A Few Things #9

Here are a few things that I found interesting this week:

When can you hear yourself think? by Greg Gilbert

Gilbert reflects on the modern (maybe?) impulse to continuously consume media. News, audiobooks, podcasts, music: “we fool ourselves into thinking we are doing something meaningful and productive.” But the reality more often is cluttered minds and unorganized thoughts.

The antidote is quite time in our own mind. “We need to hear ourselves think on a regular basis. The easiest way to do that is to unplug from ‘knowledgetainement’ when we perform mundane tasks like emptying the dishwasher.”

I think that washing the dishes can be a great time to catch up on podcasts or YouTube videos. But too frequently I feel myself reaching for media just to fill the void. Gilbert’s article gives me something to thinking about.

h/t Evan Travers

Making A Medieval Book by Four Keys Book Arts

This video compresses 60 hours of expert bookmaking into 24 minutes. I haven’t thought much about how books are made before, but I really appreciated the care and attention to detail. Making books is an art.

For a more accessible look at bookmaking, checkout Adam Savage on Tested.

Semantic Satiation (Wikipedia)

This week I wrote about the term “blog”, and it didn’t take long before the word felt weird in the mouth and sounded strange to my eat. That phenomenon has a name: semantic satiation.

Matthew Wolff Design

I really like soccer, and I really like logo design. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that almost all of my favorite American soccer logos were designed by the same guy: Matthew Wolf.