Let's be Fwends #146:

Make, See, Learn, Do

Wisdom lies in correctly discerning where we are free to mould reality to our desires and where we must accept the unaltered with tranquility.

~ Seneca

Welcome to issue 146 of Let's be Fwends. Today, I have a couple of things I found interesting for you, with no particular theme or focus. There's a really interesting report about alternative narratives for work and business, a compilation of great maker projects you can try out yourself, two links for design geeks, a guide for European digital self-reliance (well, not really, but still ...) and the maths behind a popular card game (popular at least in this household). Enjoy!

Human-Scale Organisations

Many of the problems I am regularly battling with stem from the sheer size of organisations. A process designed in a remote corner of a different department you never heard of before. HR routines designed to scale and cope with thousands of employees. Synchronising your efforts with that of another team. Dependencies. Hierarchies. Politics. Decisions that don't make sense in your context.

Many of the problems we as societies are regularly battling with come from the aspirations those companies have. A product that is designed to have "global scale". Becoming too big to fail. Growth at all costs.

Sebastian pointed me to Thomas Klaffke's "Business-as-un-usual", a report compiling new narratives for a new business world. "Human-Scale Organisations" was a word I was looking for.

Make It Yourself

There are so many things you can make yourself. Make it Yourself collected over a thousand tutorials on how to make things, from chairs to computers. There are many very basic things I know nothing about (for example, what makes a good chair), and I really want to learn those things. This compendium comes at the right time for me.

The Creation of the NeXT Brand

When I was at university, there were two types of workstation everyone wanted to work on: One was the Sun-3 "Pizza Box", which was already a bit outdated but cool (mostly based on its history of high performance). The others were NeXTstations, built by NeXT-Computers, a company headed by Apple-founder Steve Jobs. Theoretically, the NeXT cubes were even more coveted, but since we only had a literal couple of those, chances where practically Zero that you ever managed to grab one of those. Both the NeXTstation and the NeXTcube stood apart from the rest by their branding. They looked really cool with their black casings emblazoned by the colourful NeXT logo.

Paul Rand designed that logo, and here's a lot of material on how he did it that is surely worth your time if you're interested in that era of computing.

NYC Subway Station Drawings

Oh, this is nice: Drawings of New York City subway station layouts. I covered something similar from London a couple of years ago.

European Alternatives to US-Based Services

Whatever your individual motives are, there are plenty of reasons to look for alternatives for software services that are based in the USA. Maybe you want better privacy protection. Or you're required to use a European service by regulation. Or maybe you want a stronger European tech sector that is less dependent on the United States. In any case, the first thing you can do is take your tech stack and look for tools and services you can replace with European alternatives.

(via https://mastodon.well.com/@ianb/113458510471836962)

The Mathematics of Dobble

One of our kid's favourite games is Dobble. It goes like this: Two players get an equal number of cards. On each card, there are a number of symbols. Both players put one of their cards down on the table. One symbol (and only one) is on both cards. The player who finds it first wins the round. You play until there are no more cards left and you lost against your offspring.

Your understanding of the math behind Dobble goes from "oh this is obvious" to "what the hell is going on?" after you played a couple of times. Because whatever cards you play, there will always be one, and only one, shared symbol.

So, it's a good thing that Peter Collingridge created an explainer about the math behind the game. If you're a parent puzzled by how the game works, have a look.

That's it for this edition of Let's be Fwends. I hope you enjoyed the varied nature of this issue as much as I did. 🤞