Mastodawn

Sketchplanations: this time on the Dutch word ‘uitwaaien’.

Uitwaaien: The Dutch Word for Walking in the Wind https://sketchplanations.com/uitwaaien #SketchPlanations

Uitwaaien: The Dutch Word for Walking in the Wind

Have you ever found something rather wonderful about a walk in a strong wind? You might appreciate the Dutch concept of Uitwaaien. What does “uitwaaien” mean? Uitwaaien is a Dutch word meaning to go out into the wind, often for a walk or bike ride, to clear your head and refresh your mind. Uitwaaien combines two words: uit, meaning out, and waaien, meaning “to blow”, as wind blows. How to pronounce uitwaaien: roughly o-ut-vye-en. In English, the idea of uitwaaien is the refreshing feeling of going out into strong wind and letting it clear your head. Like getting an airing out, I picture it blowing your worries away. A breath of fresh air. We like to go to the southwest of England in autumn and winter. A walk on the coast or up a tor in Dartmoor, getting battered around with a strong wind in your face pulls you into the roar and immerses you in it. It’s bracing and never fails to give a satisfying, relaxed calm when you finally get back inside and exhale. And there are plenty of windy spots across the Netherlands, where the Dutch word uitwaaien comes from, to enjoy a regular walk in the wind and clear your head. A walk in nature always has the power to soothe, calm, and clear your head, be it the three-day effect, forest bathing, or solvitur ambulando. But nature, combined with a strong wind, seems to have an extra power. Uitwaaien is one of many beautiful foreign words that capture a feeling English describes only with a longer phrase. I’ve linked some others below. I also made prints of Uitwaaien with words and without words Related Ideas About Walking in Nature Also see: The three-day effect Forest bathing Solvitur ambulando Apricity: the warmth of winter sun 5 Ways to Wellbeing How to Instantly Feel Better Some other super, non-English words: Rückenfigur Wabi-sabi Kaffikok: the distance before you need a cup of coffee Tsundoku: buying books and letting them pile up without reading them Vorfreude: the pleasure of anticipation Schadenfreude: pleasure at someone else’s misfortune Grateful to my Dutch friend for sanity checking all this 🙏

Sketchplanations

Marcello Seri Feb 17

The #Mathematics of Everyday Life from #sketchplanations https://open.substack.com/pub/sketchplanations/p/the-mathematics-of-everyday-life

The Mathematics of Everyday Life

A little maths goes a long way

Sketchplanations

James House-Lantto (He/Him)Jan 3

https://sketchplanations.com/smart-goals

how to make goals the S.M.A.R.T way:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-Bound

SMART Goals

If you’ve heard of one framework to help with goal-setting, it could well be this one: SMART Goals. SMART is an acronym to keep in mind a few ideas for setting better goals, ones you’re more likely to make progress on and complete. I’ve lost track of when I first learned it, and I do keep it in mind when I set goals. Running through as a little mental checklist helps me go from vague, easy-to-ignore goals to ones with more tangible progress. What are SMART Goals SMART stands for: Specific Avoid vague, fuzzy goals Measurable How will you see your progress, and when you’ve achieved it? Achievable Are you able to control and influence your progress? Relevant Is it really what will help you most? Time-Bound A timeline and deadline spur action I’ve seen some variation in the words, in particular with Achievable, Attainable, or Actionable, Relevant or Realistic, Time-Bound and Timely. Either way, the broad intent, as I understand it, is generally the same: turning vague, passive, and imagined goals into decisions, signals, and progress. SMART Goals help you go from something like: Next year I will get fit to: I will run three times a week, aiming for a 10k personal best in July I have found that if I do actually want to make progress and not just make the same goal next year, the second formulation here will help me. There are many goal-setting frameworks. And there’s advice to focus on habits and systems rather than goals (see, for example, Atomic Habits). SMART isn’t always the answer and at times other strategies might serve you better. Use what works for you. How I use SMART Goals I’ve definitely found SMART help me over the years. Here’s how I think about each of the aspects of SMART Goals: Specific Specific is better than vague. Just like breaking down a big project makes it easier to get started on, getting specific helps me focus on something I’m more likely to act on. Try more new foods, I find, is not as good as Cook one new meal a week. Getting specific forces you to think about how you will make progress on your goal. There are many different ways, and I sometimes find that I didn’t choose the right thing. No matter, just switch it up when you find what really helps you. See Implementation intentions. Measurable I have been involved in several projects at work where we made changes only to realise we had no way of knowing whether they improved things. Sometimes we hadn’t bothered to take a measurement before we started working on it. Other times, we hadn’t included a way to measure an outcome from the change we made. These projects weren’t very satisfying. Keeping your goals measurable helps you know if you’re making things better, and is more motivating along the way (see Flow). For example, measurable helps you go from "Improve the onboarding experience" to "Improve the satisfaction score post-onboarding by 50%." Or ”Get healthier” to “Lose 3 kilograms”. Sometimes changes in what you really care about may take time, and you may need to consider leading rather than lagging metrics. Achievable It’s miserable and demotivating working on goals you stand no chance of hitting. It’s great to think big (as in the BHAG: Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and, in my experience, it also helps to set goals that are hard but that you stand a chance of getting close to. I have spent a year or more working on company goals that no one really believed we had a chance to hit. Missing it every week is no fun. It’s not always easy to set a specific, measurable goal that’s achievable, usually because I don’t always have a good sense for what’s possible. Fortunately, goal-setting doesn’t have to be a one-time exercise. If you set something too high or too low because you didn’t know what was possible, readjust. And if nothing else, you’ll have made progress and be wiser. If your goal is to run a sub-3-hour marathon but you’ve never really run before, you might be better off starting with “Complete a half-marathon,” until you know how hard running a sub-3-hour marathon is (it’s very hard). Relevant The idea with Relevant goals is that they are the most important ones. It can require some thinking about what you really want to achieve. You don’t want to climb the wrong mountain. A little thought to check I’m really on the right path at the beginning is helpful. Time-Bound This is a reminder to me that a goal without an end is very easy to ignore. Setting a timeline and end date allows me to plan and forces me to make progress even when I don’t want to. Related Ideas to SMART Goals Apparently, as for productivity, I think about goal-setting a lot. Here are some other concepts that might help when setting or working on your SMART goals: The Fresh Start Effect (podcast episode) Leading and lagging metrics Implementation Intentions Clear is kind Local Optimisation The Power of Streaks The Doorstep Mile Enough molehills make a mountain The twin engines of Altruism and Ambition What Drives Us Everything is Aiming Replicate then Innovate Accuracy vs Precision Public Commitment Pledge Commitment Device Goodhart’s Law—very relevant if you’re setting goals for others What gets measured gets better Flow Find your why not

