Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Some Things I Recommend Frequently
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2017 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Some of these I ought to write up for Cool Tools someday! These are some recommendations I make somewhat often because, in my circles, I run into people who don't yet know about them. A non-comprehensive list.
Radio comedy: The sketch comedy show John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme.
Clothing: Shock Absorber's Ultimate Run Bra which has a clip at the top of the racerback and adjustable vertical straps.
Political and systems analysis essayists: siderea, Alexandra Erin, Alexandra Petri.
Music: Regina Spektor, the Mountain Goats, and Vienna Teng.
Books: Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever: The History of Recorded Music. Emily Nagoski, Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life. Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Andy Oram and Greg Wilson, Making Software: What Works and Why We Believe It. Ellen Ullman, The Bug. Maureen McHugh, China Mountain Zhang.
Status play: this old improv wiki page.
Software: The goal-tracking service Beeminder, the distraction-avoidance browser add-on LeechBlock, the journaling community and open source project Dreamwidth, the doctor-finding and -booking service ZocDoc, Nelson Elhage and Anders Kaseorg's "Understanding Git" slide presentation, the regular expression sandbox/testing site RegExr, the email and calendar provider Fastmail, the library e-reader app SimplyE, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's sustainability checker Seafood Watch, and the Python debugging/prototyping tools python -i and bpython.
New York City ID: IDNYC, a New York City ID card that works for many purposes and gets you museum discounts, and that's available regardless of immigration status of the applicant, and the License Express DMV office in midtown Manhattan for state ID renewals. [Incidentally, if you are a US citizen in New York State, consider an Enhanced Driver's License which will also let you cross the land border into Canada.]
