Adam Keys @akk@refactorcamp.org

The Cool Zone:

The pandemic that has dominated the past three months strikes a useful contrast with what’s happening now. Unlike coronavirus, racism and police violence are problems caused by humans. There’s a saying, “You aren’t stuck in traffic, you are traffic.” Similarly, the unre... https://short.therealadam.com/2020/06/06/the-cool-zone.html

Never give up on reading the whole internet https://buttondown.email/therealadam/archive/never-give-up-on-reading-the-whole-internet/

Yin and Yang: Lessons of Creativity — David Perell

Flow states are the holy grail of productivity. To achieve flow, we need a proper skill-challenge ratio.
Skill: Yin (Order)
Challenge: Yang (Chaos)
We do best when we’re pursuing goals that are a little bit tougher than what we can ea... https://short.therealadam.com/2020/05/27/yin-and-yang.html

Dear Apple Music algorithms,

The center item is not at all like the others.

H.264 is Magic. There’s so much amazing stuff you can do with math in the pursuit of distinctly non-math-y endeavors. I’ve always thought compilers, and their cousins the query optimizer, are magic. Computer graphics too. Turns out video compression is also uniquely amazing. https://sidbala.com/h-264-is-magic/

Bonus quote from Revenge of the Intuitive:

Years ago I realized that the recording studio was becoming a musical instrument. I even lectured about it, proclaiming that “by turning sound into malleable material, studios invite you to construct new worlds of sounds as painters construct... https://short.therealadam.com/2020/05/26/bonus-quote-from.html

The Revenge of the Intuitive and developer tools in 2020: https://short.therealadam.com/2020/05/25/the-revenge-of.html

They say never let a good crisis go to waste: https://short.therealadam.com/2020/05/24/they-say-never.html

“Building quality things of substance takes time.” - Rands in Repose, One Thing https://randsinrepose.com/archives/one-thing/

Why NetNewsWire Is Fast - I love it when Brent Simmons writes about system design and principles. https://inessential.com/2020/05/18/why_netnewswire_is_fast

Tools for plain-text thinking: https://short.therealadam.com/2020/05/12/tools-for-plaintext.html

No way through but together https://buttondown.email/therealadam/archive/now-way-through-but-together/

The Bremont Argonaut - there’s a lot of “ink” on this watch face, but it doesn’t seem busy. Even more, the marks on the crowns are the real winners. https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-bremont-argonaut-hands-on

The second best sunset of the week (Monday)

AirPods as a Platform:

You could also think about the Apple Watch as the main input device. In contrast to the AirPods, Apple opened the Watch for developers from the start, but it hasn’t really seen much success as a platform. Perhaps a combination of Watch and AirPods has a better c... https://short.therealadam.com/2020/04/19/airpods-as-a.html

Machine Supply:

Knowing what books someone loves is to know their perspective and their journey, to have something special in common, to share a language. http://interconnected.org/home/2015/07/22/machine_supply

The CWC Mellor-72 - I love the overall shape, but especially the arrow icon above the 6. https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/cwc-mellor-72-hands-on?mc_cid=0ee87fdfa9&mc_eid=1e5968a7ea

My law of music: there is no song that Aretha Franklin could not perform slower and therefore better than everyone else.

Newly discovered corollary: except possibly Pierre Boulez and Beethoven’s 5th. So slow, nearly belabored. Love it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXDXMI7PW6M

Drew Austin on high/low-brow music, how it fits into album reviews and club culture, and how all that has shifted in our current state of distance. Energy Flash:

“For Reynolds, “at home and at album length” refers to a process of decontextualization, the musical equivalent of the mode... https://short.therealadam.com/2020/04/11/drew-austin-on.html

A new cannonball run record set - a surprise and unintentended consequence of pandemic and shutting down the economy. It’s now much easier to drive a car really fast from New York to Los Angeles. The new record is just a few hours over a day. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/speeding-tickets-cars-coronavirus.html