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I think about all the effort and energy that goes into finding references and doing research, and I think it’s a lost art form. I started my blog and

increasingly convinced the work of a truly great editor or writing teacher is to keep asking “why do you care?” until you reach the live wire under th

Honestly: I don’t want AI to make me 10x more productive so that I can “crush it” and “stay ahead of everyone else.” I actually just want a calmer,

The whole corruption of aesthetic language is the application of financial jargon to artistic creativity. This is why instead of calling a work of art

“Another word for creativity is courage.” – Henri Matisse

In ‘How Movies Were Edited 60 Years Ago,’ an editor manually cut film splicing, taping, and rewinding at a near biblical pace. Each move carried signi

Why should what you produce, rather than what you consume, be the most important thing about you? Why shouldn’t the fact that you race boats or watch

consumption choices force you to develop the habit of self-examination. And when you think about more complex life choices — what kind of personality

Truth and falsehood are not opposites.  The opposite of one truth is often another truth, and the opposite of one falsehood is usually another.   - D

Now that we’ve seen how successful “Boytoy” was, how do you think you’ll approach your next project, now that the bar is so high? E In my art and crea

Very often, I will check out three or four or five books on a writer or artist I admire; spend several hours reading, skimming, scanning, printing, an

The value of polish is going to go down and the value of personal charisma and style and weirdness is going to go up.There’s this saying that I was to

If the media is fragmented, how would you define the fragment that you are inhabiting yourself?It’s interesting. Last week we talked with Flynn McGarr

Could you give me some examples of — I don’t want to say AI-safe or AI-proof — but the types of journalism that are going to be the most robust in the

Love this from Yancey Strickler: An artist is a self-employed self-expressor. A creator is a self-employed commercial expressor.

Well, I can be fooled, will be fooled in the future, probably have been fooled in the past. But the conclusions drawn from that fact are all wrong. I

I find that changing mediums is always good for my writing, so often I will go from the manila folder to a sheet of paper to a Word doc to a Scrivener

I have said that releasing certain work is like having a pap smear in public. This still feels true but before you can even get to the point of choosi

So much of making creative work is not actually being in flow, but it’s getting yourself there.

Letter to Arc Members 2025

Dreamer – your home for personal intelligence // flurries of latent creativity

Learn Prompting: Your Guide to Communicating with AI

One of the best ways I’ve found to organize one’s thoughts about a huge swath of intellectual and creative space, is to write a syllabus

As a kid did you ever stare into your own eyes in the mirror long enough to lose your sense of reality?

A child can spend an hour fascinated by light reflecting on a wall. Adults often require escalating stimulation because familiarity numbs perception.W

Watch a child become emotionally transformed by:warm bathwater,a soft blanket,sunlight,being swung in circles,a heated car seat,grass,pool water,being

Output down, page views up: Axios shifts from volume to value Axios output in Q1 was down 22% compared to a year earlier but

Working in tech should be more like filmmaking—artists jumping from project to project, collaborating with new creators across disciplines every few m

Kurt, Dave and Chris:First let me apologize for taking a couple of days to put this outline together. When I spoke to Kurt I was in the middle of maki

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. – Simone Weil In 1989, when I was selected as the ne

There are brilliant examples all over the place of people tweaking time subjectively. One of my favorites is the Uber map. It doesn’t change how long

I want them to take away from the book the same thing they would take from the concert. I want them to think, well, I feel better now. I feel upli

There's a feeling you get in the presence of beautiful buildings and bustling courtyards.

A secret of the top growth experts in tech is to think about every UX interaction as an emotional event.

“You’re probably wondering what we’re trying to do. It’s hard to say. We hope that we have something here... We’ve been working quite hard at it. We h

I did not make a single $ from 20VC for three years. 4 shows per week for 3 years and not $1. For the first 150 episodes, I did not get more than

We built systems that prize speed above all else, and in doing so we lost the most fundamental lesson that nature teaches: speed of growth makes you f

All human wisdom is contained in these two words: ‘wait’ and ‘hope’!”

don’t live each day like it’s your last. live like you’ll make it to 100. think in centuries.

To my own children, I hope one day you will be proud of the work for which you have sacrificed so much time with your father. I love you more than wor

For Mom and Dad, who taught me to think for myself— and the AIs, robots, and machines that made me wonder if I really was.