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When the Conficker computer “worm” was unleashed on the world in November 2008, cyber-security experts didn’t know what to make of it. It infiltrated millions of computers around the globe. It constantly checks in with its unknown creators. It uses an encryption code so sophisticated that only a very few people could have deployed it. For the first time ever, the cyber-security elites of the world have joined forces in a high-tech game of cops and robbers, trying to find Conficker’s creators and defeat them. The cops are failing. And now the worm lies there, waiting …

Fascinating read. Also, terrifying. 

If we embrace the fact that no one can or should ever care about the health of our passions as much as we do, the practical decisions that help ensure Our Good Thing stays alive can become as “simple” as a handful of proven patterns—work hard, stay awake, fail well, hang with smart people, shed bullshit, say “maybe,” focus on action, and always always commit yourself to a bracing daily mixture of all the courage, honesty, and information you need to do something awesome—discover whatever it’ll take to keep your nose on the side of the ocean where the fresh air lives. This is huge.

Dear 18 Year Old Self,

Read this and follow every single word.

Wait, scratch that. You’ll turn out OK. Not great, but OK (trust me, I know).

Instead, give this to your kids so they have a sliver of a chance at turning out even better than you.

Love,

Yourself

And no more of that talk about “the tragedy of fame.” The tragedy of fame is when no one shows up and you’re singing to the cleaning lady in some empty joint that hasn’t seen a paying customer since Saint Swithin’s day. And you’re nowhere near that; you’re top dog on the top rung of a tall ladder called Stardom, which in latin means thanks-to-the-fans who were there when it was lonely.

Frank Sinatra rips George Michael a new one. Perhaps my favorite letter of note yet. Which is saying a lot because every single thing posted is a treasure.

Also, I would do boundless and unseemly things to spend one minute as the cleaning lady at either of these gigs. 

“Like, I don’t have a toilet at the moment. My house is just a wooden box. I mean I am planning to get a toilet at some point. But for now I have to go to the neighbours. I threw it all out.”

(As he says this, I’m wondering whether this is just another of the parts Kartheiser might be trying on for size, but to prove the point he later takes me back to his house, which really is an empty wooden box, a small one-room bungalow on a nondescript Hollywood street and indeed it has no lavatory.) Is that a Buddhist thing, I wonder, or an early midlife crisis thing?

“It started a couple of years ago,” he says. “It was in response to going to these Golden Globe type events and they just give you stuff. You don’t want it. You don’t use it. And then Mad Men started to become a success on a popular level and people started sending me stuff, just boxes of shit. Gifts for every holiday, clothes. One day, I looked around and thought ‘I don’t want this stuff, I didn’t ask for it’. So I started giving it to friends or charity stores, or if it is still in its box I might sell it for a hundred bucks. I liked it so I didn’t stop.”

Does he have a bed?

“I do,” he concedes, “but that might go…

I’m almost ashamed to say I have not seen a single episode of Mad Men but, I like this guy. He may be bat-shit crazy extreme but he seems like my kind of guy.

Adding a second layer to this in the form of a separate brand name only adds unnecessary confusion. If I had employees, that’s a different story, but right now it is just me. I am the business, I am the brand. And so, for the foreseeable future I will be working under my own name.

Pat Dryburgh is going rogue!

So happy to see him make this move. He is a man of many and immeasurable talents who I am sure will be in high demand. Also, I plan to make some more commentary on the decision quoted above, as it is something that I faced with my business. I will likely do so over at A Better Freelancer.

On the other hand, I’m really busy, and I ought to be writing, so pricing appearances somewhere between ridiculously high and obscenely high helps to discourage most of the people who want me to come and talk to them. Which I could make a full time profession, if I didn’t say ‘no’ a lot.

Love this.

See also: Bad Correspondent by Neal Stephenson my favorite passage of which is:

The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can’t do both; the first one obliterates the second.

My friend Randy on the beauty of the power nap. I have long known the truth about the restorative nature of short naps but have never been good about taking or making the time to actually do so. 

One of my favorite short nap stories of all is that of the artist Salvador Dali who would recline on the chaise in his studio with a large metal spoon in his outstretched hand. As soon as he fell asleep his hand would drop, hit the cobblestone floor, and the clang would awaken him to paint on for several more hours. Rumor has held that he would often do this for days instead of actual night time sleep. Which may explain some of his paintings. 

See also:

Napstyles of the Rich & Famous | 43 Folders

Merlin’s wonderful little post on famous power nappers.

At fifteen seconds after 9:41 a.m., on September 11, 2001, a photographer named Richard Drew took a picture of a man falling through the sky – falling through time as well as through space. The picture went all around the world, and then disappeared, as if we willed it away. One of the most famous photographs in human history became an unmarked grave, and the man buried inside its frame – the Falling Man – became the Unknown Soldier in a war whose end we have not yet seen.

I’m way late too the game in posting this one but I was going through my Instapaper backlog today and came across this. 

This is the most wonderfully written journalistic prose I ever remember reading. Real, tragic, heartbreaking – yet beautiful and deeply personal. What it says about us all is just as important as what it says about the people and the events at hand. That, in our efforts to “never forget”, we have chosen to only selectively remember, because the truth is just too hard to bare.

Tom Junod has set a bar here that all writers, especially those in the business of recording our history, should aspire to meet or exceed.

I love historical trivia, especially when a Latin lesson or two are involved. Plus, our money is so ugly and worthless in comparison to other Western nations, we need more reasons to love it.

I have about 112 hours of conscious life to live each week: wisdom dictates investing at least one of these hours to meditate on how I will use the remaining 111 hours.

I really enjoy everything James writes and this is no exception.