April 2024
Books, articles, podcasts, and thoughts throughout the month
April 29
🎧 Reddit CEO Steve Huffman on the IPO - On with Kara Swisher
Reddit prefers charging Google for AI data use because at least Reddit gets a say in how the data is being used, e.g. no identifiable features for users. Otherwise, Reddit is going to be just crawled by AI engines anyway so doing it deliberately with a price tag is better.
🎧 How to Be Single and Not Hate Being Alone by Staying Up with Cammie and
Being alone is a transitory state until you get to be with someone again.
If you're losing a relationship and gaining your freedom back, focus on the fact that you're gaining something like you really are.
Making “being single” into a challgne: What if you said, I'm going to spend two months learning about myself? I'm going to learn as much as I can about myself.
🎧 How to Date on Apps and IRL by Staying Up with Cammie and
Make dating profile with the help of friends
Friends can help see the sides of you that you’re not privy to
Get friends to help you get good photos
The art of pictures for dating profiles
The flow matters. E.g. not all group photos, not all solo photos
Be funny with the features
E.g. if you’re circling yourself in a group photo, take one with a cat/dog and circle yourself too
The voice function is for comedy. E.g. when doing a pronunciation of your name, the audio is something completely different
If you only have group photos, your bio can say “I look good in groups” or “Look how good I look next to people”
Respond to messages
You’re already putting yourself out there. Go take the initiative and respond to messages if you aren’t messaging first.
The body language of flirting
Make eye contact
Give someone your full attention by turning your body towards them
Get off your phone
If you’re wondering if somebody is gay, just ask them straight up
Be the femme you wish to see in the world
Make the move, drum up that bravery
April 25
📰 Cindy Reid: Vertical Runner on the Rise
Teaching to get a spot in class
What sparked your step into teaching in the fitness industry?
I was waiting outside the one and only spin studio at Fitness First in Sydney’s busy corporate hub on a crazy Monday lunchtime – this is when universally the world feels obliged to work out! I wasn’t fast enough to score a bike. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed. There was a light-bulb moment, an epiphany when I thought to myself that I should get an instructor’s license because that is when I will be guaranteed a spot in class. So I did, and the rest was history.
April 24
🎥 My Honest Advice to Someone Who Wants Financial Freedom via Ali Abdaal
Spend time to learn how to make money. Don’t just dream. Read and listen to podcasts and talk to people and do the thing.
Book recs
Ultimate rec: Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco
Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan
Dotcom Secrets by Russell Brunson
$100M Offers by Alex Hormozi
Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne
April 21
🎧 Knockoff vs Inspiration, Next Level Pens & Adam Visits! - Goulet Pencast
Mockbusters were done a lot in the 90s.
On knock-offs: companies will take big swings and then go bankrupt because they blew it all. Like for movies where they need a payoff for that risk sometimes. But if all you're doing is knockoffs then you're going to end up with a bunch of just crappy movies all the time that are unoriginal like Trans Morphers.
April 20
📰 Taylor Swift’s Publicist Tree Paine Fiercely Guards Her Reputation via the Wall Street Journal
exculpatory evidence
In a long career of riding high, Swift has hit the stratosphere. It’s Paine’s job to keep her there.
But mostly, Paine works. She has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift and sending emails to journalists with surprising velocity whenever she disagrees with a story.
In the past 10 years, Paine has guided Swift through some of the more tumultuous moments of her career: her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West; her trial accusing a former DJ of sexual assault; her battle against her former label, Scooter Braun and private-equity giants for the control of her master recordings. At almost every turn, Paine presents Swift—arguably the most famous woman on the planet, a billionaire with a private jet—as a relatable underdog fighting for her voice to be heard.
This is an understandable sticking point for Paine. The Kardashian-West debacle revolved, in large part, around a truncated recording of Swift. Before the rapper released the single “Famous,” which contained lewd lyrics about Swift, they spoke by phone, where he asked her to promote the track on Twitter. For years, a snippet of the call released by Kardashian painted Swift as a liar who publicly rejected the lyrics but privately approved them. When someone released the full call online—a friendly heads-up but one in which West never shares the final lyric (“I made that bitch famous”)—Kardashian tried to save face. “To be clear, the only issue I ever had around the situation was that Taylor lied through her publicist who stated that ‘Kanye never called to ask for permission…,’ ” she tweeted. But Paine never said that exactly. She tweeted a rejoinder: “I’m Taylor’s publicist and this is my UNEDITED original statement. Btw, when you take parts out, that’s editing. P.S. who did you guys piss off to leak that video?”
There are fans who speculate that Paine sent Swift to Kelce’s regular-season game against the New York Jets in October so that internet searches for “Taylor Swift jets” would return cheery images of Swift dancing in a VIP suite with Blake Lively instead of stats about CO2 emissions.
If Swift released *The Tortured Poets Department* with zero fanfare, it would probably still hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. But she chooses to feed the beast—with black-and-white Instagram posts, snippets of possible lyrics, a pop-up poetry library, so many vinyl editions—and, with Paine’s help, make her own news.
Seven hundred and fifty words is the minimum amount of words you need to really say something and stick the landing. Beyond that, you start to say something else, something more.
And that’s when another essay begins.
April 19
📰 How Meta Is Paving the Way for Synthetic Social Networks by
On Thursday, the AI hype train rolled through Meta's family of apps. The company's Meta AI assistant, a ChatGPT-like bot that can answer a wide range of questions, is beginning to roll out broadly across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Powering the bot is Llama 3, the latest and most capable version of Meta's large language model. As with its predecessors — and in contrast to models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic — Llama 3 is open source. Today Meta made it available in two sizes: one with 8 billion parameters, and one with 70 billion parameters. (Parameters are the variables inside a large language model; in general, the more parameters a model contains, the smarter and more sophisticated its output.)
OpenAI has never revealed the number of parameters in GPT-4, but analyses have suggested that it may be around 1.8 trillion.
Where Meta is arguably leading at the moment is in the quality of AI it is now offering for the cost — free —at a time when its top rivals are charging $20 a month for premium models. And with the introduction of its AI assistant into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Meta may also now be leading in distribution. The company's apps have 3.19 billion daily users, and Meta will work to ensure that those users find reasons to consult its AI bots regularly.
Earlier this year I wrote about the disastrous launch of Humane's Ai Pin and the broader hangover the tech industry is facing after the past 18 months of nonstop AI hype. The leap in quality from GPT-2 to GPT-3 had been exponential. From GPT-3 to GPT-4, less so.
Everything since has felt incremental.
The first era of Facebook was for talking with friends and family. The second, TikTok-influenced era of the company is more focused on content from creators and other people you don't know.
But for all that is impressive about Llama 3, its release offers a reminder that synthetic media is about to ooze into every corner of social products, too. And what happens after that is anyone's guess.
📰 Is It Dumb to Quit Something I Worked Hard to Get? by
The graph on the left is basically Western culture’s depiction of what a “successful” life should look like, which not un-coincidentally, looks like the earnings report of a profitable corporation. Linear progress!
But what if, instead of a line that goes perpetually up and to the right, with the goal of reaching a future point of “success,” the point of being alive is expansion? What if another, more accurate definition of success is the process of broadening our experiences, growing in different directions, deepening our understanding of ourselves and the collective, gathering new information, and adjusting our decisions accordingly as we go?
In the “expansion” illustration, there is no point B. Instead of “before and after,” there’s a perpetual *during*. This, as it turns out, is a much more accurate portrayal of what it’s like to exist.
At some point, the old program is no longer compatible.
There’s no point in being your own boss—in work, or in any life decision—if you’re going to use that privilege to be the worst boss you’ve ever had.
April 18
📰 Create Career Assets by
My motivation to create career assets was sparked by two reflection prompts:
1. What questions do I find myself answering over and over again?
2. How might I answer those questions in more fun, scalable ways?
When I have existing career assets, I can easily repurpose them for future projects
📰 What Steve Jobs Taught Me at 19 by
Ryan was talking to me about a spec regarding the release while all I was trying to do was eat my yellowtail sushi and not think about how I was easily the littlest fish in this sea.
In one moment, Steve showed me life is about making something wonderful with your friends.
PS. If you haven’t yet, go read Make Something Wonderful compiled by the Steve Jobs Archive. It is free, but it may just change what you do for a living.
April 16
🎧 Beautiful Follow Ups - Vinyl Market Researcher
Chris Gethard mentioned D Soraki’s dance battle for I’m Coming Out
🎧 ALOK — How Do We Interrupt Trauma? How Do We Heal?
Patriarchy is not just men dominating women. Patriarchy is the policing of all people into gender norms. Feminism is about ending the gender binary.
On parenting, create pathways for conversations with kids.
Kids are constantly, not just leaving bread crumbs, but entire like bagels. It's the parents who have so much trepidation and anxiety and fear. So it's actually about just creating the pathways for conversation: “Hey, what do you want to wear to day? How do you feel about this? What do you think?”
Authenticity is not a destination, it’s an orientation. Facilitate that journey by creating opportunities for experimentation for yourself.
Everyone needs experimentation. So maybe create many places with you and your friends where you can just be on a microphone and you can just speak. Who knows what will come out. Who knows what other people looking at you speaking will bring up in you. Experiment. Try it out. It's ok to get it wrong, cause it's all going to take you closer to where you need to end up. Authenticity is not a destination. It's an orientation. What matters more is that you're showing up, not where you're going.
Pink for girls and blue for boys is a recent norm.
Pink used to actually be a marker of masculinity in this country. After world war two, the pink and blue division was a marketing scheme to get parents to buy two of the same thing, for their different kids. The hypergendering of the youth space is a recent construction. Kids used to just wear the same gown. It wasn't an issue. There's a really amazing book called Chromophobia by this art historian, David Batchelor, who basely says that we have a fear of color in society because we associate color with women, with people of color and with indigenous people. When we're taught that professional equals black and white and removing color, it's that same patriarchal idea of having to be reasonable, not emotional. Color is too emotional.
Rather than being in the closet, people are strategic in coming out.
Knowing whether or not if it’s safe to come out is a strategic decision. The word “strategy” puts power back to people who are considering to come out.
April 15
🎧 She's leaving me for Jesus by Cammie and
(transcription)Relatability is very important for identity development.
it sounds similar to how I felt when I was coming out and being like, I don't, can I be a lesbian? Yeah. If I don't relate to the lesbians I see on tv. So I must not be a lesbian. Yeah. But this is confusing because the definition of a lesbian is a woman who loves a woman and that is me. Yeah. But I don't understand because I don't, I don't look like that. I don't act like, I just don't feel like that represents my identity. And I think we're now really getting to a point where we can do that with gender.
Sparked Nymphia Wind essay
“I’m not gay, she’s just the exception” is hard to be true.
I don't know many people who that truly only has been the exception except for people who had the ability to lie them to themselves to maintain their faith.
📰 The Best Contemporary Indonesian Literature via
Recommended by Dee Lestari
I finally self-published my book in 2001 to celebrate my 25th birthday.
Similar to publishing my art book for my 28th birthday
I enjoyed writing a lot more because it’s more solitary and there’s less fuss. There’s less need for make-up, hairdos, and high heels.
[Indonesia] worked a lot more on our tourism. Literature was also below food and fashion on the list. That reflects the dwarf size of our book industry in Indonesia’s creative economy.
Translation is an art that cannot be rushed.
Sudenly the Night by Sapardi Djoko Damono.
This is a poetry book from a prominent Indonesian poet. Sapardi’s poems were very influential in my early introduction to literature. They taught me a lot about perusing nature as a source of metaphors.
Do you have a favourite poem from this collection? Why? ‘Aku Ingin.’ It captures love so accurately and beautifully.
Saman by Ayu Utami.
To me, Saman was a mark of a new era in literature. What was taboo before? Politics, sex, and religion.
Harimau Manusia by Eka Kurniawan
Raden Mandasia by Yusi Avianto Pareanom
Kill the Radio by Dorothea Rosa Herliany
📰 Why Buy a House (Or Land) by
Whenever I seek to get a deal (such as when furniture hunting), I often end up finding a deal. But I tend to do so by accepting something adequately disappointing. By contrast when I am excited enough to be willing to overpay, I am almost always grateful for my lapse in frugality.
Cost is a variable, but it’s a mistake to consider it the only one. If you look too hard at economizing, you might start to downplay significant desires.
🎧 ALOK — What Makes Us Beautiful? What Makes Us Free? from We Can Do Hard Things
Beauty is looking like ourselves.
Not scared to be seen without makeup
LGBTQ+ ideas are not new, they’re ancient. It takes courage to create change and often times the result of change is that we forget what was never granted before (e.g. women wearing pants)
It's that censorship has been an organizing strategy for hundreds of years. It looked like cross dressing laws that made it illegal for people like us to exist in public, like abbe. You and i would have been thrown into prison for just being outside. Women would be beaten for wearing pants. And when i tell people that, they're so shocked that they don't even know that. And how did people get the cross dressing laws? They went outside. Anyways. They did something very hard. They knew that they would be criminalized. And i have documentation of people who were arrested 20 to forty times, who, in courts of law said, i know who i am. I am neither a man nor a woman. I have evidence of that from the early 18 hundreds. But why is it that those stories don't reach us? Why do i have to go to univer city to go into archives to find those newspaper clippings? Why did it take me being an adult to learn that there were people like me who ran new york city night life in the early twentieth century? We called ourselves fairies and girl boys andregens and inverts. We had so much language and so much love. Why? Why? Why? And then i realized, oh, it's because when we have action to ancestry, and especially queer ancestry, then we know that there have been people who have felt the same pain that we did, And they still lived a glorious life so that we could. And that inner generational connection of queer people is why i do the work that i do. I know that in my life i might not see the end of transpobia, but i might be able to create something that allows the next generation to feel like they can live a life that's worth living. I want a gift possibility, because that's what my trancestors, or my trans ancestors, did for me. And so much of what i'm doing in the work is in tribute. It's a living memorial to an ongoing pulse that says, let's let's do this decent human thing of being ourselves in a world predicated on our disappearance.
