The Squiggle

The Process of Uncertainty

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The process of uncertainty, innovation, cooking, creativity, tidying your space and much more, in a simple illustration.

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Less but More
Items of interest more frequently posted.

  • Have you read this: Aeon’s Homo Crustaceous? You must. By the super intellect Michael Garfield, join him for a look back at evolution, crabs and how might we evolve? It’s quite lovely.

  • Well this year so far has been quite an uncertain ride. I needed a T Shirt to make me feel better. So I made one. And you can grab yourself one also over on the T Shirt Page.

    All proceeds of Ts (hoodies, onsies etc.) will be donated to Jason Kottke. In some small* way helping him to keep providing a destination online we all want and need to visit daily.

    Update: For the first time in my memory, I’ve fattened the Squiggle to make it read better on fabric and made a Yellow version for dark colours available.

    *But if you buy a lot of T Shirts, it could be ‘in some large way…’

  • This week’s Cover Picture comes from Cornell’s Alumni magazine Cornelliana: Stories from their history. I came across their post celebrating 75th birthday of the Newman Lab. (no relation) Which is a list of interesting facts about the Lab, home to Cornell’s first synchrotron that opened in 1948. The picture is of the synchrotron ring.

    Now a synchrotron is not the same thing as a clyclotron, of course. Here’s an interesting paper explaining the distinctions: Comparison of cyclotron and synchrotron in particle therapy.

    Here’s also a link to the CERN Proton synchrotron. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll really enjoy this Lars Müller publication: Inside Cern book, by photographer Andri Pol. (the scientist at the empty coffee pot is kind of amusing.)

    Finally, how did I stumble across the Cornelliana? I was looking for a paper (is relation) and also came across the excellent computer sciences course page here: CS 6241: Numerical Methods for Data Science.

  • This was a lot of fun to learn about: A Short video from the BBC on English electrical engineer, Dame Caroline Haslett and the invention of the awesome plug. Yep, that thing Americans complain about and I find myself missing.

  • Matt Webb runs a marathon, wins a medal and writes about it in a fashion only Webb could. What person causally drops in Turing patterns while explaining what cramp is? Webb does of course and it is all very interesting. His final words on the experience: “And that’s another lesson I can take more generally which is to try more and if I’m going to commit, then commit faster.“

    Also you can read the 1952 Turing article, The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis here. Turing’s only published writing about Chemistry. At the end of this article Turing writes, “It might be possible, however, to treat a few particular cases in detail with the aid of a digital computer.“

    I believe Turing was in Manchester at the time, working on the Manchester Mark 1 at the Computing Machine Laboratory.

  • From the BBC a lovely teaching example by UK Artist Antony Gormley in his Kings Cross, London Studio. Which also is incredible. I am definitely not a post-studio person myself.

    Also please enjoy this from Whitechapel Gallery with Gormley discussing his David Chipperfield designed studio. ‘The Studio is a tool’.

  • It’s been a while but I’m brought back by two thoughtful posts written by Skipper Chong Warson. The first, The Art of Embracing Chaos includes a well placed concept from Paul Saffo about keeping a certain mindset while navigating the more dynamic parts of the Squiggle. The second post I saw was using the Squiggle as a critical look at Design Thinking, where Warson writes: Newman’s squiggle, in its visual representation of the messy reality of design, inadvertently [has] several potential shortcomings

    As an aside, I very much disagree with Natasha Jen in her 2018 99U talk. And would go as far as to say she is quite wrong.

  • Lovely short video on LA visual artist Geoff McFettridge coming up with the Drip Series idea for Chocolate Skateboards. It’s like a little masterclass. Also check out the doc on McFettridge: Drawing A Life. (I’ve watched it multiple times…)

  • This is quite an interesting essay on art & drop collective MSCHF and Meme coins. “The success of a meme coin hinges on collective action spurred by resonance.” Read it here on dirt.fyi

  • This is quite fun, interesting and thought provoking. From the Ethics & Emerging Sciences Group at Cal Poly, the recent publication of a report on: “Outer Space Cyberattacks: Generating Novel Scenarios to Avoid Surprise.” It’s hard not to consider running a Design Fiction project to imagine these scenarios.

  • Did you happen to see this exquisite post from the UK Estate Agents, The Modern House? A home for books, quite stunning. Naturally. There is no YouTube video accompanying the post unfortunately, but there is a short Instagram thingy here.

  • Fred again’s creativity is such a joy to witness. A year ago he did a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR which is an excellent place to see his hybrid DJ’ing talents. I’d also like to point out that Hat&Beard’s brilliant book, The Steve Keene Art Book is (the only book) lying on one of the white desks.

  • As you may have read in one of my longer posts, I’m addicted to maker portfolios on YouTube. This, from Liong Ma, is no less insane than the others I’ve shared—but in some way feels a little more mind boggling. He started at 12… As @hilmyrukmana2144 says in the comments: ‘ bruh does not need to go to college what’. Enjoy.

  • Sabine Hossenfelder is fun and informative to watch at times. This one was particularly fun. Her taking actor Terence Howard to task for not knowing basic mathematics, or any physics really, as he promotes his new Theory of Everything: 1×1=2. (I’m so tempted to read his book…) Also, Joe Rogan did interview Roger Penrose rather well some five years ago.

  • I’m thinking there could be a full analysis on the style and brand of British musician Fred again, because I’ve found his media absolutely compelling. Not to mention his incredibly infectious pure joy in his making of his music. It stands apart from the rather brutish positioning of most successful DJs in a similar position. Fred again’s Boiler Room performance was a lot of fun, as was his, making of video in a train station, this live jam, and this ”drop”messing around’ video is also a complete joy to watch.

  • Soon after seeing Draplin’s studio I spotted on The Verge, a new series: Full Frame: Creators. This one on Matty Benedetto’s sprawling studio for Unnecessary Inventions A lot of fun to watch. What a great way to do what you love. I’d have liked to have seen a little more variety—like a week with the fellow to see his process. (sad news about his studio tho’)

  • I could probably just make a lengthy post weekly on all the interesting YouTube videos I’ve come across. This week I got to see inside Aaron Draplin’s awesome studio. The man behind Field Notes and a lot of brilliant graphic design. (as a side note, I’d like to think it was Draplin himself who mailed my first set of notebooks in 2007, and added Damien “Brass Knuckles” Newman to my name.)

  • Did you see that there’s a new page dedicated to T Shirts? ↑↑↑ On the top Navigation. ↑↑↑
    Or you can visit here: https://thedesignsquiggle.com/t-shirts
    A new drop coming soon. (Can’t believe I used ‘drop’.)

  • Greg Wolanski: “I’m a designer who can code, but I tell people I’m a full‑stack developer who can design, because the order of those words strongly affects how much money you can make.” I like this. And his personal site. Thank you for the mention.

  • Oh this is super fun. For me. A virtual Colossus. Complete with step-by-steps of decrypting a Lorenz message. I have a floorplan of the Newmanry, which I should post, which was responsible for the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cypher and had ten Colossus machines! (see also the Testery)

  • Hah. I really like UX designer Ryan Young’s animated Squiggle. It’s his own, to be sure, but I appreciate the nod nonetheless. And really like that final curve.