Where do we go from here
Manley Beach Summer is Here, Ethel Carrick Hello friends, it’s been a long while since we’ve had a Normcore Tech. Quite honestly, I’ve been feeling a little...
The art of the long goodbye
Quick programming notes: NormConf is a real, free conference and it is happening on December 15. See you there! Second, I recently had the distinct privilege...
What we talk about when we talk about The Algo
Dynamo Machine, Natalia Goncharova Quick programming notes: I wrapped up my previous gig a few weeks ago and I’m psyched to be starting as Sr. Machine...
Duo, the Push, and the Bandits
The Little Owl, Albrecht Durer 1508 Some people say that Duo, the light-green mascot of Duolingo, an app that helps you learn different languages by prodding...
With the Feed as my witness
Pigeons, Maria Primachenko, 1968 Hello friends old and new, it’s been a while. Last year, I stopped writing Normcore Tech, a weekly newsletter about tech and...
Scaling Normcore way down
Goodbye on the Mersey, James Tissot, 1881 Hello friends! As you might have guessed from my four-month absence, I can no longer continue writing Normcore on a...
The luxury of length
Hi Friends, It’s been a while since my last post, almost a month, as the dashboard shows. But it’s not like I haven’t been thinking about it.I’ve been...
The last miles and miles of the vaccine
The Doctor’s Waiting Room, Makovsky, 1870 Hey, your friendly neighborhood COVID CEO here, popping in with the latest news from my board room. Almost five...
Diamond hands, when memes became power ✋💎🤚
Detail from Mary I by Hans Eworth, 1520 A few months ago, my corner of the internet was completely fixated on Four Seasons Total Landscaping, the small yard...
The blank slate in your hands
A couple of housekeeping things: I’ve been pretty busy lately! I gave a keynote at RStudio’s 2021 Conference. You can find all the slides here and it’ll be...
Containerized
Vanity Box, Kasimir Malevich Happy New Year, Normcore Readers! Here’s to a happier, and most important, healthier 2021. “That’s it”, my husband said, as I...
A winter's tale for the end of the year
Winter Forest, Ivan Shishkin Some time ago, on a dark snowy winter’s night, in a land far from here, four Councilors to the Emperor stood together huddled in...
My Hero's Journey to Peloton
Le cirque: Acrobate à la bicyclette, Bernard Buffet 1955 Early last year, the face of an extremely terrified woman looked at me through the small window of...
The rules of the game
Playing Chess, Wilhelm Kotarbinski My husband and I have finally started watching Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, making us officially the last people on the face...
Ad block and you don't stop
Art: Advertisement for Pope Manufacturing Co., "We are Having a Heavenly Time" Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, 1890 Something I worry about a lot is that I don’t...
The great A/B/C/D divide
Art: Argument over a Card Game, Jan Steen What do you see when you power on your doom brick for the first time in the morning? For me, it’s first and...
You're a sky full of stars
Art: Starry Night, Edvard Munch, 1922 Vicki’s Note: I guest-wrote a piece for Leon’s newsletter last week on what AI truly means. Go read it! It was sometime...
The rise of the non-expert expert
Art: Profit I, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982 I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it was like to write code 20, 30 years ago. At the time, one of my...
The satisfaction of the hand-off
Hi, friends! Sorry for the brief absence. I’ve been off putting together some other things. Last week, I taught an introduction to Python for WSDS. And this...
The person on the other side of the crowd
Art: Chaos nr. 2, Hilma af Klint, 1096Over the weekend, I was catching up on the piece in New York Magazine by model and actress Emily Ratajkowski, about how...