making sublime
a collection of thoughts, musings, and ideas that inspire sublime
sari and
making sublime
I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have... See more
Ezra Klein • Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You.
2024 Memo
Toolhouse's 2024 memo outlines their mission to develop a personal product generator that empowers users to create custom, personalized 3D objects through the integration of AI and agile production methods.
toolhouse.buildBeautiful memo bridging the physical and digital worlds in service of the future of product design, personalization, and people’s agency around their experiences. By Toolhouse (Joe, OEM care).
Highlights:
An engine to help you build first person products — products whose utility is specific to you, and shaped with an imprint of your expression.
The finest products are custom, and the ability to produce custom products should be made as accessible as possible. Custom and accessible don’t need to be mutually exclusive.
As the material world grows to reflect the agility of software, products will become much more malleable.
As the technology matures, the scale of applications will grow to encompass larger systems of interchangeable parts. With the ability to generate variations for any product.
The goal throughout is the same: leverage machine intelligence to lower the ceiling of production so users can easily produce exceptionally personal products.
Principles:
Physical imagination: materialize ideas to transcend the digital/virtual realm with real world feedback.
Creative practicality: balance expression with real-world utility. Make imagination useful.
Play and accessibility: give users agency to shape their world by making the production process easily understandable and fun to use.
Dynamic personalization: a product is a living entity, capable of continuous improvements and adaptations in response to the user's evolving needs. Make the system capable to respond uniquely to individual preferences and requirements. If you build what you use, you learn to build better.
Also reminded me of Scott Belsky’s post on personalization.
All original ideas are combinations of other people’s ideas. So the more you curate other people’s ideas, the more you develop your own rare and valuable ideas
a space to curate my own digital garden
Every time I fail a spaced repetition review for a card which I remember thinking was almost too trivial to write down, I become more convinced that everything I read without making cards for is a waste of time.
Dwarkesh Patelx.comA knowledge base that looked for new connections within itself would be less of a memory system, as notes conventionally are, and become more of a generative tool. Generative tools are exciting because they contain real infinites that invite endless play and exploration.
Linus Lee • Knowledge tools, finite and infinite | thesephist.com
What the catalogers provide is different than traditional press coverage or financial investment. They are dealers of agency. Through a combination of tools, information, and imagination they help draw a map around new communities.
If you ask them to describe what they do, you’ll get a meandering answer. As Brand says: “I find things and found... See more
If you ask them to describe what they do, you’ll get a meandering answer. As Brand says: “I find things and found... See more
David Lang • The Catalogers
Cataloging and organizing the world is a deeply human endeavor. Before we can unify ideas together, or provide some sort of large conceptual framework, we need to at least have gathered and organized the facts and data. Creating a catalog or a list involves frameworks and organization, but it is also at peace with the grab-bag and the miscellaneous. It is a means for creating order while still being wary of too much order—or at least comfortable sitting with a bit of a mess.