Well, that was a slow slog of a year. I personally felt like Spider-Man in the 3rd Toby Maguire movie, where he inexplicably briefly loses his powers. Surprisingly though, I did end up writing more posts than in 2017 (18 versus 13, even though 5 were… uhh… not quite longform). It was like pulling teeth, but I appear to be gathering momentum again.
Let’s do the roundup first, and then some commentary.
Editor-At-Large Posts
Sarah Perry posts
- Luxuriating in Privacy
- Light of the American Whale
- The Well-Being Machine
- Treasure Hunting
- Cringe and the Design of Sacred Experiences
- Notes on Doing Things
- Hedonic Audit
- Social Media Consciousness
- Boilerplate
- Justice Fantasies
- “Something Runs Through The Whole Thread”
- Deep Laziness
Venkatesh Rao posts
- Think Entangled, Act Spooky
- Unflattening Hobbes
- The Speakeasy Imagineering Network
- Dodo Thoughts
- May You Live in Epic Times
- The Age of Early Divinity
- Why We Slouch
- How Do You Value a Human Being?
- Flying Blind into the Anthropocene
- Survival of the Mediocre Mediocre
- Boat Stories
- The Key to Act Two
- A Quick (Battle) Field Guide to the New Culture Wars
- Make Your Own Rules
- Reality Maintenance
- Chekov’s Gun and the Principle of Sufficient Reason
- Quiver Doodles
- Armpit Futures
Guest Posts
Community Stuff
- Into the Fediverse
- Refactor Camp 2018: Cryptoeconomics and Blockchain Weirding Post-Mortem
- Refactor Camp 2018: Cryptoeconomics and Blockchain Weirding
- Refactor Camp: Cryptoeconomics and Blockchain Weirding Summary and Wrap Up
- The Art of Longform
- 2018 Annual Letter
Refactorings Roundups
- Refactorings Roundup 09/16/18 — 10/06/18
- Refactorings Roundup 11/13/18 – 12/08/18
- Feed Fox Links: 8/12/18 — 8/18/18
- Refactorings Roundup 08/26/2018 09/1/2018
- Refactorings Roundup 10/07/18 — 11/12/18
- Refactorings Roundup 09/02/2018 — 09/15/18
- Refactorings Roundup 08/19/2018 – 8/25/2018
Here are the 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013 roundups.New readers, here is the new readers start page. If you want to do some binge reading further back into the archives, there is a page for the Rust Age (2007-12) with both curated selections and complete roundups for 2007-12, as well as Kindle ebook collections.
After the monster 62-post year that was 2017 (thanks to the big bump created by guest contributions from people who took the longform writing course, which is now available in recorded form) this was a bit of a home-game year. Not counting administrative/community posts, we only had 38 proper posts: 18 by me, 12 by Sarah Perry, 4 by guests, 3 by Carlos Bueno, and 1 by Renee DiResta.
On the community front though, we probably had the best Refactor Camp ever this year in Austin. There was also a healthy flow of meetups in the Bay Area, New York, Austin, London, LA, and Seattle.
The 2019 Refactor Camp will in be Los Angeles, probably on the weekend of June 7/8. Mark your calendars. Details in a month or so.
We also spun un a Mastodon server, and refactorcamp.org (open registration) has now been humming along quietly for 6 months. That has been the source of the irregular Refactorings Roundups posts (scroll up for back issues) with links to things people are reading and writing.
Interesting changes have gotten underway in the subterranean foundations of ribbonfarm, where our pet Cthulhu lives, so expect to see those bubble up to the surface next year.
Happy Holidays!
Thanks Venkat and Sarah for another year of the juiciest new content on the web. Always a pleasure reading your latest.