Francesco Schwarz

What a lovely use of typography on Andrew Walpole’s website! 😍

Rapper RIN in an interview with the SZ:

Dort unten ist für mich Urlaub. Hier ist meine Heimat. Ich vermisse es richtig, wenn ich in Bosnien bin. Vor allem das Schwabenland. Ich liebe die Ruhe, die dieser Teil von Deutschland ausstrahlt. Das Schwabenland ist wie das Auenland aus Herr der Ringe. Milch und Honig fließt durch die Bäche, Mercedes, Porsche und Einfamilienhäusle.

There is so much to learn from this podcast episode, I listened to it during a run this morning.

On days when good things happen, as you’d expect, people tend to report increases in things like positive affect, life satisfaction or self-esteem, but individuals who score high in measures of purpose in life, on those days when good things happen, they tend to look emotionally even keel. It’s almost as if that good thing didn’t happen. I’ll just say, although that may be jarring at first, it’s like purpose almost blocks you from reaping the benefits of a good thing, over time, you would not want your emotional tone to be bouncing around based upon the experiences that are happening to you. Over the course of one’s lifespan, it might be beneficial to remain even keel or as close as possible to life’s experiences, and feel good irrespective of what’s happening around you.

Most conversations about performance are a total waste of time, […]

Creating an accessible dialog on the web is trickier than it should be.

Word!

Lots of people started moving to Mastodon. I figured I should do the same for my syndicated notes.

This is why the octopus is such an interesting case – it can be seen as a form of “conscious exotica”, or an example of consciousness very unlike our own, as Halina writes in an essay on the subject. Octopuses are different enough from us that a lot of our assumptions about them have to be questioned – and even our assumptions about ourselves.

Fascinating creatues. Let’s hope plans for the world’s first commerical octopus farm in Spain won’t go ahead. 🤞

Mark Kaufman about a “successful, deceptive PR campaign”. Eye-opening.

British Petroleum, the second largest non-state owned oil company in the world, with 18,700 gas and service stations worldwide, hired the public relations professionals Ogilvy & Mather to promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals.

Ivan Demchenko on how to think about Design Systems.

During my time at Personio, I participated in the process of re-thinking the existing Design System. I noticed that dissecting the system into layers helped us answer some tricky questions. So, bear with me.

Sara Soueidan on how she manages her daily time.

I divide my day into “activity blocks” that are then distributed to occupy different time slots across the day.

Alex Russell puts into words what the popular phrase “Safari is the new IE6” really means. Insightful.

This is not an exhaustive list, and each entry can block entire classes of applications from credibly being possible on the web. The real world impact is challenging to estimate. Weighing up the deadweight losses in start-ups not attempted and higher prices for small businesses who must pay to develop native apps seems a promising angle for economists to investigate.

Jay Hoffman teamed up with CSS-Tricks to deliver an ongoing series about the history of the web.

The first chapter is titled “Birth” and speaks about how the WWW came to be. It’s a captivating read. I especially like the quote

Vague, but exciting…

This is a comment by Mike Sendall, who was Berners-Lee’s boss at the time. He wrote it as a note on the first formal proposal for the WWW titled “Information Management, a Proposal” by Berners-Lee from 1989.

Today, as you know, the web is

[…] used by billions of people and runs through everything we do. It is among the most remarkable technological achievements of the 20th century.

Looking forward to this series.

Sarah Drasner, killin’ it over at CSS-Tricks:

When a site is done with care and excitement you can tell. You feel it as you visit, the hum of intention. The craft, the cohesiveness, the attention to detail is obvious. And in turn, you meet them halfway. These are the sites with the low bounce rates, the best engagement metrics, the ones where they get questions like “can I contribute?” No gimmicks needed.

Struck a cord with me, so true! Some links in the comment section are also pretty good:

• a website of a local cafe, written over 20 years ago
• the Wiby search engine, a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet (hit the “surprise me…” link)

I remember websites with a statement, character, attention to detail, playfulness, boldness, and rough edges. What I don’t remember: websites chasing the next web trend, trying to be like everyone else, mere manifestations of the insubstantial.

I think that’s why I also love Heydon Pickering’s website so much. It’s so playful and thoughtful. Everything seems to be done with intention. And that makes me smile.

I just discovered Matthias Ott’s challenge of wiriting something every day for 100 days just recently. Since May 27 he’s constantly outputting such good content that it leaves me deeply impressed.

What will I learn from this? Will my writing improve? Will I think more about what to write? Will I make it a habit? Will you enjoy what you read? Will I fail? I don’t know. All I know is that I already like the idea of writing more and seeing where this leads me. I’m actually excited! Let’s do this. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Jason Fried:

Our customers use Basecamp or HEY every day, we’re here for them 24/7 to help with anything. But when it comes to billing, one of the most sensitive concerns, if you’re forced to pay through Apple’s system, well, we can’t help you anymore. As a business owner who gives a shit, that’s shit.

I wasn’t aware of the huge toll in-app purchases have on the customer experience. Makes Apple’s handling of the situation all the more vile. Mrs. Vestager, please step in.

This is a treasure.

A semi-weekly dose of the best stories from the web’s history delivered straight to your inbox!

I came across this website via an article circulating my Twitter timeline this week called What Happened to the Webmaster by Jay Hoffmann which is a beauty in itself. Really nicely done, and the screenshots in the article will make your heart melt. I mean: who can resist the freshness and sexiness of the homepage for a Chicago Museum from the year 1995?!

Kidding aside, I really appreciate the work that went into this and the explanation of how the role of the webmaster really never disappeared.

But the webmaster role, the one we created thirty years ago? That’s still there. Because that role built the web and the web is a part of us. We can’t shake it loose. It’s begging us to do something different. I see it all the time. I see it every time we outwardly express one of the fundamental qualities of the web creator.

I could read this kind of web philosophy all day long.

Beth Finke:

I never got to the part where I was supposed to give them a call. The emojis got in the way.

You can easily fuck up accessibility by over- or misusing them. Thanks for these simple tips, Beth.

PC Maffey describes it like it is:

Hiring is broken. People leave their jobs every 2 years or less. The corporate work culture survives on people's fears. If you don't play by the rules of the people in power, how will you make money, how will you feed your family, how will you contribute to society? It's a vicious cycle perpetuated by our willingness to outsource our values.

I can’t remember if LinkedIn (or XING in German-speaking countries for that matter) ever helped me in finding or steering me towards a job.

Twitter on the other side helped me find my first one right after university (article on when I left said first job).

Here I am, freshly setting up my syndication workflow on my website. And here is Ben, advocating against it. Pretty compellingly he writes:

POSSE requires participation from the networks. I think it might be more effective to move all the value away: publish on your own site, and use independent readers like Woodwind or Newsblur to consume content. Forget using social networks as the conduit. Let’s go full indie.

And the paragraph that brings it to the finish line:

The effect of independence is practical, not just ideological: if you publish on your own site, your words are much more likely to stand the test of time and still be online years later. Social networks come and go, adjust their policies, etc. And there’s a business value to being able to point to a single space online that holds your body of thought and work.

Well observed.