Hey friends,

What did one raindrop say as it ran off the road?

This is a grate day. 💧

(Grateful for some rain bringing cooler temperatures this week!)

Thinking Too Hard 🤔

We talked the other week about the moment of decision in a creative endeavor to either give up or keep going. But how do we keep going? How do we push past the slump?

Walt Disney had a slump of his own in the post-war period of 1948. The company was struggling. They hadn't had a hit in 6 years, the animators were striking... things were bad. However, at a friend's suggestion, Disney attended the Chicago Railroad Fair. What he saw there lit a creative spark in him that eventually led to the creation of a giant model train railroad in his yard, named the Carolwood Pacific Railroad. This seemingly meaningless obsession ultimately reinvigorated Disney, producing a creative energy that sparked other ideas that fed back into the company.

Cal Newport tells the story in more detail and comes up with a term for this process: engineered wonder. However, I like the term freak energy: chasing a genuine interest to an absurd degree for the purpose of self-fascination.

Creating in this mode produces a creative joy that can push you past the slump because your own spark of interest keeps you rolling. And once you've de-slumped with some freak energy, your mindset is more open to the mode of play that can produce other ideas — it LEAKS into your other efforts.

So, what sparks your interest? What fascinates you enough that you can ride the freak energy train on it?

Interesting Web Bits 🍜

Web Stuff

• Adrian Roselli explores some a11y options for a check/uncheck all control.
• A team in Shanghai cracked RSA security, but it took quantum computing to crack a 22-bit key (usually 2048 bits for standard encryption)... We'll be safe for a little while longer. Hopefully.
• Paweł Grzybek shows some upcoming features in ECMAScript 2025. I never went far enough back on Set theory 😵‍💫!
• "Rarely in software does anyone ask for “fast.” We ask for features, we ask for volume discounts, we ask for the next data integration. We never think to ask for fast."
• Chris Dzombak implores us to actually use our type systems.

Other Stuff

• After building his own personal cloud, Drew tells us that the future is not self-hosted.
• Scientists have found a new color we can see by shooting laser beams into our eyes. Oooor you can watch the demo animation and see if you can see it, y'know, without the lasers...
• Optician Sans, a new font based on those eye charts.