espy

espy recommended The Disappeared from newyorker.com:

It was Conrad who gave him the motto to which he clung, as if to a lifeline, in the long years that followed. In the now unacceptably titled “The Nigger of the Narcissus,” the hero, a sailor named James Wait, stricken with tuberculosis on a long sea voyage, is asked by a fellow-sailor why he came aboard, knowing that he was unwell. “I must live till I die—mustn’t I?” Wait replies.

Estimated reading time: 52 min

espy On Salman Rushie's life after Satanic Verses

September 24, 2012 | 0

espy recommended an article from inoveryourhead.net:

Read as much as you can. Learn to speed read with high retention. Emerson Spartz taught me this while I was at a Summit Series event. If he reads 2-3 books a week, you can read one.

Estimated reading time: 4 min

Recited from Marcel Wichmann

espy recommended Sweep the Sleaze from informationarchitects.net:

Don’t worry. These buttons will vanish. The previous wave of buttons for Delicious and Digg and Co. vanished, Facebook and Twitter and G+ might vanish or they might survive, but the buttons will vanish for sure. Or do you seriously think that in ten years we will still have those buttons on every page? No, right? Why, because you already know as a user that they’re not that great. So why not get rid of them now? Because “they’re not doing any harm”?

Estimated reading time: 5 min

Recited from Marcel Wichmann

espy recommended The Song Machine from newyorker.com:

Most of the songs played on Top Forty radio are collaborations between producers like Stargate and “top line” writers like Ester Dean. The producers compose the chord progressions, program the beats, and arrange the “synths,” or computer-made instrumental sounds; the top-liners come up with primary melodies, lyrics, and the all-important hooks, the ear-friendly musical phrases that lock you into the song. “It’s not enough to have one hook anymore,” Jay Brown, the president of Roc Nation, and Dean’s manager, told me recently. “You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook i[…]

Estimated reading time: 28 min

espy A fascinating look at how modern pop music gets made.

March 28, 2012 | 0

At 225 feet above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don't know.

Estimated reading time: 6 min

espy Interessante Geschichte über eine Wahnsinnsinsel und ein paar sonderbare Insekten.

March 2, 2012 | 0

espy recommended The 3 Types of Knowledge from jangosteve.com:

To really understand how it is that no one knows what they’re doing, we need to understand the three fundamental categories of information. There’s the shit you know, the shit you know you don’t know, and the shit you don’t know you don’t know.

Estimated reading time: 9 min

espy One of those texts everyone should read before they turn 14. Very helpful.

February 20, 2012 | 0
Gustav Moorhouse John Cleese on creativity:
„To know how good you are at something requires the same skills as it does to be good at that thing. Which means if you’re absolutely hopeless at something, you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you’re absolutely hopeless.“

February 22, 2012 | 0

espy recommended Latest Discussions from postscapes.com:

"When wireless* is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole.........and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."

Estimated reading time: 9 min

espy Nikola Tesla, 1926. A fascinating man. I like to wonder where humanity might be if he hadn't been so bogged down by Edison, politics and patent conflicts.

January 13, 2012 | 4
Thomas Kelpen Patent wars – Fucking society since 1926.

January 18, 2012 | 0
Merle Wallace whole world, huge brain -- sounds like douglas adams

February 4, 2012 | 0

espy recommended Submarine City from bldgblog.blogspot.com:

I found a story originally published in New York Magazine back in 2009 about the waters of New York City—a maritime metropolis that, many forget, is also an archipelago. "What, exactly, is down there?" the magazine asked, looking out at the urban waters. "For starters, a 350-foot steamship, 1,600 bars of silver, a freight train, and four-foot-long cement-eating worms."

Estimated reading time: 3 min

espy The wonderful and always interesting BLDGBLOG on the waters of NYC.

January 11, 2012 | 1

espy recommended Das Schweigen der Hühner from spiegel.de:

In den Regalen der Supermärkte begann die Suche nach einer Antwort auf die Frage, warum der Verbraucher nicht weiß, was er isst. Um die Menschen zu treffen, die die Bestandteile des Menüs herstellen, mussten 89 E-Mails geschrieben werden, und manchmal vergingen Wochen, bis eine Antwort kam. Die Suche führt aus Deutschland hinaus nach Spanien, Italien, Holland, Belgien und dann wieder quer durch Deutschland, es ist die Reise in eine Welt mit einer eigenen Sprache und mit Regeln, die nur der kennt, der dazugehört. Es ist der Trip in eine Unterwelt. Wer diesen Trip erlebt hat, wird dar[…]

Estimated reading time: 18 min

espy SpOn über die Zutaten eines typischen Supermarkt-Einkaufes.

December 24, 2011 | 0

In any case, here are some of the cave modules offered by Entre Prises, a kind of cave catalog called the Speleo System—though it's worth noting, as well, that "To add interest within passages and chambers, cave paintings and fossils can be added. This allows for user interest to be maintained, creating an educational experience."

Estimated reading time: 5 min

espy So there's this company that not only makes regular and ice climbing walls, but also modular, reconfigurable indoor and outdoor cave systems. The brochure is joyously bizarre.

December 24, 2011 | 0

In fact, it is now usually cheaper to just try something than to sit around and try to figure out whether to try something. The product map is now often more complex and more expensive to create than trying to figure it out as you go. The compass has replaced the map, and “rough consensus and running code” has become the fundamental philosophy for the so-called lean start-up movement.

Estimated reading time: 4 min

espy Bit obvious, but nicely put. Good point on why the internet needs to stay the way it was.

December 7, 2011 | 0

The eminent linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford once gave a lecture in which he asserted that there are many languages in which a double negative makes a positive, but none in which a double positive makes a negative — to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, sitting in the audience, sarcastically replied, “Yeah, yeah.‹

Estimated reading time: 8 min

espy Ja ja :)

October 15, 2011 | 0
manuel "Ja ja" kann auch eine negative Aussage besitzen. Zumindest bei uns im Süden :P

October 16, 2011 | 0
hakantee die version mit "yeah, right" finde ich irgendwie geiler.

October 17, 2011 | 0

Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Estimated reading time: 6 min

espy — T. S. Eliot , "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", 1920. Probably my favourite piece of prose. On descisions and waiting and love and what to do with oneself.

October 12, 2011 | 0

Frauen sind keine Wunderlampen.

Estimated reading time: 2 min

espy Gut zu wissen.

October 1, 2011 | 0

espy recommended Minimum Viable Personality from avc.com:

SELL TO FRIENDS, NOT STRANGERS PERSONALITY MAKE PRODUCT FRIEND. YOU HELP FRIEND. YOU FORGIVE WHEN FRIEND NOT PERFECT. YOU WANT FRIEND WIN. BORING STRANGER?… YOU NOT.

Estimated reading time: 2 min

espy What any product needs: Minimum Viable Personality. A wonderful formula for win.

September 29, 2011 | 0
Marcel Wichmann WHY IS EVERYTHING WRITTEN IN UPPERCASE

September 29, 2011 | 0
espy Because it's written by a GIANT ROBOT DINOSAUR: twitter.com/#!/FAKEGRIMLOCK They're just loud, you know. It's because they're so huge.

September 29, 2011 | 0
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espy Ach, apropos, hashbangs vermurksen immer noch die automatische Verlinkung :D

September 29, 2011 | 0
Marcel Wichmann Oh, fixen wir.

September 29, 2011 | 0

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