Issue 93
Bizarro Devs is a weekly newsletter curating the weird & the wonderful from all over the web.
🏗️ HOW TO USE SHOWER THOUGHTS FOR GREATER CREATIVITY; REDUCE STRESS OVER THE FESTIVE SEASON; GET GOOD NEWS DAILY
Heya,
This week, I discovered a great way to harness the power of shower thoughts. My son also decided he wanted to shower with me every morning. I am now searching for an article which will help me harness the power of shower thoughts while dodging a showerhead swung wildly by a two-year-old with a pranksters mentality. Please reach out if you know of anything that will help.
In other news, we have helpful guides for making a difference, horror stories written by AI, cool tools for hobbyists, and methods for boosting producitivity & reducing stress.
Enjoy,
Chris.
🕸️ The Cool Side of the Web
Loved this guide for taking climate action. ♻️
It's well-designed and chock full of stats and useful steps you can take to be more climate active without being extreme.
In a similar vein, this podcast answers a bunch of questions about social entrepreneurship and how a business can help save the world.
If you needed convincing, stuff like this kinda explains why businesses need to be pulled in a bit. The article goes into how much computational power is used just to power the explore feature on Instagram. Which, you know, is kind of like the Borgs of app features.
audubon.org
Beautiful News Daily has beautiful charts with uplifting news. 💓
For sure, you know at least one curmudgeon who'd make counter-claims about some of the news but that's the kind of person who'd find fault with shoes. Don't listen to shoeless Joe, check out the site for a taste of the good stuff. For example, we now have four types of chocolate.
informationisbeautiful.net
A deep dive into lo-fi beats.
If you're not currently into lo-fi beats, then there are few reasons to try them: "Some theorize that the way the tracks are created—with a muffled, wooly quality, familiar rhythms, and downtempo beat—may prime the brain for a particular state of relaxed attention."
I lifted this one from The Morning News which covers a heck of a lot of ground in each newsletter.
qz.com
Silk lets you create your own interactive generative art. 👩🎨
A very, very cool site for relaxing and creating something cool with the slide of the mouse. A lot of different strands with multiple colors.
weavesilk.com
🤖 Robots et. al.
Behold the incredible horror stories an AI will write if you let it.
theoutline.com
⚒️ Tools and Resources
A JSX-based page builder for creating beautiful websites without writing code.
github.com
Finisher is a workflow and team checklist app for Slack. ✅
I like this for keeping track of those little off-hand tasks that are given life only on Slack. You know the ones that are really, really hard to track or locate after a few days have passed? It has pretty good templates, collaboration options, and user assignments.
finisher.co
This one feels all 70s with a touch of the old lava lamp: generate your own animated CSS backgrounds with this one.
In other free tools, this one popped up with tools for hobbies and side projects. It has a good range with cloud storage for JSON, simple mobile alerts, crons, and firewalls.
vincentwill.com
🥇 World of WordPress
Obligatory cat post: Doing good with WordPress to build a cat shelter in Ecuador. 🐈
themeisle.com
All the big WordPress news from the last month: Site Kit by Google, State of the Word, the death of WordCamps?
codeinwp.com
🌩️ Eat lightning - Productivity
This is why I started showering every day: how to have good shower thoughts. 🚿
There's also this one from the BBC with tips you can steal from polymaths to help boost your career.
alexanderell.is
Continuing the productive unproductivity: how to manage stress over the festive season. 🎅🏿
The article has a Christmas theme, but, personally, I think these tips are gifts that keep giving. They help you manage the "busy-work" which do a lot to ratchet up stress levels. I'd argue that you can use these tips to find a good balance between achieving "busyness" and bringing value.
wholegraindigital.com
Outro
That about wraps it up.
As usual, I take requests via Twitter or a reply to this email.
Widespread sharing is always welcomed.
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Have a great week,
Chris.