Hi everyone,

Last year I started making an annual list of stuff I worked on during the past year that I was proud of. It's like looking at a work-photo-album—it helps me actually remember some of the things that were worth more to me than what I got paid for them, instead of just treating it all equally like ground sausage.

So, here's this year's Proud-Of List:

1. "Let's Go Tardigrading": you may remember this video from Issue 2. Definitely the thing I'm most proud of this year. Not just the result, but also the process. 

2. "Bipedal Metal" [paywalled, sorry; but here's a PDF of an almost-copy-edited version which is pretty much the same thing as the final product except for some TK's]: This is a longform feature for Scientific American that explains why it's so darn hard to make a robot that can walk upright on two legs like we can. (Spoiler: "walking" is a suitcase word that encloses and obscures dozens of invisible engineering/design/neuro/programming/AI problems, all of which are fascinating and really difficult.) 

3. "Meet Your New A.I.": a short video about "smart buildings", and my first piece of straight-up ad work (done for Legrand via a local agency here in Portland). Low-budget enough for me to pitch a concept and them just leave me alone to execute it. It's a bit crude in some places, but I had a real blast R&D-ing the light-projection effects (with one of my best friends) and channeling Charles Eames (I used kindergarten toys as my main prop). 

4. "What NASA Could Teach Tesla About Making Automated Vehicles That Won't Fricking Kill People": OK, that's not the real title, but that's the basic sentiment. I don't do adversarial muckracking journalism, but this is about as close as I get. Much of what Tesla is still "figuring out" with its semi-self-driving cars—using its own customers as crash-test-dummies—is already known by NASA and the aeronautics industry, which have been researching human factors in automated cockpits for decades before Elon Musk decided to get all Tony Stark about it. 

5. Q&A with a world-class mathematician who dropped out of school twice and almost committed suicide because he thought he was no good: Ken Ono is a living counterexample to the myth of scientific or creative "talent" as something you're born with, or that high achievers simply set their minds to their accomplishments in advance and then march toward them in a predictable, painless, linear process. Even geniuses and brainiacs need encouragement—and not just as precocious kids, but as fallible, complicated adults, too.

6. "What My Vote For Hillary Was About": a friend of mine said that this personal essay helped him feel calmer after the election, which I am very proud of, even if no one else ever reads it.

What are some of the things you made/produced/worked on in 2016 that you're most proud of? Send them to me and (with your permission) I'll include them in a little digest to everyone else who receives this newsletter. No obligation, though.

Have a great holiday, see you in 2017...

John