"a blog post by Tag Savage [http://sexpigeon.org/post/16729718345/path-puts-a-silly-amount-of-trust-in-its-avatars ] about Path’s user interface choices in their app. Central tennent: if a place is too pristine and planned, it can’t be colonized. Tag’s words:

"Path is pretty in the same designy way as our modern museums. […] These museums are very exciting when they open. You show up and marvel along with all of the other fans of architecture. Maybe you return for one of those nights where they stay open late and there is a band and drinking. “A great space,” you think. […] The art doesn’t get talked about so much at these museums."

Path is a monument to Path. It is no place to scribble in. I wish it longevity so that it might find shabbiness.

A tricky balance, to be sure, but one that must be navigated if a product is dependant on user’s content. Part of the product must be left undone to provide the opening for the user to contribute."

"At the heart of it is an inquiry into the meaning of making. I am deeply interested in how making works (as a process), what it means (to make something), and why it matters (to our lives).

One of the central theme is the relationship between the act of empathizing with the act of making…

The second theme is exploring how we can design a space that facilitates the act of making, especially in the digital space…

The book is structured around a number of stories that talk about the humbling experiences I've had in art school. These are experiences that have lead to epiphanies, which changed my understanding of what it means to make something.

In response to these experiences are conversations I've had with an interdisciplinary group of friends (an animator, a programmer, a neuroscientist, a human-computer interaction researcher, and a theologian) about these epiphanies.

Weaving together the stories and conversations are both reflective and analytic essays that model…"

"WOMEN shop, men stockpile. That’s one theory, anyway, of how men buy clothes differently from women. If women see shopping as an opportunity, a social or even therapeutic activity, the thinking goes, then men see it as a necessary evil, a moment to restock the supply closet.

At the risk of perpetuating sex stereotypes, the archetype may have been Steve Jobs. When Mr. Jobs died in October, he left behind not only a peerless legacy, but a closet full of identical black cotton turtlenecks by Issey Miyake. “If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them,” his sister, the author Mona Simpson, said in her eulogy.

It was an obsession that many men could relate to. Here, stylish New Yorkers reflect on their wardrobe hoarding."

[via http://kottke.org/11/12/the-men-who-shop-in-bulk ]

"The train, in all aspects, was a superior experience. The first thing was the feeling of everything melting away, of someone else taking control. When flying there are generally so many rules to be obeyed, and times when specific things can happen that I generally feel like, as a passenger, I'm actually a co-pilot. Lights tell you when you can and can't move. Announcements indicate (because I use a lap-top and iPad) when it's safe to read, write or listen to your music. Food and drink are administered at precise times. All of this within a confined space.

But there was a freedom on the train that you may need to be taller than six feet to really understand. You could walk as you needed to. You could sit in the cafe car and watch the scenery. You could fall into your book. Or you could just sleep, something I can't really do on airplanes. 

Finally there is the fact that, as much as possible, I should avoid supporting airline travel in its current American iteration…"

"As part of our Bob and Aliecia Woodrick Diversity Learning Center Diversity Lecture Series, Grand Rapids Community College presents Ta-Nehisi Coates speaking on "A Deeper Black: The Meaning of Race in the Age of Obama.""

"The Manifesto: Before we embarked on our first Roadtrip, we were feeling The Noise and pressure around us to conform. Our Manifesto keeps us true to the original principles that started us on this journey.<br />
Our History: Imagine telling people you were going to travel across the country in a bright green RV to learn how people defined their own lives. You can imagine the reactions – but we knew we needed to find our Open Road. Here’s our story.<br />
Education: Extending the Movement into education, we started a nonprofit, RoadtripNation.org. Our curriculum empowers students to get out into their communities and connect what they learn to their real world."

"Somewhere in your childhood is a gaping hole. Fill this hole…best things I did in college all involved explorations"<br />
<br />
"Remember to take some time away from campus"<br />
<br />
"When you leave your room for class, leave laptop behind. In a lecture, you’ll only waste your time & parents’ money, disrespect professor & annoy whomever is trying to pay attention…by spending the hour on Facebook.<br />
<br />
You don’t need a computer to take notes—good note-taking is not transcribing. All that clack, clack, clacking…you’re a student, not a court reporter. And in seminar or discussion sections, get used to being around a table with a dozen other humans, a few books & your ideas. After all, you have the rest of your life to hide behind a screen during meetings."<br />
<br />
"when my drawing teacher invited several of us students to dinner at her house, I was still worried that I was out of my league. But in this casual setting, everyone opened up, & I was able to talk about art in the most relaxed & personal way."

"Two days after a 8.8 magnitude earthquake displaced them from their homes and separated them from dear ones, people gathered at a fire-station in Concepcion, Chile to charge their cellphones—their comfort objects during this disaster.

"In this program, Dr. Greene had the pleasure of talking with Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards, Beyond Discipline, and many other critical books. This was a fun and enlightening discussion about a variety of school-related topics, including school discipline, socially healthy classrooms, high-stakes testing...the whole gamut." [via: http://twitter.com/joe_bower/status/17543978978 quoting "When you put autonomy and community together you get democracy."]

