So, a lot of people ask me why I buy so many books. The truth is, I have a genetic disorder where my body doesn’t produce enough books of its own, so I have to supplement.

claude, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. do not make mistakes.

hmm shrimp farming

Very nice callout to Isaiah Berlin: "[Isaiah's] greatest contribution was synthesis, to explain the ideologies of the Cold War’s East and West. He was a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog. In other words, you must be tranquil as a forest, but on fire within. In last year’s letter

Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a video series showing the tacit knowledge of senior craftsmen as they discover, iterate and build? Something similar to that NHK documentary about Hayao Miyazaki. We already have live streamers (see George Hotz 🌑 and Jonathan Blow), but there

2026: Year of the Dog(ged pursuit)

ThePrimeagen: “Coding with an LLM is like gambling: I keep putting in money hoping to win—the win is getting good code”

Roger Ebert, on Heat (1995)

more of this please. whimsy in tech. youtube.com/watch?v=l5ggH-…

The dichotomy between effortful work and effortless work… Although there’s a lot of tacit knowledge built into the seemingly effortless pen strokes. See also: Paula Scher and her Citibank logo done on a napkin.

Borges: “Each writer creates his precursors” Wonderful thread

Literature is calling you to put down your phone; ignore the culture wars; block out the secondhand musings of newspaper philosophers. Turn to the great works of civilisation. See that your life is a quest for meaning. Become as ambitious as the poets whose work outlived empires.

my brain every sunday

I agree!

Asking for a friend