The Tremendous 10 link roundup, #222

1. The Pulsar Chart That Became a Pop Icon Turns 50: Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures | “A classic data visualization brought an astronomical curiosity to music lovers.”
2. Steal Steve Jobs’s Secret for Being More Creative at Work | “Steve Jobs may not have upended our understanding of the universe, but he did revolutionize the way we work and play. And, like Einstein, he did it by allowing himself to do nothing sometimes.”
3. Five Key Stages Of The Creative Process | “When we think about the definition of the creative process, what usually comes to mind is a completely subjective, nebulous series of wayward steps exclusively understood by gifted creatives. As if it is some sort of secret code that only the Van Goghs, the Banksys, the Picassos, The Warhols, and the Rodins of the world have access to. Though a romantic way to think of it, the notion that an understanding of the creative process is only bestowed to the “innately creative” among us is rather stifling.”
4. A four-day week would help workers and firms | “The report by the thinktank Autonomy (Four-day working week could create 500K new jobs in UK, study says, 30 August) is very welcome – and timely. An additional day’s leisure would not only massively improve work-life balance, and indirectly help areas such as childcare, but of course stimulate the leisure, retail and hospitality industries, which have been hit very hard by the pandemic.”
5. On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant | “In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen.” Via Austin Kleon.
6. The Surprising Reason Why All Bank Logos Look the Same | “How a shift toward logo modernization in the 1960s ushered in an era of rubber-stamp designs.”
7. The hashtag turns 13 | “An interview with the hashtag inventor on the symbol’s unlikely role during a challenging and unruly cultural moment.”
8. The World’s First Novel Is Older Than You Think | “I’m first going to cover five real, actual first novel contenders, which are books that arguably fall into that category between the 1st and 11th centuries CE. Then, because I know everyone’s interested, I’ll follow up with the first novel in English and the first American novel.”
9. We Don’t Know How to Warn You Any Harder. America is Dying. | “We Survivors of Authoritarianism Have a Message America Needs to Hear: This is Exactly How it Happens, and It’s Happening Here.”
10. The Ancient Greeks Had a Word for the Specific Kind of Bad You’re Feeling Right Now | “Listless and unable to motivate yourself to get your work and other things done? That’s ‘acedia.'”

Image: pulsar chart by Harold D. Craft, Jr., via Scientific American (link #1).