Here’s what has caught my eye over the last few weeks:
Seth Godin: The Lab or the Factory?
Fast Company: Why This Vintage He-Man Action Figure Still Smells Bad 30 Years Later. Somewhere in my parent’s basement, Stinkor still lives, next time I’m back in Iowa, I’ll have to give him a smell.
Justin Zoradi (via Donald Miller): You Don’t Have to Be Radical, Just a Little Different. Good reminder for me, that the key isn’t evaluating myself by the credentials and accomplishments of others, but by claiming and celebrating my own gifts and abilities.
Great, short post by Wil Wheaton on anxiety and depression: You Are Not Alone in This Fight
Jeremy Smith: Yes, We ARE your Grandmother’s Church.
Gizmodo: Government Destroys $170k of Hardware in Absurd Effort to Stop Malware.
David Byrne (formerly of the Talking Heads) came to Des Moines earlier this summer and had some nice things to say on his blog: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. I love the fact that he recognizes and even visits some of the great bike trails in the area. I found myself particularly drawn to his idea about growing up in the area:
“The town isn’t particularly hip, but I sort of counted that as a factor in its favor—kids would have to discover what they thought was cool for themselves. Or make it up. Or come to the conclusion that trends does not a life make.”
While I get the thought behind it, having grown up in Des Moines, my sense was we didn’t really get that chance to “discover what [we] thought was cool for themselves” – because we were still connected to the larger culture (through things like MTV), instead it felt like all this “cool” stuff was happening around us, but we were missing out. While many musicians seem to make regular stops in Des Moines now, back in the late ’80s and early ’90s it felt a little like a wasteland. Unfortunately we (or maybe just I) lacked the wisdom and foresight to discover what was cool, or just make it up myself… victims of a consumer (vs. creative) culture, I guess.
Lifehack: 20 Books Everyone Should Read Before Age 40. Guess I need to get busy reading; I have covered a little less that 1/2 of the titles, but unless I get really really focused in the next couple of months, I’m not going to cover all of them.
The Daily Show on news of Detroit’s bankruptcy:
For a better look at what Detroit has to offer and the opportunities it has to present, I loved this video from Campbell Ewald:
Fred Clark: It’s Corporations, Not Killer Robots.
If you are following any of the news concerning the NSA and their ability to intercept traffic on the internet, and you wonder about ways to better protect your privacy, check out the website https://prism-break.org/ – it provides a good overview of better software alternatives that can help you maintain your internet security. Even if you aren’t worried about government intrusion, these are good products (and practices) to keep your information from being compromised, in general. Just to cover the basics, I’d recommend using Firefox and your web-browser with the “HTTPS Everywhere” extension, and using Thunderbird for e-mail with the GPG encryption. I have hopes to get my own VPN (Virtual Private Network) set up sometime this summer, but I haven’t gotten that done, yet.
Lots of good music on the horizon, including this one from Derek Webb called “I Was Wrong, I’m Sorry & I Love You”: