Mining Towns
Continuing on the parasite theme, I wrote this week on communities within the monetized internet — specifically how community members are harvested for their attention and their capital. But! I believe there’s a way to know when you’re getting pulled into these parasitic communities, and that there are some benign models for “consciously” extractive communities.
Mining Towns | andrewlb.com blog
Interaction Design and writing
Meta
Two (very different) book recommendations.
1) The Rise of the GI Army analyzes the remaking of the US Army in 1939 through legislative actions, management decisions, key actors, and some truly wild training exercises. Standout topics for me: Civilian Conservation Corps, Marston Mats, and the mass purge of the officer corps.
2) N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became. Crossing Neil Gaiman’s American Gods with Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I’m a fan of Jemisin’s writing already, and this is a unique one.
Some Links
This little video essay isolation and creativity is lovely and worth the 45min listen. Worth exploring his other works too.
Appreciated this essay which I discovered after chatting with Justin about AI love letters, Alan Turing, and Strachey.
WOTR is a really good US defense publication, and they had a worthwhile reflection on lessons learned from the Louisiana Maneuvers which were covered in The Rise of the GI Army.
I’m have standing “office” hours for mutual sparring, tangential discussions, and fun. Some of you are making use of this already and I’m loving it. calendly.com/alb/social
I do 1:1 coaching on creative practice, strategy, process and related topics — less life coach, more sparring partner. It’s not my main gig, I don’t charge a lot, and I focus on makers, designers, and entrepreneurs pretty exclusively. Book an intro session with me
I’m actively seeking consulting work for the fall. Startups and teams within large orgs hire me for workshops, sparring, customer research (internal and external), and building web apps/internal tools. Just respond to this email if you know a team or project I could contribute to.