Interesting Things on the Internet: November 16th 2020 Edition

• Mutually Assured Construction. A couple of years old now (more on that below), but a good piece from Usman about just enough consensus and how we need to continue building a better future (I initially typed "start building" there, but realised that lots of us have been doing this work for ages now. We need more of us, and to better explain what we're up to, but the weak signals are there.) Interesting to focus on the mutual bit of mutually assured destruction. Even at the height of capitalism vs. communism, mutual efforts were what won out.
• The Craft of Writing Effectively: Essential Lessons from the Longtime Director of UChicago’s Writing Program. Excellent lecture about writing, that talks about how we write in order to think, and how that clashes with how it might change your readers. Now pondering who the readers i'm trying to change are.
• Twitter thread about building small, useful web apps and how tech's obsession with adopting the tools required for huge-scale apps for things that are never going to need that is making us less productive. Via Blaine, whose analysis also stacks up perfectly, IMHO.

This week’s RSS additions (see aboutfeeds.com if you don’t know what RSS is, RSS is how I find most of these Interesting Things…):

• Usman Haque's blog. I've been friends with Usman for years, but hadn't realised he was writing over on Medium until a link in Bryan Boyer's newsletter this week.