Kickoff For August 4, 2025
Once again, I've had a few people ask how I pull together each edition of The Monday Kickoff. If you're interested, you can learn more about that (very simple) process in this entry in my public notebook.
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
Ingredients for brilliance — Wherein Julia F Christensen explores the mythologized and seemingly elusive state called flow, explains that while it isn't only for top achievers, flow doesn't just happen, and offers advice to help you achieve that state.
From the article:
One thing is for sure, if you keep chasing flow by some sort of celestial action, waiting for your inner genius to strike from nowhere, you’ll keep failing. Because that genius, apologies for being blunt, is, in fact, nowhere to be found. Genius is work.
The Cult of Hard Mode: Why Simplicity Offends Tech Elites — Wherein Joan Westenberg pens a paen to list, simple software, ponders why technology companies throw everything into their applications and platforms, and why people feel compelled to default to the complex.
From the article:
They pursue clarity in mission but bury it under layers of process. This is inefficient - largely because it’s protective. Complexity becomes a defense mechanism. If your system breaks, it’s because it’s complicated, not because you made a bad decision. If no one can understand it, that’s not a failure of communication - it’s proof of depth.
The big idea: should we embrace boredom? — Wherein Sophie McBain looks at boredom, how technologies like the computers in our pockets give us an excuse to escape that boredom, and why a bit of boredom is healthy for us.
From the article:
The people who choose to embrace boredom, at least for a while, may paradoxically experience less of it. It could even be the first step towards a life that feels more stimulating overall: meaningful, creative and free.
The Best for the Most for the Least — Wherein we learn about the avant-garde short films crafted by furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames for various corporate clients, and the influence that those films had on both clients and the public.
From the article:
In fact, the couple may have been the tech sector’s original creative consultants. The Eameses were the first to humanize the computer for the public at a time when the machine was a complete mystery, and a threatening one.
Brain Freeze — Wherein we dive into the world of cryogenics, which researchers have spent decades trying to make viable (let alone perfect), and discover the many challenges to preserving bodies by freezing and then reviving them.
From the article:
Effective human cryopreservation can only happen under very controlled circumstances. Advance preparation is an absolute requirement. Just before death, the patient must be injected with heparin. They must then die a quick and controlled respiratory death, after which the expert team has 12 minutes to preserve the body. Only under these conditions can we get a properly perfused brain and crisply-preserved synapses rather than mush.
Recurring Screens — Wherein Nora Claire Miller explores the origins of the computer screen saver and ponders its relationship not only to computing but to memory.
From the article:
I used to think I could use old computers to break open time and get everything back; to fold the screen in two and make a tesseract. I wanted to know what would happen at the end of my dream with the car, the airplane, and the hill. I wanted to go inside the stereoscope and see my grandmother in three dimensions in a place that no longer exists.