Sketchplanations

Fred Jun 16, 2025

How to instantly feel better

#sketchplanations

Siobhán Greaney (Shivers)Apr 23, 2025

I quite enjoy most of the Mastodon polls I see. But they do often remind me of this wonderful 'sampling bias' sketch.
https://sketchplanations.com/sampling-bias
#Sketchplanation #Sketchplanations #Poll #Sampling

Sampling bias

If you wanted to know who would win an election, then the only reliable (most of the time) way to do that is to ask everyone to vote for real and count them all. Short of doing that, if you want to get an idea who would win you can pick a group that you hope is representative of the whole of the voting population, ask them what they plan to vote instead, and then multiply up to the full group. But it turns out, whenever you ask people things, it's jolly hard to really have confidence in what you're extrapolating up to as all sorts of bias can creep into your sample. If you ask people what they plan to vote they may lie, they may tell you what they plan to do then change their mind, they may tell you what they think you want to hear depending on who's asking, they may say the first option because it's easiest, and you may ask in the places where it's easy or cheap to do so, or hear from only the people who are happy and not too busy to talk with you. In the example in the sketch, if you hope to receive responses to your questions by surveys then you get responses from people who happen to not mind doing surveys — from anyone who throws them in the bin you won't receive a single data point. All of these, and others, can lead to a bias in your sample and, at times, to drawing wholly inaccurate conclusions. Extreme example from How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff.

Sketchplanations

Khürt Williams Oct 19, 2024

In Do Birds Use Scarecrows?, Vanya Rohwer explores why birds, especially cavity-nesters, incorporate shed snake skin into nests. This rare material deters small mammal predators, likely due to their fear of snakes. The study found that cavity-nesters are 6.5 times more likely to use snake skin than open-cup nesters, highlighting its potential anti-predation benefits.

"Leading from Any Chair" by Mike Rohde emphasizes that leadership isn't limited to those in charge—anyone can influence a situation from any position. Drawing inspiration from The Art of Possibility, the article shares stories, like that of a violist in an orchestra, to highlight the importance of staying ready to step up when needed. The piece encourages seizing opportunities to lead, recognizing others’ contributions, and staying engaged.

In Coming Soon: Securely Import and Export Passkeys, Nick Steele explains that the FIDO Alliance has released draft specifications (CXP and CXF) to securely transfer passkeys across platforms. This aims to eliminate the current inability to move passkeys between password managers while maintaining strong security.

In The WordPress Saga: Does Matt Mullenweg Want a Fork or Not?, Alex Williams digs into the tension between WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine over trademark violations. Mullenweg’s aggressive stance and calls for a WordPress fork make one think about the broader issue of open-source software’s role in corporate power struggles.

In Gergely Orosz's article, "Open source business model struggles at WordPress", he analyses the escalating legal battle between Automattic and WP Engine and highlights the challenges of monetising open source software. Automattic's aggressive tactics reveal a struggle to maintain dominance and profits in an increasingly competitive landscape, mirroring broader trends in tech.

