Contentions: Long live typing

Author Luke Burgis puts forward the question, is typing dead? Luke had tried a new AI voice dictation app. From a text generation perspective, both language learning models and voice dictation seem more efficient. I did the same a few years ago, which I covered for Forge here. An excerpt: In dictating this piece, I […]

Fan non-fiction

Fan non-fiction is a ​book, article, or text about real facts, people and events, conveyed through the characters, stories, and lore of a particular novel, film, etc. It’s a great way to get someone interested in learning about a topic that would’ve otherwise bored them immensely. Elvia Wilk writes, “First I point—then, you notice my […]

Steps to success

The Milwaukee Bucks were one of the favorites to win the NBA playoffs this year, finishing at the top of their conference division. The team had already won a championship in 2021. That didn’t happen.  Instead, the team lost in the first round, to the eighth seed Miami Heat.  Journalist Eric Nehm recently asked Bucks’ […]

A deliverable is just an artifact

Project deliverables—a final draft, an app in production, a strategy or plan, etc.—are great. They’re not easy to make, and they only exist because a person or group of people gave a ton of emotional energy to breathe life into them. We focus on the project deliverable because we can see and touch it. We’ve […]

Question everything

In Figures of Speech, an essay entitled, Virgil Abloh: A Hundred Percent, Virgil Abloh and Anja Aronowsky Cronberg write: Get this. I was the idiot who believed that all fashion design was deeper than just clothing. I thought each season was about a concept that represented a larger idea. Don’t get me wrong, I know […]

Start with the end in mind

In The Art of Possibility, Ben and Roz Zander write: “Each student in this class will get an A for the course,” I announce. “However, there is one requirement that you must fulfill to earn this grade: Sometime during the next two weeks, you must write me a letter dated next May, which begins with […]

Eating your vegetables

u/MaginusMedia writes, in response to creating a perception: Marketing is eating your vegetables. No more and no less than that. So my advice, for what it’s worth, is learn as much as you can (i.e., find some good “vegetable recipes”); get as much help as you can; and remember that in all this stuff (music […]

The preciousness paradox

The more important a piece of work is to you, the more difficult it is to make progress on and release it. Obsessive creative energy builds up; your expectations rise endlessly. You envision what this work is going to be like after you’re done, as well as what this work will do for you and […]

Fictional brands

The fictional brands archive is one of the most intriguing directories I’ve come across in a long time.  Merchandise from these fictional brands have occasionally made their way into the physical world, which is always fun.