NESTED! Drop your phone, maths are cool, the internet isn't heavy, dab coconut oil on your spine

hello! it's victor! you subscribed to this newsletter last week and probably forgot about it already! this is the first issue!

it’s called NESTED because there’s nested bullet point lists! so that you can easily skip the stuff that sound boring to you! there's soooo many links! I'm sorry!!!

personal ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

• for the first year ever I have new years resolutions. I’ve sort of "decided" them drunkenly during New Years’ Eve, but really they’ve all been sitting in my head for all of 2018. and I thought if I don’t even give it a go now, will I ever get a chance to fail at doing them?
  • so I’ve cut off almost all social media since the beginning of the year. I've added it up and on average I spent 3 hours a day scrolling a bit mindlessly on Twitter, Instagram and other slot machines. It’s that automatic thing you do when you’re vaguely bored for a second: you just get your phone out and your finger just automatically goes there, in the same way some people light up cigarettes to fill time, and you think it's just for a bit each time but it really adds up in a day! so I've gone cold turkey and ~* logged out *~.
    • also trying to look at your phone less? I'd recommend going 100% silent (no ringer, no vibrate, these notifications can wait). making your screen greyscale is kinda working too, I was a bit dubious at first but now my eyes are less drawn to my phone.
    • when using my phone in idle time I now try to do some Duolingo sessions instead of going on social media. It’s actually a productive pastime and by the end of the year I may understand Spanish and Dutch?
  • I’m also trying to work out a little. I’m one of these people traumatised by PE at school. I’ve never experienced sport as something that could be enjoyable. Until I started trampolining in my second year at uni which is lots of fun when it's not forced on you! Anyway I’m now trying to get a daily stretch, to get the blood going and gain a bit more strength.
    I had no idea how to go about it and I found stuff on YouTube a bit too overwhelming for beginners. My friend Alice recommended me the Nike Fitness Club app which is actually super super good! It has clear videos and explanations of what to do, has pre-planned workouts for different goals, and counts everything for you. (it’s free so they probably mine your data, but you can give a fake email and not sync your contacts).
• today I've started a new part-time job as a UX/product designer at Feeld, a dating app! I'm v excited about it. I'm still working part-time as an accessibility consultant the rest of the week, which I still enjoy and I think juggling between two different roles will keep my brain stimulated.
• I tried to watch an episode of that Marie Kondo show (mostly to keep up with the memes) and I found it boring and very cliché. But the next day I donated a whole bin bag of clothes and folded the rest in thirds, so I guess she wins.
  • however I really want to see her do an episode with those who practice maximalism at home, the opposite of minimalism. That’d be entertaining.
  • that remarkable article about millennials and burnout by Anne Helen Petersen gently reminds us that this joy coming from tidying or workout or planning breaks should not come at the cost of being extra items on our permanent to-do lists: "The media that surrounds us — both social and mainstream, from Marie Kondo’s new Netflix show to the lifestyle influencer economy — tells us that our personal spaces should be optimised just as much as one’s self and career. The end result isn’t just fatigue, but enveloping burnout that follows us to home and back. The most common prescription is ‘self-care.’ Give yourself a face mask! Go to yoga! Use your meditation app! But much of self-care isn’t care at all: It’s an $11 billion industry whose end goal isn’t to alleviate the burnout cycle, but to provide further means of self-optimisation. At least in its contemporary, commodified iteration, self-care isn’t a solution; it’s exhausting." Sounds depressing to be reminded that capitalism looms over everything but it’s a great read, promised.

a book to make you smarter

• last month I read How Not To Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg, which is a sort of pop science intro to mathematics and statistics for people who didn't really get math in high school. It's full of stories, history, real-life examples and practical applications for things that can sound really abstract in theory; as well as advice for suppressing biases and using better models in your daily reasoning. (A bit like the fascinating Thinking Fast and Slow). There's almost no equations with weird symbols in it: it's all about the logic, in clear writing. It's funny, it's engaging, it's well-written, and sometimes a bit mind-blowing.

