Links


What Was the TED Talk?

thedriftmag.com

I recently watched some of the talks from this conference on my laptop. They hit like parodies of a bygone era, so ridiculous that it made me almost nostalgic for a time when TED talks captivated me. Back then, around a decade ago, I watched those articulate, audacious, composed people talk about how they were building robots that would eat trash and turn it into oxygen, or whatever, and I felt hopeful about the future. But the trash-eating robots never arrived. With some distance, now, from a world in which TED seemed to offer a bright path forward, it’s time to ask: what exactly is TED? And what happened to the future it envisioned?

On Not Being the Free Alternative

nnw.ranchero.com

We realize that free and open source apps often do have the mission of mimicking the features of some one or several commercial apps, as if they’re Prometheus bringing features to the common computer user — but that is not our mission.

Our mission is to make the best RSS reader that we like making. We value stability, high performance, clarity, and lots of figurative air and space rather than a mélange of features.

Feynman's Nobel Ambition

asc.ohio-state.edu

Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with.

The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get Back

ianleslie.substack.com

Watching extraordinary people do ordinary things is also just oddly gripping. I loved witnessing the workaday mundanity of The Beatles’ creative life. Turning up for work - for the most part - every day, at an agreed time: Morning Paul. Morning George. Taking an hour for lunch, popping out for meetings. Sticking up your kid’s drawing by your workstation. Confessing to hangovers. Discussing TV from the night before. Fart jokes. Happy hour at the end of an afternoon. Coats on: Bye then. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow.