Parc Masterson

I call these "load-bearing justs"

10x existential dread

What a fucking clown.

The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models rep… The new era of tech seems to be built on superstitious behaviour

Fascinating! softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llme...

Screenshot from season 3 episode 5 of the series The Gilded Age featuring four women gossiping in Newport. Mrs Russel is center right wearing a dress that mirrors the armor of imperial storm troopers from Star Wars. More the original trilogy than the prequels or sequels, in my opinion.

I mean, you can practically hear the imperial march

Why is Mrs Russel dressed like a gilded age storm trooper?

Screenshot from season 3 episode 5 of the series The Gilded Age featuring four women gossiping in Newport. Mrs Russel is center right wearing a dress that mirrors the armor of imperial storm troopers from Star Wars. More the original trilogy than the prequels or sequels, in my opinion.

I mean, you can practically hear the imperial march

Would be nice if congress could remember it is illegal for the president to unilaterally impose tariffs

Truly SaaS

Somehow it just hit me, but it’s now clear that the #vibesession (where economic indicators say we’re doing ok, but people still act/feel like they are in recession) is a result of economic inequity. Basically, while the numbers say all is good, no money is not making its way to the bottom +90%. 🤦‍♂️

Maybe corny but it was helpful for me to hear Henry Rollins saying "this is not time to be dismayed, this is punk rock time, this is what Joe Strummer trained you for... You can be thunderous in your own life, to the eight people around you. That rubs off... Goodness is viral"

We know that OKRs are not a replacement for strategy but that's a simplistic view.

If we create a small number of wildly important OKRs, they become a sort of de-facto strategy.

The essence of strategy are the choices we make and these OKRs are a reflection of those choices.

Why Can’t You Just Deal with It? Often, it’s our most obviously necessary tasks that feel the most impossible.

"leaders weren’t much smarter than everyone else; instead, they were willing to make decisions under conditions that others found paralyzing and able to accept the consequences of those decisions, good or bad."

www.newyorker.com/culture/open...

LinkedIn is cool because I was always wondering what it would be like if people I sort of knew wrote mediocre press releases about themselves.

No ideology survives first contact with money.

And that feedback is about to show up in a new, *fun* way you weren’t expecting

December 1, and Advent(ure) season!

Anyone here want to participate in #AdventOfSystemSeeing 2024 edition?

There are daily prompts on the AdventOfSystemSeeing hashtag (making it easier to follow or mute).

The idea is to do daily (15-20 minute) exercises in a System Journal (notebook).

Slow down to speed up

Looking to get better at design critiques? Read this thread!

Love this. Can you say more about how you structure and guide sharing work and receiving feedback?

If you’re overwhelmed with all that is being reported on right now, take some time to rest but don’t disengage.

Your fear and anger are signals, they easily transform into action if you let them.

So reduce your overwhelm for today, then turn those emotions into action.

Image of quoted text reading “Smart people are uniquely vulnerable to mistaking complexity for insight. An executive writes a ten-page memo that could be one. An engineer builds an intricate system when a simple one would perform better at half the cost. The consultant mesmerizes clients with frameworks that conceal rather than reveal. We attach prestige to what mystifies us. Complexity intoxicates both the creator and audience, drugging us with the illusion of wisdom. Mastery isn’t making the simple complex—it’s finding the elegant simplicity that cuts through the complexity.”

This tiny thought from Farnam Street really resonared this morning. As service and systemic designers we thrive in complexity, but we strive to find beautifully functional ways to cut through the Gordian Knot of interconnected experiences.

Any chance this is public…😬😇

Teams often stop at how clearly we can see where we’re going and why. But, being able to create an environment that will get us there together by thinking out loud, making thoughts tangible, and inviting others to adopt and improve ‘em is what matters. This is not how most orgs naturally work.

And you know what comes with great power, right?🕷️♦️🔷

You realize how arbitrary definitions like internal and external or customer and partner really are. There is great power to reframe products this way.

When you start to think of products and services as a system and the organization that is facilitating those products and services as a network of people and things working together to reach individual and shared outcomes, well, the boundaries start to blur.

Join us on ServSky!

Or errr, yeah, m’okay. How about…

Let’s talk at service design and systems on Bluesky.

Better?

Show me a business problem and I’ll show you an opportunity for trust to be established, improved, or extended.

Relationships—between people and people or people and things—are essential to service performance.

It’s often easier to see a problem clearly from outside it.

It’s often easier to act on a problem unless inside it.

Design teams need to cover both.