Andy Matuschak

[link] I found the Four Star books helpful for learning techniques (things to note when scanning a piece before beginning to play) but they must be supplemented with tons more at-level music—not enough in each book to pass each level IME.

Really enjoyed this thread, Connie—thank you! Sharing some notes in a similar vein in case they're of interest:

I've not found the "how to be more creative" genre terribly fruitful myself, but some of the "creativity research" work has been pretty interesting. Klein's "Seeing What Others Don't" might be a nice starting point there if you haven't seen.

I don't think any really have its mystique, though of course there are many other great books. It's pretty interesting, actually, that no others seem to have the same cultural vibe. SICP is just so singular.

Read through the CHI '21 proceedings last week. My favorite paper was this very interesting AR tutor, which features in-context guides and multiple levels of scaffolding, adapted in realtime to user behavior. PDF: [link] Abstract/videos:

Quite breathtaking paper: [link] Computationally identifying transcriptional phenotypes by using CRISPR interference to knockdown genes, then sequencing millions of cells (!) to correlate the varying perturbations with transcription effects.

I spent much of yesterday reading this book and have really been enjoying it. Thank you for a phenomenal resource. And thank you for licensing it so liberally—I may use it as part of a research program on augmented learning media…

Holden K's been writing a great series exploring why depictions of non-ironic utopias are so rare / unappealing. I really love this suggestion in his latest post—that you can get a feel for a "moderate" utopia thru media centered on sports or performing arts.

Yes, I enjoyed it too.

From McCutcheon, "Silent Reading in Antiquity and the Future History of the Book": [link] And via the consistently excellent @rsnous sponsor newsletter.

Boy, this is a phenomenal piece. The central point really resonates with my own experience: when I catch myself trying to "do research", I'm usually a) unhappy and b) doing bad work. The best work does seem to happen when I'm desperate to understand something, as Kanjun suggests.

If you've only read "modern" HIGs, I definitely recommend reading the 1987 edition! It's *very* different. It is amusingly difficult to imagine this passage in a contemporary Apple text.

An excellent and practical book on the subject!

The paper includes several examples, but the translation interface is my favorite—some of the most thoughtful academic HCI design work I've seen in the past few years. Nice work, Spence Green et al (now commercialized as @LiltHQ)

One good extended discussion:

If you haven't read yet, this is a good starting point for historical material: [link] See also many good refs in this thread:

This is an old problem, of course. There's a great discussion in "Formality considered harmful"[1] (via @JoelChan86, I think!). See also Smalltalk, Dynamicland, Chalktalk… [1]

I loved @robinsloan's 2016 article on using language models as collab writing aids https://t.co/0L3o6PgkwN This new story surfaces the grain, shows where the ML helped. Works well with the (sad) story, since it suggests where the author reached for aid.