Kyoto Idetsu, I want to wear a warm sweater (Bridget Donahue, New York)
ON DECK: Grading exams; A plan to readjust the timeline for a consultancy; Professorial chair application.
INBOX: 6 unread messages.
WATCHING: Bocchi the Rock!
LISTENING: Kessoku Band (from the Bocchi the Rock OST)
Ester Partegàs, Refugio de Fachada Solar, (NoguerasBlanchard, Madrid)
ON DECK: Policy note on digital taxation. A billing invoice, and paper work for my research load credit application.
INBOX: 25 unread emails. Hope to process more before I close the window and get back to the grind.
LISTENING: Planet Money podcast.
WATCHING: Yuru Camp Movie. Just two hours of gentle healing.
Evelīna Deičmane, Tanzorgan (Kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga)
ON DECK: Sending out some important emails, and then diving back to drafting the policy note on digital taxation.
INBOX: 49 unread messages. Partial backlog. Processed the backlog after getting the first draft of the LAE 2023 manual out.
ADMIN: This is now my default, on-the-go work environment. A Traveller’s Notebook for appointments, notes and zero drafts. The phone is a refurbished Blackberry 9930. I like the form factor and I am nostalgic about physical QWERTY keyboards. That and it makes me look like a wired political operator from Washington D.C. A lot of the functionality has disappeared since Research in Motion imploded. It can’t load apps from a central store, and it can’t connect to social media. All it can do is text and call.
The sparseness is by design. My new workflow is based on getting off the Internet’s algorithmic Pavlovian treadmill and working in (mostly) offline, distraction-free environments.
Julia Scher, Maximum Security Society (Kunsthalle Zürich)
ON DECK: Done with drafting the LAE manual. Will shoot a note to the vendor later today. Tomorrow will start working on that policy note on digital taxation.
INBOX: 167 unread email messages. This was the final count before I started reading and responding to emails again. Note: None of the messages were really that urgent, and any harm done from delay was reversible.
READING: How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. WIRED Magazine back issues.
Satoru Kurata, 2P, (Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo)
ON DECK: The latest LAE manual, and a note to the exam vendor. A policy note on digital taxation.
INBOX: 142 unread email messages. I’ll get back to it as soon as I finish any one of my on-deck items.
READING: How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. WIRED Magazine back issues.
Shannon Te Ao, Tīwakawaka (Coastal Signs, Auckland)
ON DECK: The latest LAE manual, and a note to the exam vendor. Catching up on reading. A policy note on digital taxation.
READING: Almost forgot I got myself a discounted subscription to WIRED magazine. Catching up.
INBOX: 70 unread email messages. Maybe a couple more in my messaging apps. I was able to process my messages before the weekend after finishing the terminal report as well as the Q and A for the Paralegal Training Program. I’m closing the email processing window until on-deck items are closed.
WATCHING: I never got to finish House of Cards. I’m giving it another go.
Raimer Jochims, Papierarbeiten, (Jacky Strenz, New York)
ON DECK: Terminal report for the digital tax project is done and posted. Later at noon I have live Q and A with the Paralegal Training Program. After that I hope to get back to All the Things.
INBOX: 112 unread emails. No processing until I am done with the PTP Q and A. I am not even looking at SMS and messaging apps. Forget about that. Most of the time nothing really justifies instant action on stuff from the Internet.
WATCHING: Git for Professionals
ADMIN: Over the past few weeks I’ve been configuring a terminal-based Linux environment (Arch Linux, i3) to be my primary writing workstation. The idea is that I’m going to write notes and drafts in text format (Markdown or LaTeX), version control and synchronize via git, and then convert to .pdf or .doc when necessary (via pandoc). After hours of bringing Lunar Vim to a usable state I might just go back to using Emacs (particularly, an opinionated distro like Doom Emacs).
ON DECK: Finish the damn terminal report now so I can bill and get this project behind me.
INBOX: 58 Unread emails, and who knows how many chat messages. Could only reply to two time-sensitive messages. No further inbox processing until I finish the terminal report.
Rodney McMillian, Regarding Violence (Petzel, New York)
ADMIN: As a way to log my progress on projects (and maybe as a sort of commitment mechanism), I’m going to post status updates on my work. Also I need to use this platform more often - since I pay a good sum of my public school teacher’s salary on keeping this, my personal corner of the Internet, provisioned.
ON DECK: Two meetings. The terminal report for the digital tax project. Posting finals for legal method.
INBOX: 32. Starting today I’m going to let non-priority emails remain unread until I have pushed out the terminal report.
WATCHING: Cosmos, Possible Worlds
One Hour of Medieval Eminem.
The Rise of User-Hostile Software - “We are truly living in an era of user-hostile software, and when I say “user-hostile” I mean it as “software that doesn’t really care about the needs of the user but rather about the needs of the developer.” And this is not a problem that is bound to a specific operating system (or version thereof) or class or computers. It’s literally cross-platform, and it follows customers from home, to office, to their commute.”
Looks like teen smoking is pretty much dead in the U.S., thanks to vaping -
“The fear that vaping is a gateway to smoking has been completely eliminated by the data that shows vaping is in fact a diversion from smoking. And why not? It is safer, cheaper, more convenient and more discrete. Teenage smokers will soon become curiosities, like people who still listen to cassettes tapes.
...
Did we arrive at this position by careful planning? Absolutely not! We got here by a devious path full of chaos, confusion, outright lies, illegal actions and misdirection.”
Accounting framework for ESG-related transactions - “As ESG features become more pervasive in the market, alternative approaches to assessing ESG features could be introduced under US GAAP to alleviate the operational burden on companies when entering into green transactions.”
Checking out Research Rabbit, although I’m not sure where it will land in my research and writing workflow