Philip Soriano
@philip
Philip Soriano
Consider what it takes for a child to develop into a grown-up. We enter our lives in a state of utter dependence on adults. Eventually, God willing, we become adults ourselves, capable of navigating daily life on our own. The journey from the former to the latter, Gill told me, ought to be one of gradually expanding independence. Parents shouldn’t... See more
The Atlantic • Cities Aren’t Built for Kids
Last, if Alex feels a little extra crying will get Mom and Dad to compete to give him a few extra goodies—dessert and extra attention—he often exploits their tension like water seeping into a fissure on a roof. The gap between Mom and Dad widens further, and Alex unconsciously learns “victim power.”
John Gray PhD • The Boy Crisis
Don’t play it safe, in your imaginings. Write a list of things you long for, that don’t include any kind of romantic entanglement, and then go after them with all of the caution and trepidation of a comet.
Catherine Gray • The Unexpected Joy of Being Single
“The best arguments in the world won’t change a single person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” - Richard Powers
Morgan Housel • Makes You Think
And that value kicks in early. Toddlers whose dads encouraged exploring (while setting limits) had better social and emotional skills twelve to eighteen months later.17
John Gray PhD • The Boy Crisis
On bad days meta-writing keeps me disciplined, giving me a reason to put pen to paper. As such, my private meta-writing is probably the greatest aid to producing public writing that I have. My journals are full of pages that start with what I planned to eat during the day and ended with a fresh idea, or an outline for a prospective article.
You’d be... See more
You’d be... See more
On Writing and Why write?
David Foster Wallace, on working your way back to writing for yourself and rediscovering the fun of the craft:
At some point you find that 90% of the stuff you're writing is motivated and informed by an overwhelming need to be liked. This results in shitty fiction. And the shitty work must get fed to the wastebasket,... See more
Henrik Karlssonsubstack.comThey Architect the Way Work Gets Done
Bezos redesigned work to create a system of independent, decoupled teams who were guided by a set of hows dramatically different from prior practices at Amazon and other large tech companies. For example, most software companies require teams to utilize one another’s code to increase efficiency. To increase velocity and reduce dependency, Amazon does the opposite: Its software teams are mostly free to choose whether they use common services or create their own building blocks of code. This results in duplicative work and some inconsistencies in the user experience, but Bezos justifies it by saying he’d “rather have two than none.”
Some of Amazon’s managerial innovations have become celebrated. For example,
teams adhere to the “two-pizza rule,” limiting team size to only as many people as can be fed by two pizzas (typically eight or fewer).
PowerPoint presentations are forbidden because they lull participants into passivity; instead, Amazon requires every proposal to be written in a narrative memo of six pages or fewer, to deliver more detailed thinking than is typically found in slide presentations.
After all the meeting attendees read the memo closely, they have a nonhierarchical, no-holds-barred debate. The goal is to interrogate everything thoroughly, and vigorous dissent is encouraged. Before stepping down as CEO, Bezos participated in hundreds of these meetings himself. Instead of sitting back and waiting for the CEO to make the decision, everyone at Amazon is expected to speak up and disagree—even with Bezos or his successor, Andy Jassy. Once a determination is made, the CEO supports the path forward, knowing that most conclusions are provisional and can be revisited as new information comes in—what Amazon calls “two-way-door decisions.”
This is what we mean when we say leaders architect the way work gets done. It’s not about changing org charts. It’s about shifting decision rights closer to the front lines—and equipping those teams with the tools and frameworks that allow them to act. Those include customer-value metrics, structured memos, and experimentation protocols. It’s difficult work because it often requires leaders to give up control—to redistribute authority, remove approvals, and reduce the frictions that slow teams down. When done well, it promotes speed, clarity, and autonomy—which is why Amazon, a giant company, continues to launch innovative products and services quickly.
All four leaders we studied recognized that frontline teams are key to creating and delivering value for customers, whether they are internal or external. They made it their personal mission to design work processes so that employees are empowered with the tools and support they need and don’t hit obstacles that slow them
We thought this was a really compelling opportunity to enter the world of NFTs, with a number of considerations in mind. In the future, the CryptoPunks will be seen as a time capsule of this period. They were an early, if not the first, major permutational project that took the space by storm, and as such the works are representative of a community... See more
ICA Miami - Outland
Museums Collect NFTs Now and Museum Exchange
CryptoPunk at ICA Miami