Ville's blog
Twitter @vesterinen
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Inspired by Zach’s post in more ways to one. Access and example can be super powerful.
My progress towards building a home using a salvaged barn frame.
A four-season bunkhouse for all of us Beaver Brookies who spend so much time up there.- I bought a barn frame from a salvager. My frame once stood in Mount Cobb, Pennsylvania. Recently, on some documents, I noticed that the barn was referred to as “Mack Barn” — Intrigued by the namesake, I dug deeper and learned that the barn once stood on a dairy farm owned by Johann Mack, who made horse-drawn wagons in the barn. Of course, several of Johann’s sons moved to New York City in the early 1900’s and formed the Mack Truck company, creating the world’s first bus which was used for giving tours of Prospect Park. The Mack company became a pioneer of the truck industry.
- An architect cataloged every frame member and produced plans for putting it back together.
- The posts and beams were transported to a joinery in N.E. Pennsylvania to be power-washed, inspected for rot, repaired, and treated to be used in a livable space.
- In collaboration with a barn expert, we sketched up a new purpose for the 30x40’ barn frame.
- We excavated into a Beaver Brook hillside and laid concrete footers to build foundation walls on top.
- The foundation has been poured, a steel deck installed to carry the first floor concrete slab, and some basic plumbing roughed in.
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civilization
I recently read from a Finnish monthly something I liked and believe in. It said that there was an Indian lawyer who had an idea of what civilization was and how to measure it. His idea on measuring how civilized a given society would be was to see how well it treated its most vulnerable and weakest members. A smart lawyer.
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GitHub wasn’t supposed to be a startup or a company. GitHub was just a tool that we needed.
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Lincoln loved to tell stories. Anyone who met with him commented on his endless supply of anecdotes and jokes. Count Adam Gurowski, a Polish exile who worked in the State Department, observed, ‘In the midst of the most stirring and exciting — nay, death-giving — news, Mr. Lincoln has always a story to tell.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson found it delightful: ‘When he has made his remark, he looks up at you with a great satisfaction, & shows all his white teeth, & laughs.’ Walt Whitman saw something else in Lincoln’s storytelling; he thought it was ‘a weapon which he employ’d with great skill.’
Is storytelling a necessary component of leadership? Lincoln Tells a Story. (via curiositycounts)(via slavin)
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“Few serious minds believe any longer that one can set down ‘blueprints’ and through ‘social engineering’ bring about a new utopia of social harmony. At the same time, the older ‘counter-beliefs’ have lost their intellectual force as well. Few ‘classic’ liberals insist that the State should play no role in the economy, and few serious conservatives, at least in England and the Continent, believe that the Welfare State is ‘the road to serfdom.’ In the Western world, therefore, there is today a rough consensus among intellectuals on political issues: the acceptance of a Welfare State; the desirability of decentralized power; a system of mixed economy and of political pluralism.”
This is what Daniel Bell wrote in the 60s, but it could be from today. It’s an answer to the central question of modernity: how to reconcile capitalism and mass democracy. The above is the widely agreed upon framework within which we can pursue our personal betterment, but I do not think that it’s enough. But nor do I think there’s anything wrong with the ideology itself, but I do think it’s rather an execution challenge. We need help with our imagination and reminding ourselves of our big dreams. And we need tools, structure and inspiration for the middle class (that’s us) to go from observants to participants in order to better our own and others’ lives.
More soon, I hope.
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Karl Larsson at Ateneum with the girls
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People seeing the world just a little differently. Just a little bit. But makes all the difference.
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It’s a Go!
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girl hacks
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Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice, whether it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else.
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And anyway, if you don’t make bold moves, you don’t get fucking anywhere.
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The higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it-that’s why societies often rub out truly enlightened beings.
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Jussi #webikehard
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