There is no gate keeping, no screening, just a calendar form. I just show up to whatever appointments folks booked on my calendar with hopefully a little context of what they’d like to discuss. I don’t think I’m some industry pundit, but I do recognize that anyone who has been doing roughly the same thing for 10 years might be able to provide advice for someone earlier on in their career. Also, it just feels like the right thing to do to try to give back to folks in this very small way.

My pal and former Tumblr coworker Brian Michel is opening up his office hours to the public and wrote a great post about why experienced technologists should be open to new connections and offering support, as well as some instructions on how to set it up.

If you’re in tech and wanna talk to one of the kindest, smartest folks I know, you can sign up for his office hours here. I just did.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control recommended that every American wear a face covering when in public. Masks will be the hot, bold look for summer.

The medical evidence for the practice is overwhelming. The post-SARS countries in East Asia have known this for a long time, and America and Europe are finally coming around. I’ve put a bunch of resources about the medical benefits of mask wearing in a further reading section at the bottom of this post.

But in this essay, I want to persuade you not just to wear a mask, but to go beyond the new CDC guidelines and help make mask wearing a social norm. That means always wearing a mask when you go out in public, and becoming a pest and nuisance to the people in your life until they do the same.

A very persuasive essay from Maciej Cegłowski, the founder of Pinboard, about the whys and hows of wearing masks in public. I started wearing one yesterday for the limited time I was outside, and the medical community seems to now be recommending that everyone do the same. It’s also worth reading Ben Thompson’s take and checking out these simple mask-making instructions from Loren Brichter.

While there are lots of great guides on how to work remote from companies like Notion, Zapier, and Slack, we thought share some of the specific tools we’re using to make this easier for our team. Hopefully, if you’re a newly remote employee or manager, you’ll see something here that can help smooth out a part of your workflow.

I wrote a new blog post over on the Lickability blog about the new tools we’re using to work from home better and some tips about how we’re using them. 🛋

As I mentioned the other day, I’m bringing back my App Critique video series, and the first submission is the app Learn Your Lines! from Andrew Cote. In this video, I walk through the app as a brand new user and point out some potential areas for improvement in the app’s UX and UI.

Want your app critiqued like this? Submit it here.

This xkcd is exactly what I needed today. Well, that, and some pasta.

Since starting on the site redesign last year, I’ve known I wanted the website to have a now page:

Most websites have a link that says “about”. It goes to a page that tells you something about the background of this person or business. For short, people just call it an “about page”.

Most websites have a link that says “contact”. It goes to a page that tells you how to contact this person or business. For short, people just call it a “contact page”.

So a website with a link that says “now” goes to a page that tells you what this person is focused on at this point in their life. For short, we call it a “now page”.

I finally had some (quaran)time to make one this weekend, so if you’re ever curious what I’m up to, you can now visit /now.

The delightful weirdos over at performance art/tech company MSCHF just launched a new app. The app does what they used to do via text messages until the phone companies starting blocking their numbers: allows you to chat with them and sends you a notification every two weeks when they announce drop their new project.

It’s good to see that even in a global pandemic, the crew over there will continue to bring us absurdly joyful things like All the Streams, Puff the Squeaky Chicken, and MSCHF Box.

App Store

Helpful Engineering is designing, sourcing and executing projects to help people suffering from the COVID-19 crisis worldwide.

We are an open community of volunteers without a commercial purpose. We believe that through a utilitarian approach, we can do the most good in the quickest time. Applying unused engineering and manufacturing resources, we can help the world cope with the threat of COVID-19.

I’m super impressed by the speed and organization of this group of volunteer engineers that are working on a number of really useful projects in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’ve got spare time, resources, or engineering know-how, consider joining their efforts.