I am fan of ActivityPub and how is has enabled my 20 year old WordPress blog to become a citizen of the Fediverse. It seems Dave Winer has fallen in love with WordPress and ActivityPub too. In his recent posts, Dave reflects on the evolution of the web, particularly how WordPress and Mastodon are redefining content creation and sharing. He seems genuinely excited about using ActivityPub to seamlessly connect his writing between these platforms, enabling a more liberated writing experience without the constraints of character limits or restrictive editing spaces. Winer envisions this as a pivotal moment where writers reclaim control from platforms like Twitter. He highlights the collaborative spirit of the web and celebrates how technology can bring people together. For more insights, check out his posts here and here.

https://islandinthenet.com/sunday-paper-birds-make-scarecrows/

#1Password #CornellLab #CornellUniversityMuseumOfVertebrates #GergelyOrosz #Leadership #MattMullenweg #MikeRohde #NickSteele #OpenSourceSoftware #Passkeys #Sketchplanations #VanyaRohwer #WordPress

Do Birds Use Scarecrows? On the Evolution of Snake Skin as Nest Material - NestWatch

Humans use scarecrows to scare away birds, but do birds also use scare tactics to repel predators from their nests? Our latest research suggests that they do, and NestWatchers may have even witnessed it in action. Read on to find out how birds try to frighten away ghouls from the nest.

NestWatch

Carl Myrland Sep 11, 2024

Hanlon's razor beskriver det som på godt norsk kan oppsummeres med ett ord; FOLK! 🙄

#allheimen #norsktut #sketchplanations

James House-Lantto (He/Him)Aug 3, 2024

https://sketchplanations.com/the-olympic-flag

Why the Olympic flag is designed the way it is.

#olympics #flag #sketchplanations

The Olympic Flag

The Olympic Flag, which consists of five interlocking coloured rings, was created by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic games, and unveiled in 1914. Coubertin said that the five rings represent the five parts of the world embracing "Olympism" and competing against each other: Africa, The Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. The interlacing of the rings represents the unity and coming together of athletes from all parts of the world. Coubertin did not associate individual rings with individual continents. The six colours of blue, dark yellow, black, green, red and white—the field on which the rings are set—"reproduce the colours of every country", and at least one is found on every national flag (I believe that’s still true). I was thinking of including a sketch of each of the Olympic sports, but depending on how you count them, there are 32 sports and over 300 events. You can learn more than you ever wanted to know about the history of the Olympic Flag in The Story of the Rings by Karl Lennartz (pdf). The Olympic flag and various other Olympic Properties (like the rings, torch and motto) are © IOC. Also see: The Union Jack Great Britain, the British Isles, the United Kingdom - eh?

Sketchplanations

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Michal Bryxí 🌱Jul 21, 2024

This obviously applies to any company and any incentive. See #GoodhartsLaw: https://sketchplanations.com/goodharts-law

#Sketchplanations

Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Goodhart's law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. In other words, if you pick a measure to assess performance, people find a way to game it. To illustrate, I like the (probably apocryphal) story of a nail factory that sets "Number of nails produced" as its measure of productivity. The workers figure out they can easily make tons of tiny nails to hit the target. Yet, when the frustrated managers switch the assessment to "weight of nails made", the workers again outfox them by making a few giant heavy nails. And there's the story of measuring fitness by steps from a pedometer only to find the pedometer attached to the dog. Some strategies for helping this are to try and find better, harder-to-game measures, assess with multiple measures, or allow a little discretion. More detail in this nice little article. I also liked an idea I read in Measure What Matters of pairing a quantity measure with a quality measure, for example, assessing both the number of nails and customer satisfaction of the nails. How strongly Goodhart's Law applies varies. John Cutler shared the Cutler Variation of Goodhart's Law: "In environments with high psychological safety, trust, and an appreciation for complex sociotechnical systems, when a measure becomes a target, it can remain a good measure because missing the target is treated as a valuable signal for continuous improvement rather than failure." Related Ideas to Goodhart's Law Also see: The Law of Unintended Consequences The Cobra Effect Campbell's Law The Boaty McBoatface Effect The Streisand Effect

Sketchplanations

Marcus Degerman Aug 14, 2023

I think all the cookie banners we see all the time wouldn't be so annoying if they didn't design them like this. #sketchplanations https://sketchplanations.com/dark-patterns

Dark patterns

Dark patterns are when people design interfaces intending to deceive or trick. Sadly we are all familiar with these. They're everywhere. It could be the free trial that unexpectedly led to a subscription or the subscription that was easy to sign up for but had to be canceled by mailing in a letter. Or it could be an outward attempt at giving control over privacy but with options so confusing as to do the opposite. Perhaps you tried to adjust cookie preferences on a news website but could only find a button to 'Accept all' after editing your preferences—grrrr! Tricking people like this into sharing more information than intended has come to be known as Privacy Zuckering. Remember popups that could only be closed once you found a tiny 'x' that moved around the screen? I recently wanted to pause a subscription only to be told it would invalidate all the accumulated unused credits I'd paid for (I'm still paying). The Pudding published a great analysis of unsubscribing from online services. At times this may be unintentional—there's naturally less incentive to work on great account closing and unsubscribe experiences than on signing up. The example in the sketch was a real one I experienced (I wish I'd grabbed a screenshot) from an airline website where the designers buried the option not to buy insurance within the country select list. And they're not just online. Sneaky casinos employ design in the physical world for their gain, such as removing references to time passing, such as clocks or windows, using mazelike navigation and the continual winning sounds of jingling coins. "Dark patterns" was coined by Harry Brignull and documented at the Deceptive patterns site and now a book.

Sketchplanations