The true imposition is dividing people into two genders
it's so fun to me that people accuse us, as transinonbinery people, of imposing the gender conversation on them, when the real imposition was dividing billions of complex, Divine nuance souls into one of two categories, man and women. And that was an orchestrated project of colonialism across the world. In what is now calld united states, in canada and in where i'm from, called india, were european settlers indoctrinated indigenous peoples into the idea that they had to be men or women
“How could you do this to me?” is actually them saying: “How dare you show me what's possible?”
You know, Glennon, in reading your book, one of the things that really stood out to me was how impoverished our definition of love is, how we've accepted conditional acceptance as love.
(Glennon’s book is Untamed)
Feminism is not about overthrowing one system of domination (patriarchy) to have another (matriarchy). It's about ending the need for domination.
Beauty is the natural orientation of the universe. The universe rioted first, and we're just following its lead.
Minorities suffering from chronic pain is caused by body telling the person that it feels unsafe
I actually believe that when i'm walking down the street and people are laughing at me and taking photos of me and spitting on me, that when i'm logging on line and people are saying lies About me, are literally just trying to fear monger as a way to make me into something that i not, that has a toll on my body such that it manifests physical pain, because our body is trying To teach us, hey, this is not right. This is not safe. And so what i started to do is say, oh, my goodness. I might never get safety out there, but i have to give safety to me.
April 14
🎧 Prof G Pod - Conversation With Verity Harding — Are We in an AI Arms Race? (transcription)
Science and tech is as shaped by the politics and culture of the time
As the politics and culture of time is shaped by the science and that Actually technology is incredibly political and sort of reflects in a way the sort of existing zeitgeist. You see this throughout history and I think it's no coincidence then that If you think about what type of society are we living in now, you know, vastly unequal, extremely polarized, a huge lack of trust in our institutions and our leaders.
🎧 Prof G Pod - Office Hours: The Cyberattack on UnitedHealth, Investing in Music Royalties, and Scott’s Tips for Giving a Compelling Presentation (transcription)
How do you convey or articulate or present around controversial or complex topics?
Analogies fit it into a story.
So when I talk about the anti-competitive or monopoly practices of the App Store, they charge a 30% tax on apps or revenues that apps get if they're in the App Store. The analogy I use is credit card companies and what if Visa went into the business of retail and the retailers they owned didn't have to pay 30% transaction fees. Those retailers would be monopolies or other retailers wouldn't be able to compete with them. That's an analogy or story that helps understand or maybe not, but I think helps people understand how Apple is in fact engaging monopoly behavior.
Data helps with controversial topics.
In terms of presenting a controversial topic, you want to, data is just sort of says, all right, I don't like this guy's opinions. I don't like him. But if he presents data, it just is what it is. There is a certain truth and charts, visualizations, super, super important. Also just some of the softer stuff. I think it's fine to have humility here. And that is to say that I predicted this, I oftentimes say, well, say, I predicted this, this is what I saw and I got it wrong because just to acknowledge that you're wrong and bring some Humility, people empathize with you.
Humor helps with controversial topics.
And then the most effective one is something that's difficult to force, but if you're blessed with it, it just softens the beach and that is humor. John Stewart can say very, very controversial things and is incredibly, is this incredibly powerful before you say something provocative or aggressive or a bit controversial. Anything around humor, it just kind of opens people's minds to listening to you and minked off.
Have humility.
🎧 How We Chose Our Sperm Donor - Staying Up with Cammie and
Sperm bank: donors don’t really get alerted when their sperm is being used. So the baby could have many half-siblings
Seed Scout: known donor route. More expensive but then the dad can choose to be in touch with kid or not, have to give updates on family conditions (e.g. if grandmother suddenly develops a disease)
In the years of obsessive studying since then I’ve also come to learn that transitions are fractal; there’s a relatively universal pattern that applies across multiple domains, from stock markets, to societies, to human development. Once you recognize the pattern you can avoid the pitfalls. And maybe even make successful predictions.
When I started on Wall Street in 2005 my job was a “research salesperson”. This involved skim-reading about 30 of my bank’s research reports every morning to find the key insights.
This is what I do
I also had a lot of experience in “translating genius.” Essentially a lot of very smart people are poor communicators. I spent years working out how to make complex specialist research accessible for a generalist audience. (View Highlight)
Note: Echoes what
thinks is my skill:translating complex ideas to simplified texts via news articles, Substack, talks
translating what I see into photography & painting
always comfortable adapting things to multi-medium. The problem is I get overwhelmed
I have an output-oriented approach.
I'm stuck in this rut. What would you do with these tendencies? These skills? What do you imagine I can do with my life?
The tendency of evolution is towards greater complexity
Systems can become imbalanced towards excessive competition. In our own bodies this imbalance describes cancer; where one group of cells grows at the expense of the entire organism. In capitalism, this is when excessive competition leads to systemic inequality and instability
But Wilber talks about how, when moving to a more integrated stage, we often pathologically “repress” the previous one instead of integrating it. While he says this is as sensible as “denying our own feet”, we can see it constantly at every level of reality.
we can’t move backwards: these stunningly powerful systems need to be reincorporated within a more positive-sum framework
you cannot *repress* parts of your own psyche throughout this process of integration, as Carl Jung naturally intuited: > Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one's being, but by integration of the contraries.
These ideas served my ego by helping me appear clever: I was parroting intensely articulate intellectuals with their logical arguments
I was using my gift for synthesis in service of a zero-sum game.
Do what what you individually love, in service of the whole.
April 13
🎧 Is Boeing a Buy? AI Picks & Shovels - Prof G Pod (transcription)
Boeing is protected by 1) duopoly with Airbus and 2) Airbus’s decade-long backlog
Boeing is fortunate because the business is a duopoly with Airbus. Right now, the supply chains for both manufacturers, while they definitely appear to be doing worse for Boeing, I would say aren't providing Airbus a lot of flexibility to crank up Delivery to crack up production quickly. And so what we really see from the outside is that Airbus isn't really able to capitalize very well on this. And Airbus's backlogs are longer than Boeing, especially for the narrow body A320, which is the competitor to the 737. When we do the calculations, we think there's seven or eight years of backlog in there at least. So probably means some of that backlog isn't sort of serially one behind another coming out the door of Airbus, right? Some airlines have placed orders that take them well into the next decade. But our our guesstimate on this is that you probably have to wait near the end of this decade to wedge yourself into the A320 delivery pipeline unless they can get their supply chain to Work better. And so because of that, if you're a Boeing customer, the cost of pulling out and switching to Airbus is I think just too high, too far down the road. And that's protecting Boeing's market share right here.
The path to monetizing attention on Reddit is to have a good ‘ad stack’. Target the people at the right place, right time.
This is about the ad stack. This is about figuring out a way to target people the right place, right time, right kind of situation and hit them with the right ad. It's about developing crazy ad tools that help advertisers reach the right people in the right context. But I think that is less difficult. I think then building an offering that gets the third most attention of any website in America. I think they've got the hard stuff done. I think they've done the heavy lifting. I think good management.
🎧 Beautiful/Anonymous Follow Ups - The Whirlpool Galaxy
Caller is subject of the ‘Space, Hope and Charity’ documentary. Now works at NASA
OG call: Husband & son killed in a tragic accident (“The worst day”). Mom, sister and brother stole money from her and guilted her into still giving them the money. She wants to pursue astrophysics.
Only 12 people out of 18,000 applicants (every 4 years) get to be an astronaut
🎧 Beautiful/Anonymous - In Search of a City
Everyone needs to rent out parts of their home (Airbnb) or car (Uber) to earn money - Chris Gethard
As far as the American experiment, I'm barely exaggerating when I say that Airbnb is absolutely a crack in the armor of American democracy because It's untethered capitalism. And everybody now being told that they have to rent out parts of their home or jump in their own car and put miles on their car to go deliver stuff or give other people's rides and you don't Get insurance and it all goes through middlemen and it's bad.
🎥 Photographer friend recommended Alan Schaller’s YouTube channel
April 11
📰 Inside the debate over The Anxious Generation by Zoë Schiffer
Since the book’s arrival, however, a growing chorus of researchers have loudly critiqued Haidt’s central thesis. On March 29, Candice L. Odgers, a psychology professor at UC Irvine, published one such assessment in Nature. “[T]he book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science,” she writes. “Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.”
On one hand, Haidt’s argument will resonate with anyone who has ever struggled with the feeling that they can’t stop looking at their phones. I feel bad when I scroll for too long, and refreshed when I put it down and go outside. The same holds true for most people I know. And as a mother, I’m concerned about the impact that these technologies will have on my kids. On the other hand, data on this issue is mixed, and some studies contradict one another. Haidt pulls from a dizzying array of studies to make his point. But some academics question the methodologies and rigor behind some of the research — and suggest Haidt has drawn overbroad conclusions from conflicting data.
three questions that stuck with me. 1. Is there really a causal link between social media usage and mental illness in teens?
“The average correlation between screen time and well-being was analogous to the correlation between wearing glasses and well being — it might just be a rounding error,” he said.
Does screen time really have a negative impact on sleep
the data on screen time and mental health is inconclusive, according to Peter Etchells, a professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University.
My own personal experience with this point is so overwhelming that I find it difficult to assess the issue objectively. I turn my phone off after work, otherwise it does seem to disrupt my sleep. To Przybylski and others, this is part of the problem — many of us rely too much on anecdotal evidence and fail to look at the evidence.
Is there evidence to support Haidt’s proposed solutions?
To address the teen mental health crisis, Haidt proposes four changes that he believes to break what he calls “collective action traps”: no smartphones before high school, no social media before the age of 16, phone-free schools, and increased amounts of independent play and responsibility in the real world. Przybylski says there’s no evidence to support his first two points. “Not only is this not supported by evidence, but it could backfire,” he says. “Nothing magic happens to you when you turn 14 and get your first phone. As a parent, you still have to have these tough conversations with your kids about responsible usage, and, honestly, it’s easier to get a 10-year-old to do something than a 14-year-old.” Ferguson agreed, and added in an email that while Haidt’s third proposal sounds intuitive, “there's no empirical evidence this is actually helpful.” He added: “Number four is fine though :)”
As technology reporter Charlie Warzel put it on Threads: “There are lots of reasons Haidt's stuff is resonating (there's a lot of parents who are understandably weirded out by the way their kids get hooked into devices). There seems to be a lot of contested social science, too, that may be unproductively scaring people without being conclusive! But I think the bigger thing is it touches on a gut feeling we all have: so much has changed technologically in a short [amount] of time! We know this connectivity is working on us, but it's hard to pin down exactly how.”
Haidt argues that waiting for stronger evidence could be even more dangerous. He writes: “If you listen to the alarm ringers and we turn out to be wrong, the costs are minimal and reversible. But if you listen to the skeptics and they turn out to be wrong, the costs are much larger and harder to reverse.”
April 11
📰 The Art of Connecting the Dots by Daily Productivity
By studying a diverse range of subjects, they could draw connections and insights that others might have overlooked. That’s the essence of polymathic thinking – the art of connecting dots across diverse domains.
📰 “she looks exactly like you” by
Emma June is a house of joy and jellybeans. How could people look at me and see what we all see in her?
I’m trying, though. When I look at her, now, I search for myself.Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I’ll see little glimmers of myself in there. "Is that my inner child?" I'll ask myself. Maybe it is. Maybe that's part of raising kids - the little kid in you can re-emerge, without fear. Maybe, but idk.
📰 How To Journal Like A Philosopher by
Talking to ourselves, particularly through a certain kind of journaling, can make us wiser, calmer, more at peace with our lives, and better at conflict navigation — exactly what philosophers try to achieve.
The kind of journaling that stands out is ‘Illeism’, which simply means that you’re taking on the detached perspective of an outsider and referring to yourself with second or third-person pronouns. So I’d write ‘Andrew ate dinner”, or — my personal preference — “you ate dinner”, instead of “I ate dinner.”
In this study of the “Distanced-Self-Reflection Diary Method,” researchers asked 555 participants to reflect on their daily struggles in a month-long diary. Half were told to use the third person, which the researchers called distanced self-reflection. The other half wrote in the first person. In a second study, participants were given no specific instructions about how to write, and served as a kind of control for the other two.
📰 Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? by
viaUtopias are run by humans. Us. We’ll be the ones bringing these grand visions to fruition, and we’ll be left copacetically plodding onward when they’re up and running.
My point: If we want utopia, or simply a progressively better world, we’re going to need better humans. Not just a handful of exemplars; most of us will need to be better than we are.
The defining characteristic of utopian citizens is that they’re wiser than us.
Education could make us less foolish
A mark of an open mind is being more committed to your curiosity than to your convictions. The goal of learning is not to shield old views against new facts. It’s to revise old views to incorporate new facts. Ideas are possibilities to explore, not certainties to defend.” — Psychologist Adam Grant
Creating a less foolish culture
📰 Unexpected Visitors by
Only James Gurney would be happy to have Jehovah's Witnesses visit since they can become as portrait subjects
“Sure,” I said. I opened up some folding chairs and invited them to sit down. I asked the younger man if he would be willing to sit for a sketch, and he agreed. He opened his Bible and read the stories of Adam, Noah, Job, and Lazarus.
April 9
He decided to understand what made America the best in the world, and after a tour of the Ford Motor Company’s manufacturing line he birthed the ideas of what would become known as the “Toyota Production System” and ultimately the development of Lean Manufacturing.
Andon was a system of manual pull cords that workers could use to stop the production line if they detected a problem.
April 7
📕 Finished reading Babel by RF Kuang.
