Mark Elder's Link Digest # 01
Wednesday 250716 edition
1. Get Things Done With Game Loops
Laurie Herault designed a to-do system based on game loop logic. It reminds me a bit of Jane McGonigal’s system in Superbetter.
The gist is that he prints out nested to-do items (the more granular, the better) using a thermal printer, then crumples and tosses them into a jar as he gets them done. Sounds simple enough, but there’s something rewarding about making to-do items physical, and his system focuses on the most basic, tangible actions. In other words, rather than writing “clean room”, you want to write the individual tasks that lead up to a clean room.
A chef commenter over at Y News suggested buying a tab grabber and spike like he used in the kitchen, and stabbing to-do lists in the heart does sound fun.
Herault uses a more expensive $150 thermal printer, but you can get a cheap $20 portable pocket thermal printer off Amazon, and it gets the job done.
2. Government by Lottery
Paul Melman has a piece over at Assembling America on the virtues of sortitionism, a form of government where representatives are chosen by lot. His piece goes over some of the benefits of introducing randomness into how we choose political representatives.
I’ve embraced a kind of antipolitics over the last decade, and my view on self-government now boils down to wanting to keep those who think they should have political power away from it.
That’s not to say that I don’t believe in a professional political class, but just that this class should consist of individuals who are deeply allergic to the political power they’ve been entrusted in wielding. They should understand, on some visceral level, that their power is dangerous and that they are unworthy of it.
Randomness, combined with some basic moral and political aptitude tests, could help deal with the problems of self-selected politicians.
3. Switch Account Banned For Playing Used Games
Yikes! Someone bought some used switch games off Facebook marketplace, then had their account banned after Nintendo detected those games had been dumped by the previous owner.
The user had their account reinstated after jumping through some hoops. If you’re buying used Switch games, make sure you have a paper trail to show Nintendo in case you got them from a pirate 🏴☠️
4. Brennan’s American Girl Doll Shoes
Anders Ericsson argued that you could become excellent at anything with enough practice.
Even making American Girl Doll shoes!
Have you practiced today?
5. Zoning Out Makes You Smarter
StudyFinds has an article out on Lin Zhong’s research on how brains still learn even when we’re not paying attention. One of my pet interests is in the Wu Wei approach to getting things done.
We don’t always have to running at full speed. Sometimes progress demands that we do absolutely nothing.
There’s a certain cultural bias in the West where the direct approach is almost always considered the best approach. Things need to be stated explicitly and approached from the front.
However, as Lin Zhong’s work with mice shows, there’s a whole lot of stuff our brains are doing when we’re not doing much of anything. And this kind of unsupervised, unfocused growth is part and parcel of more extensive biological systems.
Rest is important. Doing nothing is important.
Currently Playing: Unicorn Overlord
Unicorn Overlord is Vanillaware’s modern spin on Ogre Battle. I was initially hesitant on this title, but after a bout of illness kept me bedridden, I decided to give the game a try.
I don’t regret it. It’s a fast paced strategy RPG that sees you play the role of a prince trying to reclaim his crown. Unlike most Japanese sRPGs, there’s an overworld to explore with resources to plunder. The battles are quick and well paced, there’s plenty of classes to experiment with, and there’s lots of side quests to take up your time.
That’s todays random round-up, thanks for reading.
P.S: Sometimes, you must Be Potato.