The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious, it is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

– Albert Einstein

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Artwork by Tristan Chesselet

Dense Discovery
Dense Discovery
 

Welcome to Issue 36!

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So many lovely comments on last week’s announcement about bringing Offscreen back. Thank you!

It’s been a busy week in my inbox. During the early phase of a new Offscreen issue, I spend about 80% of my time in emails trying to confirm contributors and explaining the process involved. Having to depend on so many other people and their busy schedules to hit a deadline still makes me anxious and reminds me why I took a break. That said, I’m very excited about the interviewees and contributors we’ve confirmed so far. I think it’ll be a great come-back issue!

Well, I better get back to it. Enjoy this week’s newsletter! – Kai

Dense Discovery is currently read by over 37,000 subscribers. Support us by (1) Sponsoring an issue, (2) Booking a classified ad, or (3) Sharing this issue with friends and colleagues.

 

Free .design Domain Name

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Porkbun →

Claim your .design domain name, before it’s gone

Thinking of building your portfolio? .design is like .com and .net, but it’s more relevant to what you do as a designer. Your .design name comes with free email, SSL, and a Site Builder.

 

Apps & Sites

Downlink →

Real-time satellite desktop images

“Watch sunlight and weather patterns move across Earth throughout the day, and bask in the glory of our blue marble in real time. Every 20 minutes (or every hour, you pick), Downlink updates your desktop background with the newest images of Earth.”

SuperPay →

Easy payment links

SuperPay provides a no-frills, easy-to-use interface for collecting one-off or recurring payments. It’s like PayPal’s ‘Buy Now’ button without having to use PayPal. Simple pricing too with a flat 1% fee.

Metatask →

Workflow manager

Metatask is a tool that helps your team perform the same tasks consistently. You can use approval tasks to quickly automate an approval process, such as a vacation request.

Redpen →

Collect feedback on visuals

Drag any image file into Redpen, point and click to give feedback on specific areas, then share it with team members or clients. Redpen is one of the most simple ways to discuss visuals remotely.

 

Idle Knowledge

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Icon by Viktor Ostrovsky

My kingdom for a wireless protocol!

The Bluetooth standard is named after the 10th century Scandinavian king Harald ‘Blåtand’ Gormsson. Legend has it, Blåtand (meaning ‘Bluetooth’ in English) ate so many blueberries that they stained his teeth blue. Originally developed by two engineers at Ericsson in Sweden, the Bluetooth protocol was meant to set a unified standard, replacing a variety of competing protocols. The name was inspired by Blåtand who managed to unify the various Danish tribes into one Danish kingdom. If you look closely at the Bluetooth logo, you can see the long-branch Nordic runes for ‘H’ and ‘B’. (Source)

 

Goods & Accessories

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Triangle Notebook →

Oddly shaped notebooks

As the name suggests, this eccentric collection includes triangular notebooks and this weird L-shaped one that neatly hugs your keyboard.

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How to Do Nothing →

Resisting the attention economy

Suggesting this book because of a rave review by a friend: “A galvanising critique of the forces vying for our attention – and our personal information – that redefines what we think of as productivity, reconnects us with the environment, and reveals all that we’ve been too distracted to see about ourselves and our world.”

 

Overheard on Twitter

Does anyone else feel that they basically lucked into a high paying career because their interests randomly aligned with scarcity and a rapidly growing field, and that it’s nowhere near as hard, or as societally valuable as what teachers, medical professionals and care-givers do?

@colmmacc

 

Food For Thought

Tristan Harris says tech is “downgrading” humanity – but we can fix it →

Listen

I’ve shared Tristan’s work here before, but this a great summary of his current thinking around humane technology: “Human downgrading is the climate change of culture. Like climate change, it can be catastrophic. Unlike climate change, only about 1,000 people, among like five companies, need to change what they’re doing.”

The End Of Empathy →

Read

“The new rule for empathy seems to be: reserve it, not for your ‘enemies’, but for the people you believe are hurt, or you have decided need it the most. Empathy, but just for your own team. And empathizing with the other team? That’s practically a taboo.”

Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard on Mindful Consumption →

Read

How can you grow a company whose success depends on selling products while publicly condemning mindless consumerism? Patagonia has been walking that fine line for many years. Here’s some insight into how they pulled if off so far.

 

Aesthetically Pleasing

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What you see here is not photoshopped; it’s the work of the bewilderingly talented make-up artist Dain Yoon.

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Melbourne-based (✌️) street artist Kitt Bennett paints giant murals on the ground.

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Construk Sans is a typeface that employs typographic ligatures to realise an alternate version of the English language that is void of gendered words, including gendered pronouns.

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This poster series combines my love for posters, typography and geometric shapes.

 

Classifieds

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Book yours →

 

The Week in a GIF

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Email us the URL to your favourite GIF and we might feature it here in a future issue.

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