The Soviets complained that Ota’s design (left) had no door;...
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Noah Kalina, Detroit, Michigan
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Virtually all of the houses with a single occupant or family (as indicated by a single doorbell or knocker) were shoveled clean. Nearly every house with multiple occupants — and most businesses — were unshoveled.
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A common good that requires work to maintain is ignored if there is a diffusion of responsibility.
emphasis mine.
But these executives were frequently numb to the sorts of innovations that enable high-quality production at low cost.
proof points and unique positioning:
::exhales:: i know this is sort of open-ended and more “okay, i get it - how do we fix it?” but maybe that’s the point. everyone is looking for ways to right the ship, to get us back on track, to get “us” flourishing again. to become omnipotent and ignorant all at once again probably shouldn’t be our best intention, veiled or otherwise.
we can do this differently and it doesn’t have to be choosing between one or the other. i’m absolutely sure of that.
We’re moving product, while the soul drowns like a cat in a well.
Quitting the Paint Factory by Mark Slouka (via gina)
funny that i came across this before a small announcement i’ll have tomorrow. ideal that it shared something that’s been in the back of my head for a long time (the whole essay is worth reading, focus in on the story of sherwood anderson).
guard your mind and guard your mind’s time.
When you live in NYC for too long, it’s common to forget what you originally came to do.
I just got back from a weekend up in the Adirondacks — shingling the roof of this new shed, chopping wood to heat a sauna, playing soccer with a big group friends — and it snuck up on me this morning upon waking up in Brooklyn, “Oh yeah, I came here to make $$$ so I could afford to live a peaceful life someplace naturally beautiful, where I can build sheds and play soccer all of the time.”
Folks, this internet shit is really addicting. Let’s spend some more time thinking about why we do it.
this is a powerful lesson my dad taught me a while ago. lots of times in life, you have to endure what you have capacity for in order to create opportunity for the rest of your life.
When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the suggestion of Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use,” which concludes with the lines “the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.” Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.
If you work on something for five years, that’s more than 20 percent of your productive work life. Most people don’t think about that, but it’s the main thing I think about. I think about it all the time, much more than money. Because the only thing we can’t make more of is time.
You have to communicate what the mission is all the time — and how meaningful someone’s contribution is to the mission.
WHEREAS By the authority vested in us by us, all employees in the U.S.A. are encouraged to forward this proclamation to their supervisors and if there is some doubt about said supervisors agreeableness to follow the guidelines stated herein they are further advised, in the great tradition of American Democracy, to take matters into their own hands and sneak out the back door at lunchtime leaving this web page open on their computer as a statement of their whereabouts and intentions.
tlc:
You know you are work early when you are watching the sun rise from your office window.
this is the best part of the day. i relish these moments.
