No finite human being has ever won a fight against time. We just get the limited time we get, and the limited control over it that we get.
And if you spend your life fighting the truth of this situation, all that happens is that you feel more rushed and overwhelmed and impatient - until one day time decisively wins the fight, as it was always destined to do. (In other words: you die.)

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Two shots of Dean from a random iPhone SE I messed with a while back...

Dear friend,

We recollect you, which if a frugal phrase, has sumptuous meanings.

E - Dickinson -

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I don't build much but on FB I follow some Lego groups (most notably "Lego Showoff")

I've learned some new stuff - like the term MOC (for My Own Creation) and also some new websites - maybe even cooler than when I found out there's a whole used Lego marketplace where you can order specific pieces, I discoved that the Rebrickable Alternate Builds page is brilliant - what can people do with the same single set?

That is much closer to the experience I had as a kid, where there was a lot of piece constraint (and not as many specialty pieces - just enough to make things look a BIT less blocky)

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Thermonator, the Flame-Throwing Robot Dog, Can Now Be Yours for $9,420. Oh goodie.

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This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Is Stress Contagious? Studies Say Yes Well, fek. Gat Out of Hell - , a kind of DLC-ish thing for Saints Row... I played this game for like the third time through this weekend

(heh looking at some notes maybe it was the only game I played all the way through in 2017 as well?) It's like $4 on Steam or PS4 store and is just such a good side story. Light on the "big scenes" but heavy on the generous and fun physics and movement empowerment - and its take on the environment hell is actually pretty funny, a few notches better than GTA 5's sense of parody.

And I love the central image of the player (either Gat in his gang jacket or Kinzie in a tanktop and jeans) with burning angel wings, soaring over and around the metropolitan hellscape...

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I'm such a hypocrite - like if I'm "heads down" on something I have a hard time not showing my annoyance when someone else asks for my attention for something.

But when I'm on my own and know I should be barrelling through a task, I welcome ANY little distraction and sidequest.

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On my devblog, thinking back to my earliest training in Scrum: the duck calls, "you suck and that makes me sad", roadkill burgers, and the metaphor of "The Chicken and the Pig"
scenes from arlington/medford and brattleboro vt

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Conspiracy Theory Rock, the censored SNL TV Funhouse... the biggest threat facing your team, whether you're a game developer or a tech founder or a CEO, is not what you think

Brilliant article on leadership. It's long and gets into the weeds of the games industry, but there is a lot that is true for the whole corporate world.

It touches on one point that is much on my mind: so much of our corporate leadership is "make number go up" (immediately! but then also forever.) Corporations generally have a legal obligation to "increase shareholder value", and in general that's on a per quarter basis. Sustainability and long term viability are afterthoughts at best.

The article points out there's parallels in that and some USA policy decisions in Vietnam:

But when the McNamara discipline is applied too literally, the first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. The second step is to disregard that which can't easily be measured or given a quantitative value. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. The fo[u]rth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

But then when you combine that with leaders who view themselves as capable of finessed big picture and aesthetic decisions as, say, Steve Jobs... well, they aren't always looking to the people reporting to them as potential Jony Ives - they want to go on their own guts.

So an organization has to thread the needle between "it only counts if it can be quantified" and "it only counts if it has good 'gut feel' to topmost leadership". I think you do that by building and then trusting the expertise of the people in the middle.