46 -0800

“There is a digital noise surrounding us, invisible chatter, and we spend time listening to this in each city we travel through. These photographs serve as a means of memorializing these brief virtual moments.”

- Nate Larson, who, together with Marni Shindelman, looks at tweets from trending topics, finds the physical location from where the tweet was posted, and photographs the space.

"There’s a whole class of human communication that happens through decorational lights. New York City..."

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 22:01:17 -0800

“There’s a whole class of human communication that happens through decorational lights. New York City does a lot of this. They light up the tree in Rockefeller center. That moment when it goes from dark to gleaming, that’s a big moment for humans. There’s a lot of ceremony involved. What is actually being communicated, then? What is the difference between the dark tree and the light tree? … It’s a way of talking at a distance. Flags and towers, short signals. Hello everyone. Here are our explosives. Hello. Here are our rainbow-colored lights hung from the balcony. Hello. Christmas lights work for the same reason that people on shore wave to people in boats.”

- Paul Ford

"If I look at everyone I’m following on Twitter, by and large they are peers I’ve known for the past..."

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 18:51:43 -0800

“If I look at everyone I’m following on Twitter, by and large they are peers I’ve known for the past few years in my current circle of friends, people that excite me with new ideas, music, and art, and lots of humor. On Twitter, I have no idea where most people grew up, what schools they attended, and they are similarly in the dark when it comes to me. You get to know more about the people you follow day by day as their comments and ideas fill my picture of what makes them tick.”

- Matt Haughey, highlight the key difference between Twitter and Facebook

When you help build intangible objects for a living, I find you...

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:46:00 -0800

When you help build intangible objects for a living, I find you live to build tangible objects — and love to do so. In an effort to bring friends together around food, a group of us gathered last Sunday and spent the entire day preparing a wonderful, autumnal feast. This is likely the beginning of a routine.

Photos from Dustin, Kim, Marianne, Kim, Dustin, and more from Alexa, in the second half of this post.

"Places mean much more than their locations on a map. Places are the ways we spend our time; how we..."

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:05:51 -0800

“Places mean much more than their locations on a map. Places are the ways we spend our time; how we live our lives. Imagine a map that replaced addresses with the number of hours people have spent there. Some places have accumulated thousands, maybe millions of our hours. Choosing to be somewhere is our way of saying “Right now, this place is worth my time. These people are worth my time. The things I can do here are the things I want to be doing now.””

- Karina van Schaardenburg