Building Something
At any given time, you’re either pre–heavy thing or post–heavy thing. You’ve either made something weighty already, or you haven’t. Pre–heavy thing people are still searching, experimenting, iterating. Post–heavy thing people have crossed the threshold, and it shows. They’ve made something substantial—something that commands respect, inspires other... See more
From one of my favorite Hacker News comments ever, by @Jonathan_Blow: https://t.co/uJgib4x6El
We can all agree that discovering fire was pretty rad. The first humans to do it probably spent a lot of time learning which kind of kindling was best, how to nurse a spark into a flame, and what sorts of fires were best for cooking vs. heating. They must have painstakingly passed this knowledge from generation to generation, and youngsters had to ... See more
Adam Mastroianni • Ideas Aren’t Getting Harder to Find and Anyone Who Tells You Otherwise Is a Coward and I Will Fight Them
How to break out of the emotional ruts within skill building
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
– John Steinbeck
– John Steinbeck
This isn't about lowering our ambitions - it's about elevating them. Trading the superficial for the substantial, rigidity for resilience, and the exhausting pursuit of "crushing it" for the satisfaction of building something meaningful. Because perhaps true success isn't measured in inbox zeros, but in creating a life that doesn't feel like someth... See more
It’s a real mind fuck and it makes me feel complicit in something terrible that hurts people. It makes me feel complicit in the thing that hurt ME. It’s like I morph into an avatar for the very thing I spend my entire career and life fighting against. Like, while I’m trying to detox, I’m actively poisoning other people.
"Tradition is about passing the flame not keeping the ash". That's from superstar chef Massimo Bottura.
Even now, when I’m lucky enough to be able to write exactly what I want to write with very few external constraints, writing often feels difficult for me in the same way it did when I was pumping out listicles — slow, sticky, clunky, painful, humiliating. I wonder if this, too, is part of the appeal of AI: it is so often humiliating to push up agai... See more