The Jubilee offers a way out of oppressive expectations, even if they are our own. This year, I’m practicing a digital jubilee by archiving my inbox, deleting my RSS subscriptions, and unfollowing most everyone on Twitter. These, of course, will fill back up as time passes, but now I have a recurring way to purge.

via Frank Chimero – Digital Jubilee.

Finally, you realize that life is not a scene from Currier and Ives, but a portrait of four people doing the best they can.

via We ride the Polar Express and it stinks: A cautionary tale | 52 Tiger.

An office with "library rules" by Jason Fried of 37signals.

Everyone knows how to behave in a library. You keep quiet or whisper. You respect people’s personal space. You don’t interrupt people who are reading or working, learning or studying. And if you need to have a full-volume conversation, you hit a private room.

Such a great idea. Yet, why leave it to just those in an office? What if there was a room in our homes where Library rules were respected. Perhaps a den or living room. Sounds like a great solution for a home with at least one introvert residing within.

“The Luddites of the late-18th early-19th century broke into textile factories and smashed the mechanical looms not because they didn’t like machines, but because they saw that the mechanization and industrialization of the textile industry posed a catastrophic threat to their work, family, community and culture. Luddites knew good and well how, by saying ‘yes’ to the elaborate promises of growth and efficiency that accompanied mechanization, they would also be waving goodbye to an entire way of life. Their thoughtful destructiveness was an effort to guard and nurture the things they loved most.”

via The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr :: Books :: Reviews :: Paste.