Thinking about users with JavaScript disabled is unhelpful. Sure, some of those exist, but they’ve largely opted into that.

It’s more helpful to think about designing a site to work robustly for the situations in which JavaScript doesn’t successfully run. There could be reasons from aggressive firewalls blocking scripts, to slow or broken network connections, where the user might not get your JavaScript along with the page.

Many browsers halt all JavaScript execution on a script error. All it takes is a badly coded third-party ad on your page, or a typo in your own code to stop all JavaScript on the page from running.

Is it right that your page or app should completely stop functioning at that point? The web is a brittle platform. Things break all the time, but our technology stack of HTML, CSS and JavaScript can be exceptionally robust when used in the right way.

Build your site with HTML. Make it look much better with CSS. Make it work much better with JavaScript. Be prepared that CSS or JavaScript may not load at any point, with the reassurance that plain old HTML has got your back.

Sure, it takes a bit longer. Doing a good job always does.

As I see it, Instagram users have enjoyed an experience that felt like being stuck on a small, hidden island. It was private, initially unknown and thus enabled new social connections with zero embarrassment. And it was also non commercial.

The first breach began with the launch of the Android app, which made Instagram less exclusive in the eyes of iOS users.

The vibe I catch from Instagram veterans is that their island is now sold to a large real estate company, which is going to start building skyscrapers there. Their main fear is probably the commercialization and the privacy settings that are now subject to changes.

I tried the disputed 75¢ slices of the pizza war today for lunch. I have to say, 75¢ is novel, but neither tops my personal favorite cheap slice at 99¢ Fresh Pizza on Lexington and 43rd.

One of the most important factors to trying cheap pizza is going when it is really busy so as to not get a solidified grease chewy reheated slice. The 2 Bros. was super packed and the pizza was pretty fresh. The Bombay Fast Food was not as packed and not as exciting. Their pizza dough was bland.

My snap judgement is that 2 Bros. is better. The Bombay Fast Food slice was fine and given different circumstances I would totally have it again. But since there is a better slice next door, I don’t think I would go there again. Sorry bros.

My goal is to be more efficient, to have and use less, and to downsize what i already have, so my dream setup would involve having fewer things.

Life is for participating:

I saw him just before he pounced, and let me tell you, I was scared to death. He was out of control. I jumped away from him as he grabbed for me, but he caught me by the shoulder and spun me around, and screamed, ‘Get the hell out of my race and give me that race number.’ I tried to get away from him but he had me by the shirt. It was like being in a bad dream. Arnie tried to wrestle Jock away from me but was having a hard time himself and then Tom, my 235-pound boyfriend came to the rescue and smacked Jock with a cross body block and Jock went flying through the air. At first, I thought we had killed him. I was stunned and didn’t know what to do, but then Arnie just looked at me and said, ‘Run like hell,’ and I did as the photographers snapped away and the scribes recorded the event for posterity.

To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that’s pretty cool. This doesn’t mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that’s pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.

(Source: swiss-miss.com, via skillshare)

And yet, at the exact moment when an education has never been more necessary, education is increasingly out of reach. From 1980 on, the price of attending a four-year college has risen by 128 percent. While the price has spiked, the quality has tanked. Students at college in 2003 did two-thirds the homework that students in 1961 did. In a survey published in 2011, 45 percent of students showed no improvement in “critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing” after two years of college. You did not read that incorrectly: That’s no improvement. None. And how could the results be any different? Three decades ago, 43 percent of professors were adjuncts. Now, with colleges bloated by older, tenured professors who take up huge slices of academic budgets while teaching crumbs of courses, the vast majority of classes are taught by adjuncts. On college campuses, the supposed hotbeds of liberalism, the young are instructed primarily in the mechanics of crony capitalism.

Money is a natural byproduct of doing something valuable – so why not focus on doing something you love, that is valuable to you, and I think you’ll be surprised to see how valuable it is to others.

If the news business on the web is depressing, contributing to the existential angst that has gripped every established news organization, mobile turns the story apocalyptic: there is no foreseeable basis on which the news establishment can support itself. There is no way even a stripped-down, aggregation-based, unpaid citizen-journalist staffed newsroom can support itself in a mobile world.

The Con of Cons

On Hour of Pour Jessie Char and Jason Permenter spoke about their hobbies and lack of hobbies and how they’d like to have 3 outside of work. (I’m not 100% sure they ever used the word “hobby”).

So, what do you do on the side?

I watch Netflix and do dishes.

I’ve been thinking and talking about this too much lately and now realize I’m not able to completely articulate what my hobbies are, let alone 3 major ones. Here’s what I have so far, how I’m enriching my life:

1. Running. I run. I run marathons. This is a totally legit hobby. I do use this as a conversation starter at parties. It does work. Success.
2. Beekeeping. I want to learn beekeeping. I’m a bit freaked by them, the bees, but Laura has shown me things between the bees and I are totally cool. We recently applied to an apprenticeship for the bees. I’m excited.
3. … Oh no. There is nothing specific to say here. I have no third.

Is watching basketball a hobby? Maybe my half-assed attempt to learn Spanish? Do either make awesome life stories? Not really, at least not yet. I think this is important and will figure it out.

So, what do you do outside of work?