Breadcrumbs – by Simon Sarris – The Map is Mostly Water
A vision of virtuous social media usage. Simon Sarris suggests leaving “breadcrumbs”: short snippets that show what you are doing in the real world. People follow the breadcrumbs and then learn more about you. A collection of breadcrumbs ends up being an honest, genuine description of a person, better than a dating doc or resume.
How to read more books – by David R. MacIver
I often have the problem of both wanting and not wanting to do something. This post is about reading more books, but the techniques extend to pretty much anything. I particularly like DRMacIver’s concept of spells, behavioral algorithms you can run on yourself to redirect energy and become more productive.
DRMacIver has some of the best writing out there for dealing with productivity, motivation, and pragmatic management of emotions.
Writes and Write-Nots by Paul Graham
A worrying story of how widespread LLM usage could play out. If people offload more and more of their writing to AIs, they will eventually lose the ability to write independently. Writing is the same as thinking, so we can expect people to lose the ability to think as well.
Eigenrobot on The Last Unicorn (1982)
I recently rewatched The Last Unicorn and very much enjoyed it despite not being into the fantasy genre. Eigenrobot points to a possible reason why: the film is less a fantasy and more a deconstruction of fantasy. It’s about characters who are confused about what kind of story they are in, and what their place is in it.
Oil Shocks, Price Controls, and War, the Marginal Revolution Podcast
An enlightening summary of what was going on economically in the 70s. I much prefer Tyler Cowen as a historian than an econonomist. His recent appearance on Rick Rubin’s podcast also had some interesting stories about the history of Asia.
A queryable, downloadable, and searchable database of tweets. It’s opt-in, but an impressive array of posters have already contributed their archives.
How glowing up ruined my life – Alivia D’Andrea on YouTube
A woman’s retrospective on a “glowing up” journey of losing weight, becoming active, and clearing up skin. This isn’t very interesting on the object level, and indeed this video doesn’t go deep into the specifics of her glow up, but I appreciated the honesty and clarity of her retrospective thought. It’s a good illustration of how people can self-inflict delusions that are obviously harmful when looked at from the outside. It also illustrates how and why people inflict needless suffering on themselves.
On Building Git for Lawyers – by Jordan Bryan
At the Pareto frontier of software engineering and lawyering, you can save a gazillion dollars worth of productivity for law firms by creating Git for Microsoft Word’s docx format.
Another lesson: even highly paid specialists have unproductive, slow workflows, and you can always learn a lot by paying attention to how someone works. There is more low-to-medium hanging fruit out there.
Will the China Cycle Come for Airbus and Boeing? – Construction Physics Substack
Why can’t China build commercial aircraft? Usually China is able to be competitive in manufacturing via appropriating processes built out in other countries (the “China Cycle”), but this hasn’t happened with aircraft. This post tells several stories of China’s failures in this area since the 70s, and ends on an uncertain note for whether or not their most recent attempt will succeed.
On Self-Respect (1961) by Joan Didion
I think a lot about nebulous qualities– for example, how do some people have more conversational “energy” than others? Or “confidence”? Didion’s conception of “self-respect” is more of a “meta-quality” that concerns how one should relate to one’s self.
Also, Didion’s style is beautiful and refreshing, like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Dominic Cummings on War and Peace
I’ve been having trouble getting into War and Peace, which hasn’t quite captured me the same way Anna Karenina did. Cummings pulls out several compelling passages that give me plenty to look forward to.
“The most deranged working habit I’ve ever heard” (from Paul Bloom on Conversations with Tyler)
Full quote:
[BLOOM]: My oddest work habit is that I work — not always, but often — in six-minute bursts. I have a whiteboard right next to me. I’ll work on a Substack for six minutes, then a reference letter for six minutes. Then I’ll rush and fold my laundry for six minutes. Then I’ll answer email for six minutes. Go on social media for six minutes. Then do this for 10 more things and go back to the Substack and repeat. Then three, four hours will go by. I don’t recommend it for everybody.
COWEN: That’s an approximation? Or you’ve set it like a timer? Or is the timing internal?
BLOOM: Not an approximate, I have a timer. When my timer beeps, I could be mid-word. I’ll stop and go on to the next. For me, (a) this keeps me from getting bored. Also, by stopping mid-word or stopping wherever I’m stopping, when I go back to it, the energy is still there to want to continue. I highly recommend it to everybody.
I’ve been using this technique in my job and to great effect. Why does it work? For one, it forces me to conceptualize work as smaller chunks. It also prevents me from going too deep into any particular rabbit hole, which I often do as a defense against working on something more important but less interesting.
Gwern talked about rabbit holes on his recent podcast appearance. There is a proper time for going down rabbit holes, and the instinct is there for a good reason. But sometimes you have to do the opposite.
Simon Sarris on website aesthetics
A starting vibe for website aesthetics. The interactive animations on his website (simonsarris.com) are also a good point of inspiration. I hope to make the blog more like this at some point in the future.
Ripley Ischia knit shirt and Jade Checker Chet knit from the Scott Fraser Collection
Obscenely expensive, but I felt I had no choice but to buy these shirts which spoke directly to my soul.
The Little Mermaid (ongoing series) by sympathetic opposition
A retelling of the original Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. Sympopp adds a modern touch with references to gender discourse and psychoanalysis.
Masterpieces of Japan (@JapanTraCul) on Twitter
Beautiful art that’s mostly vertical and works well as phone wallpapers.
I use the Slideshow Wallpaper app to rotate through art on my phone.
More good art that can be used for phone wallpapers.
A proposed redesign of Serbian currency
See also the artist’s Instagram. (I originally learned about this from Twitter but can’t find the original link.)
Lovely jazz-swingy covers of popular songs, highly recommended. IMO their version of “Creep” is better than Radiohead’s.
The most photogenic cat I’ve ever seen, highly recommended follow.
If you clicked on any of these links or found one of the descriptions interesting, please let me know in the comments!
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