Build Something Beautiful
The craft of building great things
Yoshio Goto and
Build Something Beautiful
Optimization alone can't get you novelty or interestingness.
There are essentially two business models right now: boring, useful things that can print money and tastemaker brands that can brute force cultural relevancy. Dumb $ is funding the middle: stuff that is neither useful nor cool enough to make it past current startup headwinds.
Daisy Aliototwitter.comCalm technology
dirt.fyi
fascinating conversation with Daylight Computer founder:
How do we bring evolutionary harmony? […] Evolutionary mismatch is redefining the way a human is built and that a lot of these vulnerabilities and unhealthy behaviors and the path of least resistance not often being aligned with our intention, is not necessarily a bug, it’s a feature.
Daisy is talking:
In my world, I’ve seen the retreat to tangible things more in categories like print books, print magazines, and stuff like perfume, things that can’t be replicated digitally.
I think people just want things that they can hold and touch, honestly, and that’s a natural impulse, but I don’t know, I think hardware is just a reflection of our relationship to objects generally, I don’t think it’s a special category.
Our choice of the particular work we do depends on the whole context of our life and society and current needs, of course; but there is also just a general orientation that emerges out of almost any set of accumulated experiences of doing something useful, particularly as part of a coordinated exchange with others. And there is profound, life-giving value in even the seemingly mundane ways we apply our minds and direct our focused efforts toward purposeful ends that matter to us. This could be as complex as building an entire company, or it could be as simple as flipping burgers at a restaurant. It could also be volunteering at a shelter, if we make a serious and sustained project of it.
Kurt, Dave and Chris:... See more
First let me apologize for taking a couple of days to put this outline together. When I spoke to Kurt I was in the middle of making a Fugazi album1, but I thought I would have a day or so between records to sort everything out. My schedule changed unexpectedly, and this is the first moment I've had to go through it all. Apology
Shaun Usher • I would like to be paid like a plumber
a great f*cking letter from Steve Albini to Nirvana.
If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema.
But this kind of love is rare nowadays. I often see record labels promote new artists for all sorts of gimmicky reasons—even labels I once trusted such as Deutsche Gr... See more
But this kind of love is rare nowadays. I often see record labels promote new artists for all sorts of gimmicky reasons—even labels I once trusted such as Deutsche Gr... See more
Do: make creative decisions that don’t (or do) scale + makes the heart sail.
Don’t: make creative decisions based on PnLs, on balance sheets, on gimmicky trends that appeal to a short-term audience.