If you don’t like/trust the cloud, you can use Syncthing to “synchronise files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes” without the help of any external servers.

An interesting idea: with the Quotebacks browser extension you can ‘embed’ snippets of texts from articles around the web, not unlike embedding tweets. Quotebacks help maintain context, gracefully fall back to a standard blockquote, and allow you to save all of your snippets locally in your browser.

Ditto is a tool to “manage the words across your team’s product from design to production” in order to present consistent and effective copy.

There are a lot of great resources for anti-racism work and education going around, but this particularly one stood out to me: a well-structured mobile web app with a growing list of books, videos, links, articles, podcasts, charities, and more.

We Should Get Together →

Cultivating better friendships

I think I’m not alone when I admit that I often wonder whether I invest enough effort and care in my friendships. I like that people like Kat are here for some practical advice: “Millions of adults struggle with an uncomfortable and persistent ache: platonic longing, which is the unfulfilled wish for authentic, resilient, close friendships. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Making and maintaining friendships during adulthood can be hard – or, with a bit of intention and creativity, joyful.”

Twenty Bits I Learned →

Running a design community

While I haven’t been actively involved in the Dribbble community for many years, it sure has become one of the web’s biggest creative hangouts that offers real value for independent designers. Dribbble’s co-founder Dan Cederholm (whom I interviewed in Offscreen issue 1 all the way back in 2011) has since taken a step back from running the show and recently published the lessons he learned in a beautifully crafted book.

I really enjoyed this interview – from the intro by Greg Epstein to Ijeoma’s observations at the end on how our Western-centric focus on tech makes us miss so many opportunities for a better use of tech. “One thing tech fundamentally has in common with many religions, at least in America, is that it is a white man’s version of Utopia. And tech especially has this cult-like adherence to a white man’s vision of a Utopia that fundamentally disempowers and endangers women and people of color.”

A hard-hitting read about Silicon Valley’s superficial stance on solving existential problems: “It is true that progress is not necessarily linear, and that all kinds of research can lead to unexpected discoveries and inventions, but still, there is a general direction of travel. And increasingly, it seems as though the direction Silicon Valley has taken does not line up with the future most of us are anticipating. Reading articles about a new app that makes the process of doing laundry more convenient (...), set against the backdrop of constant reports that elements of the natural world are heating, melting, or becoming extinct, can feel like watching two Earths operating in separate realities, moving away from each other on irreconcilable paths.”

Tell your Insta-loving family members: there is a very slippery slope between Health Instagram and Conspiracy Instagram: “An obsession with a ‘clean’ body also lends itself to narratives that demonise immunisation, which is seen as a pollutant. That’s a view of physical purity that could, some fear, lead people down a path to even more extreme and even racist beliefs.”