Tanuj

my app doesn’t need a login system. It doesn’t need an interface to create and manage contacts. It already knows exactly who’s using it. (This makes me think about an old blog post by Clay Shirky: “Situated software, by contrast, doesn’t need to be personalized — it is personal from its inception.”)

Most books are not half great and half horrible. And you should look at a few different parts of the book. But especially these days an author should be able to signal by putting some good stuff up front. Because people are less patient than they used to be. A nineteenth century book you need to give it more time, it may not get good until chapter... See more

You can't make a movie and say, "It was all a big accident." No, it has to be a conspiracy, people plotting together, because a story is about intention. A story is not about spontaneous order or complex human institutions which are the product of human action but not of human design. No, a story is about evil people plotting together. So you hear... See more

As you explore this document, imagine a world where we expect every claim to be accompanied by an explorable analysis, and every statistic to be linked to a primary source. Imagine collecting data and designing analyses in a collaborative wiki-like manner.

For the people who’ve figured out the right incantations to type and buttons-buried-in-submenus to click, computers can automate administrivia, surface information, and make them feel “more fully participant in the future”. But getting there is an arduous journey, and many people get in a place where computers just make things harder. The... See more

Mastering these categories and where they apply will take time and experience. However, knowing the contradictions in each category helps master the category better. We’re using inversion to define the limits of the category.