"1. Change is difficult for us. Staying as we are is often easier.

"Pretend you’re giving it all up and going back to school in a year. Act like you have one year to make it work before you give up and try something else. What haven’t you done? Where aren’t you being aggressive enough? Go do it and embarrass yourself with your pushiness- after all, you’ll be doing something else in a year anyway, so who cares what people think? Push until you feel uncomfortable, and then double it."

"I was breaking the most basic rule of being a male teacher; sitting in classroom alone w/ just-turned 12yo girl. & she was sitting w/ me. We could do this because we trust each other. We feel safe w/ each other. The distillation of my philosophy came to me as I was telling S how I realized she was different from almost every student I’ve taught. Whenever I ask a question requiring a higher-order thinking skill & the rest of her class stares at me as if I were speaking Klingon, she will raise her hand slowly & say, “I’m not sure, but…” That’s it! ...my education philosophy distilled to its most essential point...I want all my students – all students – to feel safe enough, secure enough, challenged enough & supported enough to take risk that S takes. No, I don’t mean spending almost 3 hours alone w/ teacher. I want them all to be able to say…“I’m not sure, but…” If we can get our students to that point I guarantee they will learn. So how do we get them there? I’m not sure. But…"

"I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of “generalization” of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside."

"The Danes have a word that's hard to translate, and no foreigner can hope to pronounce, but it's as Danish as pork roast and cold beer. It's hygge, and it goes far in illuminating the Danish soul. The closest we can come phonetically is "hooga," if we try forming our mouths for "ee" while saying "oo." It doesn’t translate directly into any other language but we can illustrate it in action."

"As it turned out, the peculiar difficulty of pronouncing this word (for me), the very tenseness of its articulation, belied the meaning in a curious way. That meaning involved a lack of tenseness, a determined relaxation. Dictionaries give "comfortable," "snug," "cozy," "homelike," "accommodating." "Yes," Kaja said. "It means cozy. But that’s only part of it. We want things to be hyggelig whether they are or not. We want it so much it has become nearly subconscious. So we call something hyggelig with intention sometimes and sometimes without meaning much at all, really."

"One of the fundamental aspects of Danish culture is "hygge", which, although translated as "coziness" is more akin to "tranquility". Hygge is a complete absence of anything annoying, irritating, or emotionally overwhelming, and the presence of and pleasure from comforting, gentle, and soothing things. Hygge is often associated with family and close friends. Christmas time when loved ones sit close together with candles lit on a cold rainy night is "hygge", as is grilling a pølse (Danish sausage) on a long summer evening. These examples, although they do not precisely define "hygge", can give an English speaker an idea of a deeply valued traditional concept of Danish culture."

"Boredom is a modern notion: if our ancestors suffered from it, they didn’t call it boredom. The verb “to bore” was first used in the late 18th century, while the noun “boredom” dates only from the mid-19th century. By then, it was often seen as an illness … Patricia Meyer Spacks traces a shift from 18th-century notions of boredom, which saw it as an individual’s personal responsibility or moral failing, to more modern notions which situated the sources of boredom outside the self. … Boredom was one way of making sense of modernity: the repetitiveness of work, the monotony of bureaucracy, the regimented time of clocks and timetables. Boredom was also the luxury of people whose lives had become relatively comfortable. … begin to notice this commonplace, everyday world that we normally regard as unworthy of our attention … [and] We might even find boredom quite interesting."

"Constant partial stupidity ... Digital isolation ... Hunger for shared experiences ... Flight to the physical ... Expecting less ... Conspicuous non-consumption ... Unsupervised adults ... Localism ... Re-sourcing ... Fear fatigue" + "Ten things on the way out: Dining rooms, Letter writing on paper, Paper statements and bills, Optimism about the future, Individual responsibility, Intimacy, Humility, Concentration, Retirement, Privacy

"When I talk to parents about school, they all agree that there are problems. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is convincing them to do something about it. Because really, most people just want to fit in.

"As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new

"...Neo-nomads embody spaces remotely. Via the Internet they customize their hotel room in advance, bringing in the complementary piece of home, the last piece of the “home” puzzle, with them, their luggage, and transitional objects."

"Robotic competition is nipping at [dogs'] heels in the man's-best-friend department...study by Saint Louis U found lovable pooch named Sparky & robotic dog AIBO, were about equally effective at relieving loneliness of nursing home residents"

"Socialization is about something else, much richer, much more human, much less controllable or “narrowable” than what we do online...about getting confronted to the unexpected...being destabilized, ...being out of your comfort zone."

"people tend to get stuck in a local minimum: they find their comfort zone, and stay there. Many...never bother to take the extra effort needed to climb out...and see if there would be a better "local minimum"

"Should schools be comfortable, and if so, why? What follows are eight truths that can go a long way toward settling an argument that probably should have been arbitrated long ago."