February 2012
12 posts
6 tags
“The alchemy of becoming your self is the ultimate act of leadership.”
– A VC: The Management Team
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Comfortable, but not too comfortable.
The New Yorker examines brainstorming, noting that its supportive, considerate framework doesn’t work since it lacks dissent:
Dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints. “There’s this Pollyannaish notion that the most important thing to do when working together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt...
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Hey, old media middlemen: No industry is safe....
The headline comes from Andy Baio in the comment thread from Yancy Strickler’s news that two Kickstarter projects hit $1m within 4 hours of each other.
There are crazy days and then there are days like yesterday. Kickstarter has experienced some frantic hours but nothing like what happened in the 24-hour span between Wednesday at 6:54pm and Thursday at 6:44pm. Two million-dollar projects,...
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Be an enlightened despot.
Terry Gilliam on filmmaking (aka “himself”):
Growing up is for losers.
Film school is for fools.
Auteurism is out.
Fil-teurism is in.
Put your ideas in a drawer. Take them out as needed.
All you’ve really got in life is story.
Command the audience with your lens.
Nothing can defeat a director who is one with his actors.
Surround yourself with improvisers.
Directing is not...
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Angels.
Assistant #1: They might enjoy their lives more if they could, say, soundtrack it.
God: Soundtrack it?
Assistant #1: You know—have music accompany it.
God: That's what the angels are for. Do you know how much they cost?
Assistant #1: They can't hear the angels anymore. They use iPods.
God: So put the angels on their iPods. God, I'm so fucking tired of Jobs. What a prick.
Assistant #2: iPods are incompatible with angels.
Assistant #1: And they brick any iPhone. We tried.
[Long pause]
God: Fine. Give them Sigur Ros.
Assistant #1 & Assistant #2 nod, sharing a smile between them.
7 tags
Say it with Chocolate. →
Katy Leen:
Over the holidays, a Montreal design studio called Dynamo decided to use their typographic skills to create unique gifts: a selection of chocolate bars inscribed with positive mantras for the new year. And they didn’t just use any kind of chocolate for their sweet sayings, they teamed with…
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I understand that some copywriters have much...
Master ad man David Ogilvy explains his flabby copywriting skills in this letter to Mr. Ray Calt, noting:
At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her.
Ogivly would get along famously with Gene Fowler, who once quipped: Writing is easy. All...
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Code wins arguments.
From the letter accompanying Facebook’s filing, Zuckerberg writes:
Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins...