Playful ‘things to think with’ and think about, shared every two weeks..

№ 123 | Deep Code Cards, Cultural Differences and Storytelling, “So You Want to Be an American?” (the Game), Work-Life Balance, the Smiley Model, Playful Visualizations—Using Trees!, and Deep Reading

Howdy! Welcome to another roundup of ‘playful things to think with’ and things to think about. Let’s kick it off with… Deep Code Cards Ooh… Another project from Dark Matter Labs. The Deep Code Cards offer a “playful exploration of the invisible forces that shape our lives.” Nice. Maybe

№ 122 | A “Horseshoe” Diagram, Slow AI, the Data Communication Triangle, The Invisibles, A Simple Clustering Algorithm for Lists, Ordinary Abundance, and “Certainty, Variety, and Delight”

A ‘horseshoe’ diagram Ooh… A horseshoe diagram?! That’s a new-to-me pattern; I’m adding this to my collection of visual primitives. Pretty much a cycle, with emphasis on the starting and ending points (before the cycle begins again). That’s all. Oh, and as for the content

№ 121 | EVOLUTION: A Card System to Break Automatic Patterns, Visualizing a Billion, Systems Thinking Lessons from Monsters, Inc., The Committee Game, A 3x3 for Assessing Stakeholders, and 6 Ways Leaders Harness Stress

Welcome to another edition of Thinking Things, your (mostly) regular roundup of ‘playful things to think with’ and things to think about! EVOLUTION: A Card System to Break Automatic Patterns You might know I’m just a wee bit (ahem) analytical. I like to take “squishy” concepts—conflict resolution, collaboration,

№ 120 | We Wunt Be Druv, If You Were a Ghost, What Would You Haunt?, Brick Starter, Can Trivia Save Us?, The Housing Game, 4 Forms of Hope, and Reality Strikes Back: A Cartoon Guide to Complexity

Welcome to another edition of Thinking Things, your regular roundup of ‘playful things to think with’ and things to think about! This weekend, I’m back with not 1, not 2, but 3—count ‘em THREE—card decks. We Wunt Be Druv At the most recent Cardstock meetup, John V

№ 119 | Scenarios From the Fable 5 Ban, Type Simulation, Player Agency, Echo Chamber Simulation, A1 Collision Density, Brains on Games, Conversational Leadership Essentials, the HIVE Deck, and a Vincent van Gogh Makeover

Welcome to another edition of Thinking Things, your regular roundup of ‘playful things to think with’ and things to think about! Let’s jump into it… Scenarios from the Fable 5 ban You might have heard that the US government banned Anthropic’s latest LLM model? This isn’t about

№ 118 | Working in Space, BriteBox Idea Generation, Epos Daimon, American Dictator? The Game, Cas Holman and ‘Anji Play’, A Web Typography Learning Game, and The Stratification of Trust

Welcome to another edition of Thinking Things, your regular roundup of 'playful things to think with’ and things to think about! 🤦I made a mistake. In the last issue, I mentioned a three-line poem from Mary Oliver. As it turns out, this is misinformation. Despite a quick bit

№ 117 | A Special “Two-fer” Edition: Museum Activities, Attention, Technology & Childhood Education, Writing Together, Two Critiques of Org Change, and More Great Conversation Starters

A special “two-fer” edition, featuring things to think with or think about—that happen to pair nicely with each other! Context: While collecting the various things that make it into this newsletter, I sometimes come across posts, frameworks, etc. that feel better to share together, as a pair (or

№ 116 | Mapping the Sources of Power, The Atlas of New Futures, Factitious, Mutual Aid Self Care Zine, Lecture-Zines by Darren Raven, Wild Cards Deck, and the Weight of Worry

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Thinking Things, your mostly-regular dose of ‘Playful Things to Think With’ (and think about). Mapping the Sources of Power By way of a LinkedIn post from Scott Wolfson comes this map depicting “how experts actually make decisions.” It’s a hand drawn

№ 115 | Copyright: The Card Game, Design Thinking Canvas, The Learning Matrix, “Moving From SWOT to SO WHAT? Analysis”, Prosocial Design Network, Lenny’s World… Remixed!, and Violence as a Contagious Disease

I'm back again, with your regular roundup of ‘playful things to think with’ and think about! (Two days later than usual, but… other priorities!) Copyright: The Card Game Now this is how you design a learning card game! Take a confusing topic (in this case copyright law). Create

№ 114 | Platform Thinking Journey Cards, The Dictionary of Radical Alternatives, Learning Theory Map, “Let Them Have Your Way” Zine, a Framework Mashup!, “There is No System 2”, Go for Goals, and Gutenberg Revisited

Welcome to another curious roundup of ‘playful things to think with’ and think about! Platform Thinking Journey Cards Here’s a shout out to my friend Werner Puchert, who just dropped another one of his extensive card deck video reviews. This time, he’s looking at the Platform Thinking Journey

№ 113 | Axbom’s Playing Cards, Creativity Tarot, The 2030 SDGs Game, Adding Confidence Levels to the BMC, Anchoring & Vigilance with AI, Yes and No, Energym, and The Alpha Generation

Wait, what?! The last issue of Thinking Things went out with ne’er a mention of card decks? How can this be. “The horror! The horror!” Let’s set things right again with this issue… Axbom’s Playing Cards My friend Per Axbom has made 2 3 card decks “for

№ 112 | Teaching One Pagers, Sliderule Simulator, Board Game Icons, “Making, Hacking and Jamming”, FLARE, Relooted, Choosing a UX Research Method, and Deep Musings on our Human Relationship with AI

Welcome to another edition of the Thinking Things newsletter, your regular dose of playful things to think with, and think about. 🫵A couple of things: 1/ ♥️ ♠️ ♦️ ♣️ I’m exploring a special edition of thinking things focused on… 🥁 playing cards. Specifically, any activity that uses a standard deck of playing cards