Bustr Bensn

twitterthecomic: bear in scrubs walks into waiting room”Sorry...

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:55:33 -0700

*bear in scrubs walks into waiting room*”Sorry to be the bear-er of bad news but I’m a bear and your son died cause bears can’t do surgery”
— Joe (@lazy_joe_) May 12, 2013

John-Paul Flintoff: The Quantified self

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:24:15 -0700

John-Paul Flintoff: The Quantified self:

nancyhd:

“QS is a kind of secular ritual. To be meaningful, it can’t be carried out on our behalf by gadgets. ”

There are many interesting ideas and questions in this fabulous essay on the Quantified Self by John-Paul Flintoff, but my favorite is: If we design perfect monitors that record without any effort, will we lose the mindfulness benefit of the “ritual” of self-tracking? Does the shortcut of technology (like using a monitor to track stress levels) atrophy our ability to notice it ourselves, or can it help alert and train us to notice it better? The classic Fitbit example plays in here- if you’re walking solely to win the Fitbit competition, do you lose your natural desire to walk or run such that you won’t do it if you forget your fitbit at home? And if you have become dependent on the technology for motivation, is that inherently a bad thing?

I think it’s important when designing tracking tools to design for educating and increasing people’s inherent motivations to be healthier, not just *replacing* those inherent motivations with features like leaderboards and competitions.

This is totally right on. With behavior change and habits and quantified self there’s this whole contingent of people who want to AUTOMATE parts of their life and brain away. The real benefit, which this article highlights well, is in creating these feedback loops that help you learn about yourself.

Quantified self is applying the scientific method and mindfulness practice to yourself. Scientists and meditators never talk about automating their experiments away, they dive in deep and try to figure things out from the data.

"“I’m the worst kinda celebrity, because all I do is make music. All I do is sit in the studio and..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:42:11 -0700

“

“I’m the worst kinda celebrity, because all I do is make music.

All I do is sit in the studio and make real, real shit, and that’s it. That’s motherfucking it.

I ain’t here to apologize to no motherfuckers man. It ain’t about me humanizing myself. At what point did I become unhuman where I had to turn myself back?

I ain’t no motherfucking celebrity. I ain’t running for office. I ain’t kissing nobody’s motherfucking babies. I’m trying to make music that inspires people to be the best they can be. I don’t want nobody to ask nothing else of me. This my goddamn life. This ain’t no motherfucking joke. That’s it.

”

- Kanye (via yancey)

Ronen found the longer version of the Kanye rant that makes it even more awesome.
(via msg)

"It’s about moments in life that are great but don’t last. They don’t go on, but you always have the..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:26:19 -0700

“It’s about moments in life that are great but don’t last. They don’t go on, but you always have the memory and they have an effect on you. That’s what I was thinking about.”

- Sofia Coppola on Lost In Translation
(via stoweboyd)

"Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:20:41 -0700

““Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?””

- Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class - Salon.com

I like Jaron Lanier a lot, but this illustration as some sort of evidence of the internet hollowing out the middle class is, forgive me for saying so, idiotic. A child could figure out where those jobs went.

1) Instagram SHOWS the photos. We have to include all of the people who work on the cloud that supports that.

2) Kodak made cameras and film. Cameras are still being made - even moreso. At the very least, we should include the current #1 camera maker’s employees. At this point, that’s apple. Fifty thousand employees. Pro rate it to only the apple devices that have cameras, ignoring their mac business. 30,000 employees.

3) The film business still exists. It was just lost to Fujichrome, who still makes film and has over 30,000 employees. This has nothing to do with the web, but rather something called “Globalization.”

The internet didn’t kill a single job in photography. There are more cameras now than ever. There are still tens of thousands of people making film.

Take the market cap of JUST these three companies - facebook, apple, fujifilm, and we’re looking at $500 billion market cap, and nearly 90,000 employees.

Think that’s unfair? Canon has nearly 200,000 employees. Nikon has 24,000. 10,000 more than Kodak. Shit, ZEISS has 24,000 employees.

Never mind every single camera in an android phone.

Those jobs went overseas, and they went to computer companies, Mr. Lanier. They still exist. The internet didn’t kill a single one of them.

(via rickwebb)

Rafer sez:
Huzzah, plus Kodak’s consumer film executives went out of their way to line their pockets on the way down, at the explicit and afaik knowing expense of the nascent digital businesses. They killed Kodak, probably knew they were doing so, and showed no signs of caring at all.

I was the first internet PM for Kodak Hollywood. My product line was one of their victims.

(via rafer)

Well played, Mr. Webb.

