Kate Marvel, klimaatwetenschapper bij NASA:
There is an entrenched system that extracts CO2 from the ground and pumps it into the atmosphere, one that results not from inherent human badness but from the choices of a few humans with power. Confronting that system will take work. We need to build things: wind turbines, solar panels, public transportation, denser cities, fairer societies. We don’t need purification. We don’t need absolution. We need to get to work.
This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all. We care deeply about one another. That is clear. That can be seen in every supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbor, in every Zoom birthday party. We are a good people. And as a good people, we want to define — on our own terms — what this country looks like in five, 10, 50 years. This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get.
In the short term, our cities will become more boring. In the long term, they might just become interesting again.
Marc Andreessen, in een ondertussen wijdverspreid opiniestuk:
The left starts out with a stronger bias toward the public sector in many of these areas. To which I say, prove the superior model! Demonstrate that the public sector can build better hospitals, better schools, better transportation, better cities, better housing. Stop trying to protect the old, the entrenched, the irrelevant; commit the public sector fully to the future. Milton Friedman once said the great public sector mistake is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. Instead of taking that as an insult, take it as a challenge — build new things and show the results!
Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian:
Hope offers us clarity that, amid the uncertainty ahead, there will be conflicts worth joining and the possibility of winning some of them. And one of the things most dangerous to this hope is the lapse into believing that everything was fine before disaster struck, and that all we need to do is return to things as they were. Ordinary life before the pandemic was already a catastrophe of desperation and exclusion for too many human beings, an environmental and climate catastrophe, an obscenity of inequality. It is too soon to know what will emerge from this emergency, but not too soon to start looking for chances to help decide it. It is, I believe, what many of us are preparing to do.
For millennials, it’s the second devastating economic calamity in our short working lives, and we’re still carrying the trauma of the first. This time, though, we know it’s not our fault. This time it’s abundantly clear that we didn’t deserve it. And this is exactly the sort of crisis that gives people ideas about overturning the social order.
Wat een cool project en bijbehorende kortfilm:
Dit zijn mijn first impressions, gemengd met wat ik lees, zie en hoor over het nieuwe Smart Keyboard voor de iPad. Een running list dus, die gaat aangevuld worden.
The Smart Keyboards are iPad covers you can type on. The Magic Keyboard is a portable keyboard stand, not a cover — when you want to use your iPad as a tablet, not a laptop, you must detach it.
The Magic Keyboard feels like it was designed with the opposite principle in mind: it enables a laptop mode for the iPad, but you can always undo it and return to the iPad’s pure tablet form in two seconds. And when you’re done using the iPad as a tablet, you can just as easily re-align it with the Magic Keyboard (thanks to magnets in the case) and go back to using the physical keyboard and trackpad.
The adjustable tilt angle is great. In the past I’ve done all sorts of crazy hacks to adjust the tilt angle (including using stacks of post it notes as shims). Never again.
Serieus: om te FaceTimen met grootouders en kleine kinderen is dit echt een godsgeschenk. In de oude flap staken we vaak een pen tussen de iPad en de flap om ‘m zo recht mogelijk te zetten en dan viel hij al wel eens voorover. Dat is hier helemaal geen punt meer. En ook bij het Zwiften kan ik ‘m zo kantelen dat de zon er niet in weerschijnt.
Games that feature gentle progression give us a sense of progress and achievability, teaching us that putting in a little work consistently while taking things one step at a time can give us some fantastic results. It’s a good life lesson, as well as a way to calm yourself and others, and it’s all achieved through game design.