j’s notes

The mechanism of “evil” here is vulnerability to capture. If there’s a gun on the ground and a stronger and weaker guy fight to claim it, the stronger guy will likely end up with it, making him even stronger. Eventually all the guns are in the hands of the already powerful, with the most powerful having the biggest guns, and no opposed forces restraining them. That’s the sort of “evil” that “can’t be evil” tries to restrain. The kind pointed to by the proverb, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Most technologies are like guns. They tend to get aggregated and captured by those who already have a lot. Technology, in other words, generally exhibits preferential attachment to power.
— Read on contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/new-nature

24. Give ‘someday’ a deadline

I’ve spent too much of my life waiting until I’m more ready, more prepared, more whatever — but someday isn’t a day of the week; it’s just a comfortable lie I tell myself to avoid starting. Turns out, 50%, 60%, even 70% ready is good enough to go for it. I’d rather bet on myself at half-ready than wait forever for perfect.

— Roxy Couse, creator and workplace culture commentator

52 fascinating people reveal the tiny habits that changed their lives

It’s almost impossible to pick a single best pen for everyone, because not everyone wants the same thing from their pens. Plus, different types of pens use different inks, so you can’t exactly compare a gel pen to a highlighter.

To that end, we’ve organized our best pens guide by category, and linked to more detailed guides so you can learn about competing pens. Take a look and try out our picks—who knows, you might find your personal best pen!

The 47 Best Pens for 2026: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens | JetPens

“It is really important that steering, acceleration, braking, gear shifting, lights, wipers, all that stuff which enables you to actually drive the car, should be tactile,” says Kyffin, who once worked on smart controls for Dutch electronics company Philips. “From an interaction design perspective, the shift to touchscreens strips away the natural affordances that made driving intuitive,” he says.

“Traditional buttons, dials, and levers had perceptible and actionable qualities—you could feel for them, adjust them without looking, and rely on muscle memory. A touchscreen obliterates this,” says Kyffin. “Now, you must look, think, and aim to adjust the temperature or volume. That’s a huge cognitive load, and completely at odds with how we evolved to interact with driving machines while keeping our attention on the road.”

— Read on www.wired.com/story/why-car-brands-are-finally-switching-back-to-buttons/

What used to require shame and ostracism is now baked into the internet’s economic infrastructure. The algorithmic reality of technology platforms has codified conformity into the human condition. And it is very profitable—the real late-stage capitalism. Things are going to get worse with the new AI, that leans into the “mid” as a default, built entirely on the notion of conformity.

— Read on om.co/2026/01/16/our-algorithmic-grey-beige-world/

Writing is hard. And I’ll also say, writers are born, not made. As a matter of fact, the more you teach someone how to write the more you risk squeezing the creativity out of them. We don’t need me-too, we need unique.

— Read on lefsetz.com/wordpress/2026/01/12/1929/

The main function of an icon is to help you find what you are looking for faster.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, adding an icon to everything is exactly the wrong thing to do. To stand out, things need to be different. But if everything has an icon, nothing stands out.

— Read on tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/

SOME WEEKS AGO, I quietly shipped a new content type on A Working Library, such that I am now writing short, social-shaped posts on my site and then sending them off to the various platforms. This is not a novel mode of publishing, but rather one borrowed and adapted from the POSSE model (“publish on your site, syndicate elsewhere”) developed by the IndieWeb community. While one of the reasons oft declared for using POSSE is the ability to own your content, I’m less interested in ownership than I am in context. Writing on my own site has very different affordances: I’m not typing into a little box, but writing in a text file. I’m not surrounded by other people’s thinking, but located within my own body of work. As I played with setting this up, I could immediately feel how that would change the kinds of things I would say, and it felt good. Really good. Like putting on a favorite t-shirt, or coming home to my solid, quiet house after a long time away.

— Read on aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home

POSSE is an abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, the practice of posting content on your own site first, then publishing copies or sharing links to third parties (like social media silos) with original post links to provide viewers a path to directly interacting with your content.

— Read on indieweb.org/POSSE