I'm rebuilding this site right now. So a lot of things may look broken. But what better motivation for me to finish it?

Quotes to remember

When everyone on a project is choosing their styles from a curated set of limited options, your CSS stops growing linearly with your project size, and you get consistency for free.

The danger in prototyping too soon is investing resources in answering a question no one asked, and ignoring the opportunity cost. Testing a prototype can help you refine an idea that is already good, not tell you whether you’re solving the right problem. And it’s easy to mistake the polish of a prototype for the quality of the idea. FWIW, it’s also easy to mistake the gloss of a research report for the value of the insights.

So why then, when we boot up our computers and smartphones, are we forced to organize everything under a system designed for everyone? Just imagine if all of your furniture was bolted down to a neat grid, or the different rooms in your home were organized by brand instead of purpose!

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Perfectionism is not as much the desire for excellence, as it is the fear of failure couched in procrastination.

Currently, the dominant narrative behind mitigating climate change is one based on economic opportunity: more, but greener. While it may lower carbon emissions eventually, this narrative doesn’t offer solutions for – or even acknowledge – the many other planetary boundaries we’re already exceeding.

Advocating for genuine sustainability must therefore include an admission that hardly any political or corporate leader is willing to make: that ‘the green future’ is a future of less instead of a future of more. 

We typically reach for science fiction stories when thinking about A.I. I’ve come to believe the apt metaphors lurk in fantasy novels and occult texts. As my colleague Ross Douthat wrote, this is an act of summoning. The coders casting these spells have no idea what will stumble through the portal. What is oddest, in my conversations with them, is that they speak of this freely. These are not naifs who believe their call can be heard only by angels. They believe they might summon demons. They are calling anyway.

Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom…is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.

The high quality of life in Finland is deeply rooted in the nation’s welfare system, Mr. Kiiski, 47, who lives in Turku, said. “It makes people feel safe and secure, to not be left out of society.”

Public funding for education and the arts, including individual artist grants, gives people like his wife, Hertta, a mixed-media artist, the freedom to pursue their creative passions. “It also affects the kind of work that we make, because we don’t have to think of the commercial value of art,” Ms. Kiiski, 49, said. “So what a lot of the artists here make is very experimental.”