Brian Sholis

* “Oddkin stakes the claim that the shape of kinship isn’t a birthright but a choice, that the people we choose to gather with are connected to us in ways at least equivalent to those we were born alongside. However odd that gathering may be—and Haraway posits that oddkin includes not only people but every living thing around us, the trees and... See more

- “Workflows, not data, are the subject of product innovation now. And the subject is easier to study, to compare, to share and extend, when it’s concrete and durable, not an organic, ephemeral series of actions.”

- “Perhaps our biggest time error is near bias—caring too much about what’s about to happen, and too little about the future.”

* "Sometimes, to be a resident of polite society, you have to lie, and this feels unpleasant for a moment but is usually bearable. But lying to an empty page alone in a room feels awful."

* “Additionally, consider how to make explicit the things that may naturally be implied in a conversation.”

- “Textual interfaces make automation trivial, and automation tools much easier to build.”

* “The mark of a great friend is somebody who believes in you, looks out for you, and has your best interests in mind. Those who give you honest feedback, even when the truth is hard to share and even harder to hear are worth their weight in gold. When you acknowledge their feedback, friends become like bumpers at a bowling alley. They let you... See more

- “Text interfaces are much easier for machines to use. And as more work is done autonomously by the workflows we teach machines to perform, text interfaces are starting to matter just as much as human ones.”

A thoughtful essay about how our online identities—even when our default mode is misdirection or obfuscation—are visible to the platforms we use, and by extension to capitalism and its prerogatives.