The Ten Worst People on the Subway

It’s hot. The subways are crowded. People are peevish, sweating, and on edge. At times like this— when the social fabric of the city seems to hang by the thinnest of threads—it’s important to relax, take a deep breath, and contemplate exactly who you hate in this godforsaken underground tunnel maze, and why. [We will…

Read More

Notes on No Man’s Sky

1. No Man’s Sky is a small videogame made by a tiny, indie studio that, like most small indie videogames, is clearly trying to achieve a very specific experience for a very specific audience. No Man’s Sky is a massive, triple-a videogame being released by Sony on a disc for a full sixty bucks that,…

Read More

Needy Design Patterns: Please-Don’t-Go Popups & Get-Back-to-Me Tabs

Summary: These two overly demanding website design patterns aimed at driving engagement are in conflict with how people utilize browser tabs. In UX design, “dark patterns” are deceptive strategies used by designers to trick users into doing potentially harmful things that support their organization’s goals. For example, sites that automatically add extra items into users’…

Read More

What Were Blogs? | New Republic

Blogging was fun, and it broke the rules. As founder Nick Denton said in a 2013 interview, “The basic concept of Gawker was two journalists in a bar telling each other a story that’s much more interesting than whatever hits the papers the next day.” Which is another way of saying Gawker tried to harness…

Read More

Are they students? Or are they employees? NLRB rules that graduate students are employees. – The Washington Post

Cosby Potter, 2, sits on his father’s shoulders during a “day of action” to celebrate graduate students and draw attention to demands Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015, near the columns on the University of Missouri campus, in Columbia, Mo. (Daniel Brenner/The Columbia Daily Tribune via AP) The National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday that graduate students who…

Read More