kirschsubjudice

Aaron Kirschenfeld

Short thoughts on topics that interest me combined with selected link-sharing. And because having one blog really isn't enough.

When Introverts Should Avoid Coffee

If you're headed into some important meeting, you might down a cup or two of coffee without thinking much of it, hoping the caffeine will provide your brain with an extra boost.

Keeping a Journal

I've never been a journal keeper. Journal aspirant sometimes, but never a journal keeper.

As I aged, and then wrote professionally for a few years, I no longer aspired. And in law / info science school, I've been so exhausted and engaged in learning new things that I haven't felt I've had much to share, even with myself. As Willie Nelson says, you can't make a record if you ain't got nothin' to say.

Or, perhaps I've just never liked the idea of writing to myself -- I tend not to be comfortable with listening to my own voice, especially when it's directed at me, and especially when it's in writing. But we'll leave my psychological issues for another day.

My other main objection to keeping a journal is that I think it tends to promote rumination. And rumination is bad.

But.

I discovered a thing. By using a set template to prompt journal responses, I've been able to actually keep a digital journal like Lifehacker says I should.


With this set of prompts I found (ok, more or less cribbed, but you can't copyright an idea, son!), the goal is to promote positive thoughts. Not Barbara Ehrenreich Bright Sided delusional thoughts, not Senator Al Franken's affirmations, either, but closer. Maybe it's better to say that I'm trying to prompt helpful thoughts. The idea is to express gratitude I wouldn't otherwise necessarily think about. And I'm writing, and keeping up with it, and enjoying myself.

My basic process works like this: one TextExpander snippet for a morning entry, one for a nighttime entry. I indulged and bought Day One for both the 'Pad and the MacBook, and just as everyone says, it's an exceptional app.

No fuss, no muss. Just me and my feelings.

The Gentleman Who Made Scholar — Backchannel — Medium

Anurag Acharya is the key inventor of Google Scholar, but the real origin of the project lies in his college years at the Kharagpur campus of the Indian Institute of Technology.

All Technology is Assistive — Backchannel — Medium

In 1941, the US Navy commissioned the husband-and-wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames to design a lightweight splint for wounded soldiers to get them out of the field more safely.

How to Get Data the Government Doesn’t Want You to Have

If you’re at all interested in understanding and learning from numbers, you should know about public records. Luckily for us, the law mandates that a lot of this information is freely available.

How to be 10% Happier

Think you had a bad day? Dan Harris had a panic attack on live TV in front of millions of people.

Games Kittens Play

We got two kittens a few months ago. We never even thought we were pet people. But in recent years we made friends with some of our neighbors’ pets, and found ourselves missing sarcastic cat Jeeves after he and his family moved away.

HBO Decides It's Finally Time To Go It Alone

For years, plenty of people have been wondering why HBO absolutely refused to offer a standalone internet offering for cord cutters (and cord nevers), with the general response being that "the math" was against it.