In his wonderful book The Evolution of Useful Things, the author and civil engineer Henry Petroski shares one of the most famous case studies in the history of design: Before it was destroyed by fi…
The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea
Not because there aren’t people who actually enjoy working in an open office, there are. Quite a few, actually. But they’re in the distinct minority. The vast majority of people either dislike the …
(This piece is now the basis of a new book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.) Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech…
Robert Liston was a British surgeon. Liston was noted for his speed and skill in an era prior to anaesthetics, when speed made a difference in terms of pain and survival. He was the first Professor of Clinical Surgery at University College Hospital in London and performed the first public operation utilizing modern anaesthesia in Europe.
Impact of Open Offices on Collaboration | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Organizations’ pursuit of increased workplace collaboration has led managers to transform traditional office spaces into ‘open’, transparency-enhancing architectures with fewer walls, doors and other spatial boundaries, yet there is scant direct empirical ...
Cory Doctorow: Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags – Locus Online
“When I first began writing, LOCUS was what opened up the world of SF for me. Until I discovered the magazine, I didn’t know that conventions, review columns, or fandom even existed. And there they all were in the magazine, along with interviews of writers I had worshiped from afar!”
The Layouts of Tomorrow | Max Böck - Frontend Web Developer
It mocks the fact that a lot of today’s websites look the same, as they all follow the same standard layout practices that we’ve collectively decided to use. Building a blog? Main column, widget sidebar. A marketing site? Big hero image, three teaser boxes (it has to be three). via Pocket
Some say Musk’s paranoia and late-night Twitter rants reveal a billionaire cracking under pressure. But those who know him best say this is nothing new.
Linguistics, Style and Writing in the 21st Century
Does writing well matter in an age of instant communication? Drawing on the latest research in linguistics and cognitive science, Steven Pinker replaces the recycled dogma of style guides with reason and evidence.
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Watch the Q&A here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rYAnYXIhL0
Buy Steven's book "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century" - https://geni.us/WYZr
In this brand-new talk, introduced by Lord Melvyn Bragg, Steven argues that style still matters: in communicating effectively, in enhancing the spread of ideas, in earning a reader’s trust and, not least, in adding beauty to the world.
Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. He is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and conducts research on language and cognition but also writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and is the author of many books, including The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works.
Melvyn Bragg is a broadcaster, writer and novelist. He was made a Life Peer (Lord Bragg of Wigton) in 1998. Since then he has hosted over 660 episodes of In Our Time on subjects ranging from Quantum Gravity to Truth. He was presenter of the BBC radio series The Routes of English, a history of the English language. He is currently Chancellor of the University of Leeds
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vesparny/fair-analytics: 📊 An analytics server that doesn't undermine user's privacy
📊 An analytics server that doesn't undermine user's privacy - GitHub - vesparny/fair-analytics: 📊 An analytics server that doesn't undermine user's privacy
The majority of people-related disasters I’ve created originate with my choice to not say the hard thing. On my short list of critical leadership skills, the ability to “say the hard thing” is right after “delegate until it hurts.” I didn’t give feedback when behavior was off because the person was