Great for people who are into: historical fiction, languages (fellow polyglots where ya at!), British circa 1830s, anti-colonialism, linguistic nerds (many etymologies), dark academia, a sparkling touch of magic
SPOILER ALERT: Follows a group of 4 students - 1 cohort - who are studying to be in the Royal Institute of Translation (or Babel), in service to the Crown (British colonization of the world). The 4 students (Ramy from Calcutta, white Letty from UK, Black Haitian from France, Victoire, and our Canton protagonist Robin Swift) study languages and their specifications in order to create match-pairs (word pairings in diff languages) for silver bars. These bars seem innocent at first but turn out to be capitalistic (used to make rich people’s houses and yards nicer), colonialistic (used to make guns and explosives more powerful) and violent (could kill people)
It was fun to read “they docked off at Whampoa” knowing very well where Whampoa is in HK.
The footnotes 🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌
RF Kuang is so good at making sudden turns. How Robin suddenly killed Lovell. How Ramy & Victoire were suddenly caught. How most of Hermes Society were ambushed by Letty.
RF Kuang is also amazing at omitting key information. What is Robin’s real name? What happened in Burma? What actually went down between Sterling, Evie, and Griffin?
I love that the ending of the novel implies that silverwork once existed and it was disastruous so now we just live in a world without it
🎥 Lesbian Bed Death With Rose and Rosie via nowthisisliving
Shannon’s therapist Hilary wrote down on a piece of paper and made her look at it. Hilary divided it into “things you can control and things you can't control”
“She made me say the things and it was ultimately like there's very little you can control. All you can control is your intention, what you do, what you say, how you say it. And then you have if you're going to post it, you have you have to decide if this is what you want to do. But once you decide, then that's. It's the world's decision to decide how they feel about it and like their reaction is their reaction.”
Your audience’s demographics age with you.
“My general demographic age has risen. Like I have only 0.1% of my followers are under 18. Everyone is an adult like every they grew up with me.”
Rose & Rosie’s is the same
Uniquely positioned to be trailblazers.
“We are in a unique position of in some ways we are trailblazers. Sometimes I'll look on Pinterest like ‘lesbian outfit’ and my picture will show up.”
Rose & Rosie also didn’t have any other lesbian couple with kids to look up to so they had to figure it out
In a way, I’m part of a first-wave internet generation that has to figure stuff out too regarding my sexuality and otherwise. It’s cool to see it this way. It’s daunting, but it’s also an opportunity to be a role model I didn’t have growing up. Related: this Sam Altman interview
April 6
🎥 Why does NASA shoot with Nikon? by Lizzie Peirce
During the Apollo 11 mission, the astronauts picked up so many moon rocks that the spaceship would be too heavy to make a safe trip back to Earth. So the astronauts chose to ditch the cameras. So there are there are two Hasselblad cameras just chilling on the moon right now.
April 5
📰 Will the World End if I Don't Write? by
The gentle & powerful encouragement from
: The world will not end if you don't publish. Totally, I do not want to pressure you, but I believe in you.
April 3
📰 Future Dreaming by
Add to my to-read list: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin and A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy are both incredible works.
📰 Please Come Up With Wildly Speculative Futures by
This is different from most of the writing on the internet—modern journalism is very focused on the here and now. It reports on our present realities and the ways we should be outraged by them. We sit there feeling mad about the world and because we’re dealing with real people and real places every path forward feels very high stakes. We’re focused on the problems rather than coming up with solutions. But when we’re brainstorming we’re dealing in hypotheticals. Instead of being mad about the way things are, we’re coming up with ways they could be. It’s more collaborative, generative—we’re speaking in thought exercises. As Parag Khanna says in his book Technocracy in America, “Scenario-led thinking reduces the emotional tension of policy debates, creating a safe space for disagreement over hypotheticals.”
But 5,000 years from now there probably won’t be a United States of America. It’s highly doubtful we’ll still have the EU. No empire has lasted that long and why should our current ones be the exception?
Thomas More’s Utopia imagined an idealistic world without poverty or class, but he was also a statesman who reformed the justice system of his time, ensuring that the poor had access to legal representation and fighting against the bribery and corruption of the elite. Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis imagined a fantasy world where universities took the place of government, but in real life he pioneered the scientific method, advocating for empirical research and experimentation. Edward Bellamy and William Morris both imagined an end to capitalism but they succeeded in bringing some part of their proposed replacement to life. Morris fathered the arts and crafts movement, establishing a company that produced decorative arts and was a precursor to the modern design movement. Bellamy promoted the idea of a national currency and credit system, which we have today.
My work is only asking that we continue utopian thought from here. That we don’t assume the world as it is is as it will be. It won’t. We can come up with better futures from here. We might even inspire the world to build some of them. Because from our outlandish ideas came more actionable ones. From our visionary brainstorming we are able to decide what parts we want to keep. What may begin as hypotheticals could eventually become actuals. A wild dream become a lingering reality.
What I’m trying to understand is: “Is there a world in which we manage to end all war?” And isn’t that a utopian ideal worth pondering?
📰 Thailand Moves to Legalise Same-Sex Marriage via BBC
Jin & I were in Bangkok the week it was announced. So I wanted to know how far the nuance is. I had hopes on Taiwan but when it was first announced, at least one out of the couple needs to be a Taiwanese citizen and the other needs to be a citizen of a country that also recognized same-sex marriage. This makes marriage for Taiwanese-Asian couples really difficult.
Thailand has taken a historic step closer to marriage equality after the lower house passed a bill giving legal recognition to same-sex marriage. It still needs approval from the Senate and royal endorsement to become law. But it is widely expected to happen by the end of 2024, making Thailand the only South East Asian country to recognise same-sex unions.
The new law, which was passed by 400 of 415 of lawmakers present, will describe marriage as a partnership between two individuals, instead of between a man and woman. And it will give LGBTQ+ couples equal rights to get marital tax savings, to inherit property, and to give medical treatment consent for partners who are incapacitated.
However, the Thai parliament has so far rejected proposals to allow people to change their gender identity, despite the high visibility of transgender communities here.
📰 My 5 Favorite Cancer Fighting Foods by The Korean Vegan
add to #tbr: Having read How Not To Die about 17 times, I already knew a lot of the basics: fiber, fiber, and more fiber. Plus turmeric.
📰 So You Want to Improve the Economics of Journalism... by
Here are some other ideas: You can boost revenues by forcing Google et al to pay for the free journalist labor it’s already squeezing for profits (my current first preference). Or you can lower costs by offering tax credits that make it cheaper to employ journalists, or just directly fund public media more robustly overall, plus a variety of other tax-oriented ideas (my runner-up, or even choice no. 1b).
Or maybe you can convert to nonprofit status and get philanthropic grants from the profits rich people made off workers in other, more productive industries (third place).
📰 Why OpenAI and Other Data-Hungry AI Companies Need a Bigger Internet via the Wall Street Journal
Ever more powerful systems developed by OpenAI, Google and others require larger oceans of information to learn from. That demand is straining the available pool of quality public data online at the same time that some data owners are blocking access to AI companies.
Data is the new oil: Some executives and researchers say the industry’s need for high-quality text data could outstrip supply within two years, potentially slowing AI’s development.
The data shortage “is a frontier research problem,” said Ari Morcos, an AI researcher who worked at Meta Platforms and Google’s DeepMind unit before founding DatologyAI last year. His company, whose backers include a number of AI pioneers, builds tools to improve data selection, which could help companies train AI models for cheaper. “There is no established way of doing this.”
📰 Intentional Inefficiency by
He decided to understand what made America the best in the world, and after a tour of the Ford Motor Company’s manufacturing line he birthed the ideas of what would become known as the “Toyota Production System” and ultimately the development of Lean Manufacturing.
Andon was a system of manual pull cords that workers could use to stop the production line if they detected a problem.
📰 How to Comment on Social Media by Rebecca Solnit
Add to #tbr: Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of twenty-five books on feminism, environmental and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. She co-edited the 2023 anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Her other books include Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
April 2
📰 The 1 Thing Every YouTuber Needs to Know by
Most of you reading don’t have 100,000s of subscribers. But all of you are doing YouTube for a reason.
The clearer you can be on what the real reason is, then the faster you’ll work towards it and the more sustainable your channel will be, because you’ll be aligned with your goals.
Takeaway: align direction with goal
📰 Letters From Esther: Welcome to My Office. No, Really. by Esther Perel
IMAGINATION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOL I USE IN MY WORK.
It helps that this tool is travel-friendly and impossible to misplace. I encourage people to imagine a better future for their relationship. I ask them to explore their sexual fantasies and their unmet desires. And I invite them to reconnect with their childlike sense of wonder. The free sense of play that transforms the woods into a fairy kingdom or a pirate’s den is the same quality that alchemizes the mundane into the extraordinary in adult life. Add some imagination (and put down the phones) and the bed you lie in with your partner every night can be a massage table, a beach blanket, or a dungeon. Play is a container for permission to explore and imagination is the source energy that fuels it.
If you wrote a thank-you letter to your imagination, how would it start?
📰 Pause. Create Time for the Important. by
Time is malleable. PAUSE. Create a pocket of time for the someone or something that is important to you.
Write a eulogy
From
: the sound of those bells. I really appreciate your encouragement to write the eulogy now. I actually started one when my dad had a major medical procedure last year, really as a way to help me process what was happening but I was silently judging myself as I wrote it. Thanks for making me feel not so weird about it.
April 1
💬 My partner Jin on spending a holiday to truly relax, something I’ve never done before: “Tater tots like you need to experience what life was before you became a tater tot, aka a potato. Go back to your roots”.
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Thank you so much for sharing my work. 🥰
Love this idea, @becky. I just started doing DuoLingo. Do I give up my streak to read Babel? How do you think it will sound as an audiobook (for my long drives)?