Someone is putting on a surprise firework display outside my balcony. For me? You shouldn’t have!
9:41 pm • 7 November 2009
"The will to blog is a complicated thing, somewhere between inspiration and compulsion. It can feel almost like a biological impulse. You see something, or an idea occurs to you, and you have to share it with the Internet as soon as possible. What I didn’t realize was that those ideas and that urgency — and the sense of self-importance that made me think anyone would be interested in hearing what went on in my head — could just disappear."
— Emily Gould
6:32 pm • 7 November 2009
"This is awful. You have to figure out how they speak to each other. They’re speaking in a moron language"
— Kazuo Ishiguro’s wife, critiquing his novel, set in mediaeval Britain, that he later abandoned. Via “How to Write a Great Novel: Junot Diaz, Anne Rice, Margaret Atwood and Other Authors Tell,” WSJ.com
4:25 pm • 7 November 2009
Harrison Ford (Han Solo), David Prowse (Darth Vader), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) and, in foreground, Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Kenny Baker (R2-D2) and Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) via LA Times
7:04 pm • 5 November 2009
"Twitter is not going to kill journalism. Journalism dedicated to reporting the impact of Twitter on journalism is going to kill journalism."
— Twitter / Elmo Keep
6:39 pm • 5 November 2009
"There are some things we know for sure. These might be minor—how to treat your parents, how to grow tomatoes, how to build a house. We each have a few such things. Start there with your feet firmly planted and see how it feels. Then take a few small steps until you reach a place that still feels firm, but where nobody else is standing. Then try to make something beautiful with what you see. If you can find a place where you’re all alone, that’s usually a good place to be."
— Jonathan Harris, “Opinions” World Building in a Crazy World . Opinions
10:03 am • 4 November 2009
"Millions of dollars are spent each year at conferences that people attend to be inspired, to learn the latest memes and speak the latest jargon. They stand around in hotel lobbies, drinking bottled water and swapping business cards. They look at what everyone else is doing, and try to figure out how to apply what they see to their own particular endeavor. These conferences lead to what I call “city ideas”. City ideas have to do with a particular moment in time, a scene, a movement, other people’s work, what critics say, or what’s happening in the zeitgeist. City ideas tend to be slick, sexy, smart, and savvy, like the people who live in cities. City ideas are often incremental improvements—small steps forward, usually in response to what your neighbor is doing or what you just read in the paper. City ideas, like cities, are fashionable. But fashions change quickly, so city ideas live and die on short cycles. The opposite of city ideas are “natural ideas”, which account for the big leaps forward and often appear to come from nowhere. These ideas come from nature, solitude, and meditation. They’re less concerned with how the world is, and more with how the world could and should be."
— Jonathan Harris, “Ideas,” World Building in a Crazy World
9:59 am • 4 November 2009
Something Changed
