The reason I’ve just made you read a thousand words about trees (bet you didn’t think you were going to do that today) is that it illustrates the problems of taking a complex system and applying a simple process to it in order to optimize a single metric.

Which brings us back to business: there are a huge number of complex systems in a business, wh... See more

Monk’s intimate, exhaustive and poetic improvisations pioneered new languages of modern jazz and helped birth bebop as a seminal art form. “And then there was the silence. There is nothing more daunting and mysterious. We flood silence with chatter, we fill it with noise or notes rather than let it reveal what it knows or just let it be,” wrote mus... See more

I’ve been playing Minecraft since I was 10, and still do to this day at 18 years old. I’ve spend these past years making multiple cities and experimenting with the craziest building and urban planning designs. My biggest project yet it a world I have been working on for 5 years now. It covers a little over 1 million square blocks, and is a world wh... See more

On the importance of bodies

Touch brings us closer. Emotions can be communicated wordlessly through hugs, caresses, holding and being held. The language of touch can inspire deep connection between people and express more than words could ever say, would ever need to say — this is the space where eros comes alive, where we desire for others. To be r... See more

James Turrell took inspiration from astronomy and perceptual psychology. Coco Chanel was most influenced by nuns and religious symbols. David Adjaye drew from Yoruban sculpture, and Steve Jobs from Zen Buddhism and calligraphy. We could continue this list forever, but that’s not the point. The point is to look outside the confines of our industry t... See more

Herein lies the triumph of commodification: it separates us from the things we evaluate. ”If a thing is to have a market value,” writes Hyde, “it must be detachable or alienable so that it can be put on the scale and compared.” Karl Marx similarly argued in Das Kapital, “I cannot express the value of linen in terms of linen”. This is why money has ... See more

After my experience at The Met, I spent the next few months viewing and considering as much beauty as I could. I went to more museums. I spent weeks researching obscure Baroque furniture makers, legendary luthiers, prominent architects, naturalist illustrators, Italian car designers, and philosophers of aesthetics. What I came out the other side be... See more