→ Tio mike's workshop
specializing in halved boards. Oaxaca, MX
12/11/15 tags: travelNike feels like one of the first lifestyle brands. They and Apple both went public the same week at the same price in 1980. They were not afraid of market differentiation: their advertising sought to inspire and be the spokesperson for runners anywhere, they packaged shoes in the iconic orange shoe box while everyone else used white or blue and always were and still are pushing shoe designs like the original Nike Air Max (there's a great netflix episode of "Abstract" with the originator of the exposed sole design Tinker Hatfield).
I loved the origin story of Coach Bowerman stitching his own designs for his Oregon athletes. Nike was born out of track and field: a lot of early Nike employees (and the CEO today) were original track and field athletes. In some ways the Nike story reminds me of Yvon Chougard's self-labeling as a "reluctant businessman."
The story focuses on early days of negotiating contracts, finding capital and the right people. I was expecting more insight into the culture and creative processes at Nike or at least more details about the sweat-factory scandal. Instead this book is paints a picture of a scrappy organization struggling to find the next buck, make ends meet for the next production run. Pretty stressful experience!
A tale of friendship and adolescence based in southern California narrated from the perspective of a black community. For me, despite its premise, this book prompted a lot of interesting contemplation about identity and race. It feels like the book's relationship with race is designed to reveal the nature of being black in America today. Whiteness as a pervasive influence that seeps through the narrative despite race not being a pivotal element of the setting or plot.
He liked to refer to his whiteness the way all white liberals did: only acknowledging it when he felt oppressed by it, otherwise pretending it didn’t exist.
I really enjoyed this article's interpretation:
The Mothers moves around those expectations, simply by setting the story in a world where whiteness is adjacent, but not invisible. Most of the characters are aware that they are, in fact, shadowed by whiteness. But the book denies that form, while acknowledging its veracity..
The chapter on cognification I think is one of those things that in hindsight will seem so obvious. The water is rising, but it's still turbulent, we can't see how far the water truly has risen.
Lots of ruminations on society's co-evolution with technologies and how they progress in tandem, social evolutions enable technical evolutions to become mainstream and vice versa.
I love Kelly's technological optimism; especially of decentralization, crowd sourced intelligence, and his relentless pursuit of redefining our relationship with technology as our understanding shifts. Kelly believes that we're just getting started.
One idea I was unaware of is the concept of zillionics which is in short:
If there is enough of something, it is possible, indeed not unusual, for it to have properties not exhibited at all in small, isolated examples.
It reminds me of dynamic systems in chaos theory where apparent randomness and unpredictability is deterministic. I wonder if the computational all-knowing power of machines will allow us to extract meaning from what was previously insignificant.
We can never predict the future. No one was sketching the likeness of the internet 60 years ago – cars and its iterative future the flying car dominating the future-scapes. I think of Kelly's writings more as fuel for current projects – is there a tangent in these ideas that fascinates? Maybe these ideas are source material for ideas that diverge from the current status quo.
03/01/17 tags: booksA literal re-imagining of the underground railroad narrative bringing focus to the hypocrisy and inanity of the American slave “engine”. Atmospherically and tonally comparable to The Road’s post-apocalyptic world. This book prompted me to think a lot about truth, and what leads to a society governed by hypocrisies. Truths are fractal: their definition growing sharper with examination, in different contexts expanding. I loved being a reader of this book, the author always ahead of me, pacing hazard with great opportunities for reflection.
Chiang’s stories are thought experiments. Reinterpretations of our reality that tend to challenge the rules that govern our physical/social/spiritual/etc existence. Chiang asks, for example, what if we could eliminate the influence of human beauty – no longer differentiate between unpleasant and pleasing? I loved his "story notes" at the end. Definitely a great collection of stories to prompt your noodle into deep thought.
Gosh, this book was always in my periphery since something like 2008 (it was originally published in '94). A layered story I should probably read through again. At least a second time through I might be able to discern what trajectory the plot is on. The storyline was really vexing but the common tale of suffering relatable – I regard it as a kind of statement on the power of self-reflection.
02/09/17 tags: books specializing in halved boards. Oaxaca, MX
12/11/15 tags: travel10/26/15 tags: urbanismIn Great Britain, where planners are no longer allowed to justify new highways on the basis of reduced congestion, road construction has dropped so dramatically that Alarm UK, the main freeway portest organization, disbanded itself 'on the grounds that it was no longer needed.'
I don't write vegetarian cookbooks out of ideology I write what I am passionate about.
The difficulty with vegetarianism, I find, is that it's very exclusive. It means like, I never look at fish or meat in my life. I grew up in Jerusalem in the Middle East and in various parts of the Middle East and Asia the diet is very plant based and doesn't include lots of meat in it. Meat is more special, you add a little bit of it or use don't use any at little but or not at. That attitude i think is a very healthy attitude. It's not about denying yourself of something completely it's about celebrating the wonderful world of vegetables.
The hummus that we have in Jerusalem is extremely popular around mid-day or late-morning where it is brunch, served warm in a big plate with all kinds of condiments: raw onion, lots of olive oil drizzled on top, some lemon juice, hard boiled egg. And it's a whole meal. It's a luscious wonderful whole meal that until you've had it you don't know what you're missing.
I really resonated with his perspective on the pleasure of collaborating with like minds.
10/25/15 tags: cookingWe are food geeks. So we like to spend our time talking about food and analyzing it. There's something completely liberating with being with someone who is a bit like you in that department you know someone who doesn't think it's completely boring to discuss quantity of spices or this and that combination because it's great. There's a certain perfectionism that you don't always find in a keen spirit. We are like that. We are very similar in that respect.