I’m less bullish on Jaron Lanier. After his book “You Are Not A Gadget” everything he says sounds to me like some variation of “YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!”
(via kenyatta)
#teamrickwebb

onlyfoolsandvikings: Motivational Megafauna, they’re extinct...

Sun, 05 May 2013 10:46:41 -0700

onlyfoolsandvikings:

Motivational Megafauna, they’re extinct but they are proud of you.

"Baumeister suggests many strategies for increasing self-control. One of these strategies is to..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:43:19 -0700

“Baumeister suggests many strategies for increasing self-control. One of these strategies is to develop a seemingly unrelated habit, such as improving your posture or saying “yes” instead of “yeah” or flossing your teeth every night before bed. This can strengthen your willpower in other areas of your life. Additionally, once the new habit is ingrained and can be completed without much effort or thought, that energy can then be turned to other activities requiring more self-control. Tasks done on autopilot don’t use up our stockpile of energy like tasks that have to be consciously completed.”

- Riffing off psychologist Roy Baumeister’s fantastic book Willpower, Erin Rooney Doland advocates for learning new habits by starting small in an excerpt from the forthcoming 99U anthology Manage Your Day-to-Day.

Also see how to rewire your habit loops. Because, as William James knew, habit is everything.

(via explore-blog)

Cool idea.

"The people we tend to admire most are the ones who live their lives without apology. We use names..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 07:31:01 -0700

“The people we tend to admire most are the ones who live their lives without apology. We use names like maverick, hero or genius to describe them - never allowing for the possibility that we might become one of them.”

- No Regrets blog post from Ann Mehl (via oats)

From @harryh and @alicetiara’s photo booth. Setup by...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:22:02 -0700

From @harryh and @alicetiara’s photo booth. Setup by @photojennyj

explore-blog: “You can never know anyone as completely as you...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 07:53:45 -0700

explore-blog:

“You can never know anyone as completely as you want. But that’s okay, love is better.”

There’s a Tibby in each of us.

Build Habits in 1,000 Steps: Our Interview with Buster Benson

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:41:48 -0700

liftworldwide:

“I am very much against the idea of a tiny habit.”
~ Buster Benson

Tony sat down with Buster Benson to debate the best strategies for reaching your goals. Buster spent the last 10 years helping people build good habits as founder of 43 Things, Health Month and 750 Words. Watch the video to learn:

His 1,000 step strategy for reaching goals

Traps to watch out for when rewarding milestones

Why he’s a behavior change fanatic… and skeptic

His favorite fitness gadgets

Transcript after the jump. For more on Buster, check out his incredibly quantified life.

Read More

Part 2 of my interview with Lift CEO Tony Stubblebine.

"Cheerfulness, unaffected cheerfulness, a sincere desire to please and be pleased, unchecked by any..."

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:07:42 -0700

“Cheerfulness, unaffected cheerfulness, a sincere desire to please and be pleased, unchecked by any efforts to shine, are the qualities you must bring with you into society, if you wish to succeed in conversation. … a light and airy equanimity of temper,—that spirit which never rises to boisterousness, and never sinks to immovable dullness; that moves gracefully from “grave to gay, from serious to serene,” and by mere manner gives proof of a feeling heart and generous mind.”

- The art of conversation, 1866 (via explore-blog)

explore-blog: Hand-lettered awesomeness from the notebook of...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:43:05 -0700

explore-blog:

Hand-lettered awesomeness from the notebook of Debbie Millman, maker of amazing things.

Complement with Michio Kaku’s The Universe in a Nutshell.

"There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place..."

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 08:05:45 -0700

“There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.”

- Henry David Thoreau
(via stoweboyd)

betaworks: Betas Work

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 23:45:41 -0700

betaworks: Betas Work:

betaworks:

The past few months have been a little extra-busy at betaworks. While our studio companies continue to grow at a fast pace, a handful of builders (hackers in residence) have been heads-down creating a new wave of products.

Now, we’re entering a new stage of building that we’re very excited to…

This is rad.

photojojo: There’s cute, and then there’s a perfectly timed...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:33:27 -0700

photojojo:

There’s cute, and then there’s a perfectly timed photo of an adorable harvest mouse climbing a dandelion.

Photo by Matt Binstead, via My Modern Met

teampunchbag: Channel your inner barber (just me?) with these...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:27:31 -0700

teampunchbag:

Channel your inner barber (just me?) with these genius erasers designed by Chen Lu Wei for Megawing. (via)

"Not to be all “Merlin Mann” or anything, but, maybe somebody will find this useful. I was recently..."

