In the end, to move through the world is to experience encounters that constantly pass us by, and to brush up against moments that we are not able to save other than as an unreliable memory. The increasing popularity of apps like BeReal that capture those moments—rather than try to contain and display them—seems to reflect an embrace of life’s... See more
If you produce ideas, don’t let the validated crowd out the emerging. If you curate ideas, don’t be beholden to consensus and algorithms. And if you consume ideas, gravitate toward what you don’t yet understand instead of going all-in on the ones you already do. Because otherwise — it’s sequels all the way down.
The antidote to burnout and the existential inquiry it brings seems to be doing things that don’t scale in pursuit of things that can’t scale. It becomes exciting not to see what you can do without limits, but to see what you can do with them.
“At the end of my reply I signed off using my initials AWS, a moniker I often use rather than my given name Austin. A few days later I received a confused reply from my collaborator to be. Whether in sincerity or jest they addressed me as Amazon Web Service, and requested clarity on who they were speaking to. I appreciated the interaction, because... See more
Do something that won’t compute. Following this maxim may mean I will soon become obsolete, outpaced by those who calculate their utils and control their time and carefully calibrate their existence. But I’ve grown contented with that fate. I wish to live and die as I am: wholly, honestly, and messily; constantly awed by life’s imperfection;... See more
i want to deoptimize my brain. make it slower, get distracted. always existing on the fringe and whatever comes out is something outside of the objectives of this process at all. as if my processes will exist to alleviate the anxiety of having an objective at all