There’s No Shortcut to Wisdom

A good read on Adam’s decision to dive away from reading as much philosophy as he can get his hands on and instead begin diving into fiction and poetry. While I share his view that he has “set [himself] up to argue with the Jamesons rather than the Geoghegans”, and believe me this is worth reading just to appreciate that line, I am decidely less optimistic than he is on the power of the humanities and literature to reveal truth.

The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein

Why not pair someone walking away from philosophy with an account of a famed philosopher whose philsophy was, itself, rejecting modern philosophy (and post-Enlightenment leanings of all kinds, it seems).

r/postrock Best Albums of 2018

This one is a playlist. The subreddit r/postrock compiled a Spotify playlist of their favorite albums of 2018. I’m mostly through it and it’s pretty damn good. This will probably be my go to playlist when nothing particular strikes me for much of the early part of this year.

Why we need to slow time and scale down

Om Malik (inspired by writing by Tariq Krim) has really captured some ideas I have been starting to put into practice in my own as a way to deal with today’s world. Three key ideas: shift focus from quantity to quality, go analog, and unscale your life.

It is a sane correction to our times. Social media and the whole “digital world” defaults to a firehose of useless information and value-free interactions. And as globalization, information technology, and the technology of capitalism itself races towards zero marginal cost, it feels easy to lose a sense of value. I have been explicitly working on slowing down. I am reading more longer form journalism, curtailing channels that push information to me rather than allowing me to pull information I wantwhen I am ready for it, and trying to chase lasting, rather than ephemeral pleasures. There’s a lot about this process which is privileged and hard, but I think it will make for a healthier psychology.

CSS Grid for Designers

When I did the redesign here on json.blog, I decided to use the opportunity to learn the basics of CSS grid. There was a fair amount of good material out there, but I wish this great post by the New York Times team was out there. A great introduction to Grid, what’s great about it, and the basics on how to use it.