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:27:04 -0700

“Not to be all “Merlin Mann” or anything, but, maybe somebody will find this useful. I was recently asked to talk about how I think about the infamous Inbox Zero these days, and here’s what I said: In my view, the titular ‘zero’ in Inbox Zero is not about the number of email messages that are sitting in your inbox at a given time. And, contrary to popular opinion, it’s absolutely not about spending hours of your precious day trying to achieve that empty inbox at any cost. That’s just monkeyballs. Given that every inbox necessarily represents a source of incompletion in our lives, any potential source of new input that we invite (or even permit) into our world presents a never-ending challenge that we may choose to frequently address, but which we must accept we can never even begin to control. Because, honestly, all of that blobby corpus of unknown, undefined, and incomplete stuff is, at the heart of the matter, what makes anything into an “inbox.” It’s all just… stuff. It’s stuff that we don’t know about. Or, it’s stuff we haven’t made a decision about. It’s stuff that we may or may not find useful or interesting. It’s stuff that may or may not be anything we can even do anything about. But, it’s also stuff that, regardless of its theoretical value, can and will constantly distract us from seeing and doing all those things that we already know are empirically valuable. Yet, somewhere in the back of our minds, we can feel that gnawing sense that we need to compulsively dive back into our inboxes or risk…well, practically everything. But, to me, it’s essential to acknowledge and accept that the dreaded prospect of having to make all those unknown hundreds or thousands of little decisions that might eventually get us out of an inbox is ultimately what makes any inbox—email or otherwise—so goddamned difficult and potentially distracting as a force in our lives and work. For me, the real ‘zero’ in Inbox Zero is more about consciously managing the amount of our attention that we commit (or, far more often, cede) to thinking and worrying about what may or may not be piling up while we’re away doing the real work of our lives. Which is to say: the Real Work that’s not, in this instance, about fiddling with email or drearily suffering the daily fusillade of random requests and information bombs that get lobbed our way. Put to best use, Inbox Zero is merely a philosophical practice of learning to be parsimonious about which and how many inputs we allow into into our lives—and, then, to responsibly but mindfully tend to those inputs in a way that is never allowed to hinder our personal commitment to doing the work that really matters to us. Once you’ve dedicated yourself to making the things you love, every inbox can and should become a well-monitored servant rather than a merciless master. Because, at the risk of sounding a little fruity, I believe that a life in which we habitually abandon the known Good Things in order to helplessly stab at ““managing”” a nebulous morass of chaoses that we can never control is not much of a life at all.”

- kung fu grippe: On Chasing the Right “Zero”

nevver: ― John Cage

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 22:54:02 -0700

nevver:

― John Cage

"Embedded in the game is a classic immigrant story. Mario and Luigi are Italians in a strange land,..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:44:00 -0700

“Embedded in the game is a classic immigrant story. Mario and Luigi are Italians in a strange land, blue-collar workers who travel back and forth between an above-ground mainstream and various undergrounds, moving through worlds (or class strata?) accumulating stuff, strength, and respect, all in a quest to get to a big house where they’ll liberate a beautiful woman — the final stage of the class-passing dream. Along the way, they hustle and fight and scrape to collect artificial performance enhancers (mushrooms, fire flowers) and currency (all of which can extend their lifelines), banging their heads against rocks to get ahead. They quickly learn the only thing more important than timing is artful cheating: With the prevalence of warp zones, shortcutting the system is part of the superstructure. As the landscape becomes more treacherous and competition more fierce, they find that they can no longer survive without the “boost” of mushrooms and invincibility stars. In the final stages, they race against the clock in abject desperation, roided-out addicts making stupid, careless mistakes in their frenzy to ascend just one more level. Maybe they find and save the princess in the end, but at what cost? It could be a lost Godfather sequel. It could be Scarface.”

- The Strange Case of the Super Mario Bros. Movie - Grantland (via Jason Goldman)

I have a longstanding fondness for tales of moviemaking disaster (“Hearts of Darkness,” about the torturous production of “Apocalypse Now,” is one of my all-time favorite documentaries), and this article about 1993’s shockingly clueless/soulless film adaptation of “Super Mario Bros.” is a great one. I particularly like the above attempt on the author’s part to put herself in the shoes of one of the film’s succession of non-gamer screenwriters and extract a film-able narrative from the game. I often play the same game of “armchair script doctor” when I’ve just seen a particularly shoddy adaptation of something.

(Update: Briana points out that this synopsis could almost match “Requiem for a Dream”)

I’d watch that.