wikipedia is the best website

• this list of unusual units of measurements will tell you exactly how much is a jiffy, how the kilogramme was almost called a grave, to see you in a microfortnight, that you can check the Mother Cow Index for buying land, and how many Bibles can you fit on a CD.
  • by the way, do you know how much the Internet weigh? It sounds like an absurd question but the answer is actually more absurd because it was only 50 grams in 2011, so perhaps double or triple that now.
  • it’s significantly less than the 25 million tonnes of spiders inhabiting our planet.
  • sorry there was a web joke to put here but I didn't know how
• you ever spend a few minutes contemplating just how incredible it is that computers and smartphones work at all? The more I learn about how computers work, the more I think about that line in this xkcd comic: “all computers are just carefully organised sand. Everything is hard until someone makes it easy”. To a lot of people like me who have a shallow but functional understanding of computer science, but very little in electrical engineering, understanding how computers work at the physical level is always a bit mind-blowing. Even simple microcontrollers seem to have some sort of magic powering them. 
Anyway, the other day I was reading about logical fallacies used in political discourse and a Wikipedia spiral later I found out that there is, in fact, something magic that makes electronics work.
• talking about magic, I’ve been re-reading Disney’s 12 principles of animation recently, which I found fascinating the first time I read them, because I knew nothing about animation. They break down the magic and write down the abstraction, the exaggeration, the tricks and illusions you have to use to make something look credible to the eyes and brain. 
I’m drawn by how transferable these principles could be to other creative areas that may seem removed from cartoon animation like writing, theatre, architecture and many forms of product design.
  In Designing for Interaction, Dan Saffer writes that “objects that don’t move don’t interact. An interaction is some sort of communication, and communication is about movement: our vocal cords vibrating as we speak, our hands and arms writing or typing as we send email or instant messages, sound and data moving between two entities.” It's a kind of poetic definition of interaction, and I think that with some abstraction, many principles can purposefully resurface in "crafted" interactions.

a picture of some otters

mundanely interesting

• I never knew I was a grocery store tourist until I saw the term described in this article, but I can relate. Let’s be honest, visiting supermarkets are one of my highlights when I travel to other countries.
• would you just look at this model of the Tokyo subway?
  • also about subways, Eye Magazine has a really cool history of the new Moscow subway typeface
• unsurprising news to all my researcher friends: the solution to all of the world's problems have probably been solved, but are buried in PDFs that nobody reads.
• you do not have to be good

in my ears

• Angèle & Elvis Romeo - J’ai vu (hip-pop / belgium / 2018 / they’re siblings omg)
• Angèle - Jalousie (pop / belgium / 2018 / this music video made me fall in love with dance again)
  • bonus cool dance performance: Celui qui tombe
• Julius Eastman - Evil N**r (minimal classical / US / 1979)
• Miel de Montagne - Permis B Bébé (electro pop / france / 2018)
• Yelle - OMG! (Safetalk Remix) (dance-pop / france / 2018)
• Молчат Дома - На Дне (lo-fi new wave / belarus / 2018)
• Sferics - Kronprinzenkoog (ambient drone / germany / 2015)

design! tech! work!

• have you tried to dab some coconut oil on your spine? A great talk/read about accessibility and disability in culture and what you can do to help change attitudes.
• reader mode, the button to beat. This article reminded me that this button exists and how amazing it is. But more importantly, that it’s what we should aim for in UX.
• the elements of UI engineering is a short but great theoretical summary of what is (or should be) valuable for people in UI design and development, and those working with them.
• the Mailchimp content style guide is public and has great rationales and examples on how to do copywriting, tone and microcopy.
• consistency in design is the wrong approach: don’t focus on being consistent, focus on what your users know.
• let’s chat about professional etiquette and not wasting everyone’s time in boring meetings.
• how Apple has made the Watch work for wheelchair users is a fascinating insight in the sort of research you can make when you’ve got the budget and the vision of Apple. I still think smart watches are expensive toys, but that’s still an interesting process.

and now for some architecture

• I really like this renovation of the Saint Francis Convent Church, both in and out.
  • in fact I like everything in this thread of reconverted churches. I’m going to the Garden Museum next week in Lambeth and I am: excited.
• Rendering vs Reality: The Improbable Rise of Tree-Covered Skyscrapers, from the always excellent 99% Invisible.

thank you for reading! have a good weekend! see you next month!