Agalia Tan

some self-limiting format, like a newsletter or print edition.

I feel like Eno is exploring this question of what creativity is and what that process looks like for different people. The way OpenAI talks about what a large language model generates is, by definition, incurious about creativity. It’s like, what if we just spit stuff out and you have no idea where it came from?

It just means that in an industry where divergent thinking is an advantage, your divergent thinking is pulling from the same sources as your contemporaries.

(This is the “best practices” problem. When a platform or channel tells you what the best practices are, it’s a list of 1) what everyone is going to be doing for the next year, 2) guidelines for... See more

She quotes Viktor Shklovsky: “habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war... and art exists so that one may recover the sensation of life.” Then she goes on: “ the trick in writing/life... is to figure out how to import a chunk of the past into the present, so your present self can feel all the things you’ve fo... See more

Continual discernment is key

Context is a tool, use and remove it with intention and you’ll be a step ahead of most.

But the repetitive, difficult nature of leaning into commodity production can give us insight, humility and skill. It helps us understand just how hard the hard parts are, and creates an opportunity to bring innovation to the work to be done.

Learning the skill and caring enough to show up to implement it, again and again, can give us the foundation... See more