January 2023: Urbit, Product Engineers, Squats
What I Did This Month
Wrote about why you should care about Urbit through a history of internet platforms (web2 and web3). It’s been interesting learning about both the decentralized web and crypto social as adjacent topics.
For PostHog, wrote about product engineers vs product managers, feature flag benefits and best practices, a bunch of tutorials, and more YouTube videos.
Ate Brazilian BBQ, played basketball, got a new bison hoodie and some books, hosted a dinner party, figured out my diet, and squatted 365 (new PR).
Thoughts
Obviously, the first time you do something, you don’t know anything and you suck. The key to getting better is getting over that and doing it a bunch more. Find the internal motivation to play a longer-term game. If you aren’t good at something, it is probably because you haven’t really tired or you don’t care.
Writing posts and working on projects is an excuse to email and message people you admire on related topics to those posts and projects.
I love reading my friends’ writings and get a lot of satisfaction out of trying to convince them to write. If you are thinking about writing more, talk to me.
There are group chats with people worth billions of dollars but the tools built on these group chats are still extremely limited. Why can’t I send my friend’s money via a group chat? (I’m in Canada is the real problem).
Learning how to code and use your computer effectively is still one of the most important skills to have. As much as the AI hype tries to tell you otherwise, many of the tools and infrastructure to leverage technology are not accessible to non-programmers. You need to become a sovereign programmer.
The sovereign programmer can use their skills to outmaneuver bureaucracy. Much of the lack of progress in areas like energy, transportation, and housing can be blamed on bureaucracy. A class of sovereign programmers could leverage computers and technological innovation to outmaneuver the bureaucracy standing in their way and drive progress forward.
"Too many travel books are an inefficient blending of memoir, novel, and travel narration and too light on information. Ideally, I want someone with a background in geography, natural history, or maybe urban studies to serve up a semi-rigorous account of what they are doing and seeing.” - Tyler Cowen
Break down your aspirational identity into completable projects. Every big problem is a bunch of little ones in a trench coat. If you want to be a writer, write 100 posts. If you want to be a developer, write 100 apps.
On the internet, everyone is your neighbour. Every type of garden, farm, and building will be appreciated by someone.
The key to lifting heavy is believing you can do it. You have a 0% chance of lifting something you don’t believe you can lift. People often lift heavier weights they believe are lighter by accident. Part of the aggressive nature of gyms is overloading overthinking about your lifts.
Recommendations
I read a bunch of mediocre books this month, and didn’t finish any of them. The notable ones:
The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan: If you’ve read or listened to any Zeihan in the last two years, it is the same. If not, potentially life-changing. Geography, demographics, and energy matter a lot and will create the future (USA-led) world.
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Biography of Robert Oppenheimer. Focuses too much on his ties to communism. Oppenheimer is either too smart to capture in biography or this one was too far away from him. I’ll try Making of the Atomic Bomb instead.
The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. Like Zeihan, if you haven’t read Sapiens or Guns, Germs, and Steel, or any similar book, this one could be life-changing, but not particularly different (was earlier though).
Foster published their first edition of a digital magazine. I’m endlessly inspired by the energy everyone at Foster is putting into making writing online as wonderful as possible.
Some of the most famous, successful people in history were energetic aliens, and a solid amount of their success can be tied to that. Shows you how important energy levels are, and that you should care more about them. Walking speed is a sign?
I love bison, they are beautiful creatures and I want to see their populations expand. They had some good. One on why America should make it their New Year’s Resolution to restore them, and another by the NYT on efforts to do just that.
My ideas around sovereign programmers came from reading this piece on weather software winter by Hundred Rabbits. Computers can do so much, but much of modern software is not really made by or for people anymore. It’s complex, in the cloud, and massive. Sovereign programmers can take software back, and this is kind of a guide to doing just that.
Most people aren’t serious, are you by
? Also, Visa on do 100 things project management. Working hurts less than procrastinating. Being prudent (slow) is often a great risk. How to evaluate character by .Robin Sloan routes attention to cool apps, projects, and technologies. It’s fun to explore.
on AI and how it might not help us solve big problems like housing, transportation, and energy.How to look better on camera (important for Zoom calls and YouTube). The ghostwriter behind Spare. Studying Napoleon Bonaparte. Netflix focused on making developers more productive. Insights from Tiny’s first employee, everything is negotiable.
12 year old Minecraft foreman. Community is more than just GM. Bloomberg Terminal is about customer centricity. Work with ChatGPT open. Home prices in Canada are insane. Is AI the new crypto (No)? Blueprint for slower aging. Write every day. Darts.
Upcoming
For PostHog, publish a lot of writing that product engineers want to read and continue improving my YouTube game.
I have many ideas in the post-idea, pre-rough draft phase, I want to publish at least 2 of them.
Write more code, and become a better programmer by shipping small projects.