shawninman.coffee

It all started with a tweet.

Have you ever sunk 95+ hours into a game before coming back to the starting zone and accidentally stumbling into the tutorial?

lol yeah no me neither pic.twitter.com/TSFBNNYE1N

— Emme Montgomery (negaoryx) (@negaoryx) December 20, 2018

When I originally Negaoryx’s tweet, I ignored it. In the cover photo, I noticed the girl was a streamer and the clip had something to do with Breath of the Wild. I scrolled by casually, but it started getting retweeted and quoted enough that it finally caught my attention.

I watched the video and got a kick out of the host’s personality, so I decided to check out her stream. She was playing The Last of Us at the time and I’d always wanted to play it. I checked in periodically over the coming days. It was really cool to watch the play through, but there was also something really cool about the community aspect of the whole thing. The host and chat stream interacted like old friends. It was… weird?

Around the same time, I was really into playing Apex Legends and was enjoying the subreddit on the topic. I kept seeing the same pro players’ names coming up in threads, so I decided to check out Dizzy’s stream. As it turns out, watching someone be incredibly good at something you do as a novice is at once both humbling and awe-inspiring. Because Dizzy is a pro player, I eventually branched out began watching streams of his teammates. Like before, I was really drawn in by the banter between all the players.

Through sheer force of will, eventually Twitch’s algorithm got me hooked on Ninja and Tim the Tatman. Today, they’re probably my most-watched streams. I put them on all the time in the background while I’m doing things around the house or even when I’m busy working. Thinking about it, it’s not surprising those guys would resonate so much for me. They’re the best hosts of the bunch. Their streams are full of wise cracks, self deprecating humor, shit-talking, and in-jokes. It really is like hanging out with buddies.

My theory is that this is almost a new-wave replacement for talk radio. I remember in the early 2000’s every office worker seemed to have a radio on their desk playing whatever morning talk shows were on their favorite stations. These streamers serve exactly the same function for me. It’s the perfect place to stop by and have a few laughs.

(and maybe steal some strategies along the way)

OK, so it’s no People Are Awesome but I love this. I still have some faith left in people after all.

I recently listening to the Conversations with Tyler: Daniel Kahneman on Cutting Through the Noise where he had Daniel Kahneman a guest and it’s pretty fantastic. I first learned about Kahneman from his book “Thinking Fast and Slow”. Aside from being an interesting guy, I was struck by his attitude when he was fielding questions from both the host and the audience. There’s something special about Kahneman’s openness to saying “I have no idea”. There were so many times where he was faced with a question and he simply responded with “that’s outside my expertise” or “I don’t know enough about that research to comment” and I love him for it.

It’s definitely something worth thinking about. I often find myself wanting to be helpful which often compels me to offer an answer or to have an opinion. The truth is, I don’t always. And that’s ok. Kahneman is a pretty smart guy. I’ll take his lead.

I first signed up for Snapchat years ago, but after being completely befuddled by its user interface, I deleted it pretty quickly. I’ve been hearing so much about it lately that I decided to reinstall it and play around.

Overall, it’s been fun talking with friends and checking it out. It’s still inscrutable, but it’s fun.

The notification experience is absolutely unbearable though. If you’re unfamiliar with Snapchat, this is what happens when someone is sending you a message:

This is some majorly user-hostile stuff. I’m guessing it’s in the name of Growth Hacking or some other nonsense, but wow, this is gross. Because I’m a total pedant about notifications, I immediately went on a deep dive figuring out how to configure this nuisance away. Nope. Not possible. There are plenty of “tutorials” online – all of which instruct you how to turn off notifications completely. For a social app… whose primary focus is Direct Message style communication… right…

This is just gross. As the underdog and the platform always being copied, I want to root for Snapchat, but this has to go.

Nope, this branding problem has nothing to do with waging war against lobbyists, pseudoscience, or the “Estbalishment” – it’s grammar. Grammar is the great equalizer. It has an equal harshness for all of us, regardless of what you believe in. There’s beauty in that.

Every time I read any reference to the Green New Deal, it sets my teeth on edge a little. I get why it’s called the “Green New Deal”, but we all agree it should be called the “New Green Deal”, right?

My mind immediately flashes back to this old post by Kottke. I don’t know how we all know those rules inherently, but we sure do. Not following these unspoken rules makes you sound like a crazy person.

“Hey buddy, check out my Blue New Mug!” Nope. Nope. Nope.

Online publishing seems to be in kind of a weird phase these days. With the death of Google Reader many years ago (gone too soon!), the self-publishing and RSS ecosystem seems to have left the mainstream consciousness. For years, I’ve been watching my favorite authors lament its disappearance and their subsequent battle to stay engaged with their readership.

While it seems like RSS is having a bit of a moment again, we’ve all seen the proliferation of email newsletters recently. I’m not against it, and I actually subscribe to a good handful of them myself, but I worry about what it’s doing to the open web.

I know, more hand-wringing over the “open web”. But my post from earlier today is a great example of where it hurts. I really wanted to link to that article by Shawn, but that writing has no home on the internet. Instead, it lives somewhere in a top secret Active Campaign CMS. I don’t feel great about that.

Folks, if you’re going to start a newsletter, I’m all for it. Just cross-post it.

I was reading the most recent newsletter from Shawn Blanc about posting every day during November and it inspired me to do the same. This is a total wimp-out version of NaNoWriMo but let’s be honest – I’m not writing a novel. Not in November 2019. Not ever.

But! But, I’ll be publishing something here every day. Sometimes, I can’t get enough of writing, and sometimes I feel like I don’t have much to say, but there’s nothing like the feeling of having written. More of that please.

So with that, let’s kick this month of writing off.

P.S. I may not actually post every day. The goal is to post 30 times in November. Life getting in the way and all that.

This photo is undoubtedly one of the coolest, most impactful photos I’ve ever taken. I love it. I took it when I was in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany last week. I’d never been to Europe before and it was really cool to get a firsthand view of the juxtaposition of modern life going on in and around these practically ancient towns. Pretty wild.

Anyway, that photo isn’t my favorite from the trip. My favorite actually came when I turned around and faced away from this incredible, historic cathedral.

What’s the significance in that? I’m not really sure. But I feel like there’s a lesson in that. It’s something I want to spend some time thinking about.

The other day, my daughter (8) asked me why people have toes. I explained to her that

“Toes help you balance. You wouldn’t be able to walk well without them.”

I didn’t Google it, but that’s always what I’d heard.

Is that right? Who even decides that as a parent, you get to instill a whole bunch of ideas in your kids that might not even be right? Anyway, I digress.

She says back to me:

“that’s true, if you didn’t have toes, it would be really hard to do a pirouette”

Something about that struck me. If doing a pirouette is the first thing that comes to mind for her, we must be doing something right…