Alex Dobrenko

Experiencing this sudden ability to code has been jarring.

It has made me realize how much our perception of work is shaped by completing tasks. Many people derive satisfaction from finishing a to-do list, no matter what kind of work they are doing. People talk about having “productive weekends” like it is their whole purpose in the world.

ou weren’t here when we had to stay up past midnight to even see a band we loved on MTV. You’re here now, wherever’s here to you. When you ask someone my age if they were into Nirvana, they claim of course they were, loved Nirvana. Same way they were all against the war in Iraq. You don’t understand that we never heard these bands when someone else... See more

his mindset provides a method and a framework for understanding, appreciating, and acting upon obstacles that life throws at you . This allows you to become “ antifragile ” in the sense that you actually gain st rength by going through and learning from challenging times. The greater the challenge , the greater your strength becomes. I learned a... See more

My friend Kasey Klimes wrote a fantastic piece called “

When to Design for Emergence

” on the design dynamics of large-scale software after working on Google Maps.

https://newsletter.rhizomerd.com/p/when-to-design-for-emergence

He points out that our current approach is designed to only solve the most common needs of the most number of users.

Anything... See more

Culture industry roles were once much more coherent, the lines of power much more concrete. Figures like Anna Wintour and Rick Rubin gesture at this recent past. They were middle men connecting financial capital (businesses) with cultural capital (artists) to create social capital (cultural institutions). Fashion and literary editors, film and

... See more

What do we need, and what do we only reach for out of habit? What exhausts, and what nourishes?

Social environments on the internet provide a bountiful — and sometimes incongruous — bundle: conversation, riffing, jokes and shitposts, entertainment, learning, distraction, inspiration, meeting interesting people.

It's a beautiful bundle, to be sure!... See more

If my notes/restacks could go directly to Sublime , that would be absolutely magical.

Also, if you haven’t already, Sublime is hospitality tech—what I mean by that is it actually cares for its users, is upfront in its purpose, and is simply clean. As I constantly aim to reclaim my attention, this is one of the limited bits of tech that will receive... See more