#639

What's making me happy 2017-01-29

Well the past few days have been... tragic. Depressing? Interesting? Unsurprising? I don't know.

Donald Trump is an asshole doing all of the absurd hateful things he said he'd do. 25% of the US elected a white supremacist to the White House. Blargh. Let's talk about the things I've been consuming that I've been using to distract me from all this. Here we go. #happy. 2017. Whoo.

I do something like Box Breathing pretty constantly. I find it's a great way to calm down. I had never really thought of it as meditation before, so I'm going to try it as a more focused attempt. Maybe then I can make it through the front page of the NYTimes without wanting to just riot.

I'm often told that I'm a morning person. I don't know how I feel about this, but How I Became a Morning Person matches my general policies on dealing with the morning.

This is one of those nice benefits of working for a gigantic company: Google Recalls Staff to U.S. After Trump Immigration Order. Google's founders have often lent their private jets to Google employees who get stranded when crazy shit like this goes down.

I've been heavily recommending the Google SRE book to everyone in the tech industry. Now it's available for free!

OKR Fundamentals by @niket is a classic. A long time ago I helped him fight through a bunch of drafts to make something everyone could understand and use. Just yesterday a friend sent it to me saying it was being passed around the office, which made me excited. It's such a great article if you're interested in OKRs.

The story of a designer conquering mathematics is a fun read. I've always been horrible at math, and this article talks about a designer dealing with that feeling and working towards a stronger understanding.

How RC uses Zulip is fun. Lots of stuff to learn here and apply to your local online communities.

Also out of a Recurse Center attendee, Let Your Side-Project Backlog Spark Joy is a great read on being productive with side projects.

Longform Podcast 227: Jace Clayton is just a fun listen if you like music journalism.

I loved Firewatch, so seeing that @hoverbird is making a new game is super exciting.

Ringing in 2017 with updates to our Google Voice apps is exciting as a Google Voice customer. I've been waiting for Google to show some sign that they are still maintaining Google Voice.

Putting The Times’s First Email Address to Bed was a fun read of NYT history.

For a good laugh, check out "Cards Against Humanity is hiring a CEO!"

I had never seen NYT Watching before. Neat site when you're trying to figure out what you want to binge watch while you're unemployed.

I hope next week is better than this one. Best of luck